The reason that the Left says the bosses use race to divide the workers is because the bosses use race to divide the workers. We aren’t making it up comrades. The ‘unconscious’ racial divide among workers is, in part, the product of a very conscious effort keep us divided. The Human Resources departments at the large meat-packing concerns being amongst the most practised, with events like Chicago’s bloody 1919 anti-Black pogroms the outcome. A look at the poison well of ruling class racism in which the U.S. working class still drinks.

‘Meat Packers Play Race and National Prejudices to Keep Workers Divided’ by Victor Zokaitis from The Daily Worker. Vol. 3 No. 6. January 19, 1926.

Racial antagonisms and national hatreds are encouraged and exploited in every way possible by the meat packers to keep the workers in the packing house industry divided. As long as the workers hate each other they will never unite to change conditions. The packers know that as long as they can keep the workers divided, they can continue to pay small wages, force the workers to work longer hours, maintain whatever sanitary conditions they please and make* the workers speed up.

Company-paid spies, who are usually put among the relief hands at Armours, go from place to place on the floors, spreading hatred of one worker for another. The Negro worker is propagandized so that he distrusts the white worker. The Lithuanian against the Pole. The “American” against the foreign-born worker. “Have nothing to do with those white they’re out after your job?” is the stock argument of the stool placed next to Negro worker. The stool argues in the same manner among the white workers and in this way creates distrust between these two big groups of workers.

The Negro worker fears to organize and strike for better conditions, because of his distrust of the white worker, whom he thinks is trying to take away his ob. The white worker is also afraid to organize making the very same excuse that the Negro worker does.

The bosses in the various departments at Armours are white. They “ride” the Negro workers as much as possible. This “riding” of the Negro worker has brought forth many spurts of revolt on the killing and other floors.

In one department the boss had been abusing the Negro workers as much as he possibly could. Every time that he gave orders to Negro worker he would do so in the vilest of language.

As protest against this behavior of the boss, one day the Negro workers stopped the chain and refused to work on the hogs that were being sent through. It was their protest against this vile and inhuman treatment that this boss was subjecting them to.

Shortly after this spurt of revolt, the boss approached one of the Negro workers and tried to show his “superiority” by calling the worker number of names that reflected on this worker’s parentage. The worker enraged by the boss’ continual nagging and abuse, threw hook at the boss. This hook grazed the boss’ arm. The worker then threw second, this time hitting the boss on the fleshy part of the arm. For the rest of that day there was no more abuse of the Negro workers. Then the abuse was rained down upon the white workers.

In departments where Lithuanians and Poles work, spies able to speak the languages of these workers mix among them and start arguments over whether Vilna is Lithuanian soil or whether it should belong to Poland. number of times these arguments have led to fist fights outside of the “yards” and have ended up in the police court. In this manner these two nationalities are played against one another.

Since the Negro worker is becoming more and more militant and is protesting against rotten conditions in the “yards” the employment office is now hiring as many Mexicans as it possibly can. Armour company has special Mexican employment who walks out into the crowd around the employment office, picks out the Mexican workers and hires them. In the plant anti-Mexican feeling has been aroused among the workers and the spies are able to so propagandize the workers that the workers look with distrust upon the Mexicans and continually refer to them as “greasers.”

The “100 per cent American” attitude is encouraged in the “yards” and is used at every possible opportunity against the foreign-born worker. The company thru its propaganda, paints its bonus schemes, its “profit sharing- we-are-partners idea,” as “American” methods. When foreign-born workers argue against these schemes of the packers and show the need for change in conditions and begin to talk of unionization, many of the so-called “American” workers, who suffer from the same evils that the foreign-born workers do, tell the foreign-born workers: “Go on back to the old country if you don’t like the way things are run here.”

Tho the meat packers play upon the racial prejudices and national antagonism of the workers, woe unto the worker, who dares allow his antagonism or his prejudices to interfere with the speed-up system and the steady operation of the chains. If any victim of company propaganda allows his prejudices to interfere with the profitmaking of the packers, he soon finds himself out on the streets. While at work they must bury these antagonisms, but the moment they cease working, the racial antagonisms and the national hatreds can have full sway.

One of the Negro workers on the hog killing floor at Armours tells of how the company arranges picnic or outing during the summer, when all of the workers are invited to come out. This gathering is supposed to create spirit of “good will” and cooperation” among the workers employed by Armour. “But,” said the Negro worker, “every time we go to one of those affairs, we find ourselves “Jim crowed,” Regardless of whether the workers in the “yards” are black, white, brown or any other color, their grievances against the packers are the same. They all suffer under the speed-up.

They all suffer the same rotten unsanitary conditions. They all are abused by the boss. They ate all the victims of the packers’ greed for more profits and because of this, their interests are one.

By allowing the company-paid spies, and company-subsidized newspapers to keep the workers divided, the workers allow the packers to wax fatter and fatter while they are exploited more and more. The workers in the packing house industry must unite into one union regardless of their color and their nationality and demand better conditions.

As long as the workers remain divided their rotten conditions will exist. When the workers bury their racial antagonism and their national hat red and refuse to fall for the company propaganda and unite Into industrial unions, then will conditions be ed for the better.

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.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n006-NY-jan-19-1926-DW-LOC.pdf