The Daily Worker

Build Machinery for Ky. and Dress Strike Relief Activity

NEW YORK, Jan. 25.—Permanent relief machinery to carry forward the relief campaign for the Kentucky Tennessee striking miners and the dress workers, who will be shortly called on strike, was established by a successful United Front Conference called by the Workers' International Relief.

Seymour Burns, district organizer of the W.I.R. opened the conference with greetings to the 226 delegates from 20 organizations. Shaw, a representative from the A.F. of L. Building Maintenance Workers, was elected chairman.

Resolutions demanding the immediate and unconditional release of Mooney and Billings were sent to the governor of California and copies to Mooney and Billings. The Conference also demanded the unconditional release of all strike leaders, militant workers and Workers' International Relief representatives held in Kentucky jails on frame-up charges. This demand was transmitted to Governor Laffoon of Kentucky.

Alfred Wagenknecht, national secretary of the Workers' International Relief, explained the importance of relief in the strike of the Kentucky miners and pointed out that this strike provides a means of drawing in new sections of the American working class into the struggle against the bosses' offensive against the workers' standards of living.

"We can march through Kentucky and Tennessee into the heart of the South with our propaganda and organization," Wagenknecht said. "This strike can create unity between Negro and white and smash discrimination and segregation."

Rose Wortis, speaking for the needle trades workers, stressed the importance of knitting the struggles of dress workers and the miners together into a common offensive.

"The Kentucky and Tennessee miners are fighting the same battle as are the dress workers. Let us unite our ranks and give a smashing blow to the hunger campaign of the bosses and their agents, the officials of the American Federation of Labor," Wortis said.

"Surely we can provide these miners and dress workers with a bite to eat when they strike against hunger and terror and for wage increases," said William Z. Foster, national secretary of the Trade Union Unity League, in summing up a brilliant analysis of the importance of relief in these strikes.

The conference endorsed the program of the resolutions committee and the delegates pledged their full energy in organizing a mass relief campaign to win these strikes and to keep starvation from stealing a brilliant victory of the miners and the dress makers.