BOLSHEVISM IN UNITED STATES.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 March 1919, Page 5

BOLSHEVISM IN UNITED STATES.

■ INTRIGUING TO SPLIT UP THE LABOR FEDERATION. The United States Government officials (says the Christian Science Monitor) have learned that a Bolshevist Soviet has been organised in New- York. The Bolsheviki aim first, it is reported, to get recruits in the American Federation of Labor, the purpose being, if possible, to disrupt that organisation. It may be said in this connection that the officials of the American Federation of Labor are thoroughly awake to the dangers of this menace, and there is no effort to belittle the gravity of the situation. There are a • number of factors which officials take into account in forming their estimate of the situation touching this question. The first one is-that no conditions must be permitted to develop in this crisis in this country, when the nation is the chief support of harmonious democracy, which will detract from the country's power to render its full measures of assistance to the world in the reconstruction period now dawning. They realise that every movement which tends towards disorder and defiance of law is a movement against the nation's function of helpfulness at this time. In this class are the I.W.W. organisation and the activities of the Woman's Party in defying law and order here. The 1.W.W., whose members are looked to as the near allies of the Bolsheviki, have been quiet recently, but the organisation manifests indications of again becoming active. In the near North-west the I.W.W. loggers and lumbermen formed a union between themselves and the Socialists under the name of Loyal Legion, under which they have been receiving war wages in the spruce camps. But now that the war is over the Loyal Legion will disappear and the I.W.W. organisation will return to their former practices of destruction. Persons familiar with labor conditions take the view that the most effective, and really the only method, for the defeat of Bolshevism in the United States is to remove cause for discontent. American Federation of Labor officials are proceeding on the theory that the unionising of labor and the general application of the practice of collective bargaining will serve more effectively to remove discontent than any other agency that may be employed. The position is taken that he employers of labor everywhere by uniting with Labor to the extent of permitting organisation and collective bargaining 'will help in removing the food on which Bolshevism feeds, but Labor cannot do it alone.