The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 7, 1924, Page 6

Page Six THE DAILY WORKER ~ ' THE DAILY WORKER. Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO., 1640 N. Halsted St., Chicago, IIL (Phone: Lincoln 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 Sh hah ll AAS YE RERUN Sa LO EI Address all mail and make out checks to THE DAILY WORKER 1640 N. Halsted Street J. LOUIS ENGDAHL. WILLIAM F. DUNNE MORITZ J. LOEB. Entered second-class mail Sept. 21, 1928 at the Post- Office ae Chicngs, Ill, under the act of March 3, 1879. e % Gompers In Panama Brother Samuel Gompers has wanted to visit the Canal Zone for a long time and the Portland convention of the American Federa- tion of Labor gave him the opportunity to do it in an official capacity. Brother Gompers journeyed to the Canal Zone and made a speech to the assembled gov- ernment employees. We are certain of some things that were said by Brother Gompers be- cause they were given much approving com- ment by labor journals which are his staunch supporters. Otherwise we would have picked them as utterances of the unctuous Mr. Hughes, our well-known secretary of state. For the edification of our readers we reproduce one of these Gompersian gems: I suggest this thought to you—be well prepared physically to protect the canal against any enemy. The greatest danger is not from without, the greatest menace is that of a discontent within. What is an essential requisite is that the men and women working and living in this Zone shall be so thoroly devoted to the spirit of the canal, the purpose of the canal—not merely its commercial value, but its value as an outpost and protector of our insti- tutions and our civilization and anything and everything that contributes toward the acceleration of that spirit, the exuber- ance of that spirit should be done to in- spire a devotion to these ideals and pur- poses, making permanent forever and ever the advance of the American ideals of civilization. We defy anyone to show any difference in thought in this rhetorical Koh-i-Noor from the public pronouncements of Otto Kahn, Elbert H. Gary, Charles Schwab, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge or any of our vociferous impe- rialists. Such sentiments are merely our old friend Deutschland ueber Alles, translated into sé for more palatable consumption by the populace. In practice they provide a General Wood in the Philippines, a General Smedley Butler in Haiti—the instruments by which is made “permanent forever and ever the advance of the American ideals of civiliza- tion.” Millions of bankrupt farmers, child labor, injunctions, soaring prices, unemployment, a Teapot Dome scandal, are sufficient proof that American ideals—which can be nothing else than the ideals of the ruling class—are some- thing that are brought out for those special occasions when a great skepticism is abroad in the land and the rulers feel a little uneasy. It is no accident that Samuel Gompers at such a time voices the catch-phrases of Amer- ican imperialism in one of its most important outposts. Profits and Human Life Forty-three miners were trapped and drowned when the bottom fell out of a pond and floodéd a mine in Crosby, Minnesota, ad- ding another tragedy to the many resulting from criminal negligence of American mine owners and of the government, whose duty it is to see that the necessary precautions are taken to safeguard the lives of the workers. Under the profit system hundreds of thou- sands are needlessly sacrificed every year to Mammon. The capitalists care little for the lives of workers who roll up their profits. The wage-slave does not cost the employer any- thing in the form of an investment. The worker comes to the boss and offers his labor-power for sale. The boss purchases it and at the end of the day or the week pays back that slave in wages a portion of the value he created for his master. This enables the slave to go to the nearest hot-dog emporium and secure some fodder that will give him back some of the energy he expended in enriching the boss. If the slave swallows a pup’s tooth or a cat’s claw, treacherously hidden under the skin of a frankfort and goes to the happy hunting ground, five or six perfectly sound wage- slaves will be fighting for the job he left after him on the following day. Wage-slaves being cheap the boss does not feel much concern over their tenure of life or the conditions under which they work, unless forced to do so by the organized power of the workers. He resists to the last any effort on the part of the workers to make their wishes count in the manner of their employment. He calls it “interfering with his right to run his property as he sees fit.” In his opinion the workers should have nothing at all to say as to how they should be employed. Wherever the workers are not organized their wages are lower and their work performed under greater hazard than where they are organized. Even : unions are recognized conditions are a a ‘ Chicago, Mlinois aesieee Editor Labor Editor iness Manager Advertising rates on application. In Crosby, Minn., the men had no union. While in that section last summer the writer investigated the conditions under which the miners worked and found them deplorable. They were completely at the mercy of the boss. Any miner who showed a desire to form a union, if discovered, was summarily dis- charged. We now see the result. The miners without organization were not able to compel the employer to protect them against the dan- ger which rested overhead and the inevitable happened. There may be another investigation. Some- body wlil be blamed and the incident will be soon forgotten. But so long as the capitalist system exists human life—that of the workers —will be held cheap, because the capitalist system is concerned alone with profit. The workers must organize in order to proteg:t their lives now against the criminal greed of the bosses and to ultimately abolish the capi- woe system and establish workers’ rule in its stead. A Slimy Turncoat One of the slickest political vaudeville ar- tists now doing big time on the Gompers cir- cuit, is John L. Walker, president of the Illinois Federation of Labor and former socialist and farmer laborite. For long a believer in inde- pendent working class political action he had the honor and esteem of the class conscious workers of the state of Illinois and of thou- sands thruout the country who looked on him as one of those who would bring the labor movement out of the political quicksands into ieee the fatal policy of Samuel Gompers has ed it. But Walker’s conversion is now complete. No reformed roue, has ever thumped his craw in repentance for his past sins with more mock sincerity than his political pulpit pounder who now wears sack cloth and ashes for the sin of having ever aided and abetted in inducing the wage slaves to rise to their feet, stand erect and tell the political parties of capitalism to go to hell. At.the last meeting of the Chica'go Federa- tion of Labor, Walker bleated loud and long, and the burden of his effort was that the workers should vote for the best man no mat- ter on what ticket he ran, ad nauseam. John Fitzpatrick, one of the parents of the Farmer- Labor movemet, sat silently by while his poli- tical baby was being assassinated. The only Vigorous defenders of the labor party movement today are the communists. The workers will soon learn that shysters like Walker have given up the fight, not because they have changed their opinions, but because they have followed the line of least resistance into the camp of the capitalists and their labor lieutenants. The labor party movement is marching on and the ranting of turncoats of the Walker type will not stop it. Barometer of Politics It’s an old story that there is a mighty close connection between the ballot box and the balance sheet. The energetic campaigns waged by our legislative wizards prove that. But the most eloquent proof of the unity of the Stock Exchange and the White House is af- forded by several angles of the Teapot Dome Steal. When Fall was negotiating the deal with his generous friend, Harry Sinclair, the Harding administration and its millionaire cabinet were in their glory. The Stock Exchange was a most accurate barometer of the progress of the negotiations and reflected the politics of the affair very vividly. In checking up the transactions in Sinclair Oil stocks on the New York Exchange between January 1st, 1922, and April 18th of that year, one finds that the 4,491,000 shares of capital common stock outstanding in this period in- creased about $16 a piece or a total of about $71,000,000. The lease was drawn up in Sin- clair’s New York office on April 3rd and signed in Washington on April 7th, 1922. On April 18th, the Department of Interior pub- licly admitted that the lease was consum- mated. An analysis shows that between these two dates the Sinclair stock advanced about nine points or about $40,000,000 for the entire capital stock. . While the secret negotiations were going on, trading in Sinclair Oil stock was unsteady and moderate. Once the lease was signed Sinclair shares were at a premium on the Exchange. An examination of the New York Stock Ex- change records discloses the most instructive information on this point. In January, 1923, only 193,800 shares changed hands;. but in April the total sales reached the dizzy height of 1,203,800. This high point was 25 per cent above the total capitalization of the company. From April 1st to June 1st of 1922, the shares rose from $24 to $38.75 a piece. These cold figures may yet tell a hot story of the dealings of many prominent Congress- men, Senators and Cabinet officers. Of course, there is a likelihood that many of our Washing- ton heroes had their friends, office boys and other unknown people buy Sinclair stock for them in order to avoid detection in a possible investigation. This is an old trick. But the above figures alone are irrefutable evidence that the Stock Exchange is the best barometer of our national politics today. The recognition of Soviet Russia by the Labor Party government of Great Britain will undoubtedly be taken by Brother Gompers as additional proof of the unmitigated evil of independent class political action. February 7, 1924 “To Make Mexico Civilized” By CONRAD LUIS GRASS (A Veteran of the Spanish-American War) A Neotel menace of United States in- tervention in Mexico is close, very close. * And this intervention is not aimed solely at Mexico, but has the other aim, of distracting the workers of this country and keeping them be- fuddled concerning their own wel- fare and interest. Our government’s intervention in the Philippines reeks of blood, mur- der, torture, rape, treachery, and all the crimes the Kaiser and his clique of militarists were accused of by our respectable financeers, war mongers and gullible citizens. The interven- tion in the Philippines has almost evaporated from the minds of the American people, and those who are planning to garrison the Mexican re- public with American soldiers, would rather let it evaporate entirely. Let us read some of the pages which tell of that imperialist ad- venture in the Philippines. Here is the testimony of Richard O’Brien, formerly of Company M., 26th Volunteers: “It was the 27th-of December, 1901, the anniversary of my birth and I shall never forget the scenes I witnessed that day as long as I live and even beyond, into eternity. “As we approached the town, the word was passed along the line that there would be no prisoners taken. We were told to shoot every living thing in sight. “The noise of our firing brought the villagers of their doors. They made no hostile move, they had no weapons in their hands, they made no offensive show, but they were shot down like so many dogs. A “We used dum-dum bullets. They are split at the nose and when they come in contact with anything, they flatten out and wherever a Filipino These atrocities were excused by the their Independence andgFreedom. se was hit, you could shove your fist thru the wound, “A mother with her babe at her side, pleaded for mercy. She stood in the doorway of her burning home which was fired. It was sure death to come out, it was sure death to remain. “She faced the flames and entered that burning house with her children and, not a hand of ‘our boys in blue’ was raised to save her. The flames enveloped her and her babies, consumed them and turned them into a charred mass. She feared the {soldiers in blue more than she did the devouring flames. “For twenty: miles around that section and district, the order was man, woman and child; and it was ;done. “The commander of that district boasted of it and the words, ‘and it was done’ are his.” How human and gallant! Here is another page: Sergeant Edward and Private Wier go on record and narrate that in April, 1909, they were ordered by ,the commanding officer, Lieutenant ‘Arnold, to torture the prisoners: “We placed the prisoners on their backs and poured ice water down their throat until the body is so dis- tended to cause great suffering, which is intensified by the fear of the victims that their stomach will burst. Pressure then is applied to the pit of the stomach until the water is forced out and expelled thru the mouth, then more water is forced down, “The victims either give up the desired information or die.” These massacres, these murders, these human beings tortured to death, were done for military pur- poses by “our boys in blue” and the army of occupation, to get informa- tion, or guns from the Filipinos. to devastate, destroy and kill every | executives then in office, and coun- tenanced by the United States sen- ate who made the bluff to investigate and punish the guilty. Perhaps the Mexicans will resent our gentle method of civilization and perhaps they are not as docile as the Filipinos and maybe they have civili- zation methods more horrible then we used in the Philippines, country are still civilizing the Philip- pines. There are nasty reports about Governor: Wood, that he carries af- fairs with arrogrant and despotic hand. This is being hushed and the word has gone out to “soft-pedal it.’ The Filipinos were promised inde- penderice long, long ago. It is stilf a promise. But the Mexican, the soldiers in |the field, who are but the citizens, will not be fooled by the extended velvet paw of the United States capi- talists. They saw that paw turned into a mailed fist in the Philippines and they, the Mexicans are wary. These editors who prate interven- tion, know that it will. take 500,000 American soldiers to subjugate the Mexican. They term it Intervention, these gentlemen of the associated press, but they mean—war! bloody war! They mouth, beautiful phrases for “humanity’s sake,” knowing that the sword will spill innocent blood, not only of the Mexican, but the gul- lible American youth, who: will be tricked in the fray, that it will be a great adventure, The Mexican is determined to be free, independent and work out his own salvation. In that determina- tion, he is ready to give up his life. When -the invaders again plant their feet on Mexican soil, they will meet a united front, revolutionists and Federals will appear and all that ithe invaders will meet will be, the junited forces of the Mexican people who will fight to the last man for The Bloody Regime in Bulgaria GOOD picture can be formed of the unspeakable atrocities A against revolting workers and peas-; ants committed by the Fascist Tsan- koff government in Bulgaria, from letters sent to Bulgarian workers living in this country. One letter reads: “You know al- ready that on the 9th day of June, 1923, thru a coup d’etat of the mili- tary clique and the mercenary Mace- donians, the government fell into the hands of the bankrupt capitalist par- ties which in the past, thru their nationalist policies, ruined the Bul- garian nation and burdened the people with heavy and impossible taxes and reparation debts, The same marauders put the Bulgarian people in an unspeakable condition, they forced them to live in the mountains, filled up the prisons and created mili- tary courts to prosecute and perse- cute them, believing that, by this means, they can destroy the Bulgar- ian National Peasants’ Federation—' a powerful national unit which has under its flag one-half of the Bulgar-: ian people—and, after that, under- took to destroy the Communist Party by mass arrests of all their most prominent members and by killing ‘others without warning, all of which started on September 12, 1923, at 6 p. m. “This action of the government deeply provoked the Bulgarian peo- ple, and it forced the peasants an the Communists into revolt. On Sep- | tember 12, 1923, the Communist press ‘was suppressed, the party’s property confiscated. General freedom of the press had ceased to exist on June 9, 1928, and together with it also free- dom of speech, organization and as- semblage. All these rights of the people had been suppressed. The people from the villages and the cities revolted, but the government, with volunteers—Macedonian irregul- ars, some traitors, supporters of re- action and corruption in together with General Wrangel’s ban- dits, armed with cannons, machine guns and modern war equipment, met us in the battleleld, and we were de- feated. Many of us were saved by crossing the boundary line into Ser- bia. But what happened the next day*® Terror, murder, pillaging and bloodshed! They got all that were left alive in our village; took eleven ‘of them and shot them without trial. The next day, in the same way, they shot twelve men. In the same way, in the village of Sotochino, they killed sixteen men, Bulgaria is a real hell now.” And this is from another letter: “In the City of Lom and the districts q|of Ferdinand and Bercovica, more than 3,000 people were executed without trial. Many villages were wiped out, With:machine guns they are shooting people in the villages in groups of 40 to 50, people from 15 to 60 years of age. Some of them were burned alive, as in the case of the revolutionist Kuncheff, from the village of Jelezna, district of Berco- viea; others were skinned alive, as in the case of the teacher, Bobanoff, from the village of Provala, district of Ferdinand; some were beheaded bb Hota as in ey of the attain our eam Goron Botota, from the village of Ljuta, district of Ferdinand. But the City of Lom has the highest record of all this vandal- ism. Lom is the grave of the revo- lution. More than 2,000 ple were packed on a barge and hauled into the middle of the River Danube and thrown into the water, and there was a committee of military and civil re- presentatives who pulled them out in groups of ten persons, and then shot them with machine guns and threw them back into the river.” Hold Workers as Hostages in Arkansas if Bie latest way by which the gov- ernment coerces workingmen is by keeping a number of them hos- tages. Gov. Thomas ©. McRae, of Arkansas, granted “furloughs” to Vurlen Orr and Luther Wise, rail- way strikers serving terms in the Arkansas state penitentiary for alleged sabotage, but the two men released on “furlough” will not get full pardons unless the terms of an agreement reached between ‘striking shopmen and the Missouri and Nor- Orr and Wise are innocent of the They, the executive of this, my | 4, thern Arkansas Railroad are kept) action charged against them. The by the union. reason they pleaded guilty was _be- This means that their freedom) cause a mob—the same mob which has been made dependent on the Le HS sen pe YA ia a gg 1e carrying out of a strike agreement.) courthouse, Their sentences of 7 And if the agreement is not ad-|t) 10 years was not cut short by hered to Governor McRae would| Governor McRae because the gov- then jail two innocent men, This|ernor has made himself virtually means that a governor has been| an agent of the railroad by condon- given the right to barter with the] ing for months a shocking state of freedom of settlement of a strike. uman beings to force] violence because it was organized in the railroad’s interest, New York Is By J. O. BENTALL. — A FTER the scare headlines in the daily papers here, over the story of a Bolshevik revolution and a new Wall Street Red Plot, we settled down to the usual. humdrum of daily toil and struggle. We fig- ured that, for some time to come, ;we might be let alone to have our nerves rested a bit. But, no. The entire police department and the whole army of service men are still popping un everv- where and stare at each other like sheilshocked soldiers of the Ar- gonne. All because one night several weeks ago the Junior Section of the Young Workers’ League let one of its members go home after a meet- ing with some revolutionary litera- ture in his pockets. It was a boy, and he was 11 years | pected. old. He had taken part in a dra- matic production at the meeting and now, at 11 o'clock, he was on his way home. The police spied him, Stopped him. Who are you? Where did fae sone an ’ are you going? What have you in your ‘an What have you in your All these questions come as a result of a bearing that indicated that the boy was not worried about} live the to wanted Shellshocked Then it was that the whistie blew. for an en poe bur! cam ig and scared jackrabbits, They made a thoro search of the vate Horrors! 8 one of international.” Also a membership card in the Junior See what he| if he ae Red Flag” and| alone and worked fai! fellow. This lad of 11, Leo Granoff by name, got into a deep dispute with the judge—much too deep for the puzzled judge. The child talked about the repeal of the child labor law by the Suprerhe Court, and wanted to know who was to pro- tect the kids when the courts would- > n’t. Which the judge could not an- r. swei The judge tried to show how ev- ery boy could become a millionaire, only let the rena tact idea ithfully for a To which Leo shot the “Well, when I get to boss. shot: eal section of the Young Workers’ Lea-| be a millionaire, I’ will buy you a gue. More horrors! A call for the patrol. to the Tombs. Quick. Now know that he is dangerous, a hard- ened criminal, Five cops guarded the fellow so he might not” make his pay He was landed in the hole and kept there all night. A “dick” stayed with him all the time. He asked all sorts of questions and got as fine answers as he never er- . The trouble with the affair was that the cop was just about a normal Bolshevik by the following morning. Lox the judge ragrdl tite iy were you out go late in nw don the y "t you w about roysoied eign | factories ha 3 have work all nig! came from thi 895 the near young of skates.” And evervbody in Bsc him fwd court room agreed that they we} would heath to see the skids put under the judge. At a Liebknecht memorial meet- ing, Leo ier bear: ale and made a great speech, is young rebel is an example of the Tenis Section, membership which promises some opposition to the present re s- tem, all right. As a result, Leo needs never to go home u.one any more, for three to six policemen are always on his trail. And will be until the workers put the skids un- der the whole cowardly system. Don’t be a “Yes, But,” supporter of The Daily Worker. Send in your sub- scription at once. When you have finished reading AS WE SEE IT By T. J. O’FLAHERTY. The World’s Greatest Liar alias the Chicago Tribune during the in- { tervals between its camyigns for an invasion of Mexico and the featur- ing of salacious clerical scandals, features yarns about Soviet Russia furnished by one of its paid liars stationed at Riga.. This prevarica- tor is particularly angry these days ecausé of the refusal of the Soviet embassy at Berlin to vise the pass- port of the Tribune correspondent unless he gave a guarantee that he would not act the part of a stool Pigeon as his predecessor had done, Unwilling td give such a written statement he was refused admittance, . “mt * © The Tribune if a great spasm of frankness declared that the Tribune correspondent refused to go to Rus- sia unless he was granted freedom to write the truth, As a matter of fact the correspondent of the Chicago Daily News in a statement to his paper when another. Tribune ‘correspondent was kicked out of Russia declared that the Soviet au- thorities allowed him the fullest freedom in writing and sending his despatches, a privilege he used to the fullest extent. The Tribune correspondent was expelled because he acted as paid liar of the enemies of Soviet Russia. “ewe In connection with this it is tinent to call attention to the Fact that France was and is conducting anti-Soviet propaganda and also has formed a ring of enemies around the Russian republic. The French government pays its agents with money and honors and Paul Wil- liams, one of the European corres- pondents of the Tribune, was given the much coveted decoration of the Legion of Honor in return for his French propaganda, es ¢ a In yesterday’s issue the Chicage june carried a six column head entitled “Russian Army in Revolt; Moscow Threatened.” ‘The dispatch carries a London date line in order to give it more authority and is signed by John Steele. But the yarn emanated from Riga and was con- ceived in the mental cess pool of the London Daily Mail’s Riga cor- respondent. That city has been éx- posed so often as a rendezvous for journalistic prostitutes that the Tribune changed the date line to London. snr ees Now about the “revolt!” The Red Army that is planning to seize Moscow is biding its time until the spring thaw sets in and will march on the city early in April, perhaps on April Fools’ day. The Soviet government is rushing “Tartar and Mongolian” hordes toward Moscow in preparation for the grand revolt. Czarist officers have almost gained control of the Red Army. The re- bellious troops are preparing for a -- campaign of slaughtering Jews, ris- ings are planned in Kronstad. And So on ad nauseum, *_* & © The Tribune does not expect any intelligent person to believe this bunk. It is published for the be: of these readers who never di below the headline and also as balm for the wounded feelings of the rabid anti-Soviet elements who are grinding their teeth with rage over the recognition of Russia by the British government. Let them He and rage, The product of the super- heated imaginations of underworld characters. and unemployed stool pigeons will not convince the work- ing class that the Soviet Republic of Russia which has succe: battled against the capitalist class of the world and beat them to a standstill will now surrender liberties into the hands ofthe de- generate human wreckage which has escaped the fate of the Czar and now floats on the troubled political waters of Europe like sewage from a sunken ship. “ * ** : “Organized labor in America is getting wiser,” says Scrutator in the February 6, issue of the Chi- cago Tribune, “when an organization containing such untamed and unag- similated elements as the miners’ union can come to a realization that labor’s pay is limited by what the traffic will bear.” John L. Lewis endeared qinelt to rect Seay rs the working class when a‘ - dianapolis convention he crusaded against the militant elements in the;”~ miners’ union who thought more of the welfare of the union members than of the employers. So long our labor leaders think of the terests of the employers first those of the workers last they will receive the plaudits of the press agents of capitalism. Is not the sup- port of Lewis by the capitalist press the best possible evidence in sup- vort of the charges made against by the communists? Daniel O’Con- nel, the great Irish orator, once said that when he was complimented by the British government he went home that evening and his conscience. If John L. Lewls followed O’Connel’s example he would be continually for a con- ae what passes with him science. ** # © William Gibbs McAdoo, once the Crown Prince of Woodrow Wilson, is now an empty political oil can. oe bee use oe Reape any se- jous crime under cay sys- tem, but because he got so much money for being Wilson’s son-in-law that the other disappointed sui ‘ot jealous and went after his . this paper, give it to another worker.| Doheny naid him $250,000 for Let read copy for a few! Miss: Wilson’s husband and days. Then him to subscribe. other emoluments came his way have —~ - not yet reached the public ear. The A thousand new members wanted| American voters show no to for the “I-want-to-make-THE DAILY| a politician who is di in club. Write for|the act of receiving money for as- re tet sisting a helpless trust in distress. ‘ .