The Organizer (Minneapolis, Minnesota), 1934-07-27

              DAILY STRIKE
UNITED
LABOR
ACTION
SMASH THE
CITIZENS
ALLIANCE
TWO TWENTY-FIVE
SOUTH THIRD STREET
Volume 1, No. 12
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA; FRIDAY, JULY^, 1934
Price one cent
Martial Law Cloaks
Petitions Laid
Before Council
By Two Groups
50,000 Endorse Union's
Move Against Johannes
This morning two petitions were
presented to the City Council. One,
circulated by Local 574 and presented by Alderman Ed Hudson, had
over 50,000 signatures affixed.
It asked the impeachment of the
Mayor and the Chief of Police. The
second, representing a large group
of private citizens, also asked that
the Mayor be removed, charging him
with a number of misdeeds.
A motion was made by Alderman
Scott to appoint a committee of five
to investigate the Mayor. A substitute motion, that this petition be laid
on the table" was passed by a vote of
13 to 11. This means that the motion was killed.
A motion to refer the-petitions to
tf.>e Welfare Committee, also made
by Scott, was passed. Alderman Ed
Hudson made a motion that the Welfare Committee hold a public meeting Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock.
This motion passed by a vote of 14
to H.
The hall outside the Council Chamber was tightly packed by workers at
the time of the presentation of the
petitions.
Workers of Minneapolis will watch
with the greatest interest the fate of
these petitions demanding the removal of the puppet Bainbridge and the
murderer Johannes from public office. The first step in this vital movement will be taken next Tuesday
morning at 10 o'clock.
At the same session of the Council,
a resolution of the Central Labor
Union and the Building Trades Council, signed by Emery Nelson and
A. H. Urtabees, was presented. This
resolution heartily endorsed the
strike and its present leadership,
characterized 574's struggle as one
which is the concern of the entire
labor movement, and demanded the
removal of Johannes.
STILL IN THE FIELD
Why Not Stick to the Issues?
Flash: Si Barach Released
Si Barach, arrested by one of
Bloody Johannes' cops yesterday on
his release from the hospital where
he was treated for 23 wounds given
him on Bloody Friday, has been released from jail. The cops tried to
hold him for vagrancy, but he turned
out to be a resident of Minneapolis!
Barach is a member of the Minneapolis Central Council of Workers.
Although unemployed for a long
time, he refused to scab against 574.
With thousands of r'-her unemployed,
he backed our strike. That is why he
was persecuted by the agents of the
Citizens Alliance.
Deps Attack Kohler Strikers
A large band of deputized thugs
today broke through the picket lines
thrown around the Kohler Manufacturing Company, also raiding the
strikers' field headquarters. Pickets
offered no resistance before the unexpected and vicious onslaught.
At the conference with Governor
Olson he stated that interstate commerce must be permitted to move.
All trucks, however, must have tier-
mits. No load may contain anything
not destined for legitimate interstate
commerce. Merchandise from over
the state line which is unloaded may
not be classified as. interstate commerce after the unloading.
Ever since this strike began, the Citizens
Alliance has been trying to isolate the strikers from the general population and to split
the strikers among themselves.
They have said our pickets are ex-convicts
and roughnecks.
They have said that somebody stole $26,000
from our Union funds.
They have put Communism on the same
level and said that our leaders and even our
thousands of members are Communists.
This is done to turn people against us, to
isolate us and beat us.
But the first red scare flopped.
The Union took the position that it would
not let the Citizens Alliance dictate to us who
our leaders shall be, and that it would not
inquire into the politics of any member of 574
but would only ask him to be a loyal union
man.
This position was endorsed by the whole
union movement of the city. Emery Nelson,
Secretary of the Central Labor Union, at our
great mass meeting last week, said that labor
will never tolerate that bosses shall examine
our officials and decide which leaders we may
have and which we may not have. Not any
more than we will let them tell us we can not
have the inside workers in our union.    "\-^
Our Union is a labor union, and the bosses
must keep their hands off.
Two days ago the bosses started another red
scare in their kept press. They had the cops
arrest two New York Trotzkyites who are in
Minneapolis to write articles about the strike
for papers which are published in New York.
Bloody Johannes had no more grounds on
which to arrest these men than he has had
against our pickets.
When Attorneys Hiram Z. Mendow and
Albert Goldman forced Johannes to produce the two Trotzkyites in court by a writ
of habeas corpus, the charge of vagrancy was
immediately dismissed against them. Every
paper in town says these men were living at
the Hotel Summit. Does that make a man a
vagrant?
The whole trick was arranged to provide
dope for some more Employers Advisory Committee (Citizens Alliance) high-priced ads in
the prostitute press.
Any^ worker knows that when bosses who
won't give a penny raise in wages, spend thou
sands of dollars on ads, it is not for the purpose of benefiting the workers. But what exactly was the idea behind this revival of the
red scare?
Simply this:
The bosses were getting ready to throw
down Father Haas and E. H. Dunnigan, Federal Conciliation agents. They knew that this
would make it clear to everybody that this
strike is continuing not because Communists
want to make trouble but because the bosses
are open-shop hogs with an insatiable appetite for profits and without a single human
instinct.
And they wanted to cover themselves, to
divide workers against each other, to give the
strike a black eye with red paint. As Governor Olson says, they try to answer a request
for a $12 weekly wage by calling people Communists.
But again they have failed. Again the labor
movement and the mass of the population has
rallied to 574. The Central Labor Union this
morning presented to the City Council a new
resolution heartily endorsing the strike and its
present leadership.
Local 574 is glad to announce that the bosses' reactionary propaganda is again proving
ineffective. We are glad to print a letter received from a union member discussing this
red scare of the Citizens Alliance. It reflects
the views of the overwhelming mass of strikers.
Local 574 reaffirms its traditional position:
If you are a truck-driver, a helper, a platform man or an inside worker, you belong in
Local 574. We do not care where you were
born ,what your religion is or is not, what political party or group you belong to, or what
color your hair or skin is. All that is as indifferent to us as whether you prefer dark beer
or light beer.  We want good Union men.
And we are glad to say we have them, of
every variety and species.
To the bosses we say this:
We want better wages. We want decent
conditions. We want our Union recognized.
Those are the issues in this strike.
Communism is not an issue in this strike.
Stick to the issues!
We'll stick to the picket line!
Someone must back down. And it won't be
the workers of Minneapolis!
Moves
574 Protests
Guards' Effect
On City Tie-up
Bosses Once More Turn
Down Haas Proposals
Grasping at the provisions of the
martial law edict of the newly appointed military administration of the
city, the labor-hating exploiters set
a number of scab trucks in motion
today.
•The trucks moved under a variety
of false banners such as signs claiming: that they were moving interstate
commerce. In most cases this was a
fake. In several cases one box was
addressed over the Wisconsin line
airathe rest of the load to Minneapolis and St. Paul stops. For a
while they got through due to the
interference with picketing by the
National Guard. Later-in the day
I the lines were tightened up, however.
The presence of the' National
Guard in the city has caused a good
deal of satisfaction to the bosses.
They feel that now they can pull off
a whole series of rackets to smash
the strike, 574 and the trade union
movement in general.
Rev. Haas and Mr. Dunnigan, Federal conciliators, who were thrown
down by the Employers Advisory
Committee, today tried to coax the
bosses into reconsidering their rejection of the Haas-Dunnigan draft
plan. Not a word of condemnation
of the bosses' impudent refusal is in
the letter. The government officials,
who roar like lions when speaking to
workers, coo like suckling doves when
speaking to the bosses.
Two hundred and fifty employers
meeting in the Radisson Hotel stood
pat on their refusal to consider the
Haas plan. Their statement pretends
that the reason is that they are patriots and dislike Communists. • Actually it is because they do not want to
grant the return-to-work wage scale
or recognize honest unions.
At a conference this afternoon between Governor Olson and a delegation representing the Central Labor
Union, the Building Trades Council
and Local 574, a protest was entered
by the workers of Minneapolis
against the use of militia as a front
for scabbing.
Olsorr feels the National Guard
will be able to protect the interests
of everybody concerned. Carl Skog-
lund of the Organizing Committee of
Local 574 stated to the Governor
"in our opinion the employers would
have been forced to sign the agreement if martial law had not been declared and troops brought in to the
city."
This conference with the Governor was arranged after a meeting of
the representatives of the Central
Labor Union and the Building Trades
Council with a committee from Local
574. At this meeting the committee
from 574 expressed the view that a
fight must be made to get the troops
out of the city in order that the
drivers, helpers and inside men can
continue to tie up scab movements
and force the employers to the wall.
Sentiment in the C. L. U. and the
Building Trades Council was unanimous in endorsing the view of the
situation taken by the representatives
of 574.
The C. L. U. is sending telegrams
to President Roosevelt and Secretary
of Labor Perkins demanding that
they force the bosses to abandon
their position.
,/