Shown leaving the 11th hour

PON) WORT
:

The militant. strike of over
82,000 Ford workers at two De-
troit. plants is evidence . that
SPeedup is rapidly becoming
ne of the most explosive issues

’ among American workers today

under pressure of the advancing
depression.

The walkout, involving about

000 Workers at the main
Rouge plant and another’ 3,500
at the Lincoln plant, was called
May 5 by Locals 600 and 900
Of the United Auto Workers
(CIO), bd

Elimination of inhuman speed-
uP practises was the sole de-
Mand. It is an indication of
how unbearable the work load
has become that the unionists
Chose to strike a little less than
two weeks before discussions
were due to begin on their entire

Contract, including new de-
Mands for wage increases and
Pensions,

The auto workers shut down
the giant Ford plants in the face
of undercover opposition from
vAW President Walter P. Reu-
her and other top union leaders,

Here UAW President Walter Reuther and his aides are

the strike of 71,000 workers at Detroit, some of whom are
Pletured (below) on the picket line.

Speedup caused Ford strike,
forced Reuther to go along

meeting which failed to halt

who gave ‘their grudging sup-
port after their initial attempts
to head off a strike were stym-
ied by the determination of the
rank-and-file.

Production pace in the auto
plants has become truly killing.
The day before the walkout, a
Ford foundry worker dropped
dead of a heart attack while at
work. A week earlier, a Chrys-
ler worked died under similar
conditions. Neither of the cases
was an isolated incident.

At a recent conference in De-
troit of the National Industrial
Hygiene Conference, doctors
admitted that “the greatest kill-
er in industry is heart disease
resulting from the increasing
tempo of the assembly lines.”

A group of British unionists
brought here under the Marsh-
all plan to inspect the marvels
of U.S. production were report-
edly so aghast when they view-
ed speed with which Ford em-
ployees had to work that they
returned home vowing they
wanted no importation of Ame-
rican production methods.

ivervar ‘appalled’

Y fascism in S.

2 f
aM su
Presen

Was appalled to see the extent of fascism
te the mass of the British people are unconscious of what the

t South African Government stands for,”

Africa

—CAPE TOWN

in this country. I

Monica Whately,

€t member of London County Council, stated here as she concluded

°ur-month tour of South Africa.

ae f her chief duties ‘on her
People home would be to tell the

@ sit of Britain and America of
Miss seats in South Africa, said
Subm} hately. She also intended to

* report to the prime min-

ister 4,
fads .7 Colonial secretary, and
lation. —2dian and African organ-
Ons in Britain,

. regard the oppressive mea-

Sur

(Segre as expressed by apartheid

lutely © tion) as something abso-

ible Mhuman and also imposs-

Saig, Cry out,” Miss Wately
wy

Soute Resition of the Indian in
that of pc Was comparable to

© Jew under Hitler.

In every street of South Africa
she saw children who were the
counterpart of the children in war-
torn Burope—undernourished, pot-

bellied, rickety-legged children.

i tinually say to the Euro-
cnn meet that today it may
be the Colored, Indians and
Africans who are discriminated
against, but that there is
doubt that tomorrow it will
the Jews, Catholics and the Eng-
lish,” said Miss Whately.

“The mental blindness of the av-

i thing which
rage European is some h
ae be seen. to be understood,

she commented.

“Their assumpti
periority makes on
sick.”

on of racial su-
e feel positively

plight of over 25,000 unionists,

Besides Dange, who is a mem-
ber of the World Federation of
Trade Unions executive committee,
leaders who have been held with-
out trial for over a year include
AITUC Vice-president S. Miraj-
kar, veteran peasant leader Muz-
affar Ahmed, President P. G. Sa-
want of the Bombay Textile Work-
ers’ Union and railway union lead-
er Baijnath Singh.

Mowe than 3,800 rank-and-file
railroad workers have been in jail
since January, when the govern-
ment acted against a general rail
strike. :

The prisons in which Nehru’s
government holds these people are
the same ones the British govern-
ment formerly used to- imprison
Nehru himself and other members
of the now ruling Congress party.
Conditions in these places are as
bad as they ever were under Brit-
ish rule and often considerably
worse.

Unionists confined in Bombay
province jails report inadequate
and often inedible food, in which
they often find such “foreign mat-
ter” as mud, worms and stones.
Cells have no windows and light-
ing never sufficient to permit pris-
oners to read. There are no toilet
facilities other than an open buck-
et placed in each Gell for the use
of ten or more persons. Books and
newspapers are not permitted in
many places of confinement. Medi-
cal service is available in only a
few. In Madras province, sick pris-

;;-oners are given no medicine unless

they pay and the prescriptions are
often held up for days or weeks at
a time.

Prisoners who have perished in
jail include M. Bhardwaj, Bombay
workers’ leader, ;who died four
days after he was arrested while
he was running a fever of 104 de-
grees from tuberculosis. Other la-
bor leaders who suffered the same
fate were D. B. Kulkarni and Ma-
lik Saheb of Bombay and M. Kup-
puswamy of Madras. Moyarath
Sankaram, a writer, who was in
perfect health when arrested, died
as a result of beatings 24 hours
later. His family was not allowed
to see or take away the body.

The Bombay hunger strike is
the latest of a Series in which
18,000 political prisoners have
taken part. The All-India Trade
Union Congress has appealed to
unions through the world to send
cables of protest to Nehru against
the continued detention and in-
human treatment of political
prisoners in Indian jails.

Police ordered out by the Nehru
government wounded many per-
sons two weeks ago when they
fired on some 500 workers dem-
onstrating _in Bombay against
maltreatment and continued im-
prisonment of the leaders with-
out trial.

The Nehru government’s drive
against the militant trade unions
is linked with imperialist schemes
for an “Indian Ocean” pact in
which India, despite ts elaborate
pretensions to independence,

would play the key rolé for im-
perialist counter-revolution in
Asia.

An outline of the scheme was
recently revealed by ihe Singapore
Straits Times, which stated:

“In the new defense plans
the primary role of Australia
and New Zealand will be the
provision of air and naval
forces. The main ground forces
would be supplied by India and
Pakistan. Ceylon’s ‘most impor-
tant contribution would be the

vital strategic naval base of
Trincomalee.
‘It is known that the U.S.

government would welcome such
a defense arrangement among
the Commonwealth countries as
a counter to the spreading Soviet

Communist power im Asia.”

Three hundred political prisoners in Indian jails, including
Trade Union Congress, began a hunger strike

Political prisoners on
hunger strike in India

—BOMBAY

President S. A. Dange of the All-India
May 2 to protest jail abuses and call attention to the
peasant and student union members and Communists now being de-
tamed by Premier Jawaharlal Nehru’s anti-labor government.

| TERROR RULES MALAYA

Pan-Malayan Trade

by nationality.

of Malaya,
to give.

Union leader hanged

British military authorities in Malaya,
Union Federation last year, on May 4
hanged its president, A. Ganapathy, for “carrying arms in
violation of emergency regulations.”

On the following day, British police assassinated Gana-
pathy’s successor as head of the outlawed federation, M. Veera-
sanen. The Bnitish terror against Malayan, Indian and Chinese
unionists in Malaya is continuing.

The press of sourthem India, which was Ganapathy’s home,
has demanded India’s complete severance from the British com-
monwealth as a protest against the execution of a union leader.
Indian labor and political organizations are also demanding that
the government cease all aid to the British colonial government
which it has been Indian Premier Nehru’s policy

—SINGAPORE
who suppressed the

Ganapathy was an Indian

Wallace calls for trade
with democratic China

—SEATTLE

Henry A. Wallace, speaking to a large rally here last week, called
on the people of the West Coast to batter down the “economic iron
curtain of the Truman Doctrine’? which separates America from poten-

tially vast trade with the new China

Wallace urged that a mission
composed of government experts,
labor representatives and business
men be sent over to China imme-
diately to arrange for opening up
trade with the two countries.

Wallace recalled that when he
was sent to China on an official
mission five years ago, President
Roosevelt emphasized to him “the
importance of a strong, united Chi-
na, friendly both to Russia and
the United States.”

But, he said, “military men who
were more interested in hating Rus-
sia than in understanding the Far
East guided policy in a; way which
may cost the Far West of the Un-
ited States tens of billions of dol-
lars in trade.”

Warning against a Pacific
Pact as a harbinger of certain
war, Wallace said that “by con-
tinuing to use the hate-Russia -
policy as our guide in China and
the Far East we can make per-
manent enemies out of half the
human race.” ;

“There is just one constructive
thing to do now for China,” he
said. “That is to make friends with
the new government.”

Wallace said he was struck on
his trip to San Francisco this time
by the growing unemployment in
industry and along the waterfront,
which the described as far more
serious than a “flash in the pan,”
and which he attributed in part to
the Truman Administration’s war
policies,

Describing China as a potential-
ly “extraordinary market for both
the United States and Russia,” he
said:

“Think what kind of a market
that means for the Pacific West,
the jobs that would open up.”

“Think of the million bales of
cotton you can’t even find room
for here moving to Chinese textile
mills, the 50 to 100 ships your ship-
yard workers would be fixing up
for the greatest China trade this
country has ever seen.

“Think of the men and women
moving back to sail these ships,

HENRY A. WALLACE

the longshoremen going back to
jobs loading them, the ware-
housemen moving the goods out.
‘And stretching back of them, the
hundreds of thousands of work-
ers in factories, on the farms, in
the logging camps, turning out
the goods for a Chinese trade.”

The meeting, attended by more
than 2,500 persons, many of them
Seamen and longshoremen with a
direct interest in China trade, was
described by members of the Wal-
lace party as one of the most re-
sponsive and enthusiastic on the
peace caravan the former vice-
president is leading across the na-
tion Some 700 more heard Wal-
lace and his guests, H. Lester Hut-
chinson, Labor member of the Bri-
tish House of Commons, Senator
Michele Giua of Italy and Mrs.
Paul Robeson, at an overflow
meeting.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MAY 20, 1949 — PAGE 3