The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 13, 1924, Page 18

IN 1924? A MILITANT’S PREDICTION twa. e.ponxe The litle naked lad that is the New Year 1924, is going to make trouble for labor. He inherits from his predecessor a dislike for the aims of Labor and finds that 1923, while still a youth, believed in showing Labor its place. Only the increase in employment pre- vented 1923 being a disastrous year for Labor. 1924 begins with un- employment on the inerease; what does the year hold for Labor? In 1923, the federal government threw its weight against the strik- ing railway shopmen with the result’ that their unions were destroyed so far as fighing ability is concerned. The same anti-labor element is still in contro] at Washington, and will remain in control thruout 1924. Coolidge is for Wall Street; Wall Street is for Coolidge and Labor will get just as much and no moré con- sideration from Coolidge than the exigencies of a campaign year seem to warrant. There is a cold hostility to every section of the Labor movement; that is the outstanding feature of the present regime and that with the in- crease in unemployment and the ex- cuse of a strike of the soft coal min- ers’ may flare into open acts of violent suppression. The coal miners can either strike or make an abject surrender. There will be no give and take—with the miners doing the bulk of the giving— as in the anthracite controversy. A bituminous strike affects basic in- dustry immediately. Non-union coal production is on the increase. - The operators are in a belligerent mood. They feel that Coolidge will see them thru. A fight seems inevitable. The election campaign will absorb the attention of Labor as never be-|- fore. Labor is doing, more political thinking than at any previous period and will appear on the political field as a unit with the farmers in many sections. The Gompers machine is going to back McAdoo; so are some of the railway organizations despite Me- Adoo’s announced hostility to the the roads to which the brotherhods More Movie Hokum Faked Endirg Mars Gripping ‘Picture of Southern Peonage By WILLIAM F. KRUSE Among the Picture Reviews in a recent issue of a movie trade journal appears that of a new six reeler, “The Whipping Boss.” The story, to quote this journal, “seems to have been made solely to show the dread- fully cruel and inauman methods em- ployed in some parts of the United States where convicts are leased out to work for lumber companies, etc. It deals with the case of a young lad who is found stealing a ride on a GREETINGS from - the Progressive Building Trades Workers with a Pledge of 100 Per Cent Support. and other organizations are com-,Secretary Hughes, ably assisted by, paired while he is still of service to mitted. & The middle West and West will see the wage-earners and farmers in politics with a class party as their weapon. 1924 will mark the be-: ginning of the entry of ‘the farmers and wage-earners into the political field as a separate entity, a political force that American capitalism must reckon with from now on. Recognition of Soviet Russia will be an issue before the present ses- sion of Congress. The assinine acts ang utterances of THE the feeble viciousness of the Daugh- erty Department of Justice, has put Soviet Russia’s enemies on the de-} fensive. Mr. Gomper alone stands unshaken; to him the recognition of Russia means a personal defeat—a major defeat. Should recognition come before the next A. F. of L. eonvention it might even contribute to his defeat. So the A. F. of L. lobbyists will fight with the Wall street bankers, who hold the czar’s bonds against Soviet Russia, that the prestige of Gompers may not be im- KEY They led him to a cell, This too-great lover of freedom. The gate clanged to, the jailer left: The bars bent not, Tho he pressed at them with all his strength. Here is something stronger than argument, Mightier than the clenched fist, Closing with a metallic shudder, unchangeable, final, * Not to be moved by a race on its knees, by the hoarse shouts of a million, by tides of men. Your faith in freedom, in brotherhood, in the flaming goal, Shakes and crumbles. ... Are they all a mockery, Beautiful to dream, dying like drowned waves under stiff cliffs of granite? The gate will swing wide As surely as it swung narrow something near you, Do not waver, lover of freedom: a little something. ‘ A little idea, maybe, will be the key to all barred gates, Will melt at last all chains an d prisons forever. —Clement Wood. them. * > * The Convention of the Uniteg Mine Workers to be held this month is, in many ways, of more importance |to Labor than the A. F. of L, Con- vention next fall. Should the Lewis machine be defeated*or even badly shaken, it will be evidence of the growing strength of the left wing movement, and more than one inter- national union official will begin to break out of his flag locker an ensign of a somewhat more lively hue. * * * _ As for the A. F. of L. Convention itself, a safe prediction wonld be that it will do nothing except to tighten the lines against the “reds.” It will meet at a time when the unemployment situation will be criti- cal but no sane person will expect the Convention to propose any remedy not approved by the Civic Federation and the Chamber of Com- merce. It is likely that unless the unemployed: invade the Convention thall the subject will never be men- tioned on the floor. * = * In 1924 and perhaps for several years following, the economic power of the Labor unions will decline. Jobless workers cannot strike and those who are lucky enough to have jobs do not want to strike. The Labor unions will turn more and more to the political field and even by the end of 1924, there may be a high and increasing level of consciousness among the masses of American workers engendered by the political thinking they have been, and will be forced to do. * a * In the educational and organiza- tional work designed to speed up the left wing activities in the Labor movement, to give the new tendency, toward class mass political action, a militant working class character, the Workers (Communist) Party of America is in the lead. It has, in fact, little, if any competition and the growth of the W. P. of A. in 1924 Editor’s Note.—In sending in the above contribution to the first issue} will be an accuarte guide to the pro- policy of government ownership of'of “The Daily, Worker,” Clement Wood encloses a note wishing the Daily' gress made by the American work- “Good Luck.” freight car and sentenced to ninety days of work in the swamps owned by a‘lumber company. How he con- |tracts fever, is brutally beaten by| Th the overseer, who when ordered to release the boy is told by a “trusty” he is dead, and who subsequently sets fire to the stockade where the prisoners are chained in for the night, furnish the chief points of the picture.” Then comes the rub. “A good patriotic note is sounded by the ap- pearance of the commander of the American Legion Post through whose fforts the villains are brought to justice.” : This is propaganda with a venge- ance. We object to propaganda— it would have been true to life if they had made the Legion commander the owner of the lumber camp, and! had the rescue pulled by some trade |‘ unign organizers—with a few epilogue “shots” of the Communist Common- wealth for a finale, The producers of the picture may without the hokum ending they would never have gotten it by the movie | trust or the censors. The journal tells the exhibitor, “The patriotic jangle and the happy ending, with | the boy restored to his weeping mother, may lighten the theme enough to put it over for you.” | Not even the use of a Florida ‘Legion Commander as an_ instru- | ment of social progress is too much ‘for the purveyers of movie hokum. \Its all right in reel life. But this ‘story is based on REAL life. That |boy, Martin Tabert, was flogged to death in a Florida camp, and when’ he died he stayed dead. There was no, “return to his weeping mother” up on a North Dakota farm waiting for the boy’s earnings to pay the interest on the mortgage. Nine-tenths of the film is worth support, the other tenth can be neu- tralized by being shown up for the bunk it is. The American workers, through effective political and indus- trial organization, could dictate 4 argue, with much justice, too, ul the terms of their film entertainm We need more that tell the story of Labor’s sa to profit and of the struggle to be free. Now they are not for us uffless mixed with a strong dose of plute propaganda poison, 2 HL URNS TUN IRC Er oe mE re tee “Anna Christie,” Eugene O’Neil’s powerful drama, has been made into a splendid film by Thomas H. Ince. fe producer is credited with a faithful rendition’ of the play in story, setting and action by the National Board? of Review. That is saying a. good deal. The heroine is a girl who has be- come a woman of the streets at the age of twenty, her father a worth- less old coal-barge captain and her lover a_ shipwrecked stoker. The life of common workers is the material of which the play and film are made and all who are weary of the customary film twaddle will be refreshed by this departure from the ordinary run. ing class as a whole. [oe ee The Workers Dramatic Club extends its felicita- tions and brotherly greet- ings to the first organ of the class conscious revolu- tionary working class, The Daily Worker. Don’t be a “Yes, But,” supporter of The Daily Worker. Send in your sub- seription at once. i MEN, \WWOMEN ann BOOKS LEAR-THINKING, honest, imagina- tive, altruistic and tirelessly working: men and women will have their great pa in the remaking of the world. Good books of all ages help to de- velop and equip such people. We try to sell such books. THE WALDEN BOOK SHOP 307 PLYMOUTH COURT. Near Dearborn and Jackson CHICAGO — ———