The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 17, 1926, Page 4

Page Four - TH THE DAILY WORKER Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO, 1118 W. Washington Bivd., Chic ag 1 Phone Monroe 4718 PTION RATES By mail (outside of Chicago): $6.00 per year $2.00 three months By mall (In Chi $8.00 per year $2.60 thre 0 six months aths ——— Address all mail and make out checks ‘to THE DAILY WORKER, 1113 W. Washington Blvd. Chleago, Itl, J. LOUIS ENGDAHL WILLIAM F, DUNNE MORITZ J, LOE: Fntered as second-class mail September 81, 1923, at the post-office at Chi cagé, Ill., under the act of March 3, 1879. Advertising rates on application, sonsmnssestierse MIGItOTS Business Manager <=> 10 g Summary of the A. F. of L. Convention The forty-sixth annual conyention of the American Federation of Labor made the following record on important issues: 1. Independent working class political action. The convention reaffirms its stand for support fo candidates on capitalist party tickets. 2. Company unions. The convention listened sto a wordy denunciation of company unions, authorized the executive council to levy an assessment to raise a fund to fight these organizations and then nullified the action by accepting the principle of worker-employer co-operation which is the basis of company unionism. 8. Support of the Mexican Federation of Labor in its struggle against religio-feudal reaction at home and imperialist aggression by the United States. The convention, after a one-sided debate in which the catholic delegates attacked the Mexican labor movement, adopted a resolu- tion authorizing an “investigation.” $ 4. Trade union delegation to the Soviet Union. The convention without a dissenting vote concurred in the recommendations of the executive council which stated that no. dele- gation to investigate conditions in the Soviet Union was necessary. 5. Recognition, of the workers’ and peasants’ government of the Soviet Union. The convention without a dissenting yote concurred in the most untruthful and vicious anti-Soviet Union resolution yet passed by an A. F. of L. convention. 6. Employe ownership and company stock-selling schemes. The convention denounced such schemes but went on record for the practice of “thrift” by workers and urged them to exercise care in purchasing stocks. 7. Support of Passaic strike. Swept off their feet by the tremendous sentiment for the textile strikers by their heroic struggle, and with some evidences of ‘old fighting spirit of the American labor movement in evidence, the convention overruled Vice-President Woll, took: up a substantial collection in the convention and authorized a relief campaign which has already raised some $10,000 dollars. Fear of Communist criticism if the strike was allowed to col- lapse because of inadequate financial support after the A. F. of L. had taken charge of it was undoubtedly of great influence in get- ting the convention to take the action it did. 8 Organization of the unorganized. The convention liurled loud and wordy challenges at the De- $3.50 six months | ARTICLE 11, By WILLIAM F. DUNNE. have seen that in Great Britain and America the struggles of the | workingclass were more bitter during | the development of centralized indus- try when great changes were taking |place in the workingolass itself as | well as in the middle class and in the organization of industry. Engels, writing to Sorge im 1892, |speaks of this phenomenon: | “Also here In Great Britain the | class struggles were more virulent | during THE PERIOD OF THE | DEVELOPMENT OF BIG INDUS- TRY and died down during the | perlod of Great Britain's undisputed Industrial world domination... - It Is precisely the revolutionization ef time-honored conditions thru the development of Industry which rev- olutionizes peoples’ brains. superior position, sections of the middle class) mental power) Jast four years. e sues or by becoming part of greater and plans have either been completed or are under way for re-trustification im metal mining, rail transportation and the automobile industries. concentration of control of the electric power industry (an efficiency measure par excellence) is going forward at a rapid rate, Huge electrification By ANNA LOUISE STRONG. RIMBA, Oct. 10 (By Mail).—It is so often stated abroad that the money raised for the British coal strike is sent by the Soviet govern- ment and not by the Rugsian workers, that my own experiences, traveling in the past two months over a thousand miles or more of the Soviet Union, on entirely different business, may be il- troit open shoppers, but it failed to meet the acid test of abandon- | !minating. ment of jurisdictional claims when it came to a resolution for the organization of the auto industry. The convention action on this question was merely platonic. 9. Support of the British_miners’ strike. Secretary Morrison reported that the sum of $100,000 had been raised for relief, but no further action was taken. An embargo on coal was not even discussed. 10. Militarism. The convention gave unqualified endorsement to Citizens’ Mil- itary Training Camps. 11. Support of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ strike and struggle against injunctions. The convention voted support to the strike and the fight against injunctions, but did not endorse mass violation of injunctions. This summary shows that the convention acted favorably only on purely trade union questions and on these only when it was con- fronted with a struggle which failure to support would have resulted m severe damage to the prestige of the leadership. The conclusion is that the left wing must strive to get larger masses into motion, broaden the struggles and in this way force of- ficialdom to support them or discredit itself still further before the membership. a Only in this way can the American Federation of Labor be jarred out of the rut marked for it by American imperialism. PORTER RETURNS FROM “OBSERVER” JOB AT GENEVA DISARMAMENT MEET United States “unofficial” representatives at Geneva have more real power than a half dozen regular delegates because of thi preme position of the United States In the financial world. Representative Stephen G, Por ter, chairman of the House Forelgn Affairs Committees was such a delegate to Geneva recently and Is here shown conferring with Senator Borah, chalr man of the Senate Forsign Relations Committees, about what the two houses are going to do with regard to foreign polloy next session, They will do, ae usual, Just what the foreign Interests of the financial ollgarohs demand. Two months ago I was traveling on a steamer on the Volga—two days’ | journey east of Moscow. At present I |am sick in a sanitarium in the Crimea, |two days’ journey south of Moscow. ‘A space of four days’ travel, and # |time of two months—yet in all of that time I have been under the con- | stent impact of the campaign for rais- |ing funds. \ Workers Interested. On the river Volga is a trade union |—the water transport workers. ‘They |have theigp own daily newspaper, |printed for all the water transport | workers of the Soviet Republic. column or two in this paper was de- voted to reports of contributions and explanations about the meaning of the | coal strike in Hngland. ers, members of this union. The sec | retary of the Communist Party (there were ten Communists among these |49 workers) called a meeting of the | workers. He said that other workers | were giving from a quarter of a day’s pay to a full day's pay. Ho urged ‘them not to be backward. They dis- | cussed the question freely and voted |to give half a day's pay to help the miners. Teachers Solicit. (OUR weeks later I was in e chil- dren’s colony near Moscow when one of the younger teachers ap proached me. She also was collecting for the British miners. She had a jlong list of all the employes in’ the | institution and all of the friends and ineighbors who might come under the | sphere of influence of the colony. Op posite each person’s name was written the amount they gave. Contributions | ranged from a few kopeks donated by |the washwoman who supported a | good-sized family on ® very small | number of rubles per month to two or | three rubles given by the most highly paid members of the staff. “You are supposed to give a day's ~| pay if you can,” she told me, “but of course people who are hard up don't give so much. I want to get everyone in the institution down for something, apd no one so far has refused.” Two weeks later on my journey south to the sanitarlum the train stopped at Kharkov, capital of the Ukraine, A pleasant-looking girl with a badge and a tin bank came into the car. “For tho British miners,” she said, “and held out the bank.” I dropped in a small allver coin and al- | most everyone else did likewise. | In Crimea Also. | And now, as I Mo on the veranda ‘overlooking the sunny Black Sea, and pick up the newspapers printed in tho Crimean Republic—an autonomous re- public, remember, quite proud of its own government and with historic tra ditions that go back beyond the days (of Homer—1 find from one to two joolumns datly devoted to this same campaign, An old newapaper of July i HE United States, in spite of its does not enjoy undisputed hegemony of the world markets, It is preparing to battle for such a position and it is this prepara- tien which 1s placing new burdens on the workingclass (as well as lower and which is the basic motive for the tre- mendous re-concentration of industrial capital (and centralization of ‘govern- which has been so marked in the United States in the Uf byeiscvi is hardly. single basic in- dustry but has been either re- organized, either by new capital is- mergers than have hitherto appeared. For the first time huge mergers are appearing in the soft coal industry The A On the steamer were some 49 work- E DAILY W KER From Portland to Detroit ; schemes (im which jrailroads are in cluded) are being developed rapidly with the magic title of “super-power.” The rise of industry in-the south (iron and steel, chemicals, coal and textiles) with no organization what- ever among the low-paid workers, brings backward sbuthern labor into direct competition with the higher paid workers of the north without any necessity for migration taking place. HE) reserve of natural resources is being surveyed by the capitalists with new care and the expansion which fs taking place is much different from the old carefree manner in which the early Amtrichn buccaneers of industry exploited thése rich fields FFICIDNCY systems are the order of the day, speed-up devices are introduced in all infustries and the burdens on the workerg consequently increased. ‘ The standard of living of the Amer- ican workers is still high and the restriction of immigration doubtless has decreased competition for the job temporarily but the high standard of living has strings to it, The purchase of’ automobiles by workers will serve &s an illustration. They are bought on the installment plan, and as insurance companies write off thirty-three ,and one-third per gent per year for fepreciation it is easily seen that the purchase of automobiles does not mean a capital accumulation for the workers, T it does do js this: It allows large Mumbers of work- ers to enjoy some of the priviliges of the middle class without becoming financially independent. The weekly or monthly payments keep him tied to his job but at the same time posses- sion of an automobile strengthens his belief in the beneficient possibilities of American capitalism. But his boasted independence is @ fiction. What is true for the purchase of automobiles holds good for many other semi-luxuries which raise the standard of living of the American worker— radios, home electric washing ma- chines, graphophones, ‘pianos, turni- | ture, ete, ul How Russian Workers Aid British Miners - 19, discovered in a forgotten drawer, also devoted many letters to money- raisings, and the new paper, brought this morning, does the same. “Strengthen the help to the British miners,” reads the headline. The of- fice and commercial employes of the Crimea—a small organization in a pen- insula with only a few towns—have given over 6,000 rubles. They are holding a special meeting to learn the present situation of the strike. They have voted to continue help to the extent of 1 per cent of their wages “for all the time the strike lasts.” This is the present form of dona- tion as the strike lengths. Next day three city federations have copied the office employes and have voted to give henceforth 1 per cent of all wages “beginning with the month of Septem- ber, as long as the strike shall last.” ‘sheath Bass ‘ASHINGTON, Oct. 15. (FP) — Benjamm C. Marsh, executive secretary of the People’s Reconstruc- tion League which was organized after the war by labor and farmer pro- gressives, shows that 4,000 persons got over one-sixth of all corporate divi- dends paid in the year 1922. His fig- ures are drawn from the Federal Trade Commission's report on national wealth and income. This sort of statistics has helped to discredit the “Me and Rockefeller” stock-ownership idea, cultivated by public utility companies in their stock- selling campaigns, The Washington administration holds the recent liberal majority in the Federal Trade Com- mission responsible for gat ing the figures originally. aston Thompson of Colorado has the most stub- born of the liberals on that commis- sion. ¢ News Note—President Coolidge’s spokesman on Sept. 24 grimly croaked the word that Honston Thompson would not be reappointed. His term has just expired. A €orporation Dem- ocrat will take his Ay “FLOW Tonite Are Mado” 4g fllus- trated by ae Prairie Farmer in a statement made @ senator just before the Fordney-] ‘umber tariff act was passed. “You ask me howthe Tariff bill was framed. The answer is simple. Dur- ing the last months @f his life Senator Penrose (chairman @f the committee) could give little a lon to the con- struction of the His technical advisers prepared tive schedules, “When he died Mac (Senator Mc- Cumber of North Dakota, later beat- en by the farmer-labor progressives) took over the moss without knowing what 18 was all about. He told sme of us we had to produce a tariff bill, He asked us to help, We helped. All the senators he consulted told him to frame schedules that would help them personally or thoir friends, Mac did it, That's the way the traiff bill was framed.” What The Prairie Farmer does not know 1s that McCumber is now a prosperous lawyerlobbyist in Wash- ington, whose biggest job was the se- curing of a rotroactive repeal of estate taxes that saved some $4,000,000 to the Clark heirs in Montana, Fe handled the Senate end, sccord- NLY a capitalist class occupying”a: superior position in the world mar- kets could finance such immense out- lays as.the credit buying system en- tails and it will be financed only so long as American capitalism can easily accumulate this surplus. In essempe they are artificial devices to keep the workingclass satisfied and have noth- ing in common with the basic proces- ses of capitalist distribution, They will be wrecked by increasing compe- tition in the world markets. HE} weakness of trade union organ- ization and the lock of class-con- sciousness of the American working- ‘lass are the greatest source ot, strength for American capitalism. It is at these two points that the task4 of the Communists and the left wing assumes major importance. We have already noted the funda- | menta] weakness of the trade union leadership and of the trade union movement as a whole—the acceptance of the capitalist system as the Alpha and Omego of social systems. It is thus unable to lead, the American workingclass in this period except in the main direction {n which the cap- italists want it to go. HE basic task of our party in a pertod when centralized capitalist government appears on the side of the master class in every struggle which they have with the workingclass has been indicated by Marx in a letter to an American worker, Bolte, written in 1871; Wherever the workingolass Is not yet sufficiently organized to under. take a decisive campaign against the collective power |. 6. the pollt- lcal might of the ruling classes, It must certainly be educated for it by continuous agitation against the polloy of the ruling classes which Is inimical to workingolass Interests. IF THIS IS NOT DONE IT WILL REMAIN A PLAYTHING IN THEIR HANDS, as shown by the September revolution In France and to a cer taln extent by the game success- fully carried on in Great Britain by ~ Gladstone and Co. (Emphasis mine.) (To be continued.) HDR is another popular form. _ The column annginces that “Com- rade Ekmichef gives five rubles to the British strikers and names com- rades”—here follow six names of per- sons he chooses to call. These per- sons are then expected to give five rubles also and call other names. Thus the endless chain goes on. Meantime the general news of Brit- ish labor, with special reference to the strike, continues to occupy front page space in all Russian papers, sec- ond only to the important war news from China. The Russian workers across thousands of miles of land are not only giving money,.they are giv- ing interest, as to a struggle which they regard as their own. No other workers in the world have half the knowledge of the issues involved, ex- cept the British workers themselves. WASHINGTON POLITICAL GOSSIP ing to capitol talk, while Mondell of | Wyoming and another lame duck handled the House. Their fee was rumored to have reached $1,000,000. The tariff helping-around sheds light on this achievement. LLEN W. DULLES, career man in the State Department and son-in-law of former Secretary Lan- sing, has resigned from the service on the eve of going to Peking to be sec- retary of the American legatton. He recently was at the arms discussion in Geneva as a member of the Ameri- can delegation. : Dulles letter of resignation says bluntly that he cannot take another promotion because the better jobs re- quire a greater private income in ad- dition to the official salary than he can supply. Hence he is going to gather money as a member of the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell in New York. This Dulles resignation emphasizes the tone of American representation In foreign diplomacy. It apes the other capitalist powers in large per- sonal expenditure on entertainments, luxurious surroundings and general plutocratic setting. It knows little of common folks anywhere, are all striving for world peace and preaching the broth- erhood of man, says Joseph C, Grew, undersecretary of state, addressidg the first Pan-American congress of national directors of public health, One of the most polished and wily of American diplomats drawn from the entrenched social group, Grew does not permit himself to be caught out by any Latin American cartoonist as a humbug. He says “preaching”, not “promoting”, or “seeking” or “build- ing” the brotherhood of man, Scientists from half-dozen Latin des- potisms nodded approval of his choice of language, NEW ORLEANS—(FP)—four hun dred non-union workers have joine’ the ranks of the striking boflermak ors and marine repair work is pract' cally tied up at this port. Strik: breaking organizations are promisin wages higher than the scale demande by the union to secure outside hei but without avail, eo reer enn ee E Why ‘King Lynch’ Still Rules By WM. PICKENS, Field Secy. of the National Assoclation for Ad- vancement of Colored People. “T seems that some of our dailies (notably an editorial in the New York World of Oct. 9th) are trying to minimize the awful significance of the fact that two colored boys and a girl were lynched in South Carolina after one of the boys had been declared not guilty of murder and when it was reasonable to expect that the other’ boy and the girl would also be freed of the charge, The World rings the changes on the idea that the authorities and the bet- ter people are altogether blameless of this mob murder, that the courts had done all they could do, and that there was “no mobbing of a colored man” by the authorities,—and that all the trouble is due to the mere little insig- nificant fact that “blood-thirsty brutes meraly took. matters tn their own hands.” j South. Civilization Week. UT just THAT is the gravest phase. of the whole matter: the society of the south has so conditioned the life of its Negro people that even the power of the state, the authority of the courts and all the goodness of its “good” people cannot protect an in- nocent Negro child from being lynch- ed by “bloodthirsty. brutes.” What does that mean? It means that the south, the better south, needs the cooperation~and help of the rest of the republic to save civilization in the south. .But jthis is the one neces- sary conclusion which thé New York World, and some other apologetic sources seem reluctant to reach. If the situation is as the World de- scribes it, an anti-lynching law of congress and the power of the na- tional government are sorely needed in every community like South Caro- lina, Doubts “Better Class.” writer of this is 45 years old and has Iived at least two-thirds of his life in the heart of the south— and he is not so sure, as is the New York World, of the absolute inculp- ableness of the better south for the action of these “bloodthirst brutes.” The legislature of South Caroline, for example, has passed scores of laws discriminating against colored citiz- ens and “excluding” them from equal ity in almost everything except the equal right to pay taxes. These dis- criminating laws give the impression to the lesser minds of the white ma- jority that the Negro is lettle less than human, and the simpler minds are so logical that they conclude that it a Negro should not have the same chance as @ white mean dn a public park, on the public vehicles and in the voting booths, he also should not have the same rights as a white per- son in a court of justice. And we are forced to acknowledge that in this conclusion, the lesser minds show themselves to be more logical than the legislature. “Actions Consistent, Rated action of these “bloodthirety brutes” is terribly consistent with the action of those southern senators, | who said on the floor of congress that lynching was for rape and that they were ‘opposed to a national law against lynching. A lynching.is the most logical conclusion of a dirty Jim Crow ear. The human mind is too simple a thing, especially the mind of the unsophisticated moh, to be able to comprehend that a Negro ts at one and the same time like other human. beings and different from all other hu- man beings,—and that Negro people are not to be treated with injustice, contempt and terrorism everywhere else ‘except in courts of law and in jails. If the political and social philosophy and practices of the “better south” have made dt powerless before its “bloodthirsty brutes,” the south needs some outside help. Unemployed Demon- strate; Imprisoned MERES, Poland, Oct. 15,—The work- ers Meres and Zinn were sentenced to two years hard labor each for par- ticipation in an unemployed demon- stration. Nine. further accused were sen- tenced to prison terms of three to five months each, The book of the year— — Including the work of seventeen leading * American artists. Over seventy cartoons size 9x12—bound in attractive brown board covers $ 1.00 THD Proletarian Stady Group % ANNOUNCES A COURSE OF LECTURES on the ILLUSIONS OF CIVILIZATION A Critique of Class Ideology re LEON SAMSON, on WEDNESDAY EVENINGS 8:30 P. M. at THE CARLTON 6 WEST 111th STREET — Schedule o Oct. 20—Economic Iilusions Tested by Maxian Theory Oct, 27—Soolal illusions ° # A Diagnosis of it Sociology Nov, 3—Historicaj Illusions In the Light of Historical Materialism Nov. 10—Anthrépologioal Iilusions ~ The Bankruptcy of Boas and Co, Nov, 17—Legal Illusions “Tomes of Reasoned Wrong” Nov. 24—Ethicaj Illusions An Analysis’ of Slave Morality : ‘Admission (Near 5th Ave.) NEW YORK f Lectures — Deo, 1—Aesthetle Illusions Bourgeols Theories of Beauty Dis- oussed and Criticized Deo, 8—Paychological lilusions And the Doctrines of Fourier + Deo. 15—Religious Ilusions «In the Light of Proletarian Atheism Dec, 22—Philosophical Illusions A Criti¢al Survey of Metaphysics Illusion of Democracy 5 Hlusion of Prosperity Jan. Tepe Hlusion of Peace. 28 Cents. QUESTIONS ‘AND. DISCUSSION . COME TO THE ENTERTAINMENT AND DANCE Woe P As ts 89 Saturday, October 16, 1926 ( at the ; Workers Lyceum 2733 Hirsch Blvd. For a real good time the muslo NITE-IN-GALE will be furnished by the famous ten on Sy ORILY WORKCO. tha Becton Somme Admission only 360.—