The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 29, 1925, Page 14

- Es : Ne oe ene wee sraciliiiadeendiniandieentinad ante theenamertiiiean nahin ee SS Si LL Le LS Follettism, against Hillquitism, to go into the organization and make the struggle there. That was a correct policy. That’s the policy the C.I. de- cided was the correct policy but what did the majority do. They issued a manifesto and a resolution which our comrades were to introduce in the trade unions which said “boycott the CPPA convention.” Boycott the CPPA convention! ‘Comrades, that was de- leonism coming to life in the W. P. Boycott a mass movement of workers. Boycott a movement that is a step for- ward to progressive struggles against capitalism. Boycott a movement of the workers, which typified the devel- opment of the American working class since the end of the war, the develop- ment toward a fight as a class in their own interests. That was the acme of sectarianism and that was the policy which was offered in place of going to the CPPA convention. The policy offered in CEC resolutions, as a sub- stitute, was that we should ask the workers in the trade unions to fight in a united front struggle with the Work- ers Party! To join in a united front struggle with the Workers Party! What was that. An application of the united frent tactic of the 0. L? No, no, comrades, that was making the tactic of the united front a sectarian principle. Making it a principle to propagate in place of making it a tactic for action of the masses. If we urge the workers to go into a united front with us, we must say “united front against wage cuts, unit- ed front against child labor, united front against La Folletteism, the use of injunctions, united front on con- crete issues and not a sectarian united front with the Workers Party.” That, comrades, was the policy in Bittelman’s. article, and the thesis of the majority which was offered next year, opposing in principle organi- zations between the Workers Party and the masses of workers. And now, comrades, we turn to the next development of that policy. I thought we would have this discussion in relation to the discussion of wom- en’s work, but since Comrade Bittel- man has raised the issue, I must an- swer.: Shad motions in the O. B. C. in acpenmatt to work among women. Comrade Bittelman tries to tell you that the issue was whether we should carry on work among women in the factories. Comrade Bittelman, here are the extracts from the minutes of ee ean amano st aM Leesa A AACAR BR ESRI Jal Cae dick a" “lag ae cana the 0, H, G, which you yourself had madé, I challenge you to show any- thing in your motion which shows work among women in the factories and*ours which says work among housewives. That was never the issue. What was the issue? Not that, com- rades, but we had in New York the United Council of Working Class Women. It was an organization of a united front character; first, delegates from existing organizations, and, sec ond, it ‘had, in addition, - individual membership—and the question was, what we were to do with this organiza- tion. Your proposal, Com. Bittelman, as it is here, is that the United Council of Working Class Women shall be- come the Women’s Department of the Workers Party. In other words, you wanted to liquidate a non-patty or- ganization and take afew of its mem- bers and make it the Women’s Section of the Workers Party. In answer to that, our proposal was that we shall continue, that we shall build the, U. C. W.):W. jand try to. develop it into a mass organization. And, comrades, the minutes went to the 0. L; and here we have some letters from thé C. I, on @ question of party policy, which the C. BE. O, has refused to pub- lish for the benefit and education of our membership, has refused to give you the benefit of this advice. (Ap plause; “Shame! Shame!”) And why did they refuse? Listen to this (quo- tation from C. L letter): The Secretariat of the E. C. C, |. has carefully examined, together with the Women’s Secretariat of the Comintern, the Bittelman and Ruth- enberg resolutions and has adopted a definite attitude towards them. Both organs have come to the unan imous conclusion that the Bittel- man resolution adopted by you, altho the voting resulted in a tie, is in several decisive points contrary to the decisions and directions of the Comintern, The rejected Ruthen- berg resolution represents, on the contrary, and precisely in the points in which it differs from the other resolution, the viewpoint formulated clearly and unmistakably in the res- olutions and theses of the Third In- ternational Conferefice of Commun- ist Wemen in Moscow, which were endorsed by the Executive of the Comintern. ND then, comrades, what next? Well, our majority has had the habit in the past, when it makes polit- ical mistakes, of accusing the Execu- tive Secretary of having falsified the case they proceeded to say the min- utes had not correctly explained their position and their viewpoint, and they sent a letter to Moscow—two letters, in fact, one on Feb. 11 and the other on March 14—in which they explain their position to the Women’s Secre- tariat and the Executive Committee, and here I -have the answer of the Ex- ecutive Committee to their explana- tion dated May 6, 1925. They say on the question of women’s sections, it was not the issue between us. The matter ig cleared up, but on the main issue, which»was the tssne. between Comrade Bittelman and myself, be- tween the majority and the minority, they continued to say the following: “This settles that question, but the main question of which the Interna- tional Women's Secretariat differed from the majority of the C..E. C. was the question of the role of the United Working Women’s Council and the party’s relation with the same.” In other ‘words, after their explanation, ‘they get an answer which says they were just as wrong as before that ex- planation. declared that our party sufferea in the last year from a leadership which, becanse of its incorrect poli- cles, could not mobilize the party nor. could it bring the masses of workers under the leadership of the party to any great extent. We say that our membership, which was 16,000 when the present minority was in the ma- jority of the C. B. C. and grew to 17,000 during the first six months of 1924, was again reduced to 16,000 dur- ing the first six montns of 1925, so that we stand exactly today where we were a year and a half ago, and we say that a C. EH. C. which comes to the party with a year and a half of struggle, of work, of expenditure of our forces in the work of our party, and cannot show progress in building the party, does not deserve leadership. (Applause.) We say, comrades, that the C. B. C. has chosen to follow the same course to unite itself in the party with the. same elements which were the basis of its support'in the past and which will again influence it in the wrong direction. We say the majority group in this convention made that choice when it chose to use its power to over- ride the minority in the fact that it took from it the positions of leader- ship in the party work which it won by vote of the majority in the districts of New York, Philadelphia and Cleve- minutes of the proceedings, and in this }land. Our group sees in that policy of the majority of the 0, B. C. a policy of persecution. It made its protest, it made its fight against it. It came back into the convention and said, we will not split this party. It 1s our party and we will stay in It and fight in it until it is a party which will continue a correct line of Communist policy. (Applause.) Ww" say that we will not split this party. No, but we will continue to fight against the policies which were adopted in the past year. We will continue to fight against misappli- cations of policies which may be rectly worded and resolutions which may be correctly stated but which the Cc. BE. C. majority will not apply in practice so as to gain results for our party. We say present conditions show Comrade Bittelman, that you have chosen to make the continued basis of your support the right wing ele- ments of our party, the Finnish Fed- _ eration and the Loreist group in the Jewish Federation, in the German Fed-- eration and elsewhere, we say to you that you have not any substantial support in this party beside these groups. We say a majority based upon that support cannot lead this party and formulate correct policies for the building of this party. You have chosen to follow a line of ex- termination and elimination. We say while you have chosen, we made the offer otherwise, we desired something otherwise, we desired that you break with these elemtnts and jolil us as the leadership of the party based upon the Communist elements of this party and having the support of these Com- munist elements. dat have chosen the other road, and as you chose to be the repre- sentative of the right wing of this party, base yourself on that right wing, we have no other recourse than to say that you are the right wing of the party and that we must fight against you. (Applause. Cheers.) We say that this condition is not the best solution and might have been alleviated yet but you made the deci- sion. You give us no other solution, and therefore there is no other road | open for this minority to carry on a <|© militant struggle against those ele- ments which are not yet Communistic- ally developed and which will give you the wrong policy and force us to continue to fight against it, and that we will do. (Tremendous cheers and applause.) Cowderly Tells How to Keep from Growing Old By P. B. COWDERY. The comrades everywhere want to knéw about touring the country in an auto. The sign, “Frisco to Chicago— Subscribe for the DAILY WORKER,” inspires numerous questions, and everyone, even strangers incidentally attracted, are invariably friendly and interested. When we handed out sam- ple copies of the DAILY WORKER they have always said, “Good, we are with you.” “We” are the comrades from San Francisco, Oakland, California, who have already reported in the DAILY WORKER our meetings in Sacramen- to and Salt Lake City, also Fallon, Nevada, At all of these places we were treated royally. In Denver we held a street mass meeting Aug. 16, with 500 attending and 78 copies of the DAILY WORKER sold, and an- other good meeting in the Labor Ly ceum Ang. 17. Stoppage of the oil line in our en- gine on the nineteen-mile climb out of Salt Lake City ruined our enginé. Temporary repairs enabled us to reach Denver. Here comrad&s overhauled the engine completely, thus ending our engine trouble. This unavoidable delay put us a day behind our schedule and made it necessary for Comrade Dolsen to proceed by train to Kansas City and St. Louis, where he held meetings on the dates advertised. Fatt Into a Mudhole. As to road conditions, the highways are still far from being boulevards, yet each year sees a tremendous lot of new construction. This year seri ous washouts have occurred in Nevada. aild Wyoming. Detours are numerous due to construction work. Rain on detours and new grades necessitates frequent use of a towline, In: Wyom- ing we went into the ditch. « “~ mere- ly attached our towline and the first machine passing pulled us out. In western Kansas a thunder storm struck us at 6 p. m. We were on a new grade. The storm so blinded Comrade Dobkin, who was driving, that he failed to avoid a bad mudhole. We camped right there until 8 a. m. During the evening several machines tried to pull us out but could not get traetion. After the coming of day- Tight and a partial drying of the road a big machine with chains easily pulled us out. Fortunately our ttn Lizzie was equipped for bunking and the three of us got a good night’s rest which we badly needed. To make meeting dates required that we drive ge and day. This fourteen-hour de- lay compelled ts to miss our Pitts- burgh date. We found that the storm was local and only extended about five miles and we had landed in the only hole that could have delayed us. Our schedule of ten meetings in twelve days between Frisco and Chicago, had we experienced no delay, was found to be possible except the lap between Pittsburgh, Kansas, and St. Louis, Mo. Here we were compelled to travel two nights and one day. Missouri roads are still m very bad condition, espe- cally for night driving, being poorly marked, often narrow and rough and fall of sharp turns without warning signs. But rapid progress is being made in road building, even in Mis- sourl, Except for occasional delays, motoring on the main highways is very practicable nad enjoyable. They r Auto—Convention Drives Them. The trip to Chicago was too hurried to be completely successful. After the convention Comrades Cowdery and Roberts plan to take more time re- turning and secure many subscribers for the DAILY WORKER and Work- ers Monthly. Comrades Dolsen and Dobkin plan to remain in Chicago. Much has been learned on this trip to demonstrate the economy and effect- iveness of using a Ford auto in dis- tribution of literature and obtaining of subscribers. We expect to visit many towns before returning to Cali- fornia and we expect to convince the comrades in these towns of the neces- sity. of circulating these publications. In California we now have two autos on this job year in and year out. Some- times, as on this trip, excessive ex- Dense compels us to accept assistance from comrades and sympathizers who realize the value of our work and are in a position to help us. We ask this only when necessary, and only on con- dition that we are giving value re- ceived fo the movement. Our only pay is the regular commission on the subscriptions we obtain. Plenty of energy, accompanied by sheer econ- omy, gets us by. As an example: Be- tween Denver and Chicago, the three of us spent just $2.75 for eats, and for sleeps nothing. We had to save our meager funds for gasoline. We had just 13 cents on arrival. But we land- ed among friends. And we could have found friends in any town had we stopped to look for them. A Wide Awake Crew. As to driving night and day: We sel- dom stopped either to eat or sleep. Only when we became tired out did we succeed in sleeping in the moving machine. Three of us took turns driv- ing the machine. At the wheel we soon became sleepy. While reclining fer the purpose of sleep we remained wide awake. This was the experience of all of us. We found, however, that we obtained sufficient rest even tho we - seemed not to sleep at all. It will be easily possible for a crew fo drive a machine from San Francisco to Chi- cago in five days and nights in the near future, One more year, or at the most two more years. will find the highways all graded and dependable. Why do not comrades use their evenings, Sundays, holidays and out- of-work vacation periods more for the social process of circulating our liter- ature and less for the personal process of mere pleasure seeking? Hunting subscribers is far more exciting and ‘interesting than hunting fun for fun’s sake. Learn to put all you meet on record, Let your friends know how disgraceful it is to waste their time and money. Hold them up to some degree of scorn and ridicule if they fail to take the DAILY WORKER and read it, Extend your circle of friends to all you meet. Then meet all you can. Don’t let them get away with the idea that it is smart and the thing to be ignorant and wasteful in rela- tion to working class problems. Put up a fight. Nothing short of this can give you any real zest in life. Use your auto to a purpose. ._ If you want to thoroughly un- derstand Communism—study it. Send for a catalogue of all Com- munist literature. 4 * Citas 3...