The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 24, 1926, Page 7

Supine of THE DAILY WORKER. Second Section: é REAT strikes, involving tens of thousands of workers, are shak- SATURDAY, JULY 24, 1926 T last the slaves of the New York traction magnates, the Interbors | ing the economic system of the United] Rapid Transit, have lost patience and States. This would prove once more| went out on strike. Not even the com- that “prosperity” under the present|/pany union, which was installing by order is decidedly a one-sided affair. The capitalists prosper, to be sure, but the working masses get more ex- Ploitation. Six months of bitter struggle is the up-to-date experience of the textile workers in Passaic, New Jersey. Thousands of men, women and chil- dren—woefully underpaid, overwork- ed, persecuted and mistreated in every way—went on strike six months ago to resist a wage cut from a wage which was already much below the subsistence level. They fought brave- ly. Tiey underwent tremendous sac- ~rifices. But they cannot lose. They must not lose. They will continue to fight until they win. : *_ * @ RTY THOUSAND New York cloakmakers are putting up a bril- liant fight against being forced back into the “sweat shop.” They have * been on strike only two weeks but the power of their discipline and organiza- | tion already received a splendid dem- | onstration. One of the chief demands | in their struggle—S8-hour day and a §-day week—is of tremendous impor- tance to the American labor move- ment. the_Interboro for the express purpose of keeping the workers from forming a real union, could prevent the men trom revolting against their brutal exploiters. It is a bitter and difficult By Wm. Gropper. The Government Stands by the Bosses. ALEX. BITTBLMAN, Editor. This Magazine Section Appears Every Saturday in The DAILY WORKER. struggle that these strikers are em gaged in, and because of that it must be fought to a finish and won. > . a HE coal mines of West Virginia are again on the strike map. The miners of Scott’s Run are putting up a game fight. They are struggling for the right to be organized. The success of their fight would achieve the un- ionization of 40,000 miners in the Fairmont district of Northern West Virginia. This would mean a tre mendous step forward in sotving the. critical situation of the United Mine Workers Union which is the backbone of the American labor movement. ae ee APITAL is fairly well united“ against the workers in all these struggles. The unity of the workers is still far from what it ought to be. Capital is making full use of the police, the courts the military and the whole oppressive machinery of the local and federal government. But the workers are still playing the politics of their enemies. A strong union is an absolute ne cessity and so is an independent po litical party of the workers. The workers must win their strikes and enriched by the experiences of their struggles they must proceed to build their own political party. What Is Wrong With France? Yi ei BRIAND. cua is something fundamentally wrong with the present situation tm France. And it Is not the financial crisis alone. The latter is only a re- flection of a deeper and much more basic crisis. It is the crisis of the French capitalist system which is fast approaching a revolutionary situation. France of today is not the France of pre-war days. It ls now more of an industrial country than it ever ba It has more and larger factories. greater unskilled and poorly ae working class employed in heavy in- dustry. Highly concentrated trusts and corporations controlled by large bankers, Agriculture and small busi- ness have been relegated to the back- ground since the war. Tremendously heightened industrial technique has taken away from the skilled worker the economic privilege of his skill. What does it all mean? It means this: Before the war France was the ideal home of small business, urban and rural. Now France has become the ideal home of big business. Be- fore the war politics in France was dominated to a large degree by the so-called democracy, the medium and small bourgeoisie of the cities and vil- lages. Now big agrarian, commercial, industrial and finance capital is the dictator in French poltics notwith- standing the fact that the medium and small bourgeoisie still retain a ma jority im the parliamentary institu. tions of the country. The intense political struggle in France, which is accompanied by change of governments nearly every day, reflects this fact: That big capi- tal is making the last determined ef- forts to break up the political influ- ence of the medium and petty bour- geoisie (represented by the Bloc de Gauches, led by Herriot) and to estab- lish its dictatorial powers in the gov- ernment as it is already established in industry, commerce and finance. o> ore NFLATION also has played its role in the present crisis. Due to in- flation, the petty bourgeoisie and the peasants have lost about five-sixth of their capital. The sum would amount to about 100,000,000,000 francs, which is one-third of the na- tional wealth of France. Ten million people have suffered as a result of inflation, of whom nearly five million have been completely ruined, In this France has repeated the ex- perience of Germany. The capital lost by the peasants and small business people was taken hold of by the bank- ers to buy up real property and to strengthen their control upon the eco- nomic life of France. 6:8 8 HE present financial crisis is a se rious one, and may lead to the de- velopment of a revolutionary situation The government must balance its MARCEL CACHIN, Communist Leader. budget. But who is to pay to make it possible? Big capital, whom the BriandCafllaux ministry was trying to accommodate to a certain degree, wants to impose heavier taxes upon the small business men, the peasants and the workers. But the latter, quite naturally, would not agree to that. The state treasur yis facing bank- ruptcy because it cannot meet its obll- gations on the short-term internal loans which amount in the aggregate to about sixty billion francs. To re pudiate these loans would mean revyo- lution, P (Continued on page 2)