The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 2, 1927, Page 4

Page Four THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 1927 THE DAILY WORKER Published by tie DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO. Daily, Except Sunday | 88 First Street, New York, N. Y. Phone, Orchard 1680 | SUBSCRIPTION RATES | By mail (in New York only): By mail (outside of New York): | 68.00 per year $4.50 six months $6.00 per year $3.50 six months | | | $2.50 three months $2.00 three months Address all mail and make out checks to THE DAILY WORKER, 33 First Street, New York, N. Y. J, LOUIS ENGDAHL WILLIAM F. DUNNE BERT MILLER | Entered as second-class mail at the post-office at New York, N. Y., under| the act of March 3, 1879, Advertising rates on application. | >. ———— American and British Imperialist Rivalry Comes to the Fore in China Imperialist rivalry between Great Britain and America is | still a decisive factor in shaping official policy in China. This is the first conclusion to be drawn from the most definite state- | ment ever made on foreign affairs by Coolidge. The second conclusion is that the dominant finance capitalists | of America have spoken and that Great Britain has failed in her} efforts to secure joint action against China from her chief im- perialist enemy. than to gain by joining now with the other powers against the Chinese nation. » There will be columns of praise for Coolidge but it was. not | Coolidge who framed the policy, The great banks with their | billions of liquid capital crying for investment "were the interests | which feared that an aggressive policy in China would result in a door being closed forever to American investments. The British empire is fighting for its life. It is impossible | to overestimate the damage suffered by British imperialism by | its defeat in China and the effect of this upon the 330,000,000 in- habitants of China. In this desperate situation the British foreign | office was undoubtedly willing to make almost any concession to | secure American support. Failure to secure agreement in these| circumstances means a sharpening of the struggle between Britain | and America to the point where it is impossible for them to com-| | bine against the Chinese liberation movement. Similarly it means | that the British-built ring around the Soviet Union does not in-} clude the United States as yet. | The Coolidge statement, however, is dangerous in that it may | in behalf of the Chinese liberation movement and that the danger | of war on China has passed. Nothing could be further from the | truth and not only is there a threat to China on the part of Ameri- | can imperialism but the evidence of the tenseness in the relations of America’and Britain makes the menace of war between pr two nations a practical issue for the American workingclass. In the struggle for the preservation of their influence and in-| vestments in China there are all the ingredients for conflict on a | world scale. As we have stated before in these columns, Ameri- | can battleships are in Chinese waters to impress Great Britain | as well as to intimidate the Chinese masses. | The demands for the withdrawal of all armed forces from} China and recognition of the People’s Government must be given | greater force since as long as they remain, there is the double | threat of aggression against the Chinese national liberation move- | ment and war between imperialist rivals which would drown mill- | ions of workers in their own blood. | The Right Wing Sinks Deeper in the Mire of Reaction No day passes without additional evidence of the utter re- | action of the right wing leaders in the needle trades coming to/| hand. Two recent developments show the Green-Woll-Sigman | clique nestling snugly in the arms of the bosses and the agents of | Tammany Hall government. First comes the agreement with the fur bosses made by the American Federation of Labor against the left wing—an agree- ment whose basis is cooperation of right wing, industrial squad and gangsters to smash the New York Joint Board. Second is the recent correspondence between Sigman and the Civil Liberties Union in which Sigman appears in the role of assis- tant prosecutor of the members of the International Ladies Gar- ment Workers who have been indicted for picketing and other “crimes” in connection with the strike of the cloakmakers. Sigman protests against certain members of the Civil Lib- erties Union, acting as individuals, who aided in the organization of the Committee of One Hundred for defense of these workers. Sigman calls workers who are trying to raise defense funds for) the indicted unionists “blackguards, character assassins, under- | world characters and corruptionists.” He threatens the Civil Lib- erties Union with dire penalties if they do not take action against the men and women who have assisted in the defense work. Nothing remains for the right wing leaders to round out their policy now except to move their headquarters into the Civic -Federation offices (where Vice President Matthew Woll is already The Freiheit Has Proved Value of Press to Labor in Its Struggle for Power By J. LOUIS ENGDAHL. ODAY, the Freiheit (Freedom), our Jewish Com- munist daily, celebrates its Fifth Anniversary. It is a time of congratulation for the thinking work- ers, speaking all languages, in the whole American labor movement,—that such a staunch fighter of the working class has come triumphantly thru five years of ceaseless Uncle Sam ‘Protecting’ Nicaragua battle in the cause of toil. The future looks bright, with new successes awaiting The Freiheit in its efforts to win greater masses of workers for their own class Se | Labor, the needle Recent events have shown that The Freiheit is not only the standard bearer of the militant workers who speak and read the Jewish language. It fights, and fights brilliantly on one sector of the American work- ing class front against capitalism, an important and nec- | morale of labor’s entire army. enmity of Abraham. Cahan, of The: Forward, the yellow Socialist organ; of Morris Sigman, head of the reaction | William Green, president, Matthew Woll, vice president, ganized labor. bor, whose prime task is to keep the workers loyal to capitalist interests, seeking to turn their faces against their own struggle. | * The Freiheit came into existence shortly after the) organization of the Workers (Communist) Party. It was established by the joint forces of the Jewish Federation that had withdrawn from the Socialist Party | the previous summer, in 1921, and the Jewish Section of | the Communist Party, that had been forced in’ illegal existence by governmental persecution. combined all the best elements among the revolutionary | Jewish workers in this country. | Armed with the * * an) This became very evident, and soon, with the barragé | doubly armed in their struggle. In a multitude of laid down against the left wing in the Jewish section of | ters, in all sections of the nation, the spark of the American trade union movement by the Socialist; effort kept glowing by revolutionary Jewish spea! | workers, communicates its inspiration to English speal “Daily Forward.” be * * ‘ing toilers, At first The Forward attacked the left wing and The | Freiheit almost exclusively on the issue of the Soviet | Union. Thus on its fifth that was raising relief funds in this country in aid of the famine stricken in the First Workers’ Republic, the socialist “Forward” was doing everything possible in an effort to hamstring this effort, even to joining with the capitalist prosecutors in demanding an examination of the funds collected. pir < * * * At that time the yellow leaders, still in control of the Comment needle trades unions, saw the necessity of maintaining an English-languaze organ and threw great sums of money into the ever-empty treasury of The New York Call, the socialist daily, operated under the thumb of Abe Cahan. - Two big significant facts in this period were: (1) The drift of Jewish workers from The Forward to The Freiheit, and; (2) The failure of The Call to hold any support among English-language reading workers re- sulting in its suspension. These two facts were in- | dications pointing to the growth of the left wing. * Coe The left wing did grow in New York, against every obstacle that was raised against it, especially the gang- ster methods employed to intimidate the rank and file. This growth, rapid as it was, could not have been achieved without The Freiheit. It was The Freiheit that kept great masses of workers informed daily as to every phase of the struggle. In those locals of the In- ternational Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, the Fur- riers’ Union, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers’ Union, the capmakers and other needle trades unions, not reached by the Freiheit and other left wing publi- cations, the reaction was sure to maintain a foothold. | The lack of information on the part of the workers as to the militant viewpoint in the left wing struggle gave strength to Cahan and Hillquit, Schlesinger and Sigman, Kaufman and Schachtman. The loss of our Italian daily was especially felt, and very severely. | * * * The Freiheit was a great power in achieving the | triumph of the Joint Action Committee of the I. L. G. the union-smashing tactics of the Pittsburgh companies. But as the strike continues there will be a series of such systematic attempts and it will be a great mistake if the miners are led to believe that shutdowns and starvation are the only weapons the operators will employ in what is primarily a nationwide effort to destroy the United Mine Workers of America as an effective in- strument of the coal diggers. Even during the life of the Jackson- ville agreement its provisions were openly violated by the operators. They flaunted their contempt for the stipulated working con- ditions in the faces of the miners, they repudiated the whole agreement and went back to the non-union system as in West ‘Virginia, they closed their mines in union territory as in Illinois, ) humane W. U., in 1925, and in the following year it was a tower of strength in the strike of the Furriers’ Union. fight leading the ‘way: to labor's complete emancipation. | In the conventions of the American Federation of | completely, first to the Gompers’ machine, and later to the Green regime, that continued to respond to the poli- cies of the arrogant American imperialism. It was in this period that the Freiheit, that suffered |essary sector that has helped strengthen the spirit and | Tepeatedly thru various financial crises, nevertheless, {won an ever-increasing support from the workers, As the mouthpiece of the Jewish workers who con-|Shown by the gradual and rapid increase in the number stitute a large and able part of the left wing in the | of its readers. It truly developed into a mass organ of needle trades unions, The Freiheit’ incurs alike the | the Jewish speaking workers. | The time quickly arrived, however, that showed the Wall Street has decided that it has more to lose|in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, | struggle of the Jewish needle workers could not be iso- | with other betrayers of the Jewish workers, as well as| lated from the bigger stream including all American ot- Militancy in the needle trades became and other officials of the American Federation of La-| the concern of the whole A. F. of L. reaction. At the Detroit convention of the A. F. of L., last Oc- | tober, after Henry Ford had announced the inauguration | of his so-called five-day week, the labor officialdom | cited the victory of the New York furriers to show a \bona fide five-day week had been won by workers thru | the exercise of their own economic power. same time the New York Joint Board of the Furriers’ | Union became the object of a vicious attack by the labor They reaction. That attack continues, | Freiheit, not only as a weapon of the Jewish workers, When the Freiheit and the left wing were urging ev-| but as an instrument of all American labor, striving create the impression that nothing needs to be done in America |ery possible support of the Friends of Soviet Russia,|in common with all other foreign and English-language left wing and Communist publications to win the workers for militant trade unionism, for independent political action in the field of the class struggle. The Freiheit is, therefore, truly an organ of Com- Hail the Freiheit as it faces its sixth year promising greater struggles, greater victories. UNCLE SAM IN CHINA trades reactionaries had gone over * * * * * * But at the * Freiheit, however, the workers * * * anniversary it is possible to hail the * * Hail Dore Textile Barons Scowl When Churches Appeal To Their Conscience CHARLOTTE,.N. C. (FP).—Sou- thern textile barons, speaking through David Clark, editor of the Southern Textile Bulletin and direc- tor of their campaign to defeat the child labor amendment, have promptly shown their resentment at the moral plea addressed to them by Protes- tant clergy that they abolish. their mill villages and establish just and industrial .relations with ensconced) put the industrial squad on the payroll as organizers Indiana and Ohio and opened up mines in non-union sections. The their workers. for the “union” and devote all their time to jailing Communist and left wing workers. The right wing has Tammanyized the section of the union it controls. Not only has it surrendered to the bosses but it has enlisted in the army of the bosses and is destroying the union} in the needle trades. The Miners’ Fight is the Fight of Every American Worker The Pittsburgi: Coal Coitpauy and ine Pittsburgh Terminal Company have put their mines on a non-union basis, mobilized | their private armies of thugs and have declared their intention | of fighting the United Mine Workers of America to a finish, These two companies typify the true attitude of the coal barons toward the miners. Local conditions at present. prevent the adoption of a similar policy in other coal fields but unless there is speedy and energetic organization work in the non-union fields operators in the central competitive field will soon be fol- lowing the example of the two companies mentioned. Tt is evident that just as in 1922 struggle in the Pittsburgh district will be fierce. This is a stronghold of the steel trust and | thé miners’ union is a thorn in its side. It will try by every means | to destroy all organization among the miners so that this terri- tory may be completely under its control with no unions of any kind to dispute its domination. In other districts—Ohio, Illinois and Indiana—the mines have been closed and as yet there has been no open attempt to duplicate ms RRL Ma ida Neate ae operators made war on the union from the day the Jacksonville contract was signed. For three years they have been getting ready for the present drive on unionism. , There is one way for the union to meet and beat this of- fensive. It is to throw its full strength into an organization cam- paign in the decisive non-union sections. Many of these miners are former union men who were starved out of the central com- petitive field and will respond to appeal of the union. The miners who have never belonged to the union understand that once the union is smashed their wages and working conditions will suffer. ‘The job can be done. The government has stated:that it will not interfere in coal dispute but ‘this means nothing except that it believes that the union will be beaten. As the militancy of the miners increases and if substantial gains are made in the non-union fields, the government will side openly with the coal barons as it did in pre- vious strikes. For this reason it is necessary that the labor move- ment as a whole be prepared to put the maximum pressure on state and national governments to prevent the use of the govern- mental machinery against the miners. ' The fate of American labor is bound up with that of the United Mine Workers. If it is defeated there will be no hesitation ro = part of the capitalists in attacking the unions all along the line. The fight of the miners is the fight of every worker in the United States, abi This plea was delivered by, Bishop Cannon of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and was signed by Protestant Episopal and Baptist bishops and ministers in all the sou- thern states. While no minister in any textile town signed the docu- ment, it was known that ministers in these towns were privately urging that the appeal to the consciences of southern employers be attempted. Clark’s answer to the clergymen’s indictment of industrial autocracy is that it is really philanthropy! New England textile mills are los- ing ground, while northern capital is being invested in southern textile de- velopment, due to the absence of labor laws and the supply of illiter- ate cheap labor from the southern mountain sections, Union organizers have made little progress. Save Two People In Newark NEWARK, N. J., April 1—A man and a young woman, trapped on the ea eee of a building here by ammonia fumes from a refrigerating plant, were rescued today by firemen wearing gas masks. BUY THE DAILY WORKER AT THE NEWSSTANDS FOOTNOTES ——mee By EUGENE LYONS: China.—For generations missionaries have been propa- gandizing in China for Christian obscurantism. Under the pro- tection of imperialist guns they intrenched themselves to preach western capitalist “morals” and “justice.”’ They went forth in every direction as advance agents for British, American, German and French investors. But the respectable citizens in this and other lands saw nothing wrong in such foreign intrusions, such outside propaganda, The “liberal” papers did not editorialize piously about “outside interference.” On the contrary, the mis- sionaries were held up as types of spiritual pioneers, Christian heroes, what not. Even the machinations of the diplomatic corps in Peking, and the officially deputized commercial drummers in Shanghai and Canton and Nanking and a hundred other Chinese | cities, failed to elicit a protest. But suddenly a horrified shout | has gone up in the best circles against “propaganda” and “foreign interference” in China. It is the “Soviet” and “Bolshevik” brand, of course, that has aroused the righteous indignation. Ministers and newspaper editors—curiously forgetful of their own propa- gandizing missionaries—now “deplore Communist influence” in China. Boiled down to essentials, their central objection seems to be that Communist leaflets have accomplished more in several years than missionary tracts did in several generations. TO per wie Politics a la Passaic._—A note on the niceties of politics in the town known for its textile strike is contributed by Irving Freeman of Passaic. He writes: “Commissioner Preiskel, popularly known as Commissioner Pret- zel, is out for re-election on his record of hysterical behavior in the early days of the Passaje strike. At a meeting of his henchmen recently he an- nounced that John Kelly would be his campaign manager, and that be- | tween his own Jewish name and Kelly’s Irish label, he had the Hebrew and Trish votes in his vest pocket. But insurrection has broken out in the afore- said vest pocket. The local unit of the Clan-Na-Gael, resolutioned in protest against this Jewish trick of appointing an Irish campaign manager.” Given such excellent ingredients—Jew, Irishman, and Commissioner Pretzel—any of our readers can easily construct his own joke, though we can’t think of ong, atthe moment. THE MAGIC “SKIN.” (Inspired by murderous doings of the imperialists in China.) The hide of a Yank is precious It’s worth ten thousand others In this respect. the Yankees And the British are blood brothers. The hide of a Yank is precious But not in the land of his birth It has a “Wall Street” value In distant parts of the earth. The hide of a Yank in danger Is the much desired excuse That “Wall Street’s” flunkies grasp at The devil-dogs to use. The hide of a white marauder, Or a Jesus peddling sap Is stretched by bandit nations / To spread out on the map. f —ADOLF WOLFF. / EXCERPTS FROM OUR OWN PEPPY’ DIARY. March 25,—All day at our scrivening but at eventide (heigh- ho!) to hear J. Brophy and P. Hapgood at the Cafe Boulevard, whereat a Committee for Democracy in Industry acted as host. Brophy held forth so quietly’and courteously (even of his foes) that it did strain the imagination to picture him as a labor agitator. The socialists, albeit a few months ago they supported Brophy, were conspicuously absent, fearing mayhap to rouse the displeasure of His Highness J. Lewis and lesser lights among the latest allies of the New Leader. P. Hapgood won the hearts of all the ladies at one fell swoop, and did tell of a beating received at the-miners’ con- vention in so joyous and sprightly a fashion that none doubted he enjoys such physical exercise. Whenafter the majority of the diners did repair (mostly uninvited) to the abode of a Russian where we settled many things, such as politics and art, but chiefly did we settle neat Swiss cheese and caviar ‘sandwiches, washed down alas! by coffee only. March 26.—Did foregather with a group of scriveners, artists and miscellaneous persons at the abode of E. Royce to consider ways and means of building The DAILY WORKER. Too many of those invited did inconsiderately accept the invitation, thereby making the gathering unwieldy. Yet we did listen to speeches and join in public-spirited resolutions. If but half of those who promised should inconsiderately come through, ’twill take all the time of J. E. Eogeahl, W. F. Dunne, S. Garlin, ete. to stem the flood of con- tributions. | On the very eve of the mine strike, two coal mine disasters have taken their toll of workers’ lives. In Illinois eight miners were burned to death. In Pennsylvania four more were killed in an explosion, and several hundred others escaped death by the narrowest margin. These tragedies go far to explain the fighting spirit of the coal miners. Where mortal danger is their daily share, a West Virginia mine war or the prospect of starvation in a | bitter strike does not frighten them. Despite the deliberate efforts of the Lewis gang to botch the strike, the rank and file may be expected to show their old mettle. | A cartoon in the Chinese press is headed “Object Lessons in Geography \in Shanghai.” It shows a father and his young son on the seashore, point- ing to the waters swarming with foreign warships. ‘Look, my son,” he | says, “this is the Pacific ocean.” | The occasion for the Nanking bombardment, it would seem from the cabled dispatches, was “the wholesale massacre of one American.” Cae. Such exaggeration reminds us of the literal cop who or- dered a solitary strike picket to “disperse.” * * * It now appears that Henry Ford did not write—or even read —the articles under his signature. Soon the reading public may lose faith in everything but the memoirs of Valentino’s ghost. a * . * can cure spring fever. f * * * The fifteen hundred marines make enough noise in d i ing for China to give the impression of a huge expeditionary force. The ballyhoo is not accidental. It serves to create a war psychology which will make the news from China more palatable to the American masses. { Study Refugee Problem Arrest George R. Dale, SOFIA, Bulgaria, April 1—John| MUNCIE, Ind. April 1—George Barton Payne, accompanied by his|R, Dale, editor of the weekly Post- wife and red cross officials, arrived | Democrat, was arrested here today here to make a study of the|on a grand jury indictment charging refugee problem. The matter is de-|him with criminally libelling Circuit manding immediate attention as there are some 20,000 refugee families here, who ever since driven from Greece, have suffered privations and are now in dire need. King Boris re- ceived Payne and his party in audi- ence, Indianapolis. Dale’s bond at $3,000 at noon today yet made it and faced \of going to jail. wo ee Not even a snowfall in the last week of March, we discovered, ,- \ ‘