Page:William F. Dunne - The Threat to the Labor Movement (1927).pdf/6

 blow they have received as a result of the outcome of the cloak strike in New York, and boiling with indignation over the terrible mismanagement of the strike by its Communist leaders and directors, are searching for an answer to this calamity which has befallen their organization and are seeking light and guidance that would lead them out of the morass into which the political adventurers have dragged them.

The searching analysis contained in the G. E. B.'s statement supplies this light abundantly. It lifts the curtain over the New York cloakmakers' tragedy and exposes mercilessly the hypocrisy, insincerity and blatant incompetence which its principal actors, the Communist camarilla, have displayed from the first day they became the masters of the destiny of the 35,000 cloakmakers involved in it.

The stage having been set for an attack all along the line it needed only some rank and file camouflage to allow the officialdom to appear as saviors of the union. A farcial "investigation" was held by the General Executive Board of the I. L. G. W., the board then met in solemn session and passed a resolution ordering the regularly elected members of the Joint Board and strike committee to surrender their positions and turn over all books and property to the G. E. B. Local union executive commitees were removed from office and all positions filled by appointment by the G. E. B.

UT the new offensive of reaction is not confined to New York or to the needle trades and its official press. It was planned as a nation-wide movement and it developed rapidly in this direction.

Extension of the drive against the left wing to Chicago gave the campaign a national character.

A rapid succession of incidents showed that the drive was not conducted by needle trades officials alone, but that the Chicago Federation of Labor officialdom co-operated actively with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers' officials and the right wing in the Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and the Furriers' union. These events were:

1. The breaking up of the Temple Hall meeting on Friday, Dec. 10, at which Ben Gold, chairman of the Joint Board of the New York Furriers' Union, and Sacha Zimmerman, manager of the dress department of the New York Joint Board of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, were to speak on amalgamation and aid for the cloakmakers' strike. The meeting was under the auspices of the National Needle Trades Committee for Amalgamation, a section of the T. U. E. L.

This meeting was broken up by a combination of police, sluggers and right wing officials, and a right wing meeting held at which Levin, manager, of the Chicago Joint Board of the Amalgamated; Fitzpatrick and Nockels, chairman and secretary of the Chicago Federation of Labor, were the principal speakers.

The Chicago Federation of Labor officialdom thus gave its sanction to the war on the left wing.

2. On Sunday, Dec. 13, another meet-