The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 16, 1924, Page 7

H=™ JOHNSON is interesting and significant as a demonstra- tion of what happens when an ex- pert, noisy, and resourceful politician has his full say and plays his whole string. It is just thirteen years since Hiram Johnson started out slaying dragons in California. He got a big cheer from the people then, nad no doubt he could defeat any other man for any California office today, but a census of dragons—a checking up of the quick and the dead—is perhaps more to the point. Hiram has an oratorical punch— there’s no doubt about that. He speaks with a sort of staccato yelp, _ with a voice yappant, even ululant, and his physical and muscular in- tensity endows the obvious and su- perficial with an entirely fictitious importance. Futhermore, he is hap- pily free from any political convic- tions or moral scruples, and _ this, with great shrewdness in discovering and echoing the prevailing platitude, gives him a rare equipment for a statesman. Added to all this, he has one all-dominating personal trait. He has a vindictiveness, a capacity for hate, and a range of bitter memory which enable him to nourish more grudges and go to greater extremes in punichine his personal enemies than any other statesman of today. W- may suppose that when Hiram Jonnson was in the fittn graue at school another boy traded him a glassie which was supposed to be an agate. If this really happened, you may be sure Hiram has this boy somewhere in a card index, and he’s going to get him some day. That’s Hiram. Hiram Gets Into Politics Hiram was dug up, in-1910 by Bill Kent, Meyer Lissner, Marshall Stim- son and a few other reformers who wanted someone to smash_ the Southern Pacific machine. Hiram was a natural-born prosecutor, who had made quite a stir in the San Francisco graft prosecution, after Heney was shot.. He «was brave.as a lion, so they said, tho it was notice- able that he didn’t come in until after the outbreak of public feeling over the shooting of Heney had made the graft prosecution comparatively safe and respectable. “Kick the Southern Pacific out of politics” was his campaign slogan. California likes the noisy, bellicose, hell-roaring type of politician. It was no trouble for Hiram to show goods. His heat, fervor, vehemence, sweat and black, macerating passion in assailing the railroad infamies were unparalleled and unsurpassed. He went around shadow-boxing with the Southern Pacific dragon all over the state. Whenever he drove his pudgy, clenched first into the jowl of the monster, he got a cheer which jarred loose all the shingles on the Southern Pacific roadhouse. When the 1911 legislature con- vened, our great reform governor offered a prospectus of progressive legislation which actually included eetrain bills for ameliorating labor conditions—the full crew train bill, employers’ liability, the industrial ac- cident commission, etc. Hiram John- son, during many years as a leading San Francisco attorney, had néver shown the slightest interest in such matters. But now, all of a sudden, mies. He went down the line with one philippic after another. e worked a day and night shift de- nouncing Mike de Young, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle; William H. Crocker, the San Francisco bank- er; Harrison Grey Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and Sam Shortridge, a bombastic and rather ludicrous San Francisco lawyer whom he later helped to make United States Senator. “There isn’t room enough in this town for Hiram John- son and Mike de Young,” he would yell, and he always got a big hand from his audience. The years slipped by,and organiz- ed labor thruout California was forc- ed into the defensive. The Mer- chants’ and Manufacturers’ Associa- tion, of Los Angeles, and the allied Chambers of Commerce thruout the state were carrying on a smashing attack, and the game of political trading wasn’t working out so well. It was true that there wére plenty of labor leaders in the state govern- ment; it was true, also, that certain labor bills had been passed—but it was true, nevertheiess, that labor was getting the stuffing knocked out of it, and neither Hiram nor the job- holding labor leaders seemed to be worrying any. William D. Stephens was lieutenant governor. Stephens was a pious stuffed-shirt and a born labor-hater. ‘the looters to tie these resources up torial nomination against Sam Short- ridge—Johnson’s erstwhile enemy. Kent, you will recall, was one of a few men who started Johnson on his career; incidentally, he furnished the money to start the campaign, and, then and later, gave Johnson many thousands of dollars. But Johnson didn’t hesitate a moment when it be- came advantageous to cut his bene- factor’s throat. Similarly, he assas- sinated Frank Heney, whose liberal- ism, like Bill Kent’s, seemed to take on a serious character, Everybody realizes now that the great Southern Pacific attack was a Weber and Fields performance; the S. P. had a pillow in its pants and it all ended happily. But what about the other big “infamies” which John- son so gallantly assailed? There is the whole matter of con- servation of natural resources. Cali- | fornia has fifteen to twenty million acres of arable land, and it has, flowing to waste, water enough to irrigate it; i, has about cight million horse-power of undeveloped hydro- electric energy; it has vast areas of timber, oil and mineral land. As governor of Caiiforuia and as United States senator, Hiram Johnson has not lent the slightest assistance to the effort of the conservationists to save some of this heritage for the ipeople. His acquiescence has allowed Johnson went to the United States in such a fashion that no political The Chewing Gum Candidate Hiram Johnson—For President. : Senate and left Stephens to take his piace. And, Stephens completed the ruin of “progressivism” in California, And now, getting around to that he was displaying a passionate devo-| census of dragons, we find that there tion to them. How come? are ten on the job where there was “Tom Finn can tell you how that|one when Hiram first set his lance came about. Tom is a plain, every- day San Francisco politician, and nothing if not direct. In 1911, he was a senator in the state legislature, bor, which was ant” in the Sam Gompers fashion. Finn wanted a_wish-washy “labor program” thru the legislature; also he wanted the water-front pat- yomage, which was a F agave dish he po gh omy oo ag tg re on the other Hiram Johnson the of in the A i i if i against then = T'> Seuthes: Peo‘4c —which in truth never seemed great- ly worried about Hiram’s denuncia- tions—is back in power. In Los An- geles, Leo Youngworth and Mott Flint, who used to be castigated by Hiram in the old days as “S. P. hire- lings,” are stalwarts of the Johnson organization. Eustace Cullinan, John- son leader in San Francisco, and for years the cham of in northern openly the hired man of the public rporations and is now attacking the initiative and referendum. te in in the it a Fi iH ez Lt SE els ‘it : ! ! i 3 5 i E E f FEE ze fe 1 E | | : i BS z : c e : action short of revolutfon can give the slightest hope of blasting them loose, and in all his entire public career he has never had a sing!e word to say on the subject of conserva- tion. He has left all this wealth to be grabbed, and grabbed it has been! The California Water and Power Act, an initiative measure, was the big issue of the California election last fall. It was a funda- mental measure, proposing to vest ownership in the water and power resources in the people and to place state credit behind their development. Who was hired by the utility corpor- ations to defeat this measure? Eus- tace Cullian, referred to above, who for years has been Johnson’s inti- mate personal friend ana who is his leading political representative in Francisco. How much was he paid for this service? Twenty thous- and dollars a year, according to his testimony before the California legis- lature. Johnson was cynically in- different to the appeals of Bill Kent, and all the other old time sives for assistance in the campaign to save the water and power. your great liberal statesman. Johnson’s labor record needs but alight comment for DAILY WORK- ER readers. When an appeal was There’s in a wack and dropped in the bay. The infamous frame-up of the strike- leaders, Ford and Suhr, was put over Hiram Johnson---His Background »%%0va:ostuarr during his administration. The perse- eution of liberals, which eventuated in the vicious criminal syndicalism law, was well under way while John- son was still governor. What did Johnson ever do about the black tyranny of the Kern County Land Company? There is nowhere in America today any more brutal or savage gang, with more crimes recorded against it, than this Kern County gang. The only lawyer who ever dared attack them was shot, his body lacerated with knives and acid poured in the wounds. He was then turned loose on the desert, covered with a coat of tar-and-feathers. He is in an insane asylum. The Kern County Land Company has gone serenely on its way all thru the years of the Johnson ascendancy. Today, they are more strongly intrenched than ever, maintaining an absolutely lawless, criminal rule over a section as large as an eastern state. And they have never received so much as a word of gentle reproof from the dauntless Hiram. The Miller and Lux interests, the interests of Harry Chandler, legatee of the ill-famed Los Angeles Times, and son-in-law of the old buceaneer, Otis, the great industrial and finan- cial network of Herbert Fleishhacker, Gargantuan banker of San Francisco; the interests of the Hammond Lum. ber Company, and above ali the al- lied hydro-electric interests, have enmeshed California im a tyranny worse than that found in any other state. And this is the state which has been “liberated” by this implac- able foe of privilege, this champion of the common man, this valorous -\knight of democracy! Labor crushed; spies, dicks, gum- shoers everywhere; newspapers lying and pandering; free speech and free assemblage brutally suppressed; fix- ers, manipulators, corruptionists, lob- byists and corporation press agents swarming over the state, like an army of snails, leaving a trail of slime— and San Quentin prison crowded with men who have dared assert their con- stitutional rights of free speech and free assemblage! Liberated—like hell! The present governor, Friend W. Richardson, provides just a touch of aesthetic completeness to the picture. He is an all but il‘iterate, untidy old man, with a walrus mustache and a bitter hostility toward education or literacy in any form. Since becoming governor he has maintained a steady drive against higher education and has ali but wrecked the public school system. He has relentlessly attacked every left-over vestage of humani- tarian legislation, and has made a complete job of it—without a word of protest from Hiram Johnson. He is owned and operated by the cor- porations, The farmers are broke; the unions are smashed; the corporations are in absolute, unassailable control; Cali- fornia, today has sunk down more deeply into the mire of hopeless re- action than any other state in America, That is the outcome of all the vo- ciferations, all the high-keyed and valorous invective, all his dauntless defiance of the great Hiram Johnson, “progressive” candidate for president of these United States. “My Country” with Many Variations By ROBBIN DUNBAR. My country, ’tis of the-e-e, Sweet Dome of Doheny And Harry Sinclair! Land where 3 Prexies died, Land of Wall Street's pride, Oil gushing on ev'ry side, ‘Of thee I swear. Wood, Warren and Silent Cal, Got stuck on the same old gal, Miss Red Light Oil! They luv her fancy frills, No accent of her chills, Her satchel’s full of bills, Let Tea Pot boil. “Our Father's God,”—is bunk, “Our country’s flag,”—is junk, Don’t givadam! Let's loot the treasury We own H. Daugherty, Our flag floats o’er the free,— T’el wid U, Sam! “We go rome rd towards our aims if possible; with force if neces- sary.”—Karl Radek.”