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From Fourth International, Vol.2 No.10, December 1941, p.290.
Transcribed, edited & formatted by Ted Crawford & David Walters in 2008 for ETOL.
By the time this issue of Fourth International reaches our readers, the Minneapolis “Sedition Trial,” involving at this time 23 militant working class leaders, will have ended.
Every person interested in the trial must have been impressed with the deliberateness with which the publications of American capitalism have avoided presenting the issues involved. Especially in the latter phase, during the period in which the defense presented its case, have the newspaper lackeys of capitalism displayed a silence as profound as their ignorance of the forces concerned In the trial of a group of labor organizers on a charge of “sedition” during peacetime.
We are, however, as we always have been, proponents of the Dialectic and we therefore find the above-cited not an unmixed annoyance. The paucity of Information on this most important American political trial in two decades has put us In the position of being the only complete source of information available today.
The publications of the Socialist Workers Party, Fourth International and The Militant, have published to date a far more complete record of the Minneapolis “Sedition Trial” than was ever printed during the course of any of the outstanding labor trials in American history.
It pleases us to contemplate what a rare service we have done Lor those research specialists of the future who will be privileged to see this trial in its true perspective in relation to the struggle of the American working class for freedom. But, more practically, we are proud to be able to offer to our present readers an opportunity not only to follow the trial to its close but to judge with us the implications of its outcome.
On this page will be found an advertisement for a joint subscription offer, made by us and our brother weekly publication, The Militant. We urge every reader, for the sake of having his own file of the proceedings of the trial from now on, to take immediate advantage of the offer.
* * *
The recently launched drive for subscriptions to the Fourth International and The Militant has, in the few days it has been under way, brought a good response from several centers. The industrial city of Flint was able to send in a total of sixteen new subscriptions in this period, topping even New York which runs behind with ten subscriptions.
One of the most encouraging evidences of stability in relation to our publications is displayed in the fact that Minneapolis, despite the great burdens that the trial has placed upon the shoulders of the members there, has maintained without the slightest interruption both the distribution of the magazine and payments on its account. We have every reason to believe that our supporters in any other part of the country would face an extraordinary responsibility in the same way.
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Last updated on 13.9.2008