Sidney Hillman, the president, is one of the most radical Socialists in the United States—so radical that he would probably spurn the name of Socialist as ordinarily used. He is a Sovietist. He is so far “advanced” that to him the regular type of American labor union is “a scab union.” The purpose of the American labor union is stated to be the improvement of the workers’ condition in industry and the establishment of their industrial rights, whereas the object of Hillman’s union is the overthrow of industry and its communization in the hands of the radical element. That is to say, Russia over again. Hillman was born in Russia. He personally knows most of the Bolshevik Jews now ruining that great land.
The secretary of the Amalgamated is Joseph Schlossberg, also born in Russia. Schlossberg has a very free gift of words. One of his promises to his Jewish followers, publicly made at Madison Square Garden, is this:
“The clothing industry is ours. We are not going to permit the employer to determine where his factory shall be, or how many hours we shall work.”
Abraham Shiplacoff, a Socialist member of the New York board of aldermen, and next to Sidney Hillman in command of the Amalgamated, is also a free speaker, as the following excerpt will show:
“We are going to move heaven and earth to educate our people that they and they alone are the owners of industry. The workers of Russia have found it out, God bless them!
“If I knew old Sammy Gompers knew as much as that, I would tell you to go and do what the workers did in Turine. Ten thousand of them marched to the factory with music and a flag, and they opened the doors and went to work and said, ‘To hell with the owners of the factory.’
“Everybody knows it is war. We are going to control the industry.”