The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 3, 1926, Page 9

. } Beating Down the Value of | a -_Labor Power in Passaic By H. M. Wicks, | “Capitat cares fothing for the length of fife of labor-power, All that concerns it Is slmply and solely the maximum of labor-power that can be rendered fluent In a work- Ing day. It attains thls end by shortening the extent of the fabor- er’s life, as a greedy farmer snatches Increased produce from the soil by robbing it of Its fertility.”—Kari Marx. VISIT to Passaic, where 16,000 workers have been on strike for ten weeks against the inhuman con- ditions imposed upon them by the mill owners is sufficient to convince anyone of the truth of Marx’s observa- tion. A frightful death rate among the workers in the textile woolen mills tells only part of the story. The United States labor bulletin, which certainly cannot be accused of pre- senting favorable or even unbiased re- ports regarding the condition of the working class in this country is forced to admit that the death rate from tu- derculosis of workers in this indus- try between the ages of 25 to 35 is 41.7 as compared with an average of 30.8 for the whole population, or in other words the death rate is more than onefourth greater than the aver- age for the whole population. Deaths from pneumonia, Bright’s disease and heart disease show a higher percent- age in this industry than in any other. - This appalling mortality rate is due not alone to the long hours in unsani- tary mills, but to the miserably low wages that prohibit the workers from é dwellings in which aay eae, be ere :& . “to*éat “and sléép ‘after they are thru with their drudgery in the ghastly ‘slave pens. Both day and night work is in vogue in the mills for women and chiMren as well as for men and frequently the rooms in which the workers live are so crowded that the beds are always occupied; the day workers sleep in them at night and then when they get up to go to work in the morning the night workers sleep in them in the day time, They are always kept warm and are veritible pest holes for the breed- ing of disease:* The homes of the workers are cold in winter and wretchedly hot in summer, but so meager are their wages even when every member of the family works in the mills that they cannot obtain any- thing other than such pestilent living quarters, Wages Far Below Standard. ANY of the families of strikers are people who strive in every way to keep in a cleanly condition the hovels they inhabit and their efforts toward this end are pitiful because their meager wages prohibit them from achieving desirable results. The spinners and weavers who make up the great bulk of woolen mill op- sratives obtain weekly wages varying from $12 to $22, while the third group of workers, the spoolers, frequently re- ceive wages as low as $9 per week. Of course there are a few skilled workers in every mill doing special work who receive higher wages than this, but they are the exception. Even these miserably low wages which have always prevailed d> not satisfy the inordinate lust for profits of the bosses. A whole series of wage cuts have ensued in the mills and when complaints are made by the workers to the individual bosses they are bluntly told that if their family can- not live on what they receive to bring some of the other members-of their family to the mills and put them to work. And that is what is usually done, in an effort to try to solve the problem of endless slavery and stark poverty. The average wage of the mill work- ers in Passaic is less than half the amount the budgets of the United States department of labor declare is essential for a family to live accord- ing to American standards. The em- ployers’ conception of a living wage is one just sufficient to enable the worker, his wife and the whole famn- ily, to drag ‘around to” the min die work thru the shift without dropping dead in front of the machines. On the faces of the children of the mill towns is indelibly imprinted the mark of slavery; all of them are old before their time. The amazing thing about the Passaic strike is that these work- ers still have vitality enuf to fight on the picket line after spending the bet- ter part of their lives in the mills where their very life blood is distilled into profits for the parasitic Stoehrs and other mill owners who do not even live in Passaic or in the state of New Jersey but who live in the most extravagant surroundings in elegant residences on Park Avenue in New York. Depreciating Labor Power. NDER the economic laws of capi- talist production the value of a man’s labor-power {is determined by the food, clothing and shelter required to enable him to live from day to day and to raise a family so that when he is worn out there will be new labor- power to take his place, As Marx says: “The value of labor-power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the laborer, The labor-power with- drawn from the market by wear and tear and death must be continually replaced by, at the very least, an equal amount of fresh labor-power. Hence the sum of the means of sub- sistence necessary for the produc- tion of labor-power must include the means necessary for the labor- er’s substitutes, that is to say his children, in order that this race of peculiar commodity-owners (own. ers of labor-power) may perpetuate ite appearance in the market.”— Capital, Chapter VI. In Passaic and other textile centers in the United States this is not done. It is not possible for the husband, the head of the family, to make sufficient to enable his dependents to exist. His wife must enter the slave pens in or- ter to supplement the family income. Then, if there are children, she has an additional burden of taking care of them after working hours. As soon as the children are old enuf they also are sacrificed on the altar of greed. And in many instances the combined wage of a family of four or five is not sufficient to cover the value of the la- bor-power of one man working in a normal industry in this country. ., The, effect of fhe low wages preval- ent in the Passaic mills is to beat down the value of labor-power by spreading the value of the man’s la- bor-power over his whole family. This is depreciation of labor-power in its most flagrant form. Furthermore, the wool textile indus- try is, m more ways than one a para- sitic industry. It is parasitic the same as any other industry under cap- italism based upon the exploitation of labor; in that its owmers take from society without rendering any equiva- lent in return. Simply thru the own- ership of the means of production the idle stockholders are enabled to live im idleness off the wealth pro- duced by the workers. This is true of all industries in this capitalist na- tion. But it is parasitic also in the sense that it uses up more labor-power that it Is possible to replace. In plain words, because of the long hours, the miserable conditions of labor, the low wages and the consequent inability of the workers to obtain habitable quarters in which to spend the time they are not in the mill, the workers and their children die off much earlier than in other industries, thereby de- pleting the supply of labor-power, the replacing of which requires a con- stant stream into the mill towns of workers from other parts of the coun- try. Not only is it an ordinary capi- talist parasite, but it ig even a para- site upon the capitalist system itself. However, the capitalist bondholders of other industries will never bother about the parasitism of a part of the capitalist system. They will rather) envy an industry that can beat down) its workers to such a low level and at the same time achieve the feat of securing additional protection from the government in the way of high tariff walls that enables it to sell the product of its slave pens much above the normal market price, as is the case of the woolen industry. A Capitalist Paradise. agrarian and other such towns are, until strikes occur, veritable para- dises for the exploiters of labor. It is of no concern to the blood-suckers who live on Park Avenue and other streets of the nabobs whether their slaves live 30 years or 30 months. If they can squeeze every ounce of vi- tality out of the bodies of their work- ers in a few short years they will do so, knowing always that they can find other slaves, even tho they may have to scour the earth to do so. ¢ Only the working class of the na tion can wipe out such plague spots as Passaic and that can only be done by aggressively encouraging organiza- tion and inciting the workers in these pest holes to struggle against their oppressors. Either the working class of Amer- ica, will conquer Passaic or Passaic conditions will spread to the rest of the country. Labor conditions in the woolen industry constitute a festering ulcer upon the economic life of the country that must be eliminated by the determined application of the elass struggle. The Workers’ “Friend” -- Hon. Wm. Goosepimple By John Bernard. —_ “friends” of labor are limber- ing up for the coming elections. One of the first noon-day meetings of the campaign was held in a down- “Big free demo- working people” repeatedly yelled a circus “spieler” was speaking: “It is with the utmost pleasure that I present to you that stalwart democrat and friend of the working man, our noble fellow towns- man, the Honorable William Goose- pimple,” he announced. Goosepimple, very fat and red of nose, arose and waddled to the speak- er’s stand amid tumultuous applause from the first five rows: “Ladies and gentlemen,” he com- enced, “I am indeed proud to be called a friend of the toiling masses. tion I wish to say that of mongrel hounds who edit the re- publican Daily Standard, the leading republican paper of our fair city, de- liberately and maliciously omitted the letter ‘m’ from the word masses. But my dear friends, this diabolical plot to discredit me im the eyes of the hon- est workers is doomed to certain fail ure, In their frantic efforts to befog the issue this rotten gang of teapot ‘domers’ failed to cite a single in- stance in my entire career in which [ was not found championing the cause of labor.” (Loud cries of “Hur- rah for Goosepimple” from the first five rows). “Who was it, in the bitter cold of last winter, induced the ‘best’ ladies of our fair city to donate their garb- age to our free soup houses? In all modesty, let me answer, it was none other than your old friend Bill Goose- pimple.” (Loud cries of “Rah for Goosie” from first five rows). “Who was it that signed the five- democrats as sponsors of this great movement. It is true that the motley gang of cut-throats from republican headquarters accused us of appointing only democrats to take up the colec- tions at these services, but we hurl back at them the answer; ‘we cer- tainly are not going to trust any re- to do it” (Wild applause five rows). “Beloved friends, if we democrats are put back into office in the coming elections, we pledge ourselves to de- vote our entire time (outside of meal time) to the interests of the workers.” And so on for the next hour and a half, Goosepimple kept piling up pledges to the workers until he had promised them almost everything from earmuffs to country homes, He with i “roasting” them so unmercifully that away to crisps. year agreement ‘with the Ministerial) “te was in the midst of giving away Association to hold noon-day religious] the street railway when one of the meetings in every factory and indus-| most vigorous applauders in the trial plant of our beautiful city?/ third row, motioned for the chairman Friends, the records of the recording}to come down from the platform. ger strike. When the hell do we eat?” he asked angrily as soon as the chair- man was in hearing distance. The chairman hurried back to the plat- form, whispered something to Goose- pimple and then announced that an- other meeting would be held in the same hall the next day. “Come on all you birds” he snapped curtly as he descended the steps from the plat- form. The “workers” who had occu- pied the first five rows followed him, out and into a nearby restaurant. As they crowded into the restaurant such remarks as: “That fathead has a nerve to want us to work overtime, without pay” and “We are ‘fed up’ on Goosepimple, we want some goose- liver,” could be plainly heard. Rather an interesting news item ap- pears in this morning’s issue of’ the Republican Daily Standard. It reads: “The Honorable William Goosepimple has severed his connections with the local democratic organization and has joined the growing ranks of the re- publicans. ‘At last I am aligned with an honorable group of men and wo- _ men who really have the interests of the common people at heart,’ Mr, Goosepimple in an interview last angel bear the names of our leading |“You seem to think we ate on a hun | night.”