40.7 million Americans have lost their jobs over just the past 10 weeks as mass layoffs induced by the coronavirus pandemic continue. More than 100,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the United States.
Currently, there are 16 more billionaires than there were in mid-March.
According to a new analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), the combined net worth of America’s billionaires soared by nearly half a trillion dollars, bringing their total wealth to $3.4 trillion. IPS, which has been publishing weekly updates on billionaire “pandemic profiteering,” found that the combined net worth of U.S. billionaires grew by $485 billion between March 18 and May 28, an increase of 16.5%.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg saw their combined wealth soar by $63 billion over the last 10 weeks.
It said, “This is a grotesque indicator of the deep inequalities in U.S. society,” adding, “This isn’t just unsustainable, it’s unconscionable.”
Climate Change – No Change – Business as Usual
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G20 nations remain committed to the Paris agreement, which aims to keep global temperature rise well below 2°C and further limit it to 1.5°C by 2100. Despite their public commitments to the Paris agreement, G20 countries continue to subsidize the fossil fuel industry. Key findings include that support for the fossil fuel industry has “stayed steady” since the Paris agreement
A new report, from Oil Change International and Friends of the Earth (FOE) U.S., focuses on financing for oil, gas, and coal projects from members of the Group of 20 (G20), which comprises governments and central bank governors from 19 countries and the European Union show governments continued to pour $77 billion a year in public finance into propping up the fossil fuel industry.
The new report—Still Digging: G20 Governments Continue to Finance the Climate Crisis (pdf)—warns that “with the health and livelihoods of billions at immediate risk from Covid-19, governments around the world are preparing public spending packages of a magnitude they previously deemed unthinkable…We cannot afford for the wave of public finance that is being prepared for relief and recovery efforts to prop up the fossil fuel industry as it has in the past. Business as usual would exacerbate the next crisis—the climate crisis—that is already on our doorstep.
FOE U.S. senior international policy analyst Kate DeAngelis said in a statement, “Our planet is hurtling towards climate catastrophe and these countries are pouring gasoline on the fire to the tune of billions,”
Oil Change International research analyst Bronwen Tucker said, “Government money must instead support a just transition from fossil fuels that protects workers, communities, and the climate—both at home and beyond their borders. Instead of bankrolling another major crisis—climate change—our governments should invest in a resilient future.”
Most of this fossil fuel finance flowed to wealthier countries,” the report says, noting that China, Canada, Japan, and Korea provided the most public finance for dirty energy projects from 2016 to 2018.
“It is unacceptable that such a high investment, which will provide billions of profits for foreign companies like Total, is contributing to the impoverishment and oppression of already vulnerable local communities,” said Justica Ambiental director Anabela Lemos.
“Peasant and fishing families have lost their livelihoods for a lifetime,” Lemos added. “The discovery of gas has stolen their identity and failed to provide them with the conditions stipulated in the so-called community consultation processes.”
Hong Kong Protests Return
300 people were arrested during day-long protests across Hong Kong, as residents railed against controversial legislation aimed at bringing the territory further under Beijing’s control. Police fired pepper-spray bullets crowds as people shouted slogans. Officers stopped and searched residents, including students, and rounded up suspected protesters, forcing them to sit in rows on the ground. Roads around the Legislative Council building, where lawmakers were holding a debate on the anthem law, were blocked off and pedestrian walkways open to only those with work passes. Nearby shops were also closed.
Thousands of armed police had flooded the streets to stop the planned demonstrations aimed at halting a law criminalising ridicule of China’s national anthem. Opponents say the anthem law could be weaponised against pro-democracy activists and legislators. Under the proposed law “intent to insult” the anthem, such as by changing lyrics or music or singing in a “disrespectful way”, carries financial penalties and jail of up to three years. The March of the Volunteers is the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China, as well as Hong Kong and Macau. Booing of the anthem at Hong Kong football marches has previously embarrassed Beijing.
Police in riot gear stopped and searched mainly young people outside Hong Kong’s MTR railway stations, prompting accusations on social media that the city had become “a police state”. People were detained in Mong Kok, with at least 180 arrested in Causeway Bay for an unauthorised gatherings and protesters repeatedly charged at in Central and fired at with pepper-spray rounds.
The protests have been given a fresh urgency with Beijing announcing last week plans to force a sweeping anti-sedition law on Hong Kong. Protest organisers on social media urged people to “be water” and keep moving throughout the city, but acknowledged it would be difficult to stop the anthem debate without high risk of arrest. The crowds remained chanting: “Hong Hong independence, it’s the only way.”
“But you can at least make a statement,” said one post.
“Of course I need to make my voice heard. They’re forcing this upon us and we can’t fight against them,” said Mrs Lam, 74.
A 73-year-old woman who gave the surname Cheung said she swam to Hong Kong from China to “escape the dictatorial rule of the CCP [Chinese Communist party]” when she was 15. “The Communist party is not trustworthy,” she said. “When they say you’re guilty then you’re guilty. Is there still ‘one country, two systems’? Of course we need to fight.”
“I’ve come for something I care deeply about – ultimately it’s freedom,” said a 40-year-old lawyer who wished to remain anonymous, citing the national security laws, Beijing encroachment, and a recent report clearing police of wrongdoing. “If we keep quiet, they can get away with it. I don’t think we can change things but need to make sure our voices are heard.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/27/hong-kong-trump-china-security-crackdown-protests
Thousands of armed police had flooded the streets to stop the planned demonstrations aimed at halting a law criminalising ridicule of China’s national anthem. Opponents say the anthem law could be weaponised against pro-democracy activists and legislators. Under the proposed law “intent to insult” the anthem, such as by changing lyrics or music or singing in a “disrespectful way”, carries financial penalties and jail of up to three years. The March of the Volunteers is the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China, as well as Hong Kong and Macau. Booing of the anthem at Hong Kong football marches has previously embarrassed Beijing.
Police in riot gear stopped and searched mainly young people outside Hong Kong’s MTR railway stations, prompting accusations on social media that the city had become “a police state”. People were detained in Mong Kok, with at least 180 arrested in Causeway Bay for an unauthorised gatherings and protesters repeatedly charged at in Central and fired at with pepper-spray rounds.
The protests have been given a fresh urgency with Beijing announcing last week plans to force a sweeping anti-sedition law on Hong Kong. Protest organisers on social media urged people to “be water” and keep moving throughout the city, but acknowledged it would be difficult to stop the anthem debate without high risk of arrest. The crowds remained chanting: “Hong Hong independence, it’s the only way.”
“But you can at least make a statement,” said one post.
“Of course I need to make my voice heard. They’re forcing this upon us and we can’t fight against them,” said Mrs Lam, 74.
A 73-year-old woman who gave the surname Cheung said she swam to Hong Kong from China to “escape the dictatorial rule of the CCP [Chinese Communist party]” when she was 15. “The Communist party is not trustworthy,” she said. “When they say you’re guilty then you’re guilty. Is there still ‘one country, two systems’? Of course we need to fight.”
“I’ve come for something I care deeply about – ultimately it’s freedom,” said a 40-year-old lawyer who wished to remain anonymous, citing the national security laws, Beijing encroachment, and a recent report clearing police of wrongdoing. “If we keep quiet, they can get away with it. I don’t think we can change things but need to make sure our voices are heard.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/27/hong-kong-trump-china-security-crackdown-protests
Masters of War
Data compiled by the New York Times showed that the chief executive officers of the top five military-industrial contractors received nearly $90 million in compensation in 2017.
An investigation that same year by the Providence Journal discovered that, from 2005 to the first half of 2017, the top five defense contractors spent more than $114 billion repurchasing their own company stocks and so boosting their value at the expense of new investment.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55141.htm
An investigation that same year by the Providence Journal discovered that, from 2005 to the first half of 2017, the top five defense contractors spent more than $114 billion repurchasing their own company stocks and so boosting their value at the expense of new investment.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55141.htm
Quote of the Day
“Our capital stock hasn’t been destroyed, our human capital stock is ready to get back to work…” – White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett dehumanising workers.
Take the cure
Socialists have diagnosed what ails the world and have identified the disease as capitalism. It is capitalism which is the virus that infects the entire world. Socialists have also prescribed the cure: revolution to take control of the means of production by working people who make up the vast majority of society. The cure isn’t easy. There is only one remedy for working-class ills and that is to overthrow the present social system, based upon the private ownership of the means of living, and to set up in its stead a system based upon the common ownership of those things. Since this involves the abolition of the capitalist claes, they will certainly resist it to the utmost extremity of their power.
The essential first step in the working-class revolt is for the toilers to get control of the armed forces of the nation. These armed forces, as we are continually pointing out, are controlled by Parliament. It is therefore necessary for the workers to organise in a political party for the capture through the ballot of the Parliament. When they have captured this capitalist stronghold they will have control of the machinery of government, and will be able to proceed to their emancipation secure in the control of the means of dealing with any capitalist rebellion. As socialists we hold that the franchise presents to the workers the way to their emancipation. Until the workers learn to use this instrument properly they are not fit or ready for socialism.
Democracy is a product of struggles and sacrifices of the working class. The campaigns for freedom, equality and justice and the social and political movements for livelihoods have helped to deepen democratic practices all over the world. But capitalist democracy has failed people with false promises of prosperity and empowerment. The vampire class are getting ready for another inevitable feast of blood sucked from the working class. All around us we see rising nationalism, populism and the conservative forces sapping the strength of democracy. Top–down bureaucratic decision-making normalise authoritarian tendencies. We are manipulated, we are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by a process we can never discern. The sociali controlm suppressng and repressing us is invisible, camoflaged by a complicit media. Capitalism directs and steers our hopes, fate and futures for the sake of its profit and to protect the interest of the ultra-rich.
There is no shortcut to progressive mass movements, which can change the course of history and fortify our democratic future. It can only be achieved through collective struggles based on our collective interests. Such a political organisation exists in the Socialist Party, founded upon sound principles, principles which have stood the searching test of years, and have proved sufficient to keep the organisation true to working-class interests. We invite every man and woman to study them in a critical, challenging spirit, and to reveal any flaw he or she may find in them. If they prove sound, the worker’s duty is clear.
The Paris Commune – Lest We Forget. (1919)
How the capitalists suppressed the Parisian workers in 1871.
At last the smell of the carnage began to choke even the most frantic. The pest, if not pity, was coming. Myriads of flesh-flies flew up from the putrefied corpses. The streets were full of dead birds. The “Avenir Libéral” singing the praises of MacMahon’s proclamations, applied the words of Flechier; ‘He hides himself, but his glory finds him out.’ The glory of the Turenne of 1871 betrayed him even up to the Seine. In certain streets the corpses encumbered the pathway, looking at the passers-by from out of their dead eyes. In the Faubourg St. Antoine they were to be seen everywhere in heaps, half white with chloride of lime. At the Polytechnic School they occupied a space of 100 yards long and three deep. At Passy, which was not one of the great centres of execution, there were 1,100 near the Trocadero. These, covered over by a thin shroud of earth, also showed their ghastly profiles. ‘Who does not recollect,’ said the Temps, ‘even though he had seen it but one moment, the square, no, the charnel of the Tour St. Jacques? From the midst of this moist soil, recently turned up by the spade, here and there look out heads, arms, feet, and hands. The profiles of corpses, dressed in the uniform of National Guards, were seen impressed against the ground. It was hideous. A decayed, sickening odour arose from this garden, and occasionally at some places it became fetid.’ The rain and heat having precipitated the putrefaction, the swollen bodies reappeared. The glory of MacMahon displayed itself too well. The journals were taking fright. ‘These wretches,’ said one of them, ‘who have done us so much harm during their lives, must not be allowed to do so still after their death.’ And those that had instigated the massacre cried ‘Enough!’
‘Let us not kill any more,’ said the Paris Journal of the 2nd June, ‘even the assassins, even the incendiaries. Let us not kill any more. It is not their pardon we ask for, but a respite.’ ‘Enough executions, enough blood, enough victims,’ said the Nationale of the 1st June. And the Opinion Nationale of the same day: ‘A serious examination of the accused is imperative. One would like to see only the really guilty die.’
The executions abated, and the sweeping off began. Carriages of all kinds, vans, omnibuses, came to pick up the corpses and traversed the town. Since the great plagues of London and Marseilles, such cart-loads of human flesh had not been seen. These exhumations proved that a great number of people had been buried alive. Imperfectly shot, and thrown with the heaps of dead into the common grave, they had eaten earth, and showed the contortions of their violent agony. Certain corpses were taken up in pieces. It was necessary to shut them as soon as possible into closed wagons, and to take them with the utmost speed to the cemeteries, where immense graves of lime swallowed up these putrid masses.
The cemetries of Paris absorbed all they could. The victims, placed side by side, without any other covering than their clothes, filled enormous ditches at the Père Lachaise, Montmartre, Mont-Parnasse, where the people in pious rememberance will annually come as pilgrims. Others, more unfortunate, were carried out of the town. At Charonne, Bagnolet, Bicêtre, etc. the trenches dug during the first siege were utilized. ‘There nothing is to be feared of the cadaverous emanations,’ said La Liberté ‘an impure blood will water the soil of the labourer, fecundating it. The deceased delegate at war will be able to pass a review of his faithful followers at the hour of midnight; the watchword will be ‘Incendiarism and assassination.’ Women by the side of the lugubrious trench endeavoured to recognize these remains. The police waited that their grief should betray them, in order to arrest those ‘females of insurgents.’
The burying of such a large number of corpses soon became too difficult, and they were burnt in the casemates of the fortifications; but for want of draught the combustion was incomplete, and the bodies were reduced to a pulp. At the Buttes Chaumont the corpses, piled up in enormous heaps, inundated with petroleum, were burnt in the open air.
The wholesale massacres lasted up to the first days of June, and the summary executions up to the middle of that month. For a long time mysterious dramas were enacted in the Bois de Boulogne. Never will the exact number of the victims of the Bloody Week be known. The chief of military justice admitted 17,000 shot, the municipal council of Paris paid the expenses of burial of 17,000 corpses; but a great number were killed out of Paris or burnt. There is no exaggeration in saying 20,000 at least.
Many battlefields have numbered more dead, but these at least had fallen in the fury of the combat. The century has not witnessed such a slaughtering after the battle; there is nothing to equal it in the history of our civil struggles. St. Bartholomew’s Day, June 1848, the 2nd December, would form but an episode of the massacres of May. Even the great executioners of Rome and modern times pale before the Duke of Magenta. The hecatombs of the Asiatic victors, the fetes of Dahomey alone could give some idea of this butchery of proletarians.
Such was the repression ‘by the laws, with the laws.’ And during these atrocities of incomparably worse than Bulgarian type, the bourgeoisie, raising to heaven its bloody hands, undertook to incite the whole world against this people, who, after two months of domination and the massacre of thousands of their own, had shed the blood of sixty-three prisoners.
The rewards of being a CEO
The typical pay package for CEOs at the biggest U.S. companies topped $12.3 million last year, and the gap between the boss and their workforces widened further,
Median pay for CEOs in the survey climbed 4.1% last year. For the typical worker at their companies, it rose 3.2%. It would take two lifetimes for the typical employee at most S&P 500 companies to make what their CEO did, or 169 years, according to data.
CEOs in the AP’s survey had a median compensation valued at $12.3 million last year, which means half made more and half made less. Besides salary and cash bonuses, that includes stock awards and option grants that CEOs will get the full value of only if the company’s stock price rises in the future. In many cases, big chunks of the compensation were for stock and options that companies granted their CEOs in 2019 for their performance in 2018 and earlier years.
For the first time since the AP’s annual pay survey began in 2011, a woman is at the top of the list: Lisa Su of Advanced Micro Devices. She had compensation valued at $58.5 million. CEOs such as Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai and Intel’s Robert Swan had packages that were valued even higher that Su’s, but were excluded because the AP’s survey looks only at S&P 500 bosses who have been in the job for at least two years, in part to avoid distortions caused by sign-on bonuses. (The AP’s compensation study included pay data for 329 CEOs at S&P 500 companies who have served at least two full fiscal years at their companies, which filed proxy statements between Jan. 1 and April 30.)
The 4.1% rise in median pay was a slowdown for S&P 500 CEOs, who had seen their pay jump 7.2% the year before and by even more in earlier years. Much of the slowdown was because of a drop in how much cash the CEOs got for hitting various performance targets. At Eastman Chemical, for example, the value of CEO Mark Costa’s compensation dropped 11% to $14 million last year, according to the survey, in part because he fell short in some performance metrics set by the board of directors. Eastman’s board said Costa exceeded the goals set for “growth and innovation” in 2019, but he only partially met the targets for how much cash the company generated, as well as for employee safety and other measures. He received $377,000 in what the company calls its “unit performance plan,” down from the $1.5 million he got from the plan a year earlier.
A CEO’s salary, though, typically makes up less than 10% of total compensation each year. What will hit CEOs’ pocketbooks more is what happens to companies’ share prices, which will affect the value of stock and options they were already granted, as well as the bonuses they would have been in line for.
”The risk is that if there is a strong rebound in the market, that could lead to windfall profits for executives,” said Borrus of the Council of Institutional Investors, which represents pension funds and other big investors.
https://apnews.com/13827540beb28669fa7847de43b52ac4
The Sino-India Stand-off
Shortly after China built a road near the Doklam or Donglang plateau and valley claimed by both the People’s Republic and Bhutan, a tiny Himalayan kingdom, India began paving a road near the disputed Pangong Tso Lake in Ladakh, a move Chinese state media has warned could provoke a conflict.
Since the beginning of May several aggressive incidents have taken place in Eastern Ladakh. India and China both claim territory along the Himalayas. Their border dispute goes back decades.
Nationalist posturing adopted by both nations have soured relations. Xi called on his military to step up its combat preparedness. Modi reportedly met with top military and security officials over the situation at the border with China. High-level Indian and Chinese military commanders have met at designated points along the LAC (line of actual control) on May 22nd and May 23rd to defuse the current situation in Eastern Ladakh.
Since the beginning of May several aggressive incidents have taken place in Eastern Ladakh. India and China both claim territory along the Himalayas. Their border dispute goes back decades.
Nationalist posturing adopted by both nations have soured relations. Xi called on his military to step up its combat preparedness. Modi reportedly met with top military and security officials over the situation at the border with China. High-level Indian and Chinese military commanders have met at designated points along the LAC (line of actual control) on May 22nd and May 23rd to defuse the current situation in Eastern Ladakh.
Under the Iron Heel. (1922)
From the May 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard
During the Big War, on one occasion when a crowd was dispersed in Turin for demanding bread, by the simple expedient of dropping bombs on them from airplanes, the present writer gave it as his opinion that this method would be resorted to in future disputes between the oppressors and the oppressed, and that this occasion marked its introduction as a permanent feature under capitalism. Events since then have fully born out that statement.
Wherever we turn—India, Egypt, Africa, in fact, any place where “rebellion” is in progress—there you will find this latest instrument of slaughter freely used. So far, this method has not been employed in this country, but it is not too much to say that if the capitalist class take it into their heads that this method is the best and most effective for producing “order,” its introduction will not be long delayed. A few mass meetings of the out-of-works and strikers, and the unemployment problem would be solved!
Its use on the Rand, where hundreds of Trade Unionists were in the midst of a trade dispute which had developed into a test of violence, is sufficiently recent to be remembered.
However justifiably workers may have acted in taking any particular line, the point to be remembered is that the master class is determined to smash up such efforts, and will not scruple to use any means to effect that end.
The writer has been asked his opinion regarding the scenes depicted in the novel by Upton Sinclair, “King Coal,” as to whether they were, or were not, exaggerated. Readers of that book will remember that Mr. Sinclair describes the system supposed to be in operation in the mining districts of the Western States, where hired thugs, spies, and other evils are employed by the capitalists against the workers. I gave it as my opinion that these evils were in way exaggerated, and the recent reports from the States conform the correctness of that opinion.
The mine owners in West Virginia seem determined to stamp out the movement for organising the workers into the United Mine Workers’ Union. More than 45,000 miners are already enrolled in this Union, and the organisers were determined to get another 45,000 non-unionists in. These are mostly located in the Logan and Mingo counties, where, it seems, the mine owners are in complete command of the county administration, with the sheriffs also in their pay. As most of the houses tenanted by the miners are owned by the companies, naturally the first thing the latter did was to threaten with eviction every man joining the Union.
This they did, utilising for the purpose detectives of the Baldwin-Felt Agency, who are notorious gunmen. Fights were the result, with the loss of life on both sides. On one occasion, during a march of Union men, they were met by troops and mine guards, which resulted in a battle in the mountains lasting for days.
Whenever things are not lively enough for the gunmen, they proceed to “shoot up” a town or two in order to strike terror into the hearts of the miners and their families. The State Attorney-General himself admits that the mine owners hold the entire machinery of administration in their grip, so that the miners in their quest for “justice” find themselves “up against it” at every turn. The latest reports show that efforts are being made to have the United Mine Workers declared an illegal association! (“Manchester Guardian,” 28/10/21.)
Another account, taken from the “Toiler” (New York), says: –
The mines, stores, churches, schools, hospitals, homes, Press, and the entire governmental machinery are owned outright by the coal barons. The salaries of deputy sheriffs are paid by the operators, and the State Constabulary is picked from lists prepared by them. All the mining area is under the domination of the Baldwin-Felt Detective Agency’s gunmen and murderers. These armed guards watch the pay rolls, collect rents, evict workers, run miners out of town, and serve as general thugs and hangmen for the capitalists. The workers are robbed going and coming . . . any defiance of this system of slavery, any sign of workers’ resistance, is met with club, bayonet, and machine gun . . . Finally, Harding was appealed to for a conference. In reply to this appeal came Federal troops, aeroplanes, gas bombs, and machine-guns to crush the workers.” (Quoted from the Worker, Brisbane, 2/2/22.) Very similar to this was the way in which the workers were treated during the recent strike in the San Joaquin oilfields of California. After striking against the reduction of a dollar a day and the abolition of the Arbitration Board, they found themselves against a very formidable and well-organised resistance. The strikers themselves formed a body of pickets, whose business it was to see that no strike breakers were brought into the district, and at the same time to prevent any disorder taking place, so that a straight fight on principle could be waged. This, however, was futile. Guards were rushed in and the Press made the most of the affair—in the interests of the bosses, of course. Like the West Virginia coal owners, the oil companies had their hired thugs and spies, who conducted their operations clandestinely. Appeals to the Government were useless, and the strikers soon found themselves down and out, with the result that the strike collapsed and the men decided to return to work without having secured any advantage. When they offered to return, however, they were informed that they were not needed. It was then discovered that a very elaborate system of blacklisting had been prepared during their absence. Each company apparently possessed full particulars of every applicant for work, and on every occasion he was turned away. This soon had the effect of creating a large body of moneyless, jobless men. To make matters worse, the strikers soon discovered that the names on the black list had been circulated by the companies among the traders of the town, so that it was an impossibility to obtain credit. As in most disputes, the Press endeavoured to show that the trouble was due to the agitation set up by the Bolsheviks, Socialists, and what not. Raids made on the homes of individuals resulted in the finding of quantities of seditious literature, which, as is usual in such case, had been carefully concealed beforehand by the “finders.” These facts I have taken from “The Golden Age,” Brooklyn, N.Y. (15/2/22).
Altogether, what has been reported lately from the various industrial centres of America leads me to believe that what Sinclair was rather under-estimated, if anything.
One needn’t be surprised, of course, at any of these things. They are not confined to America. The same class is in possession everywhere, and everywhere its methods are the same. It follows that there is only one cure—Socialism.
Wherever we turn—India, Egypt, Africa, in fact, any place where “rebellion” is in progress—there you will find this latest instrument of slaughter freely used. So far, this method has not been employed in this country, but it is not too much to say that if the capitalist class take it into their heads that this method is the best and most effective for producing “order,” its introduction will not be long delayed. A few mass meetings of the out-of-works and strikers, and the unemployment problem would be solved!
Its use on the Rand, where hundreds of Trade Unionists were in the midst of a trade dispute which had developed into a test of violence, is sufficiently recent to be remembered.
However justifiably workers may have acted in taking any particular line, the point to be remembered is that the master class is determined to smash up such efforts, and will not scruple to use any means to effect that end.
The writer has been asked his opinion regarding the scenes depicted in the novel by Upton Sinclair, “King Coal,” as to whether they were, or were not, exaggerated. Readers of that book will remember that Mr. Sinclair describes the system supposed to be in operation in the mining districts of the Western States, where hired thugs, spies, and other evils are employed by the capitalists against the workers. I gave it as my opinion that these evils were in way exaggerated, and the recent reports from the States conform the correctness of that opinion.
The mine owners in West Virginia seem determined to stamp out the movement for organising the workers into the United Mine Workers’ Union. More than 45,000 miners are already enrolled in this Union, and the organisers were determined to get another 45,000 non-unionists in. These are mostly located in the Logan and Mingo counties, where, it seems, the mine owners are in complete command of the county administration, with the sheriffs also in their pay. As most of the houses tenanted by the miners are owned by the companies, naturally the first thing the latter did was to threaten with eviction every man joining the Union.
This they did, utilising for the purpose detectives of the Baldwin-Felt Agency, who are notorious gunmen. Fights were the result, with the loss of life on both sides. On one occasion, during a march of Union men, they were met by troops and mine guards, which resulted in a battle in the mountains lasting for days.
Whenever things are not lively enough for the gunmen, they proceed to “shoot up” a town or two in order to strike terror into the hearts of the miners and their families. The State Attorney-General himself admits that the mine owners hold the entire machinery of administration in their grip, so that the miners in their quest for “justice” find themselves “up against it” at every turn. The latest reports show that efforts are being made to have the United Mine Workers declared an illegal association! (“Manchester Guardian,” 28/10/21.)
Another account, taken from the “Toiler” (New York), says: –
The mines, stores, churches, schools, hospitals, homes, Press, and the entire governmental machinery are owned outright by the coal barons. The salaries of deputy sheriffs are paid by the operators, and the State Constabulary is picked from lists prepared by them. All the mining area is under the domination of the Baldwin-Felt Detective Agency’s gunmen and murderers. These armed guards watch the pay rolls, collect rents, evict workers, run miners out of town, and serve as general thugs and hangmen for the capitalists. The workers are robbed going and coming . . . any defiance of this system of slavery, any sign of workers’ resistance, is met with club, bayonet, and machine gun . . . Finally, Harding was appealed to for a conference. In reply to this appeal came Federal troops, aeroplanes, gas bombs, and machine-guns to crush the workers.” (Quoted from the Worker, Brisbane, 2/2/22.) Very similar to this was the way in which the workers were treated during the recent strike in the San Joaquin oilfields of California. After striking against the reduction of a dollar a day and the abolition of the Arbitration Board, they found themselves against a very formidable and well-organised resistance. The strikers themselves formed a body of pickets, whose business it was to see that no strike breakers were brought into the district, and at the same time to prevent any disorder taking place, so that a straight fight on principle could be waged. This, however, was futile. Guards were rushed in and the Press made the most of the affair—in the interests of the bosses, of course. Like the West Virginia coal owners, the oil companies had their hired thugs and spies, who conducted their operations clandestinely. Appeals to the Government were useless, and the strikers soon found themselves down and out, with the result that the strike collapsed and the men decided to return to work without having secured any advantage. When they offered to return, however, they were informed that they were not needed. It was then discovered that a very elaborate system of blacklisting had been prepared during their absence. Each company apparently possessed full particulars of every applicant for work, and on every occasion he was turned away. This soon had the effect of creating a large body of moneyless, jobless men. To make matters worse, the strikers soon discovered that the names on the black list had been circulated by the companies among the traders of the town, so that it was an impossibility to obtain credit. As in most disputes, the Press endeavoured to show that the trouble was due to the agitation set up by the Bolsheviks, Socialists, and what not. Raids made on the homes of individuals resulted in the finding of quantities of seditious literature, which, as is usual in such case, had been carefully concealed beforehand by the “finders.” These facts I have taken from “The Golden Age,” Brooklyn, N.Y. (15/2/22).
Altogether, what has been reported lately from the various industrial centres of America leads me to believe that what Sinclair was rather under-estimated, if anything.
One needn’t be surprised, of course, at any of these things. They are not confined to America. The same class is in possession everywhere, and everywhere its methods are the same. It follows that there is only one cure—Socialism.
Tom Sala