THE THREAT TO THE LABOR MOVEMENT
may conclude that the Communist influence was not an important element in this strike and that Woll therefore has no criticism to make of the outcome.
It will be interesting to compare the methods and results of three strikes which Woll charges the Communists with "trying to capture and direct" with the method's and results of the anthracite strike under direction of one of the most bitter opponents of militant unionism—John L. Lewis.
In the first place the fact that a strike occurred under such reactionary leadership is sufficient proof that even in this period of "prosperity" strikes cannot be prevented except by surrender on the part of unions. Surely Vice-President Woll will not charge that John L. Lewis, a member of the National Committee of the republican party, called the anthracite strike as part of a revolutionary plot against the government which in 1919 he said "we cannot fight."
But Woll, and all the other apostles of "worker-employer co-operation," are insistent that militant unionism in the garment industry, the fur industry and the textile industry has nothing whatever to do with wages, hours and working conditions but is simply the result of the activities of Communists who are trying to stir UP trouble. The New York Times and other capitalist organs make the same categorical statement.
These spokesmen of the bosses go farther and say that Communists do not care whether the workers win strikes or not, that the strikes in the fur, garment and textile industry were unnecessary. They then try to prove their assertions by claiming that the cloakmakers have won nothing, have in fact suffered a defeat. The New York Times makes the same statement about the Passaic workers.
These statements have been shown to be without foundation in another part of this pamphlet and here we wish only to ask why the self-appointed saviors of the garment workers, fur workers and textile workers do not apply this same test to the anthracite strike.
This is a strike that was lost if ever a strike was lost. After five months of struggle by 150,000 miners, during all of which time Lewis allowed the maintenance men to work and keep the owners' properties in better condition than ever before. Lewis signed an agreement with the coal operators which does not provide for the closed shop (the check-off) the union previously had and which accepts exactly those arbitration methods (participation of other persons than representatives of operators and the union) which the United Mine Workers have hitherto refused to be bound by.
These statements may be denied by friends of President Lewis but President Coolidge, whom President Lewis supported for election, knows otherwise. In his recent message to congress Coolidge says:
No progress seems to have been made within large areas of the bituminous coal industry toward creation of voluntary machinery by which greater assurance can be given to the public of PEACEFUL ADJUSTMENT OF WAGE DIFFICULTIES SUCH AS HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED IN THE ANTHRACITE INDUSTRY. (Emphasis, Mine.)
The miners are bound by a five-
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