The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 19, 1926, Page 6

Page Six THE DAILY WORKER Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO 4118 W. Washington Bivd., Chicago, I, Phone Monroe 4712 SUBSCRIPTION RATES By mall (in Chicago onty): By mall (outside ef 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, 1118 W. Washington Bivd., Chicago, Ilinole J. LOUIS BNGDAHL WILLIAM ¥, DUNNE f* MORITZ J. LOEB. 008 Entered ax second-class mail September 21, 1923, at the post-office at Chi- cago, lil, under the act of March 3, 1879. Mditors Business Manager Advertising rates on application. SS ed The Next Step in the Anthracite As we predicted when we first commented on the outcome of “Black Friday” at Philadelphia, the Lewis machine was able to so maneuver as to crush all opposition at the hastily-called Scranton tri-district convention. The steam roller technique operated flaw- lessly. The first act was to cut down répresentation so that instead of one delegate for each hundred members the proportion was one to cach five handred. This enabled the machine more easily to guard against the opposition delegates being selected. The haste with which the convention was called precluded the possibility of organ- izing determined opposition, even tho the expressed sentiment of the membership indicated widespread repudiation of the Lewis surrender. At the actual convention the stage was well set for the dis- eful performance that ensued. A brainless clown delivered a} eap jingo poem filled with scurrilous drivel against revolutionists. He was followed by a priest, one Curran, who eulogized Lewis as the greatest leader of all time. Extravagant praise was needed to <Be- 190 What the Bosses” By JAY LOVESTONE, THE DAILY WORKER a1 This in itself is already tantamount to registration. Wes know from our I. THE ASWELL BILL, ‘experiences with the military registra- HERE are at least a dozen bills be- fore congress which aim to limit in some way or other the rights of the foreign-born workers in the United State Some of these bills are more outspoken than others in their objec- tive: to put the unnaturalized worker, in particular, and the foreign-born workers in general, at disadvantage economically and politically. We herewith begin the first of a series of articles dealing» with’ the most vicious of these bills before the sixty-ninth congress. The first bill to be analyzed is the one introduced by Congressman As- well of Louisiana, one of the most backward states in the country. Mr, Aswell's bill, known as HR-5583, introduced in the house on Dec. 15, 1925, provides “for the registration of aliens, and for other purposes.” It some one thinks that the registration of aliens is bad enuf, he will find upon examination that “other purposes” in this bill are even worse. Will Register Workers! vee us examine the main features of} the Aswell bill. It says: “Every alien who enters the United States on or after the first day of registration as fixed in such proclamation shall .be immediately registered in like manner by the immigration officials at the conceal the monstrous betrayal. When one of their flunkeys Was in} danger the anthracite barons sent in another one, whose mission it is/ to detract the attention of the miners from their misery on this earth+ by promising them, as Paul LaFargue so well said, “pay checks on the bank of heaven.” After the strikers had endured six months of | struggle and privation, had seen the left elements in their organiza-| tion persecuted, jailed and reviled by a combination of police,| judges, newspapers, thugs and traitorous labor officials, that other arm of capitalist tyranny, the clergy, was called in to preach con-; tentment to them. | The jingo and the priest also served the purpose of consuming the time of the convention—thereby avoiding discussion of the main| question—the sell-out at Philadelphia. When the steam roller was! ready for the final crushing of the opposition, one delegate arose and asked the privilege of discussing the agreement. Lewis was speech-| less. Was it possible that a dissenter had managed to escape the jugernant operating in the districts? This flaw was overcome by one of the machine challenging the! right of the delegate to sit in the convention because he had one time distributed “red” literature. Then Lewis recovered his composure | and began his customary bull-dozing and terrorism, with the result) that the recalcitrant was thrown out of the convention amidst! the hooligan yells of the payroll gang. The ratification by the rump convention of the “Black Friday” pact followed. This means a five-years’ sentence to servitude of the thiners of the anthracite region if the pact: is carried out. It ean be repudiated in two ways—first, the building of a strong opposi- tion that will defeat Lewis and at another convention declare this convention illegal; or thru action of the miners refusing to abide by the decision and initiating a series of sharp ‘struggles against the pact, reducing it to a mere serap of paper. Either move entails the solidifying of a powerful left wing embracing thousands of miners who are determined in spite of all oppression and terror to rescue the union from the hands of the agents of capitalism that now contro] it in the interest of the mine barons. A Professional Liar One Donald Day, stationed in the nest of ex-czarist, counter- revolutionary spies, and slanderers of the Soviet Union, with head- quarters at Riga, Latvia, is again exercising his putrid imagina- tion, and spewing forth deliberate falsehoods, without an iota of foundation in fact, against the proletarian revolution. Like others of his type he is so completely discredited as a persistent liar that he is not accorded the privileges of reliable re- porters and dare not enter the confines of the nation he is paid to direct his assaults against. His latest fable is the hackneyed one of delegates from the various Parties of the world assembling in Moscow to explain why, with all the gold at their disposal, they have not produced revolutions in other countries. Never at any time or any place have Communists labored under the illusion that revolutions could be manufactured to order with gold. Revolutions come about when the conditions in a given na- tion are so unbearable, when there is such widespread misery as a result of the collapse of the economic structure that there is no other way out, and when there are in existence powerful, well dis- ciplined parties to carry them out by mobilizing the masses for the struggle. If the Tribune would take the ¢rouble to learn these ex- ceedingly elementary facts it would not waste money on such creatures as Mr. Day. Mellon-Coolidge Gang on Defensive With, the opposition to their regime striving to bring to light the criminal conspiracy of the aluminum trust, the Mellon- Coolidge supporters in the senate held a caucus yesterday and rec- ommended a new rule intended to stop the series of inquiries by that body that have already resulted in the downfall of Daugherty, Denby, Fall and Roosevelt and that would have covered with shame the late Harding had he been unfortunate enongh to have lived longer. With Dawes in the chair of the senate clamoring to shut off debate wheneyer it becomes objectionable to the brigand machine and the republican supporters of the Mellon-Coolidge outfit moving against future investigations, the gigantic aluminum trust, with its ramifications extending to many industries, hopes to establish an even more strict dictatorship of big business than now exists at Washington. The administratoin is on the defensive in the aluminum scandal, and is preparing, thru complete “gag” rule, to change its position by Jaunching a counter blast that has as its objective the stifling of all criticism. The coming congressional elections furnish an opportunity to tufn the tide if the workers and impoverished farmers will chal- lenge the Mellon candidates with class candidates, but nothing can place of entry.” The sixty-ninth congress is as black as any worker would desire a con- gress not to be. Consequently there is today greater danger than at. any time previously that bills of the Aswell type may be carried by congress,.This provision means much more than mere registration on the first’ day of entry for immigrants. This bill provides fur- thermore that “every alien subject to registration as provided. inthis, act shall, subsequent to his official regis- tration, register once each following calendar yédr.” Por What does this mean? This mqans that of the millions of proletarians in this country, nearly 7,000,000 who are unnaturalized, who are foreign-born workers in this category, will have to register every year. Where can we stop at? What measures will the po- lice and the governmental authorities in general take to insure the carrying out of this decision to register approxi- mately 7,000,000 individuals? If the bill is to mean anything at all in prac- tice, it will have to translate itself into a registration of all workers. Why? The answer i8 very plain. The employing class government will have to find some ways of guar- anteeing the proper execution of the provisions of this bill. This means in practice that workers would be stop- bed here and there, and now and then by some government official to ask them for their registration cards. Perhaps the workers might look “for- eign” to some government official. tion during the war that the registra- tion was all-inclusive in effect insofar as the nuisance of being hailed and stopped by government agents was concerned, altho formally the statutes provided for military registration in classifications only of certain sections of the male population. Of course the worker will have to pay the government an initial fee of $10 and a subsequent fee annually of $5 for this great privilege of being catalogued and indexed in the files of their exploiters. Pe Every Movement of; Workers to Be Watched, UT there are even worse features than this one imjthe Aswell bill. Even annual registration is not enuf of a check on the foreign-born worker for our exploiting:class government. The bill goes on toapnovide that: “Whenever any alien permanently removes from the district in which he is registered, he shail report to the post office of suchpdistrict. and give such information jm» regard to his movements as may ibe required by regulation. He shalljwithin two days after arriving in the district to which he removes, report to the post office of such district anddikewise give such information as may ;be required by regulation.” f What worse espionage system could one conceive? The workers’ move- ments are thus checked up and fol- lowed very closely—and why? There can be only one reason animating the employing class and its\ government for proposing such methods of limit- ing the freedom, of stifling the work- ing class. These methods have as their purpose the reduction of the mo-| bility, the robbing of the freedom of the workers in order to cripple these millions of foreign-born and conse- quently the whole working class in their struggle against the exploiting class, in the struggle for. working class rights, for better conditions of life and employment, , Setting Up an Elaborate Espionage . System, OW elaborate a spy system the government proposes to build up for the capitalists is shown by the provision of the bill which declares that: “Every alien shall, on demand, at any time exhibit his certificate of identification to any, agent of the de- partment of labor, to any state, terri- torial or local police,or peace officer, and to any other Siers designated by the president.” Under this provision, the govern- ment, thru the president, may appoint a huge army of i ives, may em- power and very lik will empower, a horde of private detective agents to act as a sort of special set of regis- trars. But how. would, these tools of the employing class know who is an alien and who is not, who is a trie born worker and who, isn’t, except by songress Wants fo D questioning and examining any work- 2r at all whom they would suspect of being foreign-born? This means, very plainly, the giving of power to a horde of detectives, agents to ex- amine the workers and to control the ‘movements cf every worker in the United States, regardless of his na- tivity. Even the committee on legislation of the executive council of the Amer- ican Federation of Labor could sense and did sense: the terrible danger to the American working class lurking in bills of this character, In its last report to the fifty-fourth annual con- vention held at Atlantic City from Oc- tober 5 to 16, 1925, this declaration was made: “This highly obnoxious measure which would, if enacted into law, mean the adoption by our gov- ernment of the spying practices of private detective agents, “The potential danger of the prin¢| cipley embodied in this bill is very great. It has all the elements of a strike-crushing, union-breaking pro- posal...” As the executive council points out, “Bills of this kind are potentially dan-) gerous because they can be frequent-| ly used by hostile interests to the in- jury and disadvantage of the labor movement,” Upon registering, the foreign-born worker will be compelled to give cer- ain information to the agent of his boss. who does the registering. First of all, he wil be compelled to make a report of all arrests or convictions | in his\record. A worker may have been arrested for refusing to obey a notorious injunction. A worker may have been arrested for picketing, he may have been arrested for talking to a scab. A worker may have been arrested for not being able to meet certain bills and thus getting into fi- nancial difficulties. All such arrests must be reported to the government. We do not doubt that the use of such information will prove of value to the ruling class and to the exploiters in their efforts to break the backbone of resistance to their wage-slashing and union-smashing campaign. Preventing Foreign-born Workers From Becoming Citizens. R. ASWELL has quite a handsome appetite when it comes to meas- uring his concern for the welfare of the employing class. He would have every unnaturalized foreign-born worker also provide to the agents of the government “any other informa- tion, as specified by regulations, bear- ing upon the fitness of such aliens for citizenship.” Activity in strikes, po- litical activity, participation in any of the more conscious cultural move- ments of the working class, Would of course be considered by the govern- ment agents, at the head of whom would be the secretary of labor, as in- formation indicating the lack of fit- ness of the foreign-born worker regis- tered for American citizenship, law not only declares for registration and cataloguing but provides for the perpetuating of the disadvantageous position in which the foreign-born worker finds himself at some time or other because of his not having been naturalized yet. What chance does) an active striker stand of getting his citizenship papers? All of this infor- mation gathered by the government would be placed at the disposal of the big bosses. The government agents would welcome and utilize to the full- est extent this opportunity to pry into the lives and conditions of the for- eign-born, of the unnaturalized work- ers,,and then to turn over the findings to the class that dominates the gov- ernment machinery. x The President—Chief Strikebreaker, iO", the president, Who, is com- mander-in-chief of the army, this bill, gives additional powers, when it provides that “Whenever, in, the judgement of the president, the inter- ests of the national defense require, he may@by proclamation, require all or any part of the aliens required.to be registered by this act, to.report at such times and places as he shall fix.” The implications cf this section of the pill are far more dangerous. to. the workers than it would appear on the face of a cursory reading of the words, . Picture to yourself. a strike of. coal miners, amongst whom there are thousands of unnaturalized, for- eign-born. workers. The company is in a tight fix. because of the effective- ness ,of the strike. Some scabs try to approach the-coal pits. The work- ers welcome the scabs in an’ appro- priate magner, The strikers speak to the scabs in the only language they understand. Forthwith the president, under the guise of the demands of national defense, orders the thousands of unnaturalized, of foreign-born work- ers to move out of the strike zone and to go elsewhere. This. would entail the arrest of thousands of workers and would mean the breaking up of the strike, a No moré monstrous strike-breaking ineasure has ever been proposed be- fore congréss than this Aswell bill. Fines and Prisons for the. Workers, O close a tab do the capitalist agents propose to have on the workers that the: bill provides: “Whenever- the physical . appearance of an alien registered under this act is changed materially, such alien shall report sich’ facts to the post office of the district in which he is registered.” Truly, fot even in the worst days, of chattel slavery was such a system of limitation; restrictions “and” barriers worked otitfor the enslaved. And woe tnto ‘the workers who fail to register. A hundred dollars fine or sixty days” prison or a combination of the two Will be the reward awainting such a@ worker,’ “Then, should’ a worker “give his information to the government agents in such a way as to enable the latter to call the state- It is clear that this provision of the ments he Yegistered ‘proletariat 0 Against the Workers misrepresentation or false, then the unnaturalized working man may be put in the position of having to pay a fine cf not more than $5,000 or be- ing imprisoned for not more than two years, or to be punished by both fine and imprisonment, A New Deportation Ruse. IVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOL- LARS are provided as a minimum for the initial expense sof enforting this bill. The crowning infamy of this notorious strikebreaking measure is the section providing that: “Any alien who is convicted of a violation of any provision of this act shall be immediately taken into custody upon the warrant of. the secretary of labor and deported.” Could there be devised a more dead- ly, effective system of union-smashing: than that provided in the Aswell bill? Recent years have seen the foreign- born .workers participate actively with increasing frequency in strikes and in other struggles of the working class against the exploiters. This bill aims to cripple the weaker sec- tion of our working class, which hap- pens to be foreign-born. The capital- ists' know very well that a blow struck at one section of the working class is a blow at the whole working clasy, at every section of the working class. They have picked out the foreign- born as the ones to attack first in their new frontal onslaught because they figure that the foreign-born workers are the most vulnerable, are the weakest because of language diffi- culties, because of their lack of knowl edge, or rather because of their insuf- ficient knowledge of the customs and conditions of the country, All Workers Menaced, Y eee foreign-born workers are part of the American working class. The native workers will not be fooled by these dastardly maneuvers of the booses. The answer of the trade unions and the other labor organiza- tions to this campaign of the exploit- ers will bé the formation of big coun- cils for the protection of foreign-born workers thruout the country. The dangers of the Aswell and other bills of this type being enacted into law in this country are very great. There is only one force that can prevent these bills from becoming law. This is the power of the organized working masses, united on a class basis to de- Stroy these efforts of the capitalists to perpetuate amd strengthen their hold on the ‘political and economic re- sources of the country. Greater efforts than ever should now be made to draw the foreign-born workers who are not yet union mem- bers into the labor unions. A more intensive and extensive campaign for uniting the forces of the workers po- litically is now the ordér of the day. The American workingmen will show that they know how to handle all of these plans for establishing detective agency government in the United States. Tomsky Speaks on the Work of the Trade Unions Comrade Tomsky stressed in his speech on the tasks of the trade unions that the principles defined at the eleventh party congress under ‘the leadership of Lenin for . trade union work, had remained in force to this day and had completely. justi- fied themselves. In this resolution which defined the essence of the new economic policy and of the socialist state industry and .the state capital- istic economic forms, the task of the trade unions is stated to be that of defending the interests of the working class under the relations created by this new economic policy. The trade unions must carry, out this task more energetically, they must take more ac- count of the voices, the opinions and the just demands of the masses of the workers, Unions Must Defend Workers, Tomsky pointed to the existence of certain abnormal. instances where some trade union bodies, failing to recognize their task as the protection of the interests of the workers, had settled always all questions with the leadership of the shops and with the party nuclei over the heads of the workers and without consulting the latter at all. Some trade union offi- cials have gone too far in their eco- nomic zeal and have amply accepted all the proposals of the economic in- stitutions. The conflicts which. oc- curred in the beginning of 1925 in several textile factories were caused by such abnormal instances, In those instances where the trade unions properly carried out their di- rect tasks and maintained a close con- nection with the working masses, no such conflicts occurred, Under the new economic policy, the leaders of the state economio. under- takings who must control their under- takings according to the principle of rentability, must certainly, in conse- quence of an exaggerated economic zeal, commit mistakes. The task of the trade unions in the state indus- try is to protect the material inter- ests of the wotkers. The united block of the shop council, shop lead- ership and party nucleus with a mu- be expeeted from the Borah bloc, appealing for the support of the masess of voters, except petty bourgeois futility. (EE SE Get a member for the Workers Party and 4 new subscription fog the DAILY WORKER. ‘i a ete ace tual covering of all measures, as this can be seen in certain places, is not normal, rt 4 Support Correct Measures, The trade salon abot support the correct measures ‘he shop leader- ‘ship, the shop cowtell must me » |a8 possible to all forget for one moment that the red factory Wirector is asleading person in the work of socialist reconstruction, a representative of the class interests of the workers, but the trade unions must take the greatest care to see to it that no bureaucratic and over- zealous measures in contradiction to the interests of the working class are taken, and in such cases they must not accept them without criticism, but they must correct them. Tomsky then quoted figures showing the quick growth of all the trade unions, The Landworkers’ Union with 370,000 members in. October 1924 and 704,000 members in October, 1925. The Building Workers’ Union has grown quickest. Im 1925 the indus- trial unions increased their member- ship by 14 per cent, the non-industrial unions by 16 per eent. Educate Peasant Youth, These new members in the indus- trial unions come not.so much from the working youth or from the older workers returning from the village where they spent the lean years, but from the peasant youth, particularly in the textile indugtry. This peasant youth has brot newpopinions into the shops, they have got yet learnt to look at the shops asythe older workers do who won the sheps with their own hands and have built them up with their own forces. xt is the immedi- ate task of the trade unions to raise these new sectiongyof the working class both politically and culturally and to draw them into the general so- cial life as otherwise there would be too wide a rift between the economic and culturally progressive older workers and the newly arrived work- ers. y At the present moment 89 per cent of all the workers are organized in trade unions, in comparison with 90 per cent at the beginning of the year, Tomsky pointed to the increasing number of cases of larceny in the shops’ councils and declared that this form of crime must be fought not only by firm judicial measures, but also by the introduction of better Torms of reckoning up between the shop councils and their electors, Communist trade unionists should ac- count for themselygs not only to the Communist fractt but also as far ‘party elections, The collective ents should not ‘be merely worked but all of the workers interested should be previous. 4 TOMSKY Head of the Russian Trade Unions had permitted the setting up of candi- dates thru the whole trade union membership, the Communists had in- creased the number of their represen- tatives aud a great activity had been developed by the non-party workers in the shops. . Unions Carry on Cultural Work. Tomsky pointed to the important successes won by. the cultural work of the trade unions, The trade union- clubs had increased their number in- side two. years by 120 per cent and their libraries by 300 per cent. Tomsky stressed once again the ne- cessity for the realization of a work- ers’ democracy inside -the trade unions, for, a close and constant rais- ing of the activity and the, securing of the possibility of free criticism for all trade. union members. . Tomsky then.proceesed to describe the inter- national work of the Russian unions. ss ly acquainted with the details and should propose alterations to them, If in doing this the workers make exag- gerated wage demands, this is not a misfortune, the trade unions will then discuss with them and explain to them the economic possibilities of the shop, As long as wage labor exists, the workers will always demand higher wages than they get. The workers will come to know the situation of the shop by taking a close part in the discussion of all the details of the colfective agreements. . The participa- tion of the trade unions in the forma- tion of the plans for production should not only take place in the leading eco- nomic institutions where trade union representatives are present, but also in the shops where the trade union- ists have a better opportunity of ob- serving practically the correctness of World Trade Union Unity. Tomsky pointed to the success won by the trade unions of the U.S. 8. Ry thru. the slogan of the international unity of the trade union moyement. |To many perhaps, the alliance of the young and_ revolutionary. ussian trade unions with the oldest unions, the English, which were accounted f, conservative, may seem - peculiar, Nevertheless this alliance. will be- come understandable when one thinks of the world economic causes, respon- sible for the leftward movement of the. British working class, . The de- ¢claration of Purcell at the conference of the American Federation of Labor that the European and American workers stood before the dilemma, either to raise the level of the work- ers of the colonial and half-colonial countries, the workers of India, China, etc, to the level of the European working class or themselves sink to the plans. The incorrectness of mak-| the. level of the workers in the col- ing a rule of regulating.conflicts thru the party must be pointed out and de- manded that the normal process for arbitration be adopted. Democracy must be established side the trade unions, the Communist leadefship of the unions must be se- onial. and half-colonial countries, is characteristic, The English trade unions are inter- ested in preventing the move of capi- in-}talism towards cheap colonial labor power, The application of the Dawes plan to Germany, the strengthening cured thru the Communist fractions, | of Germany's capacity to compete in and the petty interferences of the party in the trade union work must be abolished, Tomaky pointed out that for instance the last elections for the Mosco: op councils took place, the st fraction had not adopted the procedure of putting UD & prepared ligt of candidates but|latter hes not only + the market, the lowering Of the wag- e# and the conditions of life of the rman workers leads unavoidably to t rsening - the economlé) situ. of the itish working class is reacting more than ever be- to the offensive of capital. The end, but it is turning into a political offensive, as this has always been in the history of the class struggle. Left Wing in British Unions. In face of the opposition of the trade unions and the new tendencies in their movement, British capitalism adopts the tactic prophesied by Marx: It attacks the right of the trade un- ions to take a part in political strug- gles, and this is the first attempt of English capitalism to follow up an economic offensive against the work- ing class with a political one, These are-the reagons for the leftward move- ment of the ‘British working class which is becoming the leader in the struggle for international trade un- ion unity and which is seeking to es- tablish a center of action which could regulate on a wide scale the wage conditions and the whole economic working class movement. The strug- gles of the Russian unions for trade union unity is the logical consequence of the previous united front campaign of the Communist parties. Ny The Anglo-Russian trade union alli- ance, promotes fhe ripening process of the contradictions inside the Am- sterdam International inside which the protest voices against such an un- heard of aeton as the work of co-op- eration with the International Labor of- fice of the capitalist league of nations, are becoming ever louder. ‘The corre- spondence of the Russian Unions with Amsterdam has limited itself to the formal question: Shall a conference take place with or without conditions? Want Conference With Amsterdam, We demand a meeting with Amster. dam to consider the question of the establishment of unity in the inter- national trade union movement, with- out any limiting conditions in order, to retain the right of presenting the question of ‘unity in all its details, ‘The justness'of our demand that the representatives of the two opposing camps in the working class movement should meet without any conditions in order to clear up all misunderstand. ings in an objective manner, is so clear that our demand received the sympathy of practécally the whale Bri- tish working class movement, (Concluded tomorrow) _ “The power of the working clase. organization, Without. t be :