The Threat to the Labor Movement/Section 7
Growing Influence of Left Wing.
THE Passaic strike was endorsed, aid from international unions pledged and another defeat administered to an officialdom which a few short weeks before had called it "a Communist enterprise."
It is probable that the report of the committee appointed to investigate the conduct of the furriers' strike would have been made at Detroit had it not been for the assault made by the open shoppers.
We have, then, in connection with the occurrences at the Detroit convention which irked sorely an officialdom whose reactionary tendencies can be traced clearly by the series of actions and utterances enumerated above, a series of militant strike actions by the rank and file supporting the left wing policies:
1. The Passaic strike.
2. The Furriers' strike.
3. The I. L. G. W. strike.
Worse than this for officialdom has been the splendid discipline and spirit of the workers in these struggles and the gains made by the workers in spite of the sabotage of the right wing.
These developments naturally are a menace to the policy of worker-employer co-operation, and there is no question but that there have been some sharp reprimands administered to their agents in the labor movement by such bosses' organizations as the Civic Federation.
But this is not all. There have been other indications of a growing organization of left wing forces that did not fit in with the plot of the play in which imperialist-minded labor officials were to be directors and the workers only actors—most of them without speaking parts.
One of the indications of a growing left wing movement, part of it inside and part outside the trade unions, has been the tremendous mass support for Sacco and Vanzetti.
This case has been neglected shamefully by the officialdom of the American Federation of Labor. It has confined its activities to the passing of formal resolutions, which, while asking for a new trial, expressed no opinion as to the guilt or innocence of these workers.
It is obvious that had labor officialdom pressed the issue honestly and militantly it would have been impossible for the Massachusetts government with fiendish cruelty to drag out this case for 5 years without giving these innocent men a new trial.
The Sacco-Vanzetti committee proper has always been unable to organize any broad mass support for the defense of the accused men. It was not until the International Labor Defense took up the case that the support took on a real mass character.
Big mass meetings were held thruout the country, demonstrations took place before the American' consulates in the principal foreign capitals, dozens of prominent trade union leaders and public men of all shades of opinion thruout the world sent protests to Governor Fuller.
Sacco-Vanzetti conferences have been organized and preparations are being made for a huge national conference to be held in New York after the first of the year.
The International Labor Defense, a non-partisan organization for the defense of all class-war prisoners, in which Communists are, of course active, can be said with truth to have saved the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti.