The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 11, 1925, Page 6

Page Six THE DAILY WORKE R THE DAILY WORKER. ne i cen i a rad il ca li te eit ok Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO. | 1113 W. Washington Blvd., Chicago, IL (Phone: Monroe 4712) SUBSCRIPTION RATES kal mall: | $3.50....6 months $2.00....8 months By mail (in Chicago only): $4.50....6 months $2.50....8 months 96.00 per year $8.00 per year A@dress all mail and make out checks to THE DAILY WORKER 1113 W. Washington Bivd. J. LOUIS ENGDAHL t WILLIAM F, DUNNE sooee EGILOPS MORITZ J. LOEB.......sssseee Business Manager Chicago, Ilinels Ontered as second-class mail Sept. 21, 1923, at the Post- Office at Chicago, Ill, under the act of March 3, 1879. e290 Advertising rates op application Communists and the Capitalist Offensive A Harding replaces a Wilson, a Coolidge re- places a Harding, a cultured barrister replaces a third-rate shyster as head of the department of justice, but the persecution of the Communists con- tinues. Perhaps there is some change in method, but the purpose remains the same—imprisonment and silencing of the most conscious and militant sec- tion of the American working class and their best} fighters. ig Following the denial of the appeal of Ruthen- berg by the Michigan supreme court and his im- prisonment until an appeal was taken to the} United States supreme court, the scene shifted from Bridgeman to Cleveland where an attempt was made to deport Severino to fascist Italy. Once more the scene changes and before Burger, a Dangherty holdover of the department of justice, Krumbein, district organizer of the Workers (Com- munist) Party and Katterfeld, New York agent of the DAILY WORKER, an attempt is made to force them to testify in the Severino case. They naturally refused and Burger threatens contempt of court proceedings. All these events indicate that the Coolidge gov- ernment of the House of Morgan is preparing an- other attack on the Workers (Co(mmunist) Party. It could hardly be otherwise. Only a blissfully ignorant optimist could be- lieve that the only party informing the workers of America of the murderous plans of American im- perialism implicit in the Dawes plan and the Paris pact and organizing the workers for resistance will remain immune from well-planned persecution. The consolidation of the forces of the blackest enemies of the working class shown by the results of the last election means that a new era of arro- gant brutality is a certainty. The Communists will be the first to suffer. Then the capitalist offensive will be broadened and the whole labor movement will be brought into the line of fire. The Communists are fully alive to the danger, but the labor movement as a whole is not. It is our task to see that every section of the organized workers understands exactly what the attack on the Communists means. As always, the interests of the Workers (Com- and most critical of their readers, It is quite easy to forget that but a small percentage.of the masses which the DAILY WORKER must reach is famil- iar with Marxian words and phraseg)and interested in involved articles dealing with .certain phases of Marxian theory and practice. It would ‘be a mistake to think, however, that the DAILY WORKER and the Communists must ac- cept this condition as one that cannot be changed and cease to struggle against it. The Communist | press not only must try to write its news and educa- | tional material in such form that any worker who can read can understand it, it must not only base its agitation and educational articles on the daily problems and struggles of the workers—what Lenin called “the facts of life’—but it must also work unceasingly to raise the level of understanding and make classic phrases of the class struggle part of the language of the American workers. The class struggle rages here in America in spite of the fact that the labor union officials and the middle class advisers of the workers deny it. It is part of the same struggle that goes on all over the world and its terms are well known to millions of workers wherever the breakdown of capitalism has created the conditions for widespread revolu- tionary work and has brought great masses of workers into the ranks of me labor“and revolution- ary movement. The best way we know of to keep the contents of the DAILY WORKER in as simple language as possible is to get constantly such criticism as that mentioned. In addition to this, but more difficult and more important, are news stories and articles written by the worker-readers of the Communist press themselves. This is the way that the DAILY WORKER can become a real mass organ and it is a paper made up of such material that we want and the working class needs. Textile Workers Battle Our news from Lawrence, Pawtucket and other textile centers tells of a sharpening of the struggle against wage cuts and speeding-up schemes of the bosses, of mass meetings called by the united front committees, organized by the Workers (Commun- ist) Party and Trade Union Educational League. At these meetings the greatest interest is dis- played in advice to unite all the protest movements and small unions in the industry into a solid front against the mill owners and their shop organiza- tion headed by Colonel Butler, the campaign man- ager of Coolidge and backed by the House of Mor- gan-Coolidge-Dawes government. The wage cuts and the speeding up system has now affected almost the entire textile industry. The economic basis for a united front of all the textile workers has’ been laid by the mill owners themselves and for the first time in the bloody his- tory of the textile industry there is a real united front movement under way. Always before, the: resentment of the workers has spent itself in’strikes and demonstrations af- fecting only a smallipart of the industry at one time. This year there is a force in the textile centers that brings to the textile workers not only the idea of industrial solidarity but a realistic or- ganizational program tried and proven effective in a thousand struggles of the workers in’ all the capitalist countries. It is the program of the Com- munist) Party and of the working class are in- separable. Only One Mess Greece talks of war on Turkey. Great Britain is the overlord of Greece, but fears to encourage her vassal in this new adventure be- | cause it would strengthen the alliance between Russia and Turkey. France and Italy prepare to back Turkey—their bul against the further advance of British im- perialism in Asia Minor. s Bulgaria crouches to spring upon Dedegeatch, the Greek port in the Aegean Sea that Bulgaria covets. Jugo-Slavia, in the event of a Greco-Turkish war, is ready to grab the Greek port of Salonica which she needs because Italy has cut her off from the sea. Over all stands the Communist International ap- pealing to the working class of all these nations to throw off the chains of capitalism—to turn im- perialist war into war on capitalism. Greek Communists call on the workers to fight the war plans of their government and twenty are imprisoned. Thousands of workers demand their release and demonstrate against the government. This is a brief sketch of just one of messes in which world capitalist finds itself. It is inextricably enmeshed in the web of its own contradictions and national rivalries when the acutely critical condition demands unity. Is it any wonder that the whole world constantly trembles on the verge of war? The Need for Simplicity We have from a worker-reader a letter asking for the use of more simple language in the articles and editorials we publish. We agree with the implied criticism and we try to use and have our contributors use a language that is clear and understandable. The DAILY WORK- ER is published for the workers in industry and for the masses of poor farmers, and anything that keeps the DAILY WORKER from being read and understood is a bad thing for both the class strug: gle and the DAILY WORKER. The task of making articles and editorials of the utmost simplicity is not as easy as might be thonght, The temptation for all editors and authors fo Special articles is to write for the best educated munist International and the Red International of Labor Unions—the united front from below against the capitalist class and the agents of cap- italism and the capitalist state wherever they are found. For the first time there is a real basis for the belief that the textile industry will be organized— organized by amalgamation of the existing unions, by organization of the unorganized workers and by united front actions into a union born of the struggle. West Virginia’s Coal Miners The territory around Fairmont and Parkersburg, ; West Virginia, is the scene of one of those strug- gles between workers and capitalists which basic industry in America furnishes in bloody colors. The local unions of the United Mine Workers of America in this section are making a last ditch fight to save their organization and prevent a wage cut, Their fight is a desperate one and in the last few days a union miner has been killed by coal company gunmen. In the state as a whole the coal mining industry is now only about ten per cent organized. In whole districts the union has been destroyed by methods exactly the same as those used by imperialist powers in breaking the resist- ance of colonial peoples. { That is what the miners of West Virginia are in their present unorganized condition—colonial serfs of the steel trust which owns or controls the mining industry. ~ The hope for the West Virginia miners lies not in the present officialdom of the United Mine Work- ers with its program of “meeting the boss half way,” but in the program of the left wing, centering around the Workers Party and the Trade Union Educational League, for which 66,000 votes were counted in the recent union election. There is jugt as thuch menace to the steel trust domination of the West Virginia miners’ lives in this proof of the militants’ numerical strength as there is to the rule of Lewis and his army of high- salaried henchmen, The two must be fought together and the steel trust will not be forced to deal with miners as a unit until the left wing program becomes the pro- gram of the union, The bosses have a united front to force wage cuts. The workers must also have. ).a united front to resist wage cuts, ALLIES WOULD REPUDIATE ALL U. S, OBLIGATIONS Squabble oe Over War Debt of Billions (Special to The Dally Worker) WASHINGTON, D. C. Feb. 9.—Great Britian’s note to France made public today, offering to reduce the French war debt to England, will not change the policy of Coolidge, who will con- tinue to demand payment in full of France’s war debt. to the United States, it was said in government cir- cles here. France and Great Britain negotiated a treaty in 1916, léng before America entered the war, members of Calvin Coolidge’s official family state, and agreed to make a common cause against Germany. They pooled money men and resources, and after the war, divided Germany’s colonies, and the bulk of the reparations. More than one billion dollars war borrowed by France from the United States after the armistice, and four billion dollars was borrowed in all. England’s note agrees to cancel some of France’s war debt, but infers that the English debt to the United States should receive similiar treat- ment. The French government regards the British debt coldly, because of the “joker” in the note which proposes that France pay part of her debt out of her own national resources, regard- less of what monéy France is able to extract from Germany. French officials declare it is a “dangerous principle for France to admit that she should pay her war debts even if Germany does not pay.” The French want. to pay England only from money that is taken from Germany. Heavier Burden on Peasants Edward Hilton Young, M. P. finan- cial adviser of the British treasury gepartment during;the world war, who has been in the United States confer- ring with American’ bankers, declared before sailing for Liverpool from New York that France should tax her peasants more. Young said that France should pay her war debts to Bngland and France by levying a heavier tax upon the peasants. Young declared; that the French peasants are unwilling to pay these taxes, but the Herriot government should organize the machinery to make the peasantspay the debts. England Knows How to Tax “The French government should organize the machinery for the col- lection of taxes and) then levy them,” said Young: “Vhe);peasants are un- willing to be taxed.” Young added that England has “solved her debt:;problem to the United States by learning how to tax her subjects.” Coal Barons Organize Scab Union in West Virginia Mine Fields (Continued from page 1) lars of union funds paying for “ex- poses” of Communists purchased from agents of the department of justice. Miners Resentful. Many of these miners comment bit- terly on the action of William Green, former secretary-treasurer of the Min- ers’ Union, and now head of the A. F. of L. in leading the fight at the Portland convention to expel William F. Dunne, from that body because he was a Communist. Had Green de- voted his energies to fighting the coal operators in West Virginia, and else- where as the Trade Union Education- al League urged, the strikers in the tent colonies would not be today at the mercy of the coal barons and their scab labor leaders. There are 100,000 coal miners in this state, which is about one-fourth the present membership of the United Mine Workers of America. With this state almost entirely in the grip of the open shop, the coal operators feel that they can smash the union in the rest of the country as the coal pro- ducing ability of this state is enorm- ous. The recent merger is only a be- ginning, and the new fake labor or- ganization, bears ‘the same relation to this merger that a company union does to the concefn which owns and controls it. e The Bosses’ Flunkeys. The incorporators of the Mine Workers’ Association of West Virginia are J. S. Querey, Lincoln Holstein, Robert Morris, W. *M. Earle and C. C, Matson, all of Charleston, The guiding hand in the great coal merger is Charles R. Flint, a 75-year- old financial wizard of New York City, and the brains in the organiza- tion of such giant concerns as the United States Rubber company, the American Woolen, company and the American Chicle eompany. The prospects it the near future for the miners of Wégt Virginia are any- thing but bright. era of industrial feudalism, that beat anything in the history of t! “black region looms on the horizon, Red Revel Masai oa 37 South Ashlarith Avenue Corner of Mon Ashland Bivd., Maas [RED REVEL ARRANGEMENTS COMMITTEE MEETS TOMORROW NIGHT AT LOCAL OFFICE Delegates from every Chicago branch of the Workers Party are expected to attend the meeting of the committee on arrangements of the Red Revel Masquerade Ball, tomorrow night. at 8 Party, 166 West Washington street, this kind. land avenue. SALZMAN TOUR IN DIST. 5 Feb. 11 to 18—Cannonsburg, Hous- ton, Midland, Meadowlands. Feb. 21—Pittsburgh, general mem- bership meeting. Feb, 25-26—Wheeling, W. Va. Feb. 27—Bellaire, Ohio. Feb. 28—Powhatan Point, Ohio. March 1—Neffs, Ohio. March 2—Yorkville, Ohio. March 3—Martin’s Ferry, Ohio. March 4-5—Dillonvale. March 8—Pittsburgh. ganizational conference. SMALL WASHES: HANDS OF KLAN WAR IN HERRIN SPRINGFIELD, Ill, Feb. 9.—Gov. Small washed his hands of the Herrin ku klux klan violence today, when he issued the statement that he was not concerned in receiving an official re- port from the Williamson county board of supervisors. The ‘d was to ratify the agreement between Sheriff Galligan and the ku klux klan in a move to end the klan riots, Small said today that he expected no official report from Marion. Galligan has moved to East St. Louis, altho he stated there he has no intention of resigning. Galligan is keeping his part of the agreement to “exile” himself from Williamson county and turn his duties temporarily over to his deputy, Randall Parks. SOCIALIST SHEET TELLS READERS TO AID SCAB DAIRY (Special to The Daily wetter! | : LOS ANGELES, Cal., Feb. 9.—The District or- Burr Creamery company hag been placed on the unfair list by the €en- tral Labor Council of Los Angeles. This concern has thrown out all union help. But the Jewish yellow socialist Forward is still accepting advertise- ments from the Burr Creamery in its Los Angeles edition and urges its readers to buy Burr Creamery prod- ucts. Workmen Dig Toward Collins As Troops Guard Cave Mouth CAVE CITY, Ky., Feb. 9.—Less than ten feet of rotten decayed rock separated Floyd Collins from his res- cuers, if a test by-Dr. W. D, Funk- houser, archeologist of the University of Kentucky, is found to be correet. The test is now being rechecked. It is thought that a hole seventy feet down in Sand Cave, where Collins is imprisoned may lead the rescuers to Collins tomb. It is doubtful, according to those digging the shaft to Collins, whether he can be reached before Thursday. Beauty and Bolshevik at South Bend Feb. 11 SOUTH BEND, Ind., Feb. 9.—The city central committee of the Work- ers Party has arranged for the show- ing of “Beauty and Bolshevik” at the White Eagle Theater, South Bend, Ind., for Feb. 11. In view of the splen- did success of the film in Chicago, witnessed by several members from South Bend, the members expect a fine turnout. Proceeds will benefit the International Workers’ Aid. Eleven Jap Sailors Drown. h VANCOUVER, B. C., Feb. 9.—Ele- ven Japanese sailors were drowned in’ the harbor here when the pinnace in which they were bound for the cruiser Idzuma collided with the Canadian Pacific tug Nanoose. SOVIET MINISTER TO MEXICO DEMANDS HIS PAPERS HELD IN U. $. MEXICO CITY, Feb. 10.—The So- viet minister here has started a court action against the representa- tive of the czar’s government to get possession of the Russian archives. The former rhinister says the miss- ing doquments are now In posess- lon of representatives of the old Russian Government In Washing ton, Pp. m., at the local office of the Workers Judging by the interest taken by the party units In the Red Revel it will be the biggest success ever achieved by Local Chicago in any affair of The branches are expected to elect delegates to the éniarged committee and the delegates are expected to make snappy reports to the branch meetings and get the selling of tickets under way. will be held on Feb. 28 in the Women’s West End Club Hall, 37 South Ash- | SHIRT COMPANY The Red Revel BUYS LABOR OF W.VA. CONVICTS: Pays Disly'Seventy. Cents Per Day for Each FAIRMONT, 'W. Va., Feb. 9.—The Gordon Shirt company, thru a con+ tract with the state board of control, was given the right to exploit the labor of four hundred convicts in the West Virginia state penitentiary at a compensation of only 70 cents per day. This fact was revealed here when Judge P. D. Morris declared the con- tract null and void in Marshall circuit court at Moundsville, last week. Mar- cellus A. Jolliff asked that the Gordon Shirt company be restrained from carrying out the provisions of the contract on the ground that under its operation the tax payers of the state would lose $60,000 a year. 4 The judge’s decision was based on the technicality that the state board of control failed to advertise the con- tract for four weeks as required by law and was therefore null and void. Evidently leasing convict labor to a private explditer is perfectly in ac- cord with the christian sentiments of the ruling class of West Virginia but this low form of robbery must be done in accordance with the law. / Class in Elementary Marxian Economics Re-opens Under Lerner The class in Elementary Marxian Economics, formerly conducted by Earl R. Browder, will teopen tomor- row evening under the direction of Max Lerner, former district organ- izer for Ohio, at 2613 Hirsch Blvd. Class starts promptly at 8 P. M. BAUER SMELLS $0 BAD SOCIALISTS MUST DISOWN HIN '| FormerChancellor in the Barmat Scandal BERLIN, Germany, Feb. 9.—Former Chancellor Bauer, social-democrat, has ‘been forced to resign his seat in the reichstag and has been “disown- ed” by the social-democratic party, after being implicated in the Barmat brothers land the Prussian state bank financial scandals. y The social-democratic paper, Vor warts, has repudiated Bauer, in an at- tempt to get out from under the ex- posures of corruption in the former Gérman governments. Left Socialists No Cholce. The social-democratic paper points out that Bauer has been repudiated by the governing board of the social- democratic party, and declares his, so- cialist colleagues “always looked as- kance at his relations with the Bar- mats.” They also “deplore the fact that Bauer became involved in conflicting testimony in the Prussian state bank enquiry, and failed to make a‘ clean breast of his operations, leaving the party no éhoice but to disown him.” The social-lemocratic party of Ger- many has been most heavily hit by the revelations of corruption of form- er government officials, which make the practices of America’s Teapot Domers appear lily-white. Numerous investigations are now in progress in the reichstag and the Prussian diet. The public prosecutor is expected today to request the reich- stag to suspend the parliamentary im- munity of former minister of posts, Hoefle, of the clerical party, who has also been forced to resign. Maybe Dawes Taught Them. New disclosures show that the gov- ernment state agencies, including the stute railroads used illegal methods to safeguard themselves during the period of inflation. The state railroads lost nearly 10,000,000 marks in an at- tempt to purchase gold on the “Black Bourse,” in return for the rapidly sinking paper mark. Hoefle loaned government money to the swindlers, Barmat brothers, an: thereby lost $15,000,000 of the govern- ment’s money. Red Revel Masquerade Ball, 37 South Ashland Avenue Corner of Monroe and Ashland Block, February 28. UabPSHE Sees By THURBER LEWIS The Reformers, No. 1—Owens, Wright, Evans TH the exception of more or less obscure rank and file agita- tors in the various strikes that de- veloped out of the early organization of trade unions, no outstanding ex- ponents of the class struggle present themselyes prior to the Civil War. The history of the early labor move- ment is bound up with the record of the early reformers. With few ex- ceptions they were intellectuals, Their connection with the real labor move- ment was in the nature of a “liaison.” They saw in the growth of working- class organization nothing more than a hook whereupon to hang their utopian hats. Each reformer endeay- ored to get support from the working- class for his particular social formula. But they were rebels insofar as they protested against things as they were, and as such inspired a large section of the more vigorious minded work- ers of the time to follow their lead. Despite their ignorance of the class- struggle, they represented in their day the advance guard of radicalism in America. A history of the labor move- ment is not complete without them, Reformism first appears in 1826 when Robert Owen, the great English phi t and utopian, came to America and established a colony called “New Harmony” in Indiana. The effect’ of ‘this innovation on the labor | ent was slight. It did, 0 , Supply personalities whose on the currents of working- class anve. bert Owen’s son, Dale’ Owen, ‘was one of these, He originated a system of educa- tion he called “State Guardianship”, which provided for free boarding-hous- es for children’s education. He was led to this by the failure of his fath- er’s colony which he thought due to the educational handicaps with which the colonists began, He thought uni- versal education the best and quickest way to social reform. Universal educa- tion found favor with the working- class. At the time, education was the restricted privilege of the rich. The workers looked ypon young Owen as a leader because he represented for them an late oy they thought wit ‘their reach. He took,an active and leading part in the political movement af 1829-32 ‘that expressed itself.as the “Working. with equal distribution of land. were of considerable import-' Robert | man’s Party” in New York City. ‘While he obviously utilized the move ment merely as a means to secure the adoption of his social plan, and while e served as a curb on the more ex treme elements like Skidmore, at the same time his contribution to .the spreading of rebellious social ideas was not inconsiderable. Frances Wright was another pro duct of: New Harmony” whose in fluences were felt in the rising labor movement. Like Robert Owen sh« was a native of Scotland. A residence of some years in France supplied th« background for her radical ideas. She came to this country in 1818 and de voted herself to anti-slavery and Neg ro educational work in Tennessee, Sh« later became a leader in Owen's “Nev Harmony” and after its failure joinec Robert Dale Owen in his universa education propaganda in New Yor! City. She played a leading role in the Workingman’s Party anc gave a great deal of her energy ad vocating the cause of women’s rights ,“Fannie” Wright, as she was called was, along with the rest of the re formers, chiefly interested in the ad vocation of immedi changes of no very fundamental s import, Bu that she had, intellectually a vision of the magnitude of the class strug ‘gle 8 shown by this observtion, mad: by her in 1830: “What distinguishe the present from every other struggl in which the human race is engage ‘is that, the present is, openly and ack nowledgedly, a war of class and tha this war is universal.” That wa twenty years before the Communis manifesto was written, George Henry Evans was a pany of England who became the editor 0 the “Worgingman’s Advocate,” th. organ of the workers’ political move ment begun in 1829, worker of Robert Dale Owen and leader 'n the Workingman’s Party He was of middleclass origin bu worked as a printer in this countr: until he became editor of what migh be called the first working-class hew: paper. iHs subsequent wa taht of land reformer, and tho never failed to give his support to working class movement that up during his life time he nursed @ pet theory that had to He was a ct |