The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 5, 1927, Page 3

Hien tate tonntts ethane sa nese RED FRONT FIGHTERS OF GERMANY PAY HOMAGE TO _ RUTHENBERG’S ASHES; SHIP BUILDERS GUARD ~wrr(Continued from Page One) { impressive effect, long to be remem-| bered) by those coming from foreign lands where no Red Army in the mak- ing. has as yet manifested itself. Power of C. P. of, Germany. The “Free City’ of Bremen,” thru its workers, did itself proud in greet- ing the ashes of our comrade, Ruthen- | berg. Bremen was one of the citie: that belonged to the Hanseatic League in the centuries gone when commerce and trade were in battle with the feudal barons. Today it has a popula- tion of about 300,000, is one of the principal seaports ;of Germany, as well as one of the centers of its metal industry and shipbuilding. Nine Communists sit in its munic- ipal council. They were elected with the ballots of 27,000 workers. It com- pares in size with such American cities as Columbus, Ohio; Jersey City, New Jersey; Los Angeles, Calif.; Providence, R, I.; St. Paul, Minn.; or Toledo, Ohio, cities in which our American Communist movement is as yet weak. A comparison with Bremen gives an idea of the power of the German Communist Party.. Bremen is the home of one of the, 34 Com- munist dailies in Germany, the Ar- beiter-Zeitung, that serves northwest | Germany. Paper Self-Sustaining. The Bremen Arbeiter-Zeitung is self-sustaining. In fact, practically | all the Communist dailies in Germany are self-sustaining. It was into Bremen that we came frorg Bremerhaven, after ten o’clock | on the-night of Satuitf@y “(the Eye of | Easter Sunday), April 16th. adainiee | Wilhelm Kaspar and Herman Oster- lohr, representing the German Com- munist Party, Otto Lindau, one of the | editors of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, and I; had made the trip together. We had | brought along the huge wreaths of | laurel and evergreen, with their. wide | and long crimson ribbons, all carry-| ing some defiant slogan of the revo-| lution. One of these was, “Ich war, Ich Bin, Ich Werde Sein-Revolution,” meaning, “I Was, I am, I Will Be— Revolution.” The wreath of the Com-} munist Party in Northwest Germany carried thé -wording, “Last Greeting | to the Revolutionists—Ruthenberg.” | Red Front Guard. The Guard of Henor of the Red Front Fighters of Hamburg was wait- |impressive multitude of the revolu- | States, we also know that we are the ing and ready as the train came to a standstill in Bremen, It immediately took the Ashes’ Urn in Cnarge, the wreaths were assigned to Red Front comrades who followed the urn, then we who had brought the Ashes, and the remainder of the Red Guard fell in behind. Down the station platform and up thru the station and out upon the open plaza we marched. There an tionary workers of Bremen, men and women, were drawn up, in two long lines, We marched between them. We were greeted by Paul Taube, political secretary of the Party in Bremen, speaking on behalf of the Communists of Bremen. Wilhelm Kaspar also spoke, At Bremerhaven, I had had a trans- lator, a young German ‘comrade who had spent three years in the United States, who had tranjlated my\ re- marks. In Bremen I h¥d no transla- tor. I met the situatiog by making my first address in German, utilizing what German I knew. I said in part: Engdahl Speaks. “You say that you, the workers of Bremen and of all Germany are the Slaves of the Dawes Plan, that the German Republic is a Dawes Repub- lic. Yet we, the workers in the United slaves of the Dawes Plan, since the Dawes Plan is only a part of the cap- italist system, a part of the Dollar Imperialism. “Ruthenberg was our best fighter against the American capitalists, against the Daweses, the Morgans, the Rockefellers, the Fords and the Garys. He was an agitator, an or- ganizer and educator of the working class, building the struggle for the abolition of capitalists, He was our leader in the struggle for a Soviet America. Ruthenberg is dead. But his spirit lives on.. It lives in the growing revolutionary movement of America and of the world.” Then the procession started for the Partei-Haus (The Party Home). The Party has a band of 70 pieces in Bremen. But there is a police regula- tion that no music is permitted on the streets after ten o’clock at night, except the beating of drums by the police themselves as the occasion de- mands. So our march was silent, broken only by the regular rhythm of many proletarian’ footsteps on President Machado, Sugar Trust Henchman, and Havana THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, THURSDAY, MAY 5, 1927 Page Three dee de de de dee de cee doce Hands Off China Meeting at Union Square | Saturday Put Some Power In That Kick! Array of Prominent i Speakers | Mr a | On Saturday, May 7, at 12 noon, Neg Union Square, there will be a mass | protest demonstration for Hands Off !China. This meeting, called by the |“Hands Off China” Committee, will ; demand a stop to the war on China and to the mobilization of imperialist troops in the Pacific for another war. Many Labor Speakers. Leaders of the labor and liberal ; movements will address the meeting. | Approximately forty have already accepted invitations to address the f t Don’t waste in idle your energy prote:t. When reaction attacks The hard cobblestones. Even at this hour there were many workers who stood on the curb and doffed their caps as we passed. The Assembly Hall at the Party Home had already been prepared} awaiting our arrival, One end of it was entirely set off with red bunting. A beautiful. bronze bust of Lenin stood upon a high pedestal, behind it was a flag with the crossed sickle | and hammer upon its crimson field.| At the foot of the pedestal containing Lenin’s bust was a raised dais on which the Ashes’ Urn was placed. Many wreaths -filled the space about the dais. There was one from the shipyards workers, who are nuild- ing the Bremen and the Deutschland, two of the largest passenger ships in the world. They built the Vaterland, the Hamburg and the Columbus. Usu- ally 20,000 workers -are employed at ternational Communist.” The wreath and new courage to our American | This meeting has been called in of the Bremen Red Front Fighters | said: “The Spirit of Lenin Spans} Both Land and Sea.” | Workers Fill Hall. | With the Guard of Honor in place, the hall filled with workers agd many waiting outside, there was another short program of speaking. Hubert Serve spoke for the party in.the Bremen district. He is also the labor} editor of the party organ in Bremen.| Serve spoke of the meaning of this| occasion and reviewed the life and| death of Ruthenberg. Kaspar spoke declaring that it is most significant that, “The banner can stand when its bearer falls. Our banner stands. Millions follow it. Ours will be the victory in spite of everything.” In responding, and again speaking in German, I said in part: “It is my greatest wish that all the this shipyard. Due to unemployment the number is now only 8,000. Con- tributions for the purchase of the huge wreath had come from social- democratic workers as well as Com- munists. The wreath contained the wording: “A Last Greeting to an In- members of our American Communist Party could be present with you here tonight, to witness the great honor that you bestow upon the memory of our dead leader. But even so the Communist movement, build stronger the Red Fighting Front of our American Communist Party against the enemies of the working class.” Then the Red Guard of Honor watched thru the night. morning we went on to Hamburg. Army-Navy Scrap On Colorado Grounding The army and the navy were en- gaged in a free-for-all yesterday over the grounding of the hell-belcher Colorado on Diamond Reef in the harbor recently. The navy gold- braids say army engineers failed to while the army retorts that the navy needs a few capable navigators for its $27,000,000 ships. A court martial against Captain Karns and the pilot may result. Sacco and Vanzetti Shall Not Die! knowledge of this occasion will reach even to America and give new spirit OF SACCO AND VANZETTI Chinese Labor Not So Docile Anymore By RONALD Ross”? HANKOW, April 15. (By Mail)—| {tension on the machine is relaxed, the machine will stop, and if the machine | It means rising at dawn, and laboring stops, he will starve, The man in Where christianity and curiosity have| such a position, aware only of enor- brought a hundred foreigners into} mous suffering, cannot look calmly China, the cheapness of labor has|at the consequences of the stopping brought thousands, ‘ happen to labor then? The men who came because labor | was cheap have brought a new era} into China, the industrial era. China} has changed in many ways since the first foreigner, seeking cheap labor, | arrived in the country, but through | all the changes wages have remained | low. A man could be hired to do for ten cents a day in China what a man would not do for a dollar a day in the West. And it was easy labor to handle, ignorant, ‘docile, subservient. Now Want Something. Today, decades later, wages are still low, but labor is not so decile as it has been. There is a tendency to ask for a very few of the amenities of existence, a holiday a week, secur- ity of job, wages and hoffrs that make possible lite a little mearer the human, a little less the dog. We hear’a great deal these days from employers of labor, both for- eigners and Chinese, of the unreason- ableness of labor demands. Glaring examples are cited. Wage increases‘ which amount to a hundred per cent. Reduction in hours that, it is claimed, would materially handicap business. A voice in the control of industry, a check on dismissal, holidays, bonuses, sick leave, union leave, and otners. Employers have been appalled. Managers Feel Loss. ‘ Two views can be taken of the la- bor situation that is developing in China. The first is to look at it from the standpoint of the manager, the man who sees labor as one factor on a ledger which must show a substan- tial balance on the credit side at the end of the year, This manager shows how the new demands of labor affect his industry, how they cripple him, how they make it-impossible for’ him to declare the enormous dividends which apparently are necessary to keep his stockhold- ers satisfied, how, unless these labor demands are moderated, he must close his plant. What, he asks, would \ To Make Ends Meet. . vhis is one way of looxmg at the situation. The other is the way of | of the machine. He cries out against his pain, fights madly to be free. Master or Servant. In these two ways, the situation of | the laboring man in China can be viewed. We can look at it from the point of view of the man in the ricksha, neatly dressed, comfortable, well-fed, just up from a good night’s sleep in a good bed and just having finished a satisfying breakfast, or we can look at it from the point of view of the shabby, dirty wretch in the shafts, half-fed, shivering in his rags in the winter time, with no warm shelter at night, and panting in the summer under the hot blasts of the sun, always miserable, always just half-alive. In viewing this situation from either angle in the past, there has beén a tendency to speak in general terms, on the one hand of per cent, cost of labor, and on the other of union rights, union rules, strong or- ganization. Causes of Unrest. There may, however, be given pic- tures instead of terms, the workingmen of China will be ex- plained. Those lives are the best ex- planation of the so-called “labor un- rest.” It is true, industries must not be strangled, but it is true also that without strangulation most of the industries of China could be re- organized in such a way that children of seven and eight would not work for twelve hours a day in dai. fac- tories for a few paltry cents, and that tired, worn women would not sit all day over steaming tables in’ silk factories, while their babies cry from discomfort and hunger, or mercifully sleep, in baskets of rags, under the machines, If to ask for a reorganization which would eliminate these evils is to be dangerous, subversive to the interests of investors in China, then the Na- tionalist movement as a whole, is a dangerous agent. But by the foreigners, if not by tlie Chinese employers of labor, such a condemnation cannot be made with- te laborer, ‘he laborer ia not look- ing at a ledger that shows profits at the end of the year. He is looking at a ledger, which never shows a copper on the credit side, which, at best, can be made to balance, and whose items are, on the side, the ha: realities of endugh rice to keep alive, enough cotton to cover his back, enough silver pieces to pay a land- lord so he ean keep the roof of a hovel over his head. On thé other side of his sheet, he puts his wage— ten cents, twenty cents, thirty, forty, fifty cents a day. Scarcely ever it is as much as a dollar. * He is in the position of a man who is trapped, who hasbeen caught in the rollers of a machine and who is asked to bear the pain because if the out some sense of guilt, for every for- eigner in China knows that such con- ditions as exist in the mills of China are unthinkable in his homeland. He knows that, at home, the existence of similar conditions, a little over a century ago, is a blot upon the mem- ories of his grandfathers. His home- land may. still be far from a heaven for the workingmen, but it is no long- er quite such a hell, as he and his Chinese imitators, have made of China, This afternoon, in four hours, the writer was guided rapidly through four mills. My impression at the end of it is that the industry of China is built up of the energy of pale- faced women and wistful-faced child- ren, profits, dividends, wage scales and} The lives of | Twelve hours a day is a long way. till twilight. There is no sun. Or else it means entering an electric- | lighted factory at twilight and work- | ing till dawn. In other countries, labor has fought for years against the twelve hour day, and in most of the world it is | now legally conceded that twelve hours a day is a crime. Women and Children Toil. It is children and women, as well as men, who labor in China. Laws that have long since been considered necessary for humanity’s sake in the West have not yet been passed in China, In other countries, labor has, fought for special laws for women, and it is now legally conceeded in and it is now legally conceded in men twelve hours a day is even more of a crime than to work the men, Other countries have fought against child labor, and it is now legally conceded that to make tiny children labor at machines, to keep them out of the sunlight and out of schools, to stunt their bodies and warp their souls in dark, unventilated factories or in mines is the worst crime of humanity. In China the time has not yet come when it is legally conceded that these things are crimes, and factories, be- longing both to foreigners and Chi- nese, work their laborers, men, wo- men and children, twelve long hours a day, and often more. How Much For It? What in wages does this long day of labor mean to the laborers? It expense sheet;.it is not viewed injese factory, one a Chinese factory. | Demonstration, Saturday, May 7, 12 terms of human lives. Children Swarm. The Japanese factory was a model {factory for Hankow. That means show the rock and its depth correctly | Chinese revolution. | “The American people must protest fla PN oc poe: | emphatically against this shameful Yr. $6.00 a. a, 40 | assault and must demand the removal Se ene = io, eyed of all armed forces from Chinese | territory and waters, The war) against China threatens not only the, 2 | Chinese revolution but also the peace | The DAILY WORKER | of the entire world.” | 33 First Street | The presence of 48 American bat-| New York tleships in Chinese waters, 10,000) sc | marines and sailors, 12 airplanes and Pec qajontuetis a flotilla of submarines demonstrate Shs that the American Government is not jonly threatening war but actually | | waging war against the Chinese peo- | |ple. The only way to call a halt to} such procedure on the part of the American Government is for the | American people to raise such a yro-| |test that the American Government| | will be compelled to obey. | | All workers, therefore, forward to| the Union Square “Hands Off China” ee WORKERS! STOP THE MURDER OF SACCO AND VANZETTI j noon. There were children in this factory,| that the rooms were light and _the swarms of them, sitting on the floor,| ceilings high. Wages are a little | sorting out the cotton. Several of | better here also,—forty cents a day! The | or $12 a month. But here, too, most picture is reproduced here. These|of the workers are women and chil- small children are the workers in a/dren and the day is twelve hours, British press packing company here.| Here we find also the deadly strain They spend twelve hours a day in|in the faces of women and children rooms filled with cotton dust. They who all day long tend a whirring do not have time out for their meals.| machine in a room with hundreds of And they get twenty coppers a day,| other machines so that the noise is or less. | deafening. When the Nationalist forces came! The coming of the Nationalists has to Hankow fast fall, there was a/| meant an increase of wages to these| strike at this factory. The workers | workers—an increase to forty cents asked for better conditions and better|a day. But forty cents a day means pay. Very little was gained and the only $12 a month. And the day is workers had to go back to their jobs.| still twelve long hours. Here, as in The union says that the strike was|all the other factories, one hears poorly organized. | about the union that is fighting for Very Low Pay. better wages, better conditions. The, It is to this factory that the men|union in this particular factory has| them let me take their picture. We Will NOT Be Silenced come who are seen on the Bund| carrying enormous bales of cotton from the river docks. These bales| weight 200 catties, They are dumped | in rooms on the ground floor of the | | succeeded in securing medical care for the workers, and a tiny hospital room, The Japanese weaving mill is far better than the Chinese mili I visited. It has required the most heroic self sac- rifice to establish our paper. Thousands of building. They must be carried up| The reason given is that the Chinese three flights of stairs. A man gets| mill is poorly financed. Rooms here 13 coppers for carrying this huge|are dark, poorly ventilated. Hours bale to the top of the building. The are long, work hard and nerve-wreck- workmen say that it wouldn’t be | ing, pay only thirty-five cents a day. such wretched pay but for the fact) Work at Home Also. that there are more men than bales} Four factories in an afternoon workers in the mines, mills, factories, and farms have given their utmost to found The DAILY WORKER, labor’s militant fighting organ, For three years it has been main- and they have to wait their turn. Chinese Mill Worse. I saw three other mills this after- noon, ‘he worst of the four was a Chinese silk mill. The best was a Japanese weaving mill. In all the varies. In a British-owned press packing plant I visited today, where hundreds of women and children work twelve hours a day sitting on stone floors loosening cotton from cotton bales, breathing air, that is so thick with cotton dust that the room seems in a perpetual fog, the average wage per day is twenty coppers. There is one room where there is more skilled labor, men laborers, who work around the packing machine, One man in this room crouches down at regular intervals before one of the great metal arms of a huge wheel, and, straining every muscle, jars the great wheel from a dead stop, and pushes it into place under the machine. Other men take care of other phases of the actual binding of the packages. The men in this room are the plutocrats of the factory.) They get 130 coppers a day. Disease Prevails, The atmosphere in the rooms of the factory is deadly. There is much coughing, many wan faces with high spots of color in the cheeks, It Is a place where death lurks in the alr, But the factory never pays a cent when a workmen is sick. There 1s mills, the day was twelve hours long, and women and children did most of the work, The silk factory was a_ horror. Babies huddled in baskets under the machines. ted room, with their hands in steam- ing water in which the cocoons are soaking. The ‘air thick with moisture and the smell is bad. Everywhere babies, and tiny children, too young) to work. Better Under Nationalists. For the workers in this wretched factory, the coming of the Nationalist Government has meant a little relief. They received a twenty per cent in- crease in wage, and a day’s holiday in each week. The wages now are sixty coppers a day for children and thirty- five cents a day for women, So these women now get about $10 a month for feeding spindles twelve hours from the water-soaked cocoons. Anyone who lives. in Hankow knows what $10 a month means-~-the | Women and girls in long | lines in a badly lighted, badly ventila- | means only the most hasty inspection. | There is no time to stop and talk with workmen to find out what is back of these tired faces, no chance to | chat a little and find more about the lives that these people return to after twelve hours of labor. But these are married women who have homes, no matter how poor, that must be cared for at night. These women do not have nurses to take care of their children while they go out to their jobs--and they do have children They go home to cook rice and a few vegetables for their fam- ilies and go to bed in the midst of squalor, to get up at five o’clock the next morning, to hurry through early |morning duties and to be on hand when the whistle blows and the sun |rises at 6. | This is factory life in Hankow. Talking to union leaders later, I was told, yes, these factories were or- | ganized; they were doing their best to |get all the increases possible, to get shorter hours, regular holidays, decent working conditions. I men- tioned to, these leaders that to the managers of the factories, this union movement was viewed as a menace, dangerous, threatening, unreasonable, tained ‘by the dollars and dimes which the -workers have painstakingly eked out of their meager pittance, Shall we now allow our paper to be si- lenced by organized reaction? Shall the dol- lar patriots triumph? Shall the voice of la- bor be crushed? No! A thousand times—no! We have shown marvels of proletarian initiative and courage in the creation of The DAILY WORKER. We will show still more in the defense of our paper against attack. Forward all! .To work! Every comrade! | DAILY WORKER 33 First Street, i New York, N. Y, Inclosed is my contribution of ie bie wes) Maat dollars .... cents to the Every party unit! : Ey- | Ruthenberg Sustaining Fund ery red-blooded, fight- | for a stronger and hetter DAILY WORKER and for the | defense of our paper. I will pay ing worker! Stand by At the mention of the word un- poorest food, clothes little better than, reasonable, the union leaders smiled. rags, a hovel to live in—and for these | They were mill workers themselves. women the deadly wearing, with! All their lives they have been wonder- babies under the machines all day,!ing about “reasonableness.” They lying in nests of rags, and families to| asked me about it, All their lives, no provision for care of the laborers on the premises. There are no holi- days with pay. If they take Sunday off, they lose a day’s pay. If they take two hours off, they lose a frac- tion of the day. Labor in this mill eis a figure, a factor, an item on an take care of and feed in the evening | they said, they had been looking for after the day’s work is done. The| some “reason” for their existence. So women are thin and pale in this silk) far, unless to starve that others might factory, They never see the sun, be clothed and fed, they had found Same Long Hours. none. Where, they asked, was the The two other factories we visited | reason in this ? were weaving factories, one a Japan-| It was a hard question to answer. our paper now. Speed |). “™* ‘mm reruaty your: contributions to |y,........ eM the defense fund. Let | Addons your dollars be your an- sity ... swer to.the attack upon | tate .........ce cee ceeee sees The DAILY WORKER. Attach check or money order, 4 i i | 4 ; : DAILY WORKER and meeting, among them being Scott A (at 9s Nearing, H. M. Wicks, Robert W.| You want to fight — } |Dunn, Ben Gold, Louis Hyman, Wil- strike your blows where ; | liam Pickens, Albert Weisbord, Pat they will be most ef- | Devine, Richard Moore, es Walsh, Fective. | Juliet Stuart Poyntz, P. Pascal Cos ‘ | grove, Carlo Tresca and Louis Budenz. Kick in With a Sub. Response to Cable. wie ee ee | Every subscription is a to help us/response to the special cable from striking answer to the [aaskey, pet at and center of enemies of Labor—every ; |the Chinese Nationa Government, seals: tas ko atra |to the “Hands Off China” Committee,| SUP 18 more strength to Ratsh. follows: the blows that are dealt { E “The actions of the American diplo- every ¢ y The DAILY 4 Early in the/matic and armed forces in Chi is WORKER. j making the American people jointly ‘s ‘ : }responsible for one of the great Don t only kick. . 44. a lerimes in the history of the armed Kick in! 4 struggle of imperialism against the SUBSCRIPTION RATES: :