The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 21, 1926, Page 9

| | There is a good cheer in a cup of coffee.—Coffee advertisement. By B. D. (Rio de Janeiro). Translated by Harrison George. SHORT time ago the presidential election took place in Brazil. As was expected, the candidate designat- ed by the government, Luis Washing- ton, has been elected. He is a typical representative of the plantation own- ers, the great land holders, and was the old president of the province of Sao Paulo, His friend and prede- cessor, Bernadez, will certainly be con- tent with the result of the election, because he knows that the anti-labor policy which he has followed with so much ardor thruout his own regime will assuredly be continued by his suc- cessor. In accord with the -constitutional rules of the country, the president should have been elected by universal suffrage, but, in reality, there has. been nothing like this at any time, because each president in the exercise of his office is able to select at his pleasure the future candidate for the presi- dency, and to have him elected by a system that assures in advance a com- plete victory for the government authorities, This, and the utterly miserable eco- nomic situation of the working class, show clearly how the authorities abuse the patience of the workers, exploited beyond all measure. There is no ex- aggeration in the statement that the conditions of existence borne by the Brazilian proletariat are comparable } to those of any colonial people, A brief examination of the condi- tions of those native and immigrant workers who toil on the coffee planta- tions is enough to convince anyone of that fact. From dawn till dark these poor slaves, with bending backs, must work the soil; then, their hard day’s work done, must return to their mud hovels thatched with straw, to cook and eat the handful of rice and black peas they get from the proprietor thru the intermediate commissaries that also exploit them, : Frequently at the end°of the month the proprietor, in place of paying the workers money, thanks to this system, claims all their pay for debts. And if, by chance, one of these exploited serfs, tired of existence, utters a re- bellious protest from the depths of his desperation, there intervenes the “capanga,” a kind of black police in the pay of the proprietors, to bring the recalcitrant to “reason” or to send him to a better world, The situation of the workers in in- dustry is not much more enviable. Not taking into account those who work in small towns, where conditions are still worse, and taking as a basis only those of the great cities, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, we see clearly that the level of existence de- termined by the wages, without speak- ing of other circumstances that repre- sent a regime of actual slavery, is well below the cost of living. For example, a weaver or a me- chanic is not able to get more than ten milreis (about $1.60 U. S. money) ; per day. At the same time the hours jof labor are 10 and sometimes 12; and coffee, the principal product of t country, costs no less than five milreis (or 80 cents per kilo—a kilo is two and one-fifth pounds), and other food products are at an equally high price, as also are rents. An objective ex- amination also shows that this con- dition is constantly growing worse. Various struggles have taken place in the past, many times accompanied by heroically fought .strikes by iso- lated groups lead by Spanish or Portu- guese anarchist elements, but these have naturally failed as a result of the methods employed by the anarchists. There has never been a serious movement created with the view of or- ganizing real unions, carried out upon a solid basis that would permit the working class really to defend itself against the attacks of the capitalists. And the government has shown that it knows how to defend itself with savage brutality against desultory an- archist tactics, with prison and de- portation, and by reducing to ashes such workers’ locals as exist. Altho it can-be.geen from the above that, wntil “how, “the boiirgeoisie has easily been able to crush movements of a sporadic character, it will not be thus in the future, when the young but TO A BUILDING UNDER CON- Coffee Plantations in Brazil daring Communist Party of Brazil will be in condition, despite all its obsta- cles, to create solid positions for itself among the masses. Already the toil- ing masses of Brazil are beginning to give evidence of much sympathy to- ward the Communist Party, A ‘Rah-Rah’ Boy Raises a Kick. By SI. W. GERSON. TO A HISTORY PROFESSOR. Thou are plucked—a withering fruit Off Reaction’s crooked tree; And thou wouldst thine bitterness | Unhoneyed pass on to me. The eastern glow thou never saw; Thine mind—twisted like a man upon the rack— Hath never felt rebellion’s fire And yet—thou dares to hold thy chil- dren back. STRUCTION, Thy steel frame and they gray wall Bloom imbibe; a class enthrall, O, stone against a flimsy sky, Thou art built by men on high—~ Men who labor night and day, Labor for their sweat-soaked pay. Thy canst not rise nor can | pen Without fierce labor . . . Souls of men Crushed out—given work’s indecent dole— From thine vitals cry, “Stop this bestial toil!” THOU PEDANTS. Playing tag ’round the culture bush thou art, Doddering at an automatic pace. When heeds thou my warnings: That thou lives by Labor’s grace. That thy beacon is a false light At the head of Capital’s machine, That thy teachings are not right For the very truth they do obscene, bp When joins thou us— Casting off sophomoric mask— Doers of the corporeal, Thou of the mental task? Coolidge’s Rubberneck---Col. Carmi Thompson By HARRY GANNES. OL. CARMI THOMPSON is now in the very midst of his Philippine tour. Coolidge summers in New Eng- land and his personal representative rubbernecks in the Philippines, dodg- -ing in and out of the fronded palms looking for a couple of Filipinos on whom he can hang his anti-independ- ence report. But wherever Thompson goes he is met with the insistent de- mand: “We want our independence!” How tremendous are the anti-Ameri- can control demonstrations cannot be gauged by the newspaper reports that emanate from the gang of journalists that make yp the Thompson-Coolidge Filipino investigating committee. Most of the news writers accompany- ing Thompson are either at the pres- ent time in the employ of the Manila chamber of commerce or have at one time been in the pay of this fervid American imperialistic body in the Philippines, Rubber Plantations. ‘Thompson has one outstanding mis- sion in the Philippines, to pave the way for rubber growing at all costs, except one—independence. Ostensibly his jaunt to the islands is to measure the economic resources and make a report. But in no colony in the world ig the economic well-being of a nation so closely tied up with its political future as in the Philippines. The rubber question in the Philippines at every turn becomes an out-and-out major political issue. Whether rub- ber is grown by the Filipinos them- selves with American backing, or whether the Philippine land laws are modified to suit Firestone & Co, in- volve political moves of the profound. est kind. Thompson's duty is to bring back a report to Coolidge outlining the most profitable way of exploiting the Phil- ippines, and in this plan there can be no room whatever for relinquishing this rich booty in the Pacific. Undoubtedly the first target will be the Jones law. The Jones law, pro- viding that the Philippines might at some time gain independence, was passed by American imperialism in itg infancy, when it could not yet see the overpowering importance of an Asiatic foothold; nor was the wealth of the Philippines fully evaluated; neither had British capitalism exerted pres- sure on the American rubber industry thru its monopoly of rubber growing. The picture is changed today. Even Coolidge is caught in the sticky, raw product. It seems that there are no lengths to which the Coolidge henchmen are not willing to go to force rubber down the throat of the entire Filipino nation. Representative Bacon introduces a bill favoring the splitting up of the Philippines into two parts—the largest section, best available for rubber cultivation, ag well as the richest in natural re- sources (tho the most scantily settled by one-tenth of the population, mainly Mohammedans), to remain under United States domination, and the other section to be left to starve with its plantations and source of food sup- ply cut off. Thus the Filipinos are being at- tacked on all sides by the Coolidge administration, They harbor a viper in their very homes in the guise of a presidential representative, True, they dine with him, they transport him everywhere, they try to demonstrate that they are a civilized nation used to diplomatic stuff, They cannot understand how the American people can tolerate the con- tinued domination of the islands when the Filipinos think the promise of in- dependence was made so plainly. But they will be disillusioned. Even if nr A Colonel Thompson: the present GovernorGeneral Wood is sacrificed to the growing campaign for freedom in the Philippines, the object of American capitalism can be di- verted only by energetic measures on the part of the entire Filipino nation. Now, more than ever, when the struggle for the control of the Fili- pino natural resources is so open and crude, must the fight for independence assume the nature of a struggle against the octopus of American capi- talism. The Philippines are a colony of the United States, There is no question about this. Coolidge has approved of every act of Governor Wood, including the jailing of a Manila councilman for a campaign speech mildly criticizing the leathernecked general, Coolidge PHILLIPPINO INDEPENDENCE a bE to express their desire for independ- ence thru a referendum. He distinctly insults the Filipinos when he sends a bookkeeper to the islands to check up on their present and potential wealth. How can this be of any concern to the United States, is the view of the Filipinos, if, in accordance with Wil- son’s promise, solemnly enacted into law, they are to receive their inde- pendence? The Filipinos want independence, The Filipino politicians cannot help but formulate their tactics on the overwhelming wish of the masses, but they put too much trust in the words of the Wilson administration, which has been buried along with its mas ter, rather than realize the significance of the present acts of the Coolidge forbids the Filipinos the right even | Morgan government,