The Threat to the Labor Movement/Section 4
The Right Wing Press.
THE needle trades press plays the same note.
The Advance, official organ of the Amalgamated, devoted its whole editorial page to the Cloakmakers' strike and said:
What has happened since the beginning of the cloakmakers' strike and what is happening in the Cloakmakers' Union now is but the inevitable outcome of the way in which the Communist Party plays trade union politics. It is the inevitable outcome of the initial sacrifice of industrial policy to politics.
"Justice," official organ of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, likewise devoted its whole editorial page to the strike and the right wing offensive. Speaking of a circular sent to all members of the union except known Communists and left wingers by the General Executive Board, "Justice" says:
It appears at a moment when our members, stunned by the terrific blow they have received as a result of the outcome of the cloak strike in New York, and boiling with indignation over the terrible mismanagement of the strike by its Communist leaders and directors, are searching for an answer to this calamity which has befallen their organization and are seeking light and guidance that would lead them out of the morass into which the political adventurers have dragged them.
The searching analysis contained in the G. E. B.'s statement supplies this light abundantly. It lifts the curtain over the New York cloakmakers' tragedy and exposes mercilessly the hypocrisy, insincerity and blatant incompetence which its principal actors, the Communist camarilla, have displayed from the first day they became the masters of the destiny of the 35,000 cloakmakers involved in it.
The stage having been set for an attack all along the line it needed only some rank and file camouflage to allow the officialdom to appear as saviors of the union. A farcial "investigation" was held by the General Executive Board of the I. L. G. W., the board then met in solemn session and passed a resolution ordering the regularly elected members of the Joint Board and strike committee to surrender their positions and turn over all books and property to the G. E. B. Local union executive commitees were removed from office and all positions filled by appointment by the G. E. B.