The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 3, 1926, Page 5

Win a Book This Week! For the best Worker Correspondent story sent in this week to appear In the issue of Friday, July 9, these book prizes are offered: B Rape iit ong Russia,” by Leon Trotsky. The last book by a brilliant writer on Soviet Rus- la. b ASR he Awakening of China,” by Jas. H. Dolsen. If you don’t or do own it—be sure to try for this real prize. Red Cartoons, offered for the first time as a prize for worker || correspondence and a joyous book every worker should own. | WIN A BOOK THIS WEEK! PHILADELPHIA POCKETBOOK WORKERS STRIKE Demand Recognition of Union By a Worker Correspondent. PHILADELPHIA, July 1. — The Pocket-book Workers’ Union of Phile- delphia is conducting an intense or- ganization drive in an attempt to unionize the leather goods workers. The leather goods workers here, most of whom are young workers, are forced to work 48 to 49 hours a week at miserable pay. The average wage of the operator is from $9 to $12 a week. A cutter receives from $15 to 25 a week and a framer from $15 to $30. In its drive to organize the industry the union has called a number of meet- ings of various shops. Among these shops was Sugber and Co., 1307 Mark- et street. Workers Walk Out. At a meeting of the workers of this shop one of the men expressed him- self in favor of forming a union. The next day he was fired. The men then went on strike demanding ‘his rein- statement. The girls also held a meet- ing. Four of them were fired for favor- ing a union, The girls walked out on strike, There are 75 workers employ- ed in the shop, 56 of these workers are striking. Nineteen or twenty are still in the shop scabbing. An effort is being made by the strikers and the union to pull out the remaining work- ers. Recognition of Union, The workers that have walked out are determined to carry on their fight against the bosses and have presented the following demands. . 1. Recognition of the union. 2. 100% union shop. 3. 44-Hour week. 4. Higher wages. The police are aiding the bosses in an attempt to break the strike by jailing the pickets. Four pickets have been arrested so far. A- picket line is maintained in the morning and in the afternoon, , Seek to Break Strike. ( The bosses have made a number of attempts to get the workers to go back to work. The bosses offered the strikers higher wages if they will give up the union, The workers are de- sermined to carry on the fight. Phila- delphia labor unions are getting be- hind the pocket-book workers, DIRECTIONS—Take Woodwar or Troy Bus to 13 Mile Rd, and” Mile Rd., Starr Stop, Then BELMONT 91810 ul Fee La Detroit Joint Picnic Workers (Communist) Party of America and the Young Workers MONDAY, JULY 5th, 1926) JAMES P, CANNON pe iperak ry Bef as ta of 1776 DANCING—GAMES—REFR Take Rochester, Oxford, City or Romeo Local Cars to 13 , west a distance of about 4 blocks. Automobiles—Go out Woodward to Main St. Royal along Main St. to 18 Mile Rd., then west a distance of about 4 blocks. ADMISSION 25c-—-——--COME EARLY JENSEN & BERGSTROM TAILORS SUITS AND OVERCOATS MADE TO ORDER » _ We Clean, Press, Repair and Remodel Ladies and Gents Garments ‘ We Furnish the Union Label 3218 North Avenue, Near Kedzie UNITED WORKERS’ CO-OPERATIVE BUILDING APARTMENT HOUSE TO HELP FREE HOUSEHOLD DRUDGES By GOLDIE CHIBKA, (Worker Correspondent) An example of what co-operation and unity can do for the workers is shown by the United Workers’ Co-operative that is now building, in New York City, one of the largest co-operative apartment houses in the world. The chief aim of this co-operative is not only to give the workers a bet- ter apartment for less rent, but to free the wives of the workers from domestic slavery, Most working wom-¢————______ en are unable.to serve the labor move- ment and live a social life after they are married, They become entirely absorbed by their individual house- holds, which is exhausting and monot- onous, Their world is then so petty and narrow that they also become narrow-minded. They cease to under- stand the workers’ class struggle, even tho they have previously been active and militant in the labor move- ment. To Check Domestic Drudgery. The United Workers’ Co-operative is establishing in its new apartment house a nursery and kindergarten for the children; and a collective restau- rant for the co-operators. The wom- en working in shops and factories will have the possibility of enjoying their spare hours in recreation and education. They will also be able to fill the ranks of the workers as equal comrades with the men in their daily struggle against their common enemy. the capitalist class. This co-operative building, which will be completed in October, 1926, is being erected opposite the Botani- cal Garden, Bronx Park. It is being built under the auspices of the United Workers’ Co-operative. It will be oc- cupied by 350 families of wage earn- ers only. Members of the co-operative must belong to a union, if there is a union in their trade, Rents to Go Down! The apartments in this house are built according to the last word in architecture. Every room will have a maximum of sunshine and air. Every apartment will be provided with the latest improvements, The rooms will be very large. Besides this, there will be many collective establish- ments such as a library, a music room, an auditorium, a gymnasium and a swimming pool for summer and winter. The price of the rooms with all these conveniences ds $12 to $13 a Toom, and rent will be gradually re- duced. The United Workers’ Co-operative will soon build two other houses, next to this house, on the same basis and create a real workers’ co-operative colony of about 1000 working class families. The co-operative plans to establish many co-operative stores which will provide the co-operators with all necessities. There will also be a dentist and medical aid on a co- operative basis; and a theater and motion picture house of their own is also planned. Real Co-operative, The United Workers’ Co-operative is fighting against the exploitation of the workers on the consuming field just as the unions are fighting on the producing field, and it deserves to be considered as an important fighting front of the workers’ general strug- gle. . ‘This organization works very ener- getically and ig gaining great influ- ence among the workers in New York. It is the same organization that con- ducts the popular workers’ camp, “Camp Nitgedeiget,” an institution of which all class-conscious workers are proud. LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS’ JOURNAL RAPS FASCIST RAVINGS OF RALPH EASLEY AGAINST PASSAIC STRIKERS The Locomotive. Engineers Journal for June in an editorial rips the false mask of friendship for labor off the face of Ralph Easley, and shows him up for the bosses’ tool he ‘really is. The editorial follows: Fake Friend of Labor. “The last nail in Easley’s coffin as a fake ‘friend of labor’ has just been driven by himself. tial—Not To Be Published’ letters he recently sent to Mr. Ivy L. Lee (some- times called ‘Poison Ivy’ because of the astute anti-union propaganda he has ably turned out for such big Openshop employers as the Steel Trust and Standard Oil), Easley wan- tonly slanders the noble men and wo- men who are leading the heroic Pas- saic textile strikers to victory. After calling these leaders Communists (many of them are no more Commu- nists than is the man in the moon), Easley adds this vile falsehood: ‘These Reds are mot after higher wages and better conditions, but they want to take over the factories in regular Moscow style.’ Strike to Better Conditions, “The editor of this Journal chanced to be asked to help these Passaic strikers when they presented their case to members of the United States senate and to the secretary of labor. He heard them tell of starvation wages ($12 to $16 a week for night work in civilized America), inhuman treatment by their employers, the de- nial of their constitutional rights, and tuthless attacks on ‘their peaceful meetings by violent policemen—an in- dustrial situation so rotten that Hon- orable Frank P. Walsh, former chair- man of the National Industrial Board, denounced it as the worst he had ever Class” 1 8t,,.oF Oak, then ~~ CHICAGO, ILLINOIS In the ‘Confiden-! Sse heard of in all his experience. Yet these long-suffering textile strikers committed no act of violence, were ‘ready and willing to negotiate with | their employers, and agreed with the ‘secretary of labor to go back to work immediately if their bosses would {agree with their union to pay them a living wage, Raps Fascist Ravings. “I personally heard the alleged ‘Communist’ leader of these strikes—a Harvard University student who has organized them, gone to jail for them, refuses to accept more than $15 a week as head of their union—pledge the strikers to accept these reason- able terms. And yet this man Hasley, in his letter to Ivy Lee, dated April 1, 1926, regrets that We have no Mus- solini over here to deal with people like these Passaic strike leaders, since ‘under our form of government, if we once let them in, we could not shoot them at sight nor beat them up as they might deserve nor even feed them castor il.” Denounces Easley. “I do not question Mr, Easley’s right to hold such brutal anti-labor opinions if he wants to. I believe in the sanctity of the Dill of rights in the American constitution, even if Mr. Easley does not, and I want him to have the freedom of speech which he would deny to others. But I do say that any man who stains his lips with such slimy slanders of a group of starving workers striking for a living wage as those uttered by this man Easley is no longer fit for the friend- ship of even the distant respect of those who are fighting the battles of labor.” Form International of Actors; Soviet Artists on Outside NEW YORK, July 1. —(FP)—<Actors Equity Association has received word trom’ Berlin that its president, John Emerson, was elected an executive committee member of the new Actors International, Gustave Rickelt, presi- dent German Actors Alliance, is Inter- national president; Andre Allard of Paris, vice-president ;and Adolf Bisler of Vienna, general secretary, Vienna will be the headquarters, The Russian actors remained out- side the new union after President Juvenal Slavinski of the All-Russian Artists Union declared that they could not join an organization in which theater directors were members. Wisconsin Bathing Fatality. RHINELANDER, Wis., July 1. — Helen Rychlock, 10-year old, drowned i THE DAILY WORKER me ee Death—the High Price Taxi Driver 22,500 Feople Were Killed Last Year in Auto Accidents. CENTRALIA, ILL,, MOULDERS’ UNION FIGHTS CHAMBER Labor Unites Against Chamber of Commerce CENTRALIA, Ill, July 1—(FP) — Three months of struggle against the anti-union chamber of commerce in Centralia finds the Molders’ union, backed by the, Centralia Trades and Labor Assembly in militant mood. Since March 29 the St. Clair Foundry Co. has tried to operate non- union. For 25 years before that it had been an honorable union concern in Belleville, I]. When it moved to Centralia the local chamber of com- merce saw a chance to attack the un- ion lineup in the city and it instigated the chief of police to proceed against the union molders. Police Terror. The company refused to employ its regular men pnless they tore up their union cards, Union pickets were kid- naped and dumped out of town by the police, A preacher named Fannon, who heads the chamber of commerce, denounced organized labor and sup- ported the foundry company, NowBeing Licked. But the pickets returned. The in- ternational union \paid strike benefits and gradually the merchants and other |members of the chamber of commerce are finding that they made a mistake in declaring war on their best cus- tomers, the organized, high-paid work- ers of Centralia. The police charges against the pickets were dismissed by the court. The molders are confident of reestablishing the St. Clair com- pany as a union shop. Every Worker Correspondent must be a subscriber to the American Worker Correspondent. Are you one? Since the unexplained calling off of the general strike there has been con- siderable friction between them, In fact before Baldwin introduced his legislation there was danger of a cli- max very damaging to trade union- ism. After the reconciliation in trade un- fon ranks Secy. Cook of the miners said that if the government would withdraw the pill legalizing the long- er workday and would agree to open the mines at prestrike terms the min- ers would co-operate in an immediate settlement of the wage question. Baldwin's Proposals. Baldwin's proposals were (1) that hours be increased to 2 (which means at least 8% in the mine according to the coal commission); (2) that until September there be no wage reduction in districts turning out half the output and in other districts re- ductions of 10% or less; (3) that after September wages depend on the pro- fits of the industry with a minimum not less than 20% above the 1914 rate, The cost of living is more than 70% above 1914, What About Intervention? Contributions to the miners from Russian unions, amount to more than $1,839,000, ing to home secre- tary Joynson-Hicks June 17. This huge sum is the voluntary contribu- tion of Russian workers. The attack COMPANY UNION BOOSTER FLAYED BY ROBERT DUNN Ripley Retreats from Cross Examination FOREST PARK, Pa. — General Electric’s newer defenses of capital- ism didn’t stand the strain of, trade union questioning directed against them by the League for Industrial Democracy summer conference, parti- cipants in the discussion on “Newer Defenses of Capitalism in America” asserted after the battle was over. Cc. M. Ripley, publicist for the big electric corporation plant at Schen- ectady, had to take refuge in a repeti- tion of, “I’m not the general manager,” when questions by Robert W. Dunn and others came too fast and straight from the shoulder. Dunn spoke on company unions at the session entitled “Changing Tactics of Employers Toward Workers.” Ord- way Tead of the New York School of Social Work and Ripley participated in this conference session. Ripley re- ferred delegates to the reprint from the Survey of Robert Bruere’s article on the General Electric’s company union’ Ripley tried to impress the group with his employer's tolerance in permitting American Federation of La- bor president William Green to broad- cast over WEAF, the company’s radio station, When Dunn asked whether the com- pany would tolerate a trade union “agitator” among its company union- ists, Ripley balked. The same happen- ed when he was asked if the company union paper would print any article written by a bona fide trade unionist on the workers’ problems. Questions which showed holes in the company union from the view of the worker were completely dodged by the com- pany agent. ATTACK ON ALL BRITISH UNIONS BEGINS WITH FIGHT ON MINERS; ALL LABOR RALLIES TO SUPPORT By LELAND OLS, Federated Press. The aim of the British government and the mine owners is to break up the Miners’ Federation as the first blow to smash trade unionism. That, according to Lansbury’s Labor Weekly, is the only explanation of prime minister Baldwin’s speech proposing to suspend for 5 years the legal gnhar- antee of the short workday in the mines, that the suggestion came from the coal owners. The proposal brought the general council of the British Trades Union congress and the miners’ executive once again into a united front against the government and the mine owners4———_____________. In this speech Baldwin admitted on Soviet Russia by the British gov- ernment for allowing this gift is shown up by the London Daily Herald. Even if the Russian government had itself sent the money, says the Herald, “that would not be a hun- dredth part as bad as the support giv- en by a British government of which Mr. Baldwin and Lord Birkenhead were members to Kolchak, Denikin, and other revolutionaries in Russia. A hundred million pounds ($486,000,000) was the worth of that support, The idea that the Russian trade unions con- tributing means that British labor is taking orders from Moscow is dismiss- ed as ridiculous. “What does exist in the movement,” says the Herald, ‘is a feeling that there ought to be comradeship among workers everywhere, that their inter- ests are the same everywhere—and that barriers of nationality and creed —aye and of race and color—ought to be thrown down.” To Dry Up Great Lakes, Naval recruiting authorities for the Chicago district. said a national cam- paign will be launched tomorrow for 1,400 men for coast guard service, to man the new “mosquito” type of cut- ers, several of which arrived today at juffalo, «i Page Five = Siting, A hEW NOVEL Uploa Sinclair re (Copyright, 1926, by Upton Sinclair) WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE, J. Arnold Ross, oli operator, formerly Jim Ross, teamster, drives with hie thirteen-year-old son, Bunny, to Beach City to sign a lease for a new oil field. ting his ‘Lease Hound,” Ben Skutt, in a hotel he goes to meet a group of 1 erty owners whose land he wants for drilling. But other oil concerns Intriguing and the meeting breaks up in a row. Bunny meet Paul jon of a Holy Roller, who has run away from home. They become di it Paul leaves for other parts before their acquaintance is very old. Dad begins to drill in Prospect Hill ni Beach City. He needs the roade fixed and smooths the paim of a city official. In short order his first well, “Ross- kside No. 1,” is begun. Dad spends busy days in his little office and Bunny is always with him—jearning about oil. Bertie, Bunny’s sister, comes home from finishing school on a vacation. She is very snobbish. Her Aunt Emma has been trying to make a lady of her. Bunny tells Bertie about Paul, doesn’t like Bunny to know such “Horrid Fellows.” They meet Mrs, Groarty, Paul's aunt, whose land hag been taken over much to her sorrow by question- able oll promoters, Bertle e e e e VI Scattered here and there over the hill were derricks and drilling crews were racing to be the first to tap the precious treas- ure. By day you saw white puffs from the steam-engines, and by night you saw lights gleaming on the derricks. and day and night you heard the sound of heavy machinery turning, turning— “ump-um—ump-um—ump-um—ur@p-um.” The newspapers re- ported the results, and a hundred thousand speculators and would-be speculators read the reports, and got into their cars and rode out to the field where the syndicates had their tents, or thronged the board-rooms in town, where prices were chalked up on blackboards, and “units” were sold to people who would not know an oil-derrick from a “chute the chutes.” Who do you think stood first in the newspaper reports? You would need to make but one guess—Ross-Bankside No. 1. Dad was right there, day and night, encouraging them, scolding them if need be—and so Dad had not had a single accident, he had not lost a day or night. The well was down to thirty-two hundred feet, and in the first stratum of oil-sand. They were using an eight-inch bit, and for some time they had been taking a core. Dad was strenuous about core-drilling; he insisted that you must know every inch of the hole, and he would tell stories of men who had drilled through paying oil-sands and never knew it. So the drill brought up a cylinder of rock, exactly like the core you would take out of an apple; and Bunny learned to tell shale from sandstone, and conglomerate from either. He learned to measure the tilt of the strata, and what that told the geologist about the shape of things down below, and the probable direction of the anticline. When there were traces of oil, there had to be chemical analyses, and he learned to interpret these reports. Every oil-pool in the world was different —each one a riddle, with colossal prizes for the men who could guess it! Dad guessed that he was right over the pool, and so he had ordered his “tankage.” There was going to be a rush for this, as for everything else, and Dad had the cash—and still more important, the reputation for having the cash. He would get his “tankage” onto the lease, and if he were disappointed in his hopes for oil—well, somebody else would get it, and they would be glad to take the “tankage” off his hands. So there came a stream of heavy trucks, and stacked up on the field were flat sheets of steel, and curved sheets, all fitting exactly. You may be sure the buyers of “units” did not fail to make note of that! They were hanging round the derrick day and night, trying to pick up hints; they followed the men to their homes, and tried to bribe them, or to get into conversation with their wives. As for Bunny, he was about the most popular boy in Beach City; it was wonderful how many kind gentlemen, and even kind ladies there were, anxious to buy him ice-cream, or to feed him out of boxes of candy! Dad forbade him to say a word to strangers, or to have anything to do with them; and presently Dad banned discussions at the family table—because Aunt Bmma was chattering in the ladies’ clubs, and the ladies were telling their husbands, besides gambling ‘on their own!” The core showed more signs, and Dad gave orders to build the foundations of the tanks; then he ordered the tanks put up, and the clatter of riveting machines was heard, and magically there rose three ten thousands barrel tanks, newly painted with flaming red lead. And then—hush!—they were in the real oil- sands; Dad set a crew of Mexicans to digging him a trench fora pipe line; ang the lease-hounds and the dealers in units discovered that, and the town went wild. In the middle of the night Dad was routed out of bed, and he called Bunny, and they jumped into their old clothes and went racing out to the well, and there were the first signs of the pressure, the mud was beginning to jump and bubble in the hole! The drilling had stopped, and the men were hastily screwing on the big “casing-head” that Dad had provided. He wasn’t satisfied even with that—he set them to fastening heavy lugs to the head, and he hustled up a couple of cement men and built great blocks of cement over the lugs, to hold her down in spite of any pressure. There wasn’t going to be a blow-out on Ross-Bankside No. 1, you bet; whatever oil came through that hole was going into the tanks, and from there to Dad’s bank account! It was time for the “cementing-off,” to make the well water- proof, and protect the precious oil-sands. Down there under the ground was a pool of oil, caught under a layer of impermeable rock, exactly like an inverted wash-bashin. The oil was full of gas, which made the pressure. Now you had drilled a hole through the wash-basin, and the oil and gas would come to you —but only on condition that you did not let any surface water down to kill the pressure. All the way down you had been tap- ping underground streams and pools of water; and now you had to set a big block of cement at the bottom of the hole, solid and tight, filling every crevice, both inside and outside your casing. Having got this tight, you would drill a hole through it, and on down into the oil sands, thus making a channel through which the oil could flow up, and no water could leak down. This was the critical part of your operation, and while it was going on the whole crew was keyed up, and the owner and his son, needless to say. First you put down your casing, known as the “water-string.” If you were a careful man, like Dad, you ran this “string” all the way up to your derrick-floor. Next you began pumping down clean water; for many hours you pumped, until you had washed the dirt and oil out of the hole; and then you were ready for the cement-men. They came with a truck, a complete outfit on wheels, ready to travel to any well. Another truck brought the sacks of cement, a couple of hundred of them; the job called for pure cement, no sand. They got everything ready before they started) and then they worked like so many fiends—for this whole job had to be put through in less than an hour, before the cement began to set. (To be continued.)