The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 16, 1926, Page 13

What Congress Stag tio Will Do for Us _ (IF IT GETS A CHANCE) By BERTRAM D. WOLFE HEN the worker and farmer east their votes for congressmen and senators in the forthcoming election, they should not only keep in mind the astounding record of both parties in the last coggress in vying with each other in subservience. to big - business and in their eagerness to re- Ject any measures of benefit to the worker and the poor farmer, but they must also keep in mind what the next congress proposes to do to them if the same balance of forces prevails. There need be no guess work as to the program of the next congress be- cause it has already been frankly stated and no worker or farmer-who supports the old parties need complain of being taken by surprise when the mext session ef congress begins its work, A few days ago, Mr. Snell, chatr man of the powerful house committee on rules, after a friendly chat with President Coolidge made a frank and fairly complete statement as to what the next congress proposes to do to the workers and farmers and the re- sources of the country if the present servants of big business continue to “represent” the people in the next sessions, According to Mr, Snell, Number One on the order of business is “The dis- position of Muscle Shoals.” “Disposi- tion” in this connection is a tremen- dously polite word. The Muscle Shoals power development cost the American government over $150,000,- 000. It is such a gigantic power cen- ter that a former secretary of war of the U. S. government declared: “It I were greedy for power over my fel- low men, I would rather control Muscle Shoals than be elected presi- dent of the U. 8.” But congress has safely tucked away in its archives the recommendation of the majority of the Muscle Shoals Joint Congressional Committee proposing to) give this enormous devélopment {fitto private hands—into the hands of the Muscle Shoals Power Distributing company which is controlled by the Electric Bond & Share Co. Now the Electric Bond & Share is a modest little com- pany which controls 1,700 power com- panied in 40 states of the United States (that was in last April, they ‘may have covered the other eight states by mow). And Electric Bond & Share in turn is controlled by the General Elecrtic Co., And the General Electric Co. is controlled. by J. P. Morgan & Co. And incidentally the Muscle Shoals Power Distributing Co. is made up of 13 associated South Eastern companies that sweep from Kentucky to..the- gulf including Georgia and Florida, Still incidental- ly it is interesting to note that one of these 13 companiés is the Tennessee Electric Power Co., which according to Pour’s Public Utility Manuel is linked with the Aluminium Co. of América owned by the “master mind” . of the Coolidge ‘administration, An- drew W. Mellon, The second order of business for the next congress, according to Mr. Snell, is the “passage of bills increas- ing salaries of judges.” S The third, order of business is the “Radio Control] Bill.” What that will mean in the matter of thought control and in the matter of insuring the suc- cess of another monopoly we can Judge from the practices of Mr. Hoo- ver so far, from the difficulties already put in the way of the Chicago Federa- tion of Labor’s establishing a broad- casting station of its own (even be- fore Mr. Hoover had the power to stop them) and in the refusal to mit Gitlow and Norman i | broadcast speeches after they had been invited by broadcasting ecom- panies in New York City. Next in line comes the “River and Harbor Bill” some of which may in- volve useful appropriation but which sessiong just ended and from Mr. Coo- lidge’s repeated statpments of his program for what he calls “farm re- ef.” But Mr, Snell is taking no chances on being misunderstood so he hastens to add, “In my survey of the farm situation I find that the con- dition in the west is now’ as good as desired and the republican party will do everything possible consistent with sound procedure (emphasis mine, B. D. W.) to alleviate the condition of the western agriculturist.”. What Mr. Snell means by sound procedure his vote and the vote of the majority of the last congress on even such a piti- fully inadequate measure as the Hau- gen-McNary Bill clearly indicate. But let ws return to the order of business. Next in the ambitious pro- gram comes the “Consolidation of the Railroads.” This means a single ‘super-railway trust, of course, under a system of private ownership, the disappearance of the fast vestiges of competition between roads and the ereation of one powerful railway super-trust means that the old railway motto of getting from the farmer as freight rates “all that the traffic will bear,” will be amended so as to read read “just a little more than that.” Next come the “annual appropria- tion bills.” Last year they amounted to about $4,500,000 at the same time that Coolidge was blabbing about his economy. By economy he means economy at the expense of the work- ers and poor farmers but a liberal and free hand when it comes to big busi ness and the “pork barrel.” The Farmer Wants to Know By JOHN B. CHAPPLE ITALISM’S reactionary farm pa- »pers, printed by the millions of copies and sold for almost nothing, have proved one of the most subtle and vicious weapons for lancing the grewing feeling of solidarity between the farmer and the city worker. This flood of capitalist propaganda has per- plexed the man who toils in the fields, and for many years has rendered his groping toward a united front with the eity proletariat sterile, But capitalism by one of its inherent contradictions has produced a farm population intelligent enough to tear the veil of ignorance from its eyes. The flood of capitalist “dope” is about done for. The young farmers—those who are not driven off their farms and into the cities—will have none of it; economic pressure igs so severe that even older men, minds dulled by long hours and little time to think, are vomiting up this poison, “The Country Gentleman”—the name is a ghastly joke and an attempt to falsify the farmers’ position and give him a set of ideals that will line him up with his enemies, the exploit- ers, in the class struggle—ig one of these farm papers that drips capitalist poison. To begin with, “The Country Gentlée- man” is published by the Curtis Pub- The next point in Mr. Snell’s modest |.lishing company, Philadelphia, which little program is “a measure to reor- ganize the prohibition enforcement unit and strengthen the laws as to search and border control.” This means another few thousand addition- al snoopers on the already enormous government payroll. When Coolidge took office; there were 600,000 persons on the payroll of the national govern- ment and he has since added 20 or 30 thousand more. Taken together, the national, state and city bureau- cracies, we find that for every ten men gainfully employed in other in- dustrieg there is one on the payroll of the government—national, state and local. We have thus the largest and costliest bureaucracy in the world and all Coolidge’s economy blabb does not prevent the high cost of govern- ment from being one of the great bur- dens upon the farmer and worker in the United States, , Finally, Mr. Snell admits that this is a short'session of congress that is coming and that time will not permit him to do everything that big business requires of him, so his ‘official state- ment, as reported in the press adds that “the session would be too short to consider much more than the above measures. This leaves out the pro- ‘posal to regulate wage disputes in the hard coal field and to distribute coal in case of strike.” In other words, he promises that a measure forbidding strikes in the coal industries simi to the Watson-Parker Bill in the rail- road industry will soon bé put across but big business cannot expect every- thing in one short session of congress, Moreover this reveals that congress is not only planning to outlaw strikes in the coal ficlds, but also to break strikes by distributing coal in case one should oecur. To distribute coal in order to lessen a coal famine, to distribute coal at cost in order to limit the sufferings of the poor in our big cities in mid-winter, to distribute coal in order to break the monopoly of the coal trust over this most neces- sary of products—all this would be, in the language of Mr, Snell, “pater- nalism” and “inconsistent with sound procedure to alleviate the condition.” To distribute coal to break a miners’ strike—that is politics and good gov- ernment ag Mr, Snell and the majority present congress understands to the workers Mr. and poor farmers, Snell has after conference with Coo with a rare should be also turns out the Saturday Evening Post—leader of the blackest kind of reaction, In the -advertising pages of “The Country Gentleman” you will find Fisher Bodies, Timkin Bearing, Mobil oil, Westinghouse, Crane, Johns-Man- -ville,. Western. Electric, Gold Medal, Fisher Bodies, Timken Bearing, Mobil- Swift, and the run of auto and tobac- co ads. What you will net find is anything about the farmers’ revolt, about the rising mortgages and for sale signs, the delinquent taxes and the crops spoiling on the ground because of the marketing system and the freight rate barriers. No, instead, there-are the usual edi- torials about our grand constitution, about the millions of homes of “free” men and women, about the “rule of reason and law rather than force,” about the community churches, the “centers of spiritual revival”— one final effort to hoodwink the farmer, to interest him in the “sweet bye and bye,” so he won't struggle when the economic blindfold is slipped over his eyes.. A rural pastor gave this game away when he told a farmer who had become interested in co-operative projects that such things would never work out because the Almighty had given humanity many tongues at the tower of Babel and people would not jar |be able to work together but must seek individual salvation-not forget- ting the rural pastor’s salary as dope dispenser. - Re These so-called farmers’ magazines advice building more. buildings to help the lumber manufacturers; buy- ing more machinery—to help Interna- national Harvester; borrowing more money—anything and everything ex- cept attacking what-s wrong. Another example is “The Farm Jour- nal,” also loaded with the advertising of American Telephone and Tele- — EO gressmen of the republican and demo- cratic parties are returned to the next session, we know in advance what they will do for and to the American people. At least everyone wiKk know what kind of congressmen and what kind of congressional program he is voting for and if the workers and farmers do not revolt at such cynical frankness and elect representatives of their own, then they will have no- body to blame but themselves when the next congress represents the in- terests of big business and not the faterests ‘of the workers and farmers of America, graph, National Electric Light, Amert- ean Radiator, Hollywood-in-Florida, Harvester, General /Motors, and the rest, A favorite stunt of this magazine is to send out salemen to ask the farm- ers questions—and get their monex. The idea of the questions is to make the farmer feel important—his an- Swers will be the basis of a “demand” apon congress, There is ai insidious angle to this scheme too. The farm- er fs asked ff he believes in eo-opera- tive selling and when he says yes, he gets one like this: “Do you think that child labor should be controlled by congress?” Before the farmer gets a chanee to answer, the subscription agent pulls this on him: “Do you want your children to sit around till they’re eighteen, never do- ing any chores? If they don’t do any work till that age, will they ever do any work? Do you want to give away the right of controlling your ewn sons? Doe you want to be prohibited from havimg your son turn the whet- stone while you are sharpening a blade?” The farmer, who can barely keep alive working fourteen hours a day with his wife and children working too, says no. It is easy to figure what thig sort of a survey can be used for by a paper with its capitalist backing. Farmers’ signatures will turn ‘out to be the ‘thousands of good American citizens opposed to child labor legislation.” Thus the farmer unintentionally plays into the hands of the mill barons, crushing out lives of the childrenrof the mill towns. This is the last’ thing in the world that the thinking farmer would want to do. And this sort of thing does Rot work nearly so well today as ft might have a few years ago. Farm ers are becoming conscious of them- selves and their place in soctety and their close relation with the city worker. The lic about “different in- terests” which was used by capital ist politicians in fighting the old non- partisan league and which ig used every time the farmer and city work- er move toward closer union, has lost its foree. , The capitalist poison. disguised as “help for the farmers” no longer goes down, The secretary of one farm club advised its members: “There’s too much reading of what’s the matter and what to do and what t to do. Our farm papers are mis- leading us. They’re telling us the legislature and congress will solve everything. It’s a lie—it’s their He, The legislature and congress are not going to do anything. All the farmers must become class-conscious and until they become. so, they will get nothing.” The president of another farm or ganization contrasted agricultural progress in Russia with the exploita- tion of the farmers by the capitalists in this country, and wound up ‘I'm a radical and I admit it. 1 don’t care if they run me out of town with a horsewhip.” The day of the “Country Gentle- man” dope is passing. The farmer does not. care to be that kind of a gentleman; he knows that he too is a worker, a partner of the factory work- er in the city—not an enemy of the factory worker as the capitalists tell him, . He is turning away from the sub- sidized pages of enemy ‘‘tarm papers,” urning away from the comic “relief” ideas of Arthur Capper, the “good management and diversified farming” formula; turning away from the “lib- eralism” of Frank Lowden, the same sort of knife-in-the-back that almost wrecked the English labor movement at the close of the 19th century, Today’s farmer is studying Com- thunism because it offers him a real road to freedom. nn Te ee A a Na i eS aki id att ata Ahh ani Sn na cnet