The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 13, 1927, Page 6

ADELE LING, Page Six ane By SYLVAN A. POLLACK The Passaic campaign has ended and the election taken place. While some workers are disappointed at the small vote polled by the labor candi- dates the campaign has resulted in a developing and strengthening, of the militant labor movement of that city. Over 1,000 votes for Albert We: bord, standard bearer of the labor group out of a total of 17,000 votes east is quite an achievement when one considers the circumstances of the election. It means that one voter out of every seventeen voted for a Com- munist candidate in a city where be- fore the textile strike of 26 the Workers (Communist) Party had practically no influence or prestige among the workers. Where the Workers’ (Communist) Party branch was no factor in the life of the city, be- ing just a little group of workers who held their regular branch meet- ings and an occasional mass meeting with a comparatively small attend- ance. Communist Leadership. As a result of the textile strike and the leadership given by Albert Weis- hord and other Communists, the movement changed from a little sect to a living, dynamic part of the local labor movement, a thorn in the side of reaction wherever it showed its head. When the time for election drew near and it was found impossible to form a labor party due to the peculiarities of the laws of New Jer- sey, that compel the election to be fun as a so-called non-partisan affair, the Workers’ (Communist) Party selected three of its members to enter the campaign as labor spokesmen, with the endorsement of the Workers’ (Communist) Party. Standard Bearer. Albert Weisbord, leader of the strike, Simon Bambach, a_ textile worker and former striker, and Simon Smeklinson, a garment worker, were picked as the standard bearers. With raw material to work with as a cam- paign commitiee, and with limited finances the campaign was started. Several large indoor meetings and about a dozen street meetings were held. Thousands of leaflets and 5,000 copies of a special issue of The DAILY WORKER were distributed. These were eagerly grabbed by the workers, many of them for the first time reading Communist literature. Why the Small Vote? Some readers might ask after reading the account given above, why the vote cast for the Communist candidates was not larger than it was. £everal factors have to be taken into consideration when analyzing that question. In the first place, if you consider the 16,000 former strikers as potential voters you have to face the follow- ing: The largest percentage of them are not voters. Many of them are LESSONS OF THE PASSAIC CAMPAIGN reign-born and never had the op- portunity of taking out citizenship papers Seve thousand others, born in Ame , are not yet of vo- ting age. Moved Away. Many of the former strikers live in the towns neighboring Passaic. Clifton, Garfield, Lodi and Walling-| ton is the home of thousands of the f Then again many of forr thos saic during the strikers who lived in I \ strike e left the te of New Jersey, due to the difficulty of ob- | taining a job. | The former strikers however, were | the basis of the entire campaign and if a vote of the population was taken, ignoring the regular legal re- quirements there is no doubt the over- | whelming majority of the working | population would cast their ballot for | the Communist ¢andidates, of | course, not in every case because they are Communists ar. many of the workers do not even as yet under-} stand the principles of the Communist | movement. But they do understand the fundamental principles that Weis- | | bord and his Communist associates | }fought for—the interests of the| | working class. The First Step. The 14-month textile strike was ithe first step in the building of a powerful labor movement in Passaic. | The recent election was the second | step. The reactionary forces are begin-| ning to become worried at the grow- | ing strength of the left wing and Communist movement as witness the | recent statement of James Starr, a| | vice-president of the United Textile .Workers that a house-cleaning of the | local union would soon be held. Future Is Bright. The future for the militant section of the Passaic labor movement is | bright. Building the Workers’ (Com- |munist) Party branch and securing | | new readers for The DAILY WORK-| ER are among the next tasks. The | formation of a local labor party in| the next election campaign is of| major importance. | When considering all factors the| of lies and mockery coming from the counter-revolution- | Passaic campaign and election has| | been a great forward step for the local and national labor movement. | For the first time since the forma-| |tion of the Communist*’Party their | candidates received a relatively large proportion of the votes cast. The en- |tire capitalist class watched with |keen interest for the results. The | New Jersey phoned a Passaic news- | paper election night, to ask only | question—the size of the Communist | vote. | New Period. | The Passaic election campaign has ended and at the same time a new} |period begins for the {movement of this country—The | Workers’ (Communist) Party as an ) influence in the political life of the} country. | The Rough Road Translated from the Russian of A. Novikov-Priboi by Vera and Violet Mitkovsky. (Continued From Last Issue). We decided | { The council was long. | to adopt measures: to let no one of | the crew ashore, to keep all rifles on| jevery ship in the officers’ quarters | only, to watch the wireless that news | of the events in Petrograd might not ne renner A month and a half passed. The) reach the lower ranks, to communi- end of February approached. A ru-| cate with the admiral in code mes- mor that something was going wrong) sages only. In concluding, the ad-| in Petrograd reached us, the officers. | miral declared that all attempts at| A dark shadow fell across our spirits./ mutiny on any ship must be sup-| Soon after, the commander of the| pressed by the officers, acting jointly | fleet summoned all the captains, my-! with the engineers and junior officers, | sélf among them, to the flagship.|in the most thorough manner, stop- | When we had all assembled, the ad-| ping at nothing. If, however, a ship/| miral ordered the doors to be locked| were to fall into the hands of the | and sank heavily into a leather up- | mutineers, it must be sunk at once | holstered chair. Dark puffs under| by gun fire from the other ships, | the eyes gave him an old and tired | “Communicate to your officers, | appearance. We took chairs about) gentlemen, that I wilt tolerate no| secret council was before us, “Gentlemen”, began the admiral glancing at all present with his strained grey eyes, “I have unplea- sant news to communicate to you. There is mutiny in Petrograd and it is impossible to tell how it will end ,He looked at the clean sheet of writing paper before him and his shoulders stooped as if under the weight of their golden galons with the black eagles, His neck shortened and the shoulders hunched up. For a few minutes in the salon, brightly lit with electric lights, reigned such silence as though every man had ceased breathing. The rosewood walls black-lacquered grand piano and nickle door knobs all shone with a cold glitter. The admiral suddenly threw up his head and extended his chest, covered with orders, as if to appear more in- stubby ears turned red. the long table, understanding that a| weakness. Determination is what we | j appring. A voice sounded irritated and un- steady. “In any case, we must be prepared for any emergency. The revolution- ary contagion may reach even the ships. Then—there is nothing more to say, you remember very well the years 1905-6.” The red spectre of those years loomed before us as though a dark curtain had lifted and revealed the past. Details crowded in of the mu- tiny at Kronstadt on the “Potemkin” and “Memory of Asov,” dirty, bloody and terrible. | need, now, more than ever, yes, de- | termination!” These were the last words of the admiral that I ever heard. I have not seen him since and will never see him| again. He fell in the mutiny. | I returned to my ship in ill humor. | It seemed to me that the commander} |of our fleet had not told us all, that | he was withholding something. In-| tuition whispered that the end of our power was approaching. This was confirmed later. We began to receive wireless messages from Petrograd. The whole capital was swept by the revolutionary movement. Late at night I ordered the officers to assemble in the mess-room. They already knew everything. Some look- ed downcast. I addressed them with a question. ary ferment begins to work in our crew?” Everyone kept perfectly still. Re- garding my assistants, I began to feel some of théir alarm. : “And what do you think, Vasili Nikolaevitch?” I tried to draw out the oldest officer, Ismaelov, a captain of the second rank. “It all depends on the turn of events,” he answered hurriedly. At present only Petrograd has mutineed, and we still haye Moscow—the heart of Russia—and other cities, Besides, we do not know the temper of the a ING THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, FRIDAY, MAY 13, 1927 “WHITE BIRD” TAKES ITS PLACE IN HISTORY _ Photo, taken in France before it sailed, of the biplane, “The White Bird,” in which Captain Charles Nungesser and Captain Francois Coli of France, startled the world by starting suddenly on a non-stop Hight across the Atlantic from Paris to New York. Inset is of Capt Nongesser. Ten Years of Revolutionary Press (PRESS DAY IN THE USSR). HE “Pravda” re-appeared in Leningrad soon after For some time it was the only Bolshevik paper in the country, but soon militant labor papers were published in Moscow, Ekaterinoslav, Wherever the Bolshevik | wing grew in influence, Bolshevik papers appeared. This was an extraordinary difficult period for Bol-| They were persecuted, their work was the bourgeois and| of individuals; had in August, | worker and peasant correspondents, and at the present the February Revolution. Tzaritzen and other towns. shevik papers. hampered by a vicious campaign of menshevik press, which in some cases was very rich and | had at its disposal excellent typographical facilities. After the Revolt. Even after the October Revolution, had to fight for months in succession ary papers. But the situation at the But the success | by the growth and | time their number the Soviet papers | veloped. against the torrent front and the civil stage. There are now in the U.S.S. R. about 600 papers (December 1, 1926, there were 582) with an enormous circulation which is three times more than that of the pre-war period. During the first months of this year, the press circulation was estimated at about 8,000,000. of the Soviet press is not measured | circulation alone. The mighty growth | of the worker and peasant correspondents’ movement | serves as evidence of no less importance. | Union press, which began by securing the collaboration The Soviet 1924, already 100,000 has increased to 250,000. | The work of the magazines has also extensively de- There are at the present time OVER 1,000 | journals with a circulation of 6-7,000,000. Some of the journals have a circulation of over 200,000. They are printed on good paper and on modern European printing war made the situation for the Bolshevik press ever more | machines. The journals deal with the most varied ques- tense. mediate danger of the restoration of the old bourgeois In the throes of hunger, desolation and the im-| tions; there are mass worker and peasant journals, literary, critical, scientific, political, economic and vari- rule, the press assisted the toilers in mobilizing their | ous other journals dealing with all phases of life, cus- forces and fighting strength in order to repel the White | toms, economy and politics. | These facts may all be regarded as achievements dur- marauders. New Tasks. When the fronts were liquidated, | chairman of the republican party of tasks of economic construction arose for the press as/| The press was called one|cn to adopt new methods and.to expend more energy in well as for the public in general. dealing with questions of restoration industry, the questions of livening up public works, and the more complicated situation in general. | The Soviet press met with certain te ;_,| transfer to a business basis, Communist paper supply, or the circulation. tions,” however meagre, were at a who hitherto received his paper free of charge was slow | in getting used to the idea of having to pay for it. | also affected the circulation of the press. Before NEP | there were 803 newspapers with a circulation of 2,261,189 copies in the U. S. S. R. NEP dealt number of papers and to their circulation and in 1922, when the press was placed on a business basis, there were only 382 papers left with a circulation of 1,287,905) copies. Got Going Again. But the Soviet press, which is a | press, firmly linked up with the masses and responsive | to the requirements of the masses, soon got over this} rmination of the civil war in what may be termed the | During the years of civil) | war, the editors did not have to worry about money, the | Now all these ques- | tions were raised in their full scope and the editors who | were used to receive their paper and typographic “ra. | ing the first ten years after the revolution. does not develop at such a rapid rate in hardly any other country in the world, Only in the U. S, S. R. is the press entirely at the service of the world revolution. new complicated The press of agriculture and difficulties on the loss. The reader This a blow both to the live revolutionary The rest of the officers expressed themselves in the same spirit. Some of them began to revive their cour- age, and their opinion was such: there are many sailors, but with bare hands they can do nothing, while we, armed with rifles and revolvers, can if need be, slaughter them like a herd of sheep. * * Lieutenant Brasov was gloomier than the rest. He sat at the table, leaning his head on his hands and clenching an unlighted cigarette be- tween his teeth. Evidently the advice of the officers did not satisfy him. Finally he straightened, his eyes glowing with determination, “I propose that first of all we join the officers’ quarters with the shell store-room by electric wires. We should be ready to blow up the ship if necessary, I beg to be entrusted with this task, At the right moment I shall press the button without . the slightest hesitation.” I looked sternly at Brasov.‘ “And what then?” y He continued in a steady voice. “We shall be blown into the air together with the mutineers, those desperadoes who know neither honor nor conscience. That would be a noble and instantaneous death, It will save us from torture and shame- ful abuse.” At these words the officers shuffl- “What are we to do if revolution-| ed uncomfortably in their seats. “On no consideration,” I answered sharply. “That would be a horrible betrayal! of our country. We must remember the war. I hope gentle- men, no one among you would allow Russia to be over-run by the .Ger- mans.” . * . We atrived at no decision but re- solved to wait and see the course history was steering and to be con- stantly on the watch, On the second day we received a wireless message stunning us with tidings of new events. Revolutionary army; the sequence depends on it, one way or the other. In any case, we must hold, on to the, very last.” ; " 4 winds had arisen to a gale and were sweeping away the decaying masts of the old regime, The throne of the : ( Czars was shaken. The majority of, my officers completely lost their |heads. Each one carried a revolver | but I already doubted if, at the nec- essary moment, he would get an op- portunity to discharge it at his op- ponent, On what was the commander of our fleet depending? Why is he keeping the sailors in ignorance? Why does he not join the revolutionary move- ment? In this way only could he save the officers. Meanwhile, on my ship all was or- derly and quiet. The first officer at- tempted to sound the sailors. through his secret agents, but could learn nothing. No signs of mutiny were visible. There could be only two ex- planations, either the crew suspected nothing of what was happening in Russia, or the Reds were conducting their conspiracy so warily that it wes impossible to detect anything. In the matter of obedience, the sailors became even better than before, per- forming their duties cheerfully, as people perform some heavy labor for the last time, after which they expect to enjoy a long rest. This circum: stance, more than anything else, gave cause for suspicion. A year before the revolution, sev- cral arrests of sailors had been made in our squadron, Investigation showed that strong political organi- zations existed on many of our war- ships. It was apparent that the fleet. was preparing to mutiny thouh it is true no sailor had yet bee. arrested on the “Thunderbolt.” We merely) increased the secret surveillance of the crew, but this led to no result, At the same time it was hard to believe that the revolutionary contagion had not ‘penetrated the men under my command. That is why the last few days I felt distrust. My men seemed terribly unreliable in their un- questioning obedience. I knew that there were advanced men on board who were not quite trustworthy, in the political sense. Of these, chief telegraphist, Smirnov. The first mate had reported him to me on more than one occasion, proposing that we dis- charge him on some pretext. There were no definite charges against Smirnov so I treated the matter tolerantly. Moreover, he was clever and intelligent and there is a weak strain in my character—I like such people. A thought entered my mind: does he know of the beginning revolution and how will he act toward me? I de- cided to see him. He was summoned, and on entering my cabin spoke calmly: “I have the honor to report, sir.” He stood before me in a respectful attitude with his cap in the left hand and the right arm down by his side. A well-fitting sailor suit, polished shoes, and cleanshaven face with a small black moustache, gave the im- pression that this man was neat and orderly in all respects. His blue eyes gazed at me inquisitively as if to divine purpose of this interview. I began a conversation about tele- graphy, of the condition of his ap- paratus, and whether it needed any repair. He answered with business- like gravity—all was well in the radio room, ‘ “Very glad to hear it, my good man,” I said. “I was concerned be- cause we must prepare for the spring campaign, in spite of any happenings in Russia.” ‘ The last words roduced no effect on Smirnov. He knew evarything. “You may go.” “Yes sir,” said Smirnov and, hesi- tating just for an instant, glanced at me with something like sympathy in his eyes. (To be continued) Chaplin Plagiarism Jury Locks. After deliberating more than seven hours, the jury in the $50,000 damage suit brought by Leo Loeb against CharNy S. Chaplin, disagreed and was dischatged yesterday by Federal Judge Bondy. and most important was the headSacco and Vanzetti Shall Not Die! INDUSTRIALIZING A LEGEND. “The Adventures of Paul Bunyan,” by James Cloyd Bowman. Co., New York. In the days when logging was done with little crews, and primitive methods, by a special group of frontiersmen, thrown forward from the teem- ing civilization back of them, but not too much affected by it, the Zofk-tum tale of Paul Bunyan was developed. That was a story of a giant logget who, by the aid of attendant trolls, “The Seven Great Axmen,” and “Babe,” his “big blue ox,” performed simple prodigies such as woodsman might find interesting. He made an enormous ax, with a flexible handle, with which he could mow down a quarter section of trees at a stroke, His ox could pull anything; he pulled the road up by one end, and replaced it where desired. Paul and the Seven logged off the dense forest covering North Dakota, and left it the present rolling grassy plain, on which trees will hardly grow. They set up Niagara Falls, gouged out the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and dug Puget Sound, Paul’s camp had in it various exaggerated persons, miracle working bookkeepers, blacksmiths, cooks, etc. And there was talk of “the year of the blue snow,” the time of the “blue moon” and more like that. As the standing timber decreased, and the market price rose, logging became a capitalized, monopolized, machine industry, in which oxen gave way toddonkey engines and the yarder; the logging road became a railroad; and the class war raged. The interests of the highly skilled mechanics who now took the place of the old time “Viking” lumberjack were not that there should be huge pro- duction, but that the camps should be clean, have good food, the pay go up, the bunkhouses be not overcrowded, not filled with steaming dirty socks drying over the stove, that the men should have individual bunks, not ar- i tier on tier, but located in separate rooms or at least on the same level. L By organizing into the I. W. W. they succeeded in securing some of these reforms, all of thém in some parts of the country. Men who were satisfied with the old conditions, “coffee and doughnuts and a lousy old bed” were suemayieed as “scissor-bills”—who cut wages and lowered the standard of living. Of course in this materialistic and sophisticated atmosphere the Paul Bunyan legend died. Paul Bunyan was the arch type of a scissor bill, and no worker admired him any more. Now somebody is spending a lot of money reviving that legend. Nu- merous “Paul Bunyan” books have appeared, one by James Stevens, one by Esther Shepard, one by Ida Virginia Turney, and most significantly of all, The Century | one, given away, by the Red River Lumber Co., which is a brutal taskmaster to the unorganized men who work for it. ‘ None of these seem to have had much influence on the loggers them- selves, But another, the latest, by James Cloyd Bowman, is more likely to do the propaganda work evidently intended; it is deliberately written to children. “The Adventures of Paul Bunyan” is pure, unadulterated poison. Paul Bunyan becomes a great lumberman, with ten thousand loggers working for him. He runs a camp in which double bunks are pictured, rising one above the other. Overwork, preventible dirt, and bad conditions, such as are cheap for the boss, and deadly to the men, are represented as high adventure, which a “real man” will gladly undertake. The whole emphasis is on production of timber for the boss, The men are simple, childlike creatures, who care for nothing but to establish the record Paul tells them they must make, as the greatest loggers in the world. “What I need is a crew of lumberjacks to help me get out all this forest timber that is standing idle around here, going to waste. What I need is a band of real savages, real honest-to-the-starg-and-stripes he-men,” says Paul to the timber cruisers. We hear no more of the “Seven Great Axmen,” and instead Paul makes long speeches to his “merry he-men” (they’re called that in the book), on “camp loyalty,” “loyalty to the boss,” ete. These actual words are used, over and over again, as tho to hypnotize the little potential lumberjack who reads the stuff. Paul picks out a staff of Swedish bosses to actually handle the men, “Swedes are the only men for bosses,” he says, “they keep their mouths shut except when they are eating or growling orders . . . and they’re bulls when it comes to fighting. In case of an uprising in camp, the Swedes will make me a tough body-guard.” Divide and rule! If the new little lumberjack who reads this book ever gets into a rebellious frame of mind, he will, if a Swede, feel hesitation about attacking his kind, if not a Swede, he will hate and suspect his Swedish fellow worker, Of course all the trouble that happens in camp is blamed onto the men, who are only big children after all, according to the author, and don’t know what is good for them. One of them insults Paul’s wife, and the camp loses @ good cook. It’s the fault of the “bull-cook” who spreads: “the insidious propaganda that it is easy to shirk.” ‘ Typical of ‘the trickery in the book, is the attempt to give a new defini- tion to this very word, “scissor-bill.” Many in the Northwest use it as a term of contempt. Perhaps children do not always know what its derivation is. For them an original explanation is supplied. The bookkeeper says to Paul: “You have dead timber in camp, These men I refer to are either too iazy to work, and so imagine therhselves the victims of some ailment or other, or else they are moral cowards. They haven’t the nerve to stand up and make a place for themselves. The result is the men kick them around from cutters to swamipers, and then to ‘chikadees’. . . finally they lie around in their shanties and become bunkhouse grouche: *. the men all call them ‘scissor-bills.’ ” I think the cunning, the ulterior motive and the class bias of these “Ad- ventures” is well enough typified by this little extract, to let it go without further comment. Except perhaps for the matter of “chickadees,” These are low paid workers, not so skilled—they clean the roads. In the book there is a constant striving to call attention to the necessity for class divisions and subdivisions among the men—no division between the men and the boss ea, ao a aoe loyalty.” e thing ends with Paul advising all his gang to m and become farmers, as the woods grow ‘anallec teaté plat soe arti “The Adventures of Paul Bunyan” will surely have a circulation—the West Coast Lumberman’s Association will see to that. The only antidote for it that I know of is Herminia zur Muehlen’s fairy tales, which has in this case the disadvantage of not being specific enough—lacks the lumber jack terminology—tho after all that is not any too well done. —VERN SMITH. SEX STARVED LADIES. The Best Stories of Mary E. Wilkins. Selected by Henry Wysham a New York: Harper and Brothers. $2.50, dail Tae I can’t picture a worker being violently moved by “Little-Girl-Afraid- of-a-Dog,” or “The Gospel According to Joan,” or “The Revolt of Mother,” or of the stories in this collection. But Mrs, Wilkins, alth he flourshed in the nineties, is easier to swallow than most of the modern writefs about New England who write under formula about pale sex starved ladies rushing through mounds of dry, baked prose. The starvation is in and understanding you are always aware of the small area she is covering Mrs. Wilkins’ stories but it is not exploited. In spite of her fine integrity ve ents her people are human you are stifled by their provincialism and intiness. f —MARGERY LATIMER. é Mexican Communists Send Greetings to Workers Party The following telegram addressed to the Workers (Com- munist) Party and The DAILY WORKER was received Friday morning from the chairman of the Mexican Communist Party now in session in Mexico City: The Fifth Congress of the Mexican Communist Party greets the American Party, hoping for intensification of its anti-imperialist campaign in order to prevent American in- tervention in Mexico. ae (Signed) Antonio Carlon, Chairman READ THE DAILY WORKER EVERY DAY