The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 23, 1924, Page 6

sacrR RET cm eR REE Sse td ; Hl 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 By mail (in Chicago only): $4.50....6 months $2.50....3 months $6.00 per year $2.00....3 months $8.00 per year Address all mail and make out checks to THE DAILY WORKER 1113 W. Washington Bivd. Chicago, Ilinois J. LOUIS ENGDAHL ) WILLIAM F. DUNNE) MORITZ J. LOEB... Editors jusiness Manager Entered as second-class mail Sept. 21, 1923 at the Post- Office at Chicago, Ill, under the act of March 3, 1879. ap 290 Advertising rates on application. ——————————————————— Imperialism In The Open President Coolidge, in his speech before the edi- tors of the Associated Press, in New York, the choicest collection of capitalism’s paid publicists, comes out openly for the establishment of the hege- mony of the House of Morgan over Europe backed by the full power of the United States government. He dismissed the fact that the capital has been found to be peopled with thieves large and small with a wave of his hand. Corruption, he said, was to be expected following such an outburst of patriotism as American participation in the world war for the rights of small nations, and most of his speech was devoted to, a glorification of the lords of finance and industry who, according to the Coolidge code, are the backbone of the nation and for whom the American masses should be grateful seeing that an all-wise providence had provided them with such far-sighted and generous rulers. On the matter of taxes the president was quite positive. The rich must not be discriminated against in favor of the poor; that, he opined, “was an unworkable principle.” Having settled the question of who owns America the president then gave more than a hint that this ownership should be extended to other lands. He spoke highly of the Dawes plan which turns the European nations into slave states upon which the House of Morgan levies tribute and hoped for the endorsement of this scheme by the electorate. ’ The fact that such a speech was delivered to such a gathering, at a time like this, is not without significance. President. Coolidge appeared before the Asso- ciated Press editors, not as the spokesman of the American people, but as the mouthpiece of the House of ‘Morgan and every editor present knew it. It is in this manner that the editors of the capi- talist press are informed of the tasks they are ex- pected to perform, In this instance the task is that of convincing the American masses that civili- zation in Europe can be saved only by the assur- ance to the House of Morgan that the armed forces of America are behind it in its project of establish- ing a receivership of European industry. : It is a glorious plan that the House of Morgan has devised. It is a dream of conquest that would have made Napoleon turn green with envy; it is the most ambitious and unscrupulous use of mighty financial power that the world has ever seen. . ‘ For five and one-half years the financiers that made billions out of the world struggle have watched the peoples of Europe sink lower and lower into the pit of misery their rulers dug for them. The international bankers have peered with a cold and calculating eye at the convulsions of diseased and starving men, women and children and have computed with seeming accuracy the exact moment when it would be possible without a great risk to bind them for unnumbered years to the chariot of the finance-capitalists. The gold of the European nations has been flow- ing in a steady stream to the shores of America; our financiers have aided with it every band of eut-throats whom they believed could weaken the powers of resistance of the European working class. They have made common cause with any and every national capitalist group that showed unusual ruthlessness and virility. The time is ripe to strike, they think, and so the masses of America will again be deluged with cleverly. written news-stories and articles eulogiz- ing the unselfish purposes of the House of Morgan and blaming all the evils of which the masses com- plain upon ‘the “unsettled European situation.” Once again the American masses will be urged to come to the rescue of a suffering world and to place its salvation in the hands of Coolidge, Dawes, Hughes and other spokesmen of the House ot Morgan. It is more than probable that the nominee of the democrat party will also be committed to such a scheme but not quite so openly. The bandits of American imperialism will have more than one string to their bow and if a candidate of either of the capitalist parties is returned in the coming election the American workers and farmers will be cast for the role of international policemen—a police force that will be expected to enforce the dictates of the rulers of America upon any people that revolts against the payment of tribute to House of Morgan. The answer of the workers and farmers of the United States to this brazen scheme must be the organization of a mass party of workers and farmers on June 17 and the prosecution with re- newed intensification of all organization—on both the industrial and political field. It Pays to be Crazy Our leading dailies that have of late been com- plaining that their delicate esthetic senses are being outraged by the Teapot and Wheeler dis- closures of corruption and rottenness in the gov- ernment are getting back to normalcy. For these well-kept mouthpieces of the employers, normalcy means but one thing in the code of newspaperdom. This is: feed the readers scandal stories, murder tales, divorce mysteries, and lurid exposures of sex depravity. Thus, recent days have brought the old Harry Thaw case on the front pages of our metropolitan press in place of some Teapot Dome testimony. Napoleon once said that “one newspaper was worth 100,000 bayonets.” He knew whereof he spoke. Even in taking up the Thaw trash instead of the Washington exposures, the capitalist press has hidden certain facts which, if given adequate currency amongst the masses, might harm the existing order. For instance, while the newspapers were filling up aeres of print refreshing the memories of. the informed and educating the uninformed, they sig- nificantly omitted saying a word about the huge estate of Harry Thaw. But on taking pains to scan carefully the financial press, not printed for or read by the .workers, one finds that “Harry Thaw’s share of the hundred million dollar estate left by William Thaw is estimated to have quin- tupled to $5,000,000 in seven years since his in- carcerations as insane.” This is interesting as well as instructive. How comes it that a man who has been adjudged in- sane by the highest medical and judicial authori- ties of capitalism can have his fortune quintupled without doing a stroke of work? What magic was employed by this wizard of lunacy that his wealth increased five hundred per cent while he was in the crazy house? Offhand it would seem that it pays to be crazy. It has never occurred that a member of the work- ing class, a miner, a steel worker, a railroader, should become a millionaire by the most arduous work. Yet, Thaw, doing nothing became a multi- millionaire. It surely must be a crazy system when individuals who are incarcerated in, insane asylums and do no productive work at all can become multimillionaires in less than a decade merely because they own the means of production and exchange socially used, while the overwhelm- ing mass of the workingmen and farmers are con- demned to intolerable living conditions and bank- ruptey tho they are engaged in industry and agri- culture from sunrise to sunset every day thruout the year. Recognition Creeps Closer. The Soviet Recognition tide draws ever closer to the borders of the United States. Like the tide that overwhelmed King Canute, it is restless, ever rising, irresistible. In spite of the avalanche of abuse hurled at Soviet Russia these past years, in spite of the open and continuous assault of the kept press, Alexan- der Yazikoff, official representative of the Union of Soviet Republics, is at Montreal, ready to open negotiations for trade relations and recognition with the Canadian government. That is getting pretty close. That is the closest that any Soviet representative has been to the bor- ders of the United States since Ludwig Martens was deported from this country. No wonder then that the kept organs of the in- ternational bankers should be.on the job. They have discovered “red propaganda” in Yazikoff’s baggage. To be sure, it consisted of only a few harmless books in the Russian language that no “honest-to-goodness” Canadian could read, but the yellow press can’t be expected to be too careful about details. If an ignorant policeman can report Lester F. Ward’s “Dynamic Sociology” as a treatise for making dynamite, then a capitalist editor can surely discover in one Russian book, in the posses- sion of Yazikoff, a force potent enough to wreck the whole capitalist structure in this western world. But this form of Soviet baiting has worn itself out. No matter how much the kept press screams, the noise it makes is drowned in the demand for Soviet recognition. The workers of the United States welcome Alexander Yazikoff to this side of the Canadian border. Soon even the capitalist politicians in Washington will be doing the same thing, in spite of themselves, and the subsidized press will applaud, because it will be compelled to. Pinchot--Penitent Prodigal Says Pinchot, the progressive: “Nobody ques- tions that, I, as a loyal republican will support him (Coolidge) in the campaign.” Will the labor leaders of Pennsylvania and the liberals in and out of the state who have been singing the praises of this “friend of labor” now rise and explain upon what their appraisal of the attitude of Pinchot was based? To be a “loyal republican” after the nauseating disclosures of crass corruption and criminality in the republican cabinet that have been made means but one thing—that Pinchot is loyal to the reac- tionary capitalist interests the republican party represents. The Pinchot position is, we believe, a trying one for the band of progressives who were cheered by the thought of the millenium that was close at hand as the result of his election. The simile of the dog returning to his vomit seems particularly apt in this instance. \ THE DAILY WORKER By the Needle Trades International Committee. Should you ask the average union member of our needle trade the ques- tion, “Wherein lies the present chaos in the industry and what caused the recent growth of the great distress of the workers?” he would certainly an- swer you in the following manner: The chaos is the result of the fact that the entire industry has been transformed into a network of con- tracting shops. The sweat shop dis- ease has spread to all corners. Cloaks, men’s clothing, caps, embroid- ery and many other products are be- ing manufactured in all sorts of hid- den dens. The union cannot have any measure of control over these hidden places, The union has even lost its control over the so-called legitimate shops, which they did control some time ago. : Many Non-Unionists. A large part of the workers in the needle trades is unorganized. The union has seldom taken special meas- ures to organize the workers in those factories which are found in small places surrounding the larger needle trade centers of the country. The large numbers of unorganized are in- strumental in spreading still further the sweat shop system. Because of crumbling politics of the union, the employers are in a position to take still more advantage of the disease. Their hunger for ever increasing profits has no bounds. They there- fore use to the utmost all possible scab holes, with the result that the disease affects the workers to an even greater degree. The employers profit by this epidemic, while the workers suffer. Their misery is constantly in; creasing because of it. Unemploy- ment is large, the season short, wages miserably lo#, tho speeding up in the shops is unbearable. The sanitary conditions in the greater“number of the contracting shops are horrible, etc. It may be that not every worker whom you ask will answer you in this manner, but it is, nevertheless, certain that the average worker sees the problem in this light, and that is simply because there are no other fac- tors that can have caused the present chaos and the present miserable con- ditions; And one does not need to be @ specialist to understand whence have come dur present sickness in the needle trades. What Is To Be Done? Then what is to be done to cure the disease? It seems to be quite clear that among the most important tasks before us, two main points stand out: First, to exert all our energy to organ- ize the unorganized workers, and, secondly, to carry on a strenuous cam- paign to uproot the newly planted sweating system. Where there is a will there is a way. In the year 1910 the New York cloakmakers revolted against the sweating system then existing, and as a result of the revolt, we have built up a powerful union. Many other branches of our needle trade unions have also been built up as a result of the revolt against the sweating epi- demic. Certainly at the present time we are not any weaker than in those days when we had almost no union at all! And is the sweating system any less evil today than it formally was? We have the strength to put up a fight against this evil. There are several means open to us by which we can start a real fight against the sweating holes and the sweat shop bosses. If we wish to cure our disease we must start by. organizing the unorganized workers, and destroy all the germs causing the disease. Difficult But Necessary. Of course it is a difficult task, but it is a necessary task and no matter how difficult we must and we can ac- Whom Shall We Organize--The Workers or The Bosses? complish it. But our leaders have lately been mainly concerned with making their work easier. We have become as ac- customed to settle our difficulties by artful means, that we have almost for- gotten that labor organizations must, at all times, still carry on a fight for better conditions. As the old fashion- ed grandmothers we have become so accustomed to look for a magic cure for every illness, that we have already forgotten that certain diseases must be operated on at the roots. Our leaders claim that it is difficult to organize the unorganized workers. To be sure, the workers are not as yet class conscious. The bosses, and even all sorts of small contractors are more class conscious than the unor- ganized workers, so our leaders’ have undertaken to organize the bosses rather than the workers, and instead of working to wipe out the nests of the sweating contractors, they are working to organize the sweating con- tractors. A short time ago, for instance, Fein- berg, the manager of the N. Y. Cloak- makers’ Joint Board, brought forth a plan whereby the union might organ- ize the small contractors that supply bundles of cloaks to all bedroom and kitchen holes in different parts of the city, Organizing Contractors. In the New York branch of the Amalgamated the union leaders have been quite chummy for some time with all sorts’ of organizations of small contractors, Lately their rela- tions have become still more friendly. Some jesters say that even the lock- outs made by the contractors against the tailors were inspired by certain union leaders. We have become ac- customed to a policy of concessions— you contractors give me something and I will give you something, too. It is understood that neither. gave up anything of their own, except at the MUSIC. Children’s Concerts Close By ALFRED V. FRANKENSTEIN. Children’s concerts of the Chicago Symphony orchestra came to a close for this season at Orchestra Hall on April 17. In order to test the quick- ness of ear which his audience had developed during the season Stock had the principal player of each wind instrument stand behind a screen and play a phrase or two. The tone qualities of most of the instruments were readily recognized, tho the clarinet and oboe did not prompt as quick and as lond response as the others. This is good music educa- tion, for many a veteran concert goer who .has not had this sort of train- ing has not so quick an ear. The program opened with the pre- lude to the third act of Wagner's “Lohengrin” follgwed by the world’s second most popular tune, the bridal chorus in the same opera. Then followed the second and third movements of the Beethoven eighth symphony. As customary Mr. Stock had, the themes of these thrown on @ screen in notation and gave his listeners a beautifully foolish text to sing them to. The text of the opened theme of the second movement has Literature - - Music -- Drama changed in four years. When this work was played during the first sea- son of children’s concerts the text was “Oh Henry, Oh Henry, where did you get that billygoat”, while last Thursday it was “Oh Lizzie, Oh Liz- zie, Where did I put my monkey wrench”. Beautiful poetry, and of the sort that sticks with the music, so that one does not easily forget words or tune. The Saint-Saens “Danse Macabre”, a symphonic poem describing the dance of ghosts on their gravestones at midnight, and the brilliant festival march “Pomp and Circumstance” by Edward Elgar closed the program. The children’s concerts of the Chi- cago Symphony orchestra are beyond doubt the best means of music educa- tion in the city. If music courses in all the schools of Chicago were abol- ished, and the pupils sent to these concerts instead, they would know and appreciate music better than any long school courses in singing could teach them. The only regret is, as many Sym- phony devotees could tell you, that there are no concerts of this kind for adults. Mendelssohn Club Farewell The Chicago Mendelsohn club, a men’s chorus directed by Harrison Wild, gave its final concert of the Pere MSR Ae RRO EAE SAE ‘THE VIEWS OF OUR READERS ON LIFE, LABOR, INDUSTRY, POLITICS A STRANGE ANIMAL. I met a unique specimen of the Furriers’ Union today. I spoke in an I. W. W. hall on boring from with- in and mass union idea vs. dual union idea. He took the floor and asked for further advice. I joined him at end of meeting and his philosophy was as follows: “I know all the ideas of the Communists and the Socialists. I don’t care for their papers, as they give a biased view. The capitalists are biased the other way. So I take the liberal-labor papers—the Dial, the Nation, the New Republic and the Manchester Guardian. are just as much against capitah3m as the Communists, they fully understand the labor movement and they give the Absolute Truth without bias.” 1 can understand a bourgeois being a pacifist and a liberal, but a work- er! He says he has studied Commun- ism—and he still believes in Abso- lute Truth divorced from any materi- alist foundation! The New Republic recently wrote up John L. is. of the Miners’, as an “honest and pug- nacious fighter"! Hard, the Na- tion, said that Foster warts to “con- vert the A. F. of L. masses into leay- ing their unions and forming perfect, industrial unions.” And none of these papers deigned to mention the recent slugging campaign of the N. Y. For, ward crowd in the speaker’s own un- jon—the Furriers! This is all true. I would not have believed yesterday such a man could exist. (Signed) GEO. McLAUGHLIN. ed The To the DAILY ‘ORKER: view expressed in Monday morning’s DAILY WORKER that the epilogue to the play, “R. U. R.,” to be shown at the C, 8. P. S, Hall on Wednesday night, supplies the play with a weak ending, has many adherents. However, I believe the ending to R. U. R. is fully as strong as the rest of the Robot play if properly inter- preted. Those who consider the end- ing weak claim that the epilogue does not carry out the revolutionary philosophy of the other acts. Accord- ing to my interpretation it does. Primus and Helena are reformed robots, that is, they represent work- ers just after the proletarian revolu- tion. The robots: previous to the uniting of the “robots of the world,” represented the average worker. The robots mind was not perceptible. He was the worker who was so busy coining money for his masters and fighting the wars of another class that he had no time to think. But after the revolution, the robot or worker for the first time had leis- ure for a little introspection. He no longer needed to spend all his time for others. Among his first thoughts were thoughts of self. The revolu- tionary robot said, “Lo, I have a soul. I have time for a real education, for romance, for the art of living.” This revelation of the spiritual self is my interpretation of the epilogue. As soon as the once lowly minded, dulled and stolid worker came to the realization of the joy of living the future of the race was secure, —K. R. 6. Wednesday, April 23, 1924 expense of the worker, but their union leaders believe that with this sort of policy they accomplish a great amount of good for the worker. Several weeks ago there was if New York a strike of tuckers, hem; stitchers and pleaters, and the union organizers of the International worked hard to organize the employers into an association, And now we hear that some of thé leaders of the capmakers union also have a plan to organize. Whom?— the contractors. Why? Well, that is the style, and it is impossible to con- vince these leaders that this style is not for the interests of the worker. A Confused Strategy. Only last summer have the cap, makers carried thru a strike with the end in vew of cleaning out thé leeches and the sweatshops. The workers gladly entered the struggle, / when called by the union for this pur- pose. According to the report of the leaders the strike ended successfully, And what have we now? We confess that we cannot under- stand the depth and the wisdom of the strategy of our leadership, but from the depths of the heart the cry must needs come: to the devil with such strategic wisdom! We still have” our senses and have not yet lost con- sciousness. We cannot find in the afore mentioned strategy any wisdom that works in the interest of the work- er. We understand that when it is necessary to organize the workers, and root out the nests of the sweat- shop bosses, we cannot work it back- wards. Don’t bother us with your maneuvers. We have had enough of your “Grandmotiér” medicines. The disease in our midst is already full grown. The workers—them we must organ- ize, but not the employers. They can» take care of their own affairs without the aid of the working class leaders. season at Orchestra Hall with John Charles Thomas, baritone, as guest soloist. The concert brought to per- formance a great deal of music, some good, some not so good. The best of the concert, in singing and in music, was an old. English ballet “Thru Bushes and Thru Briars,” arranged for part singing by R. Vaughan Williams. It is a quiet, rustic bit, and excellently sung. An unusual arrangement of sym- honic music was the second move- ment of Dvorak’s “New World” sym- phony set to a Negro spiritual text. In the symphony the music is a slow, idyllic solo for English horn. The text fitted the music well, but one may question a bit the application of a text to a composition intended as pure music. “The Farewell of Hiawatha,” set from Longfellow by Arthur Foote, is a trifle long and bombastic. But the pure delight of such composition as the Negro spiritual “Wait ’Til Ah Put On Mah Crown” by William Reddick, and the comic song “But They Didn't” by Rogers as performed by the Men- delsohn club amply makes up for it. John Charles Thomas sings the English language so that one can re- cognize and understand it as such. This alone is a high art, but Thomas has a great deal more. A big voice, superb quality, interpretative ability are some of them. The compositions he sang were mainly of the French (impressionist style of concert song, but the one Russian work he sang got his audience and this writer more than the French compositions. That was “The Evening Prayer” by Mu- sorgski, which tells about a little child, half asleep, forced to pray for his parents and all his sisters and his cousins and his aunts, whom he reckoned up by dozens. If it were not for the fact that. it takes a most wide awake singer to sing in a man- ner that gives one the impression that he is all but dozing, one might have thought that Musorgskis’ song was written about John Charles Thomas, saying his prayers in a dress suit, standing before a piano on the platform of Orchestra Hall, with @ large audience and the Mendels- sohn club looking on, ¢ ee Noted Musician H Has . Composed Music For New Motion Picture Fully as great care has been ex- ercised in the selection of the mu- sic which will accompany the new motion picture of the International Workers’ Aid, Friends of Soviet Rus- sia, as in the selection and titling of the picture itself. The Russian half of the picture shows the contrast between the old Production methods and the new so- cial order so it is comparatively sim- ple to carry the theme of the former in the beautiful old Russian folk- songs while the latter is served with the gorgeously inspiring new music of the revolutionary movement. Many of these new selections will be play- ed in this country for tne first time, and the services of a noted musician, Franz Beidel, have been employed to make orchestrations of these tunes. In the German half of the picture the task was much more difficult not- withstanding the reputed wealth of German folk music. The arrangers found that practically all German» non-operative music consisted either of folk tune or nationalist patriotie airs. The sweetly sentimental, con contentment loving folk music was found to be expressive of a “Golden Age” Germany that no longer exists This labor film shows the actual- Germany of today, the Germany of reality, and the old folk tunes, with very few exceptions, were actually incongruous. The nationalist tunes were obvious+ ly out of the question. For'the ac« companiment to the pathetice condi-- tions of the German worker, recourse had to be taken to Tchaikovsky and other Russians of tne old school, showing the reversal of conditions in, the two countries. For the labor re-. volt sections of the film, special med-. leys of German labor songs dear to the hearts of the “Liedertafeln” were arranged, topped off with ‘the magni-, ficent new “Hundertschaften Marsch”. of the Workers’ armed guards. Thus “Russian and Germany” becomes a. musical as well as a pictorial treat. |, Straws of Alfalfa By JOEL SHOMAKER ‘e Olde Hay Editor WHAT, O WHAT SHALL THE HARVEST BE? 1 WAS TALKING TO A STORE MAN, WITH RUBBER tire goggles ASTRADDLE HIS long nose, "4 AND HE told me HIS PLAN to settle THE FARM question, 3 WAS TO PAY the farmers FIXED PRICES for all crops " AND LET the old hayseeds ; ROOT HOG or die. JUST LIKE union workers ’ WITH WAGES by the scales, A CHEWING GUM fellow WITH MONEY to burn AND HIS lunch tablets IN ONE CORNER of a * SMALL VEST pocket 4 BROKE IN on our talk, 1 HE WANTED to see ] ALL FARMERS move to cities, ) SO LABOR would be cheap q> THAT MAN would have rt GAME PRESERVES instead of farmay TOURIST PARKS in place of dairies AND FARM products ruled off THE PUBLIC markets ‘ AS UNFIT for human food ' | WAS just thinking WHAT FUNNY old birds , THE MEN and the women ‘ OF THIS NATION will be , WHEN FARMS and ee aaa ARE MEMORIES of AND ALL PEOPLE Renee nose bags, TO CATCH food calories DRIFTING IN the air AND EVERY one will dress. IN FIG LEAF robes. BUT YE OLD politicians WITH WEAK KNEES and sore une’ WHY DON’T YOU do something —_- TO HELP the farmers S OWN THE LAND and be FREE AMERICAN citizens? Sa, * 1 / mah of