The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 24, 1927, Page 7

C The Trained Rams of Betrayed Unionism blue cartoon accompanying-this article gives you 1 better picture ofthe role played by the reac- tionary leaders of the American Federation of La- bor than thousands of words. But since people in- sist on reading articles they must be served. Those who have had the opportunity of visiting that delightfully interesting and uplifting place, the stockyards of Chicago, will be better able to appre- Fred Ellis’s excellent drawing than those whose acquaintanceship with the “Yards” is confined to a reading of Sinclair’s “Jungle” or the neat script on the wrappers that enfold Armour’s choice hams. There are trained fleas, trained dogs and trained animals of many varieties. We may live to see the day when even bed bugs can be trained to bite only democrats and republicans. But those animals and vermin do their stunts on the stage to the great delight of an audience and to the profit of their owners.’ They don’t hurt anybody. But the trained rams, like the one pictured by Ellis, lead their fel- lows to 'the butcher’s knife and return for more. Surely this is about as low a moral level as a four- legged animal could sink to, The only excuse we can make for the traitorous stockyards rams is that they don’t know any better, not being able to think. We sincerely hope that some vegetarian or Freud- jan’ does not start an argument with us and insist that rams do think. As a matter of fact the rams are with the great majority of us in this respect, if we lump them with the one billion and a half or so ef human beings that make up the population of the earth. Be that as it may the prosperous, conservative, respectable, patriotic, law-abiding, leaders of the American Federation of Labor will meet at Los An- zeles in the early part of October to devote a week or two in that pleasant climate, to the business of devising ways and means to keep the working class of the United States, the slaves of mill, mine and factory, contented with the shackles of wage- slavery for another year. They will overhaul the policies formulated by them at past conventions if those policies may carry the slightest suggestion of class-conscicusness. They will deliver well-directed rhetorical blasts against the radicals and scourge the Soviet Union with the scorpion whips of their vocal wrath. For all those services they will expect more than tolerance from the-capitalists. The train- ed rams of the stockyards: are merely allowed to live until ofd age palsies: their limbs. The trained rams of betrayed unionism demand their milk and honey, the reward of their treason to the working class. In all the great strikes that have taken place in this country for several years past, the high official- dom of the A. F. of L. has invariably functioned as trained rams in inducing the strikers to return to their slave pens before their demands were met. Of course strikers are human beings and human beings do not always act like sheep. So our trained trade union rams must use their brains as well as their pedal extremities. When 400,000 steel workers walked out of the steel mills in 1919 and for six months waged a heroic battle against the mightiest industrial power in the United States, backed by. the forces of the govern- ment, the reactionary officialdom of the American Federation of Labor permitted Mike Tighe, presi- dent of the Amalgamated Association of Steel, Tin and Tron Workers to sabotage the strike. Despite the heroism of the strikers and the militancy of the radical leadership of that strike, the workers were forced back to the industrial shambles and the em- ployes of the United States Steel Trust remain un- organized until this day, with the confidence of the. workers in trade unionism impaired as a result of that treachery. When the railroad workers struck in 1922 and crippled the lines from coast to coast there was no By T. J. OFLAHERTY leadership given by the high officials of the A. I’. of L. Indeed the strike was-almost unofficial except in a very technical sense. One threat from Daugh- erty and Bert Jewell, then head of the shop crafts division of the American Federation of Labor, threw up his hands and hoisted the white fiag of sur- render. The rank and file were allowed to carry on a long-drawn-out resistance for years, with defeat constantly staring them in the face. The protracted struggle transformed the militancy that once pre- vailed in the shop. crafts into apathy, disillusion- ment and despair. The leaders had again played the role of trained rams. The slaves were again back in their fetters. During a strike in the bituminous fields, John L. Lewis threw up his hands and declared that he could not fight against his own government. His own government had issued an injunction against the miners which enjoined the strikers and their leaders against taking any action calculated to bring vic- tory to the strikers. The wily Gompers upbraided Lewis for this cowardly conduet at the Denver con- vention when Lewis ran against Gompers for the presidency of the A. F. of L. This was campaign dynamite. Gompers was no. better than Lewis, but Vi. s By EDWARD W. CONNAWAY. Last night as I lay sleeping In my cold and cheerless bed, I saw in a dream the figures Of a thousand martyred dead March by like troops to battle With a“deep and measured tread, And I saw a wind-whipped standard, A banner of deepest red. Like ghosts our lpst battalions, ~The men who fell in the fight, Went down the street with measured beat To fade in the starlit night. Sacco and Vanzetti By EDWARD W. CONNAWAY. Now you are numbered with our martyred dead. The slender cord is severed, you are free. The flesh is burned, the fire of hate is fed. Tho butchers rant and rave that all was fair *Twas murder stark, The blindest man can see, They made a million rebels with their chair! he was more adept in the art of carrying water on both shoulders. Of course the miners were handicap- ped in the struggle against the operators. Their trained rams had only one object, to get them back to the mines as quickly as possible. Whatever gains the miners made were in spite of their headers. The story of the Passaic strike is fresh in the memory of every reader of The DAILY WORKER. It was organized by Communists and in face of a vicious campaign by the emplcyers and the muni- cipal government, reinforced by blasts from the pro- paganda miils of the executive council of the A. F. of L. and chiefly by Matthew Woll, the political poodle of the Civic Federation from his watch tower in the Metropolitan Insurance Company’s building in Madison Square, the mill workers held out for almost a year and forced the bosses to make con- cessions. When Thomas MacMahon, president of the United ‘Textile Workers stepped into the situa- tion it was for the purpose of sending the textile slaves back to the milis. Recently, officials of the Amalgamated Associa- tion of Street and Electric Employes made a big bluff about organizing the New York rapid transit employes. After waging a battle in the newspapers for several weeks they quit cold when the workers were expecting strike action. The result of this policy is to discourage the workers, to make them lose faith in trades unionism and to make it more difficult for progressive and radical leaders, who miean business to induce them to organize for a.real struggie for a betterment of their conditions. This is Just what the bosses and the fakers want. When, during the last election campaign there was widespread sentiment for a third party around the personality of Robert M. LaFollette, the exe- cutive council of the A. F. of L. was forced to bow to the wishes of the masses in the trade unions who wanted to break away from the old capitalist par- ties. The trained rams followed the flock for awhile but when the course of public sentiment was changed by clever Wali Street propaganda the rams ttotted . to the head of the procession-and helped to lead the sheep back again to the republican and demo- eratie political slaughter houses. Not that LaFol- lett@ism offered the workers and poor farmers a solution for their economic ills. Nevertheless a third party would embarrass big business. It is much easier and less expensive to manage two parties than three and they feared that out of a third petty- bourgeois party would spring a Labor Party. The trained rams of trade unionism are always on the job. But for them the capitalists would not sleep so peacefully. Without them the exploited workers would be in a better position to organize the unorganized and extract more of the product of their toil from the employers. They would not be so hampered in the effort to organize a Labor Party. The workers of this country, and indeed of all capitalist countries must fight the capitalists for eyery concession granted them. This is to be ex- pected. But they also have to fight the reactionary leaders who are paid by them to represent them. The progressives in the American trade union move- ment must wnderstand that the Greens, Wolls and Lewises, have nothing in common with the exploited, poorly paid workers who pay them their salaries. They have everything in common with the system they are pledged to defer.d; the system that enables -them to live in luxury on large salaries extracted from the members of the trade unions and the unknown emoluments they derive thru other and more mysterious sources. The trained rams of betrayed trade unionism must go down before a left wing movement that ‘ will clear the unions of betrayers and bring tmder the banner of militant trade unionism the mil'ions of unorganized workers in this country.