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MINERVA
MILLER

A resolution originating in
the American Federation of La-
bor was unanimously acclaimed
in 1889 at the first congress of
the Second International in Paris,
and a decision was made that
the succeeding, May 1 should be-
come the occasion for demon-
strations in every country for
the eight-hour day.

Thus, while’ May Day is of
American origin, its internation-
al significance was recognized
from the beginning. As the or-
ganized labor movement grew
in stature and raised new de-
mands, the concept of May Day
grew accordingly till today it is
recegnized as the day on which
the labor movement reviews its
accomplishment, takes stock of
its position, proclaims its de-
mands, and affirms its unity
and solidarity.

@
IG business has always label-
led May Day a foreign im-
portation. Past masters in inter-
national intrigue directed against
the people, they fear, above all,
the international solidarity of
the working class of which May

Day is a symbol.

We may expect that this year
they will outdo their own un-
speakable record of distortion.
International working class un-
ity does not fit well with their
plans for atomic war.

Celebration of May Day is
also termed foreign-inspired as
part of the campaign to isolate
the labor-movement and to make
all labor activity appear alien
to the traditions of the country,
the better to destroy it.

This is an old custom among
the privileged who fear the rise

of new forces in society.
When Mackenzie and Pap-
ineau led the artisans and

shopkeepers and farmers of Up-
per and Lower Canada against
the dictatorship of the landed

“agents of Tito, agents of Bul-
garia, agents of  Czechoalo-
vakia,” and in the not too @is-
tant ‘future perhaps, “agente of
China, agetits of India, agents
of Italy”.
e

MAY Day will be celebrated

in many towns and cities
across Canada and in our own
province this year. Its celebra-
tion in this province is almost as
old as the organized labor move-
ment.

As early as 1913, a May Day
parade was held on the streets
of Vancouver, and in the mining
towns of this province, the tra-
dition that tools are laid down
on May Day gqaes back still far-
ther in labor history.

This year we of the labor
movement march against the
profiteers who force prices up
to enrich themselves at thé ‘ex-
pense of the people. We march
for~ higher standards of living,
for wage increases in 1948, for
security for our families, for
genuine labor legislation and for
the defeat of every legislator
who lifted his hand against the:
people in support of Bill 39.

As-we march we declare in a
new way our determination to
defend the labor movement in
this. life and death struggle for
survival. Against the criminal
talk of war when the millions of
dead are so newly buried we
raise the heartfelt cry for
peace. Against the threat of yet
another depression we pose the
people’s needs for a_ greater
share of the wealth they pro-
duce.

In all of Eastern Europe, in
France, in Italy, in China, m
India, yes, in Britain and in the
United States, in spite of the
atom-bomb generals, pavements
will resound with millions of

marching feet of people who

(4 ‘T HERE will come a time when our silence in the grave will be more eloquent

than the voices you are strangling today.”

With these words August Spies,

with three of his union: brothers, went to his death, a martyr in the struggle

for the eight-hour day.

May Day, which will forever be associated with the struggle for the eight-hour day
and the memory of the men who gave their lives in the put to win it, has in the ae

of Spies’ last words, become a
day in which working people of
every land have affirmed their
unquenchable confidence in their
class and its ultimate victory.

May Day has a special signi-
ficance in 1948, this year of deci-
sion, when big business, fearful
to the point of frenzy of the
mighty, organized labor move-
ment which capitalism has call-

ed into being, is feverishly plot-
ting its destruction. This too, is
the centennial year of Marxism.

It is just one hundred: years
ago since the Communist Mani-
festo saw the light of ey in

OS

CLOTHING
6 West Pos ae &

FOR WORK and
DRESS CLOTHING

an ebbonss little printshop in
London. Born in a time wheh
Europe was seething with popu-
lar revolt, when wage-workers,
artisans, debt-ridden peasants,

shopkeepers and intellectuals re- |

belled against the double tyranny
of “feudal landlords and new
capitalist masters, the Commun-
ist Manifesto,, product of the
joint efforts of the young Karl
«Marx and Frederick. Engels,
marked the emergence of the
science of society and blazed a
trail for the liberation of al!
mankind.

There are, indeed, grounds for
the fears of big business, for
Socialist consciousness ‘has.. been
fused with the labor movement
in a growing number of coun-
tries and today, the Marxism Of
the Communist Manifesto guides
the feet of millions in their ad-
vance to a better life.

e
MARX and Engels, always in
the. mainstream of their
time, were deeply interested in
the struggle of the American
workers for the eight-hour day,
& grand movement which, ac-

cording to Marx, “ran with the
seven-leagued boots of the loco-

motive from the Atlantic to the
Pacific, from New England to
California.”

The events which led to
commemoration in an
tional labor day took place
some three years after Marx’
death.

On May 1, 1886, the workers
of tthe McCormack Harvester
Company in Chicago, along with
80,000 other workers in that
city, went on strike for the
eight-hour . day. A few days la-
ter six strikers were killed when
police attacked the picket line.
At an indignation rally in
Haymarket Square the following
day, a bomb was thrown which

its

killed four workers and seven

policemen, wigs

This outrage, unquestionably
committed by a Provocateur, pro-
vided the pretext for the arrest
of strike leaders and the gsub-
sequent execution of four of
them — the labor immortals —
Parsons, Spies, Engel and Fis-
cher.

interna- .

aristocrats | they were called

“American agents.”

When some ‘of the first unions
were organized in Canada it was
in a period of insurgent revolu-
tionary activity in France. Our
union brothers of those times
were called “agents of Paris.’

After the 1917 revolution in
Russia it became the vogue to
call all progressives who ‘meant
business “agents of Moscow.”

Now big business and its pro-
paganda agents are faced with
a dilemma. For people’s govern-
ments have been established -in
all Eastern Europe, colonial peo-
ples are throwing off their
chains. To the already formid-
able . list. of agencies, the bosses
to be consistent must now add

For a Good .
Suit or Overcoat

,

come to the
OLD ESTABLISHED RELIABLE FIRM

REGENT TAILORS —

$24 West Hastings Street

“want peace and whose combined

strength can silence forever the
sounds of marching armies and
the criminal shrieks of the war-
mongers.

For those who believe in a
new society this May Day will
have a special meaning. We shall
be remembering that this is the
100th anniversary of Marxism
and we shall be thinking of the
proud millions who march be-
neath its banners toward world
brotherhood. We shall remember
the words of Gabriel Peri, “Com-
munism is the youth of. the
world. It prepares for han eag
tomorrows. "

The time will come.

EVERY GARMENT STRICTLY UNION MADE
DK

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 16, 1948—PAGE 12