The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 19, 1924, Page 6

Page Six THE DAILY WORKER ‘HE 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): $4.50....6 months $2.50....3 montus $6.00 per year $8.00 per year Address all mail and make out checks to THE DAILY WORKER 1113 W. Washington Bivd. Chicago, Illinois 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. <Se 290 Advertising rates on application. Harassing Hughes To prove that an official of the United States government utilized his office to serve the interests of a special group of capitalists is like carrying coal to Newcastle. The evidence is so abundant and so easily accessible, the performance has been so frequent of late, that it no longer creates even a ripple on the muddy political waters. But the case involving the help rendered by Secretary of State Hughes in getting the Ship- ping Board to turn over the steamer Martha Washington to the Italian government should draw more fire from the workingmen, who still have illusions left about the character of the gov- ernment; than the ordinary exposure of this sort. Hughes is supposed to symbolize the acme of self-sacrifice and political purity in Coolidge’s cabinet. Unlike Denby he was not boiled in Tea- pot Oil. Mr. Hughes was never a member of the “Ohio gang,” of which Harry Daugherty was the sachem. Prior to this charge made in the House Committee investigating the Shipping Board no one would even dare to insinuate that Hughes was getting away with the kind of loot Mellon is said to have cleaned up in illicit whiskey-permit with- drawals. In intimate Washington circles the report has long been current to the effect that Hughes was being restrained by Coolidge from resigning on account of the cabinet post being a source of economic liability to him. The nervousness that has seized the Secretary of State at the charge of the House Committee makes it clear that tho Hughes’s political gar- ments may not have been soiled in the last oil mess, they certainly were dipped in some Italian gold for services rendered in turning over the steamer in dispute. It is especially interesting to find that the former chief justice of the su- preme court, supposedly the most virile guardian of the law and the highest impersonation of cap- italigt legal ethics and spirit, should be the very agent to drive the shipping board into tie ‘com- mission of a crime against the State. According to the law of the land the Shipping Board has no right legally to transfer any ships to a foreign government. The Board did this undoubtedly under the notion that the word of so eminent a legal authority would be sufficient camouflage to hide the violation of the statute involving the safety of the state. The secretary of state is badly harassed when he is caught red-handed guilty of perpetrating a crime against the state. The time for getting rid of the government is rotten ripe when its sup- posedly purest officials are the recipients of pelf and the outstanding agents of the plunderers of the wealth of the country. Whose Press Is It? ‘We are indebted to Mr. James O’Shaugnessy, executive Secretary of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, for the statement that this year will see the expenditure of at least $360,- 000,000 for advertising. This is the sum that will be spent thru this organization. It is estimated as being only eighty per cent of the total sum of money that will be spent by the owners of com- modities to advertise their wares. In other words, close to half a billion dollars will be spent by the owning class in advertising. There is little dispute about the fact that the vast bulk of this money will be invested in news- paper advertising. This mean the advertisers will be wielding a more powerful influence on the molding of the minds of the workers and farmers than ever before. When Wallace’s Farmer gets several millions of dollars of advertising annually it will know how to and where to stand on farm legislation, on railway freight rates, and on the demands of striking workers. The railroads alone have spent,in the last few Years more than $300,000,000 on advertising. Most of this huge sum was expended in subsidizing ' dailies and weeklies the country over. With the railway interests as with all other capitalist in- terests, advertising is as much a medium of in- surance against working class encroachment on their vested privileges as a matter of business. The disclosures of the Interstate Commerce Commis- sion, when the New Haven was under fire revealed startling information about the extent to which the big banking and manufacturing interests are _ ready to go to make public opinion. In Mr. O’Shaughnessy’s testimony there is to be found much food for thought and action by the workers and the dispossessed farmers. They are the’ ones who, in the last resort, make it possible for the big employing class groups to own and control the papers. The very press that the work- ing and farming masses directly and indirectly support is in fact, in the daily struggles of the workers, the mortal foe of these masses. Indeed the need for a press committed solely to serving the interests of the working and farming classes is more necessary than ever. ily Re-electing Hooper Ben Hooper has just been re-elected chairman of the Railroad Labor Board. This announcement should spur on organized Labor and the farmers to demand that the board be abolished immediate- ly. The choice of Hooper to succeed himself as the head of this government agency against the rail- way workers is in itself a challenge to the railway workers in particular and to. all other working- men in general to get rid of this strikebreaking agency. This is the same Mr. Hooper under whose regime the overwhelming majority of decisions involving wage disputes or working conditions were ren- dered against the workers. This is the same Hooper who inspired and organized the open shop cam- paign of the railway capitalists against the shop crafts in the national strike of 1922. It was the self-styled lover of the public, Ben Hooper, who an- swered the strike of the rail hands with the ukase providing for the protection of strikebreakers by “every branch and department of the government —state and national.” And when the workers suc- ceeded in tieing up the railways as they had never been tied up before and in forcing the bankers controlling them to run to Harding for aid, the same strikebreaker Hooper declared that to yield to the railway workers “would be an outrage upon public decency and would hasten the enthrone- ment of anarchy in this country.” It is precisely such a policy which Mr. Hooper will pursue as head of the Railway Labor Board. His re-election as chairman will only whet his anti-worker appetite and he will swing the club against the workers more freely. The poor farmers and the workers in general are also vitally interested in getting rid of this piece of dangerous strikebreaking machinery. What is being done to the railway workers will be done to the miners, the seamen, and other organ- izations of labor that dare challenge the right of the employing class to exploit the working class. For the workingmen to tolerate the existence of the Railroad Labor Board means for them to in- vite the foisting of similar boards on the employes in other industries and the entering wedge to the end of the right to strike. Besides, the operation of the Board is tied up organically with the con- tinuance of the vicious Esh-Cummins Act under which the farmers are compelled to pay almost 50 per cent more in freight rates than they did prior to the war. A blow struck against this strikebreaking board will be a blow struck against the capitalist rail- way law robbing the masses and enriching the exploiters. “We” and Russia The disclosures made by THE DAILY WORK- ER, completely fastening: on the State-and War Departments of “our” government unpardonable guilt for a series of crimes against the Workers’ and Peasants’ Soviet Republic of Russia, are part- icularly timely now. Today there is no more insolent and determined enemy of the First Workers’ and Farmers’ Soviet Republic than the United States. The revelations of THE DAILY WORKER, coming at a time when the trent toward the resumption of normal relations with the Russian government is rapidly accelerating its pace everywhere in Europe and Asia, only serve to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it has been the plan and desire of our capitalist class alone and not the charges made against the Soviet Republic that is responsible for the continued strained relations. France, the hotbed of European intrigue, mon- archist and capitalist, against the welfare of So- viet Russia, is about to make a complete change of policy. Poincare is being sent to the scrap heap by the opposition deluge of the last election. Japan is again seeking to negotiate with the So- viet Government. Belgium is making concrete cteps to resume friendly relations. Germany is preparing to make adequate amends to the Rus- sian Republic for the outrageous raid on the So- viet commrecial mission. In England the negotia- tions are now in the committee stage. J by the lack of adverse publicity in the press, it is) safe to state that tangible progress is being made by the negotiators. Everybody is moving forward except the Amer- ican capitalist government. Messers Hughes and Weeks are still busy forging documents ut the Soviet Government’s plan to hoist the red flag over the White House: The evidence uncovered by THE DAILY WORKER affords irrefutable proof that the United States Government is mak- ing these charges only to hide its own infamous crimes against Soviet Russia. The evidence un- earthed by us convicts the State and War Depart- ments of preparing the basest attack not only against the Russian masses but even more 80 against the American workers and farmers. Now that the drift toward Russian recognition is becoming so marked and that the American government has been shown up in its true light as being responsible for a no small part of the misery upon the Soviet Republic by its foreign and domestic capitalist-monarchist enemies it is doubtly imperative for the workers and farmers of this country to clean house politically and to achieve the immediate resumption of peaceful re- lations with the Workers and farmers Soviet Re- public of Russia. Wealth hath its drawbacks as well as poverty: A rich English ship owner died of shock on learn- ing that he made over four million dollars on sev- eral cargoes. We did not hear that any of the men who manned his ships died for the same reason, JOIN THE WORKERS PARTY, Pullman Heads Tell Slavery Plans By ELSA BLOCH. F, CARRY, president of the Pull- "man Company, has a forgiving spirit. “Let's all. forget about the strike,” he says in a mesage to the DAILY WORKER. “It’s over, and we're all going to be good friends again.” E. F. Carry can forget about the strike. I understood why wsien I went to see him at his home at 199 Lake Shore Drive. The door of the huge white building was opened for me by an obsequious butler in blue uniform. A white-gloved attendant took me up- stairs, growing more diffident at every step. “Mr. Carry must be a great man,” he confided to me in an awed undertone. “He's got to be to live in a place like this.” How Carry Lives. Even now the preliminaries were not over. I found that I still had Mr. Car- ry’s butler and his many maids to reckon with. And after all these formalities had been attended to, I did not see Mr. Carry. But I was per- mitted to get a glimpse of a vista of large, cool.rooms, tapestried, expen- sively carpeted, charmingly furnish- éd. Here was an atmosphere of aban- doned luxury, of perfect ease, that made me, too, forget, for a few mo- ments at least, that a strike had been going on in Pullman. How the Workers Live. The strike was recalled to me, vivid- ly enough, when I went back to Pull- man that afternoon. A few blocks from the factory I found the homes which shelter a large proportion of the Pullman workers. Long rows of dirty, broken gray stone houses, crowded together so that no single flat could have more than one side open to the light, face on “lawns” filthy with tin cans,torn paper, heap- ed-up garbage. Wash-lines are strung from one house to another, and mot- ley-colored clothes flap grotesquely over barefoot children who, in their efforts to get a little space in which to play, crowd one another into the streets, in front of wagons and motor- ears: In the Pullman houses—there are three flats in every story, and five to six stories to every house—families of six and seven persons gather in two or three rooms, dark, unclean, foul- smelling. There is no division of liv-- ing quarters, and it would be almost impossible to say which is kitchen and which bedroom, for stove and bed jostle each other in corners. There is no water in any of these apartments. One tap in the hallway is made to serve three families. On many floors there is a leakege from the common toilets; there are of course no private bathrooms. Ficrence Rents. Where the workers in Pullman have succeeded in buying their own homes, conditions are mueh better. The houses I describe are those owned by Florence Pullman and leased out to the slaves in the factory. These houses are the ones on which the rent has been raised within the past few months from seven to nine and then to eleven dollars. The company knows that the workers have no place else to go. It will be hard for these men and their families to forget about the strike. The Brass Check. And the Pullman Company will not forget about the strike either. Already steps are being taken to prevent an- other outbreak of active discontent among the more militant workers. When the men go to work in the morn- ing, each one is expected to hang up his employment tag—a small brass Without this tag he cannot pass the doors. When yesterday afternoon came, certain of the workers—among them some who had taken part in the strike—found their tags gone. When they complained, they were simply told that they would have to visit the employment office and be re-hired. Many of those who went back were forced to work side by side with scabs, who were kept there under the pro- tection of the inside police. These are the same scabs who, the workers claim, slept in the shop, and in a near-by restaurant, while the strike was going on. Double Crossing Boss. That there would be no discrimina- tion against the strikers when they returned to work was the promise made by James McLaren, manager of the Pullman Company. McLaren told me yesterday—without knowing who I was—that he does not propose to take back all of the strikers. “I am going to let some of the scabs stay on,” he said. “I did make the state- ment that I would take back whom I pleased and fire whom I pleased, and I propose to stick to it.” McLaren, a corpulent man with weak blue eyes, whined pitifully about the lack of profits that the company suffered. “The car business has drop- ped off-terribly within the past few montlis,” he said. “We have to meet competition from all over the country, and this was a case of making a re- duction or going out of business.” Pullman Has No Competition. Figures sent out by the Interstate Commerce Commission tell a differ- ent story. Pullman is universally known as the only corporation in the country, Standard Oil not excepted, that has no competition. In the man- ufacture of passenger cars Pullman is supreme. It not only operates its own cars on its own lines, but it is paid by other companies who want the privilege of using Pullman cars on their lines, Pullman has a practical monopoly. When the tax reports were made out last year, and every possible and impossible deduction had’ been made, the company still showed a surplus, over and above all dividends, of $25,000,000. In order to escape the surtax, they proposed to make im- provements on the line. They offered to spend the money in any and in all ways—excepting for higher wages for the workers. “The riveters get enough money anyway,” said McLaren, in an attempt to strengthen his case. “Some of them get as high as $1.18 an hour.” He had selected with cool deliberation the highest wage that any riveter can make. And this wage is made, under the piece-rate system, only by speed- ing up faster then a mene: #ellsw workers can go. The average wage of | the riveters does not amount\to a dollar an hour. McLaren Scabbed In Great Strike. . Why the workers should be dissatis- fied with this wage is a. thing that McLaren doesn’t see. As he told the story of his rise in the company, he became the successful business man, elevated high over the day workman. “I used to work sixty hours a week my- self, at the rate of thirteen and a half cents an hour, and thought nothing of it.” His chest expanded as far as it could—his stomach interfered. “When the strike of 1894 came along, I stayed in the shop. I never joined a union and I never struck.” “Only the unskilled workers were slashed. None of the skilled groups in the shop has been touched. Riveters are not skilled workmen.” No Cars For a Month. If riveters are not skilled workmen, impossible to get men trained in a short time to take the place of the strikers. During the month ending April 1, the company turned out 144 passenger cars—a record production. It was in a fair way to break that record up to April 14, when some of the riveters quit. From that day to this, not a single car was manufac- tured. There were plenty of scabs to do the work, but none that could be trained to make rivets that would get past the inspectors. The operation of riveting was too highly skilled for mere novices to handle. Unions Get His Goat. “No, I can’t believe in unions,” said McLaren. “They are a force for dis- content, fostered by the foreign ele- ment that is so hard to handle. We are perfectly fair to our men. For instance, we have an ola-age penszon system. If a man has worked for us continuously for twenty years, and is seventy years old, or is totally dis- abled, we give him a pension of 10 per cent of his salary.” McLaren did not mention the fact that if a man has been guilty of murmuring against the company during these twenty years he finds his “pension” mysteriously withdrawn. “Nothing is gained by unions,” Me- Laren went on. “In 1922 John Holm- gren, vice-president of the Brother- hood of Railway Carmen, had a tag day for the benefit of the Chicago shopmen, then on strike. Most of what he got he kept for himself and the union treasury.” A Regular Pullman Lie. That this is a deliberate lie can be proved by documents now on file at the local headquarters of the union. Every cent collected went into locked boxes, which were taken to headquar- ters and counted several times by dif- ferent officials. Every striker who got a benefit signed papers naming the amount he received. The two accounts tally exactly. “The workers don’t realize that the social activity they get under the auspices of the company is much bet- ter for them.” There is certainly no doubt that it is better tor tne com- pany. The Pullman News, gotten out by the publicity department, is a fawn- ing, smirking little magazine, con- taining publicity for those men who are the most willing among the slaves. James Keeley, publicity manger and editor of the paper, admitted to me that he knows nothing about the strike. “My job is, to keep in touch with the activities of the workers,” was his statement. As far as Keeley is concerned, fights for decent condi- tions and better wages are not things that matter to the workers. Courtesy to passengers on the cars is more im- nartant. Keeley is right. more the company: ** McLaren doesn’t mind working all day for thirteen and a half cents fan hour?” said one of the men who had heard the statement. “Well, some of us have been here longer than he has, and we do mind it and we propose to do something about it.” The DAILY WORKER makes Mc- Laren nervous. He claims that it bhelp- ed to foster discontent and that it prolonged the strike. He squirmed un- comfortably when the name of the paper was mentioned. The Cardinal and the Knight. “Why did Cardinal Mundelein make Carry a Knight of St. Gregory?” Mc- Laren was asked. “Was it for his services to the workers?” The watery blue eyes widened. “Why, Carry wouldn’t get anything out of Mundelein for doing things for the workers. It’s understood that that honor was for something he did for check—on a hook at the entrance. |it is hard to understand why it was|the Church.” Blaming It On Congress of the country has been down and out. half of the population of the country has been in Almost The signs of a serious industrial depression are multiplying. The textile industry is shot to pieces. Bituminous mining is at a low ebb. The production of steel is falling so rapidly that there is being considered a substantial price-cutting campaign to stave off the shutdown of ‘more fur- naces. The automobile industry, which only a month ago was the banner industry, is now oper- ating at 20 per cent below capacity in many cen- ters. Even the building industry, which for some- time has maintained- a steady pace of increased contracts, is slowing up considerably. This state of affairs is being capitalized by the employing class in many ways. First of all, there is increasing evidence of preparation for a na- tional wage-cutting campaign. In the shoe and steel industries the workers have already had their pay slashed in several cases. The press of the bosses, as usual, is paving the way for such inroads on the meagre wages of the workers. Then, the same capitalist press is attempting to convince the working masses that Congress is re- sponsible for bad business. The fact that the House dared repudiate Coolidge on the bonus question and the disaster that has overcome the millionaires’ Mellon tax scheme are cited as hay- ing had harmful effects on business. To the extent that there is an iota of honesty in these statements of the kept editors, they be- tray an ignorance of the most elementary rudi- ments of economics, We have never lost any love on Congress. But to blame the puppet show on Capitol Hill for the collapse of the steel industry, for the depression threatening the building indus- try, or the bottom falling out of the textile indus- try, is the height of asininity. This condition which industry is assuming depends on and arises out of far more fundamental factors. For sometime, agriculture, th eleading industry AS WE SEE IT By T. J. O'FLAHERTY human scale than a fink ‘it is some. liam J. Burns, in an expansive mo- ment, described his army “of stool pigeons as the greatest collection of scoundrels “that ever went un- whipped of justice.” Burns was mighty proud of them for that rea- son. That was before he got the job of chief of the investigation bureau of the department of justice, After- wards he aimed higher. He planned to organize a special force so much more despicable than the regular stools that, in the words of Billy Sun- day, “if they wanted to get into hell, they would have to use an airplane,” He actually got men to act as stool pigeons for $1 a year. And one of them was the son of Harry M. Daugh- erty, who recently escaped from a sanitarium where he was held in an attempt to cure him of alcoholism, se * Edward L. Doheny was behind th: 1921 Mexican revolution in Lowe California, William J. Burns and the department of justice were aware of this fact, but they did not prosecute or even publish the facts. Burns was very anxious to give out statements whenever he had a pipe dream about Communist plots or fanciful solutions of the Wall street bomb outrage. In this case Burns prepared to frame up on the D, of J. agent who furnished the news of Doheny’s activities. It appears that Doheny provided the cash for the rebels and that the dis- bursements were made by no less a person than Albert B. Fall, then sec- retary of the interior. It was fear of the result of the discovery of these criminal acts that caused Burns to send in his resignation to the new attorney general, to become effective at once. ee The Michigan raid of 1922 was made under the direction of William J. Burns and Harry Daugherty. The “Ohio gang,” as they have now come to be known, used the “red raids” as cover for their grafting activities. While they were busy “saving” the country from the radicals, they were even busier robbing the country or robbing the robbers. Perhaps Ber- rien county was recouped for the ex- pense of financing the prosecution of the Communists out of the millions paid in graft to Daugherty and Jess Smith. It would be interesting to know what the farmers of Berrien county now think of the patriotic he- roes who delivered them from the un- scrupulous reds, who had so little re- spect for the institution of private property. ' sf @ 2n@ fu wuts ssvauk BYE @ mctIE taste — of their own medicine in South Bend, Ind., a few days ago. A great masked parade was to be held as the closing event of the May festival, and klans- men, hooded and robed, took up their Posts in the business section of the city, acting as sentries. Sheriff Cun- ningham served notice on the city police that if they did not stop-the parade he would. His first act was to send automobile loads of men thru the city who unmasked and unrobed the sentries. Afterwards a mob stormed the klan headquarters and broke some windows. Autos loaded with kluxers were overturned. The klansmen never attack except, when they are twenty to one. But. when- ever a force anything like equal to theirs shows up they fall back on the constitution. eee The death of John F. McGinnis of Boston recalls vividly to mind the po- lice strike of 1919, which made the name of Coolidge famous and infa- mous. McGinnis, a former bricklay- er, who joined the police force, 8 leader of the strike. The 4 the throes of an economic crisis for the past five years. It was obvious to every observer that the building and railway needs would be met in time. The ravages of the boll evil could not be dis- counted in analysizing the trend of the textile market. The increasing competition met by American farmers in the world market is not the fault of Congress. All this talk of Congress being to blame for the impending industrial crisis is just that much balderdash. Such arrant nonsense is not found in the financial papers read by the big bankers and manufacturers. It is handed out only to the masse to mislead them and hide the basic causes of the ersis. We believe that Congress is to be blamed, but it is to be blamed for a crime far more serious than that levelled at some recalci- trant legislators by the hired press. We charge congress with being an organic part of the ma- chinery of government owned and controlled by the capitalist class and employed by it to maintain and perpetuate the present system of exploitation which alone is responsible for the constantly re- curring industrial crisis bringing in their wake misery and suffering for the great masses engaged in agriculture and industry. Premier Grabski, of Poland, announced that owing to the condition of affairs in Europe, his formed a union and were promised the aid of the American Federation of Labor. When the first scare head- line appeared in the capitalist presg, the Gompers gang deserted the strik- ing policemen like rats. Let it be said to the credit of the strikers that no body of men ever displayed finer solidarity than they did, and they had the capitalist class of America a bling at the knees, fearing that victory in Boston would mean id spread of unionism thruout the ranks of policemen in every city in the United States. Instead of the support Gompers promised, he sent his private secre- tary, Guy Oyster, to Boston to talk surrender. Oyster arrived, immacu- lately dressed, with spats and cane, etc. The Boston Central Labor Union, which had promised the po- licemen its support, welched on the strikers after the appearance of the oyster. From then on the police were at the mercy of the city and state officials, It was an easy~ nae ae Coolidge to win a victory. tory cannot be claimed by bial ig If any man is entitled to credit, it is Samuel Gompers, He broke the po lice strike, Conviction Makes Him Sick. WASHINGTON, May 18.—Repre- country had decided to begin payment on the | sentative Langley, Kentucky, who suf- det of RIBTANONSO ‘which Plead owes to thal fier sent eens ‘oles at United States. The defeat of Poincare in the re-|his home here, was reported by cent French elections robs Poland of one of its|Physicians today to be out of danger, best friends. Langley was stricken following his re- turn to Washington from his trial in Kentucky, at which he was convicted A Spanish toreador, failing to kill his bull atjot conspiracy to violate the liquor the proper moment, was so badly mauled that he|!@w- is not expected to live. The news despatch does not say whether he was injured by the bull or the| worKER? fight fans who attended the spectacle, Do you want to help the DAILY Then get a new sub- soriber, x body who would scab on a fink. Wil. / If there is anything lower in nel | | ) | | «