The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 22, 1924, Page 6

Page Six THE DAILY WORKER. Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO., 1118 W. Washington Blvd., Chicago, Ill. (Phone: Monroe 4712) SUBSCRIPTION.RATES By mail: $3.60....6 months $2.00.3 months By mall (in Chicago only)! $4.50....6 months $2.50....3 montus $6.00 per year $8.00 per year Address all mail and make out checks to THE DAILY WORKER 1113 W. Washington Bivd. Chicago, Ilinols Bditors J. LOUIS ENGDAHL \ WILLIAM F, DUNNE MORITZ J. LOEB. —_————$— Entered as second-class mail Sept. 21, 1923 at the Post- Office at Chicago, Ill, under the act of March 3, 1879. <p 250 Advertieing rates on application. == War Makers Busy While all the peace conferences, raparations gatherings, reconstruction confabs, and universal justice sessions are going on, the capitalist world ——EE Miners Must Fight Meeting in Herrin yesterday, the coal operators and their lieutenants make public the object of their plottings for the past two years—smash the wage scale of the miners and destroy their upion. Frank Farrington, by playing around with the utopian schemes of class collaboration, with such buncombe as the talk of super-power plants as the cure for the miners’ ills, and by joining hands with Lewis in putting across the three-year contract in such a fashion that it puts a rope around the Illinois ‘miners’ necks—Farrington has, by these and other methods, carefully prepared the way for the operators’ conference in Herrin. Of course, the union officials do not dare to sit openly into the Herrin conference. They will put up a bluff of fighting it. But they have nothing definite to offer. They continue to talk about co- operating with the bosses, they continue to propose collaboration schemes, that mean nothing except profits to the bosses. But what the miners need is a fighting leadership, district and national, that will go out and organize the miners 100% and then cut down the working day to 6 hours and the week to 5 days, without reduction of earning war makers are working overtime preparing am- munition and infernal machines for the coming war. The Skoda Works, in Europe, the munition plants of France, the cannon factories of England and the airplane manufacturers of Germany and Italy are now operating at a feverish pace, piling up huge supplies of destruction. In the United States, while unemployment is gripping every basic industry the munition fae- tories are busier than ever. The findings of the Department of Commerce, 1923, Census of Manu- facturers just issued, dealing with ammunition and related products, affords most instructive evi- dence of the energy with which our war makers are setting the pace in preparing the country for the next conflict. The last biennial Census of Manufacturers tells us that, the establishments engaged primarily in the production of ammunition and related products reported a total output valued at more than fifty- one million dallors. This is a rate of increase in the total as compared with 1921, the last preceding census year, of nearly fifty-three per cent. The rate of increase in the value of ammunition and related products was sixty-two and a half per cent. : The number of working men producing ammuni- tion in the United States has increased: twenty- . five per cent within the last two years; the cost of materials nearly seventy-five per cent. Since the last Census of Manufacturers there have been held at least half a dozen international peace gatherings of first magnitude. While the em- ploying class phrase-mongers were attempting to hide the imperialist intents and purposes of the ruling class behind a smokescreen of poisonous words, the munition makers were plying their trade more prosperously than ever. This apparently strange contradiction is a grim reality confronting the workers today. This situa- tion is a sad commentary on the likelihood of the international bankers and industrialists being able to bring peace to the world for even a limited num- ber of years. While the meaningless words of an impossible peace are being uttered, the seeds of an impending hellish war are being sown. Towards Splendid Isolation Jn an address delivered before the Institute of International Politics of the Federal Council of Churches, Samuel G. Inman, a student of Latin- American problems, pointed out the great dangers to the United States of its being isolated by a united Latin-American opposition. No one can overestimate the seriousness of this danger to the workers and farmers of the United States. Our imperialists are driving at such a headlong pace towards world domination that, in time, they are bound to win universal hatred. Such a “victory” will necessarily be the signal for a new world conflagration. Not only in Latin America, not only in the Far East and in Asia Minor, but also in Europe the American capitalists are rapidly extending their sway. Our exploiters haye at this moment an invest- ment of more than $7,000,000,000 in the markets and industries of the lesser industrially developed and the war-stricken countries. Handsomé profits and fabulous dividends must be collected on these giant investments of the surplus value wrung from the American workers by our exploiting class. Security, in the terms of vassal governments, con- trol of the natural resources of the country, and mortgages on the basic industries, is an essential guarantee demanded by our imperialists before they invest a single dollar. Therein lie the dangers of the United States achieving this goal of splendid isolation, Sooner, rather than lager, the hatred of the world will be won by our imperialists along with their domina- countries. This means that the very working class whose products were taken from them to be in- vested by their bosses in the foreign lands, will be called upon to fight for the safety of these invest- ments, for the continuity of the flow of dividends to the very class that is exploiting the masses of every country. The times demand that the workers of the United States and the Latin-American countries get to- gether with the working masses of all the other countries for organized united action against the serious menace of another world slaughter that will with certainty follow the presently brewing sharp conflict of interests among the various na- tional, capitalist imperialist groups. Get a member for the Workers Party and a new subscription for the DAILY WORKER, \ capacity of the miners. Wisconsin No Exception Much valuable ink and oceans of words have been spilled by our liberal political innocents and malcontents about the great panacea that LaFol- lette’s “Wisconsin plan” has proved to the workers. All talk to this effect is as empty as it is loud. The Wisconsin plan of government is originally the same plan funetioning thruout the country; the plan whereby the;employing class utilizes the state machinery to oppress the workers and cripple them in their struggle for better employment and living conditions. Thruout the country, Wisconsin and the other 47 states included, the court system is thé pivotal point in the whole governmental organization be- ing used against labor. Fresh evidence of this eon- dition being a scource of grave difficnlties for the workers in LaFollette’s state is reyealed thru the issuing of a temporary injunction restraining the operation of the Wisconsin minimum wage law. We see no cause for holding that the minimum wage of twenty-five cents an hour for adult women, as ordained by the Wisconsin minimum wage law, is a source of substantial relief to the working class. But the Wisconsin district court, at Supe- rior, found it necessary to brand even this insig- nificant measure a violation of the constitutional provision guaranteeing the sacredness of the free- dom of contract and private property. It is plain that in the Badger state, as in all the states where the reactionaries make no pretense about the pro- pressive character of their administrations, the in- tion of the markets and industries of the other) terests of the propertied class are held far above the welfare of the working masses. In the light of an unbroken series of such ex- periences as the above with the Wisconsin judicial oligarchy, LaFollette’s continuous talk about the tyranny of the court is quite useless. Our judicial oligarchy will be made impotent only when the en- tire system of government dominated by the em- ploying class is gotten rid of by the exploited workers and the dispossessed farmers. The ownership of the means of production and ex- change and of the governmental machinery by the bosses is alone responsible for the sufferings of the workers at the hands of the courts, legisla- tures, and executive bureaus, It is this sore spot that LaFollette not only refuses to remove, but thru his economic and po- litical program is seeking to perpetuate. His sham battles in the courts are no signs of friendship for the workegs. They are that much dust thrown into the eyes of the working men. Fundamentally Wis- consin is as much a tool in the hands of the ex- |ploiters as any other state in the Union. More evidence on the Russian Bolsheviks! Maj.- Gen, il Tscheslavsky, formerly an officer in the Czar’s army, is now working as a guard at the Western Electric Company’s plant at Hawthorne. This is an outrage. »Perhaps the publicity in the capitalist papers may mark a turning point in his fortunes. He would make a good substitute for a poodle on the Gold Coast. Several hundred empty pocketbooks were found on the Dawes lawn in Evanston the morning after the notification ceremonies. The DAILY WORKER reporter did not lose the dollar and ten cents he had in his pocket, because he stayed away from Evanston when he heard that prominent repub- lican politicians would attend in great numbers. Look out for political pickpockets. T. V. O’Connoro, chairman of the United States shipping board, discovered that Coolidge is a friend of labor. He signed the “forty-eight hour week” bill for women when he was governor of Massa- chusetts. That was about the time he smashed the Policemen’s Union with the aid of Samuel Gom- pers. Labor fakers are a drug on the political market these days. They can be had for the asking. La Follette has the largest collection. John W. Davis has some outstanding samples and even little “Cal,” the most prominent strike breaker of them all, can boast of several stalwarts. After Coolidge assumed the presidency he was visited by Samuel Gompers and a committee from the executive council of the American Federation of Labor. Gompers assured Coolidge that while he voted the democratic ticket, he considered a republican perfectly reliable and not at all dan- gerous to business, ¥ THE DAILY WORKER. . fday, August 22, 1924 Bob’s State Gives Labor Poor Wages (Continued from page 1) . Wisconsin holds the unenviable twen- ty-ninth place in the ranks of the monthly wages paid the working men of the various states. This low wage is significantly pain- ful when one realizes that it is in no way due to a lack of industrial de- velopment. In Wisconsin 92,6 per cent of the workers engaged in manufac- turing industries are employed by cor- porations. Wisconsin ranks fourth in the United States in the proportion of workers employed in manufactur- ing industries owned by corporations, but ranks only twenty-ninth in the average monthly wage paid to these working men, Since this investigation was made Wisconsin wages have declined sharp- ly. For all industries, according to the April, 1924, United States. Month- ly Labor Review, the average weekly wage in the Badger state was $26.87 in December, 1920. Today, according to the June Report of the Wisconsin State Industrial Commission, the average weekly wage for all workers is only $23.93. While the wages are low, the hours of labor are long in Wisconsin. For the United States as a whole the pro- portion of wage-workers in the manu- facturing industries having forty-eight hours or less of labor per week is 48.6 per cent. But in LaFollette’s “Model Commonwealth,” only 31.3 per cent of the workers engaged in the manufacturing industries have a forty-eight hour week or the average eight-hour day. Tho tenth in the num- ber of men engaged in the manufac- turing industries of the country, Wis- “| consin ranks only thirty-ninth in the proportion of its workers in these in- dustries laboring forty-eight hours a week or under. Cost of Living Mounting. With all the smoke raised by La | further find that: Follette and his forces about trust. busting and monopoly-stifling, the cost of living has been rising in Wis- consin as steadily as elsewhere. Taking July, 1914, as a base of one hundred, as the normal point, the In- dustrial Commission of Wisconsin INDIANA LA FOLLITES WILL VOTE IN STATE FOR OLD PARTY TICKETS INDIANAPOLIS, Ind., Aug. 21.— LaFollette Progressive Party in In- diana will steer clear of the state issues and conduct a “purely La Follette-Wheeler campaign,” accord- ing to the Wisconsin senator's chief- tains attending the state convention of third party delegates here today. A. F. Bentley, of Paoli, 8! chair- man of the Indiana Progressive Ac- tion League, who presided at the opening session of the convention, declared LaFollette-Wheeler men would “vote in the state election on their old party affiliations.” considerably more than half of Mil- waukee’s industrial strength. “The object of the council is the establishment and maintenance of the open shop in the Milwaukee in- dustrial district. “Members of council groups re- ceiving this report, who may know of other open shop employers not yet members of a council group, will confer a favor by notifying the proper delegate or the undersigned. “J, M. Bell, Secretary Manager.” This report goes on to boast of the Milwaukee Council having member- ship in the notorious national open shop organization, the League for In- dustrial Rights, and of playing an ac- tive part in the fight against the job printers for a forty-four hour week and in the strikes of the tailors and sheet metal workers. Turning to the May, 1924, “Mem- bers’ Supplement—Freedom in Em- ployment” published monthly by the Milwaukee Employers’ Council, we “The printing in- dustry is now overwhelmingly open shop-in Milwaukee, and in due course we expect to see the allied photo-en-| graving and electrotyping industries follow suit. We shall not rest until this is accomplished.” This same bulletin then, speaking has found the eost of living to have risen in the ‘state at least 61.7 per cent on July 1, 1924, And the April, 1924, United States Monthly Labor Review tells us that Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s leading city, is among the six highest cities in the increased retail cost of food. In Feb- ruary, 1924, thirty-three cities ranked lower than Milwaukee in the rise of the cost of living since 1913. Open Shop Movement Powerful. Wisconsin is one of the banner states of the open shop movement of the country. Let us consult the se- eret minutes of the regular quarterly meeting of the Milwaukee Employers’ Council, held on June 8, 1921, to get an idea of the extent of this anti-la- bor crusade. We quote verbatim: “The Milwaukee Employers’ Council’ is at present composed of twenty-eight industrial groups, representing a total of six hundred and sixty-two plants and approximately sixty thousand em- ployes on wages. «|, , All the principal indus- tries are represented and we are organizing new groups every month. for the anti-union employers, an- nounces: “In Milwaukee we actually have a large proportion of open shop in building construction; perhaps sixty-five per cent; but “we have a timidity, a lack of principle, a disre- gard for the public welfare and a general apathy to overcome in certain groups of our business men, in order to increase this percentage and put this great industry on the same basis with our other great industries.” And in its June, 1924, supplement the Milwaukee Employets’ Council proudly declares: “The Milwaukee Branch, National Metal Trades Asso- ciation, is apparently leading the country in its apprenticeship work. We are so informed at least, by George W. Jones of the open shop Review, who spent a week in Milwau- kee in May. “This kind of work is of the ut- most importance to. the open shop. Other industries are greatly im need of such work—notably the building industry, which in Milwaukee must soon do something constructive, either in minor apprenticeship work At present the council represents or in adult intensive training. The apprentice movement in the metal trades should help other movements to get started.” Smashing the Unions. The terrific drive these open’ shop- pers have been waging against the workers was roundly denounced by the State Federation of Labor in its 1923 convention in a special resolu- tion from which we produce in part: “The railroad owners have set out to wreck the shop crafts unions by organizing scab unions or so-called company associations of employes, and are endeavoring to compel all shop crafts workers to join these scab unions, by threatening discharge and visiting other punishment upon the workers for failing to join these scab unions, and ~ “Whereas, the, Great Northern, Northern Pacific and Soo Railways in Wisconsin are at present engaged in this insidious plan now, therefore, be it “Resolved, that the Wisconsin State Federation of Labor hereby serves no- tice upon the railroad owners that the visitation upon the workers of these unfair and outrageous condi- tions will not be tolerated.” Private detective agencies do a flourishing business in Wisconsin strike breaking. Mr. L. B. Lamfrom, who was counsel for the Milwaukee Employers’ organization at the height of its offensive against the working- men in 1921, was at the same time also the attorney for the infamous Russell Detective Agency. Testifying before the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commissioner on Oc- tober 17, 1921, Walter G. Russel, the head of this scab-herding agency stat- ed that his firm now employs twelve hundred detectives, and answering the question as to what line of work these agents do, said: “If you ask, do we do strike work, yes. Do we put men in factories to report information to the heads of firms? I would say yes. Do we have men in unions? Yes.” Allied With Open Shoppers. Not only do the enemies of the workers meet with no opposition from the progressive LaFollette govern- ment in Wisconsin, but this govern- ment covertly and overtly aids and abets their anti-labor activities. Describing the proceedings of the State Federation of Labor Conven- tion, the Milwaukee Sentinel for July, 22, 1920, said: “Administrative bodies were flayed for alleged failure to pro- secute employers who, labor says, vio- late the provision compelling the ad- vertisement of the fact that a strike is in progress when labor is imported to fill strikers’ places.” At itg 1921 convention the State Federation of Labor was forced to Protest against open shop construc- tion in the erection of high schools. The special resolution against this Policy of the government read: “Whereas the carpenters of the Fox River Valley District Council consist- ing of those cities from Fond du Lac to Green Bay, inclusive, have been on strike since. the first of May, fighting against the so-called ‘Open Shop’ which the contractors are endeavor- ing to impose upon them, and “Whereas, the Ludolph M. Hanson Construction Company, one of the largest contracting firms of the Fox River Valley, trying to force the so- called ‘Open Shop’ on the carpenters, is building a $450,000 high school in the city of Two Rivers; therefore, ba it , “Resolved, that the State Federa- tion of Labor here in convention as- sembled appoint a committee of three . . to visit the high school job in Two Rivers as soon as possible to use their influence to persuade the above firm to use fair labor on their construction work.” Trade Union Movement Weak. Since LaFollette has for years been posing as a defender of the interests of the workers, it would be in order to expect a strong trade union move- ment in the state where his word is law. Nothing of the sort is the case. The Wisconsin trade union, move- ment, tho on many occasions show- ing hopeful signs of militancy and genuine progressivism, is lamentably weak ifn numbers and strength to re- sist the aggression of the highly. or- ganized open shoppers of the state, From its Official 1920 convention proceedings we learned that in the year 1919-1920, before the fierce open shop drive was launched, the Wis- consin State Federation of Labor had a total affiliated membership of only 51,645. Of these a maximum of 30,- 977 were employed in the manufac- | turing industries of the state. At this time, there were, according to the findings of the United States Census of Manufacturers, 263,949 wage earn- ers employed in the manufacturing | industries of Wisconsin. Compare these figures with the fact that the . Milwaukee Employers’ Council. alone represented sixty thousand or more than half of the industrial strength of the leading industrial city in the state, Of course, even this strength of the trade unions was reduced by the vici- ous open shop drive of 1921, as can be seen from the following report on membership made to the 1922 con- vention of the State Federation of La- bor: “The affiliated unions show a de- crease of but sixteen per cent in membership at the close of the year, as compared with the same months of the previous year. . . . “The fiscal year has closed with many unpleasant memorfés to the workers and their families due to un- employment and the desperate ef- forts’ of capital to annihilate their or- ganizations. bag ~ How helpless the Wisconsin work- ers are despite their heroic resist- ance, before the open shoppers of La Follette’s state is thus vividly de- scribed as follows in “The Next Step —A Program of Construction, Propos- ed by the Wisconsin State Federation of Labor, J..J. Handley, Secretary- Treasurer: (Page 4) “Employes who have been nent in union activities are béing dis- charged all over the state, not be- cause there is no work for them, but in order that the employers may put into their places workers from other cities. The dismissed employes, in their turn, must leave their homes and families and go on to other cities at great expense to themselves and romis . at the risk of increasing the unem- © ployment of these cities.” This is the freedom enjoyed by the workers in LaFollette’s “Model Com- monwealth,”” Protect the Poor Bondholders By EARL R. BROWDER. VALIANT champion has been found for the rights of the op- pressed holders of railroad bonds! It is none other than the weekly publica- tion, Labor, organ of the railroad un- ions. The unions and their paper are popularly supposed to be fighting for the interests of the workers in the railroad industry, of those workers who are all exploited by capitalism. But that is an illustion! What they are fighting for is “justice;” and “jus- tice” is seen as something in common between the bondholders and the workers as against another “factor” in the railroad industry known as “watered stock.” The labor move- ment, my children, we are told, is not a class struggle of the workers against Qe exploiters—it is a move- ment of the bondholders and workers against those who take «dividends “unfairly” from both. This is the meaning of an editorial in the current issue of Labor. Deal- ing with a merger by the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, which will result in increased dividends to common stock, Labor says: J \ “Bondholders, who paid real money for their securities, get no Their dollars are work- and therefore in the same class as the employes, but most of their owners haven't sense enuf to know it.” ; “Real money” is in the same class as “employes,” the dividends which it extracts from the surplus labor of the workers’ “honorably earned wages,” and but for the stubborn lack of com- mon sense on the part of the misled bondholders this common interest, which transcends all other economic dash that fills the heads of our “la- bor leaders” would be hard to find. It is the same crude class-collaboration bunk that the railroad shop unions are peddling to their members in the in- famous “B. .& O. co-operation plan.” It is the same philosophy that under- lies the treacherous surrender to La- Follette and the sabotaging of the Farmer-Labor party. It is the thot which causes the leaders of the rail- road unions to surrender the demands of their membership for better wages, and to submit to arbitration, labor boards and similar schemes to oppress and rob the railroad workers. Against this poison class of class collaboration that turns the unions into auxiliaries of capitalism, into “company unions” in all but name, which threatens the very life of the labor movement if it is not uprooted and thrown out—against this insidu- ous invasion of bourgeois thot which is paralyzing the labor movement, the workers have only one rallying center. This center of opposition to class collaboration is the left wing, with its militant program of amalgamation of the isolated craft unions into powerful industrial organizations, of the organ- ization of the unorganized by means of a great modern campaign prepared on a mass scale, of the launching of a class political party of Labor, of the organizational alliance internationally with the rqvolutionary workers of all the rest of the world. ux Railroad workers! If you do not wish to. unite with the bondholders, you must unite with the amalgama- tionists and left-wingers and adopt their program. If you are against this disgusting class collaboration, then you must adopt the policies of class struggle. Out of the swamp, of B. & O. plans, of alliances with Wall Street thru “labor banks,” of LaFol- lettism and class collaboration,, the jonly clear course is that pointed out by the. Communists, The War for Democracy By W. J. WHITE E fought for democracy and to make the world safe for the plutocracy, i The August sun was beating down on his convulsed form, as it twitched and jerked under the force of an epilectic fit. Saliva spewed from his lips as nature endeavored to restore hts poor bruised body to its normal functioning. The charge of shrapnel that had burs his skull like an egg shell had been more-merciful to his comrades who now rest in their graves o'er which bloom the poppies of famed Flanders fields. Women were calling on the men to go to his relief. Shuddering they stood viewing with drawn and distort- ed faces this semblance of death, which has always caused our race to look with horror upon those stricken, This poor torn, battered and warped wreck of humanity whose struggling to feed, had sent tingling thrills of and social factors, would bring: the] joy and pride thru the breast of some bondholders and workers into the/glad mother, now, lay convulsively same common organization. struggling back to his burden of A balder statement of the balder-|misery and woe. A mother patted his poor shrapnel torn head upon her lap, while | another put a cup of water to his froth flecked lips. He shrank back from the fanning of his cap, that another in her sympathy had taken up, and was trying to cool the sweltering brow, as tho she had struck him a mortal blow, No greater lie was ever given to the world than that man is naturally bad. No greater curse can be perpetuated than the one the priests and preachers foist upon a long suffering people that men and women are bad by nature. This poor twisted and distorted wraith of humanity as he struggled back to consciousness was surrounded by humanity in whose every move the lie was given that man is naturally bad. Sympathy was personified in every move as men chafed his torn limbs trying to restore the arrested circulation, No question there on his, jalien birth. No sarcastic comment on his bearing a name that ended in ski. He fought to make the world safe for democracy. eae Curses,on his lips sounded like the anthem of some mighty organ, His swearing sounded like some epic poem, His face shone in the light of tho ; / electric lamp like some saint of old sworn to go forth to find the holy grail. He too had fought for democ- racy. He had gone out to make war to stop wars. Wounded and down and out he had fallen on the streets of an Eastern city from hunger. In another he had been discharged from the hospital hardly able to stagger to the eet. Born on the soil and in Amer- ica, his dead niother a member of one | of the families that had come in the Mayflower, he stood in’ that old village tin shop passing out the iden- tification papers that showed who and what he was, damning to hell and back, the system that made him a pauper-wanderer on the face of his native land, while the men who had had charge of the funds that should have taken care of such as he, were at large, after having stolen | He had fought to make the safe for democracy, but he Lhoctionnec A he had saved, to ac! Individually man {s\a weak bein fl strong in union vit thera ORE! Revolutionary changes , n gin in the minds parr hh abi dc oe