The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 18, 1924, Page 6

Page Six THE DAILY WORKER. Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO., 1113 W. Washington Blvd., Chicago, Ill. (Phone: Monroe 4712) SUBSCRIPTION RATES By mail: $3.50....6 months $2.00....3 months By mail (in Chicago only): $8.00 per year $4.50....6 months $2.50....3 months Si Pa ie GN SABIE is AY OE RS ET Address all mail and make out checks to THE DAILY WORKER 1113 W. Washington Bivd. $6.00 per year Chicago, Hlinois J. LOUIS ENGDAHL ) WILLIAM F. DUNNE) "" MORITZ J. LOEB.... Editors Business Manager Entered as second-class mail Sept, 21, 1923 at the Post- Office at Chicago, Ill, under the act of March 3, 1879. SEB 290 Advertising rates on application. ———————————————————— C. P. P. A. Aids Communists. The Conference For Progressive Political Ac- tion thru its official organ, “Labor,” is waging war on the June 17 Farmer-Labor convention to be held in St. Paul. It warns its readers that June 17 is a care- fully baited trap set for the unwary workers and farmers by the Communist ogres and, that once in, the hapless wights will be devoured. The June 17 convention called by farmer-labor parties representative of the movement in more than half a dozen western states is in no sense a competitor of the July 4 conference called by the Conference for Progressive Political Action. If the C. P. P, A. had said that it was its in- tention to organize a farmer-labor party or if any of its acts and utterances could be'so con- strued, it could consistently denounce the June 17 convention as a dual movement and advise the elements it can reach to stay away for that reason. The last thing in the world that the C. P,P. A. wants, however, is to be confused with the ele- ments that desire the formation of a class farm- er-labor party; it does not even wish to sponsor a heterogeneous third party dominated by middle class groups; it has no intention of crys- tallizing the disgust with and distrust of the two capitalist parties into anything more than some sort of an “independent” movement to back LaFollette for the presidency. In the elections for congressmen and senators and state offices it intends to back so-called progressive republi- cans and deniocrats. It does not intend to es- tablish any sort of an organization other than the one it now has—a bi-partisan voting ma- chine controlled by labor union bureaucrats and labor union lawyers. It should be plain from the above facts that the reason the C. P. P. A. fights the June 17 _ convention is not because the Workers (Com- munist) Party of America will be represented there by five delegates and that the Federated Farmer-Labor party which includes Communists in its membership will also be represented by three or four delegates, but because it is against the organization of a class party of any kind. It wants to continue the united front of busi- ness men, wealthy farmers, lawyers and small manufacturers which allows nothing but middle class views to dominate. It fears the rise of a rank and file organization such as will in all probability come out of the June 17 convention. What will be the result of the campaign of sabotage carried on against the farmer-labor movement by the C. P. P. A.? The result will be one that will please the Communists hugely—the frightening away from St. Paul of any middle-class elements who might have opposed with some effectiveness the formation ofa class party. The C. P. P. A, will not succeed in keeping away from St. Paul those groups and organizations that really de- sire to organize ona class basis and the only consequence of its volunteer efforts will be to make of the June 17 convention exactly the kind of a gathering that the Communists desired in the first place—representatives of every union, co-operative society, workingclass party, ete., that is willing to sever all connection with the parties of American capitalism and help to build a mass movement of workers and farmers. The C. P. P. A. is certainly welcome to every- body who does not want to take this step in the struggle that the masses are forced to wage for the preservation of elementary privileges and which will serve to consolidate their forces for an offensive against American capitalism. Amalgamation. In St. Louis the painters’ union is engaged in a struggle with the bosses but gets little or no support from other building trade organiza- tions and this experience is duplicated dozens of times in every industrial center. The building trades crafts were more militant in their earlier history than they are now; they j developed the sympathetic strike and the doc- td trine of “an injury to one is an injury to all” to a high point while the building industry was of ' a more competitive nature. ! Of late years the officialdom of the building f trades unions has sought to force a policy of fay arbitration and conciliation on the membership 5 and this has resulted in almost complete de- moralization; true, wages are still high and con- ditions fairly good but only because of a build- ing boom and the consequent demand for skilled labor. The building industry is peculiar; if a con- tractor can prevent a strike until the building is finished he can, without much fear of reprisal, tell the building trades to go to a much warmer climate and does so. Craft division, combined with the yielding to the safe entreaties of the employers’ agents for “peace and harmony” has put the trade unions in a precarious position. Faced with a like situation the building trades unions of England amalgamated and multiplied their power many times. In America the same remedy is indicated but it can only be accom- plished by an organization such as the Trade Union Educational League which recognizes that the mere logic of an idea is not enough to obtain general recognition but that ideas must be given organizational backing and unity of purpose on the part of the rank and file who want progress be opposed to the unity of an officialdom for whom everything is all right just as it is as long as they draw their very satis- factory salaries. Educating Young America A nation-wide campaign with the object of in- stilling the “American ideal” in the hearts of everyone has been launched here in Chicago by a number of persons who are worrying about the welfare of our great nation. The type of persons who are doing all the worry- ing is interesting. The City Club, the Union League Club, the Woman’s City Club, the Associa- tion of Commerce and the Kiwanis Club were all represented at the preliminary meeting. One Rosenthal, a contractor who employs many workers, is chairman of the literature committee and the speakers bureau is headed by Professor George Vincent of the Rockefeller foundation. Assistant City Superintendent of Schools Hogge was also present and promised that the burning message of the “American ideal” would be placed in the hands of every one of the 500,000 Chicago school children. This will be of great help to.these little Ameri- cans when we go to war for the House of Morgan or the Rockefellers or some other patriotic group and shows the exceptional educational facilities en- joyed by American children. We hope the leaflets issued will point out that the Russian children are deprived of the manifest advantages of having no capitalists to get slaughtered for. Two Dirty Deuces So the righteous gent known to fame as A. Mitchell Palmer was just a common crook and stood for the blackmail weapon which an- other more energetic crook—Harry M. Daugh- erty—held over his head. This much we gather from the testimony of the busy Gaston Means before the senate committee. Mr. Means is not too credible a witness but his detailed story of the conference between Palmer and Daugherty, from which the former emerged white and shaking, carries conviction; no denial has come, from either of these gentlement who before the oily flood engulfed them were wont to vocifer- ously warn their fellow-patriots to beware of the Communists who intended to confiscate all private property. While the attention of the populace was dis- tracted by the loud and frightful cries of these two reprobates, they were busily engaged in confiscating all the private property they could lay their hands on. Just how much the demo- crat Palmer shook down concerns like the Bosch Magneto Company for will probably never be known but the loot grabbed by the republican Daugherty is of more recent date and may be estimated if the voluble Means con- tinues to talk. Here we have an accurate measure of the calibre of these 100 per centers. Not only were they the tools of labor hating corporations, the agents who essayed to terrorize and smash the organizations of workers, part of the mech- anism of the capitalist state, but they were and are criminals of a particularly loathson:e type, men who deliberately created widespread mis- ery, who tore families apart, jailed thousands of workingmen and women, sent many to their death at the hands of foreign tyrants and in- stituted a nation-wide spy system, not only to serve the foes of the workers but to fill their own pockets. ) It is possible to-have some respect for an individual who, tho cruel and reactionary, fights the workers because he wants his class to rule and believes that it alone is capable of ruling. But the Palmers and Daughertys are merely low types of mercenaries without convictions of any kind who will serve any interest willing to pay them well. American government, however, is not in trouble today because it has had Palmers and Lessons of : The end of the tram strike, like that of the dockers’ strike, is another evidence of the sinister part now be- ing played in rélation to all industrial disputes by the Labor Government. The mass of the workers have al- ways imagined that the advent of a Labor Government meant that at last the workers had gained a powerful ally in all their industral struggles. Instead, the opposite has been “the case, and, rather than place the whole resources of governmental machinery on the side of the striking workers, every possible subterfuge and in- trigue, and even blatant threatenings, have been resorted to by the middle- class politicians who dominate the La- bor Government in order to intimidate the strikérs to moderate their demand and accept compromises. Wonderful Solidarity. The magnificent solidarity displayed by the dockers a month ago has been excelled by the solidarity of the tram- ‘way men and the spontaneous sympa- thetic action taken with them by the busmen. In the long history of labor struggles no finer example of working class solidarity has been recorded. Let it be placed on record to the credit of the underground railway workers that they, too, would have responded to a similar call for sym- pathetic action on their part on the THE DAILY WORKER first day of the strike had this been demanded by their officials. As it was, when the government and the capitalists saw that the un- derground workers were determined to line up with their fellow trans- port workers, and that this was no idle threat, but one that would be put into practice, increased conces- sions ‘were immediately offered to the Transport and General Work- ers’ Union. A Government Pressure And had the underground workers been called out, let there be no mis- understanding, the full demands of the tramway men’ would have been met. But just as the Labor Govern- ment put pressure to bear on Mr. Bevin and his colleagues in the dock- ers’ strike, even more drastic pres- sure was brought to bear during the tramway men’s strike. This took the form of,the Government's determina- tion to declare a state of emergency under the Emergency Powers Act. ‘We understand that Mr. Macdonald, in the middle of the strike, asked the Labor, Party to give him complete power to deal with the strike. This, the Liason Committee of the Labor Party refused to do. Yet there can be no doubt that the underground workers come out on strike this state of emergency would have been declar- ed. There should be no misunder- standing as to what this meant. It would have brought about a similar WITH THE CONDUCTED - BY TH THE FARM AND THE AMER- ICAN YOUTH. By HARRY GANNES. “Get away from the farms” is a popular expression among the Amer- ican youth. They do not like the life of the farmers, and it is next to im- possible to transform a young worker into a young farmer; while the re- verse of the process seems to be a rapid evolution. The long hours and the miserable pay on the American farm is pro- verbial. Bad as conditions always were for the youth on the farms, they are becoming worse. For a long time in the United States there were a select group of farmers; those who owned their land, free of encumbrances, and who were able to enjoy some of the luxuries which went with a prosperous farm, But that number was small, and as some figures that I shall quote fur- ther on will show, is growing smaller and smaller. For the past twenty years, the cen- tral theme of nearly all cheap and melodramatic boys’ novels has been the saving of some farm, at the last moment, by the boy hero by redeem- ing the mortgage. Farm and mort- gage are now becoming synonymous words. Why is it that the American farm- ers who technically are the most ad- vanced in the world should suffer such hardships and Hold so insecure a social position? The answer is the predatory nature of American capitalism, and the con- stant and increasing exploitation of every section of the farmers by both the small and large American capi- talists. . The robbing of the American farm- ers by the railroads is now stale knowledge. How the Youth Fare on the Farm. There are 8,000,000 children and young people on the farms in the United States and nearly all of them do some form of farm work. As a whole, the American youth detest the farm and a great amount of persua- sion is necessary to keep them on the land. The cities and industrial cen- ters with their highly concentrated aie have a strong appeal for them; ile, on the other hand, the con- tinually growing depression makes life miserable for them at home. Even tho the farmer might not be ‘utterly bankrupt, as his condition grows worse, he hires fewer farm hands, re- lying more on his own children to do the work. On the smaller farms, known as truck farms, whole families are hired to do the work, and the more children in these families, the better for the farmer employing the labor, as chil- WODKEDS UNG WORKERS LEAGUE average age is about 25. These work- ers are not strictly farm workers; for when the crop is harvested most of them go either to the cities or farther west to the lumber camps. Child Labor on the Farms. There are in the United States over 2,500,000 children from 5 to 15 years of age; and 61 per cent of these children work on farms. The conditions of the child farm laborers is indeed miserable. In the Southern cotton fields, the little chil- dren drag big heavy sacks about in the fields, picking cotton, under the blistering sun. Their work is very long, sometimes exceeding 10 hours. There are no legal regulations in the South. Thousands of colored children are also employed in this\work. In California, a so-called enlighten- ed section of the United States, em- ploys literally thousands of children, some five and six years old. Even in the highly industrialized states of Rhode Island, Michigan and New Jersey, as well as Maryland, special investigations by the United States Department of Labor (Children’s Bu- reau) reveal horrible facts regarding the exploitation of children and youth in the farming territories. The hours of all the young farm workers are extremely long. Housing conditions are rotten, and can be lik- ened to the ¢onditions described by Frederick Engels: in his “Conditions of the Working Class in England.” In Maryland and New Jersey, for in- stance, hundreds of these people sleep in one shack without any semblance of privacy. Children and older people sleep and perform all functions in the same chambers without any partitions. , Because there are no laws to pro- tect these farm children, they receive the most meager schooling. The aver- age number of grades finished by these children is very small, and the type of schools attended are indeed primitive because the wages of the teachers are poor. Laws Neglect Children. Most of the states have passed some form of child labor law, but it is significant to note that in no state do they pertain to the welfare of the farming youth. On thé land, the chil- dren are left to the mercy of the ex- ploiters and their parents, beth of whom, in most instances look upop them as objects of work—as farming inplements. And the number of child workers is growing. Organization of Farming Youth. Strange as it may sound, the American farming youth is pretty the i otnlbn Train Strike situation as existed during the miners lock-out when the State was used to smash the miners, the right of free speech and agitation during the strike destroyed, and when over 70: members of the Communist Party were arrested for their activities during that lock- out. Seats Capitalists Sitting Pretty Even if the workers still doubt that this would have been possible the ca- pitalists had no illusions. They knew that they could rely, upon the present Labor Government to act as ruthless- ly as any capitalist government would have done under similar circumstanc- es. In this connection, the reasons for the strike should not be lost sight of. We believe that the strike was de- liberately encouraged by Lord Ash- field and the Traffic Combine interest he represents, in order tha’ a re- sult of the Impasse created, the Labor Government would be forced to intervene with the Court of Inquiry, who, obviously, would have to recom- mend the setting up of a London Board of Traffic Control. This would have been a cloak, as it will be, for the future operations of the combine under the leadership of Lord Ashfield to get the complete mo- nopoly of the whole of the traffic sys- tem of London, thus ensuring them a guaranteed rate of profit, eliminate all competition on the part of the pirate buses, prevent any attempt on the culture than the boy and girl farm clubs.” Difficult to Reach Farming Youth. It is extremely difficult to reach the American farming youth with any revolutionary propaganda, as the more intelligent and more revolution- ary of the youth do not stay on the farm. Those who are already organ- ized are under the complete domina- tion of capitalistically trained leaders or reactionary farmers. The Workers Party of America is succeeding, in a small measure, in reaching the American farmers thru its Farmer-Labor Party agitation and because of the favorable state of the farmer's mind due to his embittered position. The Young Workers League of America has within its ranks some 15 or 16 farming leagues, but these are composed nearly all of Finnish young people. 4 The problem is to go into contact with the farming youth, and experi- ence has shown that merely sending an organizer into rural territory is not fruitful. / With the growth of the Young Workers League and the development of a mass Farmer-Labor Party, there is no doubt that some valuable means of reaching the American farming youth will be offered the American Communist Youth organization. Staws of Alfalfa By JOEL SHOMAKER Friday, April 18, 1924 By HARRY POLLITT part of the municipalities to make the combine pay towards the upkeep of the roads in repair, In these circumstances we urge the working class. of this country to demand an end to this serving ‘of capitalist interests by the La- bor Government. , We are faced with a situation im which the whole of the organized workers are definitely in revolt: a- gainst starvation conditions. The Ca- pitalists are making desperate at- tempts to play off the unskilled men against the skilled men. the sheltered trades against those trades subject to foreign competition. It is surely né part of the Labor Government to be assisting in this business, Their po- licy is a simple one, and one that the workers will understand. That is to use the advantages of being a govern. ment on behalf of the class they are supposed to represent. The miners’ situation gives them one further opportunity of redeeming their otherwise despicable and reac- tionary record. If this is not taken and the Government refuses to intro- duce a minimum wage bill that will guarantee the miners a wage equal to their 1924 rate plus the-increased cost of living, then we hope that the work- ers will sweep away these middle class bourgeois politicians and replace them by men who understand what poverty and a strugle for existence Ye Olde Hay Editor « WHERE, O WHERE ARE THE CITIES OF REFUGE? I WENT to a room, IN A big hotel, WHERE WISE men talked AND I HEARD a story THAT WOULD make gray STONE MEN weep like babies. FIVE MILLION farmers IN THE United States ARE ON the run_ FOR CITIES of refuge. EVERY FAMILY on the farm SEEMS TO BE mixed in, FOR FARMING does not pay. FIRST COST of crops, BECAUSE OF no markets; THE FARMERS of our land OWE BILLS, notes and mortgages, TWENTY BILLION dollars in total, FOUR TIMES the money COINED, MINTED and printed BY THE United States Treasury. THEY CANNOT pay their bills, FOR BIG harvests are liabilities AND NOT assets on the farms. BUT WHERE are THE CITIES of refuge TO WHICH the farmers ARE FLEEING for work and food? FARM MEN are not SKILLED WORKERS in any sense. THE CITIES are crowded WITH LABORERS on poor pay. MEN AND WOMEN work long hours well organized, but not in its own in-|IN SHOPS and factories’ terests. churches, Reactionary farm bureaus, and capitalist controlled| STAND IN agricultural universities expend great| MEET T! TO PAY the rent, ith the butcher, doctor - sums of money and abundant effort in} AND PREPARE for the undertaker. dren are used very extensively on the Daughertys in high places. It is in trouble be- cause of the weakening of its economic founda- tions and it is because of this that its mercen- aries cannot be controlled and their acts hidden from the gaze of the working and farming masses. Palmer and Daugherty are merely two dirty deuces in the marked deck with which American capitalism robs the workers, Turning them face up Will help a little. Page the Security League. Our 100 per cent American sensibilities are wounded badly by an article on immigration published by an Italian capitalist sheet, Corriere d'Italia, in which the sacred doctrine of Ameri- canism is ascribed to the influence of a “group of Anglo-Saxons and intransigeant Americans mixed with Puritanic, theosophic, vegetarian, and anti-alcoholic elements.” Will not the American Security League take steps to deny, to a sheet carrying such studied insults, agcess to our shores® truck farms in the United States. In the harvest fields thousands of young laborers migrate from state to state following the ripening crop, Tho these harvesters are not very young, there is no doubt that the organizing the farming youth osten-|NO, MISTER Farmer, sibly to keep them on the farm, since} THERE IS no home or the American youth has shown such|CITY OF REFUGE for. you. a strong tendency to leave the land. ‘These youth farm organizations Old Parties Kill Labor Bill. have as their purpose the making of} ALBANY, N. Y., April 17.— The better farmers of the rural youth. At} floors are littered with death reform the same time, they are taught the| bills as the New York state legisla- most reactionary sort of trash. ‘For|ture closes its 1924 session here, example, the anti-labor president,|Some of the defeated bills provided Calvin Coolidge, ¢vas made honorary |for restricting injunctions ‘in labor head of all the youth farm organiza-| disputes, election reforms, 48-hour tions comprising a membership of|week for women and minors, movie ever 700,000. It may be safely said|censorship repeal, minimum wage that the bulk of the American farm-|commission, state ownership and de- porters of the reactionary capitalist elements, tho, at the same time, this spirit is gradually being undermined by the economic reverses which their parents are now facing. President Coolidge recognized the importance of taking over the ideo- logical leadership of the greater num- ber of farming youth, when hé said in accepting the honorary leaderships over the organized farming youth: “Probably no activity is of more importance to the future standing, The Lip on aah serial they would like to se the famous Russian hovel, and of the life of this illustrious ning for another seriat the views of our. What Do You Want to Read? wants the publ to be started soon. But we Daly WORKER, 113 means. MENTIONING THE MOVIES By PROJECTOR. The movement for petter films fs America is progressing— down—and out. Trade papers speax quite cynical- ly over the passing of The Little The- atre Films which was to further Art in the films even as its namesake in the field of the speaking stage. Now, despite the presence on its Advisory Boatd of the brightest stars in the filmament, including Chaplin, Fairbanks, DeMille, Lubitsch, Hughes, Ingram, Pickford, Seastrom, Sher- wood, Villard, etc., its! manager is out looking for a job. , They made one picture. And could not release it. ‘It wouldn’t pay,” said the distributor. And that was the end of ART. But what can one expect now that America has turned Soviet and capitalism is no longer here to patronize art for art’s sake? Which recalls an aged and honor- able joke in the film profession: “There are two kinds of producers today: those who make bad pic- tures and write good checks, and those who make good pictures and give bum checks.” * * 2. @ . By mutual agreement between pio- ture theatre owners end ministers of Portland, Ore., competition in bunk+ ing the “young idea” will be regu- lated. The theatre owners have prom: ised to bar all children during Sun- day School hours. < a ee “HAPPINESS”—SAME OLD SOAP, Laurette Taylor, thru her stage work in a succession of one-type Poly- anna plays, has built up a publi¢e that will probably be satisfied with her screen appearance wiih Pat O'Malley in “Happiness.” That it will bring any of its namesake to a class- conscious worker in the audience is highly doubtful, however. As usual, she is a p. w. g., good natured, but somewhat “dumb”. She is an errand girl and supports her invalid mother on eight dollars: a week. Those miraculous movies! Delivers a dress to one who has “everything but happiness”—money, beauty, breeding, a husband safely planted in the grave-yard, and still she is unhappy. Enter the errand girl. While waiting for the grand dame, tries on the hats and things. Caught. in the act. As a reward she gets a rich home, and an electrician hus-° band. K ‘ Her recipe for happiness is “jest lookin’ ahead.” It should have been -| Pat O'Malley for there never was a more human, lovable young screen electrician. His hobby for inventions contributes most of the happiness that the audience gets out of this. muchly padded film. The errand girl is «mbitious to own, her own shop. She leaves her rich home to go back to work so that she won't lose any time. “By hard work and constant application”—you know the rest. She gets $25 a week as a fitter and soon after has her own shop, with ner name in electric lights, and her husband, with his name in electric lights just around the corner. The clinch having come in the mid- dle of the picture, the end is a ser- mon, She is just breaking even in business,.when along comes a gawky little Brooklynite to be taken under her wing and started on the road to, her own shop, her name in electric lights, and Happiness. p . The inentor of tooth-brushes and mouth-wash must have had such pic- ing youth are the most reliable sup-|velopment of water power resources, | tures in mind. views of its readers on what next. We have had “A Week,” Story of John Brown,” ar account — in revolutionist. are pend would | get. ke to see publishedy W. Washington St, ¥ /