Page:Jay Lovestone - Blood and Steel (1923)).djvu/30

 Bolshevism were made on the sole complaint of company 'under-cover-men, …

"These company spy-systems carry right through the United States Government … Federal immigration authorities testified to the Commission that raids and arrests for 'radicalism,' etc., were made, especially in the Pittsburgh district, on the denunciation and secret reports of the steel company's 'under-cover-men,' and the prisoners turned over to the Department of Justice. The Monessen 'labor file' enabled the student to follow one such paper through to the Government …

"The testimony of a Federal officer of long official experience, made at a hearing of the Commission of Inquiry in November in Pittsburgh was: 90 per cent of all the radicals arrested and taken into custody were reported by one of the large corporations, either of the steel or coal industry. The corporation orders an organization raided by the police department, the members are taken into custody, thrown into the police station, and the Department of Justice is notified. They send a man to examine them to see if there are any extreme radicals or anarchists among them."

When the strike deputations of workers sought aid from Attorney General Palmer his only answer was a commendation of a "patriotic" society's effort to run labor "agitators" out of Pennsylvania. Thus wrote the Attorney General in November 26, 1919: "It is a pity that more patriotic organizations do not take action similar to that of your order."

According to the Interchurch Commission the attitude of the Government towards the struggle of the workers against the 12-Hour Day could be summed up in these words: "Civil peace could be preserved only by interference with the existence of ordinary civil liberties on the part of a large proportion of the poulationpopulation [sic]."

No worker should or can take seriously Harding's last plea in behalf of the abolition of the 12-Hour Day. The very reply of Gary accepting the President's plan to institute the 8-Hour Day "when there is a surplus of labor available" unmasks the joint hypocrisy and fraud of the promises of the Chief Executive of the country and the Chief Executive of the Steel Trust. On this basis, the President has actually not gone one bit further than the Iron and Steel Institute. Harding has only lightened his burden of apologies for the coming campaign and saved the Republican Party the Steel campaign contributions.