The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 13, 1926, Page 9

——————— oeREEEgETERRNE we a nae ‘ By J. LOUIS ENGDAHL. HE outcome of the prosecution of Anthony Bimba, Communist editor of the Lithuanian daily,. Laisve, of Brooklyn, New York, before’ the courts of the “open shop” shoe manu- facturers of Brockton, Mass., was a victory for the labor-hating predatory interests of New England. The enemies of the workers, with their church lackeys, the priests and the preachers, could have hoped for nothing better than the acquittal of Bimba on the blasphemy charge. The Butler textile czardom, that covers New England with a blanket of black reaction, with its loaded ju- dicial dice couldn’t have called for a better decision than the conviction in the sedition case. e T is well for the workers of the whole nation to understand this situation, which is a call for new struggles, both in the industrial field and in the realms of religious con- troversy, especially in New England. where the church has a stranglehold on. great masses of the working class population as it feeds the multitudes with its repulsive narcotics to numb labor’s brain against clear thinking.. * > & The blasphemy stattute still lives altho it has aged with the passage of 229 years, and dates back in its an tecedents to the year 1646, only 2( years after the first white settlers set foot in New England. That is the meaning of the court decision, that recognizes no change altho the nation has swept thru a national revolution and civil war. Bimba declared his belief that, “there is no god!” and challenged the court to convict him, which meant an appeal to the higher courts to decide whether the law still stands, or whether it should be stricken from the statute books. The court rejected the challenge. “1 was easiér ‘and~more convenient to find Bimba “not guilty” which per- mits the law to live undisturbed, at least temporarily, The court, Judge C. Carroll King, a unitarian, and the unitarian church itself denies the divine origin of Jesus Christ, thus placed its appreval on this law hand- ed down by the religious intolerance of the early 17th century. “Death!” was the penalty decreed in 1646, as shown in the reproduction in another column of the statute passed in that year, One year in prison or a $300 fine and the acceptance of a gag to observe the law in the future, was the penalty imposed by the statute of 1697, also reproduced here. It was the statute of 1697 under which Bimba was tried. Only one conviction had been secured under it, that of Abner Kneeland, editor of the Boston In- yestigator, an atheist, sent to prison for 60 days in 1838, nearly a century , ago. The Kneeland case decision was made by a divided court, Judge Car- ‘roll claiming that he sympathized with the minority decision. But he refused to permit the Bimba case to go to a higher capitalist court for its ruling in this century. The result is that any Communist speaker in Massachusetts in the fu- ture may be arrested under the same statute on the flimsiest of charges. The church hirelings of the shoe and textile barons may invade any meet- ing and have the speaker arrested on the merest pretext that their god is being assailed. eee 1 iy clearly brought out that Bimba, at Brockton, Mass., on Jan. 26, had had no intention of discussing religion and the Communist attitude toward it. He came to Brockton to speak on “the white terror in Lith- uania.” It was in denouncing the “clerical-nationalist-socialist” govern- ment of that country, in exposing the crimes of the priests in imprisoning, torturing and putting to death work- ers suspected of radicalism or the slightest sympathy toward Commun- ism, that he denounced the church and declared his belief that, “there is no god!” ' Evidently the court concluded that if god had been outraged by Bimba’s remarks, it was god in Lithuania and Ask Death For All Blasphemers Statute of 1646 Against Blaspheming Ye Name of God LBEIT faith be not wrought by ye sword, but by ye word & therefore such pagen Indians as have submitted themselves to our gouvernment, though wee would not neglect any dew helpes to bring them on to grace, & to ye meanes of it, yett wee compell them not to ye Xtian faith, not to ye pfession of it, either by force of armes or by poenai!l lawes, neuthe- lesse, seeing the blaspheming of ye true God cannot be excused by any ignorance or infirmity of hum- ane nature ye aetaernall power & God-head being knowne by ye light of nature & ye creation of ye world, & common reason requireth eurey state & society of men to be more carefull of preventing the dishonor & contempt of ye Most High God (in whom we all consist) then of any mortall princess & magistrates, it is therefore ordered & decreed by this Courte, for ye honnor of ye aetaernal| God, whome only we worship and serve, that no pson withing this jurisdiction, whether Xtian or pagan shall wittingly ane willingly psume to blasphem his holy name, either by wilful obsti- nate denying ye true God, or re- proach ye holy of God, as ifit were but a polliticke deuise to keep ig- norant men in awe or deny his crea- tion or government of ye world, or shall curse God, or shall utter any other eminent kind of blasphemy of ye like nature and degree; if any pson of psons wtsoeuer, within our jurisdiction shali breake this lawe THEY SHALL BE PUTT TO DEATH, By Both..oo oe vi) torrart ta not in Massachusetts that had really suffered. The Bay State statute pro- vides against anyone “contumeliously reproaching god.” There was a court battle over the meaning of the word “contumeliously.” The dictionary de- clares it means the use of contemptu- ous, abusive, rude and insolent lan- guage in an attempt to disgrace. The church itself, neither catholic, protes- tant or of any other creed came into court to charge that its god had been disgraced. All of the nine witnesses for the prosecution, with two excep- tions, admitted they did not belong to any church. It was clear that the blasphemy charge had been brought in to bulwark the sedition complaint. es ee HIS ease also brings to light the alacrity with which the local police in the factory cities hastens to the assistance of the reactionary ele- ments in the foreign colonies. The Lithuanian colony in Brockton was clearly split on the conditions in the old country. The white guard Lithua- nian government has its supporters in Brockton. It is opposed by the radical elements organized into tlie Lithuanian Workers’ Literary and Educational Society. The Brockton police, prosecutors and courts threw all their support on the side of the white guardist Lithuanians doing the work in this country of the terror in the old country. The prosecutor him- self is | Lithuanian by descent. - It Pa clearly evident that the situa- tion growing out of the presence of the blasphemy law on the statute books must be bitterly fought. Meet- ings must be held at which the Com- munist position toward religion must be clearly and definitely stated. If prosecutions result, then the fight must be made to wipe this hoary sur- vival of past centuries out of exist- ence, or the New England mill barons be forced to admit that their capital- ist government today insists on cring- ing servility to. subsidized religion. Massachusetts adopted an amendment to its constitution in 1835 declaring the state separate from the church, The nee of the blasphemy law The Boss Class Won at Brockton Wealth and Want They Always Attend the Dance Together. means that the church is a part of the state and defended by it. The prosecutor, a renegade Lithua- nian Jew turned unitarian, stated the situation clearly when he declared that belief in god is the foundation upon which the government rests. “Destroy the belief in god and you destroy the government,” he said. That fight is still on! * HE sedition charge on which Bim- ba was found guilty grew cut of alleged answers that Bimba is sup- posed to have made to provocative questions asked by interrogators pur- posely placed in the audience in an attempted frame-up. Every Commun- ist speaker is faced with a similar situation. ‘The foreign-born reactiona- ries are always on hand to champion the cause of reaction in the old coun- tries and thus divide the workers in the struggle in this country. The em- ployers could wish nothing better. The shoe bosses realized this in Brockton and subscribed handsome sums in support of the Lithuanian citizens’ club, a nest of Lithuanian reactionaries, organized to fight the Lithuanian Workers’ Literary Society, a nation-wide organization with thou- sands of members and an extensive book publishing business, agg to educate Lithuanian workers in this country. The guilty decision against Bimba on the sedition charge is another in- dication showing that the employers do not intend to lessen one bit the effectiveness of this kind of legisla- tion that exists today in 35 states. The state sedition laws, that came in- to existence immediately following the war, and which even the judge at Brockton admitted were out of date, will continue to be used in in- dustrial disputes against the spokes- men of labor, These laws have been declared con- —— in the Gitlow case in New Law Defends God, Christ a and Ghost Statute of of 1697 Under Which Bimba Was Prosecuted ~ ie adeimpstcig willfully blasphemes the holy name of god by deny- ing, cursing or contumeliously re- proaching god, his creation, gov- ernment or final judging of the world, or by cursing or contumeli- ously reproaching Jesus Christ or the holy ghost, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching or ex- posing to contempt and ridicule the holy work of god, contained ‘inthe holy scriptures, shall. be punished by imprisonment in jail for not more than one year, or by a fine of not more than $300 and may also be bound to good behavior.” ; York, in the Whitney case in Call- fornia, and in several other instances, while the Ruthenberg case, in Michi- gan, is now on appeal to the United States supreme court The industrial czardom in Massachusetts is glad to use the Bimba case to have its sedt tion law also declared constitutional. Bimba’s lawyers have taken an ap; peal, The guilty verdict will be fought out in the higher courts, Labor in Massachusetts and thruout New Eng- land can and must be aroused to the danger of this insidious attack against them by their class enemies. The employers triumphed in the decisions of their capitalist court at Brockton, The workers must struggle, thru unity and intelligent action, to overturn those decisions,