The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 12, 1927, Page 9

S83 Buy Union Coal. Editor, Daily Worker:—-We have given support to’ many labor unions by purchasing their commodities through the union label. Isn’t there a way of getting a line on the coal dealers in New York City who are furnishing coal handled by unions? By knowing which dealers handle union coal, we can help the miners in their struggle. If this news can be communicated to us through the daily paper of the workers, it would furnish us with a means of aiding the miners. I wish that you would give infor- mation like this to the revolutionary workers of this country.—F. Beach, Brooklyn, N. Y. * + * Another Utopia, Editor, Daily Worker:—When all is done by machines, the alarm- clock factories will be the first to be closed, because there will no longer be any cause for alarm. Workers will have a leisurely break- fast at the Knights of Columbus Halls and will then march to the Ingersoll Forum where they will hear a debate on religion—and dis- ‘cover, after one thousand nine hun- dred and twenty-seven years of in- vestigation, whether or not there is a God. —Aconcagua Catopesi, New York City. * * * Priests and Installment Plans. Editor, Daily Worker:—Detroit has a very fine installment plan ar- rangement for workers who want homes. Workers, who save a few dollars and pay so much down for houses, because apartments won’t ac- themselves at the mercy of the sher- iff in a little while. -I know of a worker, the father of several children, who having been laid off by his boss, was thrown out of his house in: mid-winter. While everyone was away from the house, a constable and a few assistants damped all of the furniture into the street, despite protests from neigh- bors, Instead of voting for workers and reading a workers’ paper, however, workers go to church and listen to preachers who advise them to vote for capitalists and who take their money. They are so blinded by preachers that they do not know what is going on around them. Yours for a workers’ government, Agnes Federoff, Detroit, Mich. * * * Conditions in Detroit. Editor, Daily Worker:—The con- ditions in the auto plants of Detroit are worse than jail conditions. I’ve worked in auto plants since 1912, and I’ve talked to a lot of other men about conditions. When I told them that in a few years the auto workers would toil in slavery, I was called a dreamer. Some of them made it pretty miserable for me; now . that many of them are hard pressed, they admit that I was right, that if they had kept their union cards, there would be different conditions in the auto plants today, I wonder how many of them, felt when the foreman came up to me and said, “Get your tools out of here, you’re a damned agitator”. I believe that if Detroit had a few Letters From Our Readers some good political and industrial work. I suggest that The DAILY WORK- ER put out an automc%ile workers’ paper about once a week and charge about two dollars a year subscription. That would help a good deal. And one of these days I hope to see an auto weekly in Detroit that would fight war and the Chamber of Com- merce. By the way, couldn’t we pre- vent wars by putting priests, minis- ters and capitalists in the front line trenches ?—E. V. A., Detroit, Mich. Dempsey-Tunney Frame-up. Editer, DAILY WORKER: I read “Spectator’s” article in yesterday’s DAILY -WORKER about sure-fire sportsmen and I want you to know that there is more than circumstan- tial evidence on the Dempsey-Tunney fight. Tunney trained here in Summit and his trainer, Bud Gorson, told all his local. friends not to bet on the fight, that it would be “flukey.” Gorson’s friends told their own friends and soon it was an open secret. Well, it turned out “flukey” all right. The statement that Dempsey drank coffee with poisoned cream on the morning of the fight is just to pave the way for another fight. Good business for Tunney. He must have paid dear for it. Sports are about as rotten as poli- tics -CHASLHS P, FLETCHER, Summit, N. J. March 9, 1927. Editor, DAILY WORKER: Your >8<3 of March 8th showed that your pa- per is not afraid to tell the truth about that notorious fake Irish re- publican, Eamon DeValera. He pretends to be an enemy of British Imperialism in Ireland, but directly he lands here, he immediate- ly hobnobs with all the worst politi- cal tyrants and grafters that the U. S. A. produces. This is the same DeValera who is opposed to the Soviet Union and who recently stated that he would not up- hold any government which “op- pressed the priests of the Roman Catholic Church,” and in that respect he is in the same boat as the Knights of Columbus, who denounce President Calles because he resents the politi- eal interference of foreign-born Ro- man Catholic clerics in the state af- fairs of Mexico. But, then, that is the trouble with most Irish “republicans” both here and in Ireland. , They are nearly all staunch sup- porters of their religion, and all the undemocratic theories that it stands for and are also firm believers in that dearly beloved Catholic tradi- tion, “The Church is superior to the State.” Long ago the late R. G. Ingersoll stated in one of his lectures that Ire- land would never be free until the people there ceased to swallow all the dogmas of orthodox theology, and those facts were spoken by a real Republican, and one of the most profound American thinkers that ever lived, but his words will never be endorsed by DeValera and his ad- cept workers with families, find . Weisbords, the unions here would do Curiosities of Nature HOW MANY LEGS HAS A CENTIPEDE? _Both, the names “centipede” and “millipede” seem to be* hasty guesses made by someone who didn’t stop - to investigate too closely. Doubtless, anyone who has ever been on a banana ship had a centipede start to crawl over him would be inclined to credit . it with the full hundred legs that its name implies. But actually centipedes have from twenty-six to for- ty-two. They can run rapidly and are carnivorous. The millipede or “thousand-legger” has as many as 220 legs, but despite this number, drags along slowly like a big parade. The millipede, unlike his faster relative, is a vegetarian. DIAMONDS: The south African official diamond rush with its crazy procedure and crazier legality has focused special interest upon the diamond. The dis nothing but carbon--the same ma- terial as charcoal, coke, graphite and lampblack— but in a different form. Of these latter materials, graphite—the same stuff that so-called “lead” pen- cils are made of—is the one that resembles the dia- mond most. Both graphite and diamond are carbon in crystalline form. But there the resemblance ends. The carbon crystal that we know as diamond has been formed by nature by infinitely slow cooling through the ages under tremendous pressure, ‘he diamond is the hardest substance known, and this is its only useful property. Millions of little dia- monds that are unclear or black due to impurities are in use for drilling, glass-cutting, etc. Diamonds have been made artificially, but only such little ones that the game wasn’t worth the candle, BAKU AND THE FIRE-WORSHIPPERS: Oil has been known at Baku since the earliest times, THE LAY OF THE GANDY DANCER Oh, I was doin’ a gandy dance, along o’ th’ Santa Fe When a gospel stiff with a clabber face said ’e’d sum’mat to say, “The Lord,” ’e says, “was wise,”’ ’e says, “an’ the Lord ’e knoweth best— *E gave the road to the financiers an’ th’ likes 0’ you th’ rest. For th’ likes 0” you ’e sav ,” ’e says, “as tong as the rattler runs Th’ burden ’e took off.o’ Mary’ s kin an’ laid upon Martha’s sons.” “Th’ hell,” say I, an’ “Christ,” I says, an’ “Pish” an ’ “Tush”, says ’e, “Yer manners is bad an’ yer blasphemous, which shouldn’t no wise be.” “But the hell”, says I, an’ “Christ”, I says, “Th’ Lord’s a crook, b’gee, If ’e passes his friends a golden spoon an’ a number Two to me.” “Yer most uncouth an’ to tell th’ truth, its very plain to see The Lord ’e couldn’t t ’aleft th’ road to ever th’ likes 0’ ye.” “Yer rough”, ’e says, “an yer tough”, ’e says, “an yer fond o’ beer an’ gin, An’ to give ye more than the grocer takes would steep yer soul in sin. An’ what is more, ye have built the road, for th’ Lord is just an’ wise— He moved th’ hearts o’ his millionaires to let you tamp th’ ties.” “Th’ hell”, says I, an’ “Christ”, I says, an’ “Pish”, an ’ “tush”, says ’e, “Yer a branded soul an’ ye don’t deserve such god-like charity.” “But th’ hell”, says J, an’ “Christ”, I says, “T’ve conned it over well, An’ if God can stand for a deai like that,’ why God can go to hell.” Oh, I was doin’ a gandy dance along o’ th’ Santa Fe. When a of God, with a clabber face, said ’e’d summat to say, I listened to him and I spoke him fair just what seemed right to me But ’im and God they’d stacked the cards from now to ¢ternity. So I took ’is lip and I took a griy sf my Gandy’s golden spoon, An’ I laid God’s share o’ that number two abaft of ’is rear jib boom. ’ * —BILLY WILLIAMS. splendid editorial in The WORKER herents.—F. B. M., New York City. By N. SPARKS and up to the date of the Arabian conquest of the city in the year A. D. 636, Baku was the principal point of pilgrimage of the Persian and: Hindu fire- worshippers, being visited every year by thousands. Usually oil is found only by drilling wells deep into the earth. But there are some places where natural gas or oil, or both, have been issuing naturally from fissures in the rock since ages. A stroke of light- ning, or a spark, back perhaps at the dawn of his- tory, was enough to turn the fountain of gas inte a column of eternal fire. The Greek ‘legend of the fiery monster the “Chimaera” was based on such & column of fire which has been burning for thousands of years on the shores of the Gulf of Adalia, in Asia Minor. It was not an accident that Persia with its oil and gas fields became the center of the religion of fire-worship, for the inexhaustible pillar of fire leaping up from the bowels of the earth was a miracle that other gods would have to strain them- selves considerably to beat. As late as 1880, the Temple of Surakhani (close to Baku) which had been the seat of the Sacred Fire for centuries, was still visited by priests from India. But machine drilling had already begun in 1871. CHARLES E. RUTHENBERG (Continued from page 1) Soviet Union and for a Soviet government in the ~ United States. The last ten years of his life were given wholly to the building of a mass Communist Party in Amer- ica. He knew the importance of the party, its value and meaning to the working class. Foremost in its ranks he was always building and strengthening the Workers (Communist) Party. Our loss is great, indeed. And it is only with the most strenuous efforts of the whole party, supported by the mass of its sympathizing workers, that our movement can in a measure be compensated for the death of Comrade Ruthenberg. What better tribute can we pay to his memory than to fulfill his last wish which was to fight on and build the party? What better tribute can the class conscious workers of America pay to the memory to the dead* revolutionary leader than to join and rally around the party which he had spent his life in founding and building? Ruthenberg is gone but the Communist movement for which he lived and fought so bravely will go on with redoubled energy and devotion. We will now work harder and struggle more intensely to make up for the loss to carry our movement forward, ever forward till the final victory of the working class, “y