BolshevismBourgeoisieCommunismSocialismSocialist PartyStrikeWorkers MovementWorking Class

2 THE REVOLUTIONARY AGE Saturday, February 8, 1919 The first of them, it would seem to us, is not so so we decided to visit our brethern and see for our The Revolutionary Age easily answered from the point of view of the Times selves what was happening A Chronicle and Interpretation of Events in Europe.
as that paper appears to think, especially if we look at the exainples Larkin cited in support of his stateWe arrived about noon and found in the main LOUIS FRAINA Editor ment: that public meetings are continually being business. Everything seemed peaceful and no outstreets of the town people going about their usual EADWONN MACALPINE. Associate Editor broken up by organized mobs, that men and women Contributing Editors are frequently lynched for daring to disagree with ward signs told of anything unusual, except that we Scott NEARING LUDWIG LORE official opinions, that returned soldiers and sailors are did observe an unusual number of police ostentatiJOHN REED SEN KATAYAMA prevented from meeting for the purpose of organizing, ously parading up and down. HOURWICE WEINSTEIN that soldiers and sailors who have suffered in the Making our way to the headquarters of the strikers trenches of the Western front are left penniless on we found the Strike Committee engaged in delt ISSUED EVERY SATURDAY the streets of New York. All the abuse that the Times tions presided over by Sam Bramhall, an r! . ne By Local Boston, Socialist Party can heap on Larkin does not change the facts of the Socialist rebel of English extraction, a member of the Steiner, Business Manager case, the facts that America has imposed sentences, Carpenters Union. The hall was filled with men and 885 Washington St. Boston, Mass.
on men and women for expressing their political conwomen representing thirty one nationalities, the delevictions, which far outdo Imperial Germany or Cza Bundle orders 2c a copy, Subscription 00 for gates from different mills. Business was proceeding ist Russia, that gangs of amateur spies have been sir months (26 issues)
in an orderly and systematic manner as we entered.
turned loose on the country, that nen on trial for political offenses have been hampered in obtaining comrade, Ime Kaplan, that Jim Larkin was in the hall.
The doorkeeper, recognizing one of us, informed vur The Left Wing the defense that even the bourgeois courts state is their right. motion was immediately made that the regular other pages we print the Manifesto and ProgIf the Times dared take these facts into considerorder of business be suspended and that Larkin be ation in could not dismiss the subject so easily nor asked to address the delegates. It was carried enthuist Party and also the Program of the Chicago Communist Propaganda League, while on the back page we would it find anything to wonder at that Larkin siastically and Larkin stepped forward. He explained speech was applauded by over 3, 000 citizens of Bosthat being in the vicinity he felt it his duty to come have the Program of the Portland, Ore. Council of ton. We would suggest that the Times ignore these amongst them and find out what the position was Workers, Soldiers and Sailors. All these documents things which it does not understand, that it pursue so that the outside world of labor might become are expressive of the present tendency in the Socialacquainted with the details of the struggle, for, needist and Labor movements of America, a tendency advice falls on deaf ears we would like to inform its policy of letting sleeping dogs lie, but in case our less to say, the principle they were fighting for was which is the reflex of the march of the Socialist and Labor movements of the world, and more particularly founders of the industrial movement in Great Britain the Times that Larkin is a Socialist, was one of the accepted by the whole of the international labor movement, namely the right of the worker to dispose of of Europe.
and is the leader of the Irish Transport and General his own life. He regretted that their imagination had Europe is aflame with revolt, and, the bourgeois Workers Union, the largest industrial union in the not carried them as far in the field of practical demands as their fellow workers in other industries.
press to the contrary notwithstanding, this revolt is world. It naturally follows that he is a Bolshevik, in the spontaneous uprising of the masses themselves. as much as he is a part of the movement of which You should not only ask for a shorter working day he said but an increased wage and the right to parIn various places, as for instance England, Scotland the Bolsheviki are the expression in Russia, it also and Ireland, the revolt is as much directed against the fotlows that he is in sympathy with the ticipate in the management of the industry. He old time leaders and the old methods of narrow parowhich is the American expression of the industrial assured them that the eyes of the whole working class chial and craft organizations as against anything else.
Lirion movement, but in Ireland he is known as a of America was centered on Lawrence, but that in The bourgeois press rejoices that the strikes in Bri Socialist and Labor man and is not affiliated with the saying this he did not mean to include the so called tain are in many instances called in defiance of the Sinn Fein, which is a purely political movement. The labor leaders. He promised that their story should old leaders, but if it was in any sense competent of Irish working class movement sympathizes with Ireget the fullest publicity and the cooperation of the best minds of the American labor movement. He, judging the significance of this very fact its rejoicings land demand for independence and is always found would soon turn to wailings. The common people are in the forefront of the fight, but whereas Sinn Fein with others, would place themselves unreservedly at their service.
awakening, they are moving forward, and those who aims at the establishment of an Irish Republic, the would be leaders must lead in actuality or get out of Irish Socialist and Labor movement aims at the estabThe writer, when called upon, acting under instlishment of a Workers Republic in Ireland.
ructions from the editorial board of The RevolutionSpace does not permit us to deal with these progary Age, placed the colums of this paper at their disrams in this issue, but we invite criticism, particularly 48 54!
posal and informed the Strike Committee that John of the Left Wing Manifesto and Program. It is deReed would, if necessary, attend to the publicity.
AWRENCE, Massachusetts, is a typical New sired that Socialist Locals and Branches shall take England mill town, a town of squalid poverty Cosgrove, a member of the Marine Firemen this document under consideration and, if able to Union and an active New England Socialist told them and business. prosperity. Silhoutted against the agree upon the basic principles enunciated therein, evening sky it shows the grim outline of tall, unlovely that the keynote of their success was solidarity.
endorse it. Several Branches and Locals have already factory buildings, accompanied by giant chimneys bel. After the session closed we adjourned to the home done so, though it is not offered as the final word dutching forth smoke, and the long monotonous lines of of the cesretary of the Strike Committee, Ime Kaplan.
merely as a basis from which to work.
tenement buildings. dirty station pitched in the Kaplan, is a young man, a worker in the higher paid The Revolutionary Age will be glad to receive these midst of the confusion of a railroad freight yard greets section of the Textile trade whose ability has been endorsements until such time (within a few days) as the traveller. An irregular plot of brown lifeless recognized by the Central Labor Union of Lawrence, other arrangements have been made.
grass opens into a street of business bustle, a street which body engaged him to organize the present niovecomposed of new flashy buildings the architec ment. He appeared to be a whole souled enthusiast, ture of industrial riches and gaudy stores, of un yet with a practical grip of the details of the industry Freedom Only in Russia expected vacant spaces covered with odds and ends and possessing a personal knowledge of his fellow THE New York Times becoming very much annoy of discarded building material and of tall irregular workers and their needs; and, as always follows with ed at learning that Russia is the only place where telegraph poles.
this type of man, a class conscious Socialist concerned men and women can be free, delivers itself as follows: Stretching away from the common, a plot of grass not with his own interest but with the interests and!
When a man, speaking in an American city, excites and trees of some beauty, runs a long straggling street uplift of his fellows. Of course the usual denuncithe applause of numerous auditors by telling them that offshot with little streets lined with the hidecusly regations are being poured on his head. Assisting the Russia is the only place where men and women can Strike Committee in a legal way is Tom Connolly, a be free, the fact raises a good many rather serious ular modern dwellings of the toilers in industry.
questions.
Such is Lawrence, the scene of one of the bitterest Socialist lawyer of Boston, a live wire by all appearThe rst of them. Why did he make a statement at ances once so stupid and so false. is easily answercil. The ir:dustrial battles of recent years and always the scene speaker was James Larkin, who is himself as much of a Bolshcvik as he can find time to be in the moments of the grim never ceasing class struggle. And her Thirty five thousand men and women are already when he doesn have to be a Sinn Feiner and an expo little streets, l:cr wooden dwellings, her broken pavenent of what in this country is called the But on strike, ninety per cent of the mills are closed and this statement was made in Boston, and it is difficult ments, her grii factories, her lifeless grass plots are the remainder crippled. The workers are demanding to understand the existence there of more than a small the scars of that struggle.
handful of out and out lunatics that are desirous to a fourty eight hour week and the same pay as they have the only sort of freedom now existing in Russia, 11: had read in the Boston papers that the class received for fifty four hours. Though the employers It is the freedom of a sinall class to kill and steal, and the freedom of everybody else to be murdered and struggle had again Aared in open revolt, that the claim that they have granted since 1912, an eighty rohbered.
strikers were assaulting scabs, that disorder was so seven per cent increase on that standard the workers Of course Mr. Larkin would not put the case exactly that way tut no other way suggested itself to him. so he rife that the city fatliers, always solicitous of the wel say that the cost of living has increased in the same ahstained from what he knew or felt would be the fare of their children, had been forced to import police period one hundred and thirty two per cent. As one dangers of definition. Mr Larkin has been credite:1 with ability of a kind and with moving clonuence. That from surrounding towns, that mounted police were of the Strike Committee put it: We are textile workis what makes him dangerous, fut one observes that riding down the workers on the sidewalks of the city, ers. What do we know of balance sheets and divihe prefers America to Russia as a place in which to do that the foreign workers were holding up the town, dends? We know that we can barely pay our grocery his preaching: the way.
THE