The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 28, 1927, Page 6

EDITOR’S NOTES (Continued from page 1) —Drawing by William Gropper. and reactionary trade union officials of Italy as servants and collaborators of Mussolini? F Tobin really means what he says, namely, that Mussolini’s wage cutting measure is a menace to slabor the world over, why does not the Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor fmitiate a movement of protest against it? Why does Tobin keep silent about the treachery of the conservatives in the Italian unions? AYBE we should not be asking these questions. Instead of that, we should be pointing out the fact that the Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor, of which Tobin is treasurer, is guilty of nearly the same crimes as the Italian reactionaries. Matthew Woll and William Green have tried to break the strike of the fur workers and failing in that, because of the militancy of the workers and the competency of its left wing leader- ship, the same gentry proceeded to undermine and break up the union. And in doing so, they are using tactics and methods which are little better than those of the fascists in Italy. Wherein, then, does the Executive Council of the American Fed- eration of Labor differ from Mussolini and his agents_in the Italian labor movement? Fr may be well to recall another fact in the situa- tion. When Mussolini started out on his das- tardly campaign to outlaw the Italian trade unions, . his black-shirted bandits invading trade union head- quarters, destroying furniture and records; mob- bing trade union officials in the most “civilized” fascist style, the Red International of Labor Unions proposed to the Italian trade union reactionaries and to the Amsterdam International as a whole the creation of a united labor front to protect the right of the Italian trade unions to a legal existence. A. Losovsky, in his capacity of general secretary of the Moscow International of Labor Unions, as the enemies are wont to call it, dispatched telegraphic offers for united action against the union smash- ing campaign of Mussolini to all parties concerned. But the result was that neither the Italian trade union reactionaries nor the reactionaries of the while the latter stood by passively permitting Mus- solini to complete his job. RECISELY the same position is now being taken by Daniel J. Tobin with regard to the next step in Mussolini’s war upon Italian labor—the national ten per cent wage cut. Incidentally, it also explains the great majority of the immigrants who come Australia finally end up in the bread line. In West Virginia YZ hiking or motoring through West Virginia on the narrow corridor-like roads alongside the Ka- nawha River, and making here and there occasional stops in the various so-called company mining camps, one with eyes open and mind clear would find it a most vivid illustration to learn from about the so much bragged of equal opportunities, great pos- sibilities and prosperous blessing, one is able to attain of, with just a bit of ambition and desire to strive for it. A worker in the United States in gen- etal and a miner in the West Virginian open-shop coal kingdom especially. Another thing of major importance one would also learn, is the degree of misery, degradation and outraged rights, human beings may allow to be hurled in, in the midst of the most extravagant lux- ury and riches, in the richest country in the world, There is hardly a feeling more humiliating than poverty when there is a will to work, or human rights outrageously suppressed when there is a will for creative activity. Yet, such is the story as one would read it from the muddy streets and dirty surroundings, filthy and ugly looking huts, and above all, from the frightened looks of some of the miners when attempting to enter into a conversa- tion concerning their circumstances betraying in- human enslavement and disfranchisement. Every family, nearly.in every mining camp, has a dreadful and sorrow story of its own, of relatives killed or injured in exploded mines or during strikes. But still they remain and generation after genera- tion they continually toil and suffer, struggle, lose and struggle again, with just.a few of them seeing in the far distance the Red Dawn—the Great Re- deemer of a!) the suffered and oppressed. bd * * ‘Tt was about five months after the general walk- out in the camps of the W. O. Coal Co. of West Virginia, following a new wage cut—thus reducing the even then meagre earnings of the miners to a rate of starvation—and on the following day after the work in the mines, being forced by poverty, terror and disorganization, was resumed under con- ditions as dictated by the coal operators, when James Anderson, a young miner, suddenly realized that all his hopes and aspirations to work himself up to a higher position in life, whatever his con- ceptions were, but relatively to a position somewhat higher than the one of a “common ordinary miner” he occupied at present, these peted dreams, he sud- denly realized are nothing else but inaccessible, self deceiving and naive illusions incompatible with reality. If asked by someone, it is very doubtful if James could intelligibly explain the source and cause of his new born conclusions, just as well as he could not probably explain the inspiring source of his former aspirations, now dead. Nevertheless, there, deep in his heart he felt and knew that it is now that he is on the right path, wondering only, how could he not see it before, and his former self-deceiv- ing illusions which were wrong and misleading... James was young, in fact very young. And though born and raised in surroundings very far from lux- ury—in mine workers’ surroundings—his knowledge ‘and conception of life were such, as of a sweet and banal novelette where everything is so noble and magnificent. But starting in the mine at seventeen with head and brain swollen of “education,” which made him hostilely inclined towards any modern though or ideal contradictory to his conceptions of life or ambitious aspirations, he was now completing his fifth year of very much discouraging hard labor in the mine entirely disillusioned, his “education” completely evaporated. Life—black and rough as a pile of coal; those bru- tal facts of life’s reality, contradictory to all the platitudes he had been taught begining almost from his cradle up to the time of his first walk to the mine; life—the most efficient and eloquent agita- tor, with hammering facts of truth and reality have spoken to James’ reason in words more conceivable and convincing than all the pamphlets he occasionally read, mercilessly smashing his shattery beliefs into dust and oblivion. , The inevitable followed. Overwhelmed by the complexities of contradictions, bewildered and dis- enchanted, James conceded. Days, dark and desperate, were those to young James Anderson, days of torturous and painful vexatiousness, reminding those, days of five years ago after that disastrous gas explosion in the same mine he is working now, when with a score of others his father, was also found dead, and he, James, then a school boy, picking up his father’s lunch-kit the only witness of his death—started his walks to the coal pits, becoming the main supporter of the family. “Why?” For the first time did he ask. “Why?” Never before did young James Anderson ask any proof or hesitate in the soundness of what he was trained to believe in and obey. “Everything is as it is—he was taught—because it cannot and should not be any different. Only reds and radicals, who are foreigners and outcasts, dare to hesitate in the justness of our American principles and question pom 2 o— By MAURICE GOMBERG the good will of our institutions.” James obeyed.as all “good American patriots” did. He did not under- stand, It did not concern him. But now : . . now, there was a lost strike in which he himself partici- pated--There was a wage cut he considered un- justified—And then—the most of everything——there were hopes and aspirations he petted so caressingly through all his darkest years in the coal pits, dreams, he now regarded as mythical as fairy tales ean only be. So now, there was a James entirely different than the one of five years ago. James, who already learned how not to care a damn, what- ever, whoever is going to think of him or of his action, and over and over again was he asking what he was so anxious to know. “Why?” “Why?” am *% * Since the last defeated strike in W. O. mining camps, several years passed away into eternity with- out any extraordinary occurrences. With the wage eut, the row of “total income” in the books of the W. 0. Coal Company of West Virginia began to grow longer and longer by every month, while on the part of the miners, the growing objects were the. loose belt ends, which were also growing longer and longer by every month-while keeping track of the ever hungry and shtinking bodies of the under- paid miners, And aithough superficially, as one unaquainted with the Situation would conceive it, the pace of life in the camps continued to make its normal daily rounds, obviously smooth with no signs of anxiety or distarbance, the more penetrative observer would reveal under this camouflaged quietness a boiling volcano 6f discontent, whose furious vapors if con- centrated and released, would exterminate in a single blew all the barriers of their enemy oppressors and exploiters forever and without return. And one of those amongst them, fully aware of this power- ful weapon of “concentration,” stimulating and propagating it, is now young James Anderson. Broken and a thing of the past is now that charmed circle of “whys” he had been clampered in, in those early days of his awakening. And not only beeame it clear now to young Anderson, why that hypocritical “equal opportunity” hokum, in- vented by the capitalist rulers and exploiters to delude the minds of the exploited masses, is equiva- lent to the same “equal opportunities” every miner’s lunch kit has to be sebuilt imto a radio set, but he also learned and knew how to combat such de- lusions, te the cause of which he entirely and whole- heartedly devoted himself since the day of his awakening. To organize, to educate and to “concentrate” that boiling volcano of discontent for the final battle and victory of his class, became his life ambition and aspiration. Young James Anderson, just recently a deluded and blind enemy of the struggles and aspirations of his own class, by accepting and critically analyz ing the facts which tife itself presented to him, be- came a class conscious and militant worker, and one of those struggling few. in West Virginia who sees in the far distance a New Dawn—the Red Redeemer of all the suffered and oppressed. ; * * * If passing through West Virginia. alongside the Kanawha River and making occasional stops at the various so-called company mining camps one may find some of these struggling few, energetic and self sacrificing Andersons, in almost every camp. Not everything is bad that comes from West Virginia. The near future will prove it. - May, 1927, Charleston, W. Va. « SYDNEY, Australia—At a trades union con- gress, held at Sydney during the last week of Feb- ruary, the present trouble in China was diseussed. Tt was ordered that fraternal greetings be sent to the Chinese Nationalist party, and the hope ex- pressed that the advancing Nationalist armies on Shanghai meet with success, and that out of the present trouble there would arise the great eastern Soviet of Chinese workers, It was decided to send a delegation of trade union representatives to attend the T, U. Congress at Can- ton (China) in May, and that the delegates sent to Canton then visit Soviet Russia to observe conditions pie and report back to the Australian working ass. Congress also carried the following resolution: “That this T. U. Congress affirms its solidarity with the workers of the world. We recognize the awaken- ing of the revolutionary spirit of the Eastern work- ers and the importance of united working class ac- tion to prevent the threatening blood-bath in the Pacific.” * ose WELLINGTON, New Zealand (FP).—The capi- talist press hails New Zealand as “God’s Own Country,” where every man has a chance to make good. The other side of the picture is shown in the following advertisement which appeared in the Wellington “Post,” a capitalist newspaper, of March 27:—“Anyone having cast-off man’s overcoat; would they help one struggling along?—Reply, 461, Eve ning Post.” .