The Threat to the Labor Movement/Section 11
Capitalist Press Supports Right Wing.
THE support given by the capitalist press to the drive against militant unionism is of three kinds:
1. Agitation against the left wing which follows—shapes, is probably nearer the truth—the tactics of the socialist and right wing trade union press.
2. Completely false statements as to the gains made by the workers in Passaic and the cloakmakers' strike with the purpose of making victories obtained under left wing leadership appear as defeats.
3. Propaganda for "class peace"—the worker-cooperation policy of the official trade union leadership—"efficiency unionism."
The first and second types of agitation against the left wing are generally combined as in the following quotations from editorials in the New York Times:
Whether a strike is won or lost, it is a victory, in the Communist doctrine, if the operation of peace machinery is destroyed, if a six month's strike leaves behind it a rankling bitterness. To be sure it does not always work out that way. Among the local garment workers the indications are that the lessons have been learned and the left wing's power for harm will be wiped out.
The above was written before the mass meeting of 18,000 needle trade workers in Madison Square Garden categorically demanded the resignation of President Sigman and endorsed the left wing leadership of the New York joint board in the cloakmakers' strike. It will be seen from this that with The Times, as with the socialist and official labor press, the wish is father to the thought. "The Communists should be driven out of the trade unions and the left wing should be crushed." No sooner said than done—on paper.
The Times again:
. . . . precipitated 30,000 workers into an unnecessary strike, protracted over five months, involving a loss of millions of dollars in wages and terminating in an admittedly disastrous defeat. This is the characterization of the cloakmakers' strike by the president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. The conflict was planned and let loose by the left wing element in the local unions.
This terrible "left wing" that insists on fighting when the kind-hearted bosses are. simply oozing peace and good will all over the place, with the minor reservation, so far as The Times and its friends in the labor movement are concerned, that all concessions to the workers must be secured thru a Tammany Hall governor whom The Times controls! No capitalist sheet was louder in its denunciation of the left wing demand for the 40-hour week, which has been secured by both the furriers and cloakmakers' unions under left wing leadership but since it has been obtained, The Times and reactionary union officialdom which it supports have conveniently forgotten all about it.
The Times, however, reaches highest into the realm of hypocrisy when it laments the struggle in the union:
War within the garment workers' organization is on, and may yet end in disruption of the union.
Such an outcome would be all the greater pity because, of the long years it took the unions and the garment industry to escape from chronic conflict and chaos.
The right wing leadership which is responsible for the struggle in the union should welcome this new ally of trade unionism and give its representative a high place on the "Committee for the Preservation of the Trade Unions." Altho a belated convert to trade unionism, The Times is doubtless just as honest in its assertions as are the leading elements in this committee and it is certain that they would feel far more at ease with a representative of The Times than they would at the recent Madison Square Garden meeting, for instance.