The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 20, 1927, Page 8

And the Daily Worker Gives Him Strength Files Be it ¥; ade The Sacco-Vanzetti Case By WM. Z. FOSTER (Seeretary Trade Union Education League) PHE United States is the Jend of the labor frame- “up. Here the capitalists are notorious for re- sorting to the most unscrupulous methods when they want to get rid of inconvenient leaders of the workingelass. Time and again when they have had in their clutches fighters of the workers they have cast aside cold-bloodedly even the most elementary forms of legalism, in order to railroad their victims to the penitentiary or the gallows. The Sacco-Van- zettie ease, which has shocked ise world for the ealloused disregard even of capitalist pretenses of justice, is only one of a long line of such outrages. Until the advent of the Sacco-Vanzetti case the worst of this kind of attack upon the workers was the case of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings. These two fighters have been in jail for 11 years, wasting the best vears of their lives. Time and again it has S2cn demonstrated that they are innocent. Many witnesses have testified that they themselves were guilty of perjury. Many jurors have signed petitions for their release. But all to no avail. Year after year passes and they remain in jail. Enormous pro- test movements, culminating even in a_ national strike, did not save them from capitalist revenge, Their incarceration is one of the blackest phases in American history. Put, if possible, the Sacco-Vanzetti case is still more infamous. Here are two workers, manifestly being punished solely of their radical opinions, be- eause they dared to speak cut bravely to the work- ers. They are being made an example of in order to terrify the workers. As for the crime they are tharged with, this was manifestly not their doing, no more than was the bomb-throwing in the San Francisco preparedness parade the act of Mooney and Billmgs. Nevertheless the capitalists, through their agents, a cynically biased judge, the usual raft of perjurers, ete., go straight ahead with their plan of punishing these fighters. In both these cases the lahor leadc=s of the Gomp- ers stripe have played a sorry role. They have acted as real lieutenants of the capitalists. In the Mooney- Billings case they cooperated directly with the prose- cutors to put our comrades in jail and to keep them there. In the Sacco-Vanzetti case, although their methods have been somewhat more indirect, they have no less certainly worked out to help the em- ployers. They have done practically nothing to re- lease these two workers. At hest their support of the defense has been mere lip service. In a situa- tion demanding the widespread mobilization of the workingclass in mass demonstration, they have done nothing more than to barely let it be known that they are not in favor of executing Saceo and Van- zetts. Now. when the capitalists find it exceedingly diffienlt, tn the face of the unparalleled world pre- test, te actually electrocute the two prisoners and when ther may casily change their tactics by send- ing them to fail for life sentences, the trade union beteancrats are letting it be known that they are not demarding absolute freedom for Sacco and Van- ret! but will be satisfied if their sentences are com- mmfed to life imprisonment. The fight for Sacco and Vanzetti gauet be re- doubled, Only action by the broad masses of work- ers in strikes and demonstrations of all kinds can save them. The battle is to save them not only from execution but also from possible life imprisonment in the event capitalists are unable to go through with the execution. Let not the tragedy of. the Mooney-Billings case be repeated: Sacco and Van- ‘etti must not only be saved from execution but actually freed from prison altogether. The great demonstrations all over the world in the few days preceding the recent date set for the execution un- doubtedly saved Sacco and Vanzetti, for the time at least, from the electric chair. Still greater demon- strations will force open the prison doors for them. Let August 22nd be a day of gigantic strikes and mass demonstrations. This is the argument that will have effect with the capitalists. Sacco and Vanzetti must be freed. Before the Attack By HENRY GEORGE WEISS. There were no banners waving in the breeze On that day, No glittering squadrons that the gray sky sees, Nor laughing columns proudly at their ease, But grimed with clay The trembling soldiers line the crumbling’walls . . . No trumpet sounds advance; no bugle calls With pealing note to stir their martial pride’. 3: They crouch in filth and stench with death outside And thing of many things. -how long ago. And years and years, it seems, since they were SO; And wonder if the rats will gnaw their bones! There was that chap who died last night—his groans Were awful sounds to hear; his flesh so torn By shrapnel shell... and they attack that morn! Perhaps they, too, in torture on the sod Will writhe in agony and call on God As he did call. They threw him in a hud With just a muttered prayer for his poor’ soul; And then a great shell tore him out again To lie in stinking rot upon the plain. Perhaps with twisted limbs and blinded eyes They never will again behold sunrise, Or else shorn of the visage of a man, A thing of horror for the crowd to scan, They may be doomed to walk adown the years And find Gethesemane in useless tears. Perhaps---ah cheerfuller thot-—perhaps thru hell They may come safe, the victors of Chapelle, And add a lustre to their arms and name, Each soldier’s glory and his country’s fame. But hark! .. there is a pause... there comes a lull... The barrage is lifted ... and clear and full The whistle sounds. Scattered are thots .. and gone. They rise to its appea. ... It is the dawn! a a Save: Two Members of Our Class By W. J. WHITE TH workers of the world are witnessing one of those struggles which comes but once in several decades of years. The case of Sacco and Vanzetti is such a struggle and the on-looker today sees the forces of the struggle in the light of the publicity thrown on it in its true light. A struggle between the forces of ownership and the struggle of those who work and toil for their living. In this sense the mere victims of this struggle are forced for the terms of their seven years of incarceration to sit behind the walls of their stone and iron ces of a Galgotha and die a thousand deaths while this class drama is enacted and they but the mere on-lookers. This case is being tried in a court which has the highest of jurisdiction in Such cases, the court of public opinion, and there is not the slightest doubt in.the minds of the workingclass jury that, the pris- oners are not guilty, and they have so far rendered their decision in such emphatic a manner that the court relied upon to put these innocent workers to death by burning them with electricity unto death has been unable to carry out the wishes of the master class who haye done their hardest to send these victims of their wrath to this ignominious end. The battle so far has been with the workingclass, out of whose loins these workers come. That these work- ers are living today is because of the mighty pro- tests of the hosts of labor. Not to the “fairness” of this mythical thing known as “justice,” not at all, hut alone to the fact that the forces of labor have heen made articulate in this crisis and have made their cries heard around the world, and have so aroused the wrath of their class that it has made the masters hesitate lest in carrying out this class destruction of these two workers they do themselves a harm from which they will not be able to recover. So far as these two workers are concerned they have no’ fear. What makes them pause is that they have been told by those whom they hire for the pur- pose of pointing out to them the course they must travel, that the killing of these workers wi!l make for the disgracing and unmasking of their courts, and the state and national governments. There is no sentiment in this for the workers in the prison of Massachusetts. None whatever. The only consideration governing these bought and paid for servants is that in doing these workers to death they may arouse the sleeping workers to see in its true light this thing which they have passed upon the workers for the past centuries as working and working alone for these workers. This is the mighty thing these servants are pointing out, and are ery- ing madly to the masters to halt their murderers be- fore it is too late. A few centuries back the cry was: “Watchman what of the night?” This tragedy is fast bringing into existence a new cry ‘and this - one is now being transformed into: “What new move has the masters made in the case of Sacco and Vanzetti.” if Tragedy is stalking abroad in this case. Death is reaching out its bony hands for these working- class victims of this capitalist conspiracy to mur- der, Several times they have been marked to die in order that the workers might be intimidated and forced to pause in their wrath against their robber masters. Nothing but the organized mass of their brothers and sisters have stayed the hand of the assassins, "and nothing but the united protest of these same workers will be able to stay this killing and free these innocent victims of capitalist hate, and the staying of their hands in this deliberate attempt to kill. There is but one force that these murderers fear and that is the mighty force of labor in a mass protest which shows the masters that labor is waking to the fact that such things as this case is making them awake from their long slumber. That shows the masters that the carrying out of this murder will be more a source of danger to them and their il] gotten gains because it will go to arouse their victims to the need of overturning the present system of ownership which lies at the base of this murder of these two members of our class, ° the workingelass. we wwe moe me mew mew wwe wee ewe eee eee ee