The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 9, 1927, Page 9

SS LORE SEO PILE EIEIO PRD EE EE ' f f sivikes, so I’m not yammering for personal recog- nition! But, it’s later on that Allen makes a mistake which is-more than a mistake. It is bad jourralism, and very bad revolutionary ethics, so to set things lightly down on paper, without verification. IT was one of the famous hundred and sixty-six who were indicted, during the war, by the govern- ment for offences against the Espionage Act. I was one of the defendants in the Chicago I. W. W. trial. I was’ sentnced to ten years, of which I served two-and-a-half at Leavenworth, being sub- s¢quently deported. I was previously six months in the Chicago Cook County Jail. I am a Communist now, and for years, I have been in Europe, and thus separated from the I. W. W. But I admire the men who were indicted with me, even if I no longer share all their opinions—the Bolshevik Re- volution and the founding of the Communist Inter- national has divided us. I love those comrades who faced, undaunted, the prospect of years in prison. I am sore when someone maligns any one of them, or all of them. Firstly, Allen says, of fhe 166 indicted Wobblies, “the vemaining 101, at the insistence of Big Bill Taywood, were tried en masse and served varied sentences in prison.” Now, I’m one of that 101, and I want to say em- phatically that I don’t relish Allen’s implication that I surrendered for trial, and took part in the mass trial, just because Haywood insisted on it. It is—I regret to somewhat harshly state—untrue. i can say, for one, that I thoroughly agreed, at that time, with the tactics of surrender and a mass trial. Bill Haywood didn't bully me into it. “And, anyone wo knows the looseness of discipline in the I. W. W. will know I’m right when I say when that, had I not agreed, all the insistence of Bill Haywood alone wouldn’t have made me surrender. I don’t mean to say I think we were right in surrendering. I now think it is a revolutionist’s business to keep out of jail, all he can. But, once he’s caught, he must make his trial as good a piece of propaganda as possible. But I didn’t think so then. In those days, in accordance with the rather muddled think- ing of the I. W. W. we had—despite our “non-po- litical” attitude—a sort of sneaking faith in the democracy we despised. We felt that a sort of dramatic passive resistance would awaken conscience in the “public.” I admit that, now, I feel that I was rather a boob to believe this. But, my point is: most of us believed it, and not just Haywood. Most cf us thought our tactics of surrender and mass’ trial were correct. Anyone will tell Allen that those tactics were completely in line with previous J. W. W. methods—Free Speech Fights, and so on. We had always used the somewhat masochistic mass tactics of putting our heads, all together, down on the block for the club to fall on them. I want right here to refute the stupid allegation that Hay- wood made me surrender, or my fellow-defendants, It is an insult to our spirit, to imply that one man . made over a hundred others go to jail against their will, to satisfy his vanity. I surrendered, in San Francisco, for the federal authorities, only after due consideration, and discussion with the I. W. W. membership of San Francisco. I did it deliberately, -hecause I thought then it was the right thing to do. 1 did not have to surrender. I could have made a perfectly good get-away. While the federal dicks in San Francisco were look king everywhere for me, I strolled down Market Street and took the ferry for Oakland, brushing right- against the intelligent ™~ (Continued from Page One) however, that the trick of blaming Communists for everything under the sun will be resorted to repeat- edly. And even so in the present difficulties of the southern capitalists. : v * * - According to newspaper reports, the migration of Negroes from the southern farms is again as- suming mass proportions. A survey including Ar- kansas, Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama, indi- cates that at least 3500 Negro families have gone to the north in the last few weeks. It has become a common thing to find that Negro families have decamped over night from plantations. The Arkansas Democrat, published in Little Rock, picks up the cudgels for the southern employers of Negro labor in this fashion: Chicago’s efforts during the last few years to entice Negro labor from the southern states have brought about a situation in the Iillinols metropolis that is threatening a whirlwind of trouble. Thirty thousand Negroes, it is esti- mated, are walking the streets of Chicago seek- ing jobs. They are without funds, without food and dependent on other Negroes for sustenance and means to return to their native commu- nities. And concludes thus: Every intelligent white man of the south who has influence over Negroes should make it a point of patriotic duty to warn the Negroes honestly of the conditions in Chicago. We owe that not only to our sister city but to our own colored people for whose interests we of the south always have been on the alert. On the alert in what way? In the way of mak- ing the lives of the Negroes so miserable that they . are departing on i aquth over night. eae . officers who were seeking me. This, because I was attired as a seaman in the United States navy. A good rebel, on a battleship then at Mare Island, had loaned me the uniform! No! I may have been foolish to surrender; but I wasn’t terrorized by Bill Tlaywood into doing it! And the same applies to my co-defendants. All together, there is unjustified spite in Allen’s remarks about Bill Haywood. He says “Big Bill’s accusations of treason against- those who refused to pose in his martyrdom tableau, his own bail- jumping and flight to Russia, and the bloody fist fights that broke out among his jailed disciples, -were death blows to the I. W. W.” Now, this is peppy stuff with which to regale the bored liberals, and smart-alec intelligentzia who read the New Mercury. But it’s damned bad taste, and some of it is lies. My friend, Bill Haywood, happens to be an hon- ored guest of the workers and peasants of the Sov- iet Union, and of the Communist International. If he is respected by the tried revolutionalists of Rus- sia, and is their guest, naturally we dislike other revolutionalists—and I presume Allen is a revolu- tionist—reviling him for the amusement of the gid- dy, but innocuous, Menckenites. It wasn’t Bill Haywood’s “martydom -tableau.” And I hope a hundred old-timers, who served in l.eavenworth, wii} read this, and write in to the same effect, and let Allen know what really hap- pened in those days. It is a repetition of the slur that we all got pinched, and served time, because Bill Haywood told us to. Good Lord, how little Allen really knows about the I. W. W., internally, in those days! Once and for all, let me inform him that the tactics cf those days—however wrong— were not designed to oranment Haywood, but WERE CONCEIVED BY REASONED DELIBERATION OF MANY RESPONSIBLE MEMBERS OF THE I. W. W. I held, at that time, credentials as a Na- tional Organizer of the I. W. W. I was a trusted speaker, writer and publicity agent fer the T. W. W. And I agreed with the tactics, and so did most of my companions, As to Bili’s bail-jumping, I wili admit that that was a inistake. Bill will probably admit it too, if Allen asks him. But. it must be remetabered that, at that time, there appeared in the press a state ment by a representative of the Comintern, stat- ing that they had agreed as to the advisability of the step. And Bill had already become a Conumm- ist. Also, Bill was-a very sick man, at that time. Tlowever, I think it was a mistake. But I don’t just blame Bill for it. He left himself in the hands of others. And now we come to an amazing statement. Al- len refers to “the bloody fist fights that broke out among his jailed disciples.” This, I definitely want to brand as a lie. During the three years that I was in prison—and my prison work at Leavenworth enabled me to maintain contact with all our boys there-—I only know of two fights. And these two both occurred in the Cook County Jail, within the same fortnight—while we were awaiting trial—and neither was on a matter of policy! One of them was When a member gave a thorough beating to his personal friend, a well-known soap-boxer from the west (who afterwards became a sort of Tolstoyan mystic) because said soap-boxer went out, with a detective, to be treated by a dentist in Chicago, and returned drunk—the federal dick being only too glad to drink at the expense of the Wobbly, or, Whether or not migration is desirable from the point of view of the Negro masses themselves, mi- gration is not going to solve the Negro problems in the south. And the question will continue to face the southern Negroes of how to resist slavery and exploitation. This is the big question. And on this the Negro masses will meet a common enemy and will have to make common cause with the ex- ploited and oppressed southern whites. What the Negro masses of the south are suffer- ing from most at the present time are the effects of the general agrarian crisis, which is being 1n- tensified by the cotton crisis, and also from the results of the industrialization of the south which is disturbing and breaking down old social] relations, carrying in its wake intense exploitation and op- pression. This situation undoubtedly strikes hard- est at the Negroes, who are, in addition, exposed to special discrimination and persecution, but the white workers and poor farmers of the south are affected by this condition as well. The fact that aggravates the condition of the op- pressed masses of the south, whites as well as Ne- groes, is the almost complete absence of political and economic organization among them. The in- dustrial and agricultural workers are unorganized. They have no unions with which to fight for better conditions, The poor and tenant farmers, white and Negro, are in little better shape as far as organization is concerned. In a political way, the situation is even worse than on the economic field. It is, therefore, obvious that the urgent task confronting the workers and poor farmers of the © south is to organize. The workers must organize into unions. The poor farmers must likewise or- ganize. Each of them must wage an organized struggle against their exploiters. Both of them must enter into an alliance for common political of course, of anyone else. And the other fight was between two very good fellows, whose nerves were exacerbated by the hellish life we lived in that Chi- cago prison (locked, three in a cell, for twenty hours out of the twenty-four), and was about some perfectly petty personal matter. The minute after this nervous explosion, they shook hands, and the matter was finished. Those were the only two fights in the jail, As to the penitentiary, even if they’d want to indulge in “bloody fist fights,” the opportunities were extremcly small. And the prison discipline was such that, if our boys had fought much, the whole damned lot would soon have been in “solitary.” I differed materially from some of the I. W. W. men in there, on several points-—on Communism, on the edvisability of accepting reduc- tions in sentence, if no recantation was involved, and other matters—but we never dreamed of fighting. It is deplorable that Allen should make such state- ments. They appear to be curiously animated by malice towards Haywood, which I cannot under- stand. Surely Allen is too young—or too young in the movement—to like or dislike Haywood person- ally? I am a Communist. I think much of the I. W. W. theory in which I then implicity believed, was wrong—namely, their attitude towards politics and towards the A. F. of L. But, they were an organiza- tion which believed in the class struggle, and Which fought in the class struggle. They spread wide in America the idea of industrial unionism; and they brought organization and consequent betterment into the lives of the migratory workers. On occa- sion, as Allen deigns to acknowledge, they travelled hundreds of miles, through parched desert or bitter cold, beating their way, risking jail and beatings on the way, in order to fight for the workers, in some conflict with the authorities. Their speakers often had to sleep on the floors of the halls, when their evening’s propaganda was done. Their edi- tors worked for a scanty living wage, and never augumented their income by titillating the after- dinner sensibilities of the readers of fifty-cent maga- zines. Perhaps they weren’t clever enough; or per- haps they didn’t think it quite decent. I am sorry Allen has. spoilt a good article. I am sure Gurley Flynn is sorry; she was ever generous and warm in her friendships, and never sought ag- grandisement at the expense of others. She never needed to. I think she is sorry she lent Allen her serap-book. Bill Haywood probably hasn’t read the article—the New Mercury hasn’t a large circulation in Moscow; and, if he has, he probably wouldn’t reply. He would not think it really worth it. Per- haps it doesn’t matter what the New Mercury read- ers think about us; and the few who read it, and know the lahor movement, won’t believe it, anyway. Very few factory workers or miners—whose good opinion we esteem—will know of it. But I—not being directly attacked or mentioned in the article—am impelled to write the above. I am impelled because I honor the comrades who went — through the Chicago trial, and imprisonment, with me. And I don’t like to have them lied about. With many of them I now disagree politically. But they are men, with men’s clean emotions of pride and of ~ anger, and with capacity for courageous suffering. To stigmatize them as puppets must hurt their pride, and mock their past suffering. And I am sure it must arouse their anger. It did in me. Hence this article. (The end.) action in defence of the larger interests of the workers and poor farmers. There is no short cut to salvation for the ex- ploited and oppresses, be they white, black or yel- low. The road that they must travel is the road of persistent struggle against capitalist exploitation. They must wage this struggle on the economic as well as political field. And for this they must or- ganize. * * _ British imperialism continues to maneuver for Joint military action by the big capitalist powers against the Chinese revolution. The English have repeatedly approached the imperialist governments of Afher:ca, France and Japan for joint military intervention on a large scale to crush the revolu- tion and to reestablish the full domination of for- eign imperialism in China, Whether or not the American government will eventually agree to such joint action with the British imperialists remain to be seen. But it would be a disastrous mistake to assume that the pre- sent policies of the American government in China are in any way pacific. é ; The danger of American imperialism waging war in China is real and immediate. Any moment may find the American workers and farmers involved in a costly and bloody struggle whose only ob- _Jective will be to fatten the profits and strengthen the power of American capitalism. The masses must be aroused to a full realization of this danger. The demand for the immediate withdrawal of all American naval and military forces from China must be spread far and wide throughout the country, The American people must say in plain and unmis- takable terms, before it becomes too late, that they do not want war against China. OA