The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 27, 1924, Page 6

Published by the DAILY WORKER FUBLISHING CO., 1113 W. Washington Blyd., Chicago, Ill. (Phone: Monroe 4712) SUBSCRIPTION RATES By mail: $3.50....6 months $2.00....3 month By mail (in Chicago only): i $4.50....6 months $2.50....3 montis $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. Advertising rates on application. Se 200 Burns, Manufacturer of Plots Admission by John W. H. Crim, former chief assistant to Daugherty, before the Wheeler-Brook- hart committee, that the “red plots” blazoned forth at intervals during the last several years by William J. Burns were all fakes, merely puts the official confirmation upon common knowledge. “In all: the ‘red’ agitation,” said Crim, “They never brought me any evidence.” How comes it that, at this late hour, the fraud and persecution by Burns against the labor and revolutionary movements is officially disclosed. Is it because the investigators wish to protect the workers? That would be nice, if it were true. But as the facts appear, we are forced to conclude that the honorable senators have exposed Burns’ outrages against the “reds” only because Burns has been also framing up some of them. They need to discredit Burns to save their own skins. All of which is grist of the mill of revolu- tionary workers. We can have no objection to the. quarreling groups of exploiters showing up one another in their true colors. It is reminis- cent of John L. Lewis and Frank Farrington, and their little correspondence of a couple years ago. When thieves fall out, it is said on good author- ity, the workers get a look at the real face of their rulers. When the class Farmer-Labor Party begins to make a real bid for power, we will doubt- less see Daugherty and all his angels lined up in solidarity with most of those who are now busy exposing the frame-up machinery. Until that time, let us hope that the exposures will continue. Strikebreakers All! - - Timé and again the Communists have told the workers and poor farmers that the United States government is today a strikebreaking agency from the top down and the bottom up. We have made this charge, not on the basis of our own fancies, but solely on the basis “of the cruel everyday ex- periences of the working masses with the various government departments. As we go on, the evi- dence supporting our view of the present political machinery of the employing class piles up moun- tain high. Only the other day, after almost five years of secrecy, it was disclosed that the United States Shipping Board has been playing the role of a tire- Jess strikebreaker. At the congressional hearings on the operations of the Shipping Board, Special Department of justice Agent Thomas F. Rice, ad- mitted that this government bureau was actively engaged in helping the Steamship Owners’ Asso- ciation of the Pacific Coast and the Pacific Ameri- can Steamship Association in cr /shing a strike in 1919. While the government is supposed to be investigating this shipping combine for the purpose of. prosecuting the association violating the Sher- man Anti-Trust Law, the same government, thru its shipping board, was spending about $150,000 in defraying the expenses of the employment bureaus set up by the bosses to break the longshore- 4 men’s strike. ‘ The present policy of the shipping board is to maintain the open shop. The board continues this closed siop policy against all union men and still. stands for the upkeep of these private employ- ment bureaus which blacklist union members. Practically speaking, there is no exception to the rule that in the hands of the employing class every agency of the present government, every department, every official from the president down, is a strikebreaking weapon used to beat back the working and farming masses and to support the exploiting class. When the miners struck in 1922, the shipping board did its level best to fit out ships which would facilitate the importation of coal from England in order to cripple the effective- ness of the strike. When the coal diggers-talked strike last year the same shipping board proudly boasted that it would do its bit in repeating the strikebreaking activities of the preceding year. _This incident should serve to disillusion many workers who were ‘still blindly groping for aid and comfort at the hands of the government, the general staff of their enemy—the capitalist class. The terrific price paid shall not have been in vain if it serves. to hasten the organization of a power- ful class farmer-labor party as a step towards scrapping the entire strikebreaking -machinery used by the bosses. ' Reactionaries in Perplexity What to do with the McNary-Haughen bill for agricultural relief is a major worry of reactionary politicians in Washington. They have the. votes to defeat it (and they want to defeat it), just as they have the votes to nominate Coolidge at the republican convention (and they want to nominate him). But—and there’s the rub—what will be the *t upon the voting millions thruout the coun- » particularly upon the bankrupt and suffering mers of the North end Middle West? The. reactionaries are in perplexity, wondering what to do with the power now in their hands, whether to boldly carry out their black desires, or to. at- tempt to trim sails a bit to the winds of discontent. The dilemma of free-booting politicians is the opportunity of the class-conscious elements of the farming and laboring masses. A clarion call for a class party of the toiling masses, a real Farmer- Labor Party, that will cut thru all the hesitation, muddle-headedness, cowardice and reaction that characterizes all the old-line politicians, that will break once and for all with every capitalist influ- ence, that will: put forward a clear-cut working class program—such a call will go far to smash the rotten and crumbling structure of the old parties, insofar as they still control the workers and farmers, and lay the foundation for real relief to the suffering agriculturalists as well as to the laboring masses in the industries, June 17th, at St. Paul, there will be the great opportunity to humanely end the mental distress of the reaction- ary politicians by telling them—to the devil with you, and all your works! We have our own Farmer-Labor Party! Why the Scare? The last few weeks have seen the development of an organized campaign in the press, in congress, and on the public platform by an apparently well- financed group for the purpose of making the United States Navy second to none in strength, Editorial column after column, news dispatch piled upon new dispatch, and stories of ‘tape- worm length all having as: their objective the spreading of the notion that the American navy is in a deplorable state are now to be noticed in the metropolitan press and the leading rural journals. Why the sudden scare? An examination of the methods and personnel involved in the new preparedness drive answers these questions. One of the leaders in the navalist revival movement is a man, Shearer, who calls him- self an inventor and who is actually interested in torpedo boat manufacturing. We are being told that the United States has not lived up to the 5-5-3 naval ratio set down for England, America, and Japan by the Washington conference... We are being asked to believe that American’ sub- marines may be good enough at going down but are even better at staying down, at never coming up. Overnight, as it were, the naval personnel is said to have become depleted and the efficiency of the fighting ships and sailors to have sunk to un- fathomable levels. Facts speaker louder than liars when the truth is sought../The United States government is utiliz- By JOSEPH MANLEY. ECENTLY while in Pittsburgh, I learned at first hand the basic THE DAILY WORKER y Alex Howat Is Popular Mr. Jenkins, the head of the com- pany. Said Howat to Jenkins: “That mine was down six months last year; now it is down. again, and our people get hungry in summer as reason for the tremendous popularity|well as in winter, and must have of Alex Howat amongst the rank and file of the miners’ union, particularly in the Kansas district—his home. While walking on the streets of Pittsburgh with him I noticed that he was greeted on all sides by miners and their wives and children who in- yariably hollered, cheerily, ‘Hello, Alec!” confined to Pittsburgh, because later in Kansas City I observed the same treatment towards him. Always Fought for Radicals. The basic reason for this popularity of the leader of the Kansas miners, is due to the fact that he has at all times fought to protect with the full wéight of the miners’ union, the mili- tants amongst the miners (who are invariably radicals) who had the cour- age to act as spokesmen for their fellow workers in the various disputes arising out of the attempts of the coal companies to infringe on the working conditions won by. the union. This is the explanation, as to why Howat retains his following, and why, on the other hand,'the name of John L. Lewis is reviled because he has betrayed the rank and file by driving out of the organization their leader, and then putting over an “employers’ agreement” which ‘pro’ ides for ar- bitration in place of the right to strike. eae Taming the Missouri Pacific. To bear out this contention it is well, at this moment, to recall the battles won by Howat and the Kansas miners nine years ago, At that time coal companies—who were- becoming well organized—used to select a mine where militants were voicing grievances of the miners; shut down the mine completely, starve out the mén and blame the trouble on the “agitators.” the «Howat decided to take counter ac- tion against the biggest company in. his district, which had just shut down a large mine throwing three hundred miners the Missouri Pacific, And this, familarity was not|- - - work. ... We insist that all the mines owned by your company work at least part time so as to give an equal share of the work to all. “Jenkins replied: “I want you to understand, Howat, that we own these mines, and we don’t propose to let you dictate to us when we shall open them up or shut them down. We cannot look out for the miners; they must look out for themselves, and stick together thru- out Kansas.” Strike Was Howat’s Answer. Howat and the Executive Board re- turned to Pittsburgh and called 3,500 miners employed by the Missouri Pacific, out on a strike that lasted two months and ended by the com- pany agreeing to open up all their mines, including the one in. dispute. Since that time and until Howat was deposed by Lewis, no company hag dared to shut down a mine with the the radicals amongst them. se 8 Today in District 14, of Kansas, there are 10,000 miners, barely 3,000 of whom are at work—in spite of the fact that Lewis signed an agreement a few weeks ago which was supposed to put them all: back to. work. An Unblushing Traitor. District 14 went “on strike April 1st. Three weeks ago John L. Lewis came to Kansas City to make an agreement with the operators. After having been closeted with the repre- sentatives of the operators for some time, Lewis appeared before the min- ers’ wage conference. It is reported that he informed them that he hadn’t given anything away, and that, “you still have a better contract than they have in other parts of the coun- try... . I must congratulate myself on what I have accomplished;.I got along better than I expected. . . Arbitration ensures peace in the in- dustry. ... Three hundred and fifty thousand men are working under ar- bitration, and you are no better than they.” Lewis’ inanities, coupled with the support of his “tool,” the district and their families out of work. Howat and the District Executive Board went to Kansas City and served notice on! ence into accepting the three-year president who has superseded Alex Howat; influenced the wage confer- ing the four-years’ naval holiday voted at the Washington conference for the purpose of exten- give and intensive research into new -methods of naval warfare instead of investing billions in archaic weapons whose inefficiency were revealed by the experiences of the world war. . American imperialism has already invested over four billions in its navy. Within the last decade the value of the American navy has increased more than 250 per cent. Thus, the hesitancy on the part of the American government to sink more millions into heavy useless fighting ships cannot be attributed to a niggardliness on its part in squandering the money of the working and farming classes in behalf of the capitalists. But new events of gigantic significance are developing. The Dawes plin to turn Germany into an American capitalist workshop, the increasing competition of Great Britain, particularly in the Latin-American markets, the none too pleasant relations between the Japanese and Yankee im- perialist cliques all serves as an effective pretense for demanding an American navy of the first rank immediately. A group of our imperialists espe- cially interested in the above spheres are therefore urging the government to continue the spending of millions on old-style ships and methods even while new and more hellish engines of destruction are being prepared. The scare being so zealously spread by our navalists arises out of a desire to safeguard the new and increasing loot recently pilfered by our imperialist clique. Today patriotic scares and the greed for piling up huge profits are one and the same. c. “RED ROSA” - ARGE, sun flooded rooms. On the looms the shuttles dart back and forth weaving bright colored cloth.|as we move beyond the whir of ma- In the air, the women’s voices, sing- ing, weave a bright clear thread thru the rhythmic whir and clack of the machines. move easily and freely about among the spindles, tying a broken thread here, adjusting a spool there. toil lined faces, bent figures, gnarled hands. Young rosy faces, erect bodies, deft ‘fingers. An atmosphere of light and freedom and: joy. In another room women Old, Freedom and joy, cleanliness and light—when before have those words been connected with great factories where thousands of workers pour out their lives day after day into greedy machines? factories began, has been associated ‘with ideas of smoke belching chimneys and dirt and noise and ugliness and strain and weariness. In the Red Rosa silk factory in Moscow I saw none of these things. The word faetory, since The skeptical friend whom I took with me laughed when I attributed all this to the revolution. “The buildings and technical equip- ment were all there before,” he told |condition of the factory. And we haye me. “The same air and light and sun- |8een our wages increase from month shine came in. As a matter of fact,|to month as the efficiency of our own conditions are probably worse now—|Work increased, and we know how some of the machinery is out of use,|Much higher they will be in another now, and has just been explaining the intricacies of the machines in her sec- tion to us. I put the question to her chinery, “Svoyou!” is the first word that comes to her lips, a Russian word that means “It is our own!” “Didn’t you notice the women at the machines in there,” she continued, “how alert they are to watch every thread that breaks, to keep everything in perfect order? That never used to be the case. The work was slovenly and careless. Production was higher perhaps because we worked 10 to 12 hours a day, and now we work only 8, and there were more workers and machines going. But each individual is doing better work now. Why? Be- cause the factory and its products are our own. Every month our director re- ports to us (our director is orfe of our own, a worker like the rest of us) and every worker knows all the details of what goes on in the factory—how much money we have spent for raw materials, for repairs, for wages, how much money has been taken in. if our wages are low, we know why they are low, because we hnow tne financial purpose of terrorizing the workers or|: “employers agreement.” With the ac- ceptance later by the district organ- ization controlled by the machine, were sacrificed all the better working conditions that had been gained by years of struggle. Lewis at His Worst. This is one of the worst pieces of treachery that Lewis has yet been guilty of. And it is typical of the complete degeneration that is coming upon our trade union “leaders,” Lewis seeks to exterminate the radi- cals from the organization, both lo- cally and nationally, so that he can consummate “employers” agreements” that strip the organization of its mili- tancy. and the better working condi- tions it has striyen for, and makes of it ‘a co-operating instrument in the service of the coal operators for greater efficiency of ,“their” workers ‘competing with the non-union fields. That is the real goal of Lewis and his kind to make of “their”. organizations more efficient mediums for the ex- ploitation of the workers than the present “company unions” which have. sprung up in some of America’s giant industries. . Canker of Employers’ Agreements. The canker of ‘employers’ agree- ments,” has for many years poisoned the labor unions—notably-in the build- ing trades. But today this malignant growth is spreading to the rest of the small proportion of the organized in- dustries. And the poison of such agreements is now being used against the workers. The radicals and mili- tants who built the unions are now shields for overhead machinery, to pro- some of it is in bad repair, which cer-|year if we do our work still better. tainly must make the work more dif-|Good work is in our own interests. ficult. The wages are lower, which |Did you hear the women singing? ‘It means the living conditions must be |never used to be like that. They used worse. The factory is only running at |tO beat us sometimes . .. . but now we 50 per cent of capacity, because raw |4re free!” materials are so expensive. After all,| My skeptical friend was unconvine- what have they gained?” ed. “O well, she’s just a sentimentalist The old woman weayer who has |like you are, talking in vague terms worked in the factory 26 years can|0f freedom—she talks like that be- answer that question better than J. |cause she has to, probably. And she “LaFollette’s Fool Friends”. Circulars are going out from a “LaFollette for President Committee” headquarters, Auditorium Hotel, Chicago. This committee must ‘haye, at least, encouragement from LaFollette, containing as it does the name of Donald Richberg, attorn: for the railroad shop-craft unions. But if LaFol- lette or his fool friends were deliberately ‘ trying to slap the Farmer-Labor Party movement in the face, they could not have done a better job in pick- ing this committee. * The committee has not a single worker, town or country, on it. Two manufacturers, two lawyers, a merchant, an author, a publisher and a banker —these are the men in charge of LaFollette's pre- convention campaign. Is this the kind of com- mittee to represent the exploited, masses of work- ers and farmers in revolt against the domination of capital? A more completely middle-clags com- mittee could hardly be imagined. There is not the slightest trace of working class influence upon it, outside of the tenuous one of a hired lawyer in the service of the unions. . b's It was a middle-class newspaper that, not long ago, deplored the activity of “LaQollette’s: fool friends.” But if LaFollette really means to break with the old capitalist parties—which seems less likely every day—it is certainly a bunch: of “fool friends” that could imagine launching a campaign committee for him that contains not a single labor man in the whole list. Is LaFollette intentionally ignoring the whole Farmer-Labor Party. moye-|, ment? God do capitalists from the Workers’ Ri She is the forewoman of a department |herself admits that some of the ma- The Poor Fish Says: 1 ile the task of saving t ub. ics entirely desolves ‘am afraid | 1,200, It is natural enough that under punish the wick-|the soviet regime the silk industry wicked enough | Should not have received great atten- to come within the meaning of any |tion when the vital industries dictionary’s definition of Wickedness, |Testoration. But now that our general yet we find the governments of Eu-|conditions are improving there is no ing the Socialists for recog-}reason why the workers shouldn't chines, aren’t running, and that the wages are low. What I want to see are concrete proofs that the lives of the workers are better than they were before, and that at the same time the workers are able to turn out products equal in quantity and quality to what they should produce under a capitalist regime.” > The young assistant director, Mais- lin, a mere youth in his early twenties, smiled when I translated this for him. “Ot course, as far as production is concerned, we are way below the pre- war leyel. Then this factory eb pea 14,000,000 yards of silk every day, and now we are producing 2,000,000—there were 5,500 workers, working in two shifts before,—there are now only eeded wear silk clothes now and then as. well, 8 any one else, and within 3 or 4 am | years we expect to have the factory runing at pre-war capacity. Our pro-— often discriminated against thru ex- pulsion and loss of their pobs thru some ‘closed shop clause in an agree- ment, that the workers never could realize would be so used against them. Like the Landis Award. The Landis Award in the building trades, the B. and O. agreement on the railroads, the Brockton agree- ment in the shoe industry, are but a few of the whole series of “employ- ers’ agreement” that have led up to -| that 1ast betrayal of real trade union- ism, just consummated by John L. Lewis. In his persecution of the militants and desire to co-operate with the em- ployers to the detriment of the rank and file, Lewis first removed Howat, and now with the completion of this scandalous’ agreement and in order to make it thoroly effective Lewis Tuesday, May 27, 1924 henchman, John P. White (formet president of the miners’ union and “dollar a year” man during the war} whose “organizing campaign” in Ken tucky and Tennessee, under the direa tion of Lewis, has been a miserablq failure. And White, thru the inflw ence of his friend, Lewis, has been ap pointed “Arbitrator” in the Kansat district for the three-year period of the “agreement” at a fat salary. This is the same White who said in former years, when speaking of arbi tration: “It puts too much power ix the hands of one man.” And now he has the power that goes:with starving men into submission, to weed out the rebels in the Kansas fields, and te force upon the remaining miners com ditions equaled only in the non-union fields which he so recently failed te organize—while drawing a salary from the miners’ union of $5,000 per year and an expense account in pro portion, Howat Scrapped Industrial Court. , Is it any wonder that Alex Howat p is the most popular man in the min ~ ers’ union, on the basis-of his record in the Kansas field? Howat fought to protect the working conditions oj the miners, and with the aid of the militant union men—the kind whom Lewis afterwards expelled—built an organization that the entire power of the state failed to crush. This ab tempt, made thru the Allen Industrial Court Law, was not successful be cause. Howat, Dorchy and the others | on the District Board had the guts to defy the law and go to jail and suffer persecution. And that law is now a dead letter—not alone in Kansas, but nationally. The originator of this law; former Governor Allen, is on the po litical scrap-heap. Union Will Live Despite Lewis. When the power of the state failed to crush the miners’ union or Howat —now comes Lewis and his aide-de camp, White, with an effort to tie up the Kansas organization with a three year “employers’ agreement.” In. spite of Lewis’ false promisos and glik arguments about “stabilizing the in | dustry,” seven thousand Kansas min, ers. are still out’ of work. And if there is sfill a union in existence in | Kansas at the end of three yeurs, if will be in spite of the efforts of Lewis and because of the confidence of the rank and file in the honest fighting character of Alex Howat. By Jessica Smith duction at that time will probably be even better than before, because in- dividual production ‘has already in- creased due'to better methods of work which we have introduced. We have doubled our production during the past year while the actual number of work- ers has increased. only 50 per cent. ‘The comrade must remember that for a few years after the factory was na- tionalized, it hardly worked at all— during ‘18, '19, an??’20. But all during that period the workers kept the ma- chinery in good condition. Raw materi- al ia, our greatest problem. During the years of war,and hunger our native silk growing industry was almost com- pletely destroyed, but now it is reviv- ing in Turkestan, Bokhara and the Caucasus, and we are beginning to im- port raw materials from Italy, Japan and China again. Ns The young assistant director was a bottomless well of enthusiasm, point- ‘ng out improvements they, were mak- ing in the factory, especially in the line of making things easier for the workers. They were building wooden tect the workers in case of accident; they were installing a new ventilation system to make the air better. In every department the workers explain- ed to us some special process or pecul- iarity of the machine they were work- ing on with the pride of artists. The man in charge of a gas machine for glogsing the satin set it running espe- cially for us to see. The factory poet expatiated in glowing terms on the glories of his machine, and showed off the factory great pride. Even my skeptical friend tegan to be impressed by the universal spirit. of joy and comradeship we found among the workers of Red Rosa, The percentage of communists in this fac- tory |was quite high, even tho the workers were mostly women, who, as they are more illiterate, are usually more backward in joining than the men. There were 250 regular mem- bers of the party, 150 members of the Communist Youth organization, and 200: new applicants for membership since the death of Lenin, » “But we're’ all Communists together, whether we belong to the party or not,” one old ‘worker assured us. “Insthe office of the factory commit- tee Comrades Tarasova and Philipiva, two fine types of women workers, were toiling indefatigably to see that the in- terests of the workers should never be neglected. At the present time they ‘were carrying on an enthusiastic cam- paign to “liquidate illiteracy”’ The women were almost entirely illiterate before the revolution, Now they are all attending evening classes, and by 1925 there will not be one illiterate Person left in the factory. ‘But the living conditions?” My skeptical friend was still bound to find something to criticize, In answer the. young director led us to the big the factory grounds where “the Fat One,” as they called the former manager, used to live. One part of it was a day nursery for the babies of the working mothers, where the babies were bathed and fed and sanitarily cared for every day, while their mothers were at work. Another part was a kindergarten for the older children, where they received excel lent care in clean, pleasant surround: ings, with trained people in charge! In other buildings were the quarters of the workers—the unmarried ones liy- ; ing in spaciois, clean, sunny dormi- ; tories, the ones with families in “quar teera” of their own. Then there was the dispensary where all kinds of med- ical help was given, the hospital where the more serious cases were cared for, the club rooms, libraries, lecture hall, theater. And every one of these Bez- plattne (free of charge) supported in part by the state, and in part by the factory. When these things were ad- ded to the wages they exceeded the pre-war level. “But didn’t these things exist be- fore the revolution?” my skeptical friend ventured hesitatingly. The young assistant laughed. “The manager of the factory lived in the house where the children are now being cared for. His son lived in the house where the hospital Is now. The big building used for our club house was his private museum where he kept his hunting trophies. Our workers’ gymnasium was his con- . ” director My skeptical friend was silent. “Newt” Baker Gets In Trouble On New York | Central Graft Probe (Special to The Daily Worker) CLEVELAND. — Politicians and business men in Cleveland are buzz- ing with rumors and hints of “more to come” since Newton D. Baker, Wil- son’s secretary of war and now head of the open shop interests in Cleve- land, has had his name mentioned in the congressional debate on a resolu- tion calling for investigation of the Cl New York Central-Nickel Plate ter+ | minal deal. The two roads were re- fused permission for a phony-looking $60,000,000 proposition by the inter- state commerce commission. Then Baker got on the job and the per- mission was granted, without any modification is the scheme, one month | later. ’ Rep. George Huddleston, Democrat, who is pushing the investigation de- mand, said in the house. “I have not forgotten that soon after Newton D, Baker got out of the cabinet as secre- tary and when many Democratic ap- pointees were still in office here in Washington, he became counsel for these interests and did what he could ‘ to get the necessary certificate from | % the interstate commerce commission,”* ‘