The Daily Worker

BOSSES' PRESS PRINTS LIES ON TEXTILE STRIKE
Force, Violence Bunk
Given Wide Space

By J. O. BENTALL.

(Special to The Daily Worker)

PASSAIC, N. J., Feb. 26 - The strikers of Passaic, Clifton and Garfield are taking a day off to laugh at the ridiculous whining of the Forstmann-Huffmann bosses who sobbed a sad story to the world when their 3,000 slaves left them and joined the picket line. The bosses claim that the employees were so scared and intimidated that after much deliberation the kind lords decided to help protect their workers by shutting their plant so "no lives might be lost due to the violence of the strikers."

It is a story and the capitalist press—from the Passaic dailies to the great New York World and Times—lament the situation with long faces and much concern, crying that it was the "reign of terror" that made the bosses shut the shops.

Strike Halls Packed.

Contrasted with this is the packed halls of strikers of all mills who have come together in a most friendly determination to spike the guns of the bosses and the capitalist press by getting into a union of textile workers.

They have decided to fight to the bitter end and win the strike under the leadership of the United Front Committee of textile workers.

It was a bad day for the textile barons when their last stronghold fell under the powerful influence of the strikers. For weeks the workers in the Forstmann-Huffmann plant have been aching to walkout, but the bosses have intimidated them in every conceivable way, telling them that if they go out they will never be taken back, and there will be no more $8.00 a week jobs for them.

Force and Violence.

The old cry of violence and riots have begun to echo throughout the whole eastern part of the country. Only in Passaic and the affected towns are the workers aware of the falsehood of the capitalist press.

At first when the speakers told the strikers that they would be charged with all kinds of crimes they would not believe them. Now they see the local papers as well as the big metropolitan press stooping to the lowest level in its vilification of the strikers.

Mary Heaton Vorse has interviewed the police of all the municipalities in the strike district and all of them, even the captains said that the strikers had behaved perfectly and that there had been no violence. The police say that if the bosses behave as well as the workers there need be no trouble at any time.

An investigation campaign will start tomorrow when Fanny Hurst and Miss Wise will start to look into the homes of the workers.

Plan Investigation.

A hearing by J. P. Walsh and others is planned before long to find out if the poverty is as horrible as the strikers have described it to be. The question of wages will be sifted thoroughly and the working conditions will be examined in a very thorough manner.

Already the bosses are sorry that they did not listen to the first demands made by the original strikers. They merely wanted their wage cuts of ten per cent back. If they had gotten that they would have returned to work and the bosses would have been ahead many thousands of dollars. As the matter now stands the bosses stand a good chance to be exposed as the finest skinflints in the country and be made to toe the mark as well as have one of the best unions in the industrial life of the nation on their hands.