The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 15, 1927, Page 6

i } if 1 ’ organization that is reputed to have over three million adherents. pase — Page Six THE DAILY WORKER, ‘THE DAILY WORKER Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO Daily, Except Sunday 83 First Street, New York, Phone, Orchard 1680 TION RATES SUBSCRI By mail (in New York only): By mail (outside of New York): $8.00 per y $4.50 six months $6.00 per year $3.50 six months $2.50 ee months 2.00 three months Address all mail and make out checks to st Street, New York, N. Y. J. LOUIS ENGDAHL } WILLIAM F, DUNNE BERT MILLER os Sinccies eae sins Business: Manager . . Editors Entered as second-class mail at the post-office at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 2, 1879. 2g rates on application, | The Miners Negotiate. The wage scale committee picked by John L. Lewis at the recent convention in Indianapolis is now in joint session in Miami, Florida, with the coal operators of the central competitive fields. Why it was necessary to travel as far south as Miami is not clear. Perhaps to recuperate from the struggle to save the union from Communism waged in Indianapolis! The Jacksonville agreement expires on March 31 of this year. | (fhe Lewis machine is said to be willing to accept a renesval of the old agreement, tho this agreement has been punched full of | holes by the coal magnates, many of those who signed it having repudiated their agreements without the slightest effort on the part of the reactionary machine to make them live up to the terms of the contract. Lewis has succeeded in digging the guts out of the union. He has expelled many of the best and most militant leaders in the organization. To protect his own position and to curry favor with the capitalists he has intensified his drive against the radicals and had the constitution amended to permit the expulsion from the union of members: known to belong to the Workers (Com- munist) Party. Thus we see Mr. Lewis deliberately setting about to destroy the union, weakening it still more while pretending to be fighting for the best terms he can secure from the operators. Lewis’s power at the negotiating table is not in his eloquence but in the) collective might of the union. An honest leader would strengthen | the union by organizing the unorganized miners, achieving unity inside its ranks by giving the union a fighting policy, something that would catch the imagination of the membership, encourag- ing the militant spirit and in general using the organization for what it was intended for: a weapon to fight for the class inter-| ests of the miners. | There is a real danger that Lewis, acting as the servant of the republican party coal barons may succeed in completely de-| stroying the once-mighty United Mine Workers of America, be- fore the left wing will have succeeded in ousting his reactionary | machine. If this organization is once destroyed it will be a dif- ficult task to reconstitute it in face of the growing trustification of the coal industry. The situation calls for intensified activity on the part of the progressive elements in the U. M. W. of A. Under the slogans | raised during the recent election campaign the miners’ union can} be given new life. But Lewis and what he stands for must go before the union can be rehabilitated. | George Washington and the Cherry Tree. , George Washington’s juvenile virtue was the bane of many a| young lad’s life. George did not smoke, chew tobacco, take snuff, | pick his teeth in public, tell lies or snore in his sleep. He was | never late for school; neither did he throw stones at the teacher. | But in those debunking days it was patent that George) Washington’s reputation could not escape the historical vacuum | cleaner. Rupert Hughes, a noted author put the tin hat on} “Pollyanna” Washington, and exhumed the real George, a George | that could crook his elbow with the best of the sports, hit a! cuspidor at nine paces with a well-directed squirt of tobacco juice, get the laughs with a well-seasoned yarn and turn the at-| mosphere livid with his envied assortment of curses, oaths and general obscenity. Since the bourgeoisie must have their saints for the masses to worship, so that they may not see the hands of the modern bourgeois in their pockets, Rupert Hughes found himself the tar- get for the shafts of a legion of super-patriots, who wanted their Washington sober and truthful. A Washington who owned dis-| tilleries! This was enough to drive the anti-saloon league and} the Ku Klux Klan to drink. If the citizenry got to believe that! Washington was a booze manufacturer, well, he might make as’ good a prohibition enforcement officer as Andrew Mellon, but as the father of our country he would be a joke. { Hughes destroyed the cherry tree story with one jab of the) pen. And yet, the writer knows several young hoodlums who ad- mitted their misdemeanors to stern-eyed parents long before they heard of George, and the young rascals told the truth, instinc- tively feeling that if there was any drop of the milk of human kindness left in the parental heart it would flow when struck with the magic wand of juvenile veracity. Sometimes the trick worked but usually the irate father was so angry over the broken pipe or the perforated window pane that mercy had abdicated before the whipping began. Hughes was the Daniel that came to pass judgment on George. But he is not getting away with it. We must have our Washington as pure as Mary Pickford in the movies. Let those who, refuse to believe in the authenticity of the cherry tree fable go back to where they came from, even if it be to Oshkosh. No doubt the attempt to get the dirt on Washington is another Communist plot! William Green and Frank Morrison had luncheon with Presi- dent Coolidge a few days ago, shortly after Henry Ford's visit to the White House. Ford made the front page but the A. P. sent out only four and a half lines on two officials of a labor After a few more years playing the role of doormats to capitalism, the A. P. may let those flunkeys go with a dash. Get Another Subscriber for Your DAILY WORKER, Get From these ugly problems Bunny had a‘refuge—his little paper. He had arrived on a funday, and | Rachel had met him at the train, with a dozen of the Ypsels, their f shining. There was a cheer at sight of him—just as if he had been a moving picture star! There were handshakes all round—he and Rachel had several extra shakes, they were so glad to be together. The young people knew that Bunny would be sad over his father’s death, and possibly also the burn- ing of his oil field; so they crowded round, and told him all the news at once, and Rachel produced the proofs of ‘a new issue of “The Young Student,’ also last week’s issue, and several others that he might not have received. The little office was home-—the only home Bunny had, because the | mansion his father had rented had been subleased, and their personal belongings put in storage before Aunt Emma came to Europe. The office was only one room, but quite impressive with files and records accumulating; they had a subscrip- tion list of over six thousand now, | and were printing eight thousand | this week, But Rachel still had only one assistant—the Ypsels did | the wrapping and. addressing, eve- nings and Saturdays and Sundays. They hadn’t got mobbed or arrested any more; the Socialists were sup- porting LaFollette for. president, and that gave them the right to be let alone for a while. And then Ruth. Bunny went to call on her, in the same little cot- | tage. Paul had not got home yet; he had stopped in Chicago for a party conference, and now ‘was coming by way of the northwest, speaking every night. He was hav- ing good meetings, because of the prominence his arrests had given | The story of his expulsion | the | papers all over. the country, and | Ruth showed Bunny letters telling | him. from France had been in about, this and other adventures with police and spies. Ruth had made Paul promise to write her a postcard every single day; and when she didn’t get one, then right away she began to imagine him in some police dungeon, getting the third degree. Bunny watched her face as she talked. Her words were cheerful— she was a graduate nurse now, and able to earn good money, and save some if Paul should be in need. But she was pale, and her face was strained, There were Com- munist papers and magazines on the table, and Bunny could see at a glance what was happenings These papers came for Paul; and Ruth, sitting here alone many and many an evening, had read them, looking for news about her brother; so she had absorbed all the horrors about the torturing and maiming and shooting of political prisoners, and | it had oeen exactiy as if rau had been in battle. Ruth hadn’t what you would call a theoretical mind; you never heard her talk about party tactics and political developments and things like that. She was instinctive, yet wit class consciousness ali the more. intense and passionate for that. She had been through two strikes, and the things sne had seen with her own eyes had been ail the lessons in economics she would ever need. She knew that the workers in big industry are wage slaves, fighting for their very lives. And this war was made like capitalist wars—this one had to be, because the masters made it. But even thus believing in Paul’s work, Ruth could not help being in a tension of anxiety. Also—a strange and perplexing thing—Ruth was angry with Rachel and “The Young Student”! It ap- peared that the Socialists had been getting up meetings all over the country for a so-called Social-revo-~ lutionary from Russia, a lecturer who made the imprisonment of his partisans in Russia the pretext for attack én the Soviet Government. The Social-revolutionaries were the people who had tried to assassinate Lenin, and who had taken the money of capitalist governments to stir up civil war inside Russia, How could Bunny’s paper give sup- port to them? Bunny went back to Rachel and the Ypsels, who declared that this man was a Socialist, opposing the partisans of violence; the Commu- nists had come to the meeting and tried to howl him down, and there had been almost a fight. So here was poor Bunny, fecing with dis- may the same internal warfare in aph Congress Today! NEW YORK, TU ESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1927 A NEW NOVEL Upton Sinclair the movement, which had so dis- tressed him in Paris and Berlin and Vienna! He had been so profoundly impressed by Paul and his account of Russia, but he found that Rachel had not moved an inch from her position. She would defend the right of the Russians to work out their own destiny,.she would de- fend their right to be heard in America-—-even though they would not defend her right. But she would have nothing to do with the Third International, and no talk about dictatorships—unless it was her own dictatorship, that was going to see to it the “The Young « Student” didn’t give the post office authorities or the district attor- ney’s office “any pretext for a raid! democratic solution of the social problem; and Bunny, as usual, was going to be bossed by a woman! It was a curious thing—the nature of women! ‘They ‘seemed so gentle and impressionable; but it was the pliability of rubber, or of water—that comes right. back the way it was before! From the very first—look at Eunice Hoyt, so set upon having her own way! © And even little Rosie Taintor—if he had married her, he would have dis- covered that she had a fixed reli- gious conviction as to the proper style of window curtains, and now often they had to be laundered! And Vee ‘fracy, Who had given up her happiness—she would not be happy with a Roumanian prince, Bunny knew. And Ruth and Grandma, in the matter of the war! And Bertie, so. hell-bent upon getting into fashionable society, in spite of having been born a mule- | driver’s daughter! And now here was Rachel Menzies, and Bunny knew exactly the situation—it would break her heart to give up the little paper, she had adopted it with the passion of a mother for a child; but she would walk out of the office in a moment, if ever Bunny should fall victim to the Communist | process of “boring from within.” (To Be Continued). Fertile Ground for Polygamy in Europe; Result of War Times BERLIN, Feb. 14. — Post - war Europe, with its large’ surplus of women, is proving itself fertile ground for Mormon missionaries and | their doctrine of polygamy. | The Mormons are gaining more ad- |herents than any of the many other sects in whose doctrines the disap- pointed and disillusioned seek escape. | In Vienna, the Mormons have al- ready gathered a considerable congre- |gation and are holding weekly serv- ices. MUSSOLINI DEPORTS | HE Executive Committee Inter- | national Red Aid recently receiv- ed information about the deportation |from Brindisi té an uninhabited island of a blind comrade, Juseppe Prampolini 84 years old. Of the numerous crimes per- | petrated every day by the fascists | this one deserves the special atten- tion of the international proletariat. | A devoted and honest Communi: |Comrade Prampolini,in view of hi jold age and his physical infirmity took no active part in the political dife of Italy during the last few years. In his youth, when the ideas'of the 1st socialist international had not yet penetrated into Italy, Prampolini was an earnest republican, often” perse- cuted by the police. When, in 1866, Juseppe Garibaldi called on the Italian youth to join the war for the emancipation of Italy from the Austrian yoke, comrade Prampolini put on the red shirt of the Garibaldians. | When Garibaldi, after the fall of Paris Commual, and after the cele- brated polemic between Mazini and Bakunin, had proclaimed his famous slogan: “The international is the sun of the future”, Prampolini together with the revolutionary part of Gari- baldians joined the 1st international and since then has always remained true to the Italian labor movement and socialism. After the strikes of 1890, when the Italian proletariat conquered the right to strike and freedom of as- sembly, comrade Prampolini left his profession of engineer and became secretary of an employment bureau in Venice run by haber. As an old man Prampolini came to his native place, Brindisi, He did not No, they were going to stand for a | | WORKERS’ EDUCATION — (A Tip from the Amalgamated Bank) | By 8. A, GARLIN | | With its chest stuck out, the Amal-| gamated Bank stands in Union| |Square. It was organized several] | years ago for the purpose of helping} |the labor movement in its struggles {against the employers,—according to) the officers of the Amalgamated | Clothing Workers of America. | From any point in the square can} | be seen the nice, large, electric sign }emblazoning the words: The Amal-| |gamated Bank—First New York La |bor Bank. Sometimes -one of the} other of the electric letters refuses to blink and then the sign is not so} | impressive as the directors of the bank would like. * * | This institution has all the things that other “institutions” have. It’s) swell inside; marble walls and ele-! | gant lighting fixtures. They have a! guard in a gray uniform, too. There's |a high class reception room where \the officials of the bank (who are} | also officials of the union), have con-| |ferences. There are writing tables. And under the heavy glass on the writing tables are some attractive! pictures. Some of them have entic-| ing captions. One of them reads: | -“Planning a trip? See our Travel| Dept., Window 24, All lines—all! | steamers—all accommodations.” | There is another one that reads! | thus: | “If you had the money—there are! ;many things you could do—travel,| | buy or build a home, or go into busi-| | You could provide the educa-) tion for your children that is such a {necessity in the competitive struggle of today. Many a promising boy or girl has been deprived of the benefit lof a college training because there | were no plans in advance for saving | money.” | There are some nice, chocolatey pic-| | fares, too. It showed how attractive | going to college would be for the | sons and daughters of the New York | clothing workers. Guess what pic-| |tures they had? © | The Workers’ School? Certainly jnot. That wouldn’t help out “in the) competitive struggle of today.” Not even the Brookwood School, support-| ed by the A. F. of L, class collabora-| tionists, or the New School for So-) cial Research, where vital social | themes are material for “objective studies” and “open-mindedness.” The pictures the Amalgamated) Bank officials were displaying showed Harvard University, educational) stronghold of the American pluto-| evacy. There were three photographs:| one showed the campus, with great! lawns, and students walking with ten-| nis racquets under their arms; an-) other, of the library with nobody! around because all the students were! probably hard at work inside; the last picture showed the administration | building where appeals are sent forth | to graduates who have “made good” lin various fields of exploitation, to} provide the endowments for the Alma Mater. Clothing workers of New York! Sénd your sons to Harvard and your daughters to Vassar. Save them from the shop and the class struggle! ee ee Class collaboration with a ven- geance. Possibly that is one of the reasons why the Russian-American Industrial Corporation, organized to help in the reconstruction of Soviet Russia’s garment industry, was ne- glected and allowed to lie undevel-} oped. There are more congenial) things to do. 80 YEAR-OLD REBEL | leave, however, the revolutionary movement, being all the time one of the best propagandists in the South | of Italy. Every Italian revolutionary can remember, how much the work- ing masses liked old Prampolini, elec- | ting him always as their represen- tative at’ municipal elections and giv- ing him the leadship in all the biggest strikes in the history of the Italian labor movement. In 1914 he was elected by the congress of the Italian socialist party as a member of the C. C. of the party and, in spite of his old age, took an active part in the work of the C. C. In 1921, in Livorno, during the split in the socialist party, when many re- volutionists preferred to remain in the socialist party,—Prampolini fol- lowed the Communist group and laid the fondation of the Italian section of the Comintern. 4 Nothing but a profound hate of the revolutionary movement of the Ital- ian proletariat, a thirst of vengence and a fear of all those believing in liberty led the fascists to commit this new crime. The international proletariat while making this act of Mussolini, is cer- tain, that the hour of retaliation is imminent--Anriano Sereni. Refuses Censor Dictatorship. WASHINGTON, Feb, 14.---[f the American stage hires a “dictator,” it will be some one else-—not Alexander YP. Moore, former ambassador to | une capitalist system and particuiarly NOTE—The conductors of this department are going to review books. Some of the books will be fi concern themselves with social and iction, some poetry, and others will economic questions. The literature we will discuss will not necessarily be proletarian. We expect, however, to talk about books from the point of view of those who have accepted the Marxist interpretation of society as a point of departure for their thinking. One thing more. This space wi ill not be devoted to polite literary gossip, painfully genial essays, or free publicity for the first novels of our personal friends, f POEMS FOR WORKERS. Edited by Manuel Gomez. Number 5 of The Little Red Library. The Daily Worker Publishing Co., $.10. title like “Poems for Workers”) implies, first, that poetry in gen-| cial can be appreciated by workers, and second, that there are specitic poems or a specific type of poetry) that make a special appeal to work-| crs. ‘Lhe first of these ideas is cer-| tainly unconventional. College pro- | iessors and graduates of the five- toot shelf will say: try to talk poetry to workers! but they forget that poetry, like all the art foris, had its| origins in’ the mass activities of early | peoples. And it was the coming of | its most vicious flowering, the United | »tates, that was to a large extent responsible for the abortive divorce} of art from the lite of the masses. Manuel Gomez believes that you} can talk poetry to workers, that | workers can tatk poetry to them-/ selves. He points out in his intro-| auction that his anthology is the first of its kind in the bngush language. | all other collections, ike Upton Sin-| ciair’s “Lhe Cry for Justice,” have! gathered togetner primarily poems | about workers, it 1s true thac nov/ TAR, by Sherwood Anderson, Boni & Liveright, $2.50, HEN Sherwood Anderson’s books first began to be published some of the critics said they liked the “groping quality of his writings. Ever since he has been strenuously endeav- oring to “grope” as much as he could. Anderson is wistful over the disap- pearance of the old swimmin’ hole, It hurts him to see the fine, rolling hills of his native Ohio covered with ugly, sooty mills, factories, and rail- roads. He finds mechanical civiliza- tion ‘so disquieting, so irritating, so relentless. Sherwood Anderson loves to dote over his own childhood and that of capitalist America. What wouldn’t he give for the return of the mellow, radiant days when men rode in buggies, painted their own houses, and wore corduroy pants. He would sacrifice anything in order to return to the time when he was a small boy and had sessions with his father in the outhouse in the backyard,—and hoped that he were already a man. “Tar,” is a story of Anderson’s boy- hood in a small Ohio town. Much of the book is convincing, and in it are folk-stories that cling closely to the core of experience. This writer knows how to tell a tale, especially if it is aii ine writers assembled here are | about a race-horse, a small town poli- themselves ‘workers, Some ise oieg-|tician, or a prostitute. Although his | thologies: tmed Sassoon, tor exampie, ave really no direct relauon with the worxing class. But practically all of these poems are written lm a ian- guage and from a point of view that are close to the understanding and the hte of the workers ot America. Some of the poems are good and some are bad. arbitrary. it might have been ex- panded into a portly volume dressed | in an elegant binding anu a pose-im-| pressionistic jacket. lt mign{ have sold for $5 imstead of lv e..us ana} been reviewed in all the best maga- zines. It might even nave veconic a topic for esthetic tabie-tappings in “atmospheric” wine-cellarg where po- etry is once more made a virgin, but it wouldn’t have reached the peopie tor whom it was intended, the men who dig our coal and build our bridges and do most of the hard- boiled, dreary, ‘unpoetical work of the world. : Since the anthology is frankly ar- bitrary, it is perhaps useless to criti- cize the selections Gomez has made. Carl Sandburg is hardly represented at his best, nor are Michael Gold and Jim Waters, who has written better stuff than this for The DAILY WORKER. But any reader can be thankful for the inclusion of two poems not usually met with in an- Edward O’Connor’s impu- dent and gaily pathetic hobo song, “Nobody Knows,’ and Arturo Gio- vannitti’s “When the Cock Crows.’ This wild dark tale of a midnight lynching is, in my opinion, one of the great poems of the Knglish language. it is a leaping prophecy and a scourge. There 1s nothing like it in dnglish unless it be the same poet’s “The Walker,” which falls short of its fierce, gigantic eloquence. ton’s “Avenge, O Lord, Thy Slaught- ered Saints” is rhetorical in compari- son and William Ellery Leonard’s “The ‘Lynching Bee” seems stilted and literary. We must go back to the Old Testament prophets to find its equal. The poem is desperately real and its denunciation and scorn and lyrical madness burn nakedly into the mind. And it is a poem which comes close to the deepest emo- tions of most workers. A. B. MAGIL, Gomez makes it pian) wnat the collection 1s personai and) Mil-} |“simplicity” is sometimes a mere pov- erty of language, critics have re- | garded it as a literary virtue. |. Anderson is sentimental about the | America before the age of imperial- jism and the U. S. Steel Corporation. | One can sympathize with him on that |score. Although it is necessary, of course, to be suspicious of the fellows who reach middle-age, and then yearn for their childhood days,—which were in all probability very unhappy. That’s silly. There is no doubt that the average literary craftsman (or word-fellow, as Anderson calls him) cannot be ex- pected to know something. of the in- |dustrial revolution; of the organiza- |tion of capitalist industry; of the |growth of the American Empire. | Especially Anderson. He is a thwart- |ed actor, a frustrated race-horse gam- |bler. Naturally he would find eco- nomics dull reading. But it is a pity |that he hasn’t more of a feel for the labor movement and the social and jartistic possibilities of a genuine working-class culture. That’s just the reason why Ander- son is getting a lijtle tiresome. Just as Mencken has already become a bore, It’s a lot of fun and quite in- teresting for a time to point out the cultural hollowness of bourgeois America. In fact it’s quite justified, and incidentally goes far toward es- tablishing the atmosphere necessary for a freer kind of writing. Anderson is lonely. He cannot iden- tify himself with the noisy, intense civilization where shoes are turned out by frightful machines. He does not see that the “frightful” machines can be made beautiful, can be made to provide the leisure for which Ander- son hankers so much. Does he hate his little portable | typewriter upon which he reveals his |yearnings for brightly-colored socks and neckties, and for the fine Creole coffee to be had in the French Quar- ter in New Orleans? Clearly it depends upon the uses to which machinery is put. Sender Garlin, ; Roll in the Subs For The DAILY WORKER, WISCONSIN PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES SHOW UP ABUSES BY EMPLOYMENT SHARKS (By Leland Olds, Federated Press) The great advantage to the worker and the community of public as opposed to privately owned employment agencies is again emphasized in the report of the Wisconsin industrial commission covering employment of- fices in that state in 1926. This advant is measured not only in dollars and cents but also for jobs. 4 The report explains that “the bur- den of showing that the employment 000. offices already in’ operation are not sufficient to-meet the needs of em- ployers and employes is upon the ap- plicant for a new license. If the ap- plicant fails to establish proof of the reasonable need of the proposed agency, the application must be de- nied in accordance with statutory pro- visions.” / This gives the free public offices a virtual monopoly. In 1926 public employment offices in Wisconsin placed 106,500 applicants compared with 8,008 placed by private agencies. Only 8,620 of the placements by pri- Spain, Moore announced here today that ke had been “informally approached” ou the proposal, but declared he would not accept it because “I don’t | believe in censorship,” 4 ~ WITHDRAW ALL U. S. WARSHIPS FROM NICARAGUA! NO INTERVENTION IN MEXICO! vate agencies went into,industry. The remainder were nurses, teachers, clerical workers and domestic serv- ants. © Private agencies would have charg- ed the 106,500 workers placed by the HANDS OFF CHINA! Don’t Delay! in the trustworthy information furnished to applicants —<$<$$<$$_____ public offices in 1926 at least $373,- . the saving due to public con- duct of this business amounted to at least $300,000, a saving which goes right into the purses ‘wage-earner families. In the 6-year period the public agencies have made 545,543 place- ments at a total cost of $301,998. If dependent upon private agencies this would have cost the workers more than $1,900,000. Public operation in the 5 years has saved the workers of Wisconsin at least $1,500,000. Some of the abuses prevalent among private agencies against which the free public agencies protect the workers are discrimination, unreason- able fees, misrepresentation concern- ing the job, its duration the wages to be paid. Read The Daily Worker Everyday —