The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 28, 1925, Page 14

(Continued from page 1.) to that of a bourgeois’ salary. Snow- den told the unions he had no money for widows’ pensions; the army need- ed £45,000,000 and the navy £56,- 000,000, not to speak of the air forces. Now as to whose budget Snowden’s was; The corporations profit tax was dropped; also the phone charges re- duced; the McKenna duties reduced and inhabited house tax withdrawn— all for the benefit of the middle class. For the workers, food taxes were re- duced, and the cost of living some- what lowered. With the sliding wage scale prevalent in most industries, a wage offensive would naturally re- sult. But even without that, the cap- italists found a way: to make up prey- ious prices for the workers. Tea im- ports ‘were. restricted, and prices raised, with terrible exploitation on the colonial plantations and profits as high as 150 per, cent (Makum Tea Co.) UMORS of a sugar shortage of 3 million .tons-in world consump- tion «wére floated and‘the price was jacked ‘up, with fortunes for the re- finergs. .A wheat-harvest scare was manufactured, and flour went up 23 per cent from April to August,’ 1924. The chemical and drug trusts, with a complete grip on the.market squeez- ing out all underselltrs. And so it goes. The government went wild pre- venting strikes, and moved not a finger to stop profiteering. Boys are earning 10 to 25s. a week ($2.25-5.75) and agricultural laborers getting such low wages (27s.) that even liberals had to protest and vainly fight the la- bor government for a 30s. minimum wage. And Snowden’s cure was a beet subsidy and a tariff to wipe out unemployment, with 3,000 workers more in the beet industry! In Au- gust, 1924 the cost of living generally was as high as’ before the budget. The capitalist class was the only one to benefit. Why, Snowden told us: “. «3% solution of the. smemploy- ment problém, inthe opinion of the government; is to be found in the full development of all our national and natural resources, and in the scien- tific organization of production, end- ing with the elimination of waste in every sphere and every department” Sounds “Kind-of-like” Coolidge and Mellon, doesn’t it? Its significance was that it incites wage reductions, increases unemployment by a more efficient capitalist method of exploita- tion, invites subsidies, etc. What tor- ies couldn’t dare try, Snowden did for them, and labor must be grate- ful! And the rude Communists call him a lackey of capitalism! On education, much was pledged, * and nothing done. Regulation of the flow of young workers into indus- try, training and maintenance, and similar pledges meant nothing in their lives. Minors didn’t help elect Mac- Donald and Snowden. The housing problem was wretch- * edly bungled. The building trades workers were to be bambooz- led, while building material profiteers were to abandon themselves to an orgy of unregulated profits. Pledges to “commandeer” factories, “ration surplus housing accommodations,” “abolish slums, promptly build an ade. quate supply of decent houses, and re- sist decontrol till the shortage’ is sat- isfied,” all petered out in ineffectual plans to build 2% million houses, if the banks would finance them, the builders listen to reason, the workers surrender wholely to the employers, the next government be willing. We'll take into consideration that the labor government had no majority. ,But we'll check up on their sincerity by looking at similar instances where they had power. A little case, but in- dicative is this: The workers took over four houses which had been empty nine years, offered to repair them gratis and pay rent for them. Henderson’s police put them out without a warrant, One was a group of man, wife and three children liv- ing in a twelve foot room, with ceil- ing cracked and walls full of holes, : ‘ we we Protests availed nothing, Poplarism, Glasgow evictions, (in two months labor evicted more workers than the tories did in a year; the government refused to support Wheatley’s claims and tried to keep the law the same) etc. show the same insincerity and bungling, even discounting the Jack of a majority. NEMPLOYMENT, according to Baldwin, was endemic, It had broken the backs of previous. govern- ments. It increased under MacDon- ald’s rule. -Far more than a million out of work, and about 100,000 on gov- ernment relief work,. at starvation wages. “Radical” Wheatley reducing the dole at - Sheffield, against «the wishes of the ‘capitalist. members of the .board of guardians.” .The: same Wheatly telling: unémployeil to’ go: to the .work-house. Pledges on: degrad- ing domestic work cracked wide open. Snowden.telling the country he :didn’t mean to keep. his election pledges on unemployment, with an increase of 100,000 unemployed from July to August: Shaw -telling labor to “wait and see” if he had any plan, And they waited,2and saw not. His ‘rém edy was the “restoration of our for eign trade,” for which the unemploy ed_were duly thankful. Baldwin had said, “If you have a particular rem- edy, you will have the support of the house and the country,” but. they didn’t even dare him, simply propos- ing what he had failed in trade re- vival. HE unemployed workers’ charter waSn’t even looked at by Mac- Donald, and their demands of suit- able housing, reduced hours of work. government relief, occupational train- ing centers, weren’t even advocated for their propaganda value in a fu- ture election. Why? al exposes himself: “Society is al ways badly treated . . when these grievances (unemployment) are taken FAMOUS MOVIES AT: GERMAN-AMERICAN HOME KENOSHA, WIS., TODAY The famous movies, “PolikushKa,” a six-reel story made by the Moscow Art Theater, “In Memoriam—Lenin,” showing the life and funeral of Lenin, and a Russian comedy, “Sol- dier Ivan’s Miracle,” will be shown SATURDAY, FEB. 28, from 4 to 11 Pp. m. at the German-American Home, 665 Grand Ave., Kenosha, Wis. These pictures have been drawing the biggest crowds in Chicago, New York and other big cities. They will be shown in Kenosha ONLY ONE EVENING, FEB. 28. There will be three showings on that evening. The first will start at 4 p. m. sharp. Make sure to attend. Tell your Let MacDon- friends about it. Don’t miss the greatest treat in your life. LEARN ESPERANTO The International Language The following Lr are received ree: Esperanto for All, grammar and vocabulary. tee and its Critics, by Prof. Collinson. WORKERS’ ESPERANTO ASSN., 625 7th St., Rockford, Ill, OO PITTSBURGH, PA. To those who work hard for their money, | will save 50 per cent on all their dental work, DR. RASNICK DENTIST 645 Smithfield Street. “Ido for Workers” (Textbook” in German OF Russian) ...n..svserreen BOO “An Elementary Grammar” Og Sears, |" The Workers’ Ido Federation Room 5, 805 James St., N. S., PITTSBURGH, PA, Patronize our advertisers, up by political parties whose sole in- terest is to clap a salve and a poul- tice on them, and like a quack doc- tor, pocket a fee and quiet the pa- tient with an expectation.” | (1920). The labor party rank and file meant sincerely what they pledged, but Mac- Donald and his crew of professional politicians, imperialistic pacfists, and opponents of socialism and strikes be- trayed the workers. Court peacock- ism, laudation and defense of colonial brutality and exploitation, and pla cating of big business corrupted la- bor’s present leaders. If the labor party is not to degenerate as did the German social-democrats, it must find’ a new leadership. Let Stresse- riann téll what the German MacDon- alds did? “The chief successes of the social-democratic participation in my cabinet. were that... . it was possible for me... # to inflict a mili- tary defeat on “the Communists © in Saxony and Thuringia, and. this de- feat, in its turn, -has cleared the way for the abolition, without any resis- tance, of the 8-hour day and the so- called ‘conquests of the revolution’.” Regarding: the same.clique, MacDon- ald’said in 1919 of Lénin’s condemna- tion of them, “Condemnation which was fully deserved and to which I fully subscribe.” And then he tried to sell out the British workers to fi- nancial imperialism in the same way. HAT. MacDonald should have done was to present labor’s de- mands to parliament, gone outside parliament to the unions and mobil- ized them, brought their pressure to bear on parliament as did the young bourgeoisie in 1832, dissolved parlia- ment if defeated and appealed to the workers again, this time with a pro- gram that would bring them enthuti- astically together under labor’s ban- ner. They might not have won this year, but they would have avoided be- trayal, and won in another couple of Amalgamated NVM AUHOUATGOGLACGSUELACEAGASGUGGAUEAAsa GENERAL HEADQUARTERS 81 East 10th Street, New York, N. Y. THIS IS OUR KON NCS EMBLEM An Industrial Organization F or All Workers in the Food Industry acDonaldism” years with a reat majority. Then the housing, unemployment, nationaliza- tion, colonial, disarmament program could have been put thru. Russia did exactly that, and has held the key positions for the workers. ACDONALDISM still runs its course. When his crowd on the front benches of labor hypocritically question the tory government on Egypt, the Zinoviev forgery, Singa- pore, India, etc., the tories simply point to the labor government’s rec- ord as a precedent and that ends the discussion. However, there are signs of an awakening. The labor party executive committee has seen the writing on the wall, and reversed the decision forced on the last labor party conference by MacDonald and his crew during ‘the .excitement of new elections to parliament. The yote at the conference of 1,800,000 to 1,500,000 to expel Communists is now changed to a- decision to refer the matter to the next conference. Meanwhile the local labor parties have disregarded the last conference decisions and: put: up ‘Communists as candidates for parliament. Expulsion has failed, arid the ‘©./P., among ofh- 2 ers, is now demanding an -all-in-all: =. conference of all labor and socialist and Communist organizations to make the labor movement a class move- ment of labor, and not of petit bour- geois careerism and liberalism. EANWHILE the Communist Party moves ahead. The Workers Weekly sells nearly 50,000 copies weekly; a national minority move ment is being started, and shows signs of great support; the united front campaign in the unions and la- bor parties progresses rapidly; and with an intensive campaign on for the shop nucleus reorganization, the C. P. is becoming the kind of section of the International Communist Party that is needed in Britain. 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