The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 21, 1924, Page 6

Page Six VHE DA1LY WORKE R January 21, 1924 THE DAILY WORKER. Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO., 1640 N. Halsted St., Chicago, Ill. (Phone: Linceln 7680.) SUBSCRIPTION RATES By mail: $6.00 per year $3.50..6 months $2,00..8 months By mail (in Chicago only): $8.00 per year $4.50..6 months $2.50. .8 months By carrier: $10.00 per year $1.00 per month Address all mail and make out checks to THE DAILY WORKER 1640 N. Halsted Street J. LOUIS ENGDAHL...... MORITZ J. LOEB Chicago, Illinois . Business Manager Entered as second-class mail Sept. 21, 1923 at the Post- Office at Chicago, Ill., under the act of March 3, 1879. ee Danger Signals for Miners The miners are about to gather in a national convention. There is strike talk in the air. It is a practical certainty that the bituminous miners will demand an increase in pay and im- provement in their conditions of work. The situation is a serious one and the capi- tailsts are preparing for all eventualities. They are preparing for a fight to the finish. Al- ready, the multi-millionaire mining engineer, John Hays Hammond, who headed Hardin'z’s Coal Fact Fixing Commission, is sounding the alarm. Mr. Hammond is yelling vociferously that quick action is needed to prevent a strike. He is now demanding that the Government forthwith establish a permanent Board of In- quiry as a division of the Interstate Commerce Commission. This Board should get to work at once. Should it fail then the Government is to step in and run the mines under “emergency.” An even more open hint to the miners that everything will be done to stop them from striking for higher wages and better working conditions is thrown out by the well-known news agency of Wall Street, the Boston News Bureau. Analyzing the likelihood of a coal strike it says: “If this were not the quadrennial year of ballot- ing, there would be a serious strike beyond much doubt. But enormous pressure will be brought to bear upon the miners, especially in the Central Competitive field, for amicable adjustments of all differences and moderation in demands, and, above all, for avoidance of any organized effort to union- ize the West Virginia fields.” This is the plainest sort of talk from the highest oracles of Big Business on the eve of a strike. The miners’ convention would do well to heed these warnings. Two of their most powerful leaders, John L. Lewis and Frank Farrington, are prominent republicans. Far- Advertising rates on application. On Receding Chins That the people of the United States are faced with the possibility of degenerating into a race characterized by the receding chin, made famous by the comic strip cartoonist in Andy Gump, is the warning sent out by the Chicago Dental Society at its sixteenth annual convention. The statement issued by the den- tists claims that most of the ills-of the body | are traceable to infected teeth and gums. Faith in the pronouncements of those whose profession it is to tinker with broken down human machinery is rather shaky in an age when even the medical profession is so com- mercialized as it is today. While we do not minimize the dangers confronting the U. S., should the scanty chin fraternity grow in num- bers, we are frank to confess that we are still more afraid of the type with the receding forehead and the protuding paunch. If the brain cavity of the average American was capable of housing a more liberal supply of gray matter it is quite likely that those who produce the wealth which enables parasites to live in comparative ease, would be in a posi- tion to look after their bodies and organize a society so that the preservation of health would be considered of greater importance than the accumulation of wealth. ‘We learn that here in our Chicago public schools with 372,191 pupils there are only five full time dental hygiene teachers, tho the rec- ommeundation is for 236. Our capitalist masters will willingly spend millions for war and destruction but while they like to boast and heave out their civic chests with pride over their public spirit; while they endow operas and other institutions that bring them renown and publicity, they leave the akong grata proper care and their parents without the necess mean ~ vide for them. mid uatinreuuderes The trumpet blast of the dentists may sen potential ‘Andy Gumps scurrying to shoo torture chambers and it ‘may bring home to parents the necessity for more attention to child hygiene, but under the social system that sends little children under six into the mills and the sweatshop hells of the great cities it is utopian to expect that a dentist’s warning i the chin in its retreat toward Adam’s The French Impasse President Poincare, in urging postponement of the economic measures until Tuesday, said in the Chamber of Deputies that no. new charges of taxation could be imposed “except by preventing anyone from defrauding the state, which is committing criminal sacrilege.” (Continued from page 1) given their share for the first Com- munist daily newspaper. That was achievement, that was the ion of the victory of our revolution. The American workers must regard their work from this angle. The labor moyement in America is |comparatively very young. American capitalism is the strongest in the ; whole world. “We know that your aid, American working comrades, will perhaps not as yet come quickly at all, as the Re- volution proceeds in different forms and in varying tempo in the various countries (and it cannot be other- wise).” So wrote Comrade Lenin on Aug. 20, 1918, in his well known “Letter to the American Workers.” Since then five years have gone by. In stood. isolated in thé working class of America, Today the situation is different. Through the efforts of the best of the American revolution- ists considerable influence has been won for Communism within broad laboring masses of America. The first successes came with varticular difficulty. In further successes the ae will doubtlessly go more quick- ly. It is quite natural for the Ameri- can Communists to concentrate their aativity above all in the working class, in its trade unions. From here only was it possible to begin the work of revolutionary enlightenment of the American working class and its assembling under the banner of Com- munism. The successes which the American Communists have had hitherto in the trade unions (concern- tration of the left wing) ean in’ no way be called little. But it is yet more important that the American Communists were able, among the first, to broach and give impetus to the question of work among the small farmers. This fact testifies best of all to the great vitality of American Communism. You should not conceal from your- selyes the truth that even in a few Sections of the International, the traditional Social Democratic attitude toward the farmers is still very strong. The Communist Interna- tional was born from the womb of the Second International. It is no wonder that individual Communist parties still pay heavy tribute to the Social Democratic traditions, espe- cially in the question of the attitude towards the farmers. The social Democratic parties of the Second In- ternational even in their best days, were in essence guild parties, which did not set themselves to the fight for the partial improvement of the condition of the working class within 1918 the American Communist Party |. attitude towards the farmers, Not so long ago, we had the op- portunity to speak with some promi- nent comrades of the Communist movement of Roumania. The Rouman- ian comrades have won over the ma- jority of the trade unions. They deserve renown and honor for this. Their merit is especially great for the reason that they have to carry on their work under constant oppres- sion by the united big landowners, capitalists and yellow Social Demo- crats. Dozens of Roumanian Com- munists were shot, or were tortured in Roumanian prisons, Many lan- guished in life-imprisonment. Every comrade risks his head for ordinary Communist agitation. To win over a majority in the trade unions under such circumstances deserves great merit. But from conversations with the same Roumanian comrades it be- came clearly apparent that our com- rades do not yet understand the tasks of revolutionary work among the farmers. And this in a country like Roumania where the majority of the population consists of farmers! Just such an attitude you will fre- quently find in other parties as well. The work among the workers, in the trade unions, is a habitual thing to us; in this work we feel at home. But as for work among the farmers, we forget that. That is the situation in such countries as Italy, where the farmer population preponderates. Owing to the same attitude, the mis- takes of the Bulgarian Communists were in a considerable degree brought to light in due course of time. The first international farmer con- ference which took place a short time back in Moscow has produced a greater echo than any of us could) have expected, especially in Ger- many (because the situation in gen- eral is most revolutionary there) and, as we hear, in America also. Already it is quite apparent now that the calling of it has cost, will be re- payed a hundred fold. Whoever wants to help the Com- munist Party to become, not a guild organization which defends only the narrow class interests of the working class, but a party of proletarian rev- olution, of Socialist upheaval, of the hegemony of the working class, must, after the establishment of a party of workers, direct its attention also to the winning over of the far: In this respect the American Com- munists first felt out the new path. The American Communists helped to create the Federated Farmer-La- bor Party (preserving, to be sure, their Communist proletarian Party as an independent organization.) Not everywhere, and not always, will precisely this form prove the most suitable. But in any case the expe- Zinoviev to the Communists of America the six years of the proletarian revo- lution can be attributed essentially to the same thing: one (very small) part of the comrades underestimate even now the role of the farmers, and do not understand the tremend- ously revolutionary and at the same time immensely realistic policy to- wards the farmers which Bolshevism, embodied thru Lenin, had already contributed to this problem as far back as twenty years ago. Let: the American comrades with still greater energy labor to win, be- fore all, the hearts of the American proletaniat, to free the American working class and its labor unions from the tenacious deadly embraces of Gompers and other agents of capi- tal. But let the foremost American workers with unswerving energy, la- bor at the same time to attract the ternational movement. The under-estimation of the role of the farmers is the fundamental original sin of international Menshe- vism. The essence of Bolshevism consists just in this, that it has clothed with flesh and blood the idea of dic- tatorship of the proletariat, that it has begun to transform into actual- ity the hegemony of the working class in the revolution, and precisely for that very reason it seeks an ally ‘in the propertyless farmers who, with correct tactics on our part, will ‘aid the proletariat to fulfill its his- torical mission. The chief differences between the Russian Bolsheviki and Mensheviki could, in the final analysis, be brought down to the question of the farmers. Even the “left” Menshe- viki, in 1905, although they imagined that they were more left than the Bolsheviki, did not understand the significance of the farmer. movement. rington was once a member of the Republican the framework of capitalism. This this first international farmer con-|and in fact spoke an opportunist’ lan- rience gained in this respect in Amer-farmers over to the side of the work- Jers. At the first opportunity the American comrades must establish a special mass Communist newspaper designed for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of small farmers. experience which you are going thru in having helped to create the Feder- ated Farmer-Labor Party is being followed attentively by every Com- munist in Europe and in the whole world. Every success of yours fills us all with pride. “We know that the European pro- letarian revolution will, perhaps, not develop as yet in the next few weeks, however quickly it may have ripened of late. We stake on the inevita- biblity of the world revolution, but that does not mean that we, like fools, stake. on the inevitability of the revolutions in our country, 1905 and 1917, and we know that revo- lutions are not made to order, nor by agreement. . . . Notwithstanding that, we know that we are invinci- ble . . . for the world proletarian revolution is invincible. So wrote Comrade Lenin in the let- ter mentioned by us above. You will undoubtedly agree with us, com- If all new expenditures are abandoned, the National Committee. The need for action is ‘ ‘ premier continued, the financial crisis can be urzent: The danger of a surrender to the coal guild Menshevist can still be per-|ference will have tremendous signi- . Almost all the conflicts |rades, that these words of the teacher ceived mostly in the question of the ficance, and that the efforts which among the Russian Bolsheviki during |remain fully and entirely in force, =>. magnates is great. Only the’ miners’ conven- tion can save the situation. Thru the Backdoor “Hell-and-Maria” General Dawes is trying to make a strong impression on Europe. Tot- tering capitalist Europe needs lots of blood and iron just now and our Holy Trinity of Bank- er-Generals can be counted upon to do some vital instilling. The job assigned to Dawes, Young and Robinson is much bigger than the task of look- ing into German finances, tho that in itself is a herculean attempt. As a matter of fact victor- ious France needs about as much diagnosis and perhaps as major an operation as van- quished Germany does. The French Govern- ment is face to face with bankruptcy. This desperate condition can no longer be hidden from the world. Poincare’s government is paying out in interest a huge proportion of its revenues. At the present rate it will take only about six years for the French Government tc spend all of its revenues on interest payments. Needless to say the European capitalists are seeing the handwriting on the wall unless America’s mizhty financial and industrial over- Jords again run to their rescue. In order to get the United States to step in as their savior, European capitalists are resorting to front and back-door methods. They are not only making outright appeals for Wall Street’s help, but they are also sending over much of their own capital to invest in American industries. ‘ ‘fhe British capitalists are experienced at this game. They know that heavy investments in our industries will enable them to wield a tremendous influence on American foreign pol- icy and politics. It was the great extent to which English capitalists had their capital in- vested in American industries along side of our own capitalists that helped them precipitate America’s entry into the World War. The recent offer of serveral big Southern Power Corporations, having large British capital in- vested in them, for Muscle Shoals indicates clearly that Great Britain has definitely launched a campaign to draw America into the European maelstrom. Much additional capital would be needed by these Southern | Power interests to utilize the Muscle Shoals grant and British capital is undoubtedly at hand to help realize the deal. Thus this back- door inroad on American economic power is a political event of international import. Mrs. A. Montgomery Ward, wife of the mail order king, had the pleasure of 'ziving a check for a million dollars to North Western Univer- sity. How many underfed girl-slaves of the mail order baron went to an early grave, in order to give the millionaire’s wife the pleasure of appearing in the guise of a pubile bene- ? ° overcome and the tranc stabilized. “Criminal sacrilege” and “defrauding the state” are phrases which Premier Poincare should use sparingly for under this head might, with the change in sentiment which is taking place among the French population, come the military loans to Poland, Czecho- Slovakia and other vassal states. The admission of the spokesman of French imperialism that all new expenditures must be abandoned is deeply significant. It means that French finance has at last come to an im- passe. The French hegemony of Europe de- pends upon ever larger and larger advances for military purposes, for subsidizing such ad- ventures as the separatist movements in. the Rhineland and Palatinate and for maintaining intact the propaganda bureaus and semi-offi- cial organizations of French imperialism. These constant drains on the treasury can be met only by increased taxation and an in- creased taxation and an increase in taxation means the end of the Poincare government. German reparations and the Russian debt have not materialized and disillusionment is spreading rapidly thruout France. From now until the April elections both the French political and financial crisis will be- come more critical as the consequences of the imperialistic debauch become more and more apparent. These be tough days for governments. Brotherly Co-Operation The twin brother of “Al” Woods, specialist in the production of bedroom and bathroom farces, has made so much money in the manu- facture of handkerchiefs that he has retired and presented his factory to two of the hired neh incident will be used by the capitalist press to show that wonderful opportunities are ahead of every American boy and that faithful service is surg of reward. Outside of the fact that the factory was not given to those who served by making handker- chiefs but to a couple of salesmen the interest- ing thing is the fact that so much money could be made in the handkerchief business. Having witnessed a couple of performances of the Woods productions while temporarily demented we are able to come forward with an explanation. sold handkerchiefs to all the people who had | to hold them to their noses while watching a performance of ‘The Demi-Virgin” or ‘“Get- ting Gertie’s Garter.” At least Hiram Johnson hopes so. think of it? “Al's” twin brother merely The storm in the Teapot Dome may halt Calvin Coolidge in his race for the Presidency’ Now that Hiram’s friend, Harry Daugherty, is involved we wonder what will the California Senator] employed and part time Seive sums which are eee Germany In the course of the. last month, Germany was shaken by an unheard of economic crisis. Like an iron wall the ruin of the mark separates Ger- many from thesforeign countries and separates producers and consumers within Germany. The refusal of many small and big businessmen to accept paper marks as payment, completely suffocates the working masses, the unemployed, and workers on part time. The continuous fall of the mark did not only destroy all fundamentals of a future stable mark, but brought about the com- plete collapse of the provisionment of the big cities with food. Starva- tion took on gigantic dimensions. Un- employed marched’ in closed ranks to the markets and shops. The so- called unemployment dole is so small that in many cases the unemployed refused to accept it. Thus, for in- stance, recently in Dusseldorf, 132,- 000 unemployed jointly refused the starvation dole. They were to re- ceive 164 billion marks, while one liter of milk costs 144 billion. Un- employment has increased immensely in the course of the last weeks. Two million eight hundred thousand are unemployed and of these, a million ‘and a half are in the occupied terri- tory, besides, there are at least the same number of part-time workers with two or three days’ work a week. In all parts of the country there are every day most serious collisions with the police. In one single day in Berlin over 1,000 bakeries were plun- dered. As the government stop} «he control on the price of bread, the bread became unpurchasable for the masses. Tha vriee of « bread of four pounds on cards, that cost in the be- ginning of October 58 muluons, jumped after the abolition of the bread became unpurchasablo for the next day and had reached to over 150 billion by the beginning of No- vember. At the same time the weekly wage of a young worker of the age of 16 in Berlin was about 300 billion, that is, the price of two loaves of bread or one pound of margarine. A car- penter’s apprentice earned in the be- ginning of November on the average of 58 billion a week, that is, two whole eggs. The cont of living for a family of four people increased from two - lion two hundred thonsand fold | the pre-war time to 423 lion six hundred million fold from the beginning of September to No- vember 10th. According to a a. ment of the chairman of the workers’ union, the timber workers of the province of Branden re- ceived on the 15th _ of Octo! weekly want of one billion, the price of two loaves of bread, wages of the full-time workers the highest, 10 to 15 per cent pre-war wages. ‘The millions t | in fertilizer. per cent of these miserable wages. One gets a picture of the chaos of prices if one compares the prices of German and English coal. One ton of- Engiish coal cost in the beginning of October, 24.54 gold marks, while Westphalian coal could not be pur- chased for less than 52 gold marks. Including the transport expenses, the English coal was 30 per cent cheaper than the German. The pauperization of the broadest masses of the former so-called mid- dle class has also advanced consider- ably. Ninety per cent of the middle class are today proletarianized. It recruits itself from people of the so-called free professions, officials, traders and businessmen, small pen- sioners, ete. Driven to despair by starvation and misery, every day members of the middle class commit suicide. News. like the following can found in the press almost daily: i “Yesterday even past 8 o'clock, the 60 year old Professor Kurt Fink of , Wuster- mark, committed suicide in the laboratory in the house at Blue- cherstrass 67, by poisoning him- self with gas. Need has driven the scientist to this desperate step. His whole fortune consisled of not quite 1,000 marks.” One can frequently find. that prominent scientists sell papers on the street, are bank couriers or shop walkers in department stores. From the more than 10,000 Berlin students more than 60 per cent are compelled ped | to earn their living as factory work- ers, clerks, bank couriers or very frequently as waiters. PGs The standard of living of the mid- die class is decreased to one-fifth of Reaches the Bottom of Misery the pre-war standard. Actually 2 skilled worker, in spite of his miser- ble situation, earns considerably more than these proletarianized “bet- ter circles.” The cases, in which people from these circles become insane as a con- sequence of economic need, become more and more frequent.. In one month alone the Berlin police an- nounces more than 77 insane, “most- ly victims of the serious economic need.” In the same time there were 151 suicides. The housing need among the broadest masses of the working popu- lation is indescribable. In July (in summer month) the Municipal Lodging House in Berlin, was visited by 69,777 male and 5,070 female per- sons as against 40,463 and 8,299 in The state of health of the working class youth is appalling. Rickets has ing about half spread in a horrible degree. Accord- ing to the report of the Health In- surance in Dortmund, 27.8% of the children under six months, 41.1% of those from six months to one year, 40.2% of those from one to one year and a half, 32.1% of those up to two years and 59% of those over two years have rickets. In other towns the situation is similar. According to reports of the National Health Bureau, of the children in the ele- mentary schools of 20 industrial towns. 42.5% were seriously under- nourished and 10 per cent. were very seriously undernourished, Of 100 pupils of the elementary schools in Hamburg, 42 had no ordi- nary shoes, 31 no ordinary shirt, 33 no ordinary soe’s, 44 no ordinary handkerchief. The lack of teaching the year before, in the same month. |. material in the schools has so serious on account of the continu- ous depreciation of money, that up to 60% of the pupils can no longer buy the necessary text books, Lumber Workers’ Union Grows, Nearly 2,000 timber workers in Maine and New Hampshire have joined the organization since last July, according to a statement from the headquarters of Lumber Work- ers’ Industrial union here. The men are_employed by contractors operat- ing for pulp mills. M4ine leads the country in pulpwood production, > The Poor Fish says: Under com- munism we would have no poor on which to expend charity. The milk of human kindness would run dry in the channels of equality. aN SS “Government Chemists Make Big Discovery By LELAND OLDS, (Federated Press Industrial Editor.) Who says that public ownership stifles individual initiative and that the grab-it-all motive is necessary to bring out inventive ability? Just ask such a person to step up and examine the record-of the U. 8, department of agriculture. It doesn’t. get much advertising in the metropolitan press. Of course not. The big papers aren’t jn business to furnish the opponents of profiteering with ammunition. Just now come the department of agriculture chemists with a discovery for obtaining nitrogen from the air which will make large scale produc- Ala., possible. tion in such plants as the U. S, gov- ernment nitrate plant at Sheffield, You know what that will mean to the farmers. Nitrogen is one of the most important elements Hitherto it has been Twelve years 4 she had to import 65 per cent of the nitrogen she con- sumed, Last year Germany operated fixation plants on such a scale that she became almost free of the need for importation and it is predicted bit will soon be exporting large quan- tities. Present consumptian of nitrogen in fertilizers .in the United States is about 200,000 tons a year, juc- tion of cheap fertilizer would largely increase this amount and would stop the steady deterioration of our farms which is one of the causes of the farmers’ present distress. The an-| nual loss of nitrogen from our soil is figured at from 3,000,000 to 4,000,- 000 tons. » So the discovery made by mere} government chemists actuated by sci- entific interest and a desire to per- form a necessary service is of im- mense dupont stee for they have not Kos any known perfected of manufac- and the profit motive come in? It will come in all right. Some big capi- talist or capitalist combine will ts i oka titaa into leasing or selling the people’s ni plants and the fhetuivts formula with them, on the vague promise that the government will get the use of them in time of war. Then the profit The production of nitrogen will be kept down enough to keep prices and profits up. And the farmers’ hope of cheap fertilizer will fade. aay Perhaps the government chemists Mm have made the greatest progress in ‘discovering the process without need of the grab-it-all motive would also be the best bet when it comes to big the a5 to bacidakeg and 0) jople’s nitrogen fixa- tion plants at Muscle Shoals and else- where, It would certainly relieve the ional record 3 of a great load ite bok coe