But 30,000 other copper workers remain on strike against nine other companies.

The settlement with Kennecott is a defeat for the company’s takeback effort. The union members will retain their cost-of-living (COLA) quarterly raise, which Kennecott wanted to withhold.

This success of the copper strike contrasts with the same takeback that Steelworkers union officials agreed to in the basic steel contract negotiated last spring under a no-strike pledge.  
 
Sept. 19, 1955
Chicago, Sept.10—According to the Chicago Defender, a Negro weekly, approximately 250,000 people viewed the body of Emmett Louis Till as it lay in state for four days over the Labor Day weekend.

On August 28 Emmett Till, a Negro youth aged 14, was kidnapped and murdered in Money, Miss. His crime—he is supposed to have whistled at a white woman.

At first it was said the body looked too shocking for the casket to be opened for viewers. But Mrs. Bradley insisted that it be opened. “I want the world to see what they did to my boy,” she said. The casket was opened. In reaction to the sight of the boy’s body, thousands wept, hundreds fainted, many became hysterical.

The Negro people are aroused by the atrocities committed against them recently, such as the murders of Rev. George Lee and Lamar Smith, also in Mississippi. This pent-up resentment reached a high point with the murder of Emmett Louis Till.  
 
Sept. 15, 1930
Enough has occurred in the last few weeks to show on what basis the twin capitalist parties intend to conduct the election campaign: Prohibition—for and against!

The so-called prohibition issue is the best one that could be chosen—for the capitalist class. It conveniently cuts across party lines so that neither singly nor together can they be made responsible for anything. It is an expedient gas gun for shooting clouds around fundamental and really burning issues.

Is there mass unemployment, misery, starvation, suicide in the country? Booze will solve that! Are wages being cut to the very marrow? Booze will make the workers forget that! Is a form of social insurance needed by the workers? No, it’s beer and light wines they need!

The dislike and total incapacity of the capitalist parties to face the real problems the masses are confronted with, are quite understandable. Republican or Democrat—they are the ramparts of the system that produces wars, unemployment, crises, and oppression with an ever-increasing frequency and permanency.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home