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Open Letter to the Middle ClassEditorialJuly 31, 1937 Vol. 145, No. 5, p. 117-118 You have recently received through the pages of thirty newspapers in twenty-two cities a full-page communication from the Citizens National Committee, with headquarters in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. It was headed Common Sense, a concept dear to Americans; and it appealed to your deepest feelings and convictions. It spoke of protecting the "individual citizen in his legal rights it advocated a "peaceful solution to the present industrial strife," a phrase that was welcome to your ears after the horror of the Chicago killings; it quoted the Constitution, a document of noble words from which even citizens committees are free to quote; above all, it defended the "constitutional right to work," a phrase that must have gone straight to the heart of every man who earns his bread and has at some time lost a job. Altogether it was high-sounding and persuasive. But did you notice that this pronouncement, devoted to constitutional rights, ended with a resolution in which it was proposed that citizens take law enforcement out of the hands of duly elected officials in the name of the Constitution? The communication was signed by the Citizens National Committee; it was in reality a letter from Big Business to the middle class; and it was designed to turn your sympathy away from the working population of this country which has dared at last to demand a living wage and to claim its share of wealth and power in this great industrial empire. This letter you have just received was suavely written because Big Business commands the services of such letter writers as John Price Jones; it appeared in the most respectable organs of public opinion because Big Business can afford to pay the high advertising rates of newspapers like the New York Times. It appealed brazenly to your dearest convictions because Big Business does not scruple to exploit the best traditions of men and nations if by so doing it can preserve or increase its own power. The proclamation of the Citizens National Committee declares that it is not anti-union. But it was formed in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a company town of Bethlehem Steel, which has declared unremitting war on unions. It has been careful, of course, to hide its tracks, but there are strong indications that its expenses have been underwritten by Bethlehem and E. T. Weir and other independent business men. The men who appear as its officers are, most of them, small fry but dangerous. For example: The Reverend John H. Stanton is a fanatic red-baiter. Lawrence W. Campbell, secretary of the Citizens National Committee, is also secretary of the Johnstown Chamber of Commerce, and Johnstown is a company town. He hates aliens, unions, and "reds." George C. Rutledge is with the Johnstown Bank and Trust Company. Rembert G. Smith is a reactionary of long standing. He took an active part in the National Conference of Clergymen and Laymen at Asheville, North Carolina, a year ago; he is associated with Gerald Winrod, anti-Semite and editor of the Defender, a pro-Nazi publication in Wichita, Kansas. Ormsby McHarg is a regular right Republican. One of the important people behind the scenes, John Price Jones, does not deign to sign the advertisement; but his connection with the movement was established in a dispatch from F. Raymond Daniell of the New York Times, when he visited Johnstown. Now let us look at Mr. Jones's other connections. He is a member of the firm of Thornley and Jones. Mr. Jones has had much more publicity than Mr. Thornley, but who is George H. Thornley? He is, for one thing, one of the closest friends of Henry Ford. He was formerly vice-president of N. W. Ayer, one of our most "patriotic" advertising agencies, and in that position he handled the lord account. Is there any reason to doubt that Mr. Thornley, like Mr. Jones, is interested in saving America from the C.I.O. and that he could easily enlist his friend Mr. Ford in such a worthy project? So much for the committee's background and motivation. So much for its claim that it is not anti-union, that it believes in the right to strike. In another section of its letter to you it expressly declares that it is not a vigilante committee; but in its resolution in the very same announcement it proclaims that This is vigilantism in its simplest and most vicious form, and when we recall that the word "certain" was inserted in the first clause only after a furious debate at the meeting of the C.N.C. we realize the full implications of the Johnstown resolutions. Surely you will realize by now that the committee's appeal for the "constitutional right to work" is of the same stripe as its defense of the "right to strike." This phrase is in fact the mainspring of the C.N.C. trap to catch middle-class men and women of good will and use them for its own ends. There is no such thing as the "constitutional right to work"—bourgeois capitalism provides for no such working-class right. Our Constitution does provide for the protection of life and liberty, and to the American worker that can have only one real meaning—the right to a decent and secure living in the industrial plenty he has helped to create. It is that right which organized labor under the banner of the C.I.O., is now fighting to obtain. It is that right which the C.N.C. and the forces behind it are determined to drown in propaganda and in blood whenever necessary. They have on their side the Liberty League, the National Civic Federation (whose own plan of "law and order" for America we shall refer to specifically in a later issue), the Republican Party, the pro-Nazi groups—in a word, every reactionary in America. They work through, because they influence, chambers of commerce, editors of newspapers, and city officials. For a vivid example of how they control officeholders, read carefully the testimony of Chief of Police Switter of Massillon, Ohio, before the National Labor Relations Board. They will work through law-and-order leagues, such as were represented in the Johnstown meetings. They will, above all, woo you, the middle class. And the middle class? Economically weak, politically important in a transition period, you stand between predatory capital on the one hand and aspiring labor on the other. Which is your enemy? The Citizens National Committee will assure you in expensive ads written by expensive publicity men that labor "threatens" you. But who forecloses your mortgage, or forces the local small-town banker to foreclose it? If you are a doctor, a lawyer, a real-estate man, a storekeeper, who is it that cuts wages, throws your neighbors out of work, and reduces your income, though corporation profits soar? Who runs your town? And do you think it would be better or worse if the workers in your town, through unionization, came to have an organized voice in the way it is run? Which is more likely to have genuine regard for human rights: a corporation striving to retain its power, or an organization of ordinary men and women seeking decent wages, a better life, a future of security and culture for their families? In Germany and Italy, capitalism, crooning the sweet phrases of the right to work, of justice, and of freedom, has led the middle class into a trap of economic starvation and political degradation, without rights and without hope. We abjure sensationalism, but it is our firm conviction that the advertisement of the C.N.C., that suave letter from Big Business to the middle class, is the first insidious music of fascism in America. Follow it and it will lead you imperceptibly into political silence, where you cannot even discuss with the workers who will be your fellow-victims what might have been. The middle class can save itself only by joining its strength with that of labor to fight every trespass upon free speech and the right to organize and strike, every threat to override the law when it supports that right. The formation of the C.N.C. is a major attempt at such a trespass. Today the police of Massillon, armed by Republic Steel, are messing up union headquarters; tomorrow they will be shooting up liberal forums and church gatherings and suppressing liberal magazines and newspapers. Last week in The Nation the Workers Defense League published an answer to the C.N.C. and called for a nationwide campaign to thwart its obvious purpose. Such a campaign will soon be overdue. |