The Daily Worker Newspaper, June 26, 1926, Page 13

i | i 5 a & + Py & : ’ By MAX SHACHTMAN E campaign for the expropriation of the German princes was the first mass movement of the German prole- tariat since its sharp defeat when Von Hindenberg was elected the president of the republic. It was the diéarest mobilization of the people, under the hegemony of workers, against monarchism since the general strike to defeat the Kapp “putsch.” And when it is considered that against the attempt to rally the neces- sary 19,500,000 votes were powerfully arrayed all the forces of reaction, the monarchists, fascisti, nationalists, clericals, democrats, and that the campaign was from the beginning sys- tematically sabotaged by the social democratic and trade union bureau- cracy—to such a point that the tasks of leadership, direction and mobiliza- tion fell almost exclusively to the Communists, it can be said that the 16,000,000 votes that were finally cast for the uncompensated expropriation of the wealth of the members of the former royal houses of the empire were the expression of a big victory for the German working class, a vic- tory for tie united front and action of the workers, a victory which is re- sulting in the strengthening of the revolutionary consciousness and faith of the German proletariat, in the spreading of the hegemony of the workers over broader sections of the people, and in the growth of the strength and influence of the German Communist Party. Communist Initiative. y gem proposals for the expropriation of the princes was drawn up jointly by Thaolmann, of the Communist Party. Wels, of the Social-Democracy and Professor Kuczynski of the Com- mittee for the Expropriation of the princes. The campaign was the re- sult of the initiative of the Commu- nists, who had introduced, in 1925, a ~ proposal for adoption in the reichstag. The law was to provide for the ex- propriation, without any compensa- tion, of all the wealth of the princes who ruled in any of the states of Germaay up to the time of the revo- lution Of 1918, their royal mansions and palaces, the properties of their families; and this wealth was to be used for the welfare of the unem- ployed, the victims of the world war, the small farmers, tenant farmers and The Fight to ae opriate the Princes peasants, and the sufferers from the period of inflation, Popular Issue. f ieroes tissue was a popular one. Hun- dreds of thousands of unemployed workers, and their number increasing daily; a million and a half war crip- ples, half a million of whom received absolutely nothing from the govern- ment, and others of whom received the pittance of two marks a day only of they were not even any longer able to lie in the streets and beg; hun- dreds of thousands of war widows and orphans, living in abject misery; em- ployes and small middle class ele- ments; thousands upon thousands of poverty-stricken peasants and land renters; all of these hailed the pro- posal to take from the robber princes their wealth which amounted to more than three billion gold marks. The movement for expropriation grew like a prairie fire. The execu- tive committee of the Social Demo cratic party, which at first declined to join with the united committee, was forced finally to enter the joint action because of the tremendous pressure exerted by the rank and file. In at least one section of Germany, Cologne, the Christian Social party which split from the reactionary Catholic Centrum party joined the united committee for expropriation. The mass pressure was 80 great that the leader of the very conservative Christian Social party, Vitus Heller, wrote in the Catholic journal “Das Neue Folk,” an appeal for all good Christians to rally to the vote on June 21st for the expropriation. Fascist Opposition, S the movement grew in momen- tum and power, the reactionaries mobilized themselves for the defeat of the proposed law. Menacing parades of fascisti, threats by the nationalists and monarchists, strengthening of the monarchist reactionary troops, god-in- spired sermons in the churches, Stahlhelm, and inspired warnings by ¢ paid agents of ex-kaiser Wilhelm, that if the bill. was made law inflation would ensue—were the methods used by the reaction to bring on defeat. Stressemann made veiled threats of a dictatorship if actual expropriation were attempted, and declared thatno government would ever carry out the law. Chancellor Marx, to stave off new elections to the reichstag which Copper Is God - hapecs oy is god in Montana: it is worshipped, revered and feared; to ignore it is sacrilege, to attack it is blasphemy. Montana is the holy dominion of this copper god; Butte is his central sanctum; Ryan is his high priest among them. The greatest copper company on earth is The Anaconda company. Ana- the copper interests? We al make our living out of it. It has made Butte what it is, Say what you please All the preachers are ministers of the copper gospel. I tackled a catholic est, and he defended it; I chalien- & methodist minister, and he was it, There are less than 250 Negroes Butte but their prerchers are from this god, I do not think that Butte preachers are promising golden crowns in their heaven, but copper crowns, and copper slippers to walk the copper streets of a capprous future world. All the faithful saints shout for copper. At a dinner the visitor said something uncompliment- who heard it, was later overheard say- ing in_an excited whisper to others: “O my god, if that man speaks at the Rotary Club tomorrow, he will ruin all of us; he’s against the company!” I came into Butte from Great Falls. As you approach Butte, your train is on the mountain top and Butte is in a deep valley below you fike a pit in- stead of the abode of a god—a big hole in the ground, with a lot of lesser holes (called mines) in the bottom of this big hole. Butte is pronounced ex- actly like the first syllable of the word beauty, but that is all in the world that Butte has to do with beauty. Down into one of the greatest mines we went, in a big iron bucket that carried us with the speed of a falling meteor, twenty-two stories of mine- levels down, down, down, down—each level representing one hundred feet or more. Some mines are being worked thirty-eight levels down, almost a per- pendicular mile! Down there one could see the sub- terranean business of this god. Onc became even more suspicious of a deity with so much underground work: tunnels, avenues, caves, rolling cars, vast machinery, and his thous- and workmen, looking like grotesque demons in the flickering lights of their miners’ lamps, their faces darkened by copper, thelr paws cracked wide by the biting capprous acid. In the main rooms and avenues there are electric lights, and the underground cars are propelled by electric power, some from ary of the great copper trust, pic- turing it more as a dragon than as a sacred god, and one of the “sisters” storage batteries and some on would result from a victory for the workers, proposed a compromise law, which would have saved all for the princes. A secret circular of the German Volkspartei in which Marx’s cOmpro- mise proposal was exposed as a swin- dle which the reactionaries were urg- ed to support, and the warning given that if the expropriation law was put into effect it would result in the dis- solution of the reichstag and the dic- tatorship of Hindenburg. The Hindenburg Letter. “private” letter -of Von Hinden- burg was published in the black press, urging against the expropria- tion proposal. Hundreds of thousands of marks were supplied to paid agents by the princely houses for the de- feat of the referendum. Personal journalistic prostitutes for Wilhelm Von Hohenzollern, Van Amstel, Kirk Van Der Gracht, and others, secured “interviews” from “prominent per-” sons” outside of Germany in which lies mingled with threats of collapse were spread everywhere in an effort to discourage support to the referen- dum, And the social democrats? The shameless sabotage of the leadership was in disgusting contrast to the splendid support given the referen- dum by the rank and file in the fac- tories, which joined everywhere with the Communists in united factory committees. Solidarity in the ranks, in the sorely-torn labor movement of Germany, was magnificent. For the first time in years, soldiers of the reichsbanner, social democratic repub- lican troops, marched side by side with the revolutionary workers in the Roter Frontkampferbund (Red Front Fighters). Social-Democratic Sabotage. OT, however, the bureaucracy. In the midst of the campaign, the of- ficial organ of the social democracy, the Vorwaerts, launched a vicious series: of attacks onthe Communists, attacks which were reprinted widely even in the so-called “left” social- democratic papers. The sabotage went so far that the Vorwaerts failed to print the appeal of the reichsban- ner, its own organization, in which its membership was urged to rally to the polls. Treachery and the brand of Cain is ineradicable from the brazen foreheads of the social-democratic By William Pickens wires. Those who live in the upper world never have dreamed what a vast world of life and action there is in the subterranean chambers of the copper god. They get the precious copper not only from the ore, or “copper glass,” but also from the acid water that is pumped out of this underworld. This water contains much copper in acid solution; it is pumped up by relay pumps from miles underground and is poured out into vast earthen vats. And how do they get the copper out of the acid solution of this devil's water? They simply throw into it tin cans, iron car wheels, worn-out machinery, scrap iron, “tin Lizzies,” any old metal things, and the acid of the water seizes this metal and the copper is “precipitated, deposited. For a pound of tin cans, the god gets a pound of copper; or for one hundred pounds of old railroad rails, a hundred pounds of copper. It will eat up an iron rail in a Tew hours precipitating copper in its stead. The acid has a greater “af- finity” for iron than for copper, it likes fron better, therefore as soon as iron comes into touch with it, the acid drops the copper out of its mouth, so to speak, and seizes the iron instead. To the untaught devotee it looks as it the “holy water” of this god liter ally turns these baser metals into pre- cious copper. Such are the “miracles” of this mighty copper god! This acid water is the symbol of the whole copper bus'ness: it turns everything else to copper, all it touches turns to copper, politics, busi- ness, religion, and the souls of men. In the Montana mind copper can do no wrong. leaders. Not even the shocking affair, in which the French socialist leader, Paul Boncourt defended the claims of a royal German princess in court, in the midst of the expropriation cam- paign, aroused the condemnation of the social-democracy of Germany or France or of the Second International, Still 15,000,000 workers and peas- ants and small owners voted to ex- propriate the princes, The vote against it was negligible, but by the technicalities of German democratic laws, the referendum was defeated. It was necessary for practically 20,000,000 voters to cast ballots in the referendum, no matter what the aye or nay vote might be. Pyrrean Victory. HE victory of reaction in the de- feat of the referendum % the vic- tory of Pyrrhus: another such “vic- tory” and they are lost, For the forces of revolution which are gain- ing new sinews and power and regain- ing the ground lost to it by social- democratic treason and its own er- rors, the great movement for the expropriation of the princes is a yic- tory. New thousands of workers followed the leadership of the Communist Party. The decisive sections of the working class, in the decisive centers, are moving towards the party of revo- lution. And as certain as is the de- cay of the German bourgeoisie so cer tain is the approach also of the de- cisive moment, JUNE ISSUE OF THE “AMERICAN WORKER CORRESPONDERT” OUT Pes miners are specially urged to become worker correspond- ents for The DAILY WORKER in an appeal by Alex-Reid, former sec- , Petary of the Progressive :Miners’. Committee, in the June Issue of the American Worker Correspondent, now off the press. This article is the first of a series to be published in the correspond- ents’ own magazine, each one to deal with a separate industry. They will take up the opportunities for developing working class writers in the railroads, in the steei mills, In the metal as well as the coal mines, in the textile and clothing trades, the automobile industry, the rubber industry and everywhere that labor toils, The June issue shows a coal miner writer on its front page. The sketch is drawn by Fred Ellis, Reid tells the coal miners that, “it Is their duty to write for The DAILY WORKER as often as they possibly can.” Other articles in this issue are by Alex Bittleman, telling about “writers in the Soviet Union"; J. Louis Engdahl, who writes about the relations between the American Worker Correspondent and The DAILY WORKER; M. A. Stolar, on “What Is News?”; Max Shachtman, on “Worker Correspondents and Sacco and Vanzetti”’; and a review of the activities of the worker con respondents of New York City by Helen Black, Instructor in the Work- er Correspondents Class. There Is also the regular review of news about the worker correspondents In other lands. Special efforts are being made with this Issue to get new sub- scribers and bundle orders, The subscription rate is 50 cents per year, single copies five cents. Bundle orders are three cents per copy. Address ali communications to the American Worker Correspondent, 1113 West Washington Bivd., Chi- cago, Ill,