Jack Battuello Memoir #1 - University of Illinois Springfield

Jack Battuello 5 4
them because. that was another form of alienation, estrangement and
we didn't want that to happen. So we accepted their nominees, we
didn't run against them, we didn't put any candidates against them.
So there was a cleavage there ideologically always right from vhe
beginning. Dormant perhaps but it was there. Top echelon was conservative.
The next line 0% defense was the radicals. The leftwimgcrs
we called them. And that difference remained all. through
that struggle. And so whenever wc got into a situation of that kind
tJe knew, nobody else knew anything about his or didn't think about
i.t, but we knew the radicals, the articu1,ate radicals. T don't want
to say intelleceuals but the articulate, we knew that when we got
faced with an emergency or some kind of a plan to counteract John
Lewis' maneuvers it requi.red sometimes a little harshness, you know,
or a little rough stuff, maybe, in ddending ourselves that they
would not go with us. They would say, "No .I1
Now if we persisted in pursuing this counseling between our farces
we knew that they would back off, not only back off from it but they
would become critical and that would widen the gap between us. All
for a schism, a difference there, a variance that would grow into
hostility. Which did eventually just: the same. Although we didn't
push the thing it finally came that way so we were reluctant sometimes
to consult with these conservatives about drastic moves or drastic
revolutionary maneuvers. We wanted to be bold in some of these things
and always wanted to defend ourselves if need be with arms. If need
be. But that was unthinkable in their language, their ideology, their
approach to the thing.
And so OUT failure to contact them spontaneously as we would if it
was friendly didn't happen because we were fearful of widenhg that
gap of difference, alienating them and becoming our chief critics.
And latcr they became our head hunters. They expelled all nf us
radicals. They got Gerry Allard, you know, was the editor, out.
Jack Batorus, executive warden, Dave Reed, out. They picked every
radical out. They picked them out, sent them down the road. And as
a result, Progressive Miners ceased to be, that's all. It quit ar;
that mommt. It died.
So in a sitdown strike, for instance, which followed 1937 all the
officers were against it. In the DuQuoin case, I've described that.
When I. ini,tiated the DuQuoin case, they charged me with every crime
under the sun. I was collaborating with the United Mine Workers for
the expressed purpose of destroying the Progressive Miners of America.
And I said, "Suppose that I succeed? I and my fellow workers succeed
in getting these boys out of prison. Then what would you say?" They
had no answer. When they were finally conditioned they pardoned [me]
on Christmas Eve, I looked in their faces and their eyes and I still
was asking the question, "Bow what do you expect? You've railroaded
me out of my office, you've reduced the Progressive Miners ro an
organization of compromise that stinks, you've scabbed aga.inst the
Jack Battuello Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield