The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 17, 1927, Page 5

THe NEw MAGAZINE Section of The DAILY W ORKER. SATURDAY, SEPT. 17, 192 This Magazi ILY bg AILY WORKER ORK T 2 Section Avpears Every Ratabdan te. in T Th ALEX BIT’ EL iA AN, I E dit THE REAL AMERICAN LEGION I EEE EST SS the AS circumstances require, the American L egion ————— pretends to be neutral in the class war, not inte By VERN SMITH ested in politics, non-partisan in both strikes ee election campaigns. When the workers of France, hear thru their militant organ, L’Humanite, conducted a the unofficial military force, of a , using direct viclence against zation into fragments, kill ack under a yoke of low ; : Hi sauetheAunen the mob, who had been made prisoners of the rest vigorous campaign of truth-telling against the Amer- by that time, and killed one more Legionnaire before ican Fascisti, as they brand the Legion, the editors he was ecantured. The man he shot | was Dale of that leading French Communist paper were visited Hubbard, nephew of the pin Peectene nedavith by one Ovid Dally of the Legion, who argued-with 4, syceess of the raid. -F. Habba peal aaa them, and told the A. P: correspondent with whom he jysher company, chief Pi or 1918 raid had contact, that the Legion was not only not anti- on the I. W. W. hall, and previously pr nt of the labor, but had “laboring men in its ranks.” Employers’ Asscciation of Washington. This is the regular camoufiage of the American a Legion whenever it finds itself called to account for its many crimes. This air of injured innocence has aw = Cee Ta eae pers uae 4 fooled American labor to the point where it actually phy 2 ein Rati pay tg Reetiee eee of prison, mie ¥ ou 4 ilated shamefully with has permitted such creatures as “Col.” Berry of the. % aes gent Re ee ontinued on Pago Seven) printers’ union to hold office in the A. F. of L. and also in the Legion, to speak to A. F, of L. conven- tions in the name of the Legion. There are many cases to be cited which abun- dantly disprove the Legion argument of neutrality towards labor, and expose its character as a tool of the American capitalist class, but none of them do so, better than the Centralia case. There the open fascist character of the Legion was exhibited—on the field of actual battle. Centralia is'a lumber town of Washington. Dur- ing the war the lumber barons, always a greedy bunch, ran wild. The price of spruce to private com- panies soared from $16 per thousand to $116, and the government paid $1,200 per thousand feet. Not content with this terrific rake-off, the com- panies insisted on bitter exploitation of their loggers. But the workers struck, under the leadership of the I. W. W., which by taking the icad in their fight for better hours, wages and conditions, became a real power in the woods of the Northwest. The union compelled the furious and resisting lumber hogs to make a change from ten or eleven hours work per day to eight, to grant a fifty per cent increase in wages, to provide real food instead of slop, and clean laundered bedding instead of blankets the worker had to carry himself, and was without facilities for washing. : In the course of this useful activity, the 1. W. W. established a hall in Centralia, Washington, and a local branch of, the Lumber Workers’ Industrial Union of the I. W. W. On Memorial Day, 1918, the local business men, officials of the Eastern Railway and Lumber Co., the Elks Club and various of their gunmen con- spired to raid the I. W. W. hall. They smashed it up, nearly killed its inmates, and took away the furniture. James Churchill, proprietor of a glove factory boasts that he got the typewriter and used it in his office. The hall was’ re-established, on another location. The work of organization continued. Bear in mind that this was a strictly labor-versus-capital fight. The I. W. W. was the only union in the woods of any account in point of size. It was waging a fight for better conditions, and it was being’ persecuted for that reason. The first raid having been insufficient to stop the work of organization, a greater and more serious one was planned, almost openly planned, in the “Elks Club,” in the offices of the lumber companies, among the business men. It was so publicly arranged that the I. W. W. knew all about it, consulted lawyers as to their rights, were told that their house was their castle and could be defended, and agreed to stand their ground. They issued a statement to the public, announcing this. The American Legion was placed at the disposal of the raiders by its local leaders. Lieut. Warren O. Grimm, a member of the U. S. expeditionary forece-in Siberia, and commander of Centralia Post of the American Legion, took active leadership of the proposed raid on the I. W. W. hall. The Legion- naires were posted in the rear of the first Armistice Day parade. They carried ropes for hanging the I. W. W., and waved other weapons. The parade passed the I. W. W. hall on its march, turned around, marched back, and the Legionnaires, at the signal to charge, broke ranks and rushed upon thé hall. There followed a fight in which three of them were killed while battering down the door of the hall. One was Lieut. Warren O. Grimm. Inside of the hall were seven loggers: Bert Faulk- ner, Wesley Everest, Ray Becker, Britt Smith, Mike Si Sheehan, James McInerney and Tom Morgan. Faulk- ner and Everest retreated. Everest was pursued by What a Rotten “ee This Turned Out To Ee! i Wm. ae : And another case, as in other in — field ted in the Centralia d battles, as an army in a class war, the laws of war to its pris- ed as prisoners of war. » of Centralia found the » with a number cf worker prisoners on its h Ail were beaten and clubbed until one of them became insane. During the night an- other of them, : Everest, was taken out of It must be realized that the Legion was w. open war against labor here. Its compositic: