The Daily Worker Newspaper, June 21, 1927, Page 6

Page Six THE DAILY WUORKEK, NEW YORK, TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 1927 Professional Patriots The expulsion of radicals from the trade unions always brings the warm approval of the professional patriotic societies. On the other hand, with the exception of the “United States Flag Association,” which holds a place on its founde board “in memoriam” for Samuel Gompers, the other organizations make no claim to identify themselves with the official labor movement in any way. (Continued from yesterday) Second, they inspired action by pros ors and secret service agents of the government in ¢ s that did not deserve attention, as.later developments proved, and served only to give some color to hysterical charges about the plot of Reds to overthrow the government; Third, they prompted various officials to espouse their notions of patriotism in terms of the “Red menace” and to incorporate it in their speeches, reports, articles, and in one case—American Education Week—in an official program. Notable in this latter up were the article published over the signature of Calvin Coolidge on the “Reds in our Colleges” in the Delineator in 1921. The Material was obviously furnished by these professional patriotic agencies. Specifically under this general head are the following facts. Documentary evidence or admissions are of course difficult to get in so delicate a field of relations. 1. The personal relations of Mr. Easley of the Civic Federation and Mr. William J. Burns have been close, and were particularly close during Mr. Burns’ incum-| bency in the Department of Justice. Mr. Easley is said to have taken credit for Mr. Burns’ appointment. 2. Mr. Burns spent most of his energies in the Bureau attacking Reds, constantly using as an argu- ment for increased appropriations the fact than only the secret service could know the danger and that the danger. was so great that many more agents were need- ed. He officially stated in 1924 that there were “over 600,000 Reds affiliated with Moscow in the United States, ready to .verthrow this government.” He constantly gave out interviews to this effect, spoke at meetings of the patriotic societies as well as over the radio, at- tacking various liberal and progressive organizations. 3. Mr. Burns resigned after the retirement from office of Attorney-General Daugherty. Attorney-Gen- eral Stone at once put the Bureau in its pfoper place as the legal investigating arm of the Department, and closed its files to inspection by private agencies. He stopped the anti-radical propaganda which had gone out from the Department under his predecessors, Palmer and Daugherty, and none has gone out since. 4. Mr. Samuel Gompers, though long opposed to Mr. Burns as a labor spy and the representative of anti-| union employers, had a common interest with him while he was in the Department. Both were fighting Reds— Mr. Gompers in the unions, Mr. Burns, anywhere. Mr. Easley was the friend of both. So there was, in effect, a most extraordinary alliance—the secret service, or- ganized labor, and big businesss, all united in a patri- otic effort to down radicalism. Mr. Easley in a con- fidential pamphlet says of the situation: “It is important to‘recall here that in 1920, Mr. Burns, | Mississippi Go South’s “Fairness” to Negro By WM. PICKENS. He did not mean to do that, of course. He simply sent the national end government a telegram, “as governor of Mississippi,” protesting against the appointment of one Negro doctor on the Flood Rehabilitation Commit- tee, altho Negroes make up 85 per cent of those to be “rehabilitated.” * = * | | |» That one brief telegram from the {governor of Mississippi exposes the South’s unfitness to be “let alone” in | its dealing with the Negro better than !any northern or Negro “radical” could ever have exposed it in a volume on the subject. This attitude of Gover- nor Dennis Murphree (we do not know where he got his name, but he cer- | tainly knows how to expose the wea ness of his position) exemplifies the best reason why intelligent Negroes should be placed»on all the commis- sions that are to, haud situation and the reh The |best meanings of a sh man’s words are not drawn from their syn- tactical construction, but from their other implications. Th Negroes will do about the hard, forced, conscripted labor of this re- |habilitation; they must slave and flood | this over: | “DOWN WITH THE BOLSHEVIKI er BOF Betrays | IF IT DOESN’T COST MUCH” +sicken and die at it. They constitute 85 per cent of the sufferers and doubt- | less 99 per cent of the suffering— 1 yet no colored man or colored | physician must have any hand in the | matter or ,any influence on_ their | | ay A REVIEW OF A REVIEW OF “OIL!” Yes, I was probably prejudiced in favor of the book by my respect for and admiration of, its author, because of the excellence of his other books, particularly those shamelessly “polemic,” Next: Upton Sinclair writes very “neat” works of art, in my opinion> | treatment. They must, be left to the | merey 6f such degenerate attitudes as that shown by this governor. ‘ * * : | We did our best to bring this situa- | tion to the attention of President / Coolidge, Secretary Hoover and the | Red Cross even ‘before it happened, | by our ordinary reasoning and com- | mon sense; but for having made the | situation so clear that even a way- faring fool could understand it, com- mend us to Dennis Murphree, “gov- ernor of Mi: ippi.” i | Will the nal government back ‘down before such barbarous attitudes? | Dr. S. D. Redmond, of Jackson, whom ‘ ini . e A jcake and have it, the administration was appointing on | Math’ tan eabiin. bing Se, Briand Premier Briand, of France, evidently wants to eat his too, and the strain of attempting to do Ange teat $ At the League of Nations we Shite cohiecicien of MEAL | Couneil, Briand’s sudden illness interrupted a deal by | and is better known than any of them |which England, France and Germany, with others, were |.—and will doubtless be much fairer | unite against the U. S. S. R. for the purpose of send- | on all questions affecting the white |iny a joint note protesting the execution of the assassins sufferers than any of those other | England had sent to kill Soviet government functionaries. x8 i |Germany was demanding partial disarmament of | France, as her price, Briand wanted the alliance but not | the disarmament. physicians will be on questions af- fecting the colored sufferers. The 8th Congress of the Workers | of the paper industry of the U.S.S.R., which coincided with the 10th anni- versary of the legal existence of the Paperworkers’ Union, open in Moscow on May 1ith. In 1917 ehe paperworkers’ union | numbered 5,000 members; at present | the membership has increased to 43,- | 200. * } The paper industry of the U.S.S.R. |has reached the pre-war level (the | production in 1926 being 263,000 tons as against 220,000 tons in 1913). To- | gether with the growth of the in- | dustry, the material position of the | paper workers has also improved, their wages before the revolution be- ing extraordinarily low. | Norway Workers. The representative of the Nor- |wegian paper workers, | Sporpind, speaking at the opening of the Congress said: “The Norw n workers are én- gaged in a serious struggle with the employers. The lockout, recently an- nounced by the employers has been | going on for 13 weeks. As a result several thousands of workers been thrown on the streets. The News from the U.S.S. R. | THE CAPITALIST WORLD AND REVOLUTIONARY CHINA By EUGENE VARGA. j factory has been laid. The building! of a new spinning factory indicates | the success of the Soviet textile indus-| try. In this industry, because of the Comrade} have | lack of spinning factories, the ma-/ jority of weaving factories were com- pelled to work on foreign yarn.» ‘The new spinning factory will help to break down this dependence on im- ported raw materials. The Finnish Metal Workers’ Union has made a proposal to the Metal Workers’ Union of U.S.S.R. to sign an agreement by which on entering the union, a foreign trade union worker | will be exempted from the payment | of entrance fees and be considered a !member of the union. from the time he originally joined in his. own coun- | try, and in the event of unemploy-)| ment has the right to trade union) benefit on equal terms with the local workers. The Metal Workers’ Union of the US. . has expressed its readiness to sign such an agreenient. Not With Mussolini. The central committee of the union | workers of the U.S.S.R. has declared against the participation of Soviet of postal, telegraph and telephone! SECTION. THREE. | Japan’s Chinese policy is rendered more complicated | by the fact that it is determined on the one hand to main- |tain its dominating position in Manchuria at all costs, and on the other hand to guide the anti-imperialist move- ment in China into channels which will promote Japanese interests, as those of a “kindred race,” in their:competi- tion with Great Britain. This twofold policy has so far been carried through with some measure of success by Japan. It poses as a friend of the Chinese revolution, the Bolshevist character of which it denies. Hence the ostentatious .refusal to | join in the British policy of intervention. 3 * * GREAT BRITAIN. Among the imperialist Powers, it | lis the bourgeoisie of Great Britain that is most hostile | | to the Chinese revolution, even in so far as the latter is bourgeois in character. In this policy, it has found the valuable support of the right Labor leaders, MacDonald, | Thomas, and Snowden. * Three main reasons actuate the British bourgeoisie in | this attitude: | | a) Great Britain is the chief colonial Power in Asia. Counting its mandated territory, it rules over an area of 5.5 million square kilometres with a population of 330 million souls. (but do remember that prejudice leering in the offing) I speak more affee- tionately of his less deceitfully polemic volumes. are the better this prejudiced person likes them. The more “polemic” they Is Vern Smith one of these “art-for-art’s sakers” who consider propaganda rather inartistic, altogether in bad taste? I would advise a good dose of Sinclair’s “Mammonart” to clear away the cobwebs. Ce * Again: Upton Sinclair does not pretend to be a novelist in the “academic If you look in the sense of the word.” He’s too"good a proletarian for that! dictionary, however! hk Further, I have always found the “pieces” of his structures unusually interesting. seemed to interest him a trifle, other, the outrage at San Pedro. Indeed, the egregious Smith saw fit to point out two which One, the drowning of the oil-worker, the Smith says, “Sinclair gets his results by piling up the evidence and his ‘novels’ have little enough of plot, nothing of that closely written narrative that sustains interest from one episode to another.” I never noticed lack of “plot,” rather an abundance, and as for the “nar- rative,” it never failed to “sustain” my. “interest.” But then, of course, I liked the book and so am “prejudiced”. in its favor and should keep quiet about it. How dare I contradict the unprejudiced Smith? * * * The statement that the “story of Oil! was pretty slim” seems entirely false to me. In saying that Bunny was “a decent lad, Sinclair’s own. type, presum- ably,” Smith must have meant that Sinclair was soft and undecided, softness and indecision being key-notes of Bunny’s character. I wish to call Smith’s attention to these facts:—that black is white, highway crossings should be greased, and water runs up hill. Of course, Sinclair might very well be called a “decent lad” by Vern Smith, whom I therefore assume to be an “aged, aged man” whether “a-sit~ ting on a gate” like the elder in Carroll’s fairy tale, or in a swivel chair. * * * Smith later says, “We have to praise Sinclair’s restraint,” but it seems that he cannot, wholeheartedly, do anything but condemn him, He makes it evident that he would have preferred that, in writing of the San Pedro affair at the I. W. W. hall, Sinclair had mentioned not only that the children were thrown into boiling coffee, being thus crippled for life, but that the raiders had brought scalding grease with them to use in torturing the chil- dren. In this case, it seems that the propagandist in Smith got it all over the artist. I seem to remember reading in O’Fiaherty’s column that Sinclair Lewis was a better propagandist than Upton Sinclair because of the sugar-coating he uses on his propaganda. candy! the American Mercury! Alright, darling, muvver tells it where to find its lollypop. * Now Upton Sinclair gives us in Oil! Communist arguments, sugar-coated for the children and one of them complains that there’ is bitter (propaganda) under the sweet. Just Try So that’s what you want? * Paul, not Bunny is the central character of the book and carries the weight of Sinclair’s argument, and Smith doesn’t even mention him! Smith says of Sinclair: “He builds up a hanging case against the bourgeoisie and then sentences them to Social service, a new liberal’newspaper or something equally piffling.” Smith dges not seem to be sure what the sentence is. I’ll make bold to tell him. It is true that he builds up a hanging case against the idlers but he neither hangs them nor sentences them to anything “piffling” as Smith so choicely expressed it, He sentences the idle class to assimilation into the working class. *Do you, Smith, find fault with that? The last paragraph is of a part with the rest. “I regret that the workers must use force.” pounds his chest like an ape till he has beaten his temper to a boil. Sinclair, in short, said, Smith seizes the “I regret” and This is all very diverting but it is not good Communism. * * i i India forms the mainstay of the world| power of Great Britain. In all these colonies, Great} Britain is fighting against the emancipatory movement among the suppressed nations and rests its authority on knowing of Mr. Gompers patriotic activities during the | pithgale ge A Feet eo caa| telegraphists in the world competi- war, and also. of the fight being made upon him by the | an fein ad " pti se head to tion of telegraphists, which is being Reds, sent to his clientele among the employers of the | Would not treat, the owners The | #ttanged for the autumn of this year country a confidential circular stating in effect: ‘It is | the Goveenment for assistance. |in Como by the Italian Fascist Gov- Now, I regret that we must use force. Does Smith take exception to the regret? But, as Upton Sinclair takes pains to make clear thru his character, Verne, the bosses have no intention of handing us our rights on a silver platter. We've got to take them the best way we know how., In the feudal classes. important at this time that the employers of the country uphold the hands of Samuel Gompers because the I. W W. elements are fighting him at every turn; and, what- ever our opposition to Mr. Gompers on certain questions | «pit we hope” concluded Sporpind may be, there is no comparison between present condi- tions and those which would obtain if the I. W. W. policies shouid win and the A. F. of L. be destroyed.’” 5. Mr. Easley raised a considerable sum of money to help Mr. Burns finance work in connection with the .Prosecution of Communists in Michigan, which could not be paid for from public funds. 6. Mr. Burns cooperated with R. M. Whitney of the American Defense Society in publishing the material Seized by the state in the Michigan case. This was the property of the government held under a search warrant, | yet Mr. Burns allowed Mr. Whitney to use it before the trial, in newspaper articles for which Mr. Whitney was well paid. These articles, incidentally, occasioned a number of libel suits and retractions by the offending | ‘ Ugpers. | position of the Norwegian workers | | is very bad, They are carrying on a | fight with both the owners and the | bourgeois government. | “that the workers of the whole world and the Russian comrades will sup- |port us in our fight. Our workers {are unanimously in favor of the crea- |tion of a United International Or- ganization of Paperworkers and of | close contact with the Russian Union.” “The Swedish workers are very in- |terested in everything connected | with the U.S.S.R. On my return from the U.S.S.R. in 1923 I gave. about |60 lectures which were attended by the workers who displayed great in- terest in them.” Clerks’ Unions. | Representatives of the clerks’ | ernment. ‘Letters From Our Readers | Editor, DAILY WORKER: | Who said Lindbergh’s welcome was purely for Wall Street Propaganda and Militarism? While the big par- jade going on near the battery wit! military band music and marching of soldiers. and sailors with guns and bayonets in their hands to show how |democratic we are, and the great re- telling how great and strong we are, |a seaman also thought great things to | enlighten some people of real facts | about these affairs. i His idea was to merely sell The hi democratic we are and the great re-! Success on the part of the Chinese revolution and a humiliation of Great Britain would be extremely dangerous for the latter’s position as an | Asiatic colonial Power. | b) Any success of the Chinese revolution, even under _ bourgeois leadership, strengthens the position of the | Soviet Union in Asia in its relation to Great Britain. | | ¢) All privileges ensured the bourgeoisie of foreign countries by the “unequal treaties,” in the first place | benefitted the British bourgeois class, A few remarks on this last-named point. Great Britain has not annexed any large portion of China, but it has the chief commercial eentres, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Hankow, in its power, It subjected the Yangtze valley to its authority, effectually if not formally. Apart from Manchuria, as an external terri- tory, the great bulk of the foreign investments in China are British. The British bourgeoisie, in the first place, govern the international trade of China, while even the | export and import trade of the rival foreign Powers “Letters to Judd” Sinclair offers one ‘solution we could use if we had the brains. I have come quite recently to the conélusion that too many of us have not. There is too much emotionalism and too little logical reasoning. So I understand why Upton Sinclair seems to believe’that Communism, re- gretable as is the necessity for it, is our way to victory. He offers all the assistance he can give when the crisis comes. Right now he is doing all in his power to show us just where we stand. He spares no efforts to encour- age the workers, no pains in fighting their battle. Yet youngsters like this Smith, without even following a single one of Sinclair’s arguments to its conclusion, see fit to come out in the most prom- inent workers’ paper with an unbalanced, ill-considered attack on their best, most fearless friend. I am annoyed. Let us have no more of this one hun- dred and ten per cent jipgoistie Communism. —E. T. BENNETT. REVIEWING A REVIEW OFA REVIEW. The fact that out of the thousands of DAILY WORKER readers there was one who enjoyed “Oil!” as a serial, is of course an addition to the sum of human knowledge, but it does not require further comment, any more than do Comrade Bennett’s curious speculations as to the age of the reviewer. 7. It is significant that while giving out information to these patriotic societies, Mr. Burns repled to a letter Little more important is it that Comrade Bennett takes umbrage at my | unions of Belgium, Germany and Fin- p frei f | DAILY WORKER, a newspaper just | passes to a great extent through British hands, via Hong’ praise of Sinclair as essentially a propagandist and not a literateur. But as |land were present at the opening on| from the National Council for the Prevention of War requesting to see the evidence he had back of his charges against it: “T must advise you that it has long been the practice of the Bureau to hold its files confidential and available for confidential use only; and I regret that under this rule it would be impossible for me to answer your in- quiry.” (To Be Continued) THE MAD DOG OF EUROPE By EUGENE KREININ. The mad dog spreads venom “In a futile attempt ' To extinguish a decade of accomplishments But the red blood of resistance Will hurl it back Upon the head of its perpetrator. The mad dog is raving. Its bloody trail of suppression Is impeded. The peoples bled white By unscrupulous blood-hounds May 12th in Moscow of the All-Union Congress of Clerks. The British “Na- | tional Union of Clerks” sent a tele- gram of greeting to the Congress, in which it was stated that the shar- pening of the struggle with the new Bill against trade unions would’ not permit of their representatives being present at the Congress. Hopes For Revolt. Comrade Everling, representing the Belgian organization, in his speech to the Congress said, incidentally: “I must say that previously we were somewhat .mistrustful of the | programme of radical changes and | wide aims of your ‘movement, but on having the opportunity, during our few days sojourn in Moscow, of see- ing your institution, we can now only wish that we shall soon see in Bel- | gium what we now see in the U.S.S.R. | Our clerks are dividet, in the class | rooms there are only 8,000 members. Our clerks as a whole are far behind | the working class, but we shall fight |for UNITY, which will help us to | direct the clerks’ moverfient into the | path of true class-consciousness.” like any other néwspaper for sale,|Kong and Shanghai. The profits of British capital in nearly as I can make out from the above, Bennett agrees with me that it is inside the pages, A cop, loyal to his masters knows already his orders, he is not satisfied with telling the seaman to leave that place, but he confiscated the whole bundle of the DAILY WORKERS while other boys were. selling their newspapers freely. SACCO and VANZETTI SHALL NOT DIE! only with different reading matter | China from international trade, navigation, and banking are very great. Chinese finance is so greatly in British hands, that the closing of the British financial institutes at Hankow, organized as a “counter-stroke,” proved a very effective economic weapon. In this entire realm of commercial activity, such rights as are guaranteed the British bourgeoisie in their deal- ings with the Chinese by the “unequal treaties,” are of the very greatest economic importance, being immedi- ately convertible into hard cash. Hence the tenacious maintenance of the status quo, particularly by that sec- tion of the British bourgeoisie which-is established in the concessions and is directly interested in Chinese busi- ness. These people have grown so accustomed to their privileged position and feel so far above the yellow race, that—even against the will of the wiser portion of the British bourgeoisie at home—they insist on the necessity of an armed intervention for the purpose of crushing the Chinese revolution. The attempt of the British Govern- ment to arrive at a peaceful solution of the problem with the Southern Government at Hankow, an attempt, it is true, which was not sincerely meant, seeing that the British were forced to undertake it in yiew of the low water level of the Yangtze during the winter, which pre- vented troops from being sent to Hankow, met with the most violent disapproval on the part of this Anglo-Chi- nese bourgeoisie. a good thing to write propaganda fiction, and is only mad at me because he thinks I thot Sinclair did not know the art of propaganda as well as Bennett thinks he does. And that’s a matter of taste. I was under the impression that restraint was a good thing, under the circumstances. * * But what is really serious is that Bennett seems to say this “Oil!” is a Communist book in disguise. I don’t think that Bennett really believes that. the book is tricking the reading public into Communism, beeause even a child would see that an article exposing such a strategem would ruin it, Bennett is merely defending Sinclair any way he can, and needlessly. But still worse is the evident delusion of Bennett that the secondary ‘character, Paul, is the heart of the story, and a true picture of what a Communist should be. Paul is undoubtedly what Sinclair, in all friendline: to Communism, thinks is an ideal leader for a Communist Party. He makes him one of those captured’at Bridgeman, sends him on secret missions to Russia, and “plays him up” in all the ways that the regular capitalist news- papers “play up” Bolsheviks. He makes him a labor leader, and a staunch defender of the Bolshevik reVolution, but whenever Paul argues for a Com- munist party in America, he is immediately checked by arguments against it, placed in the mouths of the Socialists, which same Socialists also approve, in “Oil!” of the Communists—in Russia. Be ’ Paul has a sister, also a Communist, and Bunny, who plays the par sympathetic, unprejudiced judge between the warring Reds and Yellov 493) seriously considers marrying her, but finally decides in favor (p. 503.) He decides on political grounds. Socialist opponent. ' Sinclair has the martyr psychosis bad; that’s all right for him, , afford it, but when he tries to make out that one of the reasons worker: r ‘ The President of the Finnish Trade | the Workers Party is so that they can get more publicity when they 4 _ Are throwing off the yoke of banditry. Union of Clerks, Comrade Laakso ex- | ‘ VICARIOUS | jail (p. 416) he goes a little too far. : tended the Congress an invitation to | Still the real bitter center, which is too much for my stomach, is Si The mad dog is nervous. ‘ |the forthcoming Congress of the . By LEBARBE. clair’s insistence that Communism is mostly an emotional reaction to the Its age-long supremacy is crashing On the granite of revolt. Finnish Trade Union of Clerks. | The first big paraffin factory has | been constructed and has begun, work in Grozny (Caucasus). Previously Do you remember yet, that afternoon (so long ago my memory must reach to hold: it still), when on the silver beach horrors of civilization. “He was a case of shell-shock from the war,”—says | Rachel, Bunny’s final choice, about Pauly and that is yiew, even yet. * Sinclair has probably Sinclair’s his little joke, you know, about Paul. He inakes Paul blood Woe to the mighty lion paraffin was neither produced in tched the + brother to Ely, the crazy evangelist, and son of the religio-maniacal Watkins * Who trembles seg skin. Russia, nor in the U,S.S.R. The en- pa op tag aa aa vars oo couple, with their “jumps” and holy-rolling. Lest you miss that point, con- © | “ *, tire demand for paraffin was covered you ’ ng 8! sider this “piece,” which I confess, “interests me a trifle” but which I do pri’ by foreign imports, The new works returning from lost lands to rest again not like at all: “ i And in fury madness will not only satisfy the demands on old familiar shores. The waves are hosts ® eS It buys remnants of a past day of the homo market, but a consider- conscripted in the army of the rain. . .” “Paul was haggard; one does not take a trip to Moscow to get fat, For cowardly assassin attacks able quantity will be put aside for but his sober face was shining with a light of fanaticism—the same thing Upon the foremost of the U.S. S. R. export. Orders for paraffin have| | , . I ft that in which his brother Ely called the glory of the Lord! Dad would have said ‘ Pe cpa ee a aad already been received from Germany,| | v Chi Yu, 28, Chin never shall orget your eyes there were two of them, equally crazy; but it didn’t seem that way to Turkey, and other countries, | eeene 1 4%, 36, eae I saw a deathless dream, and that your hands,| Bunny, who mocked at Eli's god but believed in Paul’s—at least enough to \ An aroused world proletariat The first works for the production, Student at Columbia university, sifting so tenderly the whisp’ring sands, tremble in his presence.” ie Ready at all times— Defies in unison with the U. S. S. R. The mad dog Losing its teeth. .. of projectors has been opened in Moscow. Spinning Fac In Danilovka, near foundation stone of a ye loscow, the ig spinning New York City, has won seven degrees in the United States in six ears. Tho seventh, Doctor of hilosophy, has just been award- ed by Columbia, were beautiful with visions as your eyes. Yet you, whose soul went yenturing"to sea, ‘sat there content upon the beach, with me! This is the regular petty-bourgeois, half-baked intelligentsia psycho- analytical explanation of revolution, clair’ hie ‘was a cockroach, 1” is a good attack on capitalism, Communism That bittex thing you tasted in Sin-