Soon to be elected Secretary-Treasurer of U.M.W.A. District 17 (West Virginia), militant miner Fred Mooney denounces the bureaucrats leading the national union.

‘Putting One Over the Miners’ by Fred Mooney from International Socialist Review. Vol. 16 No. 11. May, 1916.

AFTER viewing the recent convention of the U.M.W. of A., held in the city of Indianapolis, Ind., we can but look upon the administration with suspicion. After wind-jamming the slaves, who were sent there as representatives of the miners, they tell them to return home while the officials beg, barter and compromise at the feet of the capitalist class.

Oh, you United Mine Workers of America!—you who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. You, who have sent hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Russianized state of West Virginia to be spent by a bunch of labor fakirs and industrial traitors, reveling in drunken debauchery and compromising our every effort!—when will you wake up ? Oh, you miners of the competitive states! You furnish the money and the traitors spend it, and at the same time you boast of what you have done for West Virginia. While you have done some good, we are honest enough to admit, there is a great wrong you have done also. You have permitted us to be dominated over and overrun with every type of industrial traitor and labor fakir in the union.

You have also permitted thousands of dollars of your money to be spent in political campaigns that were detrimental to the cause of industrial freedom.

Every time we make a move to better our conditions the Czar from Pennsylvania puts in his oar. We cannot recall any official of our own district organization even for embezzlement or crooked dealings of any kind, because of the interference of the representatives of the International Union. We furnish the money for the advancement of the union and our money is being spent to crush organization. We would do well to investigate this matter for ourselves and not leave it up to the International Union to do so.

We, in West Virginia, are getting tired of being called the pull-back of the organization when we, who put up the money are alone responsible by putting our money in the hands of official pirates and compromisers to be spent in fighting us instead of being used to further the cause of organized labor in West Virginia. But we are fast coming to our right minds in the Russianized state of West Virginia, and if the policy of the union is not changed in the near future, there will be more secessionists in West Virginia. We are tired of being robbed by the officials of our own district who are backed up by the officials of the International Union, and if there is not something doing shortly, there will be another step made toward the advancement of the one big union.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v16n11-may-1916-ISR-gog-Princ-ocr.pdf