Abstract

Grist for Goebbels

The article discusses the unfairness of strike called by the Railroad Brotherhoods, one of the most advanced sections of the American labor movement. These progressive unions had been forcing railroads to discharge Negro firemen and give their jobs to white. The five operating brotherhoods have ordered a strike to begin on December 30 and this order is the work not of an irresponsible minority manipulating unions but of democratic processes and majority vote. Their grievance is that a government board granted a four-cents-an-hour raise. They are prepared to strike for eight cents. According to the author, the question union must ask themselves is whether the difference between four cents an hour and eight cents an hour is worth a nation-wide strike rail in the midst of a great war.