The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 4, 1927, Page 6

Page Six What's What in Washington WASHINGTON, J the fifth congress of the Pan-Ameri- can Federation of Labor meets in Washington on July 15, it will be at- tended by the most rep i body of labor men from the and Gulf of Me nations ever sembled on American soil. But not a single delegate from Ar- gentina, Ch the ABC countr th Ame , will be in dance. is indie: 1.—When Thi s now in the hands of ago Igle st Party has been . The Argentin submitted creden informed by, Igles but that the congress will be primarily for trade union bodi Susy The failure of the attend on. ABC countries to the Washington meeting is seen as another indication of the growing antipathy betv the non- Caribbean Latin and the United Sta The feeling against the United as the “colossus of the north” permeates not only labor organizations but commercial bodies as well, wher bobbed up in the re- cent Pan-Ar n Commercial Con- gress. This propag: ia has an unfortu- nate effect, I s explains, on labor relations between the South American countries and the American Federa- tion of Labor. The n workers be- low the equ upon A. officia manufac- diplo: Going. suggestion ts adopted by the a delegation of North Amer bor leaders will visit Rio d iro, Buenos Aires, Valparaiso, § ontevideo and Santiago, of anti-United States p x! the program a ° of L. The Washington congress will seat! delegates {ro Jnited States, Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Santo Domingo, Venezuela, Panama, | Salvador and Porto Ri At the| fourth congr in Mexico City in 1924, delegates were present from .| ening of labor unions along the shore THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, MONDAY, JULY 4, 1927 BRITISH DIE-HARDS DOING A WAR DANCE AS Canadian flunke Nicaragua, Panama, Santo Domingo, Guatemala and Porto Rico, in addition to the A. F. of L. and Mexican Fede- ration of Labor (CROM). Unionizing. The main object of the fifth con- gress, according to Iglesias, who i also president of the Porto Rico Fed- eration of Labor, will be the strength- of the Caribbean. Iglesias sees the job as an immense one with scores of sharp conflicts with employing interests before suc- cess is attained. That it can be at- tained in good measure is evidenced, he declares, by the success of the Mexican Federation of Labor. ‘Letters From Our Readers Dear Comrades: Without doubt you are informed of the imprisonment on May ist of Com-| rade Monmousseau, Secretary of the} C. G. & U. of France. Since then a} great number of militants have been put in prison. Lately the reactionary wave has been extremely intense. The F hh government has resolved to our party, and is dealing the erious blow by arresting the prominent leaders. Parliamen- tary immunity will soon be a thing of the past, and Doriot, Marty, Ca- chin, Couturier and the rest of our) parliamentary group are in danger | of imprisonment. | The discovery of so Plots” are the order of the day; bu one balloon explodes after another, and this causes extreme rage among | the reactionaries. The influence of | our party on the soldiers and sailors | is very considerable and the govern-| ment feels its hold loosening every the army is con-| Constantine speech | threatening death to Communism, | the law Boncour militarizing men,} women, children and labor organiza- | tidhs in time of war, recently passed, the intensification of reaction, the Sarraut worsening economic conditions of the| very imaginative these days to per-| proletariat and the lower classes, the | danger of war, etc. the position of our party along the| reading public by the powers of the | whole line. Evidence of this can be| seen in the recent various local elec- | tions in which the Party has come} out victoriou and the participation of more than 100,000 workers in the recent assem- | the martyrs of the Commune. In a word, the French bourgeoisie | has a hard bone to bite on, and there- | of over $200 was raised for the Daily. In Boston the reception was even | better, if that were possible. Com- rade Shohan of the Bookstore had set his quota for the tour in his terri- tory at $500 and he sure made a herculean effort to attain it. Norwood, Brockton, McKenzie King. angelic wings is carrying poison gas. iet Union cartoonist’s conception of the tory drive for a break with the U.S. S. R. From left to right are: William) Joynson Hicks, Lord Birkenhead, formerly “Galloping Smith,” Winston Churchill, Stanley Baldwin, Austen Chamberlain and the Baldwin is carrying a portfolio marked “forgeries and stolen documents.” Chamberlain with IT WAS LONG By T. LOAF. ees ago the learned professors of the theory of} “constitutional law” as it was being} ght at the European universities, had always a mighty | ard job when in their nicely rounded systems of gov- ernment they came across the question of Revolution. | Then the legalistic minds of the learned professors knew | ut one source of law—the Law itself. That means/ every new law had its validity from a preceding one, the} the so-called AGO whole presenting thus. an uninterrupted chain of legal facts plus the learned comments thereto. To be sure, the textbooks in single cases differvd as to the “source jof law”: \y epresentation, the Parliament. in more or less absolutist countries it was the vine right” of the monarch, in more democratic ones was the “will of the people” as expressed through their The trouble for the profesSorial guild started when it was necessary to “explain” the change from an abso-} \lutist to a constitutional government that has come about as a result of a Revolution. It was not so bad yet if the result of the Revolution was. a constitutional monarchy. In such case the legal theory was taking a leaf from theology: as God through the laws of nature establishes of his own volition an “order” to be followed by his selfsame power so the }monarch establishes the constitution through which he} |puts limitations upon his own actually unrestrainable | rule. Such had been the “theory” for tsarist Russia, Worcester, | monarchist Germany and Austria-Hungary, etc. But the Peabody, South Boston and Gardener | Jb became harder when, as in France, the final outcome were visited. Comrade Gage and his |0f @ revolution (or for that matter of a series of revolu- wife, Feinstein, Parta, Anderson and|tions) there emerged a democratic republic. Still, even others too numerous to mention all|in that case the learned men tried to help themselves by joined in a 100 per cent effort and |finding the “legal basis” for the constitutional assembly | port, however, and there is no doubt | revolution, | raised the magnificent sum of $480. | and the new constitution in some centuries-old and for- |The Finnish comrades promised sup-| gotten statutes or some legitimistic acts of the counter- But under no circumstances would they— that they will send a substantial|some rare exceptions excluded—admit the “legality”. of quota up to scratch. One can truly say that with such friends the only English labor daily in the world will live. A continuation of such devotion will not only save The DAILY WORKER, but will send it into new fields where its influence will in- crease one hundred fold.—Pat De- vine. Editor, DAILY WORKER, Dear Comrade:—One need not be ceive the great game of deception be- world. In fact, a course of “reading between the lines” should be taken by Americans and others, in order to} nations of the world are pointing. the following statements: First, that a declaration of warj|candid opinion regarding this little phrase. -called “Red| donation to The DAILY WORKER, | the Revolution itself. t| which will bring the Boston district | | States. j}own rule. | | ple to alter or to abolish it... . | ered criminal. There was one democratic country, however, whose “organic law” defied the fossilized mentality of the reac- |tionary jurists, presenting at the same time an “inter- jesting case” to the more liberal-minded—the United The “Declaration of Independence,” represent- |ing the first written revolutionary document of a people in revolt, breaking its colonial ties and establishing its Here was a charter that unmistakingly was establishing the right of the People to a Revolution! That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the peo- We do not know how European textbooks of “consti- tutional law” look nowadays—after the experiences of the World War, Russian Revolution, Fascism and so on. We confess, it even puzzles us. But we do know this thing. e strengthened | ing played at the expense of the|The country with such exceptional and exemplary con- stitutional document is moving rather fast to a point | where some paragraphs of this document will be consid- ‘ It is a pity (indeed, a great pity) that The DAILY nine out of ten times;|make clear the true goal to which | WORKER can’t be as free with money as the capitalist | publications which are able to send at will a questionnaire ‘ One of our foreign “defenders” jto so many people. If we did not know that the cost of blage at the “Wall” to commemorate |Mr. Houghton speaking at the Har-) postage alone would bankrupt the paper we should in- | vard commencement exercises makes | sist on sending one to at least all government officials, lincluding the members of the cabinet, requesting their Who can fore the struggle which threatens to goainst other peoples in the group | doubt the result of such a questionnaire? And after all, | while at present it only happens with individuals thet !they are arrested for reading the Constitution in public break out in the near future, will be} of a great historical importance, if| not decisi | soldiers and sailors. | Receive my revolutionary greet- ings, and believe me, Fraternally yours,— Louis De Fillippis. | ‘* * * | Editor, The DAILY WORKER: | To those who fear for the future) of our militant DAILY WORKER, it is necessary to point out how splen-| ‘didly the workers all over are rally- ing to the call for support. Comrades Dunne and Miller were in the front line trenches facing the enemy, and all the reserves thruout the country put forward a special ef- fort the result of which was to defeat (temporarily at least) the machina- tions of the employing class who look upon The DAILY WORKER as their most dangerous opponent. Rishop W. M. Brown just recently ended a short two weeks’ tour of the Philadelphia and Boston districts. Al- most without exception, their recep- tion was splendid. In Philadelphia, Comrade L. Lem- ley, the energetic DAILY WORKER agent had his program all arranged. Scranton, Allantown, Chester, Tren- ton and Philadelphia were solicited for donations and Comrade Olga Gold, Hoffman, Wishnewsky, Maxin- off and a host of others, all put their shoulders to the wheel. In spite of the fact that special drives were being made for the Frei- heit, the Joint Defense of Furriers and Cloakmakers and many other necessary objects, the splendid sum |sian propaganda? (meaning, of course, the group whose purpose shall be to “outlaw war”) ve, in view of the revolu-| Gan be made only after the question| place, can there not come a time when the powers that tionary sympathy of great masses of has received the affirmative sanction |be would be compelled to repudiate the law, lest it be of a majority of the qualified electors | necessary to imprison the whole people for taking the | words of the proud document.at their face value? * of each; and, Second, that in return for recipro- cal pledges,-each shall agree not to * % In the “material” brought a few days ago before the attack the others for a term of—say | Federal Grand Jury for the indictment of the staff of |The DAILY WORKER there was, according to newspa- Does this not smack of anti-Rus-|Per reports, a book “which ridiculed Christianity, Amer- —one hundred years. Does this not seem like the forerunner to the grad- ual formation of a powerful alliance against the common enemy? This talk of “outlawing war” is the bunk. There is too much profit to be made from the sales of munitions, etc., for | any such talk to be clothed with any | sincerity. It seems to be little more than a desperate attempt to hold back the great tide. We seem to be on the verge of a world-wide flood that will make our own mid-country disaster shrink to the insignificance of a mirage in the desert. We'll not try to buck it. We'll leave that task for old King Canute, Capitalism.— L. Chaskin, Brooklyn, N. Y. Levine Sued For $500,000. PARIS, July 3.—Charles A. Levine, who flew to Germany with Clarence Chamberlin, is now facing a $500,- 000 U. S. Government suit as a re- sult of alleged irregularities involved in his purchase of salvaged war ma- terials from the war department. Levine has stated that the government has offered to settle for $300,000, ad- ding that he is making counter-claims for an even higher sum. zations.” organizations” seems somewhat strange. |nant reaction, Labor is concerned. the one falsified for patriotic use. Miss Mary Agnes Best. ican history and conservative labor leaders and organi- | At first sight, the connection between “Christianity,” “American history” and “conservative labor leaders and The bewilder- |ment disappears, however, when one considers that all three serve as secure and trustworthy props of the “American Constitution,” or correctly speaking of stag- Other connections are no less plausible. It may be, for instance, that “conservative leaders and | organizations” show actually so little life that they be- long already to history; or, that “conservative labor lead- ers and organizations” are on the same level as “Chris- \tianity” so far as their actual value and usefulness to Be it as it may, let us keep to the “Independence Day.” We must state then that the “American history” which \is mentioned here is not the true American history, but Just recently there appeared an interesting biography of Thomas Paine by In her conscientious study Miss Best shows what a generous treatment has been meted out to this giant of American Revolution. more than anybody else was responsible for keeping the ragged revolutionary army in high spirits, whose writings were a tremendous spur to the energy of the revolu- tionary leaders and whose services, by the way, were fully recognized by men like Washington, Jefferson, etc., this man was prosecuted by American (and English) reactionaries, cursed by the Church (“Christianity”) and The man who maligned by professional patgiots (“American History”), THE L. I. D. MEETS AMONG POLITICAL COBWEBS By MARIA LETRO. 'HE League for Industrial Democracy in its an- nual conference at Camp Tamiment, July 23 to 26, took into consideration the subject of “prosper- ity” and all those phases of existence that are af- fected by the presence or absence of prosperity. All of the speakers deplored the myth of prosperity, particularly among the unorganized and unskilled workers, and the farmers. There was a good deal of talk about business cycles, recurrent periods of prosperity and depression, index numbers, real wages and standards of living. Certain sessions of the conference were reminiscent of the academic, musty flavor of the economics classroom. When speakers are chosen who have no direct contact with the scarring struggle to obtain bread and but- ter on the farms and in the mines, and who are so used to the classroom that they never lose the pro- fessorial attitude, it is to be expected that their tale of prosperity or lack of prosperity will not ring with conviction or the sincerity of first hand knowl- edge. There was one honorable exception in this group, and that was Benjamin Marsh of the Farmers’ Na- tional Council and the People’s Reconstruction League. Although he does not believe in the efficacy of revolutionary methods or direct action, he spoke from twenty-five years’ experience as a fighter for farmers’ rights and the nationalization of public utilities, with practical knowledge and a keen in- sight into the present agricultural condition of this country: “The American farmer is the strongest in- dividualist in the United States. “Cooperatives alone won’t solve the farm question. Let the farmer go so low, let him get so miserable that finally the only way out for him is organiza- tion, and then unionize him.” Dean Cary Taylor of North Carolina College read a paper on the agricultural situation which sounded, someone said “as though it had been written for the American Philosophical Society.” In one part of the paper he stated that the majority of the farm mortgages are held by city enterprises, a large body of them being life insurance companies, and in another section of the paper he said that “the tariff was not inaugura- ted for the bencfit of agriculture and the way for the farmers to get their share is either to get up on the tariff table, or to pull out the legs from under the tariff table and bring down the bankers on top with a crash.” Scott Nearing, taking Bertram Wolfe’s place in offering the Communist political program as opposed to the socialist political program offered by Morris Hillquit stirred up a hornet’s nest in the midst of those comfortable intellectuals, liberals and intense radicals who for the most part thought with Com- rade Hillquit that the efforts of the socialist party should be centered on the attainment of social in- surance and old age pensions for workers, on the attack against the power of the courts, and on the building up of a strong opposition party in this country, as in England, until the time is ripe for a socialist state to step up and offer itself on a silver platter. The buzzing of the hornets began when Scott Nearing said that there must be organized, and built up in the United States a professiondl rev- olutionary class which will prepare for the revolu- tion. Charney Vladeck, representing a socialist pa- per with a quarter of a million dollars profit an- nually, was so amused over this that when Nearing , hammered back “Vladeck, if you and your like in the socialist party had remained as lean and vig- orous aS you were twenty-five years ago, and if you were drawing down a salary of forty or fifty dollars a week the socialist party would not be where it is today,” the business manager of the “For- ward”*and the rest of the audience were forced to be quiet, temporarily only, however. Sitting directly in back of the writer was an economics professor from one of the New York col- leges. Once when Nearing had jolted her academic sensibilities too harshly she whispered to her com- -panion, “Oh well, he’s a Russian Communist.” An all-damning statement presumably. It was a good thing for the health of the conferenee that a Com- munist was present. At least then there was spirited, if at times, from the audience, not very intelligent discussion. Only a few years ago Theodore Roosevelt called Paine the “filthy little atheist.” Now if moderate revolutionists like Paine get such treatment at the hands of American patriots, what can the poor devils from The DAILY WORKER expect? And, by the way, does not the raving of Ambassador Herrick against the Bolshevik Revolution. and his high praise for Russian tsarism call to our memory another ambassador to France who was intriguing in company with the French court against the French revolution and who out! of his tory hatred for the moderate revolutionist Paine helped to clap the latter in prison and almost caused his death? The place of Morris in the unfalsified American his- tory is known—the dungheap. The place of Paine has been, despite all the maligning, firmly established. But we are sure, neither Herrick nor the Federal Grand Jury will heed this. The Mothers’ League of New England By SARAH FELL-YELLIN. ‘ner of the country, when young and Hl During the world war, when the, 8 for her general education in}so- | war propaganda penetrated every cor- | ial matters. needs (lower prices and rent) as The membership increased rapidly. old, idealists and adventurers, were | Quantitatively it was already a mass {drawn into the patriotic nationalistic organization but it suffered from a game, the women and the youth—the | lack of understanding. Its program |most sentimental section of the popu-| was inadequate, its tasks limited. lation—were the first victims. Young | When the war ended a great number |boys, strong and healthy, right from|of members dropped out, the others | the school desks, were driven by their | went back home to their kitchens, or | sweethearts, aye, and even by their | joined the petty bourgeois clubs main- |mothers to enlist. Thousands {all over the country to assist in the |massacre of their own and other and lovers. done to stop the disgraceful war propaganda and open the workers’ eyes to the real reasons of America’s suffered most. They Organize. organized themselves into a body un- der the name of the Mothers’ League of New England. As we see, the mere name of the organization indi- cates its aims and purposes: A union |of mothers who sacrificed their lives for their children against the de- stroyers of the younger generation for selfish aims of the ruling capi- talist class. Thousands of women re- sponded to the call of the mothers’ league, and joined the organization to fight under the mighty slogans of protest and discontent. The mass anti-war demonstrations conducted by the league are still remembered, also the splendid organized assistance to | struggle for better conditions. | | of|tained by organized charity or the women’s clubs, sewing circles, the Red | chamber of commerce, and partook of Cross, were spontaneously organized, |ice cream and cake and hand shaking with prominant leaders who enter- tained them with music and dancing. |women’s children, husbands, brothers, | This was a crystalization process and It was then that the|the Mothers League came out of it class-conscious men and women work- | stronger than before. The member- ers decided that something must be| ship was now more class conscious, and had learned much more about class relations and the class struggle. Instead of mere propaganda, the jentry into the war, and its results—' league now adopted new methods, — |the high costs of living, high rent, | studying the role of the woman in the jete., from which the working people | world social order, and the economic and political situation of society, man- aging lectures, discussions on various | In the midst of these conditions aj problems, classes in history of culture group of brave class-conscious women! in women’s movements, In the every ‘day struggle the league was active in helping strikers, the workers’ press, workers’ institutions, defenses of poli~ tical prisoners, etc, using this ac- tivity as a means to educate the women of the working class. Now in the twelfth year of its existence we find the Mothers League of New Eng- land} the only organization of Jewish working women and housewives, with a definite left orientation, although non-partisan, Ten branches all over the state, with a membership of over six hundred, and a crowd of sympa- thisers about twice 4s large, who are doing the hard work of agitating and educating ‘the working women, and the bakers and shoemakers in their| keeping them in constant touch with the bitter struggle, for a better and The ordinary woman appreciated|a happier future—this is the accom- |the good work of the Mothers League, | plishment of the Mothers League of | because it was fighting for immediate | New England. ° At its session of April 26-29 in Brussels, the Central Committee of the alliance concentrated attention on determining the points for discussion at the International Cooperative Con- gress in Stockholm. The quéstion of representation of Soviet cooperatives in the Central Committee was decided, in accordance with the proposal of the Soviet representative by 21 votes against 5 as follows: Soviet coopera- tives are to have 14 representatives to the 7 allotted to other individual countries. Only Two Groups Oppose. gations voted against the proposal. The German delegates were very strongly opposed to the proposal. Since the Amsterdam Trade Union International has been invited to send representatives to the congress, the Soviet delegation proposed that the Red International of Labor Unions should be also officially invited. The proposal was rejected, the voting re- sulting in a draw (17:17). A pro- The Central Union of Soviet-Rus- sian Consumers’ Cooperatives (Cen- trosoyuz) has invited the following cooperative organizations to send delegations to the Soviet Union in the course of the current year for the purpose of studying the work of the Soviet cooperatives and their develop- ment after 10 years of proletarian dic- tatorship: the English and Scotch Wholesale Societies, the British Co- operative Society, the English and Scotch Cooperative Women’s Guilds, the Swedish Cooperative Society, the Central Society of German Consum- ers’ Cooperatives, the Hamburg Wholesale Society, the Central So- ciety of the Czecho-Slovakian Con- sumers’ Cooperatives, the National Federation of French Cooperatives, the Central Society of the Workers’ Cooperatives of Belgium, the Austrian Central Society of Consumers’ Coop- eratives and the Cooperative League of North America. The cooperative delegations are to spend 2 to 4 weeks in the Soviet Union. They are to visit Moscow, Lenin- grad, Kharkov, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhni-Novogorod, Tiflis, Baku and any other towns they would like to see. Prague Accepts. One of the first among the organi- zations invited to accept the invita- tion is the Czecho-Slovakian Coopera- tive Society in Prague, since a de- cision to this effect was already made at last year’s congress in Pilsen. The society is sending a delegation of 14 cooperators composed of representa- tives of leading organs and of certain big organizations. Apart from a few Communists, most of the delegates are social-democrats. The delegation will arrive in Moscow in thé first half of May and will remain four weeks in the Soviet Union. The delegation question was discussed at all district sessions which have taken place up till now and at many meetings held y individual consumers’ cooperatives. Only the German and Czech deine! CO-OPERATIVES _ SESSION OF THE COOPERATIVE ALLIANCE ' posal to have at the congress a dem- onstration against fascism was also rejected. The German representatives took advantage of this opportunity for re- newed fierce denunciations of prole- tarian dictatorship and thus gave the Soviet representatives an opportunity to explain the character of proletar- ian state power as compared with bourgeois class rule and particularly with fascist methods. All other pro- posals were left to the decision of the congress. Forced Concessions. On the’whole the voting—particu- larly in regard to representation of the Soviet cooperatives in the Cen- tral Committee, and to the invitation of the RILU—as well as the discus- sion, showed that the representatives of the reformist unions are more of- ten than not compelled to make some concessions to the spirit of class con- sciousness prevailing among rank and file cooperators. — (“Koop Zhizn,” 11.5). | Codperative Delegations to the Soviet Union Delegated From German Group. The German cooperative society of Czecho-Slovakia said in reply to the invitation that in view of the delega- tion to the Stockholm congress, it is compelled this year to abstain from any other delegations to foreign coun- tries for financial reasons. The so-) ciety emphasizes in its reply that it is very interested in the Soviet coopera- | tives and that it is in favor of close | and friendly relations with them, The’ Reichenberg District Society which is | affiliated to the German Society de- cided at its congress to send dele- gates to Soviet Russia at its own ex- pense. Individual societies wishing to dispatch a delegation of their own are to receive financial support from the funds of the district society, | The Belgian Society did not the invitation, giving its lous financial position as the only : for this non-acceptance. Await French Reply. ' The French Federation (; of. Consumers’ Cooperatives) has not yet given a definite reply. The mamber| of the Central Cooperative Commis-" sion in the CC of the Communist Par- ty, Paquereaux, announced in the “Humanité” that in the event of the bureaucrats rejecting the invitation, the question would be raised at the National Congress in May. At the same time, Communists are of the opinion that the smaller societics which are under the control of the revolutionary minority, should band themselves together in order % send delegates to the Soviet Union at their own expense. te The English and Scotch Wholesale Societies have rejected the invitation. One can see by the British co pers} tive press that considerable rest, is shown in individual local or tions of the cooperative rin trip to the Soviet Dalen the ducers’ ae too which are filiated as autonomous } the British Cooperative Soci to participate in the \