THE THREAT TO THE LABOR MOVEMENT
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.
Lying About Passaic.
BUT it is when the Times speaks of the Passaic strike it throws all caution to the winds and out-Munchausens the famous baron while at the same time not forgetting to say a good word for its particular hero—President Sigman. It says: (I quote a length so that readers may be able to form some idea of the amount of lying that can be done in a few paragraphs by a skilled editorial writer on a capitalist sheet.)
Passaic's textile strike is virtually brought to an end amid circumstances that have now become the regular thing with labor conflicts conducted under Communist inspiration and leadership. The same formula operated as in the cloakmakers' strike. Hostilities are proclaimed without sufficient cause. . . . . Bitterness and violence are engendered. Exhaustion casts the deciding vote. The Communist leadership decamps, as in Passaic, and leaves the task of bringing order out of chaos to moderate labor, or subscribes to a defeat which it hails as a victory.
It seems useless to argue with a sheet which dismisses such gains as the establishment of a union in a hitherto unorganized industry, the recognition of the right of union com-
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