The Daily Worker

PACKING HOUSE WORKERS KNOW COMMUNISTS FIGHT FOR THEM, SAYS CORRESPONDENT

UNION BUSTERS, POLICE TRYING TO FRAME OHLER, OTHERS

Workers Party Rouses Workers to Union

(By a Worker Correspondent)

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (By Mail).

—With the hearing for Hugo Oehler, Nelson S. Yocum, E. B. Eastwood and Sam Kassis, charged with the violation of the Kansas State Criminal Syndicalist Law, starting Monday, 1 p. m. at the state court house, there are practically no new developments in the case of the packing interests against the Communist Party.

While only these four are indicted for the violation of the syndicalist code of the state there are six others who are charged with vagrancy and against whom other charges such as the syndicalist law or of a similar character will be brought.

The persecution and the frame-up of militant workers and Communists was carefully planned by the company and government officials.

When the raid on the Sacco-Vanzetti meeting which was held under the auspices of the International Labor Defense, at Shawnee Park in Armourdale, Kansas, the police had about a dozen spies, stool-pigeons from the packing houses, and detectives all clad in overalls, planted in the crowd. At the same time higher company officials and police in plain clothes, headed by Beatty, captain of the police force, were hiding during the meeting in the bushes.

When the meeting was finished this aggregation reinforced by fifteen policemen in uniform descended upon the meeting and began the arrests.

Oehler and E. B. Eastwood were the first ones to be arrested, then Kassis and Nelson S. Yocum, while the stool-pigeons began to round up the audience. Among the arrested were mothers with their children who were released after a protest.

It is important to note that Beatty referred the protesting mothers to the company official who evidently was conducting the raid. The police were careful to exclude American born workers and arrested only those who looked like foreign-born workers. When the arrested were brought to the jail they were charged with vagrancy and released under a $500 bond. Meanwhile the police, the county and district attorneys, were busy in formulating the charges.

On Thursday afternoon it became known that Hugo Oehler, district organizer of District 10 of the Workers (Communist) Party, and Nelson S. Yocum, E. B. Eastwood and Sam Kassis were indicted under the criminal syndicalist law.

Hugo Oehler made a tirade against the government in which he said that Sacco and Vanzetti were murdered by the capitalists and their government, and that the workers must organize in order to prevent further recurrences. This is seditious, according to the hard-boiled government officials, who received their education while in service of the Armour Company. Then, according to police statements, Oehler urged to have the conditions reversed and have the laborers kill the capitalists. It is evident that the stool-pigeons of the Armour Co. will testify to statements that Oehler never made and on the basis of his speech at the Sacco-Vanzetti meeting they will try to railroad him.

More "Crimes".

E. B. Eastwood, who is secretary organizer of the Kansas City branch of the International Labor Defense, is also indicted on the same charges. His crime consists in making an announcement after the meeting of some picnics and other I. L. D. affairs. So this is termed assisting Hugo Oehler in organizing, teaching, preaching sedition, violence, etc., against the government. Sam Kassis, a member of the I. L. D., was, according to the police, distributing the Labor Defender, the official organ of the I. L. D., and other I. L. D. literature. This, too, is a seditious act against the government.

The Packing House workers who were arrested at the Sacco-Vanzetti meeting in Armourdale are now being urged to turn state evidence against Hugo Oehler and the others. If they fail to do so they will be faced with the prospect of being arrested on the charge of belonging to the Communist Party and will also lose their jobs.

Meanwhile the persecution of the Communist Party and other militant workers is the most "going" subject of discussion, not only among the Packing House bosses, but also among workers in other industries.

The workers know that the Communists are persecuted because they are fighting for the interests of the workers against those of the bosses.

Particularly do the Packing House workers feel and resent this attack. They know that the attack against the Party was undertaken and directed by the packing house interests because the Party was the active factor in rousing the workers towards the need of a union.