Gordon Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 46, 7 October 1933, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
If you’re in the working class or of it you’re bound to get a headache wading through the boss press. Especially now – under NRA. The high pressure salesmanship methods of the recovery administration – always profuse with their great, passionate love for the laboring masses – are simply overwhelming.
When you’re lucky enough to survive the intoxicating ballyhoo of the front page and the stultifying hypocrisy of the editorials, you will, however, find a good sobering bromide in the financial columns. They usually tell the unadorned truth. They’re got to. Because they constitute the only part of the paper that’s actually written for the boss – minus the ballyhoo and minus the embellishments.
And here is what we found on the financial sheet of the N.Y. Herald-Tribune recently:
“With the strong arm of government around the wage earner”, says a certain C.T. Revere (of the firm of Mund’s, Winslow, and Potter), “the labor unions are displaced as guardians of the toiler ... The basic reason for the labor union as we have known it in the past no longer prevails.”
This is Mr. Revere’s government. He speaks of it knowingly. And he is addressing his kind, on the forum of his class. He has no need for camouflage and subterfuges here.
The Herald-Tribune, appropriately enough, sums up his remarks in the headline, “Blow to Unions Seen by Revere in NRA Plans”. That tells the whole story in a nutshell. And as if he were anticipating the argument of the recent strikes and the big, successful unionization drive, the gentleman from Wall St. adds:
“Economic forces (?) work out their solution in inexorable fashion even against the intimidation of the working masses.”
If we know anything at all of economic forces (sic) and if the present widespread and far-flung testimonials of strike militancy mean anything, Mr. Revere may yet discover that there is nothing quite so inexorable as the workers’ march to power, as the economic solution of the working masses.
We might add ... even against all the pious “class peace” wishes of the labor fakers and all their persistent servility.
Mr. Revere knows what his class wants and needs, and so does the awakening worker.
The proof? The first plank of nearly every strike action in the growing working class upsurge and the major objective of nine tenths of them has been – union recognition!
That’s what the workers think of the “strong arm of government!”
“In Pittsburgh, 3,000 to 5,000 miners, singing as they go, request Carnegie steel workers to join a ‘holiday movement’ with 85,000 other steel and mine workers in three states.
“Carlyle said: ‘Give me the man who sings at his work!’
“A strike seems hardly a thing to sing about!” – Arthur Brisbane
For all of our sympathy with Mr. Brisbane’s outraged ... esthetics, and in spite of his rather impressive appeal to Carlyle’s authority, we cannot nevertheless understand why he should begrudge the workers a “holiday” – the bankers only had one of their own not so long ago.
It is only just, and even Carlyle had a warm spot for justice.
Still, if the eminent sage of Hearstdon finds strike holidays “hardly a thing to sing about” in his capacity as major share-holder of a profit-mad enterprise, he ought to compose himself as a member of the Fourth Estate.
We can well understand that he cannot sing over a strike. Just let him whistle ...
“Green Backs Plan for U.S. to Assist Jobless Mine Gold” – Newspaper Headline.
Having clad the employed working class in codes of ermine and led them into the promised land of the New Deal, the great American Labor Leader prepares to bring down a shower of gold manna (or are we getting it mixed up with NRA?) upon their less fortunate brethren, left behind in the wilderness of unemployment.
Gordon Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 3 January 2016