The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 12, 1927, Page 6

% 2 RR Page Six THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, FRIDAY, AUGUST 12, 1927 This Is What Has Saved Sacco and Vanzetti So Far Millions of workers striking and assembling in demonstrations all over the world to protest the electrocution of their innocent comrades in Massachusetts stay the hands of the executioner. This is a photo cross section of a crowd of 50,000 demonstrating in Union Square, New York. “SACCO-VANZETTI ANTHOLOGY, OF VERSE.” 82 pages. 25 cents. Another fiery Sacco and Vanzetti protest, in the form of a verse an- thology edited by Henry Harrison made its debut in time for the gigantic ¢ ation at Union Square Tuesday. Judging by the rapidity in which publication sold, its popularity will not be gainsaid. There are verses ch poets as Ralph Cheney, Lucia Trent, Henry Reich, Jr., Benjamin ‘, David P. Berenberg, Mary Caroline Davies, Henry Harrison, and a number of othe Every conceivable phase of the Massachusctts frame-up, from its very inception is treated in the pamphlet. There 'is Miss Trent’s r World Trembles”: : . In another world is an iron door, Two men stare at a sullen floor.” And there is the one addressed to the people of Massachusetts, Mary Pater deseribes Mrs. Saeco from the feminine point of view, telling how women feel losing their men in such a way. In his inimitable style Reich gives his version so: “Now Pilate has decreed that they shall die. The law is served; the court has been sustained. The state is headless of the anguished cry For freedom that has risen unrestrained. Edited and published by On new Golgotha now the cross is set To slay these Christs. The time is drawing near”... “Not that it matters whether these two men Are dead or not, for clocks will, scréam ats Just the and whistles clamor When > justice is not sblind: help chuckling up hér sleeve? She t Marie Antoinette once’ said of the starving. people.. If ad, let them eat cake. And justice is ying this time of If they can’t stand it, let them sit down.onthe chair! Jus- e her little joke... 2. 2 s long ceased to concern the fate of two men, It now con- s time. How car two plain tice must cerns humanity When these was fixed for Aug It on the date-of doom for Sacco and Vanzetti now been postponed to August 22nd. The real murderers, the ruling ¢} of “Massachusetts, may go on! unpunished and that proud state may disregard ‘the bioodstain it has placed on -its bourgeois conscience. But should Saeto and Vanzetti die, in the electric chair this would’ only be one more count.in*the indi¢f{ment’ of: labor: against the exploiters of the working class, And. justice will:¢ontinue to, smirk until the social revolution sweeps this rotten system off the earth. Then real justice > can prevail untainted by the class Katrads that are ‘bred in-a society where the many are robbed for the benefit of the few. This little book of poems is a&valuable contribution to the struggle in behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti and should command a wide sale. —NOEL MEADOW. THE NEW DECALOGUE OF SCIENCE: By Albert Edward Wiggam. The Bobbs-Merrill Company. ‘HIS. bo S a mass off contradictions. beads with a few—very few e could liken it to a string of 3 entire length. These ‘pearls are not of the first water either. we take the book as a sign of the feeble-mindedness—or scramble after the fleshpots—that is weakening the intellects of bourgeois scientists? “At any Tate, we can take it as an indica- , tion that, while he may be a biologist of sorts, Albert Edward Wiggam is hopelessly mediocre when he attempts to apply what he knows to the prob- lems confronting society today. His whole book is written in the form of an address to “His Excellency, the Statesman Executive Mansion.” Imagine any one with a modicum of brains expecting to get results by. reasoning with Cal Coolidge or “Nervous Nelly”! lent of the Woodrow Wilson type, Or perhaps the author had in mind eellency Executive Mansion.” Which will lead the average reader of this review to ask what Wiggam’s | book is about anyway. Nothing, I am sorry to say, of any great import to anything or anyone,—save possibly Wiggam’s pocketbook, In this reviewer's opinion it is not worth a working man’s time to wade thru the mass of ab- surdities the author palms off as political wisdom. The gist of the thesis is that man>is what he is because of his germ plasm, chromosomes, genes, and not because he has been born to the purple or into an onvironment where the means of existence of himself and family are at the merey, the wliim of a few aristocratic and economic lords and masters. In other \words, fellow working stiffs, if you eat with a knife instead of a fork, say “ain’t” instead of “aren't,” and don’t belong to at least a modest income instead three- thirty-nine a day, there is something “radically wrong with something in your bloodstream so small that even the biologists admit never having viewed it. If Wiggam even took this conception and dyeeloped it intelligently, without constantly tripping over his own icuatayepen, the book might make ) In-that, case we would advise him | ud a certain book of Wilson’s dealing with the impotency of any “Ex- | Wages and Working Conditions in China BY EARL BROWDER. (Continued From Last Issue) heeness in Namyung are all paid|cent were getting less than $60, by the year. Apprentices get| which _was formerly the maximum. lonly| “food and lodgings.” The| Following are brief tabular notes on \ |fourth year they begin at $20 per) ther trades in Nananfu: | Conditions in the Interior. jyear. From that point they slowly Carpenters, formerly 25 cents, 14 |THE conditions described above are| progress upward. When we insisted hours; now, 35 cents, 10 hours. |“ in Canton, a great city, the most} upon knowing what was. the very} Confectionary workers, minimum {modern in China aside from Shang-| highest wage being paid to any clerk! $80 year, maximum $150 year; hai and Hankow, where the trade|in town we were told $150 per year.| hours, daybreak to dark. |unions have been able to work openly | Hours,. daybreak until 11 p.m. ; bes and ike Sane 30 cents per |for several years. What then must} Artisans, upon completing appren-| 9@Y> hours w a. |the conditions be in the interior? | ticeship, ent to eulve ates pe Cooks, $2. to $8 pér month; hours | We had an opportunity to see at first) $4 per month. The average wage is| 14 to 15. jhand when we began our overland|$g per month, with “food and iodg-| _ Jewelry workers, 25 to 40 cents, trip to Hankow, which lasted twenty-| ings”; the hours are fifteen per day.| Pet day, with. allowance for food | five days. A few typical towns along VI |the route will give a picture of the {general conditions. ROM Namyung we walked over | NAMYUNG is the jast town on the/® the mountains by.Meiling Pass to Pei Kiang; or North River, north- Nananfu, a distance of 120 Chinese ern Kwangtung\ Province, near the! li (about forty miles). Thruout this Tayu mountains bordering Kiangsi| distance we constantly passed groups Province. It is reached by boat, of carriers, loaded with great bun- drawn by ropes and pushed by poles|dles, bales and boxes, tyansporting against the current, for six days|the commerce between two great from Shiuchow, ‘the present terminus | provinces exactly as it had been done | of the railroad eventually to continue} for the past two thousand years. |to Hankow. Themen and women! Only the character of the commodi- | who perform this labor are strongly| ties has begun to change-—again I /organized in the Water- Transport! saw oil cans bearing the ‘“Socony” Union (originally the Seamen only),| jabel.. The carriers are about equally and their union controls all trans-|men and women. We are told that port on this river. They are there-| they earn 30 cents per. day, but can |fore among the better-off. They re-| get no detailed information. ; | ceive-40 to 60: cents.a day, working . !from dawn until dark, and’ some- ANANFU was the first. town we ‘times till ten o’clock.at night, stop- had visited in the newly conquered | ping twenty minutes twice during| Nationalist — territory. It was the the day for food. first. point in. Kiangsi entered by the ‘ Nationalist armies last July when RRIVED - at Namyung, - WSs see they began their triumphant march | " lodged as the guests. of the city! northward. Here we heard the story | \in the public gardens on top of ithe repeated from that time on up to the | great old city walls which in former, Yanktsekiang. Following the Na- times protected the commerce that tionalist armies: had come a sweep jflowed here from. the North -thru) 4¢/ trade \ union organization and |Meiling Pass from Kiangsi. These! struggles to ameliorate the terrible | walls; typical of Chinese cities, are conditions of labor. Everywhere it) | still in good repair, but in,the era of| was’ the same tale of feverish organi- | modern artillery useless for, anything, zation .activities, strikes, and a few more’ serious than | lodgings * for meagre gains which, however, had ;guests. In the quaint tea houses tremendous significance for the | perched over the city we met a dozen| yokers, Above all, they realized for trade patty leaders, who spent the first time they “had something hours with us answering our inter+ to say” about the course of events, jminable questions. This was the enfranchisement of the | HERS we learned a peculiarity of | Chinese masses, the greatest product most Chinese inland towns, Aj of the revolution so far. oat rough division of labor has,} HE. trade: unions of Nananfu. had ‘in the course of time, deyeloped be-' rs A Lax] am ¥y | about 2,500 members in the city, | tween them, so that one town makes and 13,000 in ‘the district, The |a specialty of one line of business, ai ‘* a an special industry of the town is bam- janother town of another line, so that) boo and timber, the next. in’ impor- almost in each town will be found ; Nid [one Judustey, predominating over the So tideataudiat nase fetal ; ' i others. Namyung is a tobacco town, ing and transporting raw materials, | a market center for the tobacco . “ogra ae raised thru large district, where it, Rot in fabricating commodities, work | A limited hours on piece work. They} is dried, packed’ and shipped to the| P) “ eae Ps A earn. $1 per day on the average; we big cities to be made into bs SRNL ICs could not get a satisfactory explana- [ese tobaceo packers and ship-|tion of why these workers can get pers in Namyung number 1,300,| so much more than the average ‘wage of whom 500 are women. Their work| of their district, more than twice as is seasonal, lasting only six months| muchas the general wage. Tailors, n the year, “How they live for the| formerly paid 25 cents per day for 14 ‘other six months we could not learn, hours, have cut the hours to 10 and but when they have work they spend| raised the wage to 28 cents, with in- fourteen hours per day at it, for crease of food. The shop clerks | which they receive, for men 40 cents,| seemed to have made the greatest for women 20 cents. The secretary! proportionate gains; formerly, ap- of the union came to us directly from| prentices began without wages, and work, and therefore did not show up| worked up to a maximum of $60 per until after 10 o'clock at night. Helyear; after several strikes, they now would begin again next morning at}begin apprentices at $10 first year, iday break. He told us that the ee second year, $30 third year. | struggle with the employers at the en ‘we arrived, 20 per cent of the moment was to force them to pay|clerks were obtaining more than the 40 cents and 20 cents per day in| $100 per year, 50 per cent received hours 14 per day. Drug clerks, 60 cents per day and food; 13 hours. Porters, young, able-bodied, 40 to 50 cents; old, 20 cents per day; 10 hours (formerly 14 hours). Vil. essentially different from Nanan- (as the maps spell it, but the inhabi- tants call it Jih-an). the capital, Nanchang, and _ the Kwangtung border. The city, how- ever, large as it is, has not a trace of modern industry except the elec- tric lighting plant employing 21 men. ee was also the first city we had found, where the shop - clerks were still in the medieval guilds to- gether with their employers, instead cial and economic structure, this. was the most advanced spot politically throat of the rest of the province. under the leadership of the “Left” Kuomintang, which controlled the city at a time wher. Chiang Kai-shek still had his fingers tight around the throat of the rest of the Province. One explanation of this, is the fact that here trade unions and Kuomin- 1924, and the leadership had been steeled in two years of civil struggle under’ the rule of Sun Chuang-fang. Waces in Kianfu, under the mili- coppers per $1.40 to $6) and always paid in cop- pers, which are constantly deprecia- ting. The first gain made by the trade unions was to establish wage pay- ments in silver, and raise the mini- mum to $3, The average wage, when we arrived, had been raised to $7 per month, plus food and lodging, with three meals per day instead of two. Corporal punishment by em- ployers, had just Aen abolished by the trade unions... In the six months the unions had existed openly, they had conducted strikes in/80 per cent of all establishments in the city, to obtain these gains. (To be continued.) Two miners were instantly killed, two others probably fatally injured, and a fifth workman is entombed following the collapse of a sandstone roof above where the men were working in the formerly 10, now 15 cents per day; | PNG several other cities, not | the peasants of the district, were | tang had'been established illegally in| fu, we come to the city of Kianfu | | of being in the modern trade unions. | Yet in spite of the very backward so- | i Te trade unions, in alliance with | | | { | ROCK SPRINGS, Wyo., Aug. 10, — | THE NEW GOLGOTHA (Poem from Sacco and Vanzetti Anthology of Verse.) By HENRY REICH. Now Pilate has decreed that they shall die, The law is served, the court has been sustained, The state is heedless of the anguished cry For freedom that has risen unrestrained. On new Golgotha how the cross is ict ; To slay these Christs. The time is drawing near. And shall we yield them up, and shall we yet Abandon them? (Dear Comrades do not fear!) A doom is on us and a tempest black That one time rent the temple curtain wide. And shall we, in this mighty hour, turn back, And shall we let these two be crucified? Oh, save our martyrs! Do not falter now! Strike! «Strike! Toil not another hour Until these men are freed! This be your vow! This be the vindication of your power! VENEZUELAN LABOR UNION CALLS ON GREEN The Venezuelan ‘Labor Union, Ric-( asking pardon’ for Sacco and, Van- Ai a ; i ; | zetti, was modified on account of the This is one of the largest cities in| ardo A. Martinez, president, yester-| 2etti, : aigraat/Prvinceso® 86 bth people, |day sent. a telegram to William| faith of the United States: delegation, on the Kan river, half way between ; Green, president -of the American| headed by you, in Governor Fuller’s Federation of Labor, asking him to) Sense of justice, which has proven a raise his voice for the freedom of, mockery, in the name of Latin-Amer- Sacco and Vanzetti. | iean workers, we ask you to add yout ‘ voice. as president of. the American The telegram follows: hind: ‘Dan Amoeniean Federations of “Tn view of the fact that the reso-| Labor to that of the world, which lution introduced at the Pan-Amer-| proclaims their innocence. Yours for ican Federation Congress by the dele-| pardon of our tortured brothers, gations of Guatemala, Dominican Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Van- Republic, Nicaragua and Venezuela,’ zetti.” (Continued from first column) bearable reading; but what he states on one page is invariably contradicted | with the next dozen. We have said that his major premise is that men are what they are (socially and economically) because of things inherent in the germ plasm. How can we reconcile this major premise with the assertion (page 286) that “things are going to happen with a quarter million of these young’ men pouring continuously thru our colleges, provided that the colleges are left free! a tag) bee. After this are we going to concede that Albert Edward Wiggam pos- sesses much acumen? On the contrary. If we possess any intelligence ourselves we are going to conclude he is a muddle head who hasn’t the lightest idea of what he is talking about. x : a ~-HENRY GEORGE WEISS. REVIEW OF “THE PASSAIC TEXTILE STRIKE.” By Mary Heaton Vorse. Published by the General Relief Committee of Textile Strikers, this book makes its somewhat belated appearance, In 125 pages Mary Heaton Vorse tarist rule, had been especially has assembled a series of dramatic incidents that would furnish enough miserable, running from 400 to 2,000{drama for a score of playwrights to concentrate upon, month (equivalent to‘ To those who kept abreast of last year’s strike news, the actual occur- rences. of the great labor struggle, paraphrased~as “Jersey Justice,” this book will offer little more than a few additional interesting sidelights hither- tofore unheard of and unpublished. But to those whose knowledge of the situation in Passaic is new, “The Textile Strike” is an invaluable,: human document, filled to the brim with pathos, suffering, and barbarism, the va- xiety that is nauseated by capitalism. i - pa ary} One sees in word pictures: the long, spiral-like picket line, winding its course in and around Passaic; the intrepid Lena Chernenko and Jack Ruben- stein ever at the forefront taking the brunt of everything; Gustave Deak, “quiet, hard-working, fearless . . . president of Local 1603 U. T. W,”; the bosses belly-aching, “they (the strikers) will come crawling back within a week,” relying on the lowet, vilest, basest stunt of starving the workers to shatter the morale and fighting spirit of the strikers, and a horde of persons, places and things that have already been entered in labor history. 3 Not unlike a play that is produced behind the footlights is the story of the 13 months’ struggle of the staunch textile workers, Great textile mills lined with sky-scraping chimneys.. Sixty per cent of the inhabitants are mill workers. With the advent of the clash between police and masses fighting for solidarity, they are arrested, literally, for breathing. Stomachs walking on legs, is the best way to describe those brave thousands who struck for better working conditions, sane wages, etc. i Ren They struck a cord that has resounded around the world, and. Miss Vorse’s graphic picture of them in her book will act as a record for similar f Sweetwater coal mine near here to-|struggles in the future. {Continued on last/colui silver instead of Haptecienag coppers.} from $60 to $100, while only 30 per| day. Wea ARS RSL SL nett IM Te ‘ : » NOEL MianomL | f we © rss antruamnenny meres na RE A OE A Ee RESO IO COM NE RUMEN) SAP OSE ASF STE EM RUSE RO Nu ena eamaameaaneten o