The spy system and race hatred; tools of the bosses to stave off unions at Chicago’s massive Armour meat packing facilities.

‘Armour Yard More Like Jail Than Packing Plant’ by Victor Zokaitis from The Daily Worker. Vol. 3 No. 1. January 13, 1926.

The police and spy system maintained by the Armour Co. is so intricate and so placed that one begins to think that he is serving a sentence in some penitentiary instead of working as a “free” laborer. Every department in the Armour packing plant has its army of police and spies, with stool-pigeons aiding these guardians of private property.

At the doors of every department there is stationed armed, uniformed police and oftentimes these police have wicked billies with which they emphasize their commands.

If a worker attempts to pass from one department to another, he is stopped at the entrance and told “get the hell back to where you belong.” Any visitor, who strays from the beaten path that the guide takes him over and shows him the things about the packing industry that the packers want to show in their attempt to advertise their wares, is liable to find himself confronted by one of these plug-uglies and arrested for trespass.

Break Into Workers’ Lockers.

Oftentimes, lockers of the innocent workers are opened and searched in the hope that something can be found to be able to accuse the worker of stealing a ham or a side of bacon in order to show their employers their vigilancy and their eagerness to serve. The women and girls are often subjected to a search by police and matrons, who finger the girls in their attempts to see if the girl has any of the meat products hidden on her person.

The police employed by the company are white and it is needless to say, they do all they can to impress upon the Negro workers their “superiority” and their “intelligence” by subjecting the Negro workers to the most disgusting of insults and searches.

Bullies Workers.

One of the workers in one of the killing departments, who had been sick for a number of weeks with the “flu,” attempted to pass from his department to another in order to go to the toilet.

As he was going through the doors. A big husky plug-ugly stopped him and roared: “Where in hell are you going to? Get back to your department and do your work!”

“I’m on my way to the toilet “here,” answered the worker.

“You fellows have got one out there,” pointing to a shack about two hundred yards away from the killing department.

“Well, I’ve been sick and I won’t go out in my shirt sleeves—heated up the way I am—in the sleet. I’m not looking for a rest in a pine box yet. I’m going in there and I don’t give a damn what you say!”

This worker was finally allowed to go through the department but was followed by the policeman and was carefully watched the rest of the day.

Instance after instance could be written of who have been forced to all kinds of inconveniences by the police system maintained in the plant. It is impossible to go from one department to another.

Spy System.

The company not only maintains a uniformed police system, but it also has a spy system with an army of stools, who aid the spies. The spies, as a rule, are stuck into a department as “relief hands.” They are able to move about freely in this role, as they take the places of workers who leave for the toilets or who, unable to stand the strain placed upon them by the speed-up system become over-heated and go into a “fit.”

These spies move about freely without being molested and they talk to the different workers. They pump the workers next to them trying to find out what these workers think about unionism and working class organizations. Any worker who is suspected of being “tainted” with unionism is “shadowed” by the detective. Pretexts are found to transfer the worker that may be working next to the “tainted” one and the dick place in his place.

The spy then tries to lead the “tainted” one on and if the worker admits membership in a union, he is called to one side at the end of the day’s work and told that work is “slack” and that he is “laid off.” No matter how long the worker may show up he is never put on again. He is on the packer’s blacklist.

Foster Hatred.

As most of the workers in the Chicago plant of Armours are Negroes, they also maintain many Negro spies, who do all they can to weed out the intelligent and class conscious Negro workers. Not only do they weed out union men, but they also spread race hatred among the workers.

The Negro spy and the white spy try to create as much distrust as possible among the workers, knowing that a house divided against itself will fall. They know that if the Negro workers and the white workers distrust each other that no union will ever be successful in organizing the workers in that industry. Not only is the race hatred played to the greatest possible degree, but such phrases as that “God damned Lugen” has killed “this job,” referring to the Lithuanian when speaking to the Polish worker, and that “God damned Polack is the cause of all these rotten things here,” in talking to the Lithuanian about the Pole.

If a foreign-born worker says something about the rotten conditions, he is immediately told “go on back to the old country where you belong” and in this way work up the antagonism of the American-born or naturalized worker against the worker, who was born in a foreign country.

When the race and nationality issue cannot be played successfully, arguments on religion are started, and catholic damns protestant, protestant damns catholic and so with the other sects. They get the workers fighting over which of the opium peddlers in the church have got the shortest route to heaven, where every wish is fulfilled, and the route that leads farthest away from hell where the preachers cry human souls will sizzle in the same way that hog’s fat sizzles in the lard vats. The non-believer is played against the believer on whether there is such an animal as heaven and where it is located.

These spies most often work on one worker at a time rousing his anger against the one next to him, spreading rumors that are groundless, etc., in an effort to antagonize one against another.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n001-NY-jan-13-1926-DW-LOC.pdf