The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 26, 1924, Page 11

Brass and Cash Whatever one may say of our own capitalist class, no matter how much one may denounce the American employers, all must agree that our capitalists at least have the brass. And that is why they have the cash, too. This seems to be the era of super-bonuses for the powerful capitalists by the Govern- ment. A person, nowadays, doesn’t get the chance to put away his paper and finish read- ing about one huge grant by the Government than another edition of the same newspaper is rushed to him with the story of a new and more gigantic bonus given to the bossing class. Of course, there always follows an investi- gation to serve as a sort of a moral blanket to hide the multitude of sins that are committed in such profitable transactions. Now it is another shipping steal. The Ship- ping Board has just sold seven high grade ships, of the President type, to the labor-hat- ing Dollar Steamship Company of @alifornia for:less than four million dollars. These ships cost the American workers and farmers $30,- 000,000. Then the steamship Los Angeles was sold to the Los Angeles Steamship Company for $100,000 after the Shipping Board wisely invested close to three million dollars merely for installing improvements on it. This surely looks like good business. It un- doubtedly is a monument to that oft-heralded capitalist virtue of private enterprise. Then, to seal these profitable contracts to the capi- talists, Chairman Farley. of the Shipping Board hands in his resignation. The matter is closed. The last prayer of the departin'z Chairman Farley is that the details of the con- tracts cannot be made public because such publicity might injure the companies in com- petition with their foreign rivals. This is a mighty clever game, isn’t it? When you haven’t a leg to stand on, call in the flag, national pride, and what not. Patri- otism still is the last refuge of the worst scoun- drels. Our capitalists and their lickspittles in their Government at Washington surely have the brass to commit such brazen holdups in broad daylight. But that is precisely why they have the cash, and own the government, body and soul. When will the workers and farmers kick these capitalist buccaneers into the alleys of history? . eye ao e Civilizing Porto Rico Many of us may recall that one of .the les- sons most forcefully impressed upon us in our school days was that the United States alone of the nations of the world played the role of the Good Samaritan towards its weaker neigh- bors. The pictures given us of the happy lands we made out of the Philippines, Hawaii, Cuba and Porto Rico are still green in our memories. Now, since this is the open season for inves- tigation, let us do a bit of prying into some of these beautiful pictures painted for us by our poor school teachers, who very often uncon- sciously propagate the most poisonous impe- rialist frauds. Let us take, for example, one of these lands made happy by our marines. bluejackets, or khaki boys. ; Taking a 'zood look at Porto Rico, which has been in the brutal grip. of the ugly civilizing hand of Wall Street for twenty-five years, we find a totally different picture from what we were given by our good-hearted teachers in school. Tho the Stars and Stripes proudly wave over Porto Rico, more than half of its children of school age are not in school. More than half of its population of ten years and over are illiterate. Most of the peeple, the working masses, live in thatched huts having wretched sanitation. The seasonal require- ments of the American capitalist-controiled sugar and tobacco crops have created a great group of migratory workers who have no homes of their own, are almost completely dispossessed. Their children are deprived of the slightest opportunity of bang educated. The steady rise and Be cing mage the great sugar and tobacco tations Wall Street, are driving the poor a ae nel the grazing and agricultural areas and mak- ing them wage-slaves in the worst sense of the word. Translating these miserable conditions for which the exploitation ‘of Porto Rico by our imperialists is to a large extent responsible into the sufferings of the every day life of the workers we find that the death rate here is. about twice as high as it is in the United States. The hospital conditions are deplor- able. Rickets (mulnutrition), tuberculosis, malaria and hookworm are reaping a bumper crop amongst the exploited masses. Yet our imperialist historians will swear themselves blue in the face that we are civiliz- ing Porto Rico. And they are right. Capital- ist civilization invincibly translates itself into fabulous profits for the capitalists and ghastly misery for the workers. Nailing Their Own Hides The political atmosphere of Washington is reeking with graft and corruption. One can hardly walk a street in the Capitol without being in danger of walking into some news sewer, without being splashed by the filth of some exposure. “Smelling committees” are on the job inves- tigating every thing under the sun and almost every section of the great green globe of ours. Picking up a Washington evening paper one finds the followin instructive headlines: “Sen- ator Walsh Infers Fall is Grafter’; “Senator Pokes Fun at Polar Flight”; “McKellar Flays Traction Companies on Fares”; “Hughes Gives Data in Soviet Inquiry”; Wood, in Fear, Lets Up on Filipinos.” What’s all this terrific noise about? Why are these “gentlemen” and senior and junior senators from Maine to California going after each other hammer and tongs? Why are they trying to nail each other’s hide on the door of their own political shanties? There must be some deep going reason for senators to look into matters ranging from Moscow to the Philippines and from poor ‘Washington street cars to oil wells in Wyoming. The facts are these: A national election is on our heels. There is a great volume of dis- content. The capitalist political parties of all shades and stripes are now vieing with each other in the game of throwing mud in order to capitalize as much of this discontent as possi- ble for the sake of getting control of the gov- ernment administrative machinery out of the hands of one capitalist political clique and info the hands of another employing class clique. The variety and number of the inves- tigations, investigators and investigated only reflect the present conflicting interests among the various layers of the ruling class. The vagueness and indistinctness of the present rifts within these sections of the owning class of the country is best mirrored in the chaos and genera] purposelessness of the whole puppet show now going on in Washington. But let no one take these fights too seriously, important as they are. None of these capi- talist politicians is willing and ready to go out to swing the axe against the system responsible for this diseased condition. They are only “pailing each other’s hides for their immediate petty party advantages. They will go thus far and no further. British Colonial Problem Followers of Zaghoul Pasha, whom the Eng-|* lish rulers of Egypt have kept in jail until re- cently, have been returned as a majority in the Egyptian parliament. In India, the followers of Nahatma Gandhi, || who is likewise experiencing the blessings of British democracy in prison, despite almost im- possible restrictions on their suffrage, have piled up a majority in the Indian ‘zovernment. | All of which would indicate that Great Britain would have to inaugurate a new colo- I nial pelicy and weaken the empire or lose some | yao ween likewise Baw the om oa J. Thomas, the new colo secretary. is going to have his hands full of a number of things. I —— Join the ‘Workers Party! Look toY our Neighbor’s Reading! Next in importance to your own reading is your neigh- bor’s reading. It is true that what we read determines what we know and what we know determines how we live.. If we are to progress in applying our knowledze, however, it is also necessary for our neighbors and our friends to interpret correctly what is happening all about us. Buy a copy of the Liber- ator from your newsstand dealer for 20c. When you finish reading it hand it to your neighbor or shopmate or give it to a friend. Send for three copies (50c) to pass on in this way or to place where the paper is cer- tain to be seen or read. Two months ago we car- ried an open letter in the Liberator calling for 50,000 new subscribers to increase the size of. the magazine to 50 pages. The appreciation of our magazine as demon- strated by the large response to this call is indeed gratify- ing. New subscriptions are coming in large numbers every day. Have you sent in your sub- scription? This month we are making a systematic drive for 10,000 one dollar subscriptions. If you have not yet subscribed to The Liberator, do so now. Stop for a moment to con- sider how often a dollar is wasted. Yet one dollar will get you a six month subscrip- tion to the finest monthly maigazine in the country. The Liberator carries each month the best in the polit- ical, scientific, economic and artistic thought of our day. You will find in it the sort of reading that helps to educate workers to class conscious- ness; that helps them to find their places in the workers’ struggle for political and economic power, for The Liberator is a revolutionary magazine. Subscribe for six months. Get a friend to subscribe. Use this coupon. lo Liberator, 1009 North State Street, Chicago, IL Enclosed find $1.00 for which enter my subscription to the Liberator for six months. ( ) Also send me 3 copies for the 50c enclosed. ( Send me some $1.00 subscrip- tion blanks. I will get some of my friends to subscribe. ( ) Address MOLES D State.......... Seen enn nena eteenartanene Srereneeesereees