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

“Page Six By A. AROSSEY. TIGHT. The unlit 3 were like the dark corridors of a my side how the light de sitting next to me as we in éar and dashed round corners. The machine was throbbing and with one ard with the other Jamy in the dimmed through th resembied a cataract roped along the: streets, panted and puffed and ws not able to awaken a single soul of those who’ were sleeping in the holses looming on both sides of the street, like on the banks of a river. T was reminded of one of the Roms catacombs where along the sides of dark underground corrid: skeletons were arrayed on shelve And here were the Moscow inhabitants. Well, we'll wake them up tomorrow anyhow. Tomo w we'll wake them up, but today— oldiers, today we will sumnton a tremendous force. . * My neighbor kept silent and went on smoking his cigarette. We passed by midnight revellers “And what will we say to the sol- diers?” *T don’t know; whatever occurs to ” The car gave two snorts and stop- ped outside the barracks on Nemet- skaya Ulitsa. The soldier on guard adorned in a front * us. long winter coat was sleeping, propped | up against the closed gates, “Comrade, open the gates.+. D’you hear!” The sentry woke up, made a long! search for his rifle, remembered he had left it in the sentry box and took hold of it. “What do: you want?” he said ap- proaching us, holding his rifle with his sleeves. “We are from the military commit- tee,” I said. The sentry muttered something un- intelligible. “And we must speak with the sol- dier comrades.” “But who are yeu,” the sentry asked again, “We are Bolsheviki—understand?” The sentry, remaining silent, left us, and began to open the gates with a rattle of keys and locks. We entered through the barrack gates. The sentry jumped on to the step of our car, then, without hurry- Ing he went and closed the gates be- hind us. “Comrade, we want to speak to the battalion committee.” “Wait a bit,” said the guard. “Is he going to arrest us?” my comrade whispered to me. “Anything might happen,” I re- plied. We stood in the dark yard while the sentry fiddied about with the gates. Then once more, without say- ing-a word, he led us into the bar- racks. We passed through several tremendous dormitories where soldiers were sleeping on wide boards crowded together in the heat. Someone in a far corner was mumbling some com- mand or other in his sleep. These tremendous rooms with sleep- ing people did not instil a kind of pessimism for long. Suddenly for some reason or other it seemed to us that we were terribly iate or had come to the wrong address, that we had come to people who might tell us oe Oe CATCHES SHARK IN CLEVELAND Regular sea going sharks, five feet long, “caught” in the jaws | of a steam shovel near the city limits of Cleveland, O., are now the Moscow a October 1—SOLDIERS AN the cigarette of the com- |S D COMMANDERS that they were lected in the bar- ks in order to shed blood away at the fre and not here far d in the r hese were just the ideas that the put into the minds of the sol- We SiO ade, get up: some Bol-|} ave come.” | From the committee?” suddenly broke out a young comrade, jumping up and ing on the board, We explained who we were to the two young soldiers and immediately went with them into a little white room in which there was an abnor- mally bright light from a large lamp} suspended from the ceiling. A young soldier, a pale clean-shaven fellow, sat on the table, awkwardly took a pen and inkpot and asked our names: We became indignant: “Comrades, there is no need for any notes. Awaken the soldier comrades and come to the Moscow Soviet!” Another young soldier, broad-faced and of small stature immediately | understood us: | “With ammunition?” he asked. And receiving a short answer from u without saying a word to the fir r, pulling on his trousers on y, ran into the soldiers’ dormitory ng: | Comrades, get up and defend the| Soviet! Comrades! Now then Se- menov, what about it!” As his voice died down in the dis- tance, it began to drown in an in- definite tumult of the voices of the awakening soldiers. The sentry went j;to his place and the one that had wanted to write our names sat down with a vacant look, rubbed his eyes and seemed to try to make out wheth- er it was all a dream or not. “Are you an 8. R,?” I asked him. “T belong to the left. tendency.” We did not hear any more, being no longer interested in what he was saying as a stream of half sleeping, half-undressed bare-footed _ soldiers burst into the room, They jostled one another scratching themselves. Fill- ing up the whole room, the entire cor- | ridor outside it and further along under the arches of the low dormi- tories an everlasting stream of heads, shoulders and hands came into sight. (To Be Continued). ‘British Cabinet to Enfranchise Women LONDON, April 14.—The British cabinet’s decision to propose legisla- tion giving the vote to British women |at the age of 21, although hailed by | many women leaders, brings no false I saiine of victory. “All women will have votes before long,” said Miss Christabel Pank- hurst, once leader of the militant suf-| fragists. “Women will be able to rule the men. We shall no doubt have a women prime minister. We shall be out voting the men. “Years ago, I should have been in | the seventh heaven of delight if this has come to pass. But I have changed since then. It does not elate me one bit now. I know we can make the same mistakes as men.” Tractor Cooperative In Detroit. DETROIT, Mich., April-14. — A membership meeting of the Tractor Cooperative for Soviet Russia will be |held April 17th, at 12 o'clock sharp in the People’s House, corner Grandy | and Ganry. property of the Museum of Natural History there. They are a part | of the city's fossil crop harvested under the direction of Prof. Jesse | E. Hye versity. body of the sharks. . head of the geology department of Western Reserve Uni- These remains of prehistoric fish are found in “concretions” or ecliptical masses of rock formed by chemical action around the When these masses are split open the sharks | are found lying on an even keel and flattened out to a thickness of a quarter of an inch. Top photo shows a “concretion” dug ont by the shovel and, below, its shark exposed by Peter A. Bungart, museum collector, at right of lower photo. r T | in a foreeful manner, | bombarding Nanking where THE BAILY WORKER, VY ORK, FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 19z7 Photo shows wreckage of two-story brick building i after it had been bombed as part of the violence that us used as a Democratic headquarters. A short time before building and took $1,000 from the players. MUTE TESTIMONY OF A “HOT” ELECTION BATTLE n forty-second ward in the “badlands” district of Chicago, hered in the mayoralty election. ‘The building had been it was bombed armed bandits raided a poker game in the Two“Friendsof Labor” in Chicago Mayoralty Election By J. W. JOHNSTONE. HE election for the lucrative post of mayor of Chi- cago will go down in Chicago election hist of the most hectic and vicious elections in this city. of spectacular campaigns. While there were fundamental issues raised by that greatest of demogogues, Bill Thompson, who" repeatedly stated in his election speeches: “It shall be for the best interest of these United States for all time to maintain friendly rela- tions with Européan nations but entangling alliances with none. Or in other words, get out of Europe and stay out. No future draft for the American boys and no joining of the league of nations or world court.” Yet these questions did not decide the election, as far as the writer could find out. Many of the unorganized workers may have voted for Thompson in the hope that he would oppose war, but as far as the’ representatives of organized labor were concerned, they simply ignored | the whole issue, no statement or speech was made by any labor official or union who supported Thompson on these issues and they did not play a vital part in the victory scored by the republican party, The race issue was also raised, this undoubtedly played a part in the election but not a decisive one. Tha Negro workers, traditionally republican, were simply overwhelmed with the propaganda that Thomp- son was the friend of the Negro worker, that it was he who as mayor fought for the protection of the Negro workers during the race riots of 1919. Because of this special effort the Thompson forces rolled up a large Negro vote. An attempt was made to raise this issue among the white workers on a rave prejudice basis, but this failed. * * * Religion was thrown into the ring but that too fell by the wayside. While Dever undoubtedly received the majority of the catholic votes, the vote as a whole! was split. Dever had his Fitzpatricks and O’Donnels, while Thompson had his Sullivans and his Kellys. The wet issue raised its head, but in a negative way. It was not for or against prohibition that the fight | was on, but rather the method in which it was to be regulated, Dever, “the friend of labor” was against home production and favored a producing monopoly for the recognized bootleg kings whose coronation ceremony generally follows the rattle of a machine gun. While Thompson, “as a friend of labor,” believed that the worker should have the privilege of making his own brew on the’ grounds that it did not interfere: with the large scale bootleg industry. x However, none of these issues ever came to the front No one pushed them. The labor leaders who supported either Thompson or Dever ig- nored the question of the drafting of the “American boys” for a future war, and Thompson and Dever talked | in generalities. The government of Nicaragua had been overthrown by the armed forces of the United States, Mexico was being forced by the American government te shape its laws in accordance with the interests of Wall Street. In the midst of the campaign, American warships, in conjunction with their British allies, were Chinese workers were killed, but not one word of protest was issued. joker was dropped. Not one outstanding or even sur- face difference was discussed. * * While the workers turried out in mass to vote, the campaign degenerated down to intimidation, terrorizing * of voters, slugging, gunning, bombing of rival head- | quarters, kidnapping, vicious speeches by both candidates | and their supporters, exposing each other as being con- trolled by big interests and supported by the underworld. It became a frank open struggle as to whether the Dever or Thompson gangs should control the political patron- age and illegal concessions in the city for the next four years. The most despicable part of the campaign was that played by labor officialdom, and it is from this that the left wing should draw its lessons. The campaign, \\as far as labor was concerned, especially organized labor, was to decide which candidate was the “friend of labor.” Undoubtedly the workers voted heavily for Thompson although large sections voted for Dever. Great interest was shown by the workers in this cam- paign. Lacking an understanding of their class posi- tion in society, without any mass political expression of labor in the campaign, with no broad left wing move- | ment or party to point the way, they were easily con- fused and misled by scheming labor politicians into believing that the interests of the workers lie in sup- porting the so-called “friends of labor” in either of the two old parties, . Olander, Fitzpatrick, Nockels, Agnes Nester, etc., supported Dever. Oscar Nelson, M. J, Kelly, Chas. F. * * | Wills, Anton Johannson, Harry Scheck, William Tracy, Glen Campbell, and others supported Thompson. While the struggle between these two groups was bitter, the only real difference was that Fitzpatrick and Olander guessed wrong and Nelson and Kelly guessed right. Nelson switched from the democratic to the republican party, Fitzpatrick and Olander from the republican to the democratic party. The political gymnastics of Fitzpatrick and a sec- tion of his group of progressives since 1917 have been rather weird, and while the group refused to follow Fitz's zigzag line, their gyrations have been just as, t ry as one} This | { brainless. Even such loyal supporters of Fitzpatrick jas Johannson and Scheck refused to follow Fitz into the Dever camp. They accepted the lead of Nelson and supported Thompson. Fitz was a democrat in 1917. From 1918 to the July, 1922 split, he was a Labor Party-ite, then he became a state republican and a Cook y democrat. From then on he has had one foot in each of the old parties and in his. stump speaking for Dever he gave voice to this gem: “The Chicago Fed- eration of Labor has not endorsed any candidate in the present election, the attitude of the federation in politics is in favor of a labor party, but as that is not here yét the organization and members are free to exer- cise their franchise in any way they see fit.” s president of the federation, I am at liberty to vote for‘ any candidate for mayor of Chicago on April 5th.” Then he proceeded to show that the reason he supported Dever was that he considered him the best man and a friend of labor. Well, Thompson, the enemy {of labor according to Fitz, and a friend of labor ac- cording to Nelson, has been elected. There is only one |of two courses left for this group to follow and that lis to either quit giving mouth service for the forma- |tion of a labor party, or openly abandon the idea of a labor party, continue their political toe dancing to the | tune played by Oscar Nelson, and join the Thompson boosters’ club, * | The split in the Fitzpatrick group and the labor | leaders in general over which candidate to support for |mayor, while it was bitter and vicious, is a fake one and will be smoothed over. The real fight is whether Fitz or Nelson will lead the federation. A few years ago this would have meant something, today it means very little. Nelson speaks authoritatively and ‘as one of labor’s orthodox bureaucrats, Fitz has gone back to the fold but has not yet been fully forgiven for his quarrels with the official family and for the few years he browsed in the progressive pasture, Fitzpatrick still gives mouth service occasionally to the labor party. He will have to give this up before he is fully forgiven. In due time he will. The fight between Fitz and Nelson for control of the federation will continue. It will fol- low a fake division, such as is supposed to divide the republican and democratic parties. The old differences, labor party, amalgamation, organize the unorganized, | militant struggle against the employers, etc., that di- ;vided* Fitz from the Nelson reactionaries no longer exist, the progressives should no longer interest them- selves as to whether Fitz or Nelson leads the federa- tion, they ‘must bring forth new leaders. * * * The Chicago Federation officially took no part in the jelection. It remained silent. This no doubt was by agreement between the Fitzpatrick and Nelson forces, jor because of mutual fear to raise such a touchy issue | that might have resulted in the refusal of the federa- |tion to endorse either candidate and this was quite feasable, Both sides massed their forces for the fed- jeration meeting, each side seemed to have about equal strength, with the left wing and the progressives who say they are for a labor party, holding the deciding |votes. It was quite possible that if someone had made }a motion to discuss the mayoralty election and for the | federation to issue an election statement, that both |the Thompsonites and Deverites would have been de- | feated. ; This was not done. The progressives made a mistake |in not raising the issue. Here was an opportunity to expose the role of reactionary labor leaders who be- |come prominent politicians because of their power to deliver a large section of labor’s votes to capitalist can- didates. It is only through the use of these methods that the true situation can be brought home to the workers, by showing to the workers that Fitzpatrick and Nelson in supporting Thompson and Dever, are lining up with the enemies of labor. * * - There are a number of progressives in the Chicago Federation of Labor and scattered throughout the Chi- cago trade unions who have followed Fitzpatrick right along because of their fear that Nelson would get control and who believe in the formation of a labor party and for progressive trade unionism and whose support makes possible the endorsement by the local unions and the federation of such resolutions as de- manding the withdrawal of American troops and mar- ines from Nicaragua and China, in support of the Calles government in Mexico, for the protection of the foreign born, for the release of Sacco and Vanzetti and other class war prisoners, ete. This weak attitude has |demoralized the progressive forces leaving only a small | left wing to really carry on the struggle, This group of progressives did not support either Fitz or Nelson in this. campaign, at least not openly. They gave it objective support because they remained silent. They fear Nelson, they fear the Communists, they shy at supporting resolutions if they are presented by known Communists or TUEL-ites and only support progressive resolutions providing they are introduced by Communists or TUEL-ites who are not yet well known, They are a weak vacillating group that won’t even pre- sent resolutions of their own, have no well defined pro- gram and no leaders. They could become a power if they would act as a unit and in conjunction with the left wing, could retrieve the lost prestige of the Chi- cago Federation of Labor, by struggling for the many plogressive points that they have in common, INTERPRETATION OF THE GOVERNMENT FOR WORKERS. The Worker Looks At Government, by Arthur W. Calhoun. tional Publishers. $1.60, There are s0 many commendable features about this book, which is an attempt to explode many of the current fallacies about the government of the United States, that many of its errors may be glossed over. There are a few points, however, that cannot go unchallenged by the Marxian, The most glaring of these is the totally unscientific and flippant manner in which the author compares the revolutionary dictatorship of the workers and peasants in Russia with the fascist dictatorship in Italy and the veiled dictatorship in the United States. Says Calhoun: “At present . . . the dominant challenge is that of class dic- tatorship, which, whether in the Russian form, dominated by labor interests, or in the Italian form, as reactionary despotism, expresses the realistic conception that the masses are not ready for power but merely for the following of masterly leadership. Open and avowed dictatorship would assuredly be preferable, from the stand- point of progress, to the camouflaged dictatorship that prevails in such a country as the United States.’» It is clear that the author is guilty of a most gross historical inaccuracy to compare even.the form of Soviet dictatorship with that of fascism. In Italy andthe United States, as every Marxian knows, there exist dictator- ships of minorities, imposing their will by force and terror upon the vast majorities, Capitalist dictatorships exist only in order to perpetuate them- selves in power and stem the tide of history that is rising against them. In Italy all democratic pretenses are scorned and the black-shirt tyrant boasts that.he tramples underfoot every manifestation of opposition to. his murderous regime. In the United States democracy is a fraud, But in the Soviet. Union, although a dictatorship exists, it is the dictatorship of the overwhelming majority of workers and peasants against the minority that still tries to revive capitalism in that country. * * It is also utterly wrong to place the problem as one of dictatorship Interna- opposed to democracy, because the masses of Russia exercise more demo- , eracy than any other people the world has ever seen. As Lenin, in his polemics against Kautsky, said: “The Soviet form is a thousand times more | democratic than the most democratic capitalist government in the world.” | Furthermore, the dictatorship of the masses in Russia is only a transitory | stage and it exists, not. because the masses are not yet ready for power— they have power—but because the dictatorship must be maintained until capitalism is not merely destroyed, but the very soil from which it springs has been so deeply forrowed by the revolution that it can never again take root. To approach the question as does Mr. Calhoun is to play the game of the basest of reactionaries, and does irreparable harm to his work, which is obviously intended for workers. The fact that the work is intended for | workers makes such a blunder all the more reprehensible because it is precisely among the workers that the master class spreads similar poisonous | statements about the revolution. . Again the author falls into error when he endeavors to prove that “forms of government in themselves are of minor significance.” On the contrary they are of utmost importance in registering the development of class conflicts. For instance, a fascist government does not arise in a country where the class conflict does not threaten the existence of the capitalist. class. Its very. existence is evidence of the fact that the old ruling class must muster its last reserves in order to maintain power. Again, the history of the changes in the form of the British government coincide, in. a striking manner with the relative changes in class power, Even, the “democratic” government of the United States has, in the course of its history, changed from a real federation of states to a centralized government as the power of the great corporate interests become national and even international in character. . . . The author is on safer ground when he confines himself to an analysis of the government machine of the United States. His description of the * * | operation of the system of checks and balances is to be commended. * * Mr. Calhoun also performs a real “service when he blasts the absurd notion of “proportional representation”—that illusion so ardently advocated by various brands of yellow socialists in this country. He shows that such a demand comes from a party that abandons hopes of becoming a majority and expects permanently to remain a minority, or from a declining party that wants to hold every available shred of influence before vanishing from the scene altogether. This is the only theoretical point on which the author is correct, His estimation of the effectiveness of single-tax agitation is economically unsound. Also jncorrect is his assertion that “the provisions of the constitution (of the U. S.) are so general and flexible in form that it would require little if any modification .in the constitution to make it serve for a Com- munist society.” History has proved, through experience gained in every proletarian struggle for power since the Paris Commune that only a Soviet constitution can serve to bring into existence a Communist society. * * The author is far in advance of most professional educators who con- fine themselves to educational activity among the workers in that he recog- nizes the fact that the American working class is on the threshold to the development of a labor party and that to achieve that end the labor move- ment must become something more than a pure and simple trade union affair. In this, unfortunately, the author relies too much upon so-called psy- chological factors, without emphasizing sufficiently the economic and poli- tical forces that are driving toward a class party of labor in this country, * * * It is to be hoped that if a second edition of the book appears the author will revise it and eliminate the many errors that have crept in. We are far from demanding that. it be a Communist treatise, but even to serve the purpose for which it is intended—popularization of the criti- cism of government for the workers—it must not contain statements that prejudice workers against the proletarian revolution, 7 —H. M. WICKS, REVOLUTIONARY CARTOONS. Red Cartoons of 1927. Edited * Walt Carmon. Daily Worker Publish- ing Co. $1. Walt Carmon has just brought together another group of brilliant car- toons (65 in number) that appeared in The DAILY WORKER and the Work- ers Monthly (now “The Communist”) during the past year. Here are found drawings by Fred Ellis, Bob Minor, Gropper, Vose, Hay Bales, Art Young, Hugo Gellert and the rest of the shock troops of the revolutionary movement in this country who tear.through the granite walls of capitalist institutions with one fell swoop of the brush. . . * * * The cartoon, as V, F. Calverton so correctly explains in a careful intro- duction, is a form of art that immediately lends itself to social tion. “It. represents,” he says, “a of snap-shot logic that often sharper than words, and more effective than argument.” The cartoons here gathered, while probably not the best products @f the radical artists Prem past year, are nevertheless quite All are vital, and searing. Some of them, like Gropper’s “ Passaic,” and Minor’s “War” suggest in a remarkable of a fine cartoon. | oh . . . irritating to see that Gellert is represented by only a single draw- fragment of a cover-design. 3 —SENDER GARLIN, SINCLAIR LEWIS ANSWERS HIS CRITICS.