Last January 750 packinghouse workers were forced to strike when the Milwaukee Independent Meatpackers Association, the employers organization, tried to impose a wage-cutting contract on the union. The city's nine major packinghouses were shut down immediately by mass picketing that came to involve many hundreds of Milwaukee trade unionists.

Despite the determination of the strikers and the breadth of labor and community support for the strike, the Meatpackers Association has refused to give in on a single union demand. They broke off negotiation talks for a five-month period and recruited hundreds of local and out-of-state strikebreakers to reopen the struck plants.

The employers have also enlisted the services of a notorious union-busting law firm in the area--the Patrick Brigden firm. In the last two years this outfit has been employed to break strikes at Harley-Davidson, Masterlock, Everbrite, Hein-Werner, and other Milwaukee-area plants. Though unsuccessful in its efforts to break the unions in any of these shops, the Brigden firm has pulled out all stops in its effort to crush the Meat Cutters union.  
 
January 29, 1951
The President of the United States, members of the Congress and the State Department are violating the will of the American people by refusing to stop the Korean war now.

In a letter to the President and Members of the Congress printed in The Militant July 31, 1950, shortly after the beginning of U.S. intervention in the Korean civil war, James P. Cannon, National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, stated that the American people would remember the War of Independence that brought this nation its freedom, and would react in our revolutionary and democratic traditions against the assault upon the Korean people. That is exactly how the American people have reacted.

On Dec. 4, 1950, James P. Cannon again addressed the responsible government officials stating that the heartfelt sentiment of the American people demanded that the President and the Congress stop the criminal aggression against the Asian people.

Today it is clear that he was speaking for the overwhelming majority of Americans.

The Gallup poll of Jan. 23 reports that two-thirds of the American people want to "pull our troops out of Korea as fast as possible." Almost one half are sure it was a mistake to send troops to Korea in the first place.  
 
 
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