March 1, 1920.---The first All-Russian Conference of Cossacks is in session at the Labor Temple. Some interesting faces and picturesque uniforms are there, Caucasian dress is much in evidence; camel-hair capes reaching to the ground, cartridges across the chest, heavy sheepskin caps, red-topped. Several women are among the delegates. A mixture of uncertain origin, half wild and warlike, these Cossacks of the Don, Ural, and Kuban were used by the Czars as a military police force, and were kept loyal by special privileges. More Asiatic than Russian, almost untouched by civilization, they had nothing in common with the people and their interests. Stanch supporters of the autocracy, they were the scourge of labor strikes and revolutionary demonstrations, with fiendish brutality suppressing every popular uprising. Unspeakably cruel they were in the days of the Revolution of 1905. Now these traditional enemies of the workers and peasants side with the Bolsheviki.
Rose Pesotta Bread upon the Waters CHAPTER 17 Travail in Atlantic City ATLANTIC CITY WAS SURCHARGED with expectation of strife when I arrived on October 11. Most of the other members of our General Executive Board were there for its quarterly meeting, and we discussed what was brewing. The affairs of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, however important to us, would be overshadowed by a larger issue coming up at the American Federation of Labor convention÷the question of organizing mass-production workers into industrial unions. This had caused a six-day battle at the Federation's 1934 convention in San Francisco. A compromise had sidetracked the issue for a year. Now, in 1935, it was coming up again, and would have to be faced. Hot debate also was looked for on a resolution to form...