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Show UTAH LABOR NEWS. SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH. JUNE 17. 1938. 7 Page Cedar City, the Gateway to Utahs Playground, Invites You. Come On a Visit or As a Permanent Resident were struggling for. J. H. BOWEN Friend of Labor Regular Mattresses Innerspring Made at Factory Frices Feather Work Upholstery Cedar City, Utah Phone 364-- nesses to hamper its progress too. From the beginning the labor movement has had a long uphill climb towards unity. Many crosscurrents of policy and method divided its forces and seemingly wasted its efforts toward a realization of its democratic needs. A number of attempts at national unity were made, one group forming with much hope and considerable promise to be suceeded by another. Factionalism and personal ambition tore great holes in labors ranks through which the enemy was easily able to penetrate. Yet despite its internal weaknesses and despite the opposition of all its opponents, the labor movement in America today has grown toward a unity in the fight for social and industrial democracy unknown in previous American history. That unity has been found in the growth and achievements of the Committee for Industrial Or ganization. Today, the C. I. 0. has four million enrolled members a greater number than any- - national labor movement has ever before enrolled in the history of our country. Through the C. I. 0., the American labor movement has been able to achieve more progress in two and a half years than it had achieved in fifty years of previous history. American employers have won greater concessions from their employers some of them once among the bitterest enemies of labor than have ever been won before. What are some of these achievements ? In the steel industry, once the stronghold of industrial feudalism, 525,000 workers are under contract with five jhundred steel companies, securing for them increases in wages, shortening of hours, a measure of job security, decent working and living conditions. In the automobile industry, from its beginning completely open shop, a union of four hundred thou sand exists, with contracts covering producevery important motor-ca- r er except one. In glass, in cement, in the maritime industry, once a floating industrial slum, in alumi num, in electrical manufacturing, In close to industrial fields, the C. I. 0. has built powerful national and international unions, has improved living and working con ditions for all of its members and for countless thousands yet outside the C. I. 0. whose employers have gone along with the tide in the realization that there is no other sensible course. Political Progress With this growth in the economic strength of the American labor movement, the C. I. 0. has added political strength to the progressive forces in our country. Before the C. I. 0., the steel towns of Allegheny County and other sections of industrial Pennsylvania and elsewrhere were political deserts, so far as Democracy was concerned. Workers not only took their working and living conditions at the command of their employers, but lheir political lives as well. A free labor vote was unknown. Today, under the banner of the C. I. 0., the working population has its own men elected and serving in municipal and county offices. Under the guidance of Labors League and the C. I. 0. the great mass of people in this country who earn their living by working for ii are beginning to take their share in the running of their country. g And everywhere that the men and women of this country are participating in their government, there is a greatly sharpened growth of. Democracy and of progressive achievement. The workers of America are making their voices heard in every legislature in the nation. The record ol progressive laws already achiev-- e i is due to this new articulation of labors needs and desires. The National Labor Relations Act, the relief program, the new activity of government in looking out for the interests of the people who elect it, is due to the new strength of the It is organized labor movement. due to the new unity that has been SUCCESS TO LABOR GOODYEAR SHOE OUR STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY (Continued from Page 1) greatest stronghold that feudalism possesed the institution of slavery. The war against slavery in the United States was the most serious armed struggle of history up to that time. American workers and American farmers gave it their fullest support. They knew what they were fighting for. They were fighting for the maintenance and extension of democracy. After the Civil war, the workers of America took up the struggle on the economic field with renewed vigor. The labor movement, as an organized mass force, began to grow at a tremendous pace. Before that time, there had been few trade-unio- n organizations, composed of small groups of craftsmen, isolated from each other in widely separated communities. As early as the eighteenth century, there had been strikes against intolerable living and working conditions. There was nothing that could be described as a labor movement. Labor was not conscious of itself as a force though labor knew how hard it had had to fight and to work to achieve the democratic rights written into the American Constitution. Now, under the impetus of the rapid industrialization of the nation, labor realized that mass organization of the labor movement was the necessary answer to its problem of making the promises of democracy become realities. Labor learned that no other force would help it to make democracy a reality. Toward Economic Democracy With the end of the Civil wTar, bringing the abolition of the last open vestige of feudalism in this country, labor moved on to a higher task in the evolution of democracy. It moved on to the struggle for economic and social democracy in the new society that industrialization was creating. Immediately labor met with fierce opposition from the social descendants of the Tories- - it had fought a hundred years before. The story of the fight that the new giant monopolies then being formed put up against the people of America does not need repeating. For many years it was a steady and unremiting warfare. Openly it took the form or ruthless slaughter of working men and women in the steel industry and in the coal fields of forty and fifty years ago. More covertly, with the full blessing of the law of the time, it took the form of the blacklist, the injunc-- i tion, evictions, mass frameups and wholesale execution of working-clas- s leaders. The workers knew what they . They knew they were struggling to bring the principles their ancestors had put into the American Constitution in two revolutionary wars down to date, to make them apply to a new situation where industrial slavery was taking the place of the feudal bonds they had once thrown off. They knew too that they were fighting the battles of all the people in America when they fought for economic and social freedom in industry. The words and actions of every trade-unio- n leader of this earlier time bristle with this knowledge. They knew then, as they know now, that the burden of maintaining and extending democracy in the United States was on their shoulders. Proof of this can be found in the record of the American labor movement every progressive cause of the time. The campaign for the eight-hou- r day was a working-class campaign. Seven men in Chicago paid for it with their lives in the Haymarket frame-u- p of 1886 just as fifty-on- e years later ten men paid with their lives in Chicagos Memorial Day massacre for their belief in the right of assembly and free speech. The campaign for safety laws and inspection service in dangerous industries was a workers campaign. The campaign for free, universal edu cation, something as yet peculiar to America among western democcamracies, was a working-clas- s exThe the for paign. campaigns tension of political democracy, as in the direct election of senators, womens suffrage, and the like, received their greatest support from the working people of this country. The campaign against child labor, still going on, has been a working-clas- s campaign. For the most part, the early struggles of the labor movement for. democracy in this country were carried on alone. Labor throughout its history had few allies and many Labor-hatin- g enemies. employers of an earlier time were able to play one group and one class against another to their enormous profit. Liberal forces outside the labor movement were weak and divided. It is historically true that the early attempts at labor organization in the United States were met with opposition from almost every quarter. Labor did not have the allies drawn from the middle and class, from the white-colltohas it that professional groups, day. Labors battles were fought alone, with the artillery on the other side. You have only to glance at the newspapers and periodicals of the time, grandfathers of todays Chicago Tribune and Hearst press, to see with what distrust and hatred almost every group was persuaded to regard labor. The Struggle for Unity Labor had its own internal weak- in ar two-sco- re Non-Partis- an wage-earnin- BEST WISHES TO LABOR SOUTHERN UTAH MATTRESS CO. W Southern Utah Heating & Plumbing Co. Friend of Labor Merryweather Telephone 45 Cedar City, Utah 164 North Main St. Wm. M. REBUILDERS Expert Shoe Rebuilding All Work Guaranteed Rex E. Christensen, Prop. Friend of Labor. Cedar City LABOR ON ITS FORWARD MARCH (Continued from page 6) WOMENS AUXILIARIES MEET IN CINCINNATI REPORTS ACTIVITIES CINCINNATI The first national convention of the American Federation of Womens Auxiliaries of Labor held in Cincinnati was an Representaoutstanding success. tives of the national and international auxiliares, as well as many nchieved and is being achieved in the ranks of the industrial mass organizations that make up the C. womens delegates from local auxliaries were present. One of the most encouraging results of the first convention was that it brought a half million additional members into the national federation, making a total of 000 members of women's auxiliaries who will demand union-mad- e goods and union services. The convention went on record as opposed to any and all wage cuts. It also passed a resolution expressing appreciation for the loyal support received from the weekly Labor newspapers and the official monthly Labor journals. A referendum will be taken on the amount of per capita tax to be paid. Collection will begin about December 1. Permanent officers will be elected in next convention. The time and place for the convention will be set by executive board, which is composed of the officials of the national and international womens auxiliaries. An advisory committee, comfrom posed of one representative each state and the District of Columbia, was set up to complement the work of the executive board. It gives- all the local womens auxiliaries full representation in the national organization. O, I. O. Workers of Hand and Brain There is another unity being forged through the work of the new labor movement in this country that has an equal importance with that of industrial unity. This is the unity now being created between industrial workers and the white-colland professional Previously the labor groups. movement had fought its battles alone, with only the industrial workers for its army. Today, under the impetus of the C. I. 0. and of other progressive organizations, and professional the white-collWelcome, Labor, to is being drawn into wage-earnCedar Citys Only the struggle as never before. Fascism has taught us this lesSINCLAIR-iz- e son. Not only does Fascist barYour Car for barism seek to destroy the organized labor movement invariably its SAFETY first target but it tries to destroy seVACUUM and of freedom SERVICE every element curity enjoyed by other groups as well. An especially violent attack Wally. Macs Fasis made on cultural freedom. Service Station cism cannot endure the presence of unhampered thought on the part of Corner of Main and Center Sts. any group, no matter how unpolit WALLACE MACFARLANE, Mgr. ical that grouD may consider itFriend of Labor self. It can no more permit middle class, white collar, professional groups to think and act for themselves than it can permit workers Best Wishes to Labor to organize for the improvement of Welcome their living and working condition The Lesson of Unity This is why Fascist barbarism is as much a threat to the middle groups as it is to labor. Labor, because it is furthest out in front in the fight for democracy, bears the heaviest part of the struggle against reaction. Today in America middle groups are beginning to Formerly Lunts Hotel and realize this. They must continue to Cafe Home of the Traveler learn the facts of economic and political life as they are presented 43 Rooms Rates $1 to $2.50 today. They must continue to learn the lesson of unity with the chief Box Spring Mattresses force fighting for democratic rights of unity with the labor Famous for Fine Foods ar - ar er Hotel Navajo and Cafe movement. The struggle that labor carries on for democracy is their struggle. It is the struggle of all people who need and who cherish liberty in our countrys social and political life. Friends of Labor Cedar City Mr. apd Mrs. L. M. McArthur 7 |