The Daily Worker Newspaper, June 24, 1924, Page 6

Page Six ‘THE DAILY WORKER. Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO., 11138 W. Washington Blvd., Chicago, Ill. (Phone: Monroe 4712) SUBSCRIPTION RATES By mail: $3.50....6 months $2.00....3 monthe By mall (in Chicago only): $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 wW. Washington Bivd. Chicago, IllInois J. LOUIS ENGDAHL ) WILLIAM F. DUNNE) “ MORITZ J. LOEB. Editors ‘Business Manager Bntered as second-class mail Sept. 21, 1923 at the Post- Office at Chicago, Ill, under the act of Murch 8, 1879. <p> 290 Advertising rates on application. EE ——=| Fakers Becoming Bankers With the announcement that the building trades union officials of Chicago are launching another “labor bank” it becomes evident that this mania is taking ever more dangerous proportions. The “labor banks” already in existence, some fifteen of them, are bad enough. But what will we have when the hard-boiled building tradesmen get into the game? The railroaders control their unions in small measure, but compared with some of the building trades and such unions as the teamsters of Chicago that elect their officers for life, they have democracy itself. Add to the present powers of these bureaucrats the control of great finances, in close co-operation with the big banks and thence with Wall Street, and it seems that the day of real fighting labor unionism is on the wane until the rank and file bestir themselves. What can be expected from these “labor banks” is seen in the case of the ones in Cincinnati and Washington, where the earliest and biggest .de- posits were made by Railroad Corporations. The Baltimore and Ohio Railway, which has since en- tered into a co-operation plan that ties the unions up in a thousand other ways, began its collabora- tion by making huge deposits in “labor banks.” A multitude of new channels for exerting pres- sure upon the unions are thus made available to the employers. And by the same token, a multi- and defying all efforts to bare them. With the manipulations of a banking business the unions will soon find that they have been emasculated, corrupted, and tied up with the worst phases of a rotten capitalist system. The revolt against this treachery will be a hard and bitter struggle, and the sooner the union members wake up to the menace, that much sooner will they overcome the danger. The Gold Dust Twins In Madison Square Garden, New York, meets today the twin of the Cleveland gathering of two weeks ago. Democratic politicians, gathered from the halls of Tammany, the plantations of the south, and the underworld of all of the big cities, will discuss “affairs of state” and who is going to appoint postmasters, sign deeds to public land, apportion the rewards for “open shop” service, and generally sweep up around the offices of J. P. Morgan & Co. Of course the Gold Dust Twins, the Democratic and Republican parties, are not exactly alike. The most striking difference is, that one is in and the _ other out. That is why one selects the cipher Coolidge by almost unanimous vote, while the other will battie long and ardently before it knows upon whom the lightening of Wall Street favor will strike. There are other differences also. The republi- ean twin, more forthright and frank, picks Dawes for second place, a banker, a fascist, an “open shopper,” and an appointee of Morgan. The dem- ‘ocratic half of the Wall Street pair will consider such men as Berry, similar to Dawes in every re- spect except that he holds the title of president of labor union instead of president of a bank. That , the democratic twin is the more dissembling the two. Each of the twins will denounce the other as dis- honest, as corrupt, as the servants of predatory ‘interests; each will proclaim its allegiance to the ‘“peepul.” The battle will be long and loud, but e projectiles hurled about will be feather pil- _ lows that will fall harmlessly upon the chuckling ‘manipulators of the entire show, the men who the checks to pay for the entertaining circus. Two Jockeys A Punch cartoon represents Lloyd George and Winston Churchill jockeying for the leadership _ of an avowed anti-Socialist party. Lloyd George says, “This is my mount,” and Churchill comes back with: “No, it isn’t, I thot of it first.” The Tory and Liberal parties of England have no more economic justification for separate exist- ence today than the Republican and Democratic ‘parties in the United States. It is quite within the bounds of possibility that the left wing liberals will, in the near future, line up with the Labor Party which is essentially liberal and not labor, , and that the more conservative liberals will join the Tories. The contenders for the leadership in this com- bination are Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. Both are brilliant and unscrupulous politicians. British capital does not fear the leadership of MacDonald but it fears the masses who behind the Labor Party. It must therefore nize its forces better than now on the politi- field in order to cope with the coming menace. b » tude of means for corruption, devious and hidden |p oq of international capitalism on the workers and the subject peoples of the colonial empires. While characterized as a liberal Smuts during] tion to this. the great Rand strike in 1921 acted the part of a bloody capitalist but butcher and sent several brave leaders of the rebel workers to the gallows without a qualm. A traitor to the cause of Boer|is more than made up by the mass or- infamous bible} ganization under state monoply. But pounder General Botha he sold out to the British |in small industries, where Russia can- General Smuts was a loyal servant of British im. perialism and never betrayed the trust reposed This is his first defeat at the hands of the people he betrayed. But his crimes against the workers merit a more severe punishment than loss Teapot Dome is International Smears of oil, appearing on domestic and in- ternational politics, have long been apparent. Oil and imperialism, oil and corruption, oil and ex- ploitation, oil and militarism—these are insepara- hle today. Oil is the key of capitalist world power|«our little artel is doing fine. today. It is therefore not a matter of surprise. that oil|the union scale. gue DAILY WORKER By ANISE, MOSCOW, June 1—(By Mail).— We are getting in wages two or three times We are beating the and murder are now commonplace partners. ‘The|*t#te factory right out of business. murder of Deputy Matteotti of Italy by the fascist Why? Because with us we are work- ing for ourselves and over there they gang in power, hooking directly into our ‘vil-|are working for a boss.” politics in America in the Sinclair deals that the deputy was exposing, might have been expected. |£7°™ out west. Violent death of those who oppose or endanger Sounds like good old I, W. W. talk But it isn’t. It is a worker from a little Petrograd mirror factory talking. It illustrates the in any other way the consumption of great schemes |competition now going on, carefully of exploitation has long been a commonplace in|watched and guided by the Commun- the development of oil in America. We have not yet had our American Matteotti, not yet our American Mussolini. the dictator’s office are, however, abundant. And violent deaths are not unknown here, in connec- tion with oil, among those in high places. the name of Jess Smith, the weakling who it was ist party, in testing out what forms of production will give most satisfac- tion to the workers and most help to Aspirants for|pring in the future Communist state. State Trusts Too Ambitious. State trusts are one of those forms. Recall | 424 state trusts have been successful far beyond the expectations of three years ago, when the new economic feared would talk too much; of Jake Hamon, who|policy was adopted. But state trusts tics of oil? action. Jan Smats leader. independence when with the fre iim: of office. denounced but a few days ago. “red 3” protect their fences. Send in that Subscription Today. The victory of the Left Bloc in France promises to be short-lived. It is true Millerand was ousted and Herriot, leader of the left bourgeoisie is pre- But a conservative very close to the Poin- care group was elected president and another conservative, Justin de Selves was elected presi- Herriot’s majority in the chamber of deputies is not impressive and it is not likely that he can command a firm majority in Another election within a short time mier. dent of the senate. the senate. is not improbable. Before Mussolini’s latest murder got out and caused the present tufmoil his stocks were high in Europe and thruout the world. Ambitious pol- iticians in Jugo-Slavia egged on by the capitalists were preparing to start a regular fascisti dictator- ship, take over the government by force, and dis- solve the political organizations that lead to dis- But we doubt very much in view of the unity. bought a cabinet position but never occupied it.|develop their And who would be so rash as to say the death of | Weaknesses. Harding had no connection whatever with the poli- Smuts is a liberal of the Wilson brand who loves | the world but hates the workingclass. He was one], more developed society may be ex- jof the most eloquent advocates of the League of] pected to produce more socially intel- Nations, a scheme calculated to strengthen the|lisent and hence more loyally ener- Is Wisconsin S. P. Getting “Red”? Action by the Wisconsin Socialist party in con- vention in Milwaukee Sunday, in demanding that LaFollette support “a labor party” as the price of their support for him, is somewhat similar to that taken by the St. Paul convention that the S. P. Is the party of Berger, Hoan, and Hilquit suddenly becoming No, the explanation is not so drastic as all that. The S. P. is still as yellow as it ever was. and here is where the practical politician from Wisconsin got crossways of right-wing, left-wing and center of the farmer-labor party movement— to endorse LaFollette as an independent candidate would be to destroy the Socialist party of Wis- consin just as it would destroy the Farmer-Labor party of Minnesota, and the Dakotas. and the others, who hold state and city jobs thru socialist politics, are forced by self-interest to fight against LaFollette as an independent. They must But— So Hoan own problems and Last winter, for in- stance, it was found that the state trusts, in their natural desire to ex- pand and get new machinery as rap- But in Italy the dealers in oil monopoly, the|idly as possible, were charging such Fascist party, have gone so far, both in outraging|®20rmous prices that the peasant and the working class and whipping it into revolt, and in undermining the entire social and economic|was applied once a year by the com- system thru private plunder, that the latest oil}mands of the central government, but murder there, the assassination of Deputy Mat-|this was too infrequent. teotti, bids fair to inaugurate the struggle for}! more intimate control was de- power of the working class over the capitalist re- worker simply could not buy. The only mechanism for controlling this A more flex- manded; for this reason Dserjinsky was put in charge of the department of national industry to work out the united front of state industry. But that’s another story. There is another weakness in state trusts. The opponents of Commun- The elections in South Africa according to press|ism have always declared that it de- reports show that Jan Smuts long the political|stroye individual initiative. leader of the imperialists in that British colony |°VeTook in this the extent to which has gone down in defeat before a combination of Natfonalist-Republican-Labor forces under) the| workers, leadership of General M. B. Hertzog, nationalist|all state industry known up to the, They big capitalism itself destroys the per- sonal initiative of the vast mass of But it ‘is still true that, in present, what the industry gains in extent and monopoly control is partly offset by a loss in individual energy. getic workers for state ends; but pres- ent society has still the inheritance of capitalism and Russia is no excep- Problem of Small Industry. In large jndustries, such as oil, rail- roads, mines and basic resources gen- erally, the loss ‘of individual interest not yet afford first-class managers, or even always honest managers, for every little factory, here personal ini- tiative is very important.» And here state industry is in danger of losing out to private energy—or would have been except for the artels, The artel, like the co-operative, is a time-honored Russian form of or- ganization, now especially encouraged by law and used as one of the wings on the front against private capital. But while the co-operative is an or- ganization of consumers, thru which it is hoped to compete out of exist- ence the private retailer, in those far distant peasant villages which the state cannot directly handle without undue bureaucratic machinery—the artel is an organization of working- men for purposes of production. “In our artel we make mirrors,” said the workingman to me. “We buy up old mirrors at large junk sales of big hotels and other buildings; we regrind and recut and resilver them and turn them out like new mirrors. We own our own factory; we bought it at an auction sale from the govern- ment for much less than it was worth, because it went bankrupt under other BOOK REVIEWS “Altgeld of Illinois,” Waldo R. Browne. B. W. Huebsch & Co. $3. To the younger generation of rad- ieals and Communists this book will appear as the story of old gods, de- mons and dreams. But even so it is an intensely interesting and absorb- ing story. Altgeld is chiefly known as the man who as governor of IIli- nois pardoned three of the Haymar- ket “anarchists.” From this biography it would ap- pear that that was his only claim to fame. After he pardoned the labor leaders and sent out his pardon mes- sage in which he proved that they were unjustly convicted and implied that the others who had been hung were also unjustly convicted and hanged he was the target for the mud slinging of the entire brass check press of that time. Pardoning the anarchists would have been forgiven, but to say they were not convicted justly aroused the ire of the plute pre: Before that time Altgeld was mere- latest developments whether Mussolini will be}temdency of the post-civil war period toward the trustifying and central- izing of industry. Then he broke his such a tin god from now on. Sammy and Bob snarl that the Soviet system is undemocratic. _ Nix on workers’ and farmers’ gov- ernment for that reason they say. So Bob stays in the Republican Party where the steam roller pick by the anarchist pardons. ‘peopl reigns supreme and Sammy hugs the Democratic |ary than prison and insane asylum ass and lets Boss Brennan and a few others fix|paign of 1896 he was charged with ad- things up over the refreshments after they have gotten their instructions from Wall Street. Send in that Subscription Today! Yet during the presidential cam: vocating all “the essential doctrines of Jeff Davis and Herr Most.” The poor devil, who today would be ly a Democrat who fought against the This man, who had accumulated a large fortune as a lawyer and real ate operator, was held up to the stroyer. He advocated “nothing more revolution- Tuesday, June 24, 1924 management. But we are making it go very well and expanding it. And we are making two to three hundred roubles a month wages, at a trade where the ordinary trade union scale gives about one hundred.” “How are you organized?” I asked. “And to what do you attribute your success?” Get More Than Union Wage. “We have sight men who are grind- ers, cutters and @olishers. Then we have one manager in Petrograd, who also does the buying of mirrors, one bookkeeper, and one salesman in Moscow who sells the mirrors in the city where the chief demand is. We all.get a regular union scale first; then a certain sum is put back into expansion by vote of the artel; above that we share equally. “Our success? Well, we have an in: terest in our job. All of us are on the lookout for places where glass is be- ing sold. We are working 12 hours a day just now to pay off the loan with which we first bought the fac- tory. We figure it will take us six months, and then we will own every- thing ourselves. But over at the state factory, with which we are com- peting, the boss is a little bureaucrat of the old regime and is always hav- ing friction with his workers. If a man gets drunk, the boss doesn’t dare say anything because of the union. But, believe me, if one of our men gets drunk we'll chuck him out.” “So you don’t have to obey union rules?” I asked. “Well, in a way we do, and in a way we don’t. We're all union mem- bers, of course. But artels get spe- cial rights, because they are workers working for themselves and enjoying the full fruits of their toil. We work as many hours a day as we choose; there is no danger in that, for no one is exploiting us. We make our own regulations about membership, and as long as those regulations only relate to the efficiency of the work, and are not social discriminations, we can put them thru. We are allowed more freedom within our own ranks, be- cause there is no class struggle in our group, as there is in a private factory, or, under present conditions, even in state factories.” Russians Experimenting More. The artels of Russia are recom- mended to the attention of those workers in America who have been criticizing the central state control of industry in Russia from a syndicalist point of view. The Russian Commun- ists are not at all committed to mere- ly one form of productive organiza- tion in their fight against capitalist control. They are using all methods and encouraging them all. Artels have extremely low taxes, as have also co-operatives. In every way they are favored as much as state industry itself. And thus, in the competition between these various forms of col- lective control, it becomes gradually possible to test out which fields of production are best adapted to each form of organization. Artels are extremely useful, in the low state of productive organization in Russia, in stimulating speed and initiative without leading to exploi- tation, They are so successful in this, and so favored by law that al- ready small bosses in industry try to organize their business in the form of an artel instead of a private business. If they make a genuine artel, the government has no objection, but defl- nite legal forms are prescribed in or- der to weed out the fake artels, such as, for instance, where the boss puts half a dozen members of his family down as members and draws wages for all of them. Capital gives no rights in the artel; it may be accept- ed as a loan only, but without voting rights. The accumulated value of factory and machines belongs in the gonsidered a conservative, with possi- bly humanitarian leanings, was writ- ten down as worse than Trotsky. Beginning with the anarchist pardons, he was driven to an early death by the curs who hounded him in every way it is possible to hound a man. Altgeld was a brave and gallant fighter for the right as he saw it. The most radical idea he ever stood for was municipal ownership. At one time he rivaled Byran in the influ- ence he held over the Democratic party, He was stricken with the stroke which killed him while speaking at a meeting to help the Boers, who were then battling against the whole Brit- ish empire for freedom from the dia- mond trust. The interest of Browne’s book is increased for workers by the thoro history of various phases of the labor movement which are included. Coolidge is an fraid hi get- dical, He talks paign of 1896 he was charged with ad-|too much of Abraham Lincoln. Abe sald many things that no good Mellon- Hughes-Wall Street would stand for. However, he Is safely dead, organization and is not taken away by retiring or expelled members. Depend on Devoted Workers. But artels have also this limitation, that they depend on intimate loyalty and understanding of members, and the tried honesty and devotion of the leader. Most artels are very small; an artel of 50 members is already un- usual, and when they reach 100, as in a bakers’ artel in Moscow, they are already subdivided into several groups. The form of organization is extremely useful for introducing flexibility and en- ergy, but in the field of heavy in- dustry, where large mass production and heavy capital is required, it is doubtful whether it can hold its own against state trusts. In some fields it will yield to the consumers’ co-op- Bossing Their Own Jobs in Russia eratives, which already have many. factories of their own. . “Is there any fixed theory about which form of production will ulti- mately triumph?” I asked a man high up in the department of national in- dustries. “Or is it expected’ that, even in the long run, there will be these various forms of productive or ganizations, some in one field, some in another.” “We aren’t worrying so far ahead,” he replied, with a slight impatience. “All that concerns us is to see that the workers’ control continues in some form in all of them. And that the Communists have their fingers in all of them, to use them all as the day by day needs develop, in our united front for industry owned and operated by the workers.” AS WE SEE IT By T. J. O'FLAHERTY. William Randolph Hearst has not made his peace with Al Smith yet. New York papers carried reports that the publisher had buried the axe, but if so, it is in the political neck of the popular Tammany candidate. The Hearst @apers of yesterday carried boxed editorials on the front page making it quite clear to all and sun- dry that the yellow syndicate is now as ever against booze and boodle. This is amusing, to say the least, when one knows that Hearst is a mil- lionaire many times over and that his papers in Chicago are lined up with the Brennan machine of Illinois, who is about as dry as the Pacific ocean. Hearst was against Al Smith when he ran for governor of New York in his last successful campaign until.a few days before polling. The publisher suddenly switched, leaving Dudley Field Malone high and dry, and ex- hausted the vocabulary of his editors in praise of the Tammanyite. Peo- ple don’t take Hearst very seriously. It is quite within the bounds of possi- bility that he may change his mind about Smith in a few days and boost him as vigorously as he now de- nounces him. This is the way capital- ist politics is played. In the mean- time, some silly people talk of read- ing Woodrow Wilson’s will to the hard-boiled delegates. Woodrow Wil- son is dead and so is his will. s* 8 Herriot of France is hopping around today like a salesman for a fire cracker concern. He is so busy doing the bidding or those who own France that he has forgotten all about his pre-election promises. One of those was the recognition of So- viet Russia. He meant well presum- ably, or more likely the French peo- ple were anxious to recognize Russia so Herriot was willing to promise for the sake of the votes. Now he real- izes that he is not the only pebble on the beach, so he must dance to the music paid for by big biz. eee Some people believe France is an independent republic. They are right after a fashion but only in degree France is more independent than Spain but not as independent as Eng- land. England is less independent than the United States. France owes the United States billions of dollars and the United States can make France cough up or else make it hot for the French. But as long as France does the bidding of the United States, the money is a good investment and can wait. Thus Uncle Sam is able to bring pressure on France which prevents the latter from recognizing Soviet Russia against the wishes of the United States government. Inde- pendence is lots of rubbish nowadays. Sg ew How deep is Henry Ford in the coal business? The Philadelphia News Bu- reau, a Wall Street publication, gives pen pictures of the big guns in the financial and business world. Under, the title “Pithy Personalities” and the sub title “Ford Walks Out On His Labor,” the following item ap- Dears: “A southern coal man tells me Henry Ford is succeeding in the coal business quite as well as he has in other industries and that he is teach- ing Kentuckians a lesson in the han- dling of labor, Though not generally known, his efforts to keep the men in his Pond Creek mines non-union were successful until about two weeks ago. After two years of attempts by the United Mine Workers’ missionaries to convert the Ford miners, there were signs of organization. Ford had been in close touch with the situation and ordered the entire workings closed down. At first, it looked as if the miners would all sign up with the union, but when Saturday nights came around and wages were not forthcoming the inclination to union- ize began to wane and it is now be- Meved the mines will be reopened with min happier and more non- union than ever.” . * This is the rugged-faced philanthro- ‘|pist who was going to establish an industrial millenium in the United States. The greatest slave driver in America, Ford has been able to amass hundreds of millions in a few years by exploiting labor more suc- cessfully than any other robber in America yet without ever having a strike on his hands. A labor move- ment that allows this brigand to go along without having to face the col- lective power of his slaves deserves political annihilation. | Henry wil not be popular in Wall Street but his methods of handling the workers are popular and recommended to the rest of the slave gang. se 8 2 More about those who count in Wall Street. Coleman Du Pont, the man whose powder wagon is believed to be responsible for the Wall Street explosion gave a circus on Irvington- -on-the-Hudson a few weeks ago. Of course he did not invite the slaves who make it possible for him to be ring leader of a circus. His fellow plutes were there. He paid for every- thing from the wild animals and spe- cial trains that hauled his guests’ to the show, the pink lemonade which was served on the beautiful lawn, There are many molding corpses under the sod of Flanders that would be living today but for the greed of the powder manufacturers who wanted the war to continue for the sake of the profits they made on every exploded shell. The parasites who enjoyed themselves on Du Pont’s lawn never gave a thought to the man- ner in which their host made their money. fe © Twelve hundred international bank- |, ers journeyed to Boston recently to / help decide this country’s foreign pol: / icy. Our statesmen kick because the Communist Party of Russia is the ruling party in that country. But it seems to be quite proper to have the bankers meet in conclave and decide what shall be the foreign policy of the United States. Mr. James A. Fare rell, president of the Steel Corpora- tion, was a prominent figure there. Prominent also was P. A. S. Frank- lin, head of the International Mercan- ~ tile Marine Co. The latter had no di- rect part in the proceedings but he wrote the resolutions on shipping. He is a member of the ruling class. That convention was much more impor- tant than several sessions of congress. The latter generally does what is de- cided by the bankers and big business at their conferences. ** 6 <t When an American worker attends a Communist congress in Europe a horde of stool pigeons are on the look out for him. His movements are re- ported to the Department of Justice and to Samuel Gompers. But Ameri- can bankers spend about one third of the year in Europe attending con- ferences of international bankers and striving to have their decisions passed favorably upon by the American con- gress. It is perfectly legal because they are the ruling class. We are in- formed by the Wall Street news bu- reau that Fred I. Kent, vice president of the Bankers Trust Co. of New York spends one third of the year-in Bu- rope. He is personally acquainted with all the principals of the Dawes’ committee of experts and maintains a regular correspondence with them. He is now working on the Dawes’ rep- aration plan. Not alone are the bank- . ers running the United States bu, they are running the world, with the single exception of Soviet Russia, Some dictatorship! Jap Fishers Threaten Strike as Bosses Yell, “We'll Get White Scabs” VANCOUVER, B. C., June 23.—Jap- anese fishermen have given the can- nery bosses of this province notice that they won't accept a cut in scale of fisn prices, and the bos have replied that if they don't wl workers will be hired to take phe places. i The. Japanese Fishermen's associa- tion, which is the union er all Japanese engaged in the fishing in- dustry of this province, threat- ened a strike if their wi masters attempt to reduce the price for fish, Bosses claim that they have been op- erating at heavy losses during the~ past three years due to competit of the Siberian salmon, Fishermen point out that the market price for canned fish is as high as ever ané that this year there will be little cor petition from the Siberian salmon, the Japanese government has mandeered practically the / pack, " The cannery bosses hope to the feeling of race prejudir the white fishermen of tr that they can dupe them bing on the Jap union fi event of a strike, ‘