re caw STRUKKH Devoted to International Socialism VoL II MARCH—APRIL, 1918 No, 2 The Future of 'She Russian Revolution By SANTERI NUORTEVA Selfdetermination of Nations and Selfdefense B7 KARL LIEBKNECHT Changing Labor Conditions in By FLORENCE KELLEY 15he State in Russia-Old and New Br LEON TROTZKY PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIALIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY, 119 LAFAYETTE ST., N. Y. CITY THE CLASS STRUGGLE Devoted to International Socialism Vd. II MARCH— APRIL, 1918 No. 2 Published by The Socialk Publication Society. 119 Lafayette St.N.Y. City Issued Every Two Months—25^ a Copy; $1.50 a Year EdUoa: LOUIS B. BOUDIN, LOUIS C FRAJNA, LUDWIG LORE CONTENTS VOI.. II MARCH-APRIL, 1918 No. 2 Changing Labor Conditions in Wartime. By Florence Kelley ...... ...... 129 The Land Question in the Russian Revolution. Changing Labor Conditions in Wartime By W. D .............. 143 By FLORENCE KELLEY Forming a War Psychosis. By Dr. John J. Kallen. 161 The Future of the Russian Revolution. By Changes before America entered the War Santeri Nuorteva ........... 171 Since August, 1914, labor conditions in the United States The Tragedy of the Russian Revolution. — Second have been changing incessantly, but the minds of the mass of wage-earners have not kept pace with these changes. Act. By L. B. Boudin ......... 186 Before the war European immigration into the United States Self-determination of Nations and Self-defense. had been, for several years, at the rate of more than a million By Karl Liebknecht. ......... 193 a year, largely from the nations then at war,—Italy and the Germany, the Liberator. By Ludwig Lore. 204 Balkan countries. This vast -influx almost exclusively of The State in Russia — Old and New. By Leon people of the wage-earning class produced no conspicuous fall in wages.. Unemployment was present, both seasonal and Trotzky .............. 213 chronic as it had been for many years, but not obviously in- Current Affairs ........ ..... 222 creased by the immigration. There was still enough cheap The new Danger. — Peace by Negotiation. — land and sufficiently rapid expansion of industry to keep wage Recall Berger. — Strategy and Conscience. conditions relatively stable. Real wages were declining. The dollar was already buying Documents for Future Socialist History. 237 less food, fuel and shelter from year to year. But this was The Bolsheviki Rising. By Karl Kautsky. — recognized as permanent only by a very small group of writers The British Miners and the War. By Robert led by Isbel King. Smillie. Then came the war followed instantly both by a reduction in immigration and by epidemic unemployment which led to no permanent organization—either legislative or voluntary— The Co-Operatire Prcst 15 Spruce St. New Y«rk intended to prevent its appearance on an immense scale at the close of the war. 130 THE CLASS STRUGGLE CHANGING LABOR CONDITIONS 131 Six months after hostilities opened however, unemployment Nebraska, and Indiana do. When, however, an attempt was made diminished, and the Allies' contracts and the social results to enforce this provision, the Connecticut courts held that the thereof began to grow clearly visible. To fill the void in the limitation applied only to stores, which have naturally only labor market created by the cessation of immigration and by slight occasion to employ women after 10 P. M. It has not the international demand for food, fuel and munitions, there been possible to get the Connecticut legislature, which sat in began a flow of recruits to the ranks of industry such as this 1915 and in 1917, to extend the prohibition of work of women country had not previously experienced. Connecticut, one of at night to include factories. the permanent homes of the munitions industry, revealed to Connecticut was merely a sample. Wherever war contracts the observant eye that lowering of industrial standards which" have appeared, suction has been applied to draw in fresh has since spread in many directions. groups of workers new to industry. Country-bred men and A famous Connecticut arms manufacturing company having women have swarmed to the new munitions towns, and heavy huge contracts began in 1915 to require men in its employ to pressure has been brought to bear upon all laws regulating bring in their wives if these had, before marriage, worked in working hours of women, minors and children. their factories. In Connecticut, more than in most of the states, building and loan associations and savings banks had The Negroes in Industry thriven, and great numbers of working men's homes were in process of being paid for. When therefore, the dictum went Negroes, both men and women, were brought from the rural forth from the munitions works that a man having a wife Southern States to Northern industrial centers in 1915 and eligible for employment and failing to bring her in when re- 1916 first by hundreds, then by thousands, to the serious dis- quested, need not come himself, great numbers of mothers organization of Southern food production. began to work at night while caring for their young children The world suffers hunger and we, with our unmeasured by day. They attempted, by thus doing the work of two per- wealth, can save neither ourselves nor the starving peoples. sons, to aid their husbands in saving their homes from fore- While Europe looks to us for food, fuel and cotton, we are not closure. meeting our own demand, much less that of the other nations. Soon the visiting nurses raised voices of warning. Tuber- One reason is neglect of the South. The nation has tacitly culous mothers whose disease had been arrested were again approved while two generations of masses of people have re- open cases. Able to maintain their restored health under the mained in blind ignorance of modern agriculture and horti- ordinary strains of home life with care and guidance of the culture. For more than a half century, ever since the Civil tuberculosis nurses, these Connecticut mothers were perishing War, millions of our rural people, both white and colored, have like grain before the scythe under the stress of the war con- by our national policy of neglect of education been left un- tracts, two years before the United States entered the war. qualified for producing maximum crops wherewith to meet the Home-making mothers by day and wage-earning wives by demand that the present crisis makes upon us. night, these were early victims of the world war. Only in the present year are appreciable sums becoming It had been widely believed that Connecticut forbade the available under the Smith Hughes and the Smith Lever Laws, employment of women in manufacture after 10 P. M. at night, in the educationally least developed states for training as Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, teachers of agriculture, horticulture and domestic science, and 132 THE CLASS STRUGGLE CHANGING LABOR CONDITIONS 133 for providing the requisite buildings and equipment for teach- tions for new school buildings ceased. A few old buildings ing these eminently necessary branches. Until now no federal were remodeled or were enlarged, but the attempt to give provision similar to the grants in aid to education, long since every child a school seat was openly abandoned for the first established in Great Britain, have ever been made by our time since New York City adopted public schools. The theory federal government. was promulgated officially that teachers should work longer The Negroes have never been welcomed in the labor move- hours and children should have less instruction and more ment. There has been a vicious circle. As agricultural supervised play. workers entering industry they have often unconsciously in- jured white union men in two ways at once. They have de- New York City's policy of crowding out school children by prived strikers of the chance to return to their previous work- administrative action, like Connecticut's reactionary judicial places, and at the same time have shared, by their mere en- and legislative procedure in regard to nightwork of women in trance into the situation, in crippling or killing the labor orga- factories, was an omen. No sooner did the United States enter nization responsible for the strike. Their numbers in industry the war than bills Were introduced in state legislatures to are now such that they can neither be ignored nor dealt with exempt children, boys and girls alike, from school attendance in detail, so the orthodox unions are doing to them what for in the Spring and Fall from the 12th birthday on, ostensibly several years they have done to women wage-earners,—lang- to work on farms, the summer vacation being prolonged for uidly going through the motions of organizing them. this purpose to cover the months from April 1st to Nov. 1st. Not until Negro men do what white women are doing, will In the propaganda for thus robbing the children of the birth- they cease to make the labor situation worse for themselves right of school-life which is theirs as future American citizens, and their fellow workers. They, too, must form organizations eminence was achieved by John Finley, Commissioner of Edu- and use their growing numbers, and the political power which cation of New York State who, in May 1917, supported an evil they command in the Northern States, to get besides collective bill to so exempt children, and sailed for France soon after Gov- bargaining, all the slender statutory protection of labor which ernor Whitman had signed it, delegating to subordinates the task the courts allow to stand. of drawing up the regulations for the guidance of local school The northward migration into industry of Negroes (of authorities and the safeguarding of the children which the new whom there were 8,000,000 in the rural Southern States to be law itself made his duty.