Combined with The Revolutionary Age The Communist All Power To The Workers!
Vol. I, No. CHICAGO, ILL. OCTOBER 11, 1919 Price, 5c Per Copy The Capitalists Challenge You Workingmen! Proclamation by the Communist Party of America ARTIAL law has been declared in Gary, Indiana! servants because they were showing their power.
Soldiers of the regular army, soldiers who have But capitalism was not done. The Steel Trust seen service overseas, who have waded through does not only have at its beck and call the power of the the blood of their fellows on the battle fields of Europe, local government, but the national government, the as the capitalist press is gloatingly declaring, are now State, is equally its servants. The workers had won in control.
the first skirmish through their mass power. They The army of occupation entered Gary fully must be taught a lesson. They must be cowed and equipped. Automatic rifles, hand grenades, machine thrown back into their former position of abject guns and heavier cannon, cannon that can clear two slaves.
miles of a city street in a few minutes, as the officer in The order went forth. Soon the long line of charge said, these are ready for use in Gary. And the truck loads of regular soldiers were on the way to soldiers wear trench helmets made by the workers of Gary. The men who the workers had been told a Gary!
short year ago, were fighting their battle for democWhy are these soldiers there, workingmen of the racy upon the blood stained fields of Europe, and whom United States? What has happened in the City of they had been urged to support by giving the last of Steel that requires this murderous equipment for the their strength to the work of production, these men de ruction of human lives?
were coming to teach them democracy. And with The workingmen of Gary are engaged in a strug them came their instruments of murder, their autogle against the capitalists. They have suffered long. matic rifles, their hand grenades, their machine guns, Low wages, long hours of exhausting work in the heat the cannon that could clear a street two miles long in of the grans. Proing toil with time for a few minutes, ali the heimets that the workers of ho. ne ife. this has been their lot Gary had produced. Gary was to be shown how the last they revolted. Risking suffering and hun Czar and Kaiser treated rebellious workingmen.
ger risking the assault of the brutal bullies of the The National Government, the Capitalist State Stee: Trust, who do not even stop at murder, they re had stepped in. The Steel Trust was in danger of being sorted to the strike to make their masters lighten the beaten. it might have to submit before the power of conditions of their toil. Thes organized their power the workers. To save itself it brought into the field and united dared challenge to a test of strength the the instrument forged by the capitalists to lyhold their great industrial octopus which dominates the steel insystem of exploitation and oppression, the State, which dustry in spite of all its democratic pretensions is but the Gary is the City of Steel, It was built by the or physical expression of the Dictatorship of the Capitalder of the Steel Trust. The influence and control of ist Class the Steel Trust extends to every nook and corner of WORKINGMEN OF THE UNITED STATES, the life of the city. Its spies are everywhere. The THE CAPITALISTS ARE CHALLENGING YOU!
local government is its tool and expresses its will.
They are demonstrating before your very eyes This Steel Trust municipal government forbade the that the governmental power is theirs, for use against workingmen to show their solidarity by parades and you when you dare strike against the enslavement public meetings. It hoped by keeping the worker which they force upon you.
apart to break their spirit, to give encouragement to The homes of the workingmen of Gary are being the few scabs who were working.
raided, their meetings forbidden, their literature conFor two weeks the workers submitted. They per fiscated by the military regime which controls Gary.
mitted the Steel Trust government to trample underMartial law is suprere. The instruments to destroy foot the democratic rights which they had been so the lives of the rokers are ready.
often assured were the heritage of the people of this Are you workingmen of this country, going to country. They let the industrial master demonstrate submit meekly to the rise of military invasion and clearly that not democracy but iron fisted autocracy force to break your strikes? Shall the iron heel rule was, for the workers, the aftermath of the war.
unchallenged?
Then these workers broke into spontaneous pro.
This is the hour to rouse the workers.
test. The mayor the Steel Trust tool, had forbidden GATHERIN CREAT MASS MEETINGS. BRING them to meet in publie. He had forbidden them to TO THE ATTENTION OF THE UNENLIGHTENED parade through the streets. But they would meet and WORKERS THE SIXING OF MARTIAL LAWAT would parade.
GARY. SHOW THE THAT IT IS NOT ENOUGH They formed in line with five hundred uniformed TO STRIKE AGAINST LOW WAGES AND BAD men, strikers all, at the head of the ite and marched WORKING CONDITIONS BUT THAT THE STRIKE through the heart of the city.
MUST BE DIRECTED AGAINST CAPITALISM.
This mass action of the workers won.
Their THE WORKERS MUST CAPTURE THE POWER mass power conquered. The orders of the mayor be OF THE STATE. THEY MUST WREST FROM THE came mere rags of paper. Ten thousand workers CAPITALISTS THE MEANS THROUGH WHICH marched through the heart of the city and in place of THE CAPITALIST RULE IS MAINTAINED.
upholding the orders of the mayor the militia and The answer to the Dictatorship of the Capitalists police cleared the way for the strikers. became their is the Dictatorship of the Workers.