The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 30, 1927, Page 9

May Day Sketches | I. AN AMERICAN GIFT A¥ DAY is an American gift, presented to the world proletariat in 1889. In July of that year the annual International Socialist Congress was held in Paris. To this memorable assembly came a dele- gation of American socialists at whose initiative a day was set aside to enable the workers throughout the world to celebrate spontaneously the spirit of working class solidarity. May the first was agreed upon to be that day. ‘ Since its inauguration thirty-eight years ago May Day began writing an inspiring history for the working class. One which will continue to be writ- ten until capitalism is abolished. And, there is much to be recorded in such a chronicle. Of bloody riots, of general strikes, and workers being massacred on that day, can fill page after page. May Day is constantly going thru a revolution of its own. It has ceased to be a day when labor “downed tools” merely to demonstrate its strength. Today, in the era of imperialism, it has a more im- portant mission to perform. Capitalism fears that day. It is a sword of Damocles hanging over its head, from which there is no escape. That sword is the incarnation of the revolution which will soon come. It cannot be avoided much longer. Capitalism has outlived its “categorical imperative.” Time has decreed its de- mise. May Day merely reminds it of its inevitable doom, The workers of Russia once bore the spirit of May Day as workers today do in other countries. Now it is the greatest holiday in the Soviet Union. The understanding of May Day helped. them make Nov., 1917, a historic date. China is rapidly learning about May Day now. In Italy Mussolini has forbidden May Day demon- strations. But on that day he will wear his bullet- proof vest. There is something tangible about it which even force cannot suppress. II. STEAMROLLER | eamecaags is the country where things get done. Every other person wakes up in this dollartized land of ours with two thoughts in his mind. The first is to “do” the other fellow, and the second is how to keep that fellow from “doing” you. This is the great American pastime, and the dollar sign which May Day fights did that. It corrupted the youth and made plutocracy an ambition. Someday labor will take the dollar sign and straighten its crooked lines, which chokes so many people insen- sible. Money is an iron wall in America, and reaction is the barrier that protects it. Yet on May Day the cops are warned to watch for phantom bomb throwers. There’s a reason for it. May Day is a sticky thorn in the bed of capitalists. - The Dough Boys are all wise, they know how to employ “force and violence” to steal property and then use that term to hang workers who rebel against their plunder. Give them credit they know how to protect their holdings and get away with it. But May Days are steadily tolling the death knell to this system. It’s echoes are awakening the American workingman from his lethargy, into which elass-collaboration drugged him. Cops won’t help you O doomed system. You can send your blue coated puppets to bed; for their night sticks can’t stop May Day—it doesn’t lurk in alleyways. It’s in the air, but you’ve got to be class-conscious to feel it. Thousands of workers do, they inhale its rebellious aroma and curse your existence. Machine guns won’t help you either. It’s an invisible force you're up against—the steamroller of the coming revolution, which each May Day brings closer and eloser. ~ | Il. , PROTEST CREENED by unever. rows of trees, and set among well kept lawns stands the Dedham jail. Behind the green painted bars a man will peer oceasiunally at the clouds rolling in the distance. An odor of freshness will breeze thru the barred window to which he had become insensitive after seven years of confinement. Dedham, the seat of Norfolk County, is a perfect example of New England bigotry, foreign prejudice, intolerance, and labor hate. It stands with its orna- mented door knockers, brown shingled roofs, and carefully cleaned streets as a symbol of the Anglo- Saxon “supremacy” which is threatening to over- take us all. The man who after seven years still stands in the shadow of the electric chair challenged that supremacy. It was not a personal challenge mind you, but part of the same challenge the working class is putting up everywhere. For that the jaded aristocracy of Massachusetts wants him to die, and to legalize his execution they trumped up charges of murder against him. Elsewhere in the Bay State is the Charlestown penitentiary. Here another worker is waiting the same gruesome fate for the same challenge. The faces of both are lined by the yellow prison pallor, and the flesh under their eyes has that frozen look. Both are separated by space but bound together by the same cause which ties them to the rest of the working class. On May Day millions of workers will hold demon- strations for their freedom, but their protests will be futile as long as the mass of workers hold them in their behalf only. Workers, if they are to fight effectively, must stop thinking of themselves as in- dividuals and begin to think in classes. They must realize that they are. a part of the working class: The same large family that Sacco and Vanzetti be- long to. Only then will the workers succeed, where law has failed in freeing them. IV. LABOR GIANT | Tt Fur Workers Union is a young giant, power- ful with the strength that comes of solidarity. This giant came into being in May, 1925, when, after a long and bitter campaign the left wing supplanted the broken down Kaufman machine. The left wing inherited a union where gangster- ism, corruption, and graft was rampant. The mem- bership terrorized at local meetings stayed away in disgust. After a systematic housecleaning at the hands of the left wing the union took on new life. Its enemies were being driven from the organiza- tion, and in a short time there emerged from a mere name, a strong, militant union. This was the young giant in birth. The following year a general strike was declared. It is here that the adversary of the growing giant combined with the A. F. of L. reactionary leaders to stab him in the back. Together they plotted, schemed, and finally reached a secret agreement with the bosses over the heads of the Strike Com- mittee. What followed is now history. Under the dynamic leadership of Ben Gold the strike wa: finally won. ; Foes of the now powerful union increased. Fore- most among them was the A. F. of L. officialdom. Rumblings of unrest in the miners’ union, talk of amalgamation in the needle trades forced them to take drastic and unheard of measures to protect their bureaucratic positions which the young giant GAIN, turning to one of the most By ALEX JACKINSON was beginning to undermine. So along came the famous $100,000 police bribe charge. It is interest- ing to note that during the seventeen-week struggle there were nearly eight hundred seventy-four ar- rests, innumerable jail sentences, and police beat- ings. This bombshell created nothing but smoke. Their next step was to follow Sigman’s lead and open a dual 10 cent union. This scheme also failed. ° The workers knew who they were, and stayed away. After five weeks they dealt their last card by once more joining hands with the bosses. Together a lockout was declared against all adherents of the Joint Board. With a depleted treasury, ten of its best fighters in prison, the police against them, young giant is now fighting his greatest battle. Workers who don’t know the meaning of May Day will register, but not for long, V. THE FIRST CO-OPERATIVE | Ww up in the Bronx stands a gigantic building occupying two square blocks, the first of such a series to be erected. The house is a beautiful struc- ture built upon an enlarged cottage style. It is bounded on one side by Bronx Park and on the other by a stretch of land where trees will soon be planted. Comé up to see it sometime. It’s the finest there is of its kind in the city, and the spirit of May Day helped build it. In the center of the spacious court a statue of Lenin will soon stand. Here the children are mem- bers of the Young Pioneers, and on May Day they will sing the International. The building will then be bedecked in red. Meetings will be held on the premises. For such purposes there is a lecture hall, also a library, a laundry, a gymnasium, a day nursery, a kindergarten, and a mass dining hall. Here the first actual attempt for people to live socially, communially, will take place. Each Sunday Yosel, of Nitgedaiget fame, comes up to teach shop workers how to breathe properly. Later they play basketball and for the first time in their lives enjoy snatches of temporary freedom. VI. YELLOW VIRGINITY | 1 the socialists are caught in a sinking boat, floun- dering-midway between extinction or complete surrender to capitalism. There is no alternative fiom either of the two suicides. - Their long overdue end will be the znost pathetic of all political deaths, for no one will even chant an obituary hymn at their funeral. On May Day the still living ones will recline in their morris chairs and listen to the radio. A few may indulge in political swashbuckling by protest- ing against intervention in China. But such spora- dic invectives against encroaching imperialism are nothing else but the wailing for a lost virginity. Mourn, you socialists, mourn, your party has volun- tarily given herself to capitalism. Before they grew tired of the class struggle the socialists used to join in radical protest meetings. They too booed wars, pinned red flowers in their lapel coats, applauded revolutionary speeches and felt good. But the dollar sign has changed that. Today they must behave as befitting close affinities of the American Federation of Labor. They can no longer wave red banners, so they denounee Com- munism, tell people to become citizens and import political “has beens” from Europe. Yet the class struggle goes on, and gains daily impetus. Those who are class conscious and have the guts shun the decadent socialist party for a more revolutionary one, the Workers (Communist) Party, under whose leadership May Days will come ana go after the socialist party has gone for good. achievements attained by the women May Day and Women’s Achievements in the U.S.S.R. By P. PROMBERG. Rac year May Day is indeed an ex- ceptional date for the factory and peasant working women of the U. S. S. R. Ten years ago the cor- rupt house of the Romanovs was ‘overthrown by the might of the Rus- sian workers and peasants. On that eventful day thousands of women came out on the streets of Petrograd with slogans, demonstrating Interna- tional Women’s Day, with demands that their husbands and sons be sent home from the imperialist war front. Since 1911 each succeeding May Day has found all the advanced sec- tions of the proletarian women cele- brating this day, A SYMBOL OF THEIR FUTURE EMANCIPATION. In capitalist countries Women’s Day is celebrated in the full spirit of the - elass-struggle against the existing ruling regime. N the U. S. S. R., the country of — the victorious proletariat where the star of Socialism is becoming ever eteadily clearer International, Women’s Day was carried out in a spirit of intense enthusiasm which only a free people can feel. Only our proletarian dictatorship has given the toiling women those isfaction at the 15th Party Congress. important problems of today, namely, that of “The New Life” (Novy Beete) where the participa- tion of women workers is of partic- ular importance there is no better method of reaching the tec*ward masses of toiling women to collabor- struction than through the institu- - tions dedicated to the protection of motherhood and childhood. During the Jast.ten years gigantic steps have been made in the diree- tion of establishing nurseries. In the textile-industrial areas almost 100% of the factories have been fit- ted out with creches, and slowly but surely the) net is continually grow- Tt following figures will, per- haps, give a slight idea of this growth which is all-important to us women. In 1923 there were only 475 ereches in these industrial areas and in 1926 this figure had already sprung to 4,101, In the current year the Council of People’s Commissars drawn into social work. We can point to a whole series of of our country in all spheres of scien- ative work in the Socialist con- tific, educational, social and official life which opportunities have been “afforded us only since the revolu- tion. Of course there are many short-comings in the ideology of our women workers, remnants of pre- revolutionary prejudices. These, how- ever, will be liquidated when the mas- ses of toiling women will receive that political and social consciousness that participation in the social work of the country will give us. HIS year the celebration of In- ternational Women’s Day was of added importance as it coincided with the 10th anniversary of the February Revolution. On this day we women factory and peasant workers of the freed U. S. S. R., demonstrating throughout the entire country will have launched slogans placing before ourselves the task of still more in- - tense drawing into social work the backward masses of women of our country, still more participation in the great work of Socialist construe- tion. Our success in our tasks will be a battle-ery to the toiling exploit- ed women masses in every country to unite for universal emanetpation.