The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 8, 1927, Page 7

Frame-ups in the American Class Struggle oe the first time in the history of the American working class a great wave of protest against the frame-up arid murder of two workingmen finds in existence an organization able to make their strug- gle, torture ard death an integral part of the na- tional and international class struggle. ; The judicial murder of Sacco and Vanzetti will be welded into the fighting tradition of the world working class movement by the conference of the International Labor Defense to be held in New York City November 11, 12 and 13—+the fortieth anniver- sary of the Haymarket martyrs. * * * The date of the conference has in itself great sig- nificance. Due to the deliberate concealment of the veal meaning of the execution of the Haymarket martyrs by a labor officialdom anxious to avoid the stigma of militant struggle in connection with its corrupt: craft union policy, comparatively few work- ers have been allowed to know that the murder of the Haymarket martyrs coincided with the struggle of the-American workers for the eight-hour day and was part of the price paid by the workers in the course of that struggle. But still more culpable has been the conspiracy of silence on the part of labor officialdom in con- nection with the deep political significance of all the classic frame-ups of American labor militants which have given the word -“frame-up” a special connotation in international circles. These frame-ups form a chain whose every link is duplicated by a corresponding link in the chain of American capitalist-imperialist development. Every time American capitalism has been prepar- ing to take another step in its career of robbery and oppression, every time it has been preparing to tighten its grip on the natural resources and the masses of this and other countries, there has ap- peared, as part of the class struggle, and as one of the principal weapons of the ruling class, an attempt to murder by legal process, leaders of the labor movement and the working class. To celebrate each new period in its history Amer- ican capitalism has plucked human sacrifices from the ranks of the workers. The altars of American capitalism may take on new architectural forms, the ritual chanted by the priests of capitalism may have discarded the savage minor notes, the electric chair may displace the knife of obsidian, but the class character of the victims never changes—al- ways they are workers. Each gigantic frame-up marks a historical period in the life of American capitalism. This is the Marxian explanation of this American institution—far more typical of America than the formal democracy which fools think it negates. * * > 1887—-the Haymarket martyrs swing from the scaffolds. In 1886 American capitalism was emerging from the competitive period. The owners of the huge fortunes founded on Civil War graft and augmented by the period of outright looting of the natural re- sources which followed it, were pooling their power and laying the foundations for the era of trustifi- cation which approximately two decades saw com- pleted. New burdens were placed upon the working class. They could no longer combat with old methods the rising might of the trusts. Hours could be short- ened only by united action on a scale far wider than had ever been attempted before. Always the ruling class picks out for its victims those individuals with a political dectrine which tends to synthesize the struggles of the masses. They pick those of the working class who see far- ther than the mass and who put forward a chal- lenge to capitalism as a system, Capitalism is not coneerned with the fallacies of revolutionary doc- trine—it is concerned only as to whether the work- ers who voice them are actually leading other work- ers to struggle in a ii conflict, broadening and deepening it. Thus it happens that anarchists, syndicalists, so- cialists and Communists have, during various his- torical periods, been singled out for persecution. As American capitalism in 1886 struck at the working class in order to make easier its drive toward centralization, it fixed on anarchists whom it believed were giving to the eight-hour movement a political character dangerous to capitalism’s fur- ther progress. ~ 1887—-Haymarket Martyrs—Passing of the com- petitive period of American capitalism. : Me ac * Bill Haywood, Charles Moyer and James Petti- bone of the Western Federation of Miners were framed up in 1906. They were charged with the murder of Governor Steunenberg of Idaho, a bitter foe of the metal miners’ union, By WILLIAM F. DUNNE (National Committee Member of the I. L. D.) These leaders of the most militant union the American labor movement has ever produced, were kidnapped in Denver, Golo., and every effort was made to send them to the scaffold. More classieonscious and aggressive than it is today, the American }Jabor movement rallied to the aid of these workers and they were saved. The eloquence of Gene Debs aroused millions of work- ers to the class meaning of this frame-up. To what period of capitalism did this frame-up correspond? One will seek in vain in the official declarations of American labor officialdom for any explanation. Yet to the working class this connec- tion of the Haywood-Moyer-Pettibone frame-up with the rise of American capitalism is of the gi'eat- est importance. In 1906 the trustification process had reached the mining regions of the Rocky Mountain aréa—the last stronghold of competitive capitalism in a basic industry. (An exception must be made of coal min- ing where special conditions intervened to prevent the rapid completion of the process.) Great struggles were taking place between the capitalists of metal mining—Clark, Daly, Heinze, ete. Combines were being formed under the control of ‘Wall Street. Especially was this true of copper and zinc. The Amalgamated Copper Company, the fore- runner of the Anaconda, was ¢rushing Heinze. The biggest and richest properties were coming under the control of various Wall Street groups and losing their individual competitive character, The Western Federation of Miners, with its con- trol of wages and working conditions, its militant policy and its long record of victorious struggle, stood in the way of the triumphant onward march of Wall Street. It was decided that it must be smashed. It was. The Haywood-Moyer-Pettibone frame-up was part of the process. Only a shadow of the union was left with Butte Miners’ Union Number One its strongest center. In 1914, seven years after the frame-up, Butte Miners’ Union was destroyed and trust capital was left in complete control of the metal mining industry. , 1906- 7—Haywood- Moyer-Pettibone frame-up — Completion of trustification in-basic industry. | % * * In 1916 the American ruling class was preparing to launch its imperialistie program on a world seale. The House of Morgan had loaned the allied govern- ments billions of dollars, These loans were endangered by the might of Ger- man imperialism which the allied nations alone could not overcome. A little blood bath would hard- en the American masses for the still sterner tasks which they would be told to carry out as the dream of world eonquest expanded. The first period of trustification was over. Tri- bute was flowing in from foreign nations where the surplus profits of America’s marvelous indus- try had been invested. The provincialism of the PITRE OF WORIKER,WAO HAS PEEN EVIGTED GECAUSE HE WAS UNAG-E TO ip | THE RENT, WEEFING rg EMPSEY’S HARD LOCI<X dee Saint American population had to be replaced by a lust for a place among, or even above, the great Euro- pean powers. Preparedness parades were the order of the day. Patriotism was the watchword and such subversive acts as the organization of exploited workers must be discouraged. Two birds could be killed with one stone. The rabble could be shown that it was unwise to follow men who were against imperialist war and tireless in their efforts to strengthen the organiza- tions of the workers. Some one threw a bomb into a preparedness par- ade in San Francisco. Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, after the American workers had torn the noose from their necks, still waste their lives away in California prisons. The House of Morgan had its way. The working class was driven to the shambles, one by one their scanty privileges vanished under the pressure of “war necessity,” Mooney and Billings became num- bers on the prison roster. 1916-—Mooney and Billings—American imperial- ism was ready to enter the world war and begin a new epoch in its struggle for world domination, In 1920 the war fever was still at a high pitch in the United States and Sacco and Vanzetti were two among the thousands of workers suspected of revolutionary tendencies who were arrested, impris- oned and deported. They were held for seven years by the inquisitors —held until their march to the sacrificial altar, and the burnt sacrifice of their bodies, would fit into the historical mosaic of the American frame-up. When they were murdered their deaths marked, as had the torture and deaths of other victims of the classic ffame-ups, the entry of Amawrica’s ruling class into a new periéd. The House of Morgan militarized the American masses for “a war to end war.” But as Sacco and Vanzetti uttered their last words in the Massachusetis death-house, the rumble of a new war was heard by those workers whose senses have been sharpened by their battles in the first line of the class struggle. 1927—-Cinders which once were Sacco and Vanzetti —-a world war in the making. The offensive against the Soviet Union enlists the best ‘minds of the British ruling class. The defense of the fatherland of the world’s workers becomes the duty of every proletarian. The drive of American imperialism for world domination is on in full force. The Moygan adven- ture in 1917 has paid huge dividends. Tribute is paid to Wall Street in golden streams, Small trickles are diverted to bribe and debauch the official leaders of the labor movement. They sell themselves to American imperialism while everywhere the labor movement is being beaten down. ‘ Once again the American ruling class, leaving one epoch and entering another, christens its new pro- gram with the blood of worker sacrifices. But this time the working class will understand. No longer shall the criminal conspiracy of silence on the part of the misleaders of labor serve to make these frame-ups appear as arbitrary incidents, some- thing separate and apart from the whole struggles of the exploited masses. The Third National Conference of the Interna- tional Labor Defense will at one and the same time link historically the frame-up system of American imperialism with its bloody assaults along the whole front of the class struggle, and forge against it a weapon that can and will be wielded by the work- ing class to the end that the high priests of Wall Street will find their altars barren of worker sac- rifices from now until the might of the workers shall overturn forever the edifices on which so many of their comrades have died. To American imperialism the Third Annual Con- ference of the International Labor Defense will say: “We have read the record and it id too long.” “Not another worker’s name shall be numbered there.” : “Our purpose is to defend but you will find that art’ of the world working class movement as we oreudly claim, we have learned well the lesson that “ke best defense is the strong attack.” . *We level our attack at the frame-up system in ne name of the Haymarket martyrs, in the name of Haywood, in the name of the Centralia I. W. W.’s, in the name of Mooney and Billings and in baa mame of Sacco and Vanzetti.” Every worker who is loyal to his class will sup- port the Third National Conference of the In- ternational Labor Defense and strike a blow at American capitalist class justice typified by the frame-up systen..