2 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE TRIAL by the use of violence and various other illegal means. On this question of conspiracy and violence, Robert Bruere, who is engaged in an investigation of the subject, said in the New York Evening Post of November 14. As write, have been in Arizona only four weeks, but feel confident that have reached pretty nearly to the bottom of the alleged conspiracy so far as Arizona is concerned. If such a conspiracy existed and we shall not know the whole truth until the United States Department of Justice has presented its full case against the indicted leaders am certain that it was not a determining factor in the strikes that have tied up the copper mines during the past four months. These strikes grew out of a long standing struggle between the forces of legitimate organized labor and the forces of organized business, dominated by the copper companies. So far as there was concerted attack by the it was principally directed against the unions affiliated with the of Crimes have been committed in Arizona, but they are not chargeable to the So far as lawlessness is concerned, the chief role of the has been to serve as camouflage.
Mr. Bruere may well characterize the charges of lawlessness as camouflage. The chambers of commerce, the municipal governments and the thugs in the employ of the corporations have been creating all the violence against the The Bisbee deportations, when thousands of workers were brutally taken from their homes and sent out into the desert to die of thirst and starvation; the infamous assassination of Frank Little, and hundreds of crimes of more or less equal magnitude organized and carried through by the respectable gentlemen of the forces of law and order, these acts of lawlessness are the answers of the to the false charges hurled against it. Strikers have been forced back to work at the point of the gun. The organizers have been thrown out of town, and imprisoned without warrant of law, as well as hundreds of men thrown into jail for no other crime than being members. In the Yakima Valley a regular organized and systematic reign of terror was instituted against the strikers and the the soldiers being used, and the open boast made by the local gentlemen thugs that this was the only way of dealing with the W.
And Theodore Knappen, writing in the New York Tribune some months ago, reported these facts approvingly!
But this policy of blood and bullets failed to crush the strikes. The movement became larger and larger, more and more groups of workers being forced to strike by unbearable conditions and the arrogance of the employers, who prated of patriotism while they stuffed their coffers with the enormous profits of war prices.
This circumstance is extraordinary significant in more ways than one. First of all, it indicates a spontaneous and general industrial revolt. Secondly, it characterizes the strikes in the west as an expression of industrial mass action on a large scale. Thirdly, it makes it apparent that the was not the chief factor in the strikes.
In fact, the is receiving more credit or discredit than is its due. The in the west is not the centre of activity in any sense. There are a great number of contributing factors, among them being revolutionary Socialists who are actively on the job. But the dynamic factor itself are the workers who have taken the bit into their teeth and are determined to strike in their own way and for their own purposes.
All local action, in spite of its brutality and lawlessness, having failed to crush the strikes, the federal government was called upon to act. Then came the nation wide raids upon the offices of the and then the indictments of 160 active members and the arrest of upward of 100. The intensity of the industrial unrest is evident in this fact, that it requires the use of the might of the national government to crush it.
The counts in the indictments against the arrested men are often extremely ridiculous and dangerous. In some cases, men have been arrested for having conspired and agreed together and with each other unlawfully, wilfully and feloniously to make or convey false statements with intent to interfere