Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/125

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PERSECUTION OF ORGANIZED LABOR
99

few weeks to Djerjinsky, who will introduce on the railways the methods of the Extraordinary Commission.

No better illustration of the Bolshevist policy towards labor unions could be offered than the picture given in the appeal to the labor world sent out towards the end of 1920 by the Moscow Printers' Union. We reproduce it here in full, with the exception of a few irrelevant sentences:

Appeal of Moscow Printers' Union

The Printers' Union of Moscow is the last trade union organization that has remained faithful to the principles of the independence of the trade unions and their separate existence as a class organization.

The Moscow Printers' Union defends these principles because a trade union organization can neither subject itself to nor permit itself to be absorbed by the organs of the government under the conditions now existing when private property is not abolished, when the state is the largest if not the only entrepreneur, when the purchase and sale of labor power is completely conserved—in a word, when labor's independent and free organs of defense and protection from the pressure of the other classes are indispensable.

In the domain of labor policy the practice of the Soviet government during the three years of its existence presents a striking example of this idea.

The Moscow Printers' Union believes that it is absolutely necessary to carry on a campaign of discussion amongst the proletariat against the political, economic, and administrative monstrosities practiced by the party in power.

For taking this position, for conducting this battle of principles, the Communists hate the printers in a manner surpassing even their hatred for the bourgeoisie and the landlords, at present non-existent in Russia.