The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 22, 1927, Page 6

preset hee RL IN Ey NA TERI = . all aid from the Communist International which he says has been Page Six THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1927 a, on a ne Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO Daily, Except Sunday 83 First Street, New York, N. Y. SUBSCRIPTION RATES By mail (in New York only): By mail (outside of New York): Phone, Orchard 1680 $8.00 per year $4.50 six months $6.00 per year $3.50 six months $2.50 three months $2.00 three months Ad all mail and make out checks to THE DAILY WORKER, 33 First Street, New York, N.Y. J. LOUIS ie Sipe WILLIAM , apigeai BERT MILLER... Business Manager the post-office at New York, N. Y¥., under 1 Entered as second-class mail at the act of March g rates on application, Advert = ‘Why Does Not President Lewis of the United Mine Workers Denounce the Coal Barons? President Lewis, in a public statement in Miami, has spurned offered in case the United Mine Workers has to strike to enforce | a wage agreement with the coal barons on April 1. This heroic repudiation of assistance from any Communist source is a gesture designed to convince all and sundry that the UMWA officialdom would rather see the miners’ union suffer a disastrous defeat rather than take one ruble from revolutionary workers for strike relief. Just why any further proof of this is thought to be needed by President Lewis is a mystery to us. He has, in addition to in-| sisting on beginning the expulsion campaign against Communists by the unseating of William F. Dunne at the Portland convention of the American Federation of Labor in 1923, made war upon the} rank and file of his own union. Starting the drive ostensibly as an effort to expel and disbar | Communist miners from the union, the Lewis machine ended by stripping the union constitution of all provisions for rank and file expression, giving the officials unlimited power to levy and col- lect assessments and prohibiting foreign-born workers who are not yet citizens from holding office in the union. The union, while the Lewis machine has been persecuting and expelling the best elements in the union, has dropped from over | 400,000 to 273,000 members. In the last six months, when all records for coal production have been broken as a result of Amer- | ican coal owners grabbing British markets, the UMWA LOST 19,000 MEMBERS. Important districts like West Virginia have been lost to the union as a result of the corruption and incompetency of the Lewis | machine. Other important districts have shrunk to half their | former strength. In yesterday’s issue of The DAILY. WORKER we pub- lished a complete refutation of one of the main charges made by) the Lewis machine in connection with its war on the Communists. | The letter of William Feeney, an organizer of the union at the time the letter was written and still on the Lewis payroll, shows} only one example of the practical application of the Lewis policy. | The Communist International never fails to call on the work- ers of all countries for support of struggles like that which the UMWA may be called upon to fight. But it does not give finan- cial aid to these struggles. The trade unions of the Soviet Union do, however. Lewis may say that he will accept no support from the 9,000,600 trade unionists of the Soviet Union but if, as appears probable, the UMWA has to fight for its life, the union member- | ship will show that Lewis does not speak for them by accepting | gratefully such support as the Russian workers can give them in a struggle against the American coal barons to save the union. | Lewis may have added to his prestige among coal operators and wider capitalist circles by his recent statement but he has not} helped the coal diggers who pay his salary of $12,000 per year. | We would like to remind President Lewis that the enemies of the United Mine Workers are the coal barons who are here in America. The Communist International is the most powerful friend any organization of workers can have. What the UMWA’ needs is a few statements from Lewis denouncing the operators | in terms at least as vigorous as those he uses in slandering the Communist International. | This would serve to put the union in a fighting mood for the} struggle which, in one form or another, it will have to wage after! April 1. But this is too much to expect from an ardent supporter | of President Coolidge. | Drive Spies andlnformers Out of the Labor Movement. The frame-up of two members of the Furriers’ Union in Bos- ton, evidently an extension of similar methods used .in New York} to other centers, should call attention again to the viciousness of|as beacon light to the workers m turn to work and strive to build up the attack on the needle trades unions and the co-operation which | can be denied no longer between government agencies—police, | courts, etc.—and the right wing in these unions backed by the} officialdom of the American Federation of Labor. On the scale whieh the drive on honest, fighting trade union- | ism is being conducted, the united front of bosses, government and reactionary trade union officials is without precedent in the} labor movement. | Heretofore it has been the rule that all differences of opinion as to internal policies have been subordinated to the main question of defending workers and union leaders who are arrested and in-| dicted as a result of strikes and boycotts. This rule no longer applies. It is clear that the right wing leaders are playing the role of informers and in some cases that of prosecutors. Expulsions of left wingers from the unions are followed sys-! tematically by prosecutions in the capitalist courts. The right) wing officialdom marks the victims for the police agents. } The members of the American labor movement will not sup-| port this black reaction once they are informed of it. The right wing leaders cannot defend their actions in this respect before! any body of American workers. f There is needed a broad mass movement for which a base al- ready exists in the traditions of American labor. There should be organized at once a drive for the defense of the workers who| have been deserted and betrayed by officialdom and there is no doubt that it will become one of the most effective weapons for checking the drive against militant trade unionism and militant | trade unionists and finally smashing it completely. No worker who feels the pressure of American capitalism but who will support a movement with the slogans of “Support all framed-up strikers” and “Drive spies and informers out of the labor movement.” , The Committee for the Preservation of the Trade Unions is reported to be in the market for an undertaker. When last seen the committee was suffering from shortness of breath, a sluggish | There weren’t | they were earnest, hard-working, and THE DAILY WORKER The Rand School: A Memory S. A. Garlin. | In 1906, when the Rand School of Social Science was founded, it had a couple of little rooms in one of the decayed brown-stone houses on East} 19th Street, near Third Avenue. | many students, but/ eager. The faculty consisted of two | or three men, one of whom also acted as executive secretary of the school, The students came trom. the shops, the factories, or the mills, to learn the facts about the capitalist system | so they could return to their “home-| towns” and spread the message. These were the “full-time” stu- dents, who spent a period of six months studying the history of the working class, economics, history, and sociology Many of them later be- came organizers, speakers*and writers tor the Socialist movement. | Some of the students slept in the} little rooms on the top floor of the/ building. Joints on Third Avenue | were constantly being discovered | where a big meal could be had for} | 25 or 30 cents. Some of them washed | dishes in neighborhood restatrants | for their meals; others brought a lit-}| tle money with them and were able| to spend all their time in study. | There existed then a spirit of com-| radeliness, co-operation, eagerness. | ing presses). ' Between 1917 and 1919 was the “Golden Age” of the Rand School.| Thousands of men and women at- | tended the lectures given at the school. A cafeteria was established, and a book shop, with a brisk andj; enterprising manager. Courses were given by some of the best radical thinkers in America. | This was a period of expulsions of unorthodox professors from the Uni- versities. There was one from, Penn- sylvania, another from Columbia, and | one from Clark, | At this time the Rand School was) in a true sense the intellectual center of the American radical movement. | Then came the left wing split in| the Socialist Party in 1919. The Rand School became the citadel for the} riglt wing forces. Several of the in-| structors were “let go.” One of them} a teacher of history and political sci- ence was made uncomfortable, be- cause of his dangerous doctrines, and he parted ‘company with the school, He had previously lost his job in a Brooklyn high school for a similar reason, It was at this time that courses were introduced in interpretative dancing, psycho-analysis, and “The Ring of the Niebelung.” It was natural, in this atmosphere | of culture and refinement, that there This was before the World War andj should be sof& jobs, administrative the Russian Revolution and America} twaddle, fat salaries. There was an was to gain the Co-operative Com-| Educational Director, an Executive monwealth by electing the lawyers in| Secretary, an Assistant Educational | United States, liver and moral leprosy. 7 of Shp ade Sala the party to the State Legislatures. The school was founded with a few thousand dollars bequeathed by Mrs. | Carrie Rand, a lady with liberal and humanitarian instincts. The money she left didn't amount to a great deal, but it was sufficient to start the school going. In the spring of 1917 the building at 7 East 15th Street was the head- | quarters of one of the branches of the Young Women’s Christian Asso- ciation. In that year the Socialist Party was very strong, numericaily, in the and particularly in New Work City. Its academic oppo- sition to the war; Morris Hillquit’s mayoralty campaign on the issue of cheaper milk; and a general program of petty reform attracted thousands of middle-class tradesmen and pro- fessional men to the party. That’s how the People’s House was obtained. (They also got the New York Call, a large building, and the fine print- Director, a House Manager, a Pub- licity Director. And once, the three-typists.and of- fice clerks had: their pay cut two | dollars each, because the “comrades | | ought to co-operate.” ; 5 | One winter Morris Hillquit gave | a series of talks on “From Marx to | Lenin.” East Fifteenth Street be- |tween Fifth Avenue and Union Square was lined with limousines. In |the crowded auditorium the Execu- | tive Secretary, who resembled a Dean } of Women in a Middle-western Uni- | versity, beamed. The Socialist move- ment was making definite progress. It was gaining recognition. | Today the Rand School is a tomb. j In spite of attractive courses on | Psychoanalysis, Appreciation of Mu- | sie, and Current Poetry, few come. Even its gym classes have been liquidated. The library is usually empty. The large clock on the wall | of the library stopped a few months | ago. Nobody has taken the trouble to wind it up again. The Passaic Spirit By CYRIL BRIGGS. (Strike Publicity Director) “We would go to work in hell if there’s a union there, but we would not go to work in heaven without a union,” That’s the way one of the Forst- mann-Huffmann strikers put it the other night at a meeting of Forst- mann-Huffmann strikers called in Ukrainian Hall to consider whether it| would be advisable to call off the strike and attempt to build a union upon the basis of the concessions so |far wrested from the stubborn and reactionary’ Julius Forstmann, presi- dent of the company and die-hard leader of the five mills which are still refusing to concede their workers the right. to organize and do collective bargaining. “Union or Nothing!” came another! | voice from the crowd and the demon-! stration that followed proved that both speakers had’ properly inter- preted the sentiment of the packed gathering. “Union or Nothing!” “Union or Nothing!” It was the Passaic spirit speaking. The cour-| ageous Passaic spirit which in its flame-up in January, 1926, lighted up| one of the darkest periods of labor history in this country and served as every trade throughout the country The Passaic spirit, which held out month after month against the boss-| es’ starvation offensives, against the poison gas propaganda éf the kept press, against all sorts of underhand attacks upon their leaders, against the clubs of the’ police cossacks and the fines and jail sentences of judi- cial tools of the millionaire mill bosses. The Passaic spirit, which rallied the workers in the most ex- ploited trades to resist the wage- slashing, union-smashing campaign of the bosses, which was in full swing at the time. The Passaic spirit, which by its tenacity and steady cour- age, finally forced four of the nine original struck mills to back down and concede to their workers the right to organize in a union of their own choice, and not in the hated com- pany union. “Rather Starve Than Surrender” Faced with diminished relief con- tributions, with food stores that are almost empty, and for months now living on a monotonous diet of cab- bage, potatoes, beans and bread, the Passaic spirit declared its readiness to starve rather than surrender. “We would rather starve than surrender,” a tall, angular woman, who carried a baby in her arms, called out after hearing the report of Relief Chair- man Wagenknecht. The Forstmann letter, while put- ting the company on record as dis- pensing with the silly fiction that there was no strike in its plants, does not concede recognition of the right of workers to organize in a union of their own choice or to do collective bargaining. It merely declares, against all evidence to the contrary, that the company had never and does| not now object to membership of its employes in outside organizations “whether religious, social or other- ina? gas Meeting Two Weeks Ago. | The letter was first presented to the strikers on January 19. The crowd cheered wildly as their local leaders spoke in favor of the resolution to treat the letter as a basis for nego- tiations, not a basis of settlement. Chief Organizer Coco, Relief Chair- man Wagenknecht, Gustave Deak, Ellen Dawson, financial secretary | Local 1603, U. T. W., Thomas De- Fazio and Joseph Magliacano, Ital- ian organizers; Emil Gardes and Ben Lawinski, Hungarian and Polish or ganizer, respectively, Felix Pancres and the members.of the F, & H. com mittee, were elected some weeks ago |to negotiate with the bosses as oc- casion presented. Two weeks later, however, on Feb rvary 2, another meeting was called |and Vice-president Starr reported that every effort at further negotia- tion with the labor-hating Julius | Forstmann had failed. | This time the local leaders, faced with a most serious relief situation, still opposed acceptance of the Forst- mann letter as a basis for a settle-| ment, but offered a resolution to call) ) off the strike and let the workers re-| |a union inside the mills. | The resolution had been passed ecutive committee and the delegate’ jbody. It declared that while the | Forstmann letter was unsatisfactory, | nevertheless it was a distinct retreat’ {on the part of the mill owners and might be made the basis for building }a real union within the F, & H. | plants, In addition to the two F. & H. plants, there are three other mills, |New Jersey Spinning, the Gera, and the United Piece Dye Works, involv- {ing some 4,500 workers, who, with | 8,000 from the four settled mills, who have. not yet been returned to their mills, make’ a total of about 7,500 still out. Of these some two thou- mills, and contribute weekly to help give relief to their fellows, In spite of this the strain on the relief mach- inery is very severe, Must Rush Relief. No one can tell what the outcome will be, but such a determination as these strikers show should, rouse a response among workers elsewhere. They must have relief at once. The organized labor movement must hurry them food, clothing, or money to buy this, And organized labor must act quickly, if the situation is to be saved, and the splendid spirit of the Passaic strikers utilized to make the victory complete. Just Another Corpse. HACKENSACK, N., J., Feb. 21,— The identity of the bullet riddled body of a well dressed man in Engle- | wood cliffs near here on Feb. 14, has | mystified the Hackensack police, earlier in the day by the strike exe-| sand have temporary jobs outside the}. “Bunny, I don’t care about the other women-they will always be | after you, of course. I was heart- sick about Miss Tracy, because I knew she was a selfish woman, and I was afraid you’d find it out too late, and be wrecked. At least, I told myself that was it—I sup- pose the truth is I was just green with jealousy.” 5 “Why, Rachel; you love me?” ‘As if any woman could help lov- ing you! The question is, do you love me?” “I do—yes, truly!” “But’ Bunny—” there was a lit- tle catch in her voice. “You don’t show it!” So then he realized that he had been wasting a lot of time! He had to fake only one more step, and put his arms about her, and there she was, sobbing on his shoulder, as if her heart would break. “Oh, Bunny, Bunny! Can I believe it?” So to make her believe it, he be- gan to kiss her. She had been such a sedate and proper little lady, such a manager in the office and all that, he had been in awe of her; but now he made the discovery that she was exactly like the other wo- men who had been in love with him; as soon as she was sure that she might let herself go, that it was not some blunder, or some crazy dream—why, there she was, clinging to him in a sort of daze of happiness, half laughing, half weeping. As he kissed her, there was mingled in his emotion the memory of how brave she had been, and how loyal, and how honest; yes, it was worth while making a girl like that happy! To. mingle love with those other emotions, that appeared to be safe! And she was just as passionate as either Eunice or Vee had been, not a particle more sedate or reticent! “Oh, Bunny, I love you so! I love you so!” She whispered it in the dark- ness, and her embraces said more than her words. “Dear Rachel!” he said, with a happy little laugh. “If you feel that way, let’s go find a preacher or a justice of the peace.” She answered, “Foolish Bunny! I want to know that you love me, and that I'm free to love you, What do I care about preachers or jus- tices?” So ‘then he caught her tighter, and their lips. met in a long kiss. If she tried to voice any more doubts, he would stop the sounds, he would find a way to convince her! And what better place for their love than this mysterious. grove, the scene of their future la- bors? Yes, they would have to buy this ranch now, regardless of soil deficiencies! It would be a haunted place; in after years, while the young folks had their games and pegeants in this grove, Bunny smi Rachel would ‘ook on wita a secret. thrill. Had it not been in ancient oak-groves that mystic rites had been celebrated, and pledges; made, and holy powers invoked! qt They found the justice of the peace next morning; and then they finished the inspection of the ranch, and drove back to Angel City and made arrangements for a first payment on the purchase price. After which they had the thrills of telling all their friends You mean that . about having got married—strictly in the interest of the college, of course, and to avoid scandals in the bourgeois press. Bunny went to see Ruth, and tell her; ang strange to say, this em- barrassed him. Bertie and Vee had planted in his mind the idea that Ruth had been in love with him for the past ten years; and now Kachel was certain of it; and these women had all proved to be right about each other every time! Also, there was a fact which he had not men- tioned to Rachel; there had been a while on the way back ‘from Paris, when he was debating in his mind whether it was Rachel or Ruth he was going to invite to become his wife! He had a deép affection for Ruth, the same still quiet feeling that she herself manifested. But the trouble was, there was Paul. Ruth was bound by steel chains to her brother—and that meant the Communist movement, and so Bun- ny had to wrestle over that problem some more. Sooner or later you had to decide, and take your place with one party or the other. Were you going to overthrow capitalism by the ballot or by “direct action”? This much had become clear to Bunny-—the final decision rested with the capi- talist class. They were getting ready for the next war; and that meant Bolshevism in all the war- ring nations, at the end of the war, if not at the beginning. S0- cialists would try to prevent this Upton Ginclair war; and if they failed, then the job would be done in Paul’s way, by the Third International. But meantime, Bunny was drawn to th socialists by his temperament. He could not call for violence. If there was to be any the other side must begin it! Whatever Ruth may have thought or felt about the news of his marriage, she gave no sign but of pleasure. She had expected it, she said; Rachel was a fine girl, who agreed with his ideas, and that was the main thing. Then she told him that Paul was’ expected back tomorrow, and was to speak at a meeting—his supporters had got him into the Labor Temple by much diplomacy, and he would have a chance to tell the workingmen about what he had seen in Russia. Bunny and Rachel must come and near him; and Bunny said they would, This was the Sunday before elec- tion day, the end of a long political campaign. The workers had heard no end of appeals for their votes— but here was something different, more important than any election issues. However hostile the lead- ers of labor might be, it was im- possible for the rank and file to resist the contagion of this miracle that was happening on the other side of the world—a vast-empire | where the workers ruled, and were making their own laws and their own culture. Paul was fresh from there scenes; his words were vivid, | he brought the things before your eyes; the red army, and the red schools, and the red papers, the white terror, and the resistance to capitalist siege on ten thousand miles of front. Oh, the fury of the capitalist press next day!. They didn’t report the meeting, but they published protests about it, and stormed in editorials. The LaFollette ‘reds” were bad enough, but this was an intolerable outrage — an avowed | Moscow agent, who had been ex- pelled from France, permitted to hold a meeting in Angel City and incite union labor to red riot and insurrection! What was our police department for? Where were our patriotic societies and our Ameri- can Legion and our other forces of law and order? Bunny called up Ruth next morn- ing; he wanted to see Paul, to talk about the proposed college. Ruth said that Paul had gone down to the harbor, to see about addressing meetings of the longshoremen, These men had had a big strike while Bunny was abroad,-and had taken their full course in capitalist government. Six hundred of them had been swept up off the street, for the crime of marching and sing- ing, and had been packed into tanks _ with all ventilation shut off, to re- duce them to silence. A score of the leaders had been sent to state’s prison for ten or twenty years for “criminal syndicalism”; so the rest ought to be ready to listen to the Communist doctrine, that the work- ers had to master the capitalist state. There was to be an enter- tainment that night in the I. W. W. hall at the harbor; there would be music and refreshments, and Paul thought it would be a good chance to get acquainted with the leaders. Bunny said that he and Rachel were going down to Beach City, and they might run over and bring Paul back with them. ‘ (To Be Continued). The Latest Censor 4 Moore, An especially posed portrait of Alexander P. Moore, formerly a Pitts- burgh newspaper publisher and lat American am! a vd NOTE:—Generally speaking, the ownership of property under the pres- ent system involves responsibility. | Collecting books and libraries is a sure sign either of juvenility or senil- ity. However, if any of the readers jof The DAILY WORKER are ever impelled to buy books we suggest an | excellent way of disposing of them after they have been read, (1) There are more than 50 class- war prisoners in the jails and peniten- tiaries of the United States who are there at the present time for violat- ing ruling-class legislation. They are constantly asking for reading matter, (2) The DAILY WORKER needs reference books. All books should be sent to the Book | Editor, The DAILY WORKER, 33 | First St., New York, : | ; |THE AWAKENING OF CHINA, by | James H. Dolsen, Dafly Worker Publishing Co., New York. $.60, The headlines about China are meaningless unless you know some- | thing about the forces behind the na- | tionalist movement. Dolsen’s book is an attempt to get at the guts of the Chinese revolution -—to get at the basic factors which brought it about and which therefore shape its character. Dolsen uses the Marxist method. He does not bother with the east- west - and-never-the-twain-shall-meet- claptrap which is the usual explana- tion for China’s attempt to clean out the foreign imperialists. He digs up the fundamental economic forces and shows you how they produced classes with conflicting sets of interests. The industrialization of China cre- ated two new classes—a native bour- geoisie and a native working class. These two classes are supplying the fireworks in China today. They are |the backbone of the nationalist move- ment. | The native bourgeoisie wants to get | rid of the foreign imperialists because it wants to be free to exploit its work- \ing class; the working class wants to | get rid of the foreign imperialists be- jcause it is being savagely exploited. | (Boys of twelve work eighteen hours |a day for about 15 cents in the rug | factories at Peking.) | Dolsen analyzes the forces which |have brought these new classes into |being. He describes the growing Strength and the consciousness of the | working class which is taking the lead in the fight for China’s liberation. He describes the murder of Chinese students and workers at Shanghai and Shameen in 1925 which gave impetus to the nationalist movement. There is one powerful class in China ‘that Dolsen neglects in his analysis— that is the peasantry. The peasants who have been burdened with exces- sive taxes and rents that sometimes | amount to four-fifths of their total |erop, are becoming conscious and | forming organizations that are bound to play an important role in the | Chinese revolution. The role of the bourgeoisie is also underestimated by Dolsen. Despite his failure to take these forces into consideration, “The Awak- ening of China” is by all odds the best book in the English language on the Chinese revolution. It’s the only attempt that’s been made at a scien- tifie analysis of the forces underlying the nationalist movement, a movement which directly involves the destiny of 436,000,000 people. Harry Freeman. | CHILDREN OF THE SUN, by James | Rorty. Macmillan Co., New York. | $1.75. The dominant note of James Rorty’s |first book of verse is meditative rap- ture. At its best this rapture is trans- muted: into a strong, burnished elo- quence. At its worst it is mere prosi- ness or rhetoric, Rorty is aware of a large world. It is a world in which his senses, his intelligence, his loves, hates and angers all play their part. Here is no fragile poetaster grieving a delicate, moldy grief. Rorty challenges the tasks and large articulateness of the major poet. There is strength and de- sire and sunlight for the flesh of his verse. Yet too often I think his vision outleaps his powers of expression, and what is evidently a deeply felt emo- tion emerges as a flat landscape of tolerable lines. He does not hew words boldly and definitively enough. Being a poet who knows the dif- ference between bunk and reality, Rorty makes no secret of his contempt for the ideals of capitalist America. This appears directly in his Satires, | which contain some of his best work, | '|and indirectly in his hymning of birds and beasts and rivers and mountains. Perhaps this is what is called ‘escape.’ But in his positive philosophic ap- Bieeh to ber oe an approach hidden at times under a mock simplicit; there fs too much that ie dirert eed unwavering to be éalled escape, Rorty’s most recent work is his strongest and he has continued to im- bere He is a poet who fuses sen- sitiveness to personal e a feeling ton ectal a iia A. B. Magil. Al Sidesteps Ted New York Trenait Wane ALBANY, N. Y., Feb. 21—I¢ bunk was " electricity, the colonel would be a power house,” This was Governor Al Smit