United Automobile Worker

Tools of Reaction

Last year during the terrific strike battles the Unions waged against the open-shop employers one of the most obvious lessons learned by the newly organized workers was that the newspapers almost without exception were willing tools of the employers. "Free speech" and "free press" were mythical phrases the press was not free, it had to be bought with money-and the employers had plenty of money to spend trying to frustrate and smash the growing Unions.

Later on when the CIO unions in Detroit put a labor slate in the field for the municipal elections the boss-press outdid itself in anti-union hysteria. Every editor in Detroit deserved a medal from the Manufacturers Association for faithful service rendered.

No matter what the issue, be it the NLRB, the Mohawk Valley Plan, or the LaFollette Committee, the kept press never betrayed its keeper. The columns of the press and radio facilities were always open to the fulminations of some megalo-maniac pulpiteer or to some "public spirited citizen" striving to smear the CIO.

The press has not changed its colors during the present internal difficulties of the UAW. True to form, every opportunity is utilized to discredit the Union and its leadership.

Every detail that lends itself to an anti-union interpretation is magnified. Let some mercenary union member go to a newspaper office and tell them how he is "exploited" by the union and it will get two columns on the front page. The wilder, the more fantastic the charge against the union, the more certain it is of being splurged by the editor.

It is a sad thing when union officials who rose to office because of the faith which union men and women had in them, betray that faith and stoop to slander the workers and their union through the boss-press. Let us be clear, however: it is not the suspended officers who are using the press to further their efforts to secure "justice"-no, the tail does not wag the dog. It is the employers and reactionary interests who are using the suspended officers as tools and dupes to continue their warfare against organized labor, and they are providing the press as the funnel through which the slander and filth manufactured by the suspended officers is poured. There is only one difference between this attack on the union and the previous ones we have mentioned above -the employer press has been joined by the kept press of the Communist Party which is doing its dirty bit to smear the union.