STRIKE WAR IN AMERICA

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4480, 16 October 1922, Page 1

STRIKE WAR IN AMERICA

THE USE OF TROOPS. REMARKABLE INCIDENTS. The early Puritans were hard on those wjio disagreed .with them (writ' es.the New York correspondent o,f ths “Manchester Guardian”). They came to America to find a place where they could think and pray freely in (their own way, but they did not believe in free speech or free thought for others. They killed the Indians and cut off Quakers’ ears with a sense of righteous duty well done. Something of the old violent intolerance survives in America. Undoubtedly, too, the frontier tradition has much to do with it. Certainly nowhere else in the world is the industrial struggle so consistently and bitterly violent. American, labour has always been conservative in theory but violent and bloody in action. Its employers have been ready to meelt violep.ce, or, more often, to anticipate it. They hire and arm their own strike guards, and often equip and pay county sheriffs. It would be easy to run over the history of American labour struggles and single out a series of bloody battles; it is even more significant to record tlhe distribution of troops, as one symptom .of violence, on the industrial battlegrounds of America toiday.

Soldier s—Federal or State—are, or have very recently been, on strike duty in fifteen of the forty-eight States. In some cases .they have succeeded in restoring calm; in others they have aggravated the situation. The first cpll is likely to be upon the State troops, the “National Guard,” which usually consists of young business men, strongly anti-labour in their sympathies, who like the two weeks in camp in summer and the one night a week in an armoury through the winter, which is the usual obligation in this service. With one short intermission such guardsmen have been on duty in the textile strike in the Pawtucket Valley, in Rhode Island (New England) since February 21. They have maintained a state of virtual martial law; they have fired upon crpwds of strike sympathisers and have as frequently been stoned in'return. “CIVIL WAR’’ IN KENTUCKY. Rhode Island has learned nothing from the example of the textile towns of New Hampshire, where the police work in the strike sections has been organised by the strikers themselves, with the hearty approval of the police, and with excellent results. The long drawn-oult strike ip the rollingmills in Newport, Kentucky, has’made tlhat city a scene of civil war for more than six months. State troops took control of the town on December 21, 1921, and are still there, despite the violent protest of the Mayor and other local officials. Tanks are used to patrol the streets about the mills. The packinghouse strike in the meat-

packing cities of the Middle West led to a proclamation of martial law in Nebraska City, Nebraska, iii January of this year, and to maintenance of troops in South S'aint Paul, Minnesota, for three months early this year.

Naturally the great coal and railway strikes have called out most troops. In two States 'at least the presence of soldiers has bettered the miners' position. In New Mexico, when the coal companies evicted the miners from their homes, the troops supplied tents for them. Utah, another Far Western State, has seen similar co operation between strikers and troops. There the railwaymen Shad refused to'carry strike-breakers, arid when a company manager ran a train to » mining camp strikers fired on the train killing one of the strikebreakers. West Virginia is a seat ot chronic warfare, where every miner and every operator habitually “totes a gun.” In Colorado State troops under the same officer, “Pat” Hamrbck, who was in charge in the famous “Ludlow Massacre” nihe years ago, when troops fired into a strikers' tent colony, killing a score of women and children, are tp-day patrolling the coalfields with mounted machine-guns and tanks.. The Southern Illinois coalfields, which are solidly unionised, are without troops, despite the massacre of 17 non-union men at Herrin, only because local officials are certain that their arrival would cause .immediate bloodshed. VIOLENCE ON THE RAILWAYS. Violence is, of course, usually a sign of weakness, and the railroad strike just begun with such poor chance of success has more than its share. I cabled you that the first week of the strike had left a recorded two strikers killed, six strikers and 18 strike-breakers seriously wounded (and many more bruised and battered), and two strike-breakers’ homes bomhed. State troops have already been mobilised iri connection with this strike in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Kansas, Illinois, Missouri, and New York—not, of course, throughput these States, butt at junction points and near the railway repair shops. That is the situation as soldiers to day. If one were tp include the State constabularies, usually mounted and well-armed, and the armed mine guards and “company detectives” the •list would be still more appalling. Perhaps the extent to wlhich the energy of American labour is burned out in these violent battles explains why Jn constructive statesmanship American labour is so far behind British labour.