The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 16, 1924, Page 4

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THE DAILY WORKER Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO., 1640 N, Halsted St., Chicago, Ill. (Phone: Lincoln 7680.) SUBSCRIPTION RATES By mail: $6.00 per year $8.50..6 months $2.00..8 months By mail (in Chicago only): $4.50..6 months $2.50. .8 months American Subtlety marks: American journalists are hardly subject to such crass corruption as these docu- ments reveal in the French press. $8.00 per year 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 as second-class mail Sept. 21, 1923 at the Post- Office at Chicago, Ill., under the act of March 3, 1879. Advertising rates on application, Chicago, Illinois . Editor ir Editor jusiness Manager <em> 304 realm. There {s also the incident of the Albuquer- que journal purchased to ensure its silence and it is here that we come upon the chief difference between the corruption of the The French sheets were paid to boost long and loud the MacDonald’s Government (Premier MacDonald’s opening speech, fol- lowed by that of Clynes, in which the house of commons was told that the Labor Party government had abandoned the capital levy, that it would not attempt it “without national approval,” has been accorded a much more favorable reception from the capitalist press and the opposition in the house than from the labor members and the rank and file of the Labor Party. According to London dispatches, there is much disappointment in labor ranks and most of the applause following the outline of the government’s policy came from the conserva- tives. The labor men sat “glum and silent” says one correspondent. The mass of the British workers have builded high hopes on the accession of the Labor Party to power. It is going to manifest more and more impatience as the MacDonald government: increases, as it will, its efforts to conciliate the middle classes and to convince the tories that their privileges and surpluses are in no serious danger. The money for the housing campaign, for construction projects of other kinds to relieve unemployment, cannot come from the im- poverished workers. Two million unemployed brought the Labor Party to power and it must solve this problem. The kind words of the spokesmen of the Bri- tish capitalists mean nothing. There will be sabotage aplenty when loans are needed to carry out the government program. Only a capital levy will bring the needed funds, but to institute it and. make it. effective the Labor Party government will have to have more iron in its blood than it has yet shown. No government can be fair to both classes in society and in its attempt to enact this role the MacDonald government will either fall or oe tT id the social democracy of Ger- many—as the smoke screen of the big indus- trialists and financiers. Boldness and resolution will rally the Bri- tish workers to the Labor Party movement. A kindly regard for the feelings of the opposition will alienate the best elements of the British working class and leave MacDonald and his cabinet at the mercy of the cleverest ruling class the world has ever seen. We wish the British Labor Party govern- ment well. It is the only bright spot in the darkness of western Europe. But we hope that British labor can and will learn the les- sons of world history since 1917. French and American press. advantages of the Russian loan. American lots of it. tion to another field of American journalistic enterprise. Page advertisements of huge de- partment stores employing thousands of under- treatment for revenue purposes. able comment concerning the Standard Oil only the culmination of years of governmental corruption fostered by the Standatd Oil interests. Full page advertisements of Socony gaso- line, pyralin toilet articles, mineral oil laxa_ tives and the thousand and one products of Standard Oil concerns carried by the metro- politan press may be a more gentlemanly means of ensuring silence on unfavorable developments, but certainly they are just as effective as other methods of subsidizing the press and just as easily detected. In one respect the finance-capitalists of America have the advantage—they own out- right many of the papers from which the American people get their information on public questions. God Bless the Teapot What is one man’s loss is often another’s gain. The shocking revelations in the Teapot Dome oil inquiry have hit hard many of the most prominent leaders of the democratic and republican parties. This blow that has been struck at the so- called representative character of the govern- ment of this country should not blind the workers to the fact that while the Teapot scandal is being investigated and while Mc- Adoo, Fall, Denby and others are being held up to the scorn of the public eye, there are many other cases of graft and corruption known to the Senate and the President, but not being investigated. There is no use denying that many a capi- talist politician and industrial magnate is now blessing the Teapot because they feel that the longer this investigation lasts and the more the Wyoming steal continues in the limelight, the less chance there is of their being investi- gated for lesser and greater crimes and the less likelihood will there be of their being caught. The Minnesota Daily Star “Martial Law to Control Anti-Klan Mobs in Herrin District.” “Bayonet Rule to Keep Mine Mobs in Hand.” The above headlines, conveying very defi-' nitely the impression that it was the Klan that was persecuted in Herrin and that the miners were the creators of the disturbances, are from the Minnesota Daily Star—an alleged farmer- labor paper published in Minneapolis. Its farmer-labor character is due solely to the fact that thousands of farmers and workers gave up their hard-earned dollars to launch this sheet if the above treatment of news of lawless ter- rorism by anti-labor forces is a guide to the policy of the paper. Starting with a policy of “fairness” and with one eye always on the advertising re- ceipts, the Minnesota Daily Star is now merely a personal organ of yellow politicians who live in daily fear of the formation of a genuine Farmer-Labor party that will end their jug- gling with the fortunes of the men and women of labor who furnished the money for their publishing venture. The policy of the Minnesota Daily Star to- day is less progressive than that of the Scripps and Hearst papers. It is purely a revenue- gathering proposition and not even successful in that as the fact that it has just gone into the hands of a receiver shows. Its mental bankruptcy and intellectual dis- honesty has evidently been of such a flagrant character that increased advertising revenue has not made up for the withdrawal of a sup- port by its disillusioned farmer and labor readers. The Star today is neither fish, flesh, fowl or good red herring in spite of the great numbers of the latter it has tried to drag across the trail left by the capitalist class in their mad rush for loot. Its treatment of the outrages on the miners at Herrin is what passes for clever journalism with the management of a sheet at has lost all militant virtue and now is trying to crawl| “Labor” are to the effect that oily into bed with the hangers-on of American’ have been discovered on the frame capitalism. ture. vrai ir country’s wealth are legion. responsible men of the government. tax dodgers. political system. been drawn in. rule society today thru its owners and control the governmental apparatus. the sixteen standard railway unions, carried a four column cartoon depicting William G. Mc- Adoo in the act of hanging a picture of a rail- way worker in the gallery of war heroes, tae iat After revealing in detail the corruption of the French press by the czar’s gold, Lewis Gannett, in The Nation for February 6th, re- We hope that Comrade Gannett will not be offended when we ask how he gets that way. Crass means gross, or stupid and unrefined, according to our dictionary. Perhaps the ar- ticle was written before the extremely frank Mr. Bonfils of the Denver Post testified before the Senate Teapot Oil committee in great de. tail as to the black-jack methods employed by himself and henchmen to extract from Harry F. Sinclair juicy sums of the currency of the newspapers are paid generally for silence and Comrade Gannett’s ideas of what consti- tutes crassness and ours differ slightly in rela- paid girls, coupled with the fact that no adverse publicity affecting these concerns ever creeps into the news or editorial columns of the capitalist press as long as the advertise- ments are forthcoming, is a fairly obyious if not an actually crass method of the silent It might also be remarked in this connec- tion that there is a great scarcity of unfavor- Company in the news of the Teapot Dome in- vestigation nor has any capitalist editor seen fit to point out that the present scaridals is The instances of capitalist spoilation of the Just now the Senate itself is confronted with about a dozen cases of corruption involving some of the most Politieal expediency coupled with the lack of time have alone delayed the exposure of another oil scandal in California, the handing over of concessions by General Wood to some of his capitalist friends in the Philippines, the crimes perpetrated in the Veterans Bureau: and En- graving Bureau, the wholesale robbery in- volved in the war frauds, the new million dol- lar bond duplication theft, the Bok peace prize, the Mellon scheme propaganda cam- paign and Mellon’s protection of millionaire The Teapot affair and the above enumerated outrages committed against the working and farming masses of this country in the interest of the capitalist class, are only symptoms of the whole diseased condition of economic and In all these steals, the good and the bad, the liberal and the reactionary, the democrat and the republican alike, have Party lines, personal charac- ter lines have vanished for the onslaughts of class lines—the principle of making the big- gest profits possible and serving the class that of the mean of production and exchange and Some time ago “Labor,” the official organ of Latest reports from the editorial rooms of. would be necessary. the wind. mittees and soviets of public his hands and returned to his family. the end of his speech. But there were also groan and more of these than of the first kind. Workmen and Red Army soldiers walked ex- citedly into the middle of the arena and, hampered by the unaccustomed attention of the crowd, they made clumsy speeches, upbraided Ziman, but agreed that they ought to hold out stoicaily. To sit with folded hands, there was no stoicism in that, and they sought a way out, feeling for it, like blind men. But the meeting did not understand their disconnected words, and one orator disputed with the one who had spoken before him, tho both meant the same thing. And Ziman in the end stopped making notes of criticisms for his concluding speech: small, wretched, he jerked his head with nervous- ness, listening to the reproachful, seeking speeches, and was worried precisely by those of the speakers who saw somewhere a way out. He did not see it, and muttered, angrily, “Demagogy. . . . Meeting stuff. ...” And the orators went on spasmodically bumping into glass walls, and could not tell the meeting of their clear plans, but tallga of some detail or other, of how, from somewhere, “It would be possible to get axes.” The meeting grew excited, and people shouted from their places, regardless of the President’s bell. And then a man above middle height, round-shoul- dered, came out, and took an old blue cap from his square head, dis- closing a high forehead with a deep wrinkle in it. “I call_on Comrade Robeiko,” said the President, and the meet- ing tried to be silent in order to — a speech that would not be loud. For Robeiko must not speak. He has consumption of the throat, He had not meant to speak, but had listened, and for.a long time had been thinking, “Ziman is helpless and cannot see the way out which many of the speakers see but can- not put into words.” He thought regretfully, Why had the Party Committee brought this report to a big meeting? And all the time he had waited for somebody to name the way out, to put it into words and save Robeiko from un- necessary suffering. . . . For Ro- beiko must not speak. Sounds tear his throat into rough red bleeding scraps. But he must say a little, just a few words, and the question will be clear, and all will have bright faces, for all will know how to name the road, the way out, that many dimly see. He began to speak in a low voice, fearing to awake the pain which just then was slumbering deep in his throat. . . . But nothing could be heard, people stretched out their necks like martyrs, and Robeiko made up his mind . . . his voice, as it were, made a jump, and all heard every word, and all had grateful faces. But every word, like a sharp splinter of glass, rose to his larynx and tore into seraps its delicate fibre and if hurt him so that tears slipped from his eyes, the sweat stood on his forehead, and his voice clanged and broke, He said that Ziman had told the meeting the truth and that they ought not to reproach him for this. For not Ziman had created this truth; he had told them of the danger, and for that they owed him thanks. Only there was no need to lose their heads; they needed only to look about them and somewhere a@ way out would be found. It was necessary quietly and calmly to look about them. Surely the party, in its day, had found the way out from worse holes than this, Their strength and wisdom lay in quiet — tion and determined ac- tion. There was a way out. Many saw it but did not know how to talk of it, It was clear enough that the whole difficulty was fuel. If they could get a little fue} they could at once bring wood from Nizhni- Elansk, “And if we have the wood we can in a week bring the seed for the sowing. Everything depends on fuel, on a few hundred cubic sazhins of wood.... Where can we get them?” Obviously, there were many gar- be eel = bie and babes versts outside, ai @ monastery, were big woods. There was west for them and plenty of it, In a k the fuel from Nizhni-! uld be there and they” begin to bring the seed. But all must be done quickly and decisive- ly; they must themselves take axes and saws, stand at the head, pel the slackers and the sie, bring in the Red Army the workers. Only, they ry; if in two weeks the parece other Ziman ended, and a Red Army soldier with a browless, broad red face, opened discussion of his report. He said he had fought on the front for two years for the Soviet Government, and in the villages everything was getting worse and worse. were injuring the villages by the corn-collection, there was a lot of scoundrelism in all these economy committees, food com- tremely hard for a poor man to live. people out of corn and now we howl about it. Ah! “What? Are we to be hungry again?” tearfully from the middle of the arena. scar on his neck, and he took,a long time in telling how hard it was to live on a ration of forty pounds of flour a month, with a “There’s thievery going on,” he added viciously at Elansk Friday, February 15, 1924 Start Reading “A Week” (Continued from Page 1) Fuel was prepared in the district of Zizhni-Elansk, in the hill, 200 versts away by railway and could not be brought in a week. ‘The collapse of the sowing campaign was almost inevitable. stoicism, but his words were dry, did not sink into the meeting, and hung uhwanted and homeless like little bits of paper in And the speaker called for They It had become ex. SWe have cleaned the He wrung economy. place. A second began He was thin, with a —rennpteietniaeenth dienes But his speech was cut short by a dry, breaking cough. For a min- ute, for two, he coughed, and the crowd waited eagerly, many, many sympathetic faces gleamed before him, and he coughed on, twisted himself with coughing, and all saw it, were silent, and only took breath, first one and then another. * The little town under the un- changing sky slept as it were with @ heavy after-dinner sleep. In every house geraniums shone in the windows, and on their beggarly but pretentious leaves lay flowers like purple and red flies. Oh, how many of these ash-colored wooden boxes, street upon street of them, how stuffy and close in each one of them! Many grim ikons in the high corner and on little tables, covered with crocheted table-cloths, albums bound: in velvet. Dirt in the kitchens, black-beetles running on the walls, and flies dismally buz- zing on the window-panes, The life of the people who live in these crowded houses is like a grey September day, when a drizzle of Tain sounds monotonously on the window, and thru the panes, lined with the running drops, you can see a grey railing and a red calf wandering in the mud. So, year after year, this life goes on. Every day early in the morning elderly women milk cows, go to the market with baskets, and then in the kitchen after dinner wash the greasy dishes. And bald-headed men with dull eyes, in old patched breeches and mended boots, go to their work, buy and sell something or other, and work at some indus- try, each one alone in a dark room. On Sundays the women smooth their hair tightly down, put on pur- ple, yellow or blue dresses, take the children to church, and in the even- ing gather together to drink tea while the men get drunk with vodka or beer and bump their fore- heads on the table. All of them, at that hour when, dismally drooping its wings, the sound of the bell calling to the Saturday evening services floated mournfully over the town, all of them hid dislike for those who were meeting in the Circus, and this timorous dislike united the whole town in a single black cloud invis- ible by men... . At this hour Raphael Antonovitch Senator went for a walk, Raphael Antonovitch who lived in the two- storied stone house on the ground floor of which was a chemist’s on. hey had requisitioned the chem- ist’s shop. ... They had taken down the black board with its af- fectionately inviting gold letters, “The Rozhdestvensky Drug Store, R, A. Senator.” And now, instead of that, insolently, from a red board, black letters were shouting, “Health Department, Communal Drug Store, No. 1.” Raphael Antonovitch stood on the sandy hillock, drank in all the hid- den dumb dislike that poured out of the little houses, dissolved in it his own bitter resentment and, ha- tred, and silently sent it all in the direction of the Circus where that incomprehensibly hostile life was going on. A little stout mamitn a grey coat and a worn hat (one of those hats nicknamed “Good Day and Goodbye’’) he stood for a long time on the hillock. Little mali- cious eyes glittered under the brim of his hat, and y he turned round and went slowly off a bit of fat red neck showed “and on it a lot Of snort black and grey hairs. He helped his wife in the house- work, asthmatically cut wood, took the hogwash to the cow, and while his we was milking it silently watched the white stream running from undef her fingers into dark milky froth... . And the regular sound of milking, the peaceful grunting of the pigs behind the railing, the perfume of the cosy, twilit cowshed, all this comforted him and he told his wife: “I had been at the Khanzhins! Their brother has come from Tula. He says that the end is soon com- ing. The people are revolting against the Bolsheviks, the Poles are wanting to fight again even the workmen in Mosco: “God in His mercy gra: wife, and Raphael Antonovitch walkéd up and down the yard with his hands behind his counting, as his custom wi the logs left over from the bu! ing of the house, for fear lest some should have been stolen, But, when the baie! gay oe ing 80 iy . -versts away. “hiding the joy of that te “all i if it did not Cod --Here’s First Installment the woods, behind the fields, behind the yellow sandy hillock, and when the clouds hanging over the sunset rejoiced with nervous tenderness at something momentary and fugitive and accompanied the sun with a trembling of elusive singing tones, then by the dark staircase past the dirty water-closet and wash-tub, hurriedly, Raphael Antonovitch fled to his own room and groaned with his_ asthma, For, at this scarlet hour of sun- set, the “Internationale” proudly floated from the Circus, and, with the power of hundreds of voices was carried over the town to the evening sun, like a red avenging angel, and Robeiko would be com- ang home at once, for he had taken lodging in the house of Raphael Antonovitch, who did not like meet- ing Robeiko and was afraid of him. CHAPTER TWO. UJ NDEE the quiet light of an electric lamp, in a study fur- nished in oak, the meeting of the Party Committee began. Robeiko made a short report, He told the comrades of his plan for getting wood. But they were inattentive, talked among themselves in loud whispers, during the report, and smiled friendlily at each other. It was pleasant after a whole day of exhausting, nervous work, to see the familiar faces of their com- rades. And consequently the flam- ing appeals of Robeiko were quenched like sparks falling in water. No one seconded his sug- gestions, but, when he had finished the report, Ziman proved at length that the whole nroject was imprac- ticable, that the melting of the streams would prevent the bring- ing of the wood to the railway, and that there where not enough saws, axes or carts, ... Small, like an unpretentious dull figure out of a ledger, he caught by the wing Robeiko’s flying ideas. Then Karaulov objected, the mili- tary Brigade Commander, an old Cossack with a dark yellow face, framed in a thin little beard. He pee out clouds of smoke from is pipe and muttered in a dull voice, “There are a lot of bandits hanging about round the town and here are you proposing to take the Red Army soldiers twelve Por withont them you will not cut down the monas- tery woods. With mobilized bour- geois and half-dead Soviet em- employes, you will not get far, . .” And Robeiko, lacerated by his cough, and spattering the rich, flowered purple carpet with spittle and green mucus, replied to Ziman with figures from a note-book and with a hoarse voice told Karaulov that there was no other way out, that, the revolution demanded . . . that they would have to take the risk. “You risk that they will take the town, cut the Communists to pieces, cut off the district from the. center for several months. . .” dis- tinctly, maliciously, in a voice not loud but audible by all, said Karau- loy and then suddenly raised his voice and cried angrily, “What are you fooling about, Robeiko? Caus- ing a revolt is no sort of joke. Ask Klimin, and he, as head of the Cheka (Cheka is short for the Russian word meaning Extraordi- nary Commission, the Revolution- ary Police dealing with Counter- Revolution, Banditism, Espionage etc., etc.) will tell you what un- rest there is just now in the vil- lages.” But Klimin was inattentive and silent. He was thinking of some- thing happy and serene, and his eyes were m and tender. He started at hearing his name, left his dreams and with unconscious dislike followed Robeiko’s words, fully agreed with the quiet objec- tions of Ziman, with the disgusted exclamations of Karaulov, and everything that Robeiko said seem- ed the result of his invalid fantasy. “You must exert your wills, to get out of the blind alley... . Otherwise we shall have the fields unsown!” BANK 371 W. JACKSON BOULEVARD | FREE ON REQUEST Our Little Comdensed Booklet *CHICAGO’S ONLY LABOR BANK” Setting Forth the Idea and Service of the Labor Banks and in Particular THE AMALGAMATED TRUST AND SAVINGS And, coughing, Robeiko pointed with his hand to the darkness of the window. Klimin foilowed his hand with a glance and looked the night in the eyes; the night was looking simply and sternly into the room, and Klimin imagined the boundless breadth of the wide country, covered by the quiet can- opy of the night. The fields wak- ing under the darkening snow- drifts, the fields waiting for the sowing, the mouzhiks (peasan’) gathering in black throngs on fine days on the benches by the cottage doors, and talking of the weather, of the harvest, and then remember- ing that the granaries were empty, that there was no seed, and separ- ating silently, anxiously waiting for help from the town, while with each day of waiting a dark hatred of the Communists, of the food committees, of the Soviets, was rising in their hearts. And Kiimin suddenly understood why Robeiko burned and trembled, understood that there was “no way out,” and instantly his practical clear judgment awoke, clearsighted- ly taking in the whole project, and Klimin thought out in his own mind exactly how to realize it, and, with strong, sonorous voice, he now sup- ported Robeiko. Robeiko was quite unable to speak, took breath, half-lying on the soft divan, and nodded his head with a smile, listening to the voice of Klimin who instantly attacked Ziman with practical suggestion, whén they voted Karaulov alone, “contra,” iitted his big strong hand with its crodked frost-distorted fingers. The other members of the Party Committee were alight with that same steady, auiet fire that burned in Klimin’s words. Immediately after the sitting of the Party Committee, the Commis- sion met to which had been assigned the task of realizing the project for getting wood. Its members were Klimin, Robeiko, Karaulov and Ziman. Tomorrow, under the guidance of the Commission, by the will of the Party, work would begin. ‘ Tomorrow in the newspaper, the leading article would shout to everybody of the danger of fam- ine, of the need of action. Tomorrow at meetings and as- semblies the military Commissars and agitators would explain to the attentive Red Army soldiers that if they wanted to see the fields sown they would have to go and cut wood. Tomorrow from all the stores Ziman would collect saws and axes while the Communal Economy Com- tittee would mobilize carts. Tomorrow Robeiko, with extreme pain for his throat, would carry thru the Trade Union Council a proposal for the mobilization of the Trade Unions, and in the fac-- tories the general meetings of the workmen would pass clumsy reso-~ ~ lutions. . . . Tomorrow! (To be continued Monday) PO eRAITS PHOTOGRAPHY — 12” $15 BERTRAM DORIEN BASABE. 1009 N. STATE ST. - PHONE. SUPERIOR 1961 OPEN ON SUNDAY 1270 50M. i. Kindly send me your Pamphlet No. 2 entitled Chicago’s i i é

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