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