Twenty-six thousand people have been killed in less than two years. Systematic terrorism by ultrarightist death squads, which operate in collusion with the military high command, have forced some 700,000 Salvadorans into exile—14 percent of the country’s population. An even greater number of refugees has been created within the country by army massacres and indiscriminate destruction of peasant villages. Those who speak out against these crimes are marked for death by the military junta and its agents.

The Salvadoran junta represents a corrupt oligarchy. Twenty families in El Salvador control more than 70 percent of the country’s private banks, sugar mills, coffee production, and exports, as well as the television and newspaper.  
 
September 24, 1956
The Socialist Workers campaign headquarters is being flooded by mail as a result of the TV and radio broadcasts of [SWP presidential and vice-presidential candidates] Farrell Dobbs and Myra Tanner Weiss. The office staff and corps of volunteer helpers are hard put to answer all the letters and to mail out the requested copies of the SWP’s 1956 election platform. And it looks as if there is no relief in sight. More, and still more, broadcasts are scheduled.

It is not only in the campaign headquarters that the impact of the fighting socialist speeches of the SWP banner bearers is being felt. From the field there are reports of these speeches being discussed on the floor of NAACP meetings and in college classrooms.  
 
September 26, 1931
The heaviest single blow dealt in the national wage-cutting campaign of the capitalist class has just been delivered by the United States Steel Corporation, which announced that, effective October 1st, wages of all its employees, approximately 220,000, would be cut ten percent. The second largest steel corporation in the country, Bethlehem, announced a similar cut, effective the same day, for its 50,000 workers. The so-called independent steel barons have already announced that the cut will be universal throughout the industry. The president of the Pittsburgh Steel Company expressed the sentiments of the “independents” by saying that “we could not ignore such a handicap as a 10 percent wage reduction by other firms. It will be necessary for us to take similar action to keep our operating costs at the general level.”  
 
 
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