LABOR: A School for Strikers

Three years ago William Z. Foster, notorious radical leader and chief organizer of the steel strike in 1919, predicted that in the near future strikes would be organized with all the scientific preparation of a military campaign, with a trained commissary department, shock troops, labor liberty loans, conscription of strikers' families, and all the material, financial equipment, and propaganda necessary to wage a modern industrial class war. His prediction has had a partial fulfilment in the school for strikers which operated three months prior to the dress and waist makers' strike in New York.

In this school 300 pupils were instructed in the art of lawful picketing, in labor investigation, the conduct of strike meetings, adjustment of disputes with employers, and all matters pertaining to the behavior of idle workers during a strike. In consequence of this training the garment strike was conducted with the specialization and division of labor of a capitalist business enterprise. The picketing corps alone cost over $1,500 a day to maintain.

"Don't attract attention," "Don't block traffic," "Don't argue," "Always obey the police," were the main instructions to pickets. These tactics, in regular use in the garment unions, are in marked contrast to the provocative and often violent methods employed by less educated and intelligently led unions.

The Painters' Union organized a health department which examines its members for occupational disease. Some 4,000 painters have been found to be suffering from incipient lead poisoning.