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In this historic picture, published for the first time, eee
of the Westérn Federation of Miners are-seen getting set to lea
t yy parade in Trail, 1917. :
= ae ae horseback at left is Ginger Goodwin, who ne
afterwards was martyred by the company for his leaders e. ae
the victorious 1917 strike in) which 3,000 workers walked solidly
off “the hill,’ and for his firm stand against imperialist war.

The company today

tries to ascribe all militancy among

workers to “Soviet agents.” But in 1913, four years before the

Soviet Union was born, Ginger

Goodwin told Cumberland coal

miners: “Strikers aré given the maximum penalty, while those

who are helping the masters are let. off ..

. Stop appealing...

Line up in this great world-wide movement of Socialism and use
the concerted, action of all workers to wrest from the master-
Class the means of wealth production.” :

Holding high the heritage of its founding fathers, Mine-Mill ,
can win out in the crucial struggles of 1949. ;

C
ave ruled like monarchs of old.
The tribute exacted by this

empire from its toiling subjects

would make the ghosts of many

ld world emperors: turn green

With® envy. ;

Thousands of miners, smelter-'

men and their families have cut

years off their lives to produce

for Consolidated. Since 1894, mil-

lions of tons of lead, zinc and fer-

tilizer, millions of ounces of gold
and silver.

What an Eldorado! Enough
to provide every worker in the
Kootenays with all his needs.

Workers’ sweat has added to
an original investment of $16,-
381,645 the following amounts:
$206,944,208 in dividends paid,
$59,951,528 earned surplus, $103
115,436 added to the company’s
“Ssets, and an as yet ‘undeclared
Profit beyond 1948 dividends—a
minimum total of  $369,786,031,
after tax. (The company made
$87,278,341 in 1947 alone.)

Today the centers of this em-
Pire are the fabulous lead-zinc
Mountain at Kimberley and the

mammoth smelter at Trail, whose

very smoke is turned into mil-

Hons of dollars worth of chemi-

Cals, :

' Former king of this empire

Was general manager 8. G. Blay-

Sck. The new ruler, R. W-

Diamond! isa more sophisticated

Monarch in keeping with the

times, Pe

Blaylock died after the Intér-
eetional Union of Mine, Mill and
Smelter Workers (CIO-CCL) local

Won its’ first contract. He
4 with a broken heart and a
*ational reputation,

Business executives hailed —
“nd sometimes envied—his abili-
ty to. combine terrorism and
eetnalism to maintain the open
°P for a generation. :

dieg

SOE NeW Re OF

solidated Mining and Smelting Company. It’s controlled by the
R from Montreal, and its chiefs on the scene for two generations

H IGH in the Kootenay Mountains is an empire, called the Con-
P

Scores. of thousands of workers
cursed the name Blaylock. To
them his company unionism
meant miserable pay, stretchout,
speedup, industrial illness, acci-
dent, and—above all—fear.

Workers struck in 1901 at Ross-

land, in 1917 at Trail and 1919

at Kimberley. The old Western
Federation of Miners led militant
struggles but secessionism and
treachery finally helped the com-
pany keep it—and its successor
the Internation] Union of Mine,
Mill and Smelter Workers-—un-
derground for a generation.

The union was underground.
Like Joe Hill it “never died.”
Bands of men held secret meet-
ings. ’ Dues were paid, letters
went in and out in spite of
Blaylock’s secret operatives.-

These men of courage paved
the way well, Arthur Evans was
temporarily able to bring the
union into the open in 1938.

At the height of the war against
fascism the time was ripe. The
Mine-Mill union’s regional direc- .
tor Harvey Murphy got off the

bus in Trail to lead the local’s

big push. .« 3
Workers were even signed up
by the light of car headlights
for Blaylock or anybody else to
see. Only traditional company
union elements remained aloof.
Kimberley miners followed Trail
smeltermen into the union.
British Columbia’s war-born
labor code compelled ‘Blaylock,
for all his die-hard bluster, to.
sign the first contract with ‘Mine-
Mill. No scabs were available:
Consolidated had to take it and
i it.
ae ewe during years of super-
duper profits would have been
poor business. The company
kept the clamps as tight as poss-

i

ible, but wage gains were won

at Trail and Kimberley as big
as anywhere in the country.

Little by little the company
changed its line. It wasn’t op-
posed to unionism—oh no. Con-

solidated wanted the men to have

a union—but a “good” union
with “responsible leaders,” not
“Communists” like Murphy.

Simultaneously every shop stew-
ard and officer was faced with
the temptation of the subtle re-
wards that “good” unionism —
judged from the company’s view-
point—can bring.

The company was in strategic
retreat. 2

It was preparing the counter-

’ offensive.

The search now was for com-
pany unionism with a “union”
label: the taking over of Mine-
Mill from within, the smashing
of its leadership and rank and
file control, the cultivating of

d prepares an

inside

hospital before a deportation
order could. be enforced.

The lie—for a scab-paper finger-
man with less principle in his
whole body than any union-build-

_ing Communist has in his little

those in labor’s ranks willing to.

be trustees of the union—for the
company.
The era of Blaylock was over.
The era of Diamond had be-
gun.

HE era of Diamond. ... The
Kimberley miner at the rock-
faca works himself half hysterical
to drive’ an extra foot of steel.
He’s on contract, curse of the
mines. <a
Shift over, he. heads back to

_the home he'll likely never own.

' His lungs have been exposed
to the poison of the silica dust.
Now, in the mail, he picks up
a package of poison for the mind.
The company has sent him a
lethal leaflet of reprints from the
scab Province. It is a series of
horror story lies about the “men-
ace of communism.”

Each lie is aimed at fixing
in his mind the single idea that
Communists want to use him and
his union, through foul means
including “force and violence” to
instal a “foreign-controlled” dic-
tatorship in Canada. :

If the poison takes, it will eat
the guts out of the miner and
his union. The miner will fight
his fellow-miner at the face who
may happen to be a Communist,
or who by militancy rouses sus-
picion of being a Communist.
He'll have lost sight of the com-
mon fight of all the !miners
against the company.

“Force and violence,” says the
company smear. But Ginger
Goodwin of the old Trail union
was murdered by a_ soft-nosed
bullet August 2, 1918. And Romeo
Albo, an‘Italian miner who help-
ed organize the Italian workers
at Trail, was arrested at’ he
company’s. behest and died in

©

finger—was easy to write. Yet
no worker who received it could
think of a single example of any
Communist miner or smelterman
using violence to solve any prob-
lem. The exception was those
Communists among the hundreds
of employees who fought fascism
at the front. One Communist
among them won the Croix de
Guerre while Consolidated was
piling up_its unpatriotic millions.

“Look out for the Communists,”

——By BRUCE

cries the company every honest >

worker hates.

The era of Diamond . .. the
era of the big lie.
eo
Hera, Hof: Diamond #4. 3a
smelterman il] from lead

poisoning gets a printed radio
script by Assistant General Man-
ager W. S. Kirkpatrick: “Your
Union and You.”

His jaw drops in amazement
as he reads, “Never before. has
active participation by members
of labor unions been as necessary
as it.is today.”

He reads on, and discovers the
trick. Kirkpatrick’ wants active
participation, not in the fight
against he company, but in the
fight against “the Communists.”
The pamphlet evén says that if
Communists succeed, “your free-
dom sto bargain collectively ‘will
be at an end.” ‘The smelterman
smiles at the thought of the com-
pany as a champion of collective

bargaining.
Kirkpatrick defines “your
union” .as “the organization

which carries your suggestions
and problems to he management.”

The smelterman heard those
honeyed words from the company
union. But he read this in Mine-
Mill’s constitution: “The objects
of this organization shall be to
unite the various persons work-
ing under our jurisdiction into
one central body ... to maintain
the right of the workers to in-
crease the wages and improve the
conditions of employment of our
members by legislation, concilia-
tion, joint agreements or strikes.”

“You should be actively identi-
fied with your union,” was the
conclusion of this company leaf-
let without a union label, Feb-
ruary 11, 1948.

And at once the Workmen’s
Cooperative Committee, alias the
Independent Smelter Workers’
at once _ scuttled obediently
like scared rabbits into Lo-
cal 480, Internation] Union of
Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers
(CIO-CCL).

4

‘The struggle is on.

job

MICKLEBURGH———

Negotiations opened shortly
afterwards. Trail and Kimber-
ley avon a 17 cent average pay
package.

The era of Diamond . .
solidated loves the union, especi-
ally some of its members
and oh, how

it hates most of

them!

. *

WHILE the union was rallying
for the wage tussle, the

company was pressing harder to
prepare a split. :

Many in Trail local 480 and
Kimberley local 651 have been
working to strengthen the shop
steward system, fight on griey-
ances, get set: for new gains in
1949. The include followers of
every political party. y.

On the other hand the com-
pany’s campaign began to bring
to the surface a minority pre-
pared to put party and personal
advantage ahead of the union.

The company took the next
step. Kirkpatrick sent a letter
last July 27 to union executive
members enclosing material slan-
derous of the Internation! union.
This was direct and illegal inter-
vention in the union, the first
open feeler at running things the
way the company union had been
run, :

Next danger signal came when
a Trail delegate was banned
by U.S. Immigration from attend-
ing the Internation] convention.
Some of those who went through
from _ the Kootenays joined
the small convention minority
who tried to hold back the
union’s fight against the slave-
labor Taft-Hartley law.

Then came the big danger sig-
nal for Trail, Kimberley,
whole of Mine-Mill in Canada
and the whole Canadian Con-
gress of Labor—raiders! The
worst pirates in the labor move-
ment! i :

Top CCL bureaucrats, who had
already connived at the ‘deport-
ing of Mine-Mill organizers and
raids by United Steelworkers
officials ,declared war on Mine-
Mill. with an ultimatum to get
out of northern Ontario gold-
fields.

This was what the company
needed — CCL backing for the
phoneys. .

ILLIAM MAHONEY, CCL

western director of organiza-
tion, appeared in Trail and Kim-
berley.. —

Men with stop watches began
timing every move of the work-
ers. The big’ business war drive
has pushed base metal prices to
record heights—Consolidated is
preparing a murderous speed-up.

Smelter workers were told to
buy their own work clothes from
now on.

Mahoney. was trounced at Trail
and Kimberley local meetings,

-but an underground network is

being built. ;

Negotiations are coming up.
All forces
must soon cqme out in the open.

The union cannot stand still.
It must go a long way forward
or a long way back. Next ar-
icle, will show why the workers
can win,

3 PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MARCH ll, 1949 — PAGE 5

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