The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 25, 1925, Page 6

‘ a <9 ue. | cll eee YOUNG WORKER THE DAILY WORKER Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO. 1113 W. Washington Blvd., Chicago, Ill. Phone Monroe 4712 "SUBSCRIPTION RATES i By mail (in Chicago only): | By mall (outside of Chicago): $8.00 per year $4.50 six months | $6.00 per year $3.50 six months $2.50 three months $2.00 three months Address all mail and make out checks to THE DAILY WORKER, 118 W. Washington Bivd., Chicago, Illinois Editors Ww ILLIAM F, MORITZ J, Entered as second-class mail September 21, 1923, at the post-office at Chi- cago, Ill, under the act of March 3, 1879. LOEB.... Business Manager The Lockout in Gary The tremendous amount fo building done in the last two and one-half years has given the building trades unions quite a degree of immunity from the attacks of the bosses, but the lockout of the _ entire group of building trades unions in Gary, one of the chief strongholds of the steel trust, is probably a sign that this period of immunity is nearing its end. Assaults upon the wages of the workers in the coal mining and textile industries have been going on for some time, but this is the first attack upon the building trades as a unit in any comparatively important center. Gary is not a very large city, but its closeness to Chicago and the fact that it is dominated by the steel trust makes the lockout a matter of concern to the whole labor movement. If the Gary building tradesmen are beaten an offensive against the Chicago building trades unions will be the next order of business for the bosses. Support for the locked out Gary workers must be immediately forthcoming from the Chicago labor movement, not only because it is a matter of duty, but also because Gary in this instance appears | to be the point at which the capitalists have decided to test the strength of the building trades unions. Advertising rates on application, Japanese Workers Aid Coal Miners The Nova Scotia coal miners, on strike against the British Em- pire Steel company, in the,extreme eastern section of the dominion jof Canada, have been aided in their struggle by Japanese workers /in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the west coast. Japanese and _ white women worked together in a special relief tag day and raised more than thirteen hundred dollars. The utter imbecility of the “yellow peril” complex that obsesses . the minds of labor officialdom, and which has had its poisonous effect upon the masses of organized workers, is shown up very effectively by the proof of solidarity and understanding of the class struggle displayed by these Japanese toilers. The Lewises and Greens, following the Gompers tradition, are loudest in the denrand for total exclusion of Japanese workers, but in the Besco strike the coal miners have had a very good chance to see who their friends are—the Japanese workers who come to their assistance when aid is badly needed or the fat union officials who fraternize with the corporation and government officials who are fighting the miners. The discrimination against Japanese workers has been based on the claim that they could not be assimilated and in this statement ., bosses and union officialdom found complete agreement, The Van- couver incident, however, indicates that the Japanese workers not only can and do take part in the labor movement, but that they play a very active and intelligent role. Cheap Trickery The struggle for the reinstatement of an expelled member in Local 38 fo the Amalgamated Clothing Workers which we published Saturday, is a fair sample of the devious methods resorted to by the desperate union officialdom to gain time in the fight they are making on the right of expression of minority opinion. By lies, and trickery, the labor fakers succeed in expelling mili- tants, but they will do nothing to break with their friends, the bosses, the issues for which the militants fought remain, and sooner or later the rank and file insists on the reinstatement of the persecuted mem- bers. It is then we see of what material these safe and sane, “prac- tical” union officials are composed. Unable to stifle any longer the mass demand for a reversal of the blacklist and expulsion policy, these great leaders, whose sneers at Communists and Communism are “ considered proof of their giant intellects, adopt methods so raw that the most simple person in the union can understand that deceit has been practiced. A ruling that a local union in accepting the minutes of an ex- ecutive board meeting upholds the expulsion endorsed by that body, and by rejecting the minutes votes against the victim of official wrath whose case is mentioned in the minutes, may be considered quite a clever piece of business by those who can play only a “heads ‘I win, tails you lose” policy, but it does not alter the fact that the membership is against the policy of the officials. Machine rule is all very well—for a while. It has, however, a fatal weakness. It never makes any converts, it never wins anyone to its support, it creates the conditions for its own destruction. This the Amalgamated mountebanks will learn very soon. Get a member for the Workers Party and a new subscription for « the DAILY WORKER. ef Torture and Turpentine Brutality as cold-blooded and horrifying as an ineident in the “campaigns of capitalyst terror raging in Poland, Spain, Ttaly and the Balkans is told in t¥e testimony now being heard in the trial of a umber of county officials in Pensacola, Florida, charged with peon- age. Indicted with them are officials of a turpentine company. The evidence shows that a flourishing business was conducted the slave traffic, Negroes were arrested for minor offenses or on -framed-up charges and sold to the turpentine company at so much | per head by the county officials with the local judge heading the syndicate. Supposed to be working out fines they could never succeed in tting out of debt. If they tried to escape they were either mur- ered or captured and tortured into submission. Only a short distance from the turpentine camps are Miami and Palm Beach, the playgrounds of millionairedom of the south and north. It is probable that only in Russia of the czar could be found such extremes of misery and luxury symbolizing the class struggle in America. : " Who can doubt but that the Negro masses who suffer such hor- _ rible treatment and who see the reverse side of the shield can feel anything but hate for the white ruling class and are destined to _ play an important part in the battles of the American workers once the white workers rid themselves of their ruling class inspired preju- pyres is Lowery day get a “sub” for the DAILY WORKER and a member for the Workers Party. <aeamy ‘ na 2 ‘i Seas Fighting Injunctions _ .. The strike of the United Mine Workers in and around Fairmont, West Virginia, has been of the most peaceful character and in com- plete accord with the provisions of a long standing injunction which allowed “peaceful persuasion” to be used by strikers in ft men to quit work. But gentle as the strikers were, under the direction ‘of the union officials who apparently believed that the coal capitaliats get out in- junctions because they are shocked by violence, the inevitable has happened—a new injunction has been issued, making ‘even peaceful persuasion illegal. This is the reward handed to the union for remaining within the *|law. Even peaceful picketing, with all the restrictions placed upon it by the injunction, kept workers away from the scab mines so the tool of the bosses on the bench ‘simply made a new law that the miners could not comply with and at the same time carry on their strike. ‘ High salaried lawyers with great skill in threading; the devious mazes of the law, have collected hundreds of thousatids of dollars from the unions for anti-injunction arguments, but ih’‘no instance has the damage done labor by injunctions been pain, or their in- roads even checked. Wholesale violation of these injunctions is the ny way they can be made ineffective and reluctant as union officialdom is to urge this policy and carry it out, sooner or later it must be put into €ffect or labor unionism in America will become a memory. » > The conditions in the lumber camps of the Pacific coast have been getting steadily worse since the Industrial Wonkers of the World has become a debating society for declassed proletarians in- stead of a fighting organization. It is quite all right for militant vorking class organizations ot have thei. differences 6f opinion but after all they have some responsibility to the working ‘class they are trying to arouse, organize and lead. It is the irony of fate that it is} the working class that suffers when its best elements forget the struggle and spend all their time in senseless bickerillg. A Com- munist Party can stand internal discussion to some extent because it is a disciplined body, but for a decentralized organization like the I. W. W. prolonged difference of opinion is certain suicide. Those hopeful souls who saw in “regulation” of the trusts a sign of progress in the Unietd States and a willingneses of the big capitalists to submit to restrictions demanded by the smaller fry have had a rude shock. The federal trade commission, the darling of the liberals, has been so thoroly reorganized by Cooldige that its best friends no longer recognize it. It has been deprived of most of its powers and is now ready to be junked. So passes another feeble irritant to American capitalism in its onward march toward To All Members of the Communist Party of Sweden! HAR COMRADES, It is in the interest of the devel- opment of the Communist movement in Sweden that you now devote the most serious attention to the inner differences in your party. These dif- ferences have arisen as a result of the non-Communist deviations of the right wing of the leading party com- rades. You must arrive at clearness and give careful thought to these dif- ferences in order, after mature con- sideration, to adopt a decisive atti- tude and thereby secure the Commun- ist line in the central committee of your party. The Executive Committee of the Comintern thru special instructions directed the attention. of your central committee to its unavoidable tasks. unfettered control of industry, government and the lives of the masses. cm Get a member for the Workers Party and a new mubecription for the DAILY WORKER. OUR MARTYRS Kosta Jankov, MONG the latest victims to be claimed by the white terror in Bul- garia is our Comrade Kosta Jankov, a son of the well-known Macedonian revolutionary Colonel Jankov, who in the year 1903, at the head of a divi- sion of insurgents fell while fighting against the troops of Sultan of Tur- key, Abdul Hamid, for the liberation of Macedonia. Comrade Jankov, on his father’s side, was a distant cousin of the old leader and founder of the Bulgarian Communist Party, Comrade Dimitri Blagoyev. During his whole life-Comrade Jan- kov lived amidst revolutionary sur- roundings. Twenty years ago he en- tered the party of the Bulgarian so- cial-democrats (orthodox). During the war he served as a major on the gen- eral staff of one of the Bulgarian armies. After the war he wrote a book in which he sharply criticized those responsible for the military disaster at Dobro Polje, and exposed the whole criminal policy of conquest of the Bulgarian bourgeoisie. During the September events of 1923 the Zankov government had him arrested, but soon set him free, Com- rade Jankov was arrested in connec- tion with the explosion in the cathe- dral of Sofia and at once shot by the Zankov fascists. In Comrade Jankov the Bulgarian Communist Party and the revolution- ary movement have lost one of their best workers, Minkov. N the 16th of April, 1925, Comrade Minkoy, at the age of 35, fell at his post as a fighting revolutionary. Comrade Minkov was the son of a Bulagrian officer with whom he took part in the world war. As an ensign in a technical corps he distinguished himself by extraordinary courage and bravery. After the war Comrade Minkoy, along with many young and enthusiastic officers who had per- ceived the predatory aims of the im- perialist slaughter, joined the revolu- tionary movement of the proletariat, to which he remained true right up to the end of his life, The Bulgarian government de- nounced him sa being one of the or- ganizers of the explosion in the cathedral of Sofia, and the fascist militia surrounded the house in which he lived and fired upon it for several hours. Comrade Minkov, along with five other comrades who did not wish to be taken alive by the Zankov hang- men, courageously resisted up to the last. Actors Strike “His Queen,” NEW YORK, May 24.—The Actors’ Equity Association (actors’ union), pulled its members off the production of “His Queen” at the Hudson Theater becaiise the management failed to put wp a financial guarantee for salaries after two requests from Equity dele- gates, The union refuses to take a chance for its members not getting their pay. Meeting of By N. ORLOV (Moscow) O* April 17th, the plenary meeting of the Internattonal Pbasant Coun- cil, which met on April 9, and sat for a week, completed its! work. —~ The International» Peasant Council is still a very young organization; it has only existed for a year and a half. During this short t! it has by no means been able letely to de- velop its work, As yet the I. P. C. is far from having its own organizations in every country. There are still many countries in which it has no organ- izing groups. In these circumstances, |a numerous attendance at the plenary meeting was hardly tobe reckoned with. Nevertheless the actual attendance at the plenary meeting surpassed all expectations, Seventy+ it delegates from 38 countries weré! present at the plenary meeting, 49 with power to vote and 29 with only consultative |power. All the most important coun- tries of Europe were represented (Ger- many, France, Italy, Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, Ireland, Roumania, Yugo-Sla- via, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Lithua- nia, Esthonia and Carpathian Russia). There were also representatives from America (United States, Mexico, Can- ada), from Asia (India, Indonesia, Mortgaged Hdmes. woe glib salesmen tour the work- ing class districts’ of America with fine sounding “ffewn-your-own- home” propositions, wepkers who now own (technically) homes find it difficult to refrain from giving violent expression té their emotions, What good is it to you to have a property title in your pocket wl the property is mortgaged up to ag h it? The department of cdihmerce bureau at Washington has reédntly published a volume entitled “Mortgages on Homes in the United ites, 1920"— which reveals (where It tries to hide) the precariousness uncertainty which charecterize théf*living condi- tions of the workers,yhs well as the poor farmers, Most workers do NOT own homes, mortgaged or unmortgaged, but aro obliged to pay rent to some land- lord—who “owns for a living,” while they simply toil. The total number of homes not on farms in the United States in 1920, as shown by the re- turns of the fourteenth census, was 17,600,472, and of this Humber 10,158,- 111 were rented, whereas only a little over 7,000,000 were o |. It wlil be clear to all that a bi@®proportion of those who own their #wn homes aro capitalists, Thus the great majority of working class fi lives in homes (or flats, or “ hed rooms") for which the landlor@jtakes a regu- lar monthly toll of rent. And how about the 1,283 home- owners? Of these 07 homes, 2,- 785,008 were mortgaged, the total These instructions however were very inadequately carried out in practice. The right majority of the bureau of the party central has neither in the organizatory work nor in the political and economic struggle shown sufii- cient interest for the development of a lively Communist activity. It has never taken the trouble to render all party members in Sweden sufficiently acquainted with the decisions of the Comintern. He Pear representatives of the right wing have also not always adopt- ed a clear attitude to such remnants of petty bourgeois ideology as pacifism and religion. During the past year the Enlarged Executive was compelled to correct the standpoint of Comrade Hoeglund regarding such an elemen- tary question as the attitude of Com- munists to religion and to make it clear to him that the Communistj Party must not be indifferent to the religious prejudices of their members, even when they demand neutrality towards religion on the part of the bourgeois state. In addition to this the central com- mittee of the party during the last years has not succeeded in maintain- ing comradely relations with the Communist Youth League, altho the youth league achieved relatively great success. The fact that Comrade Hoeg- lund, in the Norwegian question, in, the beginning systematically support- ed the opportunists of the “labor party” in their fraction fight against the Communist wing and finally, af- ter the open breach of the Tranmae- lites with the Imternational, sharply attacked the Executive and the Nor- wegian Communist . Party, must be characterized as a serious fault. All the representatives of the remaining. parties of the Comintern have revog- nized that the Tranmaelites were on the wrong path when they desired not to abolish collective membership in the Communist Party of Norway, when they permitted the party to be the cockpit for.various anti-Commun- ist tendencies, when they rejected the revolutionary slogan of the workers’ and peasants’ government, etc. HE Norwegian opportunists let their own obstinacy come before the resolutions of the world congres- ses and the unity of international leadership of the movement. Com- rade Hoeglund has also disregarded international party discipline. The Executive Committee however acted in a conciliatory manner and endeav- ored té induce Hoeglund to loyal co- operation with the Comintern and with the left wing of the Swedish party, which upholds the line of the Comintern. After the December Con- ference in Moscow the Executive hoped that the inner conflicts in the Swedish party would’ cease. The ma- jority of the central committee of your party wished after the confer- ence to gain time, on the one hand in order to create trifling disputes, and on the other hand to convene in all haste a party conference at which they intended to remove the represen- tatives of the léft wing of the central committee. That could only have led to the splitting of the party in Swe- den. At the session of the Enlarged Executive the representatives of all Communist parties pronounced against Hoeglund apd his followers and supported the standpoint of nu- merous Swedish party organizations, in accordance with which the party conference should not;be held until after the parliamentary elections. In Moscow, Comrade Hoeglund fail- ed to answer the question, whether he would comply with this decision of the International.’ We. still believe that he will do so. In the event of Hoeglund and his immediate follow- Be ntl aR TRE C. . Letier to Swedish Communists ers, in spite of everything opposing this resolution, then we cajl upon you,’ members of the’ Swedish party, to sup- port with the greatest unanimity the efforts of the left wing in the interest of the preservation of party unity. HE Executive does not at all wish to’ remove Comrade Hoeglund from the central committee of the party, unless he himhelf desires to de- stroy international fighting unity. He: must be compelled to co-operate with the most prominent representatives of the left wing, as tor example; Com- rades Chilbum, Samuelson, Tunnel and others. ) This effective collabora- tion can however only be based on the decisions of the Fifth World Con- gress. Without desiring to limit the right of the Swedish comrades freely to elect their central committee, we say it openly that in our opinion’ you would best serve the further revolu- tionary development of your party, if next party congress were to correct ‘the tendency of the central commit- tee of your party in the sense that the majority of the presidium of the central committee should consist not of right but of left leaders, who stand entirely on the standpoint of the Co- mintern, and show a stronger will for Communist activity. In addition to this all party organs, from the highest to the lowest, must be supplemented by new active forces from the ranks of the factory workers. HAR Comrades, study the most im- portant decisions of the Fifth World Congress and also the resolu- tion of the Comintern regarding the Swedish question. We hope that you will be in agreement with these decis- ions. That is of decisive :mportance. On the firm basis of these decisions It will not be hard for you to overcome rapidly the inner differences of opin- ion in the party, to gather together all revoltuionary forces, and in solidarity with the whole Communist Interna- tional to conduct the fight against the enemies of the Swedish proletariat against the capitalists and the social democratic leaders. In this fight you will build up your party to a power- ful, victorious, Communist mass party. Long live the Communist Party of Sweden! Long live the Communist Interna- tional. Moscow, July 22, 1924, The International Peasants’ Council Japan, Turkey, Persia, China, Korea), and from North Africa (Algeria and Egypt). The most important work of the plenary meeting was done in its com- missions. In a series of reports which the delegates laid before these com- missions, they gave one another infor- mation as to the position of the peas- ant movement, and worked out a plat- form forthe demands of the peasant- ry and a series of questions of organ- ization corresponding to the condi- tions in each individual country. The chief merit of the plenary meet- ing consists in the fact that it exactly determines the character of the work which the I. P. C: and its adherents are to carry on among the peasantry. Up to the time of the plenary meeting, there was no unanimity in this ques- tion. There were comrades who want- ed to construct the peasant organiza- tions as a kind of party organizations and to give them a clearly pronounced political character. Other comrades endeavored to group the peasantry chiefly on the basis of economic needs and to give their organizations rather an econo- mic character. The plenary meeting struck out on the only correct middle line: it resolved that the “peasants’ unions” to be called into being by the I. P. C. should haye no firmly pro- nounced political, character as this would render it more difficult to em- brace in the ranks.of the LP. C. all the fairly manifold groups of the peas- antry which could join amore elastic organization after the manner of a non-party peasant union. It was easy enough to come to agreement on this platform; the Rbariences of a year and a half .of ‘the movement carried enough powers of conviction. Among the resolutions of the ple- nary meeting another important one must be noted. The I. P. C. does not lay particular stress on the formation of organizations and associations of its own, but chiefly on. encouraging work within the already existing peasant parties and groups. The chief object should be, not to split these organizations nor to create new organ- izations which would necessarily be weak at first, but to capture, if not the whole movement, at least its most important part, and‘to impart to this section of the movement as revolu- tionary a character as possible. As a young and therefore still weak organization, the I. P. C. did not wish to split up its work into too many di- rections at first. It has therefore in its early days deliberately refraitted from work in the colonial countries, as it was anxious first of all to eon- solidate its position in the European countries, where it can much more easily find co-workers. Now it can al- ready register some success in this fleld of action, some positions have been conquered, and therefore the plenary meeting considered it possi- ble to extend its work to the more distant countries of Asia, Africa and America. On the other hand, because of the necessity of economizing its forces, the I. P. C. did not, during the first year and & half, concern itself with work among the women in the villages and among the peasant youth. At its last session, the plenary meeting. con- sidered it possible to make a start now on these two kinds of work and to carry them on energetically, and it addressed itself to the peasant women and to the youth of the villages in special proclamations. In general it can be maintained that the plenary meeting achieved some very important work, the results of which will be evident in a very short time in the activities of all the organ- izations affiliated to the I. P. C. Ammunition for the Workers’ Arsenal By MANUEL GOMEz. mortgage debt for owned homes not on farms amounting to over six billion dollars. It does not take any un- usual imagination to deduce that the mortgaged homes include most of those owned by workers, while the unencumbered property is substantial- ly the property of the idle class. The interest on that 6 billion dollér debt constitutes a steady drain on the nar row earnings of the workers. It fa really rent insofar as the family budget is concerned, All this refers to homes not on farms. The volume issued by the census bureau has very little to say about the mortgaged farmers, enough haps there is a reason. No mention is made of the great and growing mass of pauperized tenant farmers, But aobut the mortgaged farmers, enough is said to point out that the estimated mortgage debt of owned mortgaged farms and homes expanded froin $2,133,000,000 in 1890, to $11,814,000,000 in 1920, an increase of 430.6 per cont, This increase cannot be adequately ox- pleined by the growth of the popula tion (which has been relatively email in rural districts), nor by increased value of the property, nor by decline in the value of the dollar. The fourteenth census was taken in 1920, on the crest of the prosperity wavo based on post-war inflation. -\uthoritative figures are yet to be compiled which will telh the story of the depression which followed, when millions of poor ‘mers were ruined when unencum| mortgaged were foreclosed overnight, when mort- gage farmers became tenant farmers, when tenant farmers left their farms in despair and migrated to the city to become wage slaves. The condition revealed in the volume on “Mortgages on Homes in the United States, 1920,” i@ bad enough, but it in no way indi- cates the extent of subjection to Vankers and money lenders to which the workers and poor farmers of this vountry have now been’ reduced. Organize Cigar Makers, NEW YORK, May 24.—The Cigar Makers’ Intrenational Union is con- ducting a drive for new members in New York City. Local representatives say the union must be restored to sufficient power to bring wages and working conditions to former stand- ards, , LEE’S PEACE CONFAB GETS LAUGH " Foreign”Exchange NEW YORK, May 23.—Great Bri- tain, pound sterling, demand 4.85%; cable 4.86%. France, franc, demand 10; cable 5.1044. Belgium, frane, de- mand 4.99%; cable 5.00, Italy, lira, demand 4.0314; cable 4.08%. Sweden, krine, demand 26.72ffi cable 26.75, Nor- way, krone, demand, 16 cable 16.85. Denmark, krone, demand 18.82; cable 18.84. Germany, mark unquoted, Shanghal, tael, demand 75.00; cable 75.50, 4 Typos Get Increase NEW YORK, May 24.—Great pographical local unions report ‘wag increases varying from $1 to $6 week- ly on newspaper and job work in Syracuse, Trenton, Newark, Bangor, Manchester, Albany, Lowell and other cities. GET A SUB AND GIVE ONE! WASHINGTON, May 21.—Among spokesmen of railroad labor in Wash: ington the invitation issued by W. G. Lee, president of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, to the executives of 50 chief railroads and the executives of all national railroad labor organizations to gather in a Peace parley under his chairmanship, is not taken seriously, ‘on Organized railroad workers look upon Lee as a sick man who has tong been an absolute autocrat in his own union, and who has in recent years become erratic in his judgments. He does not co-operate with the other unions in their general policy. They look upon the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen as an organization in which factional differences have made a nt policy difficlut in recent years, Some of them anticipate Lee's resignation, should he secure re-election at the convention. now in session in Cleveland, and fal selection of Vice President W. N, Doak as his successor. ‘on the Lee tradition, Leo claim a membership ‘of 180,000 for his organization— ir than ig of any “ the other raliroad hrotherhogde. aR