The Daily Worker

For Social Insurance

TODAY'S Daily Worker contains the call to the National Congress for Unemployment and Social Insurance to be held right in the nation's capital on January 5, 6 and 7.

The call for this Congress expresses the great movement which has grown up in the past five years, since the crisis struck the country, for a program of insurance that would protect the millions of workers, small farmers, white collar workers, professionals, and so forth, from the dread insecurity that haunts the majority of the population under capitalism.

So urgent is the need of millions of people for adequate insurance against unemployment, sickness and accident, that even the most reactionary groups are now forced to give lip service to the idea of social insurance. And Roosevelt is using this great need as a means of maintaining himself in power, through a barrage of false promises.

The most important immediate task for all who are determined to achieve adequate protection against loss of income because of unemployment, old age, industrial accident or sickness and maternity, is to consolidate this great mass movement into an organized fighting force. Only in this way can Congress be compelled to establish such a system of social insurance.

The signatures attached to the Call for the Congress indicate at once the tremendous sweep of the fight for social insurance, and also the way in which many who give lip service to this fight are the first to avoid any real struggle to achieve the program.

Many State conventions of the A.F. of L., as well as more than 2,400 locals in the A.F. of L. have endorsed the struggle for unemployment and social insurance. Yet the names of leading A.F. of L. officials are conspicuous by their absence from the call to the Congress. Similarly, the names of Socialist Party and Musteite leaders, who have publicly spoken for this insurance, are also conspicuously absent.

But it is obvious that the masses can win real protection only by the enactment of such a Bill as the Workers Bill for Social and Unemployment Insurance. Only mass struggle, organized and persistent, can force Congress to act on this measure in January. All other measures are only fraudulent schemes to make those least able to pay carry the burden of the insurance.

Every section of the toiling population can be rallied to support the Social Insurance Congress in January. Practical steps toward building united support should begin at once.