There se poate monta Twin City Workers Stage Their Strike Against Starvation Bill Government ALongui cials?
pension We Fight. On!
The Strike Can and Must Be Won SOCIALIST APPEAL FRIDAY, JULY 14, 1939 five years until July 1, is restored SOCIALIST APPEAL Vol. III, No. 50 July 14, 1939 Any labor leader who continues to stick by his By James Burnham guns will deserve the support of labor.
Published twice a week by the SOCIALIST APPEAL, PUBLISHING ASSN.
Who is being threatened by the strike breakat 116 University Place, New York, ing Roosevelt government and its offiTelephone 844 Subscriptions: 00 per year: 00 for six months. For Labor! Yes, labor!
By CARL SHEA the office that if any tions from the projects were cents per copy in the United States: centa per copy ar When election time rolls around, they all pose (Special to the Socialist Appeal)
all foreign countries. Single copies: cents.
trouble started, any projects visiting Local 544 Federal Bronx and Manhattan subscriptions are: 50 for alx as Friends of Labor. They are all Labor BenMINNEAPOLIS, July A still operating were to close Workers Section office for admonths: 00 for one year.
vice and directives, or were down immediately.
spontaneous walkout of Reentered as second clar matter February 16, 1930, efactors. They are Labor Protectors!
The main feature of the walk phoning in asking for speakers. The new law which abolishes the prevailing the post omee at New York, under the Act of March workers, estimated by the boss out so far is its unorganized Wednesday evening the 179.
Labor organized labor, unorganized labor wage on A, construction projects by decreepress to embrace 12, 500, devel character. Everyone is boiling stewards met and voted to send put the Roosevelt machine into office.
ing that all employees must work a full Editor oped in Minneapolis and st. mad at slash, but a delegation to the Thursday MAX SHACHTMAN Result? The Roosevelt government has acted 130 hours monthly for the subsistence relief wage Paul Wednesday morning after no one has a program. General meeting of the Building Trades is part of a long term, deliberate plan to smash HAROLD ROBERTS Senders Ansociate Editors Drivers Local 544 Federal Council, where they will press FELIX MORROW like any other employer. has been cut to the Fourth of July holiday. The Workers Section, at the invita. for a program of demands upon the wage levels in the construction industries. Like the bone. Millions have been thrown off relief. strike was started by the skilled tion of the building trades Congress to scrap the relief EMANUEL GARRETT JOSEPH HANSEN any other similar plan, directed toward a partieRuinen Hundreds of millions of dollars have been workers, in revolt against unions, will send several dele ciave bill and pass a HERMAN STANLEY ular industry, this means the attempt to decrease poured into military and war expenditures. the Roosevelt Woodrum relief gates to this afternoon meet bill that will restore the the share of the workers in the total national inFIGHT WITH THE SOCIALIST Roosevelt can find any money for a decent bill which has cut wage rates ing of the Twin Cities Building cuts, restore the prevailing in half.
Trades Council. Whether the wage clause, and increase the come, and to increase the relative share drawn wage. He finds all he needs to prepare for mass WORKERS PARTY FOR: The strike began at a. walkout collapses, or whether. number of jobs avail by the bosses.
murder.
on the big project at the movement develops into a able.
This plan has, also, a political as well as an Job and a decent living for every worker.
Now, when workers are striking for a mod the State Fair grounds. When mass strike demanding that the Federal Workers Section economic aim. Its author, once more, is none other Open the idle factories operate them under est wage, Roosevelt and his appointees the men reported for work they rable reliet bill, restore the meeting to be held Friday than Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt has been workers control.
say: new wage rates. Skilled wor prevailing wage return those morning. 10 o clock in the preparing for the present smashing blow by sev3. Twenty Billion dollar Federal public works You can strike against the government!
Kers in the Twin Cities received fired from WPA to their jobs, Drivers Hall eral years of skillful publicity and build up. He and housing program.
MOTOR CARAVAN ACTS Back to your jobs at slave wages and slave a cut in hourly wages from and pass a relief bill that will and his aides have been regularly making Thirty thirty! 30 weekly minimum wage 25 to. 71, brought about by union wages. will be deter cade of 150 cars filled with sive jobs to all unemployed at Thursday morning caval hours! If you don want to work on our terms 30 hour weekly maximum for all workers on speeches, the latest of his own only a few weeks back, on the problem of what is wrong with hous All Jobs. then starve! We ll get scabs to take your 549 to 130. Intermediate wor mined by the decisions of the strikers, mostly skilled Kers had their hours lengthened Building Trades Council and its workers, toured the cities, see ing. Beneath layers rhetoric, the answer always places. Thirty dollar weekly old age and disability from 80 to 130. The hours of sister bodies elsewhere.
ing that all projects remained The answer of the workers must be: seems to be: wages are too high.
unskilled labor were boosted Police Chief Forestal of closed. The temper of the work Right now, the Monopoly Committee is conduct6. Expropriate the Sixty Familles.
from 88 to 130, all with corre. Minneapolis announced Thurs ers is very militant. Given any ing hearings on the housing and construction in All war funds to the unemployed.
sponding hourly wage slashes. day that he would furnish police sort of a positive program by dustry. Time and again the experts and witnesses The 160 skilled workers at protection if it were requested. the union movement, this strike people referendum on any and all wars.
come back to the theme: wages are too high No secret diplomacy. We won work under starvation conditions members of the building trades pin County said his policy win wide protest movement that The real political purpose is clear. The New 20. An Independent Labor Party for any boss government or no government. unions, refused to start work, be to protect the public. The will command Congress to back Deal housing program, to which has been devoted We fought for years to get a decent living wage. Skilled workers. series of Paul said the same thine as did a large number of un taw and order specialists in st. down on its starvation program 11. Workers Defense Guards against vigilante and put through a real public huge mountains of ballyhoo, is an utter flop.
and Fascist attacks.
and we won give it up without a fight. And we Roosevelt needs a scapegoat, and he is trying to job meetings were held imme. RELIEF BOSSES THREATS works program have the power to win that fight.
diately, with the result that As if to pour salt in the find one in the construction workers.
For years the Federal WorkThe workers put their trust in Roosevelt, and both skilled and and unskilled wounds of the WPA workers, ers Section has preached to the got the double cross.
workers walked off the job. relief heads in both Minne unions of skilled workers that Why Can Houses Be Built?
The workers put their trust in Congress, in to other projects in the that no relle would be granted leadership to the unemployed.
The government itself recognizes that at least the New Deal, in Labor Friends and they Twin Cities, carried along by strikers until at least The lesson is now being driven one third of the nation lives in sub normal housing roving bands of strikers. two weeks after the applicants home with a jolt that will awa unfit from the points of view both of hygiene and got the Woodrum Bill.
Big Cities Solid received their last pay check. ke even the most smug union comfort. Nevertheless, nothing is done about it.
They got the double cross and the Woodrum By the end of the day, 7, 500 To top it off, State bureaucrat.
The scattered and advertised projects of the Every decent worker in the United States Bill because the Roosevelt Government IS NOT men in Minneapolis were out administrator Linus Glotzbach If an honest to God unemstands one hundred percent behind the Roosevelt administration are not enough to make THEIR GOVERNMENT, just as the Rooseand 5, 000 in St. Paul. In Duluth announced that no time lost ployed movement existed nastrike.
approximately the same result from voluntary separation will tionally to give leadership to up for the additional housing that each year falls velt Party IS NOT THEIR PARTY!
obtained. That is, in the large be considered as allowable this spontaneous strike movebelow the level of decency The building trades unions of the L, have et that be a lesson for a long time to come: towns where the union move makeup time. In other words, ment, the workers Is there any truth that high hourly wages are taken the lead in the fight against the infamous maent was Labor needs a party of ITS OWN. Labor entrenched. all no strikers will be paid for the other than building trades could actually to blame? work was closed down. time they are off the projects. really smash through with It is true that hourly wages though not at all Woodrum Starvation Bill.
needs a GOVERNMENT of its own.
Thursday morning a number 2e gave a final dig by breaking their demands. Thanks to the annual wages are comparatively high in the The is backing the strike to the hilt. It can get them only by relying on its own of workers went out to their the news that another Stalinized Workers Alliance, no building trades, and this naturally enters into the Threats and intimidation haven stopped the ORGANIZED STRENGTH.
projects but refused to work, cut of 3, 780 will be made July such national organization serv cost of housing. But consider: and orders hastily came from 20 in Minnesota, in line with ing the interests of the unem The cost of financing a 5, 000 house or 5, 000 unit strike. They cannot break it. The power of And it can win this strike only by its organRoosevelt relief bill ployed exists.
of an apartment dwelling, figuring in primarily united, militant, fighting labor is too strong to ized strength.
All day Wednesday delega. Later story on page 1) interest and the other secondary bank charges, be broken that way.
Republican wage slashers won lead or win California runs anywhere from about 3, 000 to 7, 500. The financing charges, that is, reach up to one and That power is not merely the organized ranks this strike Exceeds Itselt a hall or more times the initial cost of the house of the building trades workers. It is backed by Roosevelt killers and scabs won lead itself! And for this enormous sum, the banks, with the enthusiastic solidarity of every worker in or win this strike, In Gross Stupidity their monopoly of credit, do absolutely nothing in this country, skilled or unskilled, organized or is directly or indirectly sweated out of the labor terms of socially productive work. All of this money unorganized, employed or unemployed.
that goes into building the house and that of the (Special to the Socialist Appeal)
THAT power numbers MILLIONS. All it SAN FRANSISCO It heads person who inhabits it.
Labor receives in wages a mere 20 to 40 of needs to win is DETERMINATION In the first place, the workers must not allow or tails sometimes whether the NEW YORK. Twenty five organized group of 200 Transthe initial cost. Who, then, deserves to receive If the building trades workers lose this fight. their ranks to be divided.
hance chiefs is not greater than hundred workers roared unmis port Worker Union militants major blame in this comparison it will mean a blow, a sharp setback to all labor That means: skilled workers and unskilled the deliberate duplicity which takable defiance against the were in standing, suarcheat the But the financing charges are only a small part workers, UNITE!
leads them to divert the anger Coughlin fascists last Friday Coughlinites for the evening.
of the story. The profits of the great building maBut if they win and they can and must win terials corporations Gypsum, Johns Man. they will set an example that will encourage The enemies of the strikers can win only it expressing range and militare night at Fordham Road and Quill dwelt at length on the ville, American Radiator, etc. have continued. In and enthuse workers everywhere.
they succeed in pitting the skilled workers Against Roosevelt simshiteley Valentine Ave. when Michael Diight of the American workers the millions virtually all through the crisis. In against the unskilled, using the one to weaken program.
Quill, President of the Trans and remarked that the Transwould not only Who AGAINST the strike?
flated land prices line the pockets of real estate the other.
The other day the head chair port Workers Union, addressed resist all cuts by the operators and speculators. In every building operMr. Starvation Woodrum, and all the Conwarmers of the Stalinist con huge outdoor street meeting government, but would go to ation, contractors and sub contractors take their This is NOT a tight of the skilled workers trolled Workers Alliance order. sponsored by the gressmen and Senators who have been working American bat for additional appropria big slice of profits. An ever greater percentage of real estate taxes, reflected in the cost of housing overtime on only one job. how to cut wages and alone. Therefore, they must do all in their power cd 30 pickets down to 433 cal Labor party tions. The American Labor ifornia Street in San Francisco and rent, go to interest payment on bonds held by Party, he promised, intends to lengthen the working day. Of course, the gen to bring the unskilled and unorganized workers to picket the United States Down with Coughlin Chris press forward for better housthe big banks and the Sixty Families and to other tlemen in Washington have their differences into the ranks of union labor.
Chamber of Commerce. tian Front Down with All ing, collective bargaining guar.
uses of no conceivable benefit to the people.
ONE ENEMY. ONE FIGHT. ONE The pickets assembled at the Forms of Vigilantism, Quillantees, and the extension of some want to cut the heart out of In a true analysis, made in the light of social address with placards and be exhorted his enthusiastic listen civil liberties throughout the functions performed, labor, which gets no profit while others want to cut it out entirely. None of FRONT!
and asks no interest, is the least burdensome item in the costs of housing them proposes to cut his own wages!
In the second place, this fight cannot and will commerce, shouting appropriers in the very shadow of Ford. ceuntry.
ate slogans against this archham University. neighborhood Board member of the TransJohn Santos International not be won by staying at home.
President Roosevelt is against the strike, The truth is that not labor but a decadent capl.
reactionary organization, which center of Coughlin dupes in port Workers Union, attacked talism stands irremediably blocking the road to Roosevelt Colonel Harrington is against Every struck job must be surrounded by a tie Stalinists hold accountable the Bronx. The scattered and the Wicks Bill which aims to an adequate, or even one tenth adequate, housing the strike and is ready to use scals to break it. mass picket line so strong and so tight that all for the relief slashes instead of program. Among all the fakes of the dead New the real Roosevelt Colonel Somervell is against the the scabs Harrington and Somervell and all the real culprit, President uncertain murmur of protest destroy union status of all subDeal, none has been more hopeless or more hypoRoosevelt that escaped from a few rum Before the meeting closed, critical than its housing plans.
other strike and is ready to use scabs to break it.
ectors can scrape eruit of the It was only after several bums at the meeting was like a Quill assured the huge crowd Will Roosevelt Succeed?
All the capitalist newspapers are against the mud won be able to pass through.
strike and are begging the workers not to fight Amass picket line of all workers, rank and filers began to detect lowed from the crowd whose ings would be held on the same an odor stronger than that gen. size gummed all traffic on the corner here in the future, as The new regulation, which went into effect July. CI. unemployed organizations the erally given off by a den of the avenue the government.
1st, amounts in effect to a cut of from one third to But why worry about them?
skilled and the unskilled. organized and unor well as in the South Bronx, Chamber of Commerce. He in Union Guards Present two thirds in the hourly wage rate. As write this vestigated. discovered that Coughlin stronghold.
Woodrum and Roosevelt and Somervell and ganized.
column, the workers concerned are replying to We have a way of taking The Bronx branch of the Sothe Chamber of Commerce had care of you provocateurs and cialist Workers Party sold 75 Roosevelt move in their own proper language Harrington and all the newspapers put together Unity of. the workers will win the moved away from that address rooligans if you insist on trou. anti Coughlin pamphlets at the a militant and rapidly spreading strike. All the can dig a single ditch.
strike!
three months ago.
ble. Quill told the fascists. An meeting machinery of Roosevelt relief administration is They can pour a concrete foundation. Militancy will win the strike!
being brought into line to smash the strike.
Roosevelt, however, counts on a special factor They can nail a stud or a shingle, lay a Raise the wage levels of the unskilled!
to aid him. The hourly rates for these skilled work brick, plaster a wall, install a plumbing fixture Restore the prevailing rate for all workers. ers have been in the past far higher than those or wipe a joint, or frame a window, Stick it out till the Woodrum Starvation Bill for the other workers. Roosevelt thinks that he can exploit this as an apparent injustice, They can put up as much as a shanty with is smashed!
and drive a wedge between the two sections of threats or intimidation. workers The Daily Worker pretends to be behind among white collar and professional workers There is an injustice, it is true. But the injustice They can wave the Woodrum Bill or any the strike.
yesterday. William Levner, president of lies not in the fact that the construction workers BUTthe Teachers Union, said the execu have a high rate it is after all low enough but not one single building will go up as a result.
The Minneapolis Journal of July reports: tive board of his union had not acted on the in the miserable, starvation rate at which the bulk The national relief administrator. The welfare) board heard Harry Mayville new schedule of working hours, but that he All power above all the power to win their of the workers are paid. This has been and Jack Lieberman of the Workers Alliance did not believe a stoppage would be author unfortunately, too often forgotten by the construc legitimate and very modest demands lies in Col. Harrington, is an appointee of Presi plead that the unskilled workers were inno ized. Very definitely we will not do anything tion workers who have been too narrowly con the mighty hands of the striking workers.
dent Roosevelt He has never been known to cently thrown out of work by the strike of that will jeopardize or curtail the services cerned with their own craft interests. lasting enunciate an important policy without the presiThe only way the strikers can lose is if they skilled tradesmen.
of the educational projects to the people of victory in the present battle needs the fused Harry Mayville and Jack Lieberman are New York, Mr. Levner said.
dent direct let themselves be kidded out of that power!
strength of all of the relief workers. And this reapproval.
prominent representatives of the Communist William Levner is the well known Com.
quires broadening the fight to include the burning On May 23 the colonel appeared before the Party the Stalinists.
munist Party boss of the Stalinist controlled demands for the lifting of the wage rate of the The St. Paul Pioneer Press of July reHouse Appropriations Committee and declared. Teachers Union.
lower brackets.
ports: Shortly after Wednesday. leaflet issued to All Workers If the construction workers inscribe on their It is my recommendation that persons em Chester Watson of St. Paul, state president of by the Workers Alliance of New York says: own banner the demand for Thirty Thirty. 30 ployed on projects of the be required to the Workers Alliance, issued a typewritten We are preparing a one day general prominimum weekly wage, 30 hours maximum weekstatement in which he said his organization work 130 hours per month.
test stoppage for all workers in the ly hours for all workers, they will find allies in is not responsible for any strike.
State of New York.
the millions to back them in their own defense of At o clock on Monday, the president of the He said that with Roosevelt approval. The Minnesota Workers Alliance has not The Workers Alliance of New York is the living standards of the American rking New York and Long Island Building Trades While Harrington mouthes all kinds called a strike. We are advising our members controlled by the Communist Party. It is class.
that whenever a project is struck by another Council, Thomas Murray, declared threats against the strikers, the presi preparing a one day general stoppage. union that your members should leave the We are not intimidated in the least by the dent, by his silence, approves these attempts to after which its members are supposed to go project in a peaceful manner and send a del back to work. and to scab.
Says Sir Roger Keyes, retired admiral of the threat of Colonel Somervell that men who do intimidate the strikers, egation the district office demand Watch out for Stalinist scabbing! The British navy: The Tientsin events, with support not return to work tomorrow will be dismissed. This strike is, therefore, not only clirected ing that they be transferred another job Communist Party leaders are Roosevelt boot being given to Japan by Germany and Italy, really and that they be permitted to make up time lickers. They don want any strikes against amount to a declaration of war against Britain. Our work stoppage protest against the vic against Congress, which adopted the 130 hour lost.
the government. They prefer starvation and is a challenge that must be met, that is, by ious new law will continue tomorrow provision as law, but against Roosevelt who Chester Watson is a well known St. Paul wages to fighting. That why, in their usual workers torn from their wives and children, and Stalinist official.
and thereafter until the prevailing rate princi initiated that provision. Lick them both, brother underhanded way, they are trying to break a rifle thrust in their hands with the order to shoot The New York Times of July reports: the solidarity of the workers.
their foreign brother workers.
ple, which Congress had steadfastly upheld for strikers. The strike movement made no headway Watch out for stalinist scabbing. Defy Coughlin Fascists at Bronx Outdoor Meeting How Win the Strike?
Watch Out for Stalinist Scabbing other Bill from the Atlantic to the Pacitie but Roosevelt Silence The Government Strikebreaker