The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 9, 1925, Page 9

By ARNE SW SWABECK, In their reckless destruction of the effectiveness and fighting ability of the union the officials of District 5, United Mine Workers, are now at- tempting to expel all militant mem- bers from the organization and thus prevent any further exposure of their mismanagement and spurious pre- tense of opposition to the efforts of the coal operators to enforce the 1917 scale. Viewed together with the attacks made upon members duly elected to certain offices within District 12, Illi- nois, who have declared themselves as Communists, it becomes clear that a well-planned and centralized drive has been launched to eliminate the real fighters from the organization and Pave the way for the policy of col- laboration with thé operators. On April 21, James Oates, president of Local 4546, was ordered expelled from the union by District 5 executive board after having been notified to ap- Pear to answer to charges placed against him. On May 4 Tom Ray, member of Local 2012, appeared, upon summons, before the board. He re- fused to answer to any charges or concede the officials the right to place him on trial. That the board will as- sume the same arrogant position as taken towards Oates and also order the expulsion of Tom Ray is not the least in doubt as both are well known militants leading . the progressive movement of the district. The excuse furnished to cover this high handed action is based on a mo- tion carried at a packed district con- vention held in March, 1924. This motion threatened expulsion of any member participating in any kind of a conference not sanctioned by the Official family. One such conference was held March 15 to consider means of relief for the Moundsville prison- ment of district 5, the details of which are briefly as follows, Growing out of the Cliftonville march during the strike 1922, when several hundred Pennsylvania miners crossed the border to West Virginia to urge complete solidarity of their fellow workers, 43 men were sent to prison. When brought to trial, five pleaded not guilty and were given heavy sentences. Upon advise of the district officials with intimations of early release, the rest of the men, when later brought to tral, pleaded guilty and were given sentences from three to five years, They soon found they were left in the lurch, no real efforts were made by the officials to secure the early release. But a vigor- ous rank and file movement sweeping the locals finally opened the jail doors for 26 of these men. The militant miners have repeat- edly exposed the base hypocrisy and the miserable role played by the whole official family in its betrayals of the heroic efforts of the rank and file workers to establish complete soli- darity during the 1922 strike. They have exposed the deals made and t swelling of the bank accounts of those board members placed in trusteeship of relief funds for -the coke region miners. They have exposed the cor- ruptness of the district ofsce in handling relief funds to the miners who were out im the crucible strike. Accounts of funds distributed were padded from $20.00 to $40.00 a week per family. Local Union 4546, of Char- leroi, Pa., on Feb, 22, 1925, at a spe- cial meeting to which delegates “of other locals as well as the district officials were invited to attend, made these charges public. This meeting decided to call the conference held in Pittsburgh, Pa., March 15 and the ers. However, this relief work is a story which has become an integral part of the miners’ progressive move- district officials were again invited ing almost as many local unions at- tended that conference the officials had meanwhile got busy circularizing the district with dire threats of ex- pulsion of all who should decide to participate. The old motion passed at the eleventh hour at the packed convention a year ago, branding this and all such meetings as “dual” and slating for expulsion not only those who participate, but also those who give aid in any way, was dug up for the purpose. The conference went ahead with its work planned to circularize peti- tions for the pardon of the Mounds- ville prisoners, to gather funds for rélief of their families and elected a publicity committee to further this work, It also went on record urging that the local unions themselves take action on the charges, publicly made, of misappropriation of funds by the district convention to bring impeach- ment proceedings. This demand is now growing in volume as the resolu- tion passes from local to local. Charges were preferred in local 4546 against James Oates for having attended the conference. After the man who presented the charges had been compelled to admit that they were framed by the district officials the local refused to even consider the matter. Likewise in the case of Tom Ray whose local vindicated him of.the charges made. Both locals had thus decided and in both instances their decisions were appealed to the dis- trict board. -Very soon the board showed its hands in flagrant defiance of the constitution of the organization It did not take the matter up for ad- justment with the locals, the decision of which had been appealed, but or- dered these two members to appear before its meetings to take action against them individually. They hoped Fighting the Famine in. Ireland 1897 there was a partial famine in Ireland just as there is this year. The English government then acted exactly as the Free State government is acting today. Thru its official press it denied famine and minimized dis- tress. In the house of commons when confronted by the Irish M. Ps. with the names of the people who had died of starvation, Mr. Balfour jocosely asked if the Irish expected him to sup- ply the peasants with champagne. To- day Minister McGilligan in the Free State Dail, replying to the labor T. D., admitted that there would be deaths from starvation in Ireland, but added, it was not the business of the Dail to provide work for the people and the sooner they realized this the better. WAS in Mayo during the last big election, and in some of the homes I visited while canvassing, there was no food. Women told me they had not broken their fast that day. The woman showed me a bit of dry bread she was giving to a sick child, and said it had been given her by a neighbor, and I saw that the sugar bowl was quite empty. Hunger is written on the thin faces of the crowds of unemployed men standing listlessly about the streets. They will tell you “we want work” and turn away ashamed lest you should take them for beggars. Except the professional beggars who follow you around promising prayers, no one asks for alms. The people are very proud and very sensitive, and ‘try to hide their poverty as if it were a@ disgrace. Only when someone is ill, or when the’crying of the children for food becomes too intolerable some woman will burst forth and tell the truth. How they are maintaining existence on the relief that is being given them is a question that I have not been able to solve. Four shilling per week for a widow with seven chil- dren! No wonder the children are naked under the outer ragged garment, no wonder consumption is rife, AT makes the danger of the present situation is that the shops also by giving credit have tided the people over many bad years, are themselves in bad straits and are able to give credit no longer. This is the second bad harvest fol- lowing on the disorganization caused by the war. In Charlestown and Swinford this is plainly evideyt, if one looks at the empty shelves, and the shop windows filled with dummy boxes and empty bottles, and notes the gen- eral air of depression. Many of the shop-keepers are on the verge of bankruptcy, they are going “wallop” in the local expression. TN Ballina which is one of the most * prosperous trading towns of the West and“ where the depletion of stocks is not so evident, I saw women from the country in shawls, buying tea by the ounce and sugar by the quarter pound, and meal by the pound, and so ashamed and so timid, fearing anyone should notice the tiny marketing, and still more fearful that their credit was outrun and that they would meet with a refusal, Tho the roads are such as to make motor traveling exciting, little is be- ing done to repair them. In some places, however, the Free State gov- ernment has opened relief works just before the election. Three shilling four pence per day seemed to be the aver- age pay, and compared to the one shilling per day given by the English it looked good; but the rate of living has trebled in Ireland since 1897, and the English gave work six days a week and did not make relief work conditional on belonging to any po- litical organization while the ‘Free State authorities generally only pro- vide two or three days’ work a week and make employment conditional on the man first paying one shilling and joining the Cumann-na-Gael organiza- tion. In cases where the man was too poor to pay the one shilling, eggs were taken in lieu of payment to the re famine is partial. and curiously patchy. It was the same in 1897, In Killala for instance, and in Bally- castle last year’s potato crop was splendid and farmers have seed to ee ide od sell In Portacloy, and other places not forty miles distant it has failed completely and the people have been able to sow no seed. The oat crop on which their poultry industry so largely depends was also a failure, and the hens are dying for want of food. Seed oats and seed potatoes are the urgent need if an even worse famine is to be avoided. After the famine in 1897 fish curing stations were put up at Belderring and others of the worst districts so that the people might salt the fish so plentiful along the coast. Fishing used to be the main industry of the people. Today the fish curing sta- tions are closed. There are no fish. During the Anglo-Irish war and since the Free State came into existence, the English steam trawlers have been allowed to come right into the coast within the prohibited 3-mile area. With their large nets and powerful engines they have, as the poor fish- ermen say, “dragged the bottom out of the sea,” in other words, they have destroyed the spawning beds, and now there are no fish, the little fishing boats are idle and the nets have rotted. An inspector of fisheries told me that it would take five years prob- ably for the fishing to recover, even if the English trawlers were now to be kept outside the coastal area. The Free State evidently fears antagoniz- ing their English masters, and makes no effort to protect the fisheries. The Helga, the gunboat used by the Eng- lish to shell Dubini in 1916, has been taken over by the Free State for the protection of the coast, but the Eng- lish captain is still retained and it is not likely he will be disagreeable to his own countrymen. An occasional little French fishing boat is caught and fined, but the big English trawl- ers who are doing all the damage are left in peace to ruin the fishing grounds on which the life of the west- ern seaboard depends. This means that whenever, like this year, there is a partial failure of the potato crop, it means actual famine and people dying of starvation, and amongst the chil- oe oA Paving the Way for Class Collaboration be present, but failed to appear at|to get rid of two militant opponents either meeting. who had always made it a point to While about 50 delegates represent-| rally the rank and file membership for the building and strengthening of the organization and for a fight against any. encroachments of the operators. Naturally the both locals refused to become the tools of any such dirty dealings and refuse to carry out the dictates made in violation of their constitution. » While*P. T. Fagan and the other lackéys of John L. Lewis are uniting their cunning abilities to fight those who give life to the union and make it an easy prey for the operators, union mines are being closed down and the miners constantly swell the ranks of the unemployed army. The Pittsburgh Coal company alone, in one month, closed 22 of its mines. What do the union officials propose to do for these unemployed miners? There is no sign of any move. As long as the bureaucrats have enough in the treasuries to keep up their fat salaries they have no personal worries and don’t give a hang for the rank and file miners. If times get real bad they will turn to the operators for their reward or perhaps begin looking around for a soft birth in a so-called labor bank or labor union insurance company. So while John L. Lewis is carrying on a counterfeit campaign of organ- ization in northern West Virginia where mines are being closed down while the southern part of that state and eastern Kentucky are rapdly be- ing developed as the coal mining cen- ter of the nation on the one hundred per cent American plan, with low wages, long hours and armed com- pany guards his lieutenants are busy pulling the props from under.. The terrific destruction wrought can be mended only by sweeping them all out of office and establishing a mili- tant leadership with a policy of fight against the exploiters. By Robert Stewart dren only the fittest survive. Emi- gration goes up. The English colonies where conditions are hard, and cheap labor is wanted, profit thereby. S I returned in the train from Mayo, at each station I heard the emigrant “keane.” All who travel by the western line know it, and it is hard to forget. It tears one’s very heart out. The crying of the mothers as the train bears off their dearest to foreign slavery, the shrill cry of the old people who. know they will never see the bright boys and girls who are going again, the “keane” echoes right along the line as the train steams away, to be taken up at the next sta- tion where. more emigrants are wait- ing. The emigrant “keane” which had almost ceased during the war when the republic brot hope to the people, is echoing wildly again thru the Free State. At the Workers’ International Re- lief committee I have seen letters tell- ing of the conditions in Donegal, let- ters from people like P. Gallagher of Dungloe (Paddy McCope) from which it is evident that things are quite as bad there as in Mayo. Col. O’Cak laghan Westhropp’s statement at the farmers’ congress described alarming conditions in Clare. The Irish Times had an article published from a corre- spondent contradicting this, but afew days later had to admit everything as far as the wiping out of the cattle and the desperate need of the small farmers, ~The Walden Book Shop 307 Plymouth Court (Between State and Dearborn Just South of Jackson) CHICAGO