The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 27, 1926, Page 11

And look at the rascals hanging around lis- tening to that bunk. The frowns on - their faces! God, why were there maniacs like that? They weren’t human beings. Couldn’t be. Did Mister Pigsteel or Mister Oilbarrel know of dirt broke or if they had lost their money, why didn’t they get themselves a job in the mills or at Mister Pork’s factories? There they could make up what they had lost. They looked as if they didn’t believe in God. They were lost. Smith consumed his weary walk, disgusted —but glad he wouldh’t have to go to heaven with a pack like that. He-thanked Jesus that he lived. in a free country where there were good Samaritans, such as Mister Pigsteel, Mis- ter Pork;.and soon. One thing that he brood- ed over for a moment was Mister Pork’s state- ment that “all men were born free and equal.” Had God created these devils among the good people?: © | ‘ QNE morning Smith did not appear .at~ the Constitution Hotel. . Several hours passed before anybody became aware of his absence. Id newspapers were lying around, waiting to e picked up. The chairs were dusty. The spitoons were full. Cigar stumps lay strewn 27] about. But it was not noticed until almost ‘©'} noon. There was going to be a luncheon and to speeches by Mr. Pigsteel, Mr. Pork, Mr. Ofl- or | barrel and others; also the manager of the Con- mM | stitution Hotel. The manager came rushing or | in, made at finding the room in such condition. © | What was the matter with Smith, anyway? th | Didn’t he know enough to come on time after all these years? He ought to be discharged for 2d | such carelessness. eS The manager went to the effort of finding rd | Smith’s address. After finding out that he ‘2 | lived in the old rooming-house and factory dis-. e! | trict, a boy was sent there to inquire after him. like this? Smith-hoped not. If these men were Passaic---The Hell-Hole By Mary Heaton Vorse FOREWORD: This picture from the textile hell-hole of New Jersey, where now 12,000 under- paid textile workers are fighting because ‘they want to tive’—fighting the textile barons for a bit of the cloth they make So that they may with- stand thé .wintry weather, is the result of a few hours spent witha relief investigating committee. A story such as this could be duplicated a dozen times during the course of one day. Nothing can better emphasize the need for relief. We ask all who want to help win this strike to write for con- tribution lists and send remittances to General Relief Committee, Textile Strikers, 734 Main ave- nue, Passaic, N. J. HE investigator said, “Mind the stairs. They’re broken.” : The hall. was as dark as a mouse hole. The stink was so dense you could have cut it into chunks. Broken stairs, tunnel-like halls, open- ing on the human burrows. A flicker of a match showed the filth of ages underfoot. They housed cattle and dogs better. Cattle and dogs/are valu- able. We went intota flat almost as dark as the hallway. In a little room was a kitchen which gave on an air-shaft. The bedroom in back of it was pitch black. The front room alone had light. A woman with a baby in her arms and two babies clinging to her skirts welcomed us. “You will excuse my mother if she don’t get up. She has to stay in bed most of the time. She has open sores on her legs.” Her story came trickling out little by little. She had no husband. She had four children un- wn old sack and get coal off dumps.” We walked away thru #lushy streets. “She hasn’t got it so bad as some,” the relief worker commented. “She’s got her rent.” He pushed open a door. “The smell is fierce,’ he said. “These tene- ments are fierce. The woman where we’re going keeps her rooms clean. She’s a nice woman. But she’s not lucky. She was in the hospital three months, and three days after she went to work comes the strike.” : She was a kindly, middle-aged Woman and smiled in friendly fashion at us. Near the stove sat her husband. He was bent over, his skin was yellow, his blue eyes were sunken into his head. He had not worked for four years. “He has a cough. He sits all day near the stove and gets the kids’ meals. That’s all he ~ can do.” The strike relief had sent a doctor there. His instructions lay on the table. They read: “Go to bed until fever has passed.” : “He won’t go to bed. He’s had a good deal of fever these last four years. He worked in the mills as long as he could—before he got his cough.” - Sitting by a table was a calm-eyed little girl with wheat-colored hair flowing down her back. She was thirteen years and large for her age. She was the kind of little girl that makes you think of the country. She looked as if she be- longed there. She was so tranquil and quiet with her blue eyes and gentle ways. How had she got- "g An hour later the boy returned. The ad- | 4? tem years of age. Her father and mother = ten along-thru the months that her mother was ed in the back room and she and her children! sick in the hospital and her father too sick to K- . ’t pricnanly- ae ace ae Tat keteooes blur eee lived in the front room. work? Her fourteen year old brother had some- is | clasped hands, on a rusty iron cot—dead. “You see, father’s the janitor here, so we get how or other managed to scrape enuf money to- "t Dead! What business did one have to die | our rent free. Sometimes he gets gome odd jobs| gether for the three of them.- The wonder of it 10 | when there were spitoons to be cleaned. Well, | to do. He-doesn’t get ’em often.” was how good a home they had. Because they e! | Smith had been a good fellow. One needed “Well, I’ve got a job for a week as night watch-| had made of these three rooms at the top of the 1e | more men like that. Men that lived quietly; | man,” said the father stoutly. He was an old man} stairs a home. They had almost nothing unless ie | worked hard; and died in peace. He would be | of kindly aspect, a man who is pleasant to meet.| you can put courage in a bank, and can count He was not very old, but the mills had laid him aside. 'Theyhadused_up his youth and tossed him out. And now he was lucky to have a roof over his head, even in a tenement of this kind, and an odd job now and then. “Now if you could let.us have something to eat I am going to make along all right. What I need most is a pair of shoes to go out on the picket line.” Her single pair of shoes were trodden down. Impossible to walk on the picket line with them. “How much do you make,” we asked. “Sixteen thirty,” she answered. “Not much, when you think that there are seven of us and the babies have got to have milk and shoes.” She was a comely woman and cheerful. She sat there and told this amazing story of unbroken bad luck, desertion, undérpay, her mother’s ill- ness, her father’s unemployment in the most ter- rewarded. . He had been a good citizen. States 2 ~ a “\ serene sage’ | as among» your belongings. In the midst of this spirit-breaking sickness and misfortune they had the audacity to have flowers growing in pots as well as some feathery-leaved plants whose name they only knew in Polish. And they had a kitten. One thing they didn’t have was any complaints. They were a little apolo- getic about having to have relief, but they ex- plained with the mother haying only worked three days they, had to have something. The mother smiled and her eyes lighted. The relief investigator turned to the English members of the committee. “She says how glad she is going te be when-her daughter will get her working papers next year. Shé\says her girl can hardly wait.” The father was coughing over the stove. The little girl who looked as if she belonged in a country lane sat there tranquil. The mills would claim her soon. It was her mother’s highest ion) , ion that the American Labor would only unite yvements: ft on sound, fundamental democracy and justice isness and human li- I submit that we must not be. delud- ed by the mere forms of government; and that if we pierce thru to the facts behind those forms we see that Ame- rica is ruled-by a capitalist dictator- ship. America is the supreme example of the new czarism—the czarism of monopoly capitalism, the czarism of the finance oligarchy. Even some of the most important forms of government are undemo- cratic, Thus the cabinet is personal- ly appdinted by the president, acting on his own absolute discretion. It is in? las stressed in the olu $n, which formulat- yn, | Doctrine,” saying, hings: sans stand for democ- Neither the Red In- f autocratic Moscow | rifying matter of course way. This was the way] \ ij.) , eben taiac eee Cee alone. life was. Most of the people she knew were like Yell » said th 8 f . ignore this definition This undemocratic spirit holds| this, » Said the relief worker as we went down ies the stairs, “they ain’t so badsoff. We go a) They tramped thru slushy streets. now and see that widow mother with cight eal “I don’t need coal,” she added. “I go out with} dren where there isn’t any eats or coal.” aca ee. os . some Negro workers are organized} ! may seem, in this article, to in American Federation of Labor Un-| »@ve painted_too dark a picture. ions. There were Negro delegates at|!t represents the facts as one the Atlantic City convention, but they| British working man saw them, were delegates in name only and|Set down without fear or fa- ; seemed to be completely isolated. |Vor. And the future is hope- ful, of that I am convinced, when I recall the magnificent meetings I was privileged to ad- dress in a number of the princi- pal American cities. There ~ were the rank and file American trade unionists—eager to hear the message of international unity, full of real sympathy with their comrades in Britain, in Russia and thruout the world. The spirit and the enthusiasm of those meetings make.me con- fident that the cause of unity will finally triumph in America. LL, The New Saturday Magazine of The DAILY WORKER wants Stories and articles written by the workers in the} shops for publication in this paper. Send your manuscripts to Robert Minor, Editor, Saturday Maga- zine Section, The Daily Worker, equal sway in the American Federa- tion of Labor and the American trade union movement. The movqment is ruled by an oligarchy which has vir- tually absolute powers. I noticed, for instance, at the Atlantic City conven- tion how all the important committees and delegations were nominated by the president and automatically agreed to by the convention. “Thus, the president in effect determined the ‘decisions of the convention, for the reports of the various committees are usually adopted without much ado. This is attributable to the overwhelm- ingly official character of the conven- tion. ~*~ The “spoil system” which is such a feature, of American official life ap- plies in the American Federation of Labor, and, I believe, in many of the k-| unions,, Thus when President Green -| sueceeded the late President Gom- pers, he gave, notice of dismissal to every man-jack of the American Fed- eration of Labor staff—organizers, etc., irrespective of their length of service, union experience, or anything. They were then notified that if they -| liked to apply for re-employment their vases would be.considered. =~ A characteristic feature of the con- vention, which would have been in- conceivable in England, was the re-| there cannot be even @ beginning to} strike much longer, and on infinitely! 1113 W. Washington Bivd., Chi- ception of a “fraternal” delegate from | facing this problem, It ig true that) less, than his white brother. Cag0, Mh: ix ue hat? adel - * " BRT ori RO ee Heel ene | Ween enn ees ae eel s 7 # / abor policy. American idly to all the world, | he world is bent upon of the aims of democ- | contest to the last } ground whatever and ocracy seeks to invade | soll ofthis hemis- we shall accept no “world labor unity” as nvading disrupters and ‘the New World is dedi- van «geedom.. 5 , with the same) ‘| rity that my Ame- si [3d to. me, that all ut’ American ‘democ- 1y humble opinion, com- . “Democracy”—in the ame-up, the gunman and emocracy”-~in the so well-known a patriotic and non- labor organization as the American Le- gion. This delegate was himself a prominefit trade union leader, Major George L. Berry, of the printing and pressmen. Many of our best friends in this country, because of their so- called “left” dencies, might soon find themselves railroaded. out, of the A. F. of L. as extreme “Igfts” as many good militant union men that I met had been railroaded out, to tlie great loss of the movement. For one man, or a group of men, stand no chance against the official machine, backed up as it actually ig by the powers of the law and the police. Once outside the American Federation of Labor you are finished; your mouth is stopped, your activities checked, and if necessary suppressed, =, Turn now to the Negro* worker. There are many. millions ‘of® himi. He represents a great problem that the American labor movement can- ‘not help but face; yet while the doors of most unions remain closed, or very difficult of entry, to Negro workers I was very pleased to learn that my plea for the unity of all workers, black, white, brown or yellow, was much appreciated by the Negro trade unionists. j The Negro workers have begun to form their own unions; but these are not tolerated north of the “Dixie” line, as a Negro hotel porter, who had previously been a trade unionist and wished heartily to be one again, told me. He told me, further, that he had once’ been out on strike with some hundreds of Negro fellow workers. ‘All their places were taken by scabs and the strike broken, Those scabs were white workers. Yet the Negro worker is one of the greatest potential sources of strength for American trade unionism. Since he ig accustomed.to a far lower standard of life he can hold out in a men striking for-their ~