The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 9, 1924, Page 6

hi i arenes THE DAILY WORKER. ' Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO,, 1113 W. Washington Blvd., Chicago, Ill. (Phone: Monroe 4712) SUBSCRIPTION RATES By mail: $3.50....6 months $2.00....8 months By mail (in Chicago only): $4.50....6 months $2.60....3 montas $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. ditors ‘Business Manager $$ ntered as second-class mail Sept. 21, 1923 at the Post- Office at Chicago, Ill, under the act of March 3, 1879, <= 250 Advertising rates on application. Sanitarium Socialism Socialism is sick. It has been sick for a long time but now the death rattle is in its throat. From Section 6, Article 2, of the 1912 to the 1924 convention at Cleveland where delegates who rep- resent nobody are unravelling the last threads of the bond once uniting the party with the workers, is a twelve year story of surrender to petit bour- geois politics. The one redeeming element was the honorable, though pacifist, resistance to war on the part of the revolutionary left wing, as particularly sym- bolized by Debs. We except the war record of Berger and his like, whose opposition was neither humanitarian nor proletarian, but nationalistic. The studied attitude of saintly pacifism Debs has taken since his release was but a sign either of illness that ravaged his body or a more insidious sickness that affected his ideas with the doctrines of the petty bourgeoisie. The great leader who once advised the coal miners to buy rifles and every local to keep a machine gun as against com- pany gunmen and murderous militia, who went to prison a self-proclaimed “Bolshevik,” issued from prison an ill, old man proclaiming non-resistance second only to the collapsed and discredited Ghandi. We submit that this signalized a surrender to the ideology of the petit bourgeoisie. The workers loved and followed the Debs that was. They have rejected and will reject the Debs that wishes to substitute Christ for Marx, humanitarian sweet- ness and light for class war and the reality of the struggle. And the evaporation of the soul of the old Debs, in even pace with decline of his physi- cal powers, is marked with the concurrent surren- der of the socialist party to the ideology and “prac- tical politics” of the petty bourgeoisie. It has remained for the new Debs, whom the workers do not understand, himself to set the seal of his shaking hand on the latest surrender of the socialists to the middle class ’76-ers. In a telegram to the S. P. convention he advised surrender to La- Follette by the socialists running no candidate against him, pathetically adding that “but, above all, keep the red flag flying.” Morris Hillquit is given the job of draping the red flag around La- Follette! Victor Berger is allotted the task of planting the crimson standard of proletarian re- yolt atop the barricades where Hillquit and his bankers ahd small business men, led by LaFollette and Hearst, are going “to fight like tigers!” Debs is sick, indeed. But the = party is even worse, it is an unburied corpse. Why delay the 9 funeral? Py Famine Scares The wish is father to the thot of the capitalist papers who published stories of a new famine in Soviet Russia. When there was a real famine in the Volga region, the result of an unprecedented drought, the plute press did everything possible to prevent the workers of this country from coming to the aid of the starving workers of Russia. The backbone of that famine was broken after a splen- did example of solidarity on the part of the work- ers of the world. Today, when there is no famine in Russia, the capitalist press creates one in its attempt to discredit the Soviet regime. Since the great famine was overcome, the Soviet Republic has made giant strides toward prosper- ity. Production on the land and in the factories has increased tremendously. There is still room for improvement, thanks to the heritage of in- efficiency left by the Czar’s regime and the hostil- ity of the capitalist world. But steady progress is assured. The workers and peasants get more of the product of their labor than they ever got before and they are masters of their own destiny. The progress made by the workers in Russia is having the effect of making the workers in other countries more discontented with the capitalist system. There is a‘ growing desire to do away with that system and begin the reconstruction of society on a communist basis. To kill this senti- ment, the capitalist press publishes lies about conditions in the Soviet Republic. Famines. Mur- ders. Chaos. They feed their readers on yarns supplied sometimes by paid liars who get their Jocal color in the dives of the European capital- ists; sometimes the fairy tales are written in the editorial rooms of the capitalist papers and given a Riga, Geneva, Helingsfors or London dateline. The Chicago Tribune is the champion anti-So- viet liar of the United States. Its lies are not even carefully concocted. Again it spreads yarns about a Russian famine. A drought in a part of . the Volga region was seized upon by these jour- nalist buzzards to manufacture another famine Break-up of Political Lines One fact stands out as the characteristic of the political period thru which we are now passing— the break-up of the old political alignments. The republican party is spt in twain in spite of the apparent harmony of its convention—it was a harmony purchased by making the split in the ranks more irretrievable. The democratic party is deadlocked, and even tho unity may ‘be restored on the surface, the hidden economic forces that produced the tie-up in Madison Square Garden will continue their process of disintegration. The socialist party has merged itself into the formless middle-class, Hearst-LaFollette movement. Even Gompers finds himself in strange and forbidding lands, without guide or compa: His own pet policy is being stolen from him by the Conference for Progressive Political Action and turned into an alliance with the semi-regulars of the old parties instead of with the regulars. This chaos in the political life of the United States is a reflection of the economic chaos of the entire world and its resultant sharpening of so- cial conflicts. Capitalism, as Marx points out, per- ishes by its own contradictions, which, of course, do not operate automatically, but as causitive fac- tors in forcing proletarian revolution. The great division within the capitalist class has arisen from the fact that greater and greater power has accumulated in the hands of finance capital, now the dominant factor in the imperial- ist stage of capitalism. The old times, when bank- ers loaned money to manufacturers, without thot of interferring in industrial processes, is gone, neyer to return. The great industrial corpora- tions, which by advantage in credit as well as in improved machinery it gave, drove the smaller manufacturers to thejwall, have become only the industrial end of the more powerful banking cor- porations. We have seen the directors of great machinery trusts, willing to do business with So- viet Russia, stopped by the orders of Wall Street banks. This is byt one small example of the eco- nomic antagonism existing within the capitalist class. Industrial capitalists bewail, also, the tendency for finance capital to export credit for a higher return than they can give, a typical habit of im- perialism. The money system, ready tool of the great banks, has alternately cheered “business” both great and small by inflation, only to snare them into a trap where deflation ruins many to enrich few. But this same money system endan- gers even its makers, and we see the finance sys- tems of half of Europe collapsing about the ears of distracted bankers. And below all these jug- glers with fortunes and figures, these quarreling classes within the bourgeoisie, lies the proletariat, only beginning to be conscious of its chains. Political movements are expressions of econom- ic differences. The split we see in the republican party, and in the democratic party also (they have been and are undifferentiatedly capitalistic), is a split between finance capital and industrial capi- tal threatened with widespread ruin. But the same process which has subjected manu- facturing capital to the international bankers, also has reduced the small business man, the employ ing farmer, the professional man, the progeny of the near-rich, the intelligentsia—all the tribe of capitalists without capital, to the servile status of not-too-independent lackeydom to corporations. They cry out against thesé “soulless” entities, against “rapacious monopolies. They seek politi- cal expression, but, being capitalistic, they reject class war and class parties, class political expres- sion. They want “justice’—they want LaFollette! Such is the plaint and the program of the petty bourgeoisie. And Gompers, poor man, he is so accustomed to selling his soul to big business that he cannot at once adjust his spiritual nature to the “radical” program of small business. No won- der he fell ill when he looked upon the democratic convention. Another “Bloc des Gauches” The united front now being set up between THE DAILY WORKER women, By J. LOUIS ENGDAHL. ADISON Square Garden, in New York City, and the Municipal Auditorium, in Cleveland, in these recent days, have heen the scenes of the complete bankruptcy of middle (muddle) class politics. All the petty conflicts that wormed their way to the surface in the demo- cratic convention, even to the Ku Klux Klan issue, “also bubbled up contin- uously in LaFollette’s personally con- ducted political show in the Ohio metropolis. ‘There is more truth than humor in the paragraph that appeared in the July 4th issue of the Wall Street Journal declaring that: “Only one thing that cannot con- tradict itself in the democratic conven- tion is the band.” so. The democratic contradictions fought their way into the open in an effort to select a winning presidential candi- date and the convention has now been on for two weeks, all records of bal- lots taken have been broken, and the outlook at this writing is not one bit changed. And it will make no differ- ence who will be nominated in the end. At Cleveland all differences were smothered under a LaFollette mani- pulated steam roller, that surpassed in efficiency any gag machine yet in- vented by either the democrats or re- publicans. . The festering political sore on the body politic, known as the democratic party, has broken in New York City, exuding its repellent stench in the nostrils of the nation. The LaFollette boil, at Cleveland, showed it has not yet come to a head, but it is rapidly on the way. The close relationship between the labor bureaucrats, the small bankers, landlords and little business men, of the New York gathering, and those of the Cleveland Conference was shown by the fact that many sat on the door- steps, or were on the inside of both asylums for the politically distressed and homeless. There was nothing strange about a few of the free lance democrats in New_York City talking about “LaFol- lette, he’s a good democrat.” It was perfectly natural for the rail- road chiefs, who held the Cleveland Conference in their pockets, to issue an ultimatum to McAdoo, at New York City, last Saturday, that if he did not put over his nomination by four o’clock in the afternoon, they would be com- Pelled to turn to LaFollette, in Cleve- land. eS Never was any middle class, in any ‘nation of the world, more hopelessly bankrupt politically. Lloyd George, for a time in England, held the pre- miership as the spokesman of the McAdoo-LaFollette elements in that country. But he was finally ground to Pieces between the capitalists on the one hand and the workers, organized in their own party, on the other. But in the United States the billion- aire plutocrats of Wall Street, pay little attention to the Madison Square Garden circus. Their official organ, the Wall Street Journal, gave it hard- ly passing attention. While McAdoo was parading as David about to slay the Wall St. Goliath, and inviting the hatred of the subsidized press, at the same time the Wall Street Journal pointed out his: inconsistency in oper- ating “his campaign from a hotel op- posite the Garden with one of Wall Street's foremost legal lights.and one of the Street’s leading financiers as his mentors.” Similarly in’ Cleveland. The labor editor, Mahoney, is unseated to make way for Sinclair, the St. Paul banker, while the political fortunes of LaFol- lette are placed in the hands of an William Randolph Hearst, Robert M. LaFollette,| = Eugene Debs, the C. P. P. A., and fragments,of former farmer-labor parties, is the most entertain- ing political potpourri that has been concocted in years. It is unlike any combination ever seen be- fore in this country, and the closest comparisoh we can think of off hand from Europe is the bloc des gauches that is supposed to have put Herriot into the premiership of France. Such a comparison is, of course, only a super- ficial one. But the many points of likeness are illuminating, and should assist the workers to come to a realistic understanding of just how little they may look for from such a combination, even should it be victorious. A combination of renegade socialists, capitalist yellow journalists, and trade union bureaucrats, forming:a united front with all the discontented small’ bankers, doctors, lawyers, dentists, preach- ers, merchants, and (last but not least) movie show propgietors, is attempting to take political leadership in this country. The failure of .this goulash, that includes William Hale Thompson, former mayor of Chicago and notorious boodler, along with the social-uplift ladies and Socialist partyites, is written in its social composition even more than in its absence of a program, its refusal to organize a party, and its apparent incapacities. The American “bloc of the left” will prove to be a bloc des gaucheries. William Hale Thompson is off on a tour to in- vestigate the habits of the tree-climbing fish of Borneo and bring back some specimens as exhibits. He built a neat little boat-for the purpose, but be- fore he was many moons to sea, he discovered that what he needed was a mud scow. — _— LEAVING ST. (From the Farmer-Labor Advocate, official organ of the Farmer-Labor federation of Minnesota.) 'HE Daily Star the other day, wind- ing up its sizzling accounts of the June 17 convention, and evidently be- lieving it was delivering the blow that would bust the whole works into a shower of red sparks, said: “William Hard and a group of east- ern political writers left the St. Paul third party convention flat today,.... declaring it was no longer worthy of their attention.” It is a sort of habitual “eastern” feeling that nothi out west is “worthy” of the “ " attention, but this is a matter of smiles to the west- erner, not of tears. If any of the group of jaded newspapermen who got weary yawning over the facts, and even their own lurid tal convention, made that statement, he was simply voicing the crude pro- vincialism of his section. It reminds us of the story of one of 7arnum’s second-rate performers down in Arkansas. This celebrity, stranded by a cheap show, sought employment of Barnum, and the great ringmaster gave him a chance with his stunt, but finding that the performer could not live up to Barnum standards, he was released—that is, fired. “Mr. Barnum,” said the discharged stuntmaker, with profound dignity, “Mr. Barnum, do you realize what this means? It means that I am going to leave Barnum's circus out here in Ar- kansas, flat on its back.” about the OSA ES ESET SH EE TEEN INE LS ANNA SSAA IEE AYR AIM I, ABE ESN AON HA NA ENS Illinois patent medicine millionaire. + Wall Street has “Coolidge and Dawes” and it is not worrying if the democrats in New York City eat out their vitals fighting over the Klan, the wet and dry issue and similar play- thing problems. Capitalism never did worry much about the middle class, the little bour- geoisie. “Big biz” knows that it can always depend on “Little biz,” except where the members of this latter class are plunged hopelessly into the ranks of oppressed toil. “The South” with its new indus- tries, with its dry rule to stop the “white trash” and the Negroes from drinking, while maintaining private cellars, with its love of the Ku Klux Klan as a weapon against any new, developing idea, carries on its sham battle against the big bankers and the big industries of Wall St. In Madison Square Garden it is in alliance with \the little bankers, the farm owners jand landlords of the West, and the |new industrialists of the Pacific coast. \It was Doheny and Sinclair, of Cali-| fornia, who bought up William Gibbs McAdoo, not John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil and the National City Bank. “The South” and “The West” and “The Coast” are against the slum po- liticians of the great centers of popu- lation, Tammany Hall, of New York City; Brennan, of Illinois; Curley, of Massachusetts, and Taggart, of In- diana, Brennan, coming from repub- lican Illinois, is having a hard time trying to fill the shoes of the late “Boss” Murphy, of Tammany. He is doing the best he can as the chief of the anti-McAdoo block, aided by the fact that the convention is being held jin Tammany’s own bailiwick, with the New York World and other demo- cratic sheets yelling for Al Smith, their own pet child. ope ee The ‘throat-cutting schism in Madi- son Square Garden is proof, if it indi- cates anything, that Big Business wants its own party. It would be glad to see the democratic ranks shattered, with the northern democrats, the Smiths, the Brennans and the Tag- garts, crawling onto the G. O. P. |bandwagon, and the southerners or- ganizing what one of them called “the true democracy,” and the West lining up with LaFollette’s fake liberalism. This is the dream of such spokes- men of Wall Street, as Frank Mun- sey, the newspaper and | steel mag- nate, and Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia University. They often re- peat it,—that capitalism has need o} only one party. * * * Between McAdoo and LaFollette there is no preceptible political shad- ing. They both claim to be “progres- sives,” enemies of Wall Street. It is merely a territorial difference that McAdoo is dry and LaFollette wet. If McAdoo lived in Milwaukee, the Brewery City, he, like Victor Berger, or the most reactionary, would also be wet. McAdoo has Ku Klux Klan backing. The LaFollette gathering at Cleveland \Tefused to adopt a resolution against the Klan. The Klan is strong in Wis- |consin, so strong that if has wormed |its way into the Wisconsin socialist party, and no denunciation of it was made at the last Wisconsin Socialist convention, | The Negro this year, more than jever, gets no relief from the demo- pieivies or republicans. McAdoo’s Klan \affiliations makes him the foe of the Negro workers’ interests, and LaFol- lette program in 1920 Also dodged this tion of the Negro problem. The LaFol- lette program in 190 also dodged this important issue directly affecting 11,000,000 of the American popula- jtion, and indirectly the whole nation. LaFollette’s claims to prominence during the war outside of his efforts PAUL “FLAT” That is the way the departure of the to dodge his St. Paul speech, was that he tried to tell Wall Street how to finance the war. McAdoo lays claim to the same notoriety having been secretary of the treasury. But neither fought the war as a banker’s war, not even as pacifists. \ McAdoo and LaFollette are as alike as two peas in the pod of helpless, wavering, don’t-know-where-we-are-go- ing middle class politics, the class that is caught between the millstones of the masses of workers and farmers, on the one side, and the big exploiters on the other. “8 ® There is no better proof of the polit- ical bankruptcy of this muddled class under.the present social system than the promises of splits both at New York City and Cleveland. This class has no common interest. William Jennings Bryan once caught it with a speech and got the presiden- tial nomination in 1896. He was then more radical than LaFollette is now. But Bryan is now one of the walking jokes in Madison Square Garden, hooted and jeered. Murphy, | who might have dictated, is dead, and Brennan’s rule has failed. McAdoo's efforts to arouse the Roosevelt fervor of 1912 fails dismally. The middle class is without leader or program. “* * LaFollette is not the Messiah. His AS WE A comrade informed me that he had an uncle who was a successful business man and as crazy as a fox during week days, but on Sunday, he became nutty and indulged in reli- gious rites that were anything but dignified. He belonged to a sect whose practices resembled those of our own Holy Rollers. On the Lord’s Day, this business man and his fellow re- ligionists gathered in a hall, rolled on the floor, climbed the walls of the room and _ gesticulated madly, every now anu then shouting that exhausting their energies in this fashion for a while, they went their separate ways and proceeded to act like normal human beings the remain- der of the week. Sieur Se Business men are supposed to be hard headed, but before me is a re- port sent out by Fred Marvin to his clients, purporting to give the facts concerning “sne Youth Movement” in America, and any business man who would spend a nickel on it is a candidate for Holy Rollers. That business men pay money for the rub- bish is evident from the fact that Marvin produces it. Marvin works for dough and he never sings the Star Spangled Banner without expecting to cash in on his effort. “The Youth Movement” seems to be the dreaded bogey man of the patriots. What is this Youth Movement? Marvin tells us. It is a purely destructive move- ment, he says and it is organized thru the National Student Forum. Is it Bolshevist inspired? Yes, says the redoubtable Marvin. Here is the evi- dence: “Gregory Zinoviev, president of ¢the Communist International, boasted that the Youth Movement is the best section of the Communist International.” se © Fearing that is not sufficient evi- dence, Mr. Marvin points out that one of the very dangerous organizations fostering the 1outh Movement is the League for Industrial Democracy, with “dangerous” socialists on its di- recting board. We believe the most dangerous of them is the Reverend Norman Thomas, and the worst the capitalists have to fear from that gentleman is that in a moment of ex- treme exasperation he may read the gospel according to St. John at them. “group of eastern political writers” left the St. Paul convention “flat.” No one in the convention even knew they left, and most Of them could have written just as gol stories about what was going on if they had been listening to jazz on Broadway, THE WAY TO FREEDOM By |. D, McFADDEN. “They who would be FREE, must THEMSELVES strike the blow!” Proletarians have been skinned long enough! Q UNITH WITH THE REDS AT THE POLLS! OVERTHROW Exploiters who always have treated you rough! McDonald and Bouck are called RED Communists! The Farmers and Wage-slaves will get a square deal, With these REDS in office, italists Will not be permitted to MURDER and Steal! The Cap- American Legion Patter. A. C. Linenthal, a Chicago lawyer, official in an American Legion post and, despite his name, a militant pro- ponent of the pilgrim brand American- ism, rises to remark in the local press that his legionnaires have no use for ‘so-called pacifists masquerading as peace agitators,” Marvin finds that these iconoclastic bodies are responsible for the in- crease of crime on the part of Ameri- can youth. He finds it easy to prove his case, evidently assuming that most business men who pay for his stuff are law-abiding morons. 4 * * . The followers of the Youth Move- ment fall into three classes: the well- balanced who become impractical the- orists for a time, tho recovering short- ly. In this class, he might place Vic- tor Berger, David Kresner, Davy Goldstein and Harry Thaw. The sec- ond class become natural rebels who never recover, They most likely be- come political prisoners. The third class become degen like the re- cently notorious ¢: in Chicago. Lack of religion, lack of respect for the flag and for authority. That’s the cause of the increase in crime, said Marvin. The business Babbits who give Marvin a handout for this men- tal tripe mever read it or if they do and believe such trash, it only proves that a man may have a good head for business but good for nothing else, * * * It is rather tough on Gaston B. Means, the famous stool-pigeon, who worked for the late President Hard- ing, William J. Burns, Harry Daugher- ty, Jess Smith and other crooks. Means was a good investigator and refreshingly frat He was proud of his calling and liked the work pro- vided there was money in it. Shortly « Wednesday, July 9, 1924 Blind Leaders of the Muddled Classes crusading days, if he ever had any, are over. If the democratic party breaks up, according to indications, some of its splinters will be more a\ ical than the political melange that La- Follette launched upon the, political ocean at Cleveland. And in his own state of Wisconsin, LaFollette will al- ways be a “regular” republican, faith. ful servant of big as well as of little business. And if he lived in Montana or Colorado, he would be a democrat and just as regular, as Wheeler or Sweet. / * * The fight of the near future looms clearer than ever—the party of capi- talism against the party of labor. And in that struggle the “Bill” Me- Adoos and “Bob” LaFollettes, with all their helpless muddled class following will be gradually but inevitably ex- terminated. “No Man’s Land” is no place to maintain life. The class struggle permits of but two sides in the combat. ‘ Labor ‘must prepare now for the: time when Wall Street will throw off its two-party mask and come out into the open. Labor must prepare for that day by building, stronger than ever, the Na- tional Farmer-Labor Party, in which the forces of Communism in these United States are the fighting van- guard. ‘i SEE IT. By T. J. O'FLAHERTY. after the presidency was purchased for Harding by Jake Hamon, the pre- sident employed Means to investigate the secretary of the Treasury, Andrew— Mellon. Harding wanted to get the goods on Andy and perhaps hold'him for ransom. But Mellon, had a flock of stoolpigeons and apparently he was investigating Harding and the two sets of finks collided. The Harding attempt to land Mellon the first time fell flat, so when Andy was off his guard Means went at him again and succeeded in catching him in his wine cellar. | * * . Jesus had entered into them. Atten| While Harding was trying to get the goods on his secretary of the treasury, the two were the closest friends. But that is the way capitalists and their lackeys treat each other. There is no honor among them. They have no confidence or trust in each other. They are always ready to knife each other politically at the first opportunity. But while Harding and Mellon and their kind can fight each other and remain friends their lickspittles, fellows who do the dirty work are lidble to get hurt. Means got badly bruised. He testified before the Daugherty invest- igation that Mellon was the biggest bootlegger in America. He delivered himself of a similar load of informa- tion in the New York courts recently, but he is on his way to Atlanta, un- less a Democratic president is elected and Means is pardoned as a reward for spilling the beans on the Republic- ans. The end would justify the means in the eyes of every good Democrat. PRY etter We are told by one of the many committees connected with the Demo cratic bedlam in Madison Square gar- den that several Democratic mothers were holding up the naming of their new born babies in order to fasten the cognomen of the successful Demo- cratic candidate on them for the rest of their lives. From all appearances, if the doting mothers persist in their intentions the babies may be dark horses before the present deadlock is broken, unless the Democratic Party is decently interred in the meantime as a menace to public health. + 8 William Randolph Hearst has not yét come out for William Gibbs Mc: Adoo, but his Good Man Friday, Arthur Brisbane loads his column with judicious boosts for the Ku Klux favor. ite. Hearst is more of a Mability than an asset to a presidential aspirant. He fought Smith when Dudley Field Malone ran for Governor of New York on the Farmer-Labor Party ticket, but two days before the polling took place, he switched to Smith praised him as vigorously as he ha¢ previously condemned him, but Smit! lost and governor Miller, the Repub lican won the victory. It pays t have Hearst as an enemy. The Poor Fish says: I was goir to cast my vote for Al Smith, but heard that the pope was hiding : the statue of Liberty and that he wi going to take up his residence in tt White House if Al elected, + { changed my mind, I dd McAdc about it and the holy man hand me a bible and said, “do as you pleas but if you are 100 per cent, th should be your platform as it mine.” I admire the pope, but at ° distance, va) wit