The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 12, 1924, Page 4

Page Four THE DAILY WORKER Saturday, April 12, 1924 GUNMEN RULE IN Girls Outdoor Sport of Burns ff Department of Justice Stools FORMER UNION % | William J. Burns ‘THE DAILY WORKER Socialists and Democracy W. VA. MINERS. | Wild Joy Rides With University Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO., CONFERRING ON Among the common pactices of the Communist terror, the author names the following: Violation of women, driving sharpened poles thru bodies, breaking 1640 N. Halsted St., Chicago, Ill. (Phone: Lincoln 7680.) SUBSCRIPTION RATES By mail: $3.50. .6 months. Gepartment of pigeon in the I. W. W. metal min- 3 $2.00..3 months : | } $6.00 per year By mail (in Chicago only): $8.00 per year $4.50..6 months $2.60. .3 months 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, 1928 at the Post- Office at Chicago, Ill., under the act of March 8, 1879. >_> Chicago, Illinois Editors .. Business Manager Advertising rates on application. Communists and the Coming Crisis Car loadings decreased last week by 28,726 ag compared with the same week in 1923. Unfilled steel tonnage decreased by 2,620,- 525 as compared with this time last year. In addition to the fall in these two barom- eters it has been discovered recently that the carloads have been averaging ten per cent less than normal in weight for several months— in other words ten per cent should be deducted | from the peak carload tonnage figures. Figures such as these coupled with reports | of unemployment in other than basic industries | shows that production is, to make an Irish bull, slowing down with considerable speed. “Flourishing industry requires something more substantial than optimistic prognostica- tions emanating from the Rotary and Kiwanis clubs and other haunts of the babbittry. It) requires markets and these the capitalist sys- | tem is finding it increasingly hard to dis- cover and exploit. | Before the first fall frost the capitalist press | will be carrying explanations of the conditions underlying “business stagnation” instead of) the glowing reports of profit-making activities. the workers of this nation and many of them, | misled by their ignorant leaders, will be blam- ing the unemployment on the depression “that | always comes in a presidential year.’ The} farmers are no longer fooled by this hokum| death, burning and burying people alive, cutting off limbs, noses or ears, branding people with disfiguring marks, flogging women and stripping them naked in pub- lic places. Do not be hasty, dear reader, and jump to the conclusion that the above is from the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times or some other capitalist sheet. Oh, dear, no! It is from the socialist Milwaukee Leader, of April 8, 1924, and is merely a part of an article resurrecting the hoary lies that even the cap- italist press is ashamed to print. Curiously enough this article is published in juxtaposition to another which, in attempting to explain the tactics of the Socialist party of Bulgaria, acknowledges that it supported the bloody Zankoff government and even formed a coalition with it. The mass murders of workers and peasants perpetrated by the gov- ernment of which they are a part and the apology for their treasonable activities by the leading organ of the Socialist party in America is sufficient to show that this shameless crew of the Second International is the same in every country in the world. The article says: When the danger of chaotic anarchy was past, the Socialists left the coalition with the Zankoff government and assumed the opposition on a constitutional basis. Thanks to this Socialist opposition, the fundamentals of democratic government have been saved. Translating the above into the language of class-conscious workers it means that the Bul- arian socialists supported the counter-revolu- tionary Zankoff government until enough | | bodies on the wheel, choking people to | | | workers and peasants had been butchered to) make Bulgaria temporarily safe for capitalists, landlords, socialists and other vermin. It does not take much to satisfy the yearning of this crew of phrasemongering traitors for democracy; the “fundamentals of democratic} The coming winter will be a terrible one for! government” that have been preserved in Bul-| garia are few and far between; like the loyal- ty of the socialists to the workingclass they are meaningless terms and in Bulgaria it was by mass murder of the workers and peasants that the socialists demonstrated their loyalty to NEW WAGE PACT 80,000 Now Working in | Open Shop Mines By J. A. HAMILTON. (Special to The Daily Worker) FAIRMONT, W. Va., April 11.— Several hundred delegates from min- ers’ local unions in sub-districts No. 3 and No. 4 of District 17 met here today in special convention to con- sider the ratification of the new three-year agreement, and other im- portant matters. The 23,000 or so miners represent- ed here—20,000 in Sub-District 4; 3,000 in Sub-District 3—comprise al- most the whole union organization in West Virginia. There are a few thousand members in the Kanawha River Valley in the South; a few hundred in Masin County (Pomerot Field) on the Ohio River; one or two thousand in the vicinity of Wheeling (the last in District 6), leaving some 80,000 unorganized min- ers in this state, which in 1923 pro- duced almost one-fifth of the coun- jtry’s bituminous coal (105,000,000 ;tons), and whose production has been jincreasing much more rapidly than the average. Organized In 1918. Sub-District No. 4, taking in the |Morgantown, Fairmont and Clarks- |burg fields, along the West Fork and | Monongah rivers in the northern |Part of the state—is the baby sub- | division in the miners’ union. It dates back only to 1918, when the (miners in these fields were organ- ized simply by agreement with the companies, without a general strike being necessary. Much of Sub-Dis- trict No. 8—Grafton-Philippi field, east of Sub-District No. ri had al- ready been organized a few years. District 17 began in the Kanawha River Valley in Southern West Vir- ginia, but open-shop campaigns have almost wiped out the original part of the district, letting the burden fall upon the infant sub-district, the orthern field of maintaining the cause of unionism in this beknighted state. Several thousand men in the Kanawha Valley have been on strike, however, for several years (Paint justice dicks whom he sent to Arizona! to assist his private agency in labor spy work for the copper companies, | had such wild parties with university | | ded that a disasterous scandal was ‘eared, we learned from confidential Burns agency, now in the possession of the Industrial Workers of the World, and made public thru Indus- trial Solidarity. Another letter, which follows, tells the" fédera® district attorney at Phoe- nix, Arizona, to make ‘discreet ’in- quiries about one of these joy rides where three labor spies spilled out of a car with girl students and warns him against the reports getting into the hands of an agent named “Jones”. ing industry until he was expelled recently. Burns is urged to “return” to the Pacific Coast and his subordi- nate refers to the girl students’ scan- |’ dal as follows: Joy Ride Across Border I have received information that three Government employes went out on a wild party, taking with them three young girls from the University of Arizona, making a trip to Nogales, Mexico. It appears as tho the officials of the Uni- versity of Arizona are up in arms over this affair and have been re- quested thru Government _ offi- cials in Arizona to make a full re- port to Washington, D. C. eee ee a Reports On Labor Spy Another ietter, dated June 5, 1923, from George P. Pross, manager of the Los Angeles branch of the Burns Agency to William J. Burns himself, addressed as “director” again gives “Your Agents” In Party As stated, when I make this trip into Arizona, I will write you a per- sonal report, giving you nameg of subjects implicated, also names of people with full knowledge, as I un- derstand some of your Department FIELDS IN W, VA. By TOM TIPPETT (Staff Correspondent of the Federated Press) OLCOTT, W.’Va., April 11.—A strike in West Virginia does not mean merely remaining away from work. It carries with it simultan- eously an influx of gunmen, eviction notices, and a general reign of terror in the camp. All of which happened at Olcott. This place is a coal min- ing camp on Briar Creek just off Big Coal river i1: Kanawha county, owned by the Black Band Consoli- dated Coal Co. The Briar Creek strike has now been on for two years. It begari in 1922 in the . national plied the 1917 wage scale im thei mines. The situation here is typica of many isolated streggles in this district. Out of rthe original strik- ers about 200 remain on the creek, involving altogether nearly 1,000 people counting the women and chil- dren, affected by the str:ke. Company Offers 1917 Scale This company would have been willing to continue union recogni- tion had the men accepted the 1917 wage scale. The 1917 rate was 50 cents a ton for loaders and $4.30 for daily labor. The war-time scale and the one demanded by the miners and being paid in other unionized sec- tions of West Virginia is $7 a day and 77 cents a ton for cuttng and loading. This company ig consid- ered liberal because it gave the strikers at one period 30 days’ mo- tice to get out of company owned houses and at all times the notices allowed at least five days to move instead of 24 hours or less. Evictions in January An examinaton of the eviction pa- pers shows January as the time chosen by this benevolent coal com- pany to give their erstwhile em- ployes a last opportunity to return to the mines under the bosses’ terms or vacate their houses. This kind of moving does not mean into an- other house, but onto the road Briar Creek Scabs Kept Like Prisoners coal strik: when the Black Band operators oN d | | j i ti | : : d Cabin Creeks) and rumors are |the lie to Burns assertion to Senator agents were connected with the par- | where the company does not own | and this myty will be pretty well exploded in| them. |an, ‘ ‘ i stri i * * * it th hi ion intend Wheeler that he severed connections| ty. the land, All many industrial centers during the coming) By the testimony of their own organ in about that the union intends to put with his private ¢ny Duaiosee ee yy, e lan the houses in such a campaign in which the Workers (Communist) Party will be active. The ‘Workers (Commun-| ist) Party is the only organization participat-| ing in the united front farmer-labor movement that has a clear understanding of the unem- ployment problem. The capitalist class of the United States, if figures mean anything, is going to give the Workers Party the opportunity of organizing unemployed councils before the year is out and of explaining to the workers that unem- ployment is inseperable from a system that takes from the workers the greater portion of | their product. In the coming industrial and financial crisis} both the workers and farmers will be entirely | without financial resources—the farmers are already bankrupt and the high cost of living) has prevented the workers from accumulat- ing any substantial savings. It will be the) most far-reaching and critical situation that American capitalism has yet faced because it| is directly linked up with the world-wide breakdown of capitalism, because it is symp-| tomatic of an organic lesion of the system. | The Communists alone of the organized | groups within society face the coming crisis! with entire confidence. They know that out! of the misery and struggle for the necessities of life which capitalism cannot supply comes} the broader movement of the workers, that gradually becomes a force challenging capital- ism in all its citadels, the movement for which the Communists have a program that means victory for the workers and farmers. Those Filipino Fanatics A Manila dispatch informs us that “three | leaders in the recent outbreaks of fanatics in Surigao province have been sentenced to death and 198 others have received sentences of thirty years imprisonment.” These “outbreaks of fanatics,” strangely enough, never occur in any but those countries subjugated by an imperialist nation and where a struggle for freedom is going on. America the socialists have convicted them- selves not only of slandering the Communist Party of Russia and the workers and peasants’ government of Russia, but of supporting coun- ter-revolution and condoning the terroristic acts of a capitalist government by pleading that in Bulgaria the socialists were “preserving the fundamentals of democracy.” This is exactly the same excuse that was given by the allied imperialists when they sent millions to the slaughter in the world war. Wallace’s Tricks Every member of the Coolidge millionaire cabinet seems to have his specialty in mislead- ing the masses of this country. Upon the shoulders of Secretary of Agriculture Wallace has fallen the arduous task of misleading the poor farmers. Of late Mr. Wallace has been working non- union hours in a desperate pre-election effort to bluff especially the wheat farmers into the ridiculous notion that their conditions are on the upgrade. The latest lullaby sung by Wallace to the farmers of the wheat belt is that ‘‘some improvement in the wheat situa- tion this year is indicated by apparent in- crease in consumption and by smaller winter wheat acreages in most of the leading produc- ing countries.” Here we have a raw case of blinking the facts and fooling the farmers deliberately. The facts of the present agricultural crisis, particularly insofar as the wheat farmers are concerned, are these: The principal wheat- consuming countries will have a greater un- used surplus crop on hand this year than last year. In 1923, Europe increased its wheat crop by 240,000,000 bushels. Outside of the United States the reduction of winter wheat has reached the tremendously insignificant height of 1 per cent. More than that. Many countries are using rye interchangeably with wheat and have large crops of rye on hand which they will consume before they will make new purchases on an aggressive organization cam- palgn. Not In Central Competitive. West Virginia is not included in the Central Competitive field in wage negotiations but its scale is based upon that of the competitive field. However, the Northern W. Virginia scale calls for 62.7 cents per ton for loading in rooms after machine cut- ting (in “thick” veins formerly five, now four feet or over) as against about 74 cents in the Pittsburgh Dis- trict for thick vein, and higher rates in some other sections; the day rates are also about 2 per cent lower. On the other hand, the Northern W. Virginia miners are not troubled ;with the draw slate (slate which overlies the coal and either comes down when the coal is blasted or must be pulled down for safety) which makes life miserable for the Pittsburgh vein miners in the Pitts- burgh District and especially in East- ern Ohio; where they must handle 12 inches or less of this slate with- out extra compensation. The Pitts- burgh vein in W. Virginia runs eight or nine feet in thickness, enabling a foot or so of roof coal to be left to hold up the slate. The Freeport and Sewickley veins, which are also ex- tensively mined in this field, do not carry draw slate, altho the Freeport has several inches of “bone coal’ (slatey unburnable, heavy substance) to be picked out of the middle of the vein, New Scale Is Worse. The new scale up for adoption is in general the same but with a num- ber of changes almost all to the dis- advantage of the miners. The dif- ferential of 1,3 cents per ton, and 8 cents per day, formerly allowed to men in mines requiring closed lamps (for safety from gas; storage bat- tery electric lights generally used) was wiped out. This affects about 15 Pe cent of the Sub-District 4 mem- rship employed in the shaft mines in the Fairmont field, Pittsburgh vein. It was also decided that “thin veins” are four feet or-under instead of five, which will take .3 cents ton away from quite a few, especial- ly In the Grafton-Phillipi field. These Bosses Won't Sign. tering the government service. It en- closes reports on the work of “investi- gator W. I.”, alias Fred Harris, stool Slimy Secretary of Labor Slips Slave Clause in Ship Bill WASHINGTON, April 11,.—Sena- tors have promised Andrew Furuseth, president International Seaman’s un- ion of America, that they will make a fight on the senate floor to strike from the immigration bill the joker inserted at the instance of Secretary of Labor Davis, which would kill the seaman’s act. The joker permits the secretary of labor to require a bond of each alien seaman who leaves his ship in an American port. This repeals the clause in the seamen’s which permits alien seamen, employed at low wages, to quit their jobs when in American ports and to wait for a chance to ship out at American wages. Son of Morgan Side Kick Heads Revolt Of Harvard Students CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 10.— Corliss Lamont, son of the New York (Morgan) banker and vice- president of the Harvard union here, is leading a students’ protest against the action of the govern- ing board of the union in refusing to allow radicals to speak to the students. Eugene V. Debs, William Z. Foster, and Scott Nearing are among the speakers excluded by Harvard union which tries to palm off'on the students only conserva- tive orators. Lamont and his fel- lows say the radicals can always speak before the Harvard Liberal club, but that does not reach enough students, Expect Ambassador Of U. 8. to Brazil I have again been warned against radical reports getting into the hands of Agent in Charge, Jones, of Phoenix, Arizona. “The Ethics of Opium,” Ellen La Motte, The Century Co. The western world, particularly America, is worried because of the increase of drug addiction. Hun- dreds of thousands of lives are be- ing wrecked and made useles thru the use of dope, Ellen La Motte makes it plain in her books, “The Ethics of Bpium,” that the only hope of controllin; the production of the raw opium eat of cocoa leaves. “The output of this raw material is the root of the matter. Strike at the root, and the whole thing dries up.” Then she shows how the produc- tion of opium is made a very prof- | d: itable business in the eastern col- onies of the western countries. How the same dope that wrecks the lives of workers in the home countries and reduced their efficiency is used in the East to keep the natives con- tented and enslaved. Miss I.a Motte shows and then proves with tables of statistics, Great Britain is the worst; offend- er in this dope traffic. At home there are excellent laws that help to prevent dope addiction but in India the opium, is raised, manufactured and sold by the government. Hol- land, France and Japan are also strong for dope in the east. These goverments could, by stop- ping production in their colonies, stop the whole dope traffic. But they don’t, it pays too well. Trachtenberg Tour Sunday, April 18, 2:30 p. m., Cleve- land, 0., Royal Hall, 5217 Woodland. Monday, April 14, 8 p. m,. Toledo, O., Labor Temple, Jefferson and Mich- igan. ‘ Tuesday, April 15, 8 p. m., Detroit, camp are owned by the coal opera- tors for that very purpose. January in West Virginia is real winter; 20 below zero is not uncom- mon on Briar Creek. When a coal strike is called in this state a tent colony appears immediately in the river bottoms or on some hillside patch which a poverty stricken farm- er gladly rents to the union. In winter barracks are substituted for the can- vas homes as much as possible. And so it is on Briar Creek. This article is being written in such a one-room home. The 1000 union people making the fight have lived in these barracks crudely and uncom- fortably for the last two years with escape very remote. They are sup- ported by District 17, U. M. W. A.; the strike benefits being $3.50 a week for single men, $1.50 extra for a wife and 50 cents for each child. This buys coarse, wholesome food and they do not suffer hunger. But: there are ‘ no clothes and nothing else. Very ragged and barefoot women and chil- ren are not an exception but the rule. None of the many children go to school because of their rags. Workers Kept as Prisoners Farther up the creek are the mines where strike-breakers are at work, except at one pit which the strikers have successfully kept closed. The 1917 wage scale is supposed to be paid but a worker there told me that the company pays “whatever it wants to” and alw: settles below the 1917 figures. Wages are paid in company money and the workers are kept in the camp like prisoners. Es- cape is 16 miles over the mountains on one side or via the company own- ed private railroad to the Baltimore & Ohio on the other. Thus the non- union men are kept in the valley in slavery. Police Nab Runaway Scabs In the Seatnning of the strike 100 Negro families were brought in from the southern plantations. It can be said to their credit that all but 35 of these colaed families have es- caped. A few days ago the strikers assisted two Negro men down the creek but later they were captured and marched back past the barracks to the mine by a detachment of the state mounted police. ; of wheat. The curse of our wheat farmers is} At present the New England Fuel To Lea fi H H of M 210 A In West Virginia there are three i i i i i Transportation Co., operati or Mome | House wiped desry Ye-! organizations that do this and other | George Washington, Tom Paine, Patrick)that they are blessed with a fertile soil. Pres-|*%¢ P . ve hd Wed keel 18, pia a } Henry, Thomas Jefferson, were branded as two large mines at Lo le, an RIO DE JANEIRO, April 11.—The se poner 4 : p. m., Det: pin Sem just as pernicious for the ent indications point to a greater 1924 yieldage vel Grant Town, employing together| newspaper A. Noite says it is in- 2101 Gratiot) coal barons. They are the Baldwin- dangerous fanatics by the rhe rg Rg ngpimar per acre which will more than overcome the about 960 Ce is still dhering to | formed from ,an authoritative source pg a agg i a nn Rae Felts detective: agency, sghartered and * he too is e an i . |its refusal to the new ‘eement a hig! iplomatic representative reday, Ap ra} pids,| operating in gan, icDowell an tees oat Rio the black slaves was hung tailed by the ptr nando a cal ‘chat sain eat ho pete = Sm: Bony Saad bag gh ery Chiniies| paae’ aoice’ ot ese wba” doputined M Dae, ed e other com ¥ lay and ‘ not return.” yy, Api . Ms, g0,| vate army of “watchmen” jut for his fanatical devotion to abolition. Amer-| Wallace's propaganda will not help thelones, have also refused to sign, There | Edwin Morgan, ambassador of the | North Side Turner'Hall, 626 N. Clavk| by the sate and raid fos by te chan iean imperialism now produces its own crop of fanatics. farmers. No matter how roseate they be, lies, false impressions, and fake figures will not have been since the 1922 strike in a few non-union miners in the Morgan- United States has booked passage for | S the United States on tnat date, but it. Saturday, April 19, Milwaukee, full ators, and the regular state constab- ulary (mounted police). The func- We look upon the dispatch quoted as proof| help the wheat and other farmers. In the past bed ig picorelt ogpe al wee prcig sad 8 a shoe eens ¢ pear Pog Gary, Inds, tell] Eom yot, hee ree. organizations, is that some of the Filipinos would rather die in | five years the farmers’ and ranchers’ livestock |far are contingent upon ratification | here. details to’ appear later. Mounted Police Guard Mines a fight for freedom than live under the rule of Leonard Wood, the potentate who rules the Phillipines for the American plunderbund. We are sorry the Prince of Wales was not allowed to go to South Africa. It is the only piece of British territory in which he has not fallen from his horse and this apparent dis- ; tion is said to be going to the rail- glaring array was the unmistakable crimination may add to the unrest there inj In view of the recent high casualty rate |roads: the Pittsburgh vein and Se-|| tion i sign ta not biter ‘onal camp. labor circles. among sweethearts of the male sex it would |Wickley mines of Northern West Vir-|| “as the most corrupt regime in the history of the country (C, H. Minner, secretary Local Se seem to be a good plan to frisk the loved one fit Pie 5 an {xceptionally || * * * * a seamy side of history for which one seeks in vain 4118, U. M, W. iA 1 “His Record is His Platform” is the slogan|for a gun before getting down to the real buai-|out the smoke-stack by the forced || Parallel short of the intrigue of the most corrupt Euro- et hy L hamalied Sp Mog bay of McAdoo’s followers. Many a man has stepped off of better platforms than this with a Join the “I want to make THE | dispatch of Arthur Sears Henning, principal Washington |) ar rope around his neck. Hugo Stinnes, billionaire steel king, is dead, . c Pp ning, p Pp Cs , but not from starvation like the thousands of | 1tY WORKER srew” lub | correspondent of the Chicago Tribune. THE DAILY WORKER, Ost nen st ge JOIN THE WORKERS PARTY “@@ German workers whom he exploited. { IMPEACH COOLIDGE! \ ; them to subseribe today. has decreased $3,914,887,000 in value. At the same time their land depreciated more than thirteen billion dollars in value. The farmers’ economic and political ills are too fundamental and too ingrained in the very capitalist system itself to be ended or evgn relieved by Wallace and his tricks. ness of the evening. of the scale by the convention, Production Near Standstill, Coal production in this region is almost at a standstill, most of the mines being entirely closed or work- ing on a part-time schedule, there jbeing in the Fairmont region 47 ‘mines reported ‘working yesterday jand 282 idle. Most of the produc- draft before being consumed. 4 What is normalcy? Harding’s Normalcy Defined It was President Harding’s favorite word to describe the activities of his administration. Comes now a description of the Harding administra- pean courts of the 18th century.” The quoted words are from a recently published On Briar Creek, in the absence of the other two, the mounted police serve the operators. I walked 16 miles from Briar Creek over the pub- lie mountain trail (April 4) and did not meet or see a sign of a single , mounted policeman except at a coal mine. Their presence on the high- way with guns and cartridge belts in clothing for men, women or children of any age to struggle.—T. T.) help them in their i / | )