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War in MinneapolisHerbert Solow
THERE are about 5,000 trucks in Minneapolis used for general goods transport. Ordinarily each moves three loads or part-loads daily. An average business day means some 15,000 truck movements. The Citizens' Alliance of Minneapolis yesterday boasted that twenty-seven trucks had moved. The city, to use a local idiom, was tied up as tight as a bull's eye in flytime. Ever since the flour-milling industry moved East, Minneapolis has been primarily commercial rather than industrial, a gathering and distribution point for Northwestern agricultural produce and manufactured goods destined for farmers' consumption. Since trucks challenged rails as a means of transport, trucking has become to a large extent a key to the economic structure of Minneapolis. Truck drivers are an entering wedge into every business and industry in the city. When, consequently the coal drivers' successful strike of February was followed by an organization drive of the General Drivers, Helpers, and Inside Workers Union, Local 574, A. F. of L., the economic rulers of Minneapolis determined on a bitter fight. They recognized the danger to them inherent in the unionization of the drivers: the unionization of the entire city. Forced to strike in May, the drivers tied up the industry 100 per cent, routed in hand-to-hand conflict an army of 1,500 armed and deputized thugs and gentlemen, and squeezed from the employers important concessions including de facto union recognition. On the morrow the union began to grow at the rate of twenty-five men a day. The workers were seeking a shield and a weapon. They were in miserable condition. I have met not a few who were often paid with damaged vegetables. One father of four children was getting eight dollars weekly for sixty hours' work. The workers looked to their leaders for continued struggle, and they did not look in vain. The employers forced an issue by stalling on the question of wage arbitration and by refusing to deal with Local 574 on matters concerning inside workers--shipping and receiving clerks in warehouses, and all sorts of produce craftsmen (celery trimmers, coolers, tomato men) who had joined the union. Thus they broke the agreement which concluded the May strike. The United States conciliation agent, Dunnigan, proposed compromise. How, asked the union leaders, can we compromise? Either we have a right to represent our members, or we have not; if the bosses say we have not, we'll go out. They did, on July 17, and the workers flocked behind them. The bosses, through a clergyman and a scab, organized a "rank-and-file revolt" against the union leaders. The anti-strike rally, as the Minneapolis press unanimously confessed, turned into a strike demonstration when the union leaders took the platform for discussion. A second "rank-and-file revolt" was arranged by the Stalinists. It consisted of a mimeographed leaflet. In the words of President Bill Brown of Local 574, "the Stalinists have not only discredited communism out here; they've discredited the mimeograph machine." The bosses launched a campaign of red-baiting against the union leaders, quoting from the Militant, the national organ of the Trotzkyites, to prove that among the strike leaders are advocates of a Fourth International. The strike leaders hit back hard, affirming the right of a union to choose its own leaders and exposing the divisive aims of the bosses in raising the red scare. The workers refused to fall for the scare; not even news of the San Francisco raids caused them to turn against their leaders. Next the bosses tried terror. On July 21 Police Chief (Bloody) Johannes provided a convoy of police to move a truck containing a few sacks. When unarmed pickets approached, the police, on orders from the chief, fired at pointblank range. Some fifty were wounded (mostly in the back) and one was killed. The result was a stiffening of the ranks, a rush of aid from many unions, general public sympathy. Three days later Henry B. Ness, shot by the police, was buried; the funeral cortege was the greatest demonstration in Minneapolis history, except for the long-forgotten NRA parade. When Albert Goldman of Chicago, the union's counsel, speaking in front of strike headquarters, pledged his audience to continued struggle, some 40,000 workers responded. On the day after the shooting, the bosses wrote all strikers, ordering them back to work by July 24. They hoped that because of the red-baiting and shooting enough would return to make possible large-scale truck movements. Their threat was 99 per cent ineffective. Not a truck moved without a convoy of fifty armed cops. The city was divided into districts patrolled by cruising picket cars. A contact man in each district was in communication with strike general headquarters. When a truck shoved its nose out of a garage or crossed the city line, a truckload of pickets whirled out from general headquarters to stop it. The estimated cost to the taxpayer of moving $1 worth of general merchandise was $200. The great mass of people regard the bosses as responsible for these expenditures. The strikers have dug deep into the populace for support. They have been joined by almost 5,000 Emergency Relief workers who demand a living wage and a thirty-hour week. Several thousand unemployed, organized in the Central Council of Workers, are helping on the picket line. Many unions have adopted resolutions of support and given support, cash, technical aid, pickets and so on. Thousands of people have signed petitions for the ousting of Johannes and his superior, Mayor Bainbridge. In the May strike there was conflict with nearby farmers. During this strike all farmers displaying the joint permit of Local 574, the Farm Holiday Association, and the Market Gardens Association have been able to bring in produce for sale to retailers and consumers in a special strike market. In return, the farmers have picketed outlying districts to stop commercial trucks and supply food to the strike commissary. The Independent Grocers and several veterans' organizations have backed the strike. The Commissary is the show-place of working-class Minneapolis. The Ladies Auxiliary of 574 dispenses about 10,000 meals daily. The auxiliary also runs an emergency hospital and distributes relief. Eighteen hours daily a loud-speaker fills the air at the union headquarters with orders to pickets and picket cars, news items, a steady stream of phrases voicing the workers' views, condemning the enemy, reviving flagging spirits. From 7 to 11 P. M. a crowd of about 4,000 blocks the street to listen in on "Station 574." The strike committee of 100 publishes a daily paper, the Organiser. Its editions of 10,000, distributed by the newsboys' union and the ladies' auxiliary, counteract the lies and propaganda of the united boss press. Priced at one cent, it has brought as high as $3. The strikers swear by it, every union leader in town is awe-stricken by it, the employers press the county attorney to arrest the editors for criminal syndicalism, and the Citizens' Alliance (a mysterious organization with no known membership but immense power and resources), by bringing pressure on printers forces the editors to move to a new plant each day. The newspapers are inciting vigilantism, and indictments are being asked. But remarkably little jailing, for criminal syndicalism or anything else, has been done in this strike. * Not a cop has been seen within a quarter of a mile of strike headquarters since the strike began. Minneapolis truck drivers would just as soon crack a cop as drink a beer. Governor Floyd B. Olson, Farmer-Labor idol of many workers, comes up for reelection soon. The Citizens' Alliance wants him to use the militia to break the strike. Thousands of workers hope he will use it to prevent scab truck movements. Thus far the militia remains in the barracks, reluctant schoolboys who, for all their armament, are scared to death of the redoubtable truck drivers, victors in the May battle. The federal government has sent the Reverend Francis J. Haas to mediate. First he tried to slip things by the strike leaders, but he met his match. Yesterday's epochal funeral cortege, the hardness of the strike leaders, seem to have made a dent in his consciousness. He has abandoned his efforts to sell the strikers an unfair compromise dressed up in fancy language. His latest proposition--a minimum wage involving substantial raises with possible further increases after arbitration and an election to determine the union's right to represent workers, said election to be held on a basis which makes victory for the union certain--has been accepted. If the employers accept, 574's third strike in six months will have resulted in another step forward in establishing decent conditions and laying the basis for a city-wide unionization drive. If the employers refuse, a new upsurge of strike sentiment, perhaps involving other industries, is to be expected. The strike leaders are not out to abolish capitalism or overturn the government by means of this strike. They are out to build a union, to get workers better conditions, to strengthen the whole Minneapolis labor movement, to teach the workers some elementary lessons not only in halting scab trucks, facing down armed cops, and tying up a city, but also as to the true nature of the capitalist government, revealing itself in this strike, and as to the need for working-class unity and militancy. The outcome of the present struggle is uncertain. But win, lose, or draw, Local 574 will have put on a justified and an able and a glorious fight. It is making labor history in the city of Minneapolis. Its victory will be a boon to the whole American labor movement. * James P. Cannon, editor of the Militant, and Max Schachtman have since been arrested for "disorderly conduct by criminal syndicalism."
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