The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 4, 1925, Page 14

Sea (Continued from page 1) labor clauses of he constitution. HAT the Coolidge administra- F tion is interested in is not so much what Calles says as what he does. If he proceeds to indemnify Americans for their properties which has been seized under the agrarian law, the American govern- ment will not care how much he fulminates. (Washington dispatch to the Chicago Tribune, June 15.) The matter stands like this: The.Mexican government owes a billion dollars to Americans. It can- not carry out its agrarian program if it has to pay Americans for land to which they have not the vestiage of title. To insist that it do ‘so is to sabotage the distribution of the land. Wall Street and the state depart- ment knows this very ‘well. It does not want the land divided among the peons because its source of cheap labor supply is thereby cut off—a ' landless people make the best slaves. ; ry addition to this compelling motive } the land distribution interferes with the grabbing by American capi- talists of territory rich in oil and min- erals. OW rich is Mexico in natural re- F sources? Their wealth is incalculable. From 1901 to 1923 Mexico produced 1,190,- F 000,000 barrels of oil. In 1920 she was producing 25 per cent of the world’s f total supply. In 1923 alone Mexico . produced 22,325 kilos of gold, 2,552,- i 550 of silver, 138,468,000 of lead and i 47,521,000 of copper. ' There are 44,000,000 acres of for- est and 25,000,000 of these are said by experts to contain vast stretches of pine, spruce, cedar, rosewood, ma- } hogany and logwood. Corn, cotton, { sisal hemp, what beans, tobacco, cof- / fee and sugar cane can be raised in i great quantities and with a minimum of labor on the 30,000,000 acres of fertile land now under cultivation. On the bereles* are 120;000,000 acres of rich grazing lands. Here is an em- pire in itself and knowing our rulers as we do (as we ought to, at least) we need not wonder if they look to- wards Mexico with greedy eyes and watering mouths. O rich is this southern country that the Mexican peasants can not be driven into the mines and mills of American capitalism while they have land. The struggle for possession of Mexico’s riches becomes therefore a war on the Mexican masses—over- whelmingly agrarian in composition. There is another thorn in the flesh of Wall Street and the Coolidge ad- ministration—the labor clauses in the Mexican constitution. Article 123 has the following provisions: Eight-hour day—seven hours for alj night work—six-hour ‘day for children from 12 to 16—no night work for women and children—one day rest in seven—vacation with pay before and after child-birth— a living wage—living wage cannot be seized for debt—compulsory profit-sharing—wages must be paid in cash—double time for all over- time—housing provisions for work- ers—insurance against accidents in industry—compulsory safety and sanitary measures—right to organ- ize, strike and shut down plants —three month’s wages must be paid to worker in case of arbitrary dis- charge—no contracting of labor— * free employment service—co-opera- tive workingmen’s building associa- tions. OQ far no Mexican government has been able or willing to enact the necessary laws to make these consti- tutional clauses legally effective but the workers—about 500,000 of them organized—know their rights and in- sist upon them. The program for American imperi- alism can be stated simply: Prevent the distribution of the land to the peons and smash or de- bauch the unions of the workers. If these twin objectives can be achieved American imperialism will have about 7,000,000 slaves in Mexico who in return for a handful of frijoles and a hunk of bread will turn the nat- ural resources of that country into a golden stream flowing into Wall Street. HE Calles' government was elected as an anti-militarist bloc by the workers and peasants. It has as of- fice holdgrs and hangers-on the whole upper stratum of Mexican labor of- ficialdom and a number of American socialists or former socialists. Since the El Paso convention of the.Amert- can Federation of Labor, after which the officialdom was taken to Mexico City as guests of the Mexican govern- ment, Calles has waged war on the most revolutionary elements of the workers and peasants. In preparation for the return of the nationalized railways to private hands he has ordered the railway union to disband, The workers are to be made government employes without the right. to organize and strike ag pro- vided in the constitution. as ao by native rulers and only in emergen- cies resorts to foreign dictatorship. This method has the advantage of not raising the issue of war on a help- less people among the working class at home, of making it appear that whatever the colonials may be suffer- ing, it is their own desire, or fault, as the case may ba It is much cheaper and less risky for Wall Street to enslave the Mexi- can masses with a native government than to do it with armed forces of the United States, TNTERESTING as these hypotheses are, their truth or falsity does not affect our major premise—that Wall Street has gobbled Mexico and that its war on Mexico, open or concealed by a Calles camouflage, is a war on the Mexican workers and peasants. The American working class must learn that the enslavement of the Mexican masses means their own en- Where Does American Labor Stand? to understand that the fight of the Mexican masses is THEIR fight—that in this imperialist period the colonial peoples and the peoples of semi-col- onial regions like Mexico can be brought into the struggle against cap italism side by side with the proleta rians, that these peoples, a thousand times betrayed and a hundred times more oppressed than ye are, hold the balance of power in the mighty strug- gle between world capitalism and the proletarian revolution? The answer of the American labor movement must be! All power to the Mexican workers and peasants! We must encourage them. to take their land and aid them in holding ‘it. We must show them that we realize that our enemies are their enemies and if‘they chase every Yankee rob- ber from their soil, if they take the water power, the oil wells, the rafl- MacDONALD WANTS ANOTHER CONFERENCE “Oh! Gentlemen! Don’t shoot so loud! say MacDonald, British “socialist,” with the world bandits. He has sent troops into the Tampi- co oil fields to crush strikes and troops have also been used freely to prevent confiscation of big estates by the peasants. UST a few days ago, on June 29, to be exact, a dispatch from Mexico City announced that 200 “reds” are to be deported. As the officialdom of the Mexican labor movement has waged war on the Communists since the El Paso convention it is fairly certain that these 200 “reds” are Communists or sympathizers who have been es- pecially active in the denunciation of the Wall Street policy of the Calles’ government and in the work of the | All-American Anti-Imperialist League. The question arises: Why, if Calles is following a Wall Street policy, did Secretary of State Kellogg send to him what practically amounts to an ultimatum? RE are two possible reasons: (1) Calles, altho following a Wall Street policy, may not be pum suing it with what Wall Street con- siders the necessary rapidity. The Kellogg note in this case was framed to let him know that the mortgage- holders were getting impatient. (2) Wall Street, by attacking C les thru the state department, ma have counted on rallying the Mexic populace to the support of a govern- ment that Wall Street has in its vest pocket, discrediting the revolutionary elements who were attacking Calles as a tool of Wall Street and securing more popular support for his policies, + The latter supposition seems the more probable. Imperialism prefers always to have the colonial slaves held in subjection slavement. From Chile the Anacon- da Copper Mining company, a subsidi- ary of the Standard Oil company, is laying down copper in New York for six cents a pound that it costs it 11 cents per pound to mine and refine in Butte, Montana. If the Mexican peons can be made into landless workers, if the Mexican unions can be betrayed and smashed, if the Wall Street policy is enforced either by an American military dic- tatorship or by a puppet Mexican gov- ernment, the living standards of the American workers will not be able to stand this slave competition. If they stand by and watch the Mexican masses betrayed they will pay the penalty. UT the Mexican workers, with a revolutionary stamina they have shown since they declared their in- dependence from Spain in 1810, will not be permanently enslaved. They will rise from time to time and it is then that a still greater danger will confront the American workers—the d r of being conscripted to butcher eir comrades to the south, ERE do the American workers stand on the Mexican question? Are they going to follow the agents Wall Street at the head of the , applaud the arrests, deporta- urder of the militant work- ers and peasants, allow the Mexican unions to be smashed by a “labor” government and the Mexican workers and peasants driven into the mines, oil refineries and mills of American imperialism to work and starve? Or are the American workers going You may awaken all the people of the East. Better call a conference and settle this matter peacefully, as you did at Versaiiles”"—pleads James Ram- -heart: Bee ways and the mines in the name of the Mexican people, we must be pre- pared to rally the working class to prevent a single soldier or a single ship going to Mexico to stop them. ET every worker and farmer ask himself, his wife, his sweet- Why ‘in hell should we do anything to aid Wall Street to enslave more people, make our lives harder and strengthen our class enemies? Why should we not be on the job to do all we can to help the Mexican workers and peasants get what be- longs to them, especially when it makes it easier to get what we want —the government, the land and the industries here in the U. S. A.? De S. ZIMMERMAN DEarris’T" ay MY NEW LOCATION eclal rices to Workers ESTABLISHED 12 YHARS. My ‘Examination is Free f, My Prices Are Reasonable My Work Ise Guarantee@ Extracting Specialist DELAY MEANS DECAY urd URI Re AES (eee Temmenenc err ren, ee