order to establish a
"dictatorship of the proletariat," or else terrible civil war, in many
of our American cities by the simple process of calling general strikes.
The reader who questions this should learn the facts about the Winnipeg
general strike of May 1-June 15, 1919, "the culmination of the
development of the One Big Union movement in Canada" (page 333 of "The
American Labor Year Book, 1919-1920, edited by Alexander Trachtenberg,
Director, Department of Labor Research, Rand School of Social Science"),
which held a city of 200,000 terrorized for six weeks under the absolute
dictatorship of a Strike Committee elected by the strikers, while "many
cities, including Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto, meanwhile joined the
general strike in sympathy with Winnipeg." (Ibid., page 334.)

The strikers included the employees of the fire, water supply, health,
street cleaning, light and power, transportation, telegraph, telephone
and postal departments of the city, together with the janitors of
buildings, elevator men, wholesale and retail clerks and the carters and
deliverers of the stores, railways and express companies, thus cutting
off the city from the rest of the world and even from the supplies and
facilities within its own bounds except only as the Strike Committee
made concessions. "I could have a glass of milk or lunch if I had a
ticket from the Strike Committee. Otherwise I couldn't." This was the
testimony of Mr. Robert McKay, of Winnipeg, February 10, 1920, and
printed in the Albany "Knickerbocker Press" of February 11, 1920, from
which we take the facts. Even the Winnipeg newspapers failed to appear
after the first three days of the strike, while the city police also
voted to strike, but continued on duty under command of the Strike
Committee.

At length a Citizens' Committee was organized, 100 men at first, which
grew to 1,000, and even 10,000, Mr. McKay says. "The regular police was
replaced by 1,500 special police, assisted by mounted police and
militia," and "during the last two weeks there were two riots, in which
two persons were shot by the mounted police." (Account in Trachtenberg's
"Year Book," above quoted, page 334.) In other words, Winnipeg was only
delivered by means of rescue from outside and by incipient civil war,
the ringleaders of the dictatorship being arrested and indicted for
trial.

Yet are there some Americans still so blinded by foolish optimism as to
think we are in no danger--even at a