The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 16, 1925, Page 7

“The idex becomes power when it pene- trates the masses.” —Karl Marx. Adeeb tba teh SPECIAL MAGAZINE SUPPLEMENT THE DAILY WORKER. MAY 16, 1925. SECOND SECTION This magazine supple ment will appear every Saturday In The Daily Worker. Three Hundred Mines Idle in Illinois By ALEX REID. UT of 374 shipping coal mines in = Illinois 300 or mofe are at a stand- till, and the large majority of those or over a year, and many of them -two years. This condition in Illinois ‘is duplicated proportionately thruout iAmerica, and the conditions of the ciate their wives and families, as a result, beggars description. _ The writer has seen many miners grown old in the industry, after a life spent in the bowels of the earth, con- tribufing to the wealth of the nation, gray and feeble, pass into the county poor farm to. spend their few remain- ing years. I attended a funeral of a miner a short time ago who died as a result of undernourishment and whose family is on the verge of physi- cal collapse. Scores of miners thruout the state who deprived themselves even of cer- tain mere necessities to be able to buy their own home, have been forced to abandon same and seek employ- ment elsewhere, and their shacks have gone to wreck, “a total loss,” and thruout Illinois today in the mining camps black despair is met on every hand and some villages are complete- ly deserted. me . . ND this in America, the wealthiest nation in the world, with its unlim- ited natural resources and perfected Sixty-five machinery of preduction. in Winois- thru no fault of their own, willing and wanting to work and none to be had. A surplus of coal has been produced in Tilinois as in other states, and this coupled with the decline of industrial activity in other lines for the past two years, coupled with the increased use of ofl as fuel, and water power, has produced this appalling situation, and With it the fact that the workers have not been paid in wages enough to buy back their production now face starva- tion and unemployment. The present annual productive ca- pacity of the coal mining industry is 1,000,000,000 tons and the annual con- sumptive capacity is 500,000,000 tons, or 50 per cent less. The productive capacity includes many uneconomical mines that probably will never again be opened up and which is calculated to reach 25 per cent of the mines in existence, Which reduces the produc- tive capacity to 80,000,000 tons annu- ally. During the war 1,000,000 men were in the industry, but since that time they have been rapidly thinned out. The industry today is employing ap- proximately 70 per cent of that figure. The industry is 50 per cent overdevel- oped, Fifty per cent of the miners working full time or 100 per cent of the men working 50 per cent of the time will produce the average con- sumptive capacity. miners not only of Illinois, but thruout the organized field, are de manding of the union leaders that steps be taken immediately to remedy the unemployment situation and alle- viate the suffering among the miners and their families, and well do the miners know that the only possible relief under this economic system that can be given them must come in the form of work, and therefore they are demanding of their leaders that a divi- sion of the available work be given them, and they are demanding now to know why a three-year contract was signed without a fight for a division of work being made, and in this re- spect they don’t forget their former demands, and the statements of their leaders that it was the only remedy for unemployment. Why did the miners’ leaders refuse * at the scale conference to fight for a shorter workday, and why did they repudiate their former position on this question? Let us see the miners’ posi- tion all the way thru since 1919. T the Cleveland convention Frank Farrington, chairman of the scale committee, in his report, and in com- pliance with the demands of hundreds of resolutions for a shorter workday and week, to divide the available work among the miners, demanded a six- hour day from bank to bank, “which was in reality a four-and-a-half-hour day at the face of the coal.” (Vol. 2, p. 952, 1919 convention.) At that same convention John L. Lewis, acting president, in speaking on that scale,report, said: “I may say there is embraced in this instrument the most progressive policies that have ever been enunciated by our or- ganization.” (Vol. 2, p. 962, 1919 con- vention report.) At that same con- vention nationalization, of coal mines was indorsed. Since that time at the convention of the Illinois miners in Peoria in 1924, William Green, the international secretary-treasurer of the U. M. W. of A., said, among other things: “I have always felt that our proposal for a shorter workday in the coal mines of the country offered at least a partial solution of the unemploy- ment problem.” (Page 128 of speeches to the convention, 1924.) N spite of the demands of the min- ers, they were misled and betrayed in the Indianapolis convention, and the leaders repudiated their former post- tions. Frank Farrington brought for- ward a proposed contract, authorizing the scale committee to get as good a contract as it was possible to get on the basis of no reduction in wages, and it was understood by the most (Continued on page 8) | HOOVER'S DEPARTMENT ADMITS HOOVER LIES Countr By HARRISON GEORGE, LTHO Herbert Hoover, like ex- Secretary Hughes, has long been insisting that Soviet Russia is an “economic vacuum,” Hoover’s own government department, the depart- ment of commerce, has been forced to acknowledge that such a statement is a lie, The above illustration, as shown, is issued by the U. S. department of commerce at Washington, D. C., and shows at the top the imports into Soviet Russia from the United States, England, Germany and other coun- tries; and at the foot, the balance of trade between exports from and im- ports into Soviet Russia during 1924. A Credit Balance for Soviet Russia. It will be noted that the balance is favorable to Soviet Russia by 129,- FIFTH OF SOVIET IMPORTS AMERICAN; TRADE_BALANCE fal SOVIET RUSSIAN TRADE 1924, |INGOLD RUBLES,!913 VALUE Exports Englen 80,7 25,000 Germany 66440000 U.S. 7,183,000 Persia 7685000 Trade with all Countries, 369,942,000 USOept.of Commerce Data Science Service washingtono.c 257,000 gold rubles (a gold ruble fs equivalent to 50 cents American money). Taken in conjunction with the fact that the Soviet budget for 1924 was not only balanced, but that a “respectable surplus” was accumulat- ed, the economic security of the So- viet Union is proved beyond question, and out of the mouths of its enemies. How this affects the lives of the workers may be shown by the follow- ing short quotation from the speech of Zinoviev before the enlarged exec- utive committee of the Communist In- ternational on March 25, when he said: ; “Furthermore, the wages of the workers in Moscow, Leningrad and other towns, during the last three months, in a number of branches of industry, have exceeded pre-war wages.” snes tetidie compmemtnmasartnamacessatilins Bone meanest Imports 53,903,000 51,307,000 46,172,000 22,357,000 240,685,000 Hiding the Truth. \V It is notable that the department of commerce statement shown above, was printed in the capitalist press on the financial page, the DAILY WORK- ER taking it from the Chicago Daily News of May 9, where it was hidden away between market story headlines about “Wheat Price Smash,” “Hog Values” and “News and Gossip of the Pits.” Yet on the editorial and news pages, the Chicago Daily News still follows the exploded myth that “So- viet Russia is an economic vacuum.” It goes without saying that if the Soviet imports are one-fifth from America with all the handicaps of trading without recognition and treaty facilities, the recognition of Russia would increase the proportion to at least double or treble the figure and give work to many unemployed. a paeuilpe onan wna