The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 25, 1927, Page 6

Page Six THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, WEDNESUAY, MAY 25, 1927 acme asian: | Professional Patriots| Report of John Brophy * * * (Continued fi rhe. 2 Bits ae Ps 4 om last issue) This is the third instalment of “Professional Injunctions. tanGuasde: Patriots,” edited by Norman Hapgood from ma-' I order to over what appeared terial assembled by Sidney Howard, co-author to be a concerted drive on the part of a large number of operators in- of “The Labor Spy” and John Hearley. & ° eae junetic were secured in several More than 25 organ zations, includinet Sar A ee Ew tional Security League, the National Civ and « strikers cration and American Defense Socicty of citizenship | discussed in these articles. s from * ed on on Professional Witness v ale in many places. Private Rais ian i eve employed by Federation . g companies LW.W. nv at 2 to strength- have been imprison law for mere In fact they used eve Federation emp! means to intimic and tify in these ti miners into accepting a reduction in ee a Waal wages. In some cases old ynion men of the patriotic finally broke away and accepted the stitution and cc David rates; in others they were reduced able to import fro: in sufficient numbers t Hill, former s addressed other plac the late Louis A. g » president of sume oper- a@ new orgar on holding its first convention, ations. the Sentinels of the sublic: During these troublesome months “T am a S el of the Re lic and am very in addition to the task of assisting heppy to join your grea ny Coe fe . and directing the work of the Board The name you oplied organization, Sen- Members and ‘organi generally tinels of the has it a sort of battle ery, throughout the district and preparing @ sound that ought to cover the whole of us. I do not! and issuing public statements both see any reason wh ons of the American Revolu- reply to operators’ letter, and in tion and the ters and the rest can not all be: protest against thei tion I attended Sentinels. I think they should be. I believe, Mr. Presi- scores of mass meetings at strategic dent, that this great movement that you have started points in effort to stem the open offers more hope th anything else I have seen of a shop drive. J days had to be possible uniting of ngth and efforts of all these spent in con se with attorneys good patriotic people d if from a central point of and in court in an attempt to pre- view, you and those closely associated with you could! gerve the rights of the miners as indicate what particular lines of work and development 1 to frustrate frame-ups could be added to those which these various societies lanned to railroad active are now doing, it might greatly increase their efficiency. | strikers to jail. Whenever it seemed s « «+ So. I say: good cheer, Brother Coolidge, and that my presence on the picket line thank you much for dreaming out this dream of the would have any beneficial effect up- on the morale of our people I made it a point to be there. Sentinels of the Republic. We will march with you. We are assigned to the watch towers where you direct UNION MINER Our first step then is to be frank with ourselves about our weak spots and then proceed at once to strengthen them. ° To District No. 2, United Mine Workers of America. VOS Sree OPEN SHOP _ MME. SUN GREETS THE * | | ~WORKERS’ DELEGATION | The | |form, may be obtained from The DAILY WORKER Publishing It is recommended that unions and labor ‘what the points at issue really were. |Results of Lack of Policy in 1922.| Speech of Madame Sun Yat-sen at demonstration The failure of our organization to of 10,000 women in Wuhan, called to welcome frame and apply a policy which would * : | pply a policy whi | brite andor oontenee lie 40000 Haat the International Workers Delegation. | | union’ miners, who: struck. With the) Gorcedas Von are here. bs representatives of the j mind by a great mass of charges and| us and God help us to be able to answer when you ask: of the night,’ what we are doing 1 that the enemy has been overawed ’ (Applause,) A Paying Business. ‘Watchman, tell u and what we see pate District No. 2 a Buffer. | District No. 2 is surrounded on| practically all sides by non-union coal | operations which makes of it a buffer district for the Central Competitive Field. We were among the first of | the exposed districts to receive the | impact of the open shop drive. We istent and thorough-going campaign of “exposure” of the forces of progress has appeared daily in the “Searchlight” column of the New York Commercial, edited by Fred R. Marvin, who outdoes all i Kigs 2: We/ union wrecking encountered | after the | the professional patriots in lurid description. He is| Were on the firing line months before | signing of the Jacksonville scale the author of several booklets whose contents and | the drive was felt in most of the Cen-| agreement. style may be judged by their titles: “The Menace of t¥al Competitive Field. At the. time ‘ofthe ‘Cleveland sek Bolshevism,” “Underground with the Reds,” “Are These) _We met all of this pressure and Yours Friends?” and “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.” His | Strain imposed on the district out of | column is headed “Data on Subversive Movements’ the check-off until November 1925, Against the American Government; Political and Labor | When taking care of evicted families, | Radicals, Communists and Pinks.” paying relief to striking miners and} The American Defense Society hasn’t bothered to dis-| Securing legal aid to fight injunctions | criminate at all in its onslaught. Note the catholicity|exhausted the district surplus and a of one of its circular letters appealing for funds: | district assessment was levied for “Do you know that the radical’s battle cry is ‘To Hell| several months. | with the government, to Hell with the law, to Hell with| The fight waged by District No. 2 the right of any person to be possessed of any property ?’| was not onlyga fight to maintain the Hundreds of thousands of Reds in the United States,|/contract here but also a fight to pre- | all mrades, no matter under which banner they|serve and maintain the Jacksonville mar narchists, Bolshevists, I.W.W.’s—all the agreement throughout the entire un- | same... . The Reds’ next weapon is the general) ion jurisdiction. The district, however, | strike, the first one they win spells the beginning of | with a sadly reduced taxpaying mem-} the end. Professional. criminals will cooperate with | bership, financied and supported the them.” fight almost entirely unaided. | The Better America Federation of Los Angeles goes | $549,093.23 to National. the Defense Society Nerd better in describing “bol- It is interesting to note that during | shevistic” even the public water works and public serv- seal e “ rae hy ice commissions. Says the Federation in ‘a bulletin ‘hese three years of ¢onflict in addi | ” . ,»/ tion to the district obligations, the | headed S.0.S.,” which, it appears, means “save our Tina cantene at Albke (Ak state”: : F the International in tax “We believe that the protection of private property 5 and of private business is vital to the progress of this | ™ent ehigcaegoaenne Ths: aeriti ~~ state. We believe that public ownership and public ; Stance we received from the Inter- control of business through a multiplicity of boards and! tional during the same period er commissions is socialistic and bolshevistic in tendency.” |# donation of $7,000 to the victims of | Although the Better America Federation levels its|*W® mine explosions and a loan to guns most openly at reds and pinks, it fights at heart! the district union of $20,000. on the front of protection for privilege. Its support) Because of mis-statements made at| comes largely from the power companies and public) the International Convention, whether utilities of southern California, and it serves them in| through ignorance or through malice, the guise of a disinterested patriotism. In the course|about the standing of District Two, of these efforts it almost defeated in the legislature a|I feel it is important to show in this| bill to make corporations bear their fair share of the|report that District Two has just as taxes. It also attacked William Kent, former member | great a proportion of loyal union min- of Congress, as a Bolshevik when he ran in 1920 for/ers as has any other district where the republican nomination for senator. | great pressure has been brought to This mixture of patriotism, anti-radicalism, and privi- bear upon them. The statements leged business runs through the larger and stronger! made and impressions given at the organizations. With the exception of the National Se- International Convention, make it ap- eurity League only the smail fry are patriots on prin-| pear that District Two was the only ciple. The National Civic Federation, for example,| district where great losses of mem- represents conservative business in its opposition to|pership occurred. But what is the minimum wage laws, child labor laws, old age pensions,} true state of affairs? We can obtain and welfare legislation. lit by comparing the secretary-treas- Source of Their Support. urer’s reports for the different years. None of the organizations makes public its con-| For example: tributors. None makes any public financial report of| Average Tax Paying Membership. income and expenditures, not even to its own members.) : ni . : Loss of All financial operations are enveloped in secrecy. All|... 4 of them have Retaiad to give the facts to interested | District Pesci ti Membership inquirers. Some have refused to give them even to} bake 17,042 22,891 members of their own committees, holding that those, 4 39,025 pis 20,245 facts concern the executive committee alone. Only two! 6 40,967 20,926 et of the organizations are endorsed by the National In-| Va. 24,655 1,811 23,844 formation Bureau, an agency for advising prospective | 21 6,187 1,307 4,880 contributors about the trustworthiness and management These are some of the largest dis- of organizations making public appeals for funds. They | tricts. Many small ones suffered loss- are the National Security League and the National Asso-| es as well. The total number of bitu- ciation for Constitutional Government. The others have minous tax paying members, accord- either refused to give information, or hold that they do| ing to the international Secretary- not make public appeals for funds. Their appeals to|Treasurer’s report on December 1, selected lists are apparently not regarded as public. | 1928, was 350,399; on December 1, This situation makes it difficult to state accurately | 1926, the total was 163,413—a loss of where they do get their money. They spend at the 196,986 tax-paying bituminous min- ah estimate $250,000 hs ‘Ano that Cereae ene es, ba: on the size of their offices, the number o: ‘ , salaried employes, and the amount of printing they at a huge loss See 7 The personnel of their committees indicates that most | S@Use ie Whither: ‘eh ee A eee of the money comes from very wealthy business men | Onto). | d pias ee ilar aay and corporations, Some proof has come to light to| Uion-mined bituminous coal made up show these sources. | the great bulk of all coal mined, at The congressional investigation of the National Se-| the oa at pry ag 65 curity League in 1919, undertaken because the League | oe cent of the bituminous coal is had spent large sums in trying to defeat congressmen | 20M-¥nlon. } whose patriotism was not of the League’s brand, showed| It is sheerest folly to try to hide among the larger contributors ranging from “$700 to| these facts. They are matters of pub-: $30,000”: lic record and any interested person Nicholas F. Brady, president of the New York Hdf-|can and does secure them without son Company; H. H. Rogers, of the Standard Oil Com-|trouble. Keeping this pany and allied interests; William K. Vanderbilt, direc- tor in several dozen big corporations; T. Coleman Du- Pont, of the DuPont Powder Company; Henry C, Frick, of the Carnegie Steel Company; George W. Perkins, of the United States Steel Corporation; Simon and Daniel Guggenheim, of Guggenheim Bros., and the Amer- ican Smelting and Refining Company; J. Pierpont Mor- gan and John D, Rockefeller. ‘To he coptinned.) information from the membership is only lessen. | ing our ability to maintain our hard} bought gains. We cannot fight a dan- | | ger unless we are aware of it. Recog- | \nizing our weaknesses does not mean) to surrender to them but it is abso-| | lutely necessary to know that we} | have a weakness before we can start | ta correct it | union in 1922 meant much more than) the loss of the union of those 100,000 men. It meant the loss of confidence in the union on the part of the non- union men and gave the operators a greatly increased confidence in their ability to checkmate the union’s moves towards expansion, and fin- ally resulted in the campaign of tlement of the 1922 strike, there was nothing insurmountable in the way of having the operators sign for all their mines, where the men were members of the union. I made an argument for that policy at the Cleveland conference, and consequent | events have proven the soundness of that argument. Such a policy carried out at that time would have meant the signing up of Consolidation Coal Company not only in Northern West Virginia, but also in Somerset Coun- ty, Pa., and in Maryland. It would have meant a contract with the Hiil- man Company not only in the Pitts- burgh district but also in Somerset | | County and in the coke region. The | Bethlehem Mines Corporation would have signed for its Pennsylvania mines, many of which were non- union. Contracts with these three large corporations would have broken the resistance of the other operators and would have meant not only the 100,000 new members then on strike but the increased power and prestige of the union would have simplified the work of organizing other non- union fields. This policy we argued for during the recent campaign and what we contended for at the recent Interna- tional Convention. This does not mean, as Mr. Lewis inferred at that convention, that no contract should be signed unless the operators signed for all their, mines regardless of whether the men are organized or not. What it does mean is that no contract should be signed with an operator unless he signs for all his mines where the men have signified their wish to belong to the union, as the Somerset miners had done in 1922. (To be continued) “Shot and Shell March” The army and navy are calling for Sousa to lead the band that greets Flier Lindbergh on his return to New York. While Lindbergh’s father fought the war mongers, Sousa made tunes for them. SACCO and VANZETTI ISHAT,T, NOT DIB! nary worver 29 iret ctrent, New York City” , oppressed classes of the West, of the working classes of India, America, England and France. You have come to bring a message of understanding and co-operation to the oppressed, people of China. You come to us as com- rades and as comrades we welcome you. I would like to express to you today the appreciation |of China’s women for the encouragement, support, and | wise counsel you are bringing to us. * * * I wish to speak to you’a few moments in the name of China’s women. You, who are familiar with the burdens and problems of the oppressed, will, I know, be able to| comprehend the extent of the oppressions borne by the women of China. | Everywhere, where women and men are suffering |from oppressions, it is the women who are suffering | |most. Working women share with their men the eco-| | nomic oppression of their class. But this is not the ex-| tent of their burden. In addition to the oppressions of | |economie exploitation which make the problem of keep- | ing alive a perilous gamble, women in most lands suffer ‘from other bondages. They are deprived of political ‘rights. Social laws discriminate against them, giving men indulgence but women sometimes almost tnendur- lable hardship. Women, partly by laws, but more often by customs, are kept in a narrow rut of small duties, |foreed to lead restricted, starved lives. | * * * The struggle of women is manifold. It is against eco- {nomic exploitation which often, even among the poorest classes, grinds down the women even more than the men. Even where wages of men are so meagre that life is almost impossible, women often get still less. So their | struggle is to work with the men for a better chance in | life, and sometimes against the men, for an equal chance \in life. Their struggle is for equality in many fields, in wages, in the rights of citizens, in social relationship. * * * It is not easy to be a woman, and, perhaps, it is harder to be a woman in China than in any other place in the world, Our economic oppressions have been greater. We have been completely disqualified politically. Edu- cation has been reserved almost entirely for the men, and, socially, our life has been more circumscribed, more bound by the customs which have been designed to make a free life the unique heritage of men, and an unfree ee heritage of women than perhaps in any western land. * * Today Chinese women are emerging. To the outsider it seems wholly miraculous, but although we who are working for the emancipation of Chinese women, recog- nize the miracle that makes this rebirth possible at all, at the same time we recognize the stupendous difficulties involved. The whole weight of traditional forces are against us, traditional economic forces, traditional inter- national forces, and, in ‘addition, traditional social and family forces. It is not easy to be a leader of Chinese women today! We are beset not only by the obstacles in the way of national and economic emancipation, but also those great obstacles of criticism, personal attacks, the open disapproval of the conservative classes who feel that women’s life should be spent, as it has always been spent, either in the drawing room or the kitchen of the house of her lord. We women of China, however, are fortunate in one respect, The Kuomintang which is leading us is deter- mined that our oppressions, as the oppression of all ex- ploited peoples and classes, shall end. Our program for emancipation receives complete support. * * * But the task ahead of us is great. In it, individual desires, individual emotions must be forgotten, merged into a common struggle, It is a time in China when great liberating movements that are above and beyond personalities are taking shape, and Chinese women lead- ers, from Canton, the birthplace of the revolution, to Peking, the stronghold of reaction, are throwing them- selves wholeheartedly into the battle to rid both China and women from the bondage that has kept them en-| slaved for centuries, “You, delegates from the workingmen of the West, we know, have come to help us in this task. You bring to} us a message of co-operation from the exploited millions of other lands. I wish to tell you in the name of the women of China how much we appreciate your coming, how much we expect to profit from your help and advice, and to ask that you take back to the workers and the women of your homelands the greetings of the women of China. SEND IN YOUR LETTERS The DAILY WORKER is anxious to receive letters from its readers stating their views on the issues con- ‘fronting the labor movement. It is our hope to de- \ velop a “Letter Box” department that will be of wide |interest to all members of The DAILY WORKER family. | Send in your lettér today to “The Letter Box,” The eff Wing in t he Garment Unions By MARGARET LARKIN Today The DAILY WORKER begins publication of Mar- aaret Larkin’s The Left Wing in the Garment Unions. Issued by the Joint Board of the Cloak, Skirt, Dress and Reefer Makers’ | Unions, this study is not only an official account of the irrepressi- | ble demand of the garment workers for a militant, honest, demo- eratic union but a remarkably factual history of the recent events |in the International Ladics’ Garment Workers’ Union, | The DAILY WORKER series on The Left Wing, in pamphlet Co. for 10 cents a copy. bodies wishing @ serious study 0. m bundle lots, at lower prices. FOREWORD Executive Board of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union issued orders expelling its four larg- est and most powerful c! locals, and the New Yor Although no formal preferred, as the con ion preser: € were made in 3 ers of the locals and the Joint ! were “Con ists” who, ‘ ders from Moscow,” had led ¢ into the “ruin of an — un: strike,” which kad been lost “mismanaged.” The locals and the Joint Board re- fused to submit to the orders on grounds that the charges were untrue and the expulsion illegal, and at-| tempted to make clear to the public) They found, however, that the com- plicated nature of the situation made it possible for the officialdom of the | International. to confuse the public | counter-charges, Officials of the American Federation of Labor insti- gated a “campaign to clean out the Reds from the Garment Unions.” The press was willing to accept “official” statements from the officers of the International and the American Fed-| eration of Labor while it ignored any | attempts of the leaders mt the Joint} Board to present their case. Public} forums were closed to the entire sit- | uation because of the attitude of the | leaders of the International in refus- | ing to debate or discuss the issues | with Joint Board leaders present. | Publicity Channels Closed. In spite of the fact that thousands | of workers were flung into an inter-| nal struggle which weakened the Union and encouraged the employers to make constant inroads upon Union conditions in the shops, and that the mass of these workers supported the} expelled Joint Board, all the usual | avenues of publicity by which the sit-| uation might have been clarified for} the general public, were closed to the| Joint Board. This history attempts’ to trace the underlying causes of the internal dis- In December of 1926, the General sequer f the New York situation order ich has had such grave con- Tt proposes to show how element which has al- } s to the ex- i even Joint in-detail into the ct of the recent Gen- ec of Cloakmakers, for which @ ional has sought to place e upon the Joint Board, although » it was conducted jointly by the Inter- officers and the Joint Board All Labor Concerned. It seems inevitable that. the entir< labor movement of America must be- come involved in the present struggle. Already the “Red” hunting campaign has spread to other unions. It ap; pears that no compromise is possible, fither the policy of expelling work- ers from tradés unions because of op- | position sentiment, political opinion, |or what not, will triumph in the Amer- ican’ labor movement or it will be | crushed, If a policy of expulsion should be firmly established in the labor move- ment, what would result? In locali- ties where the workers expelled were in the minority, and the union strong- ly organized, they would either have to work on the status of scab labor or be forced out of the industry! In | localities where the workers expelled were in the majority, there is danger that dual unionism might result, a condition which is. repugnant to the ideals of the American labor move- ment. Although the struggle is spreading through the entire labor | movement, the New York garment unions remain its focal point. It is with the hope of clarifying the situa- tion for those friends of labor who are anxious to obtain all the facts in this crisis, that this pamphlet is pre- sented to the public. (To be continued) By SYLVAN A. POLLACK Second Article With the forces of reaction in the Passaic labor movement determined to force the issue against the pro- gressive leadership of the local United Textile Workers’ Union, a clear-cut statement of what should be their an- swer and future policy is necessary. | Is He Bluffing? ! Will James, Starr, vice president of the Textile Workers’ Union carry injo effect his recent warning of a “house- cleaning” that he made in a speech referred to before in The DAILY WORKER? Was his remarks made only to throw fear into the progres- sive forces, to act as a sort of warn- ing, not to try and implant their ideas among the membership in other cit- ies, or is his speech a prologue that will be followed by a bitter struggle in that union? , The answer to the above query must | take into consideration a number of important points. The success or fail- | ure of the assault in the needle trades | will to a very large extent be a fac- | tor in deciding the question. If Me- Mahon, Starr and Co., see that the Woll-Sigman-Schachtman attack is a fizzle they will abandon their plans to destroy the Passaic unions. On the other hand if the right wing were able to secure any degree of success in New York, they would be encouraged to broaden their scope of activities to the Passaic front. Another factor to be considered is the Passaic locals of the United Tex- tile Workers’ Union. How would they react to a frontal attack on their reg- wlarly elected sleadership? To what extent would they resist any attempt to take away the leadership that guided them to victory in the 14) months strike? Without a shadow of a doubt the’ members of the Passaic Textile Unions would fight just as bravely to ] defend their policies and leadership | in the union as they did against the | bosses and the police during the bit-| terly fought struggle.. Would Fight For Union. . | Any attempt on the part of the MeMahons and Starrs to carry out the instructions of Matthew Woll by eliminating any pretense of fighting spirit in the American trades unions will be ruthlessly fought by the Pas-. saic textile workers. | The Passaic workers are today a part of the American Federation of Labor not because that organization made any move to organize them but because the workers under Commun- ist leadership fought their way in. What Passaic Faces ; tile Workers’ Union made no attempt to organize them. Only due to the or- ganizational ability and fighting spir- it given the workers by Albert Weis- bord and his associates it was possible for the workers even to consider a strike. ee United Front Committee. 5 The United Front Committee that irected the struggle during the ma- jor portion of the strike was formed in spite of the American Federation of Labor, and only during the last few months as a result of a great deal of pressure, were the textile workers admitted into the A. F. of L. To enter, they had to pay a price many of them were opposed to--the stepping aside of the man who had organized them— Albert Weisbord, Communist. Evidently the A. F.. of I. clique realizes to their sorrow, that the tex- tile’ workers are aware of the fact that the Communists are not any of the 57 varieties of bad and wild men that they would like them to be con- , sidered. Not To Their Liking. Viewing questions from the point of view of the militant working class is not to the liking of the A. F. of L. bureaucrats so the sooner it is squashed they believe, the more secure will be their control of the American labor movement, for if the / workers in one or two unions p gress under left wing tse will result in éther unions emulating them. , The Passaic textile work serious problems but’ they will meet them in an adequate mani judg- ing from past events. They will fight to remain a part of the American Federation of Labor and , at the same time follow a progressive ff line in their activities, likewise will face #they choose their own leaders and nott allow any of their members to be rificed because they are not ap by the A. F, of L. machine. After Great Struggle. They became a part of the A. F. of 'L, after a great struggle and will con- tinue to remain a part. The entire membership supports the p: ive, left wing leadership and will continue * to do 80, ; The forward-looking section of the American working class will watch with keen interest the events in Pas- saic and give the workers their ut- most support. The future will give the bureaucrats of the A. F. of L. their acid test; they will have the choice of being eliminated in a battle to oust the. left wing, or they will be exter- minated as the left wing increases its Before the workers went on strike, the A FW nf T end the United Tex- * , . support in the American labor move+ ment. ‘ f neers RR SAR RRND RRR Ke