The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 2, 1927, Page 7

= | town section.” Everything pointed to SUPPLEMENT PART II THE | Hands Off China!——Hands Off the Soviet Union!—— | Smash the Right Wing Drive Against Trade Unionism! | | ———Sacco and Vanzetti Shall Be Freed; The 1919 May Day Terror ; in Cleveland By T. J. O}FLAHERTY. | Oh loyal cripple! Oh most perfect HE Victory Loan drive was sagging | ap cai capitalism! Crippled above in Cleveland. The people who | *74 ee were sold a sordid war under the| nother hero of the day was Ser- pretense that it was a fight for civili- | geant Raymond Williams, “whose arm zation and freedom for humanity were | ¥* shattered at St. Mihiel, who like | Stop the Wall Street-Coolidge-Kellogg War on Chinese Liberation Movement! MAY EDITIO DAY DAILY WORKER. Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office at Néw York, N. Y¥., under the act of March 8, 1879, The Smile. That Makes Imperialism Frantic | Save the Miners’ Union—Hands Off Nicaragua and Mexico! ——Withdraw China!. All Troops § and Support the Chinese _ MAY DAY—Yesterday | and Today By H. M. WICKS. Battleships From Trade Unions! struggle. Then Terence V. Powder- ly, leader of the Knights of Labor a recovering from the spree and they | Stevens, is here for the Victory Loan hugged their dollars regretting tha they had not hugged the sons the sent across the ocean to die or b maimed on the bloody fields of Fland- | ers to protect the millions of the | House of Morgan that were invested | on the side of the allies. The patriotic | bankers and business men and their} political flunkeys were frantic. The Victory Loan must be put over. The voices of those who continued to tel the masses the truth must be stilled It was in this atmosphere of contem- plated violence that the Socialist Par- | ty of Cleveland, under the direction of Comrade C. E. Ruthenberg organ- ized a monster parade on that his- toric May Day, 1919. E Socialists of the city of Cleve- land and sympathetic organiza- tions gathered in their respective halls early on May Day and formed in line for the march downtown to the Public Square where they were supposed to arrive by noontime. The procession was orderly. As the parade got under way hoodlums of the Amer- jean Legion, under the direction of} the local business men began to at-/| tack the individual marchers who car- ried red flags. Crippled victims of the war in wheel hairs were used by the reactionaries to ‘couse the people against the socialists. These unfor- tunate victims of capitalism did not} realize that their crippled bodies was their only gain from a war that raised: a crop of American millionaries who } svere never within hearing of gunshot, | and that the men and women they} were incited to attack were their best friends whose advice if followed would | have kept in the United States the) millions of young men who risked life and limb in the bloody holocaust | that the imperialist powers ‘turned | loose upon the human race. } DESCRIPTION of the ‘attack on the parade as reported in The} Cleveland Press tells us that “trouble started simultaneously on each rout \like the idea of having to fork out vas one of the first to get a red flag. A OSEPH IVANY and Sam Pearlman were shot and killed by policemen. Death alone saved the murdered frdm being indicted on charge of shooting with intent to kill. The po- lice were exonerated and hailed as heroes. The necessary hysteria for a successful Victory Loan campaign yas being worked up. What did it matter if the lives of a few working- men were sacrificed on the altar of patriotism and that hundreds should be smashed, jailed and separated from their families by deportation? E. RUTHENBERG, then as al- * ways, was in the forefront of the fight. He led the parade to the Pub- lic Square and mounted the platform accompanied by a number of war veterans in uniform who carried red flags. Those soldiers learned what they had been fighting for and they wanted to show their hatred for the capitalists that sent them to the slaughter. No sooner had the speak- ers and the radical soldiers mounted the platform than hoodlums attacked them. The Victory Loan quota for the city of Cleveland was $81,500,000. | With only eight more days left the patriots had succeeded only in high- jacking $31,000,000 out of the pockets of the public. The bankers did noz the balance even tho they could dig their fists into the people’s savings in the banks and claim credit for extra-patriotism. * beta arrests made by Friday num- Herel, 134. Most:of those were: foreign born. “Almost every other man arraigned” the Cleveland Press reports “appeared with a bandaged head or body bound up. This wa: the result of blows from police maces or of culbs in the hands of loyalis: rowds.” Those were the days when abitual criminals accustomed to tne fered up sacrifices on the first day of the month, nor because we do hc mage to the processions to the gr to of Egeria. Nor t is our M ; Day derived from e Maypole ec | brations in medeival and Tudor |jland; the gayety of which a | the ire of the puritans who abolished \it during the Cromwellian interreg- num. | UR May Day is Internatio | Labor Day, born of the strugg’ ‘of the working class against its torical enemy, the capitalist cla born on American soil out of the great eight-hour agitation of the eighties of the last century. For }years May First had come to be dreaded by the exploiters of labor in the United States in that era when |the colossal trusts of today were |young giants endeavoring to enslave the working class of a continent. It is the irony of history that the pres- sure of the masses of American la- bor and the preparations that were made for the resumption of the eight- hour struggle in 1899 impelled Sz uel Gompers, president of the Amer- the International Labor Congress at 1st, the day selected for the begin’ ing of the American eight-hour da: strike. It seems ironic today in vie of the subsequent history pers who not only repudiated, national Labor D. ¢ national laber }ia whe Srwith the most malevolent y for ar for an gested sympathetic strikes in national action. * * * HE May y that the working class of the world celebrates is}Who bore the euphonious title of |not that mystical, far-away festival| Grarid Master Workman, issued a lof sacrifice to gods and goddesses of | Secret letter in which he advised ancient Greece and the still more|2ainst being too active in the eight ancient Babylon; we do not celebrate} hour movement. At a convention it because the name of the mc i d at Richmond a few months later derived from Maia, the mother of| defended h traitorous course Mereury to whom the Romans of-| With the miserable plea that “the education which r intelligant action to those most i Powderly’s it always precede ad not been given of it,” led to his be- ee! ‘al by tal of the t hour e the mbership of h ation was highly for the reason that the ‘ederation |did not have fund hich to em- }ploy even one org: The new }members in the Kn could not know of Powderly’s ret treachery d were strongly behind the eight- jhour agitation, which he capitalized only in order that he could more eas- ily betray the movement. The 1885 convention of the Fed- eration reaffirmed its determinatién to launch the eight hour day on May First of the next year. In spite of iE ican Federation of Labor, to request °° Paris to arrange sympathetic demon- | strations throughout Europe on May of Gom- | gate those workers who even sug the United States, say nothing of inter- | 5 6 Be American labor movement, or | Powderly’s circular and the sabotage | of his clique the units of the Knights Jof Labor in the most important cen- |ters were unanimously in favor of the movement, | March and April of 1886 saw most intensive org the press | serv: ling trusts campaign of villifica- | tion ainst labor | that has no equal even to thi® jday, A Knights of Lab strike |broke over the Gould railroad lines jon’ March 1, over a question of a lwage of $1.50.er day and because discrimination aga hat .nerticipated #¢ the road a year . rderlyy. during the course» of fthe strike, had made th ave | disgraceful proposals to Jay Gould 0 “arbitrate” the strike as he wanted it inated before | Feder: 1 n, as by that time it v pparent igorous treatment accorded them in | United States jails became patriots |for the moment by way of a change vell- tiack. 2 if = 3 — aoa git me a member of | #nd got away with it until the waz J Many of them the allegedly liberal United Press | hysteria died down. 1 < news syndicate, points exultingly to |*"e Now back in their striped unt- the patriotism shown by the office | iorms, numbered and tagged in prison as the paraders entered the down rather that portion of it that} (1, was organized under the banner of |, |the Federation of Organized Trades the demand was to meet the animous resistance of the emnloy- GRorepee~ | ey lisdainft and Labor Unions of the United | (ri ¢Comd disdainfull ‘i " States and Canada, first set a = il 2 Young China—Armed and Defiant the First of May for the beginning of a “universal strike” at its con-| Pe aa tp | vention that began in Chicago on a ee employes who showered confetti o cells, the hoodlums, labelled “loyalists” a those “heroes” broke the heads of | defenseless and peaceful workers. How this confetti appeared so sudden- | ly is not explained by the capitalist | press but furnishes more evidence in | proof of the contention that the at tack was planned and premeditated. | The police were supposed to pro-| tect the parade but the kind of pro- tection that afforded was the. club- bing of the heads of paraders and the | killing of two of them. RIPPLED war victim James Stev-| ens who was sitting in his wheel | chair in front of the Olmstead Hotel deposes: “The first thing I saw was the red} flags. I wheeled my chair into the street as the heads of the column| passed and I yelled. ‘Get those red flags.’ “Some of the marchers laughed and JOT content with breaking up the parade the “gallant” hoodlums visited socialist party headquarters smashed the windows and destroyed | pictures and books. More than 200| workers were injured in the struggle ncluding 17 policemen. All the blows were not on one side. The workers } defended themselves as best they could against the armed hoodlums. | In the middle of the second page of | the Cleveland Press of May 2, and} surrounded by stories and pictures of | the riot was an appeal for contribu- tions to the Victory Loan. Here is an example of the threatening langu- age used by the chairman of the drive committee: “Tt means a_hair-trigger sprint from now on. A victory button is your only protection now. All instruc- | tions to wait for the canvassers to reach your homes are off.” This Jeered at me. But my comrades in| meant that a worker without a vic- uniform came running when I yelled, ‘Get ’em boys’.” tory button prominently displayed (Continued on Page Three) Sink the Electric Chair From All Over the ee in a Flood of Protests! | October 7, 1884, when the followin; | resolution was adopted: “Resolved, By the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Un- ions of the United States and Can- ada, that eight hours shall consti- tute a legal day’s labor from and after May 1, 1886, and that we re- ‘commend to labor organizations throughout this jurisdiction that they so direct their laws as to con- form to this resolution by the time Max. Uae, 1927 Declaration of the Central Executive Committee of the Workers (Com.) | Party of America i May Day is International Labor Day—the day when the workers of the entire world demon- | strate their solidarity and their determination to fight together in a common cause against com-| mon oppressors. There never was a May Day when international solidarity was more necessary | named.” than it is today on the first of May, 1927. But the struggle for the eight- hour-day required something more A NEW WORLD WAR. First there is the war danger, In China, where a nation of 400,000,000 is struggling to be free; where under the leadership of the Chinese labor movement supported by the entire Chinese people, a war of liberation is being waged against the chains of foreign imperialism and native tyranny, the battleships of the ig i ialii ti rth : big imperialist nations of the ea: Rablacd, Japan and. Ameries, their new labor movement years, At the time the resolution was ad- than a mere resolution directing its affiliated bodies to enforce it, as the |? in America| into a squad of policemen, killing a soon discovered as it passed through the blood baptism of the ensuing | s First May Day! one then knew nvolved. Subsequent statistics place the number at 190,000. More r workers were per- | n from striking by | the promise of shorter hours—but |not the eight hour da; | s the movement was ng when on the even- li in Haymarket Square {in Chicago, during the progress of a mass meeting someone, unquestion- | ably a provocateur, hurled a bomb the exact num- sergeant wounding several | others. The wild provocation, the hysteri- |cal incitements in the columns of the and are massing to throttle the Chinese People’s Republic. Over 175 battle- ships of eight nations are riding in the harbor of Shanghai and far up the inland waters of the Yangtse river. Under the arrogant leadership of British imperialism which had the biggest strangle-hold upon the econ- omic life of the Chinese people, the great powers are cynically preparing their military intervention to attempt to stop the rising tide of the victor- ious Chinese revolution, Over thirty of our battleships and all our regi- ments of marines that are not other- wise occupied in the disgraceful busi- ness of invading Nicaragua, are in China, British imperialism which has the biggest stakes there has been try- Fl World They e ing to make our government and our marines take the lead in butchering Chinese workers. And already our marines have to their credit the jin- vasion of Shanghai and the disgrace- ful massacre of Nanking. American and British. battleships opened up with artillery fire on the civilian population of ‘Nanking under the pre- text of defending Socony Hill (Stan- |dard Oil Co.) and over 7,000 Chinese men, women, and children were slaughtered. American battleships have become tankers for Socony. Now Wall Street and British imperialism have gotten our government to join with England, Japan, Italy, and France in insolent “identic” notes de- manding for the fact that one American was killed while hundreds of Chinese were being slaughtered. This note means only one thing. IT MEANS WAR! Attacks On Soviet Union. At the same time that the big im- perialist powers are planning to in- vade China they are also planning to attack the Soviet Union, the only land in the world where the workers rule. As a step in this direction they en- gineered the unheard of raid on the Soviet Embassy in Peking. With the connivance and approval of the Bri- tish and American ministers in Pek- ing whose consent to raid the lega- tion section had to be secured, and urged and paid by the bankers of hireling, Chang Tso Lin, made his unprovoked attack upon the Soviet Legation in hopes that Soviet Russia would declare war and thus give the other powers a pretext to invade China and attack Russia. But the only government in the world that is sincerely trying to avoid war is the government of the Workers and Peasants of the Soviet Union and in place of falling into the trap it with- drew its ambassador from the puppet government of Peking and warned the workers of the world of the new war plot, “War To End All Wars.” Ten years ago our country entered into the bloody war which they told us was “to end all wars” and now) Wall Street is planning to plunge our country into a bloodier war than the world has ever known. Such a war would be the most unrighteous war and the most disastrous—a war to crush the rising Chinese republic, a war to crush the Soviet Union. And if those two should be successful then a new series of international wars with England and Japan for the divi- sion of the spoils, a war for the par- tition of China and the control of the Pacific. We must not permit this new world war for which the nations are arming and the battle fleets gathering in the Pacific. This May Day let us demon- strate in every corner of our land along with the workers of Great Bri- tain, of Japan, of China, of the Soviet (Continued on Page Five) | press, the vapid ravings of the pul- | pit, the mobil ion of all the forces |in defense of “law and order,” “the | family,” and “civilization,” the riff- eration which only had an affiliated | Taff and hangers-on of capitalist so+ membership of 59,000, so the conven-| ciety, need not here be described, tion instructed its “legislative com-| Organized terror crippled the eight- mittee” to extend an invitation to|hour movement and stopped the the Knights of Labor to cooperate spread of the strike. “in the general movement to estab- | In spite of the frightfulness and lish the eight-hour reform.” | ruthlessness of the enemy the labor Few even of the unions affiliated|™movement made substantial gains with the Federation adopted the pro-|from the struggle. What the out+ posal to donate two per cent of their come might have been under more revenue to the fund for financing the (Continued on Page Three) The May Day Hand Clasp opted the Knights of Labor played a more important role as far as its influence upon the working class was concerned than did the new Fed- The Symbol of Workingclass Unity . ; oe