The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 30, 1927, Page 6

’ tims; Frances Wright and Susan B. Anthony, Page Six The Literary Arsenal of English-Speaking Labor Stocked With New Weapons By J. LOUIS ENGDAHL. the past, overcome great obstacles. | s to the education of the workers | 1 practice of the class struggle will be| s ahead. But this will only be ng power of the unsatisfied hunger selves. to learn of the workers the bines increase the spread between * * * what the f for his products Overcome Great Obstacles. and what th er pays for The whol story of the Rus: revolutionary move-|his bre Th profits are made ment, for , prior to the Bolshevik triumph of | Ithou the nerican milling +in- Nov. 7, 1917, illed with the heroic struggle to spread | dustr 100% overexpanded averag- | the literature of the revolution with the use of illegal |!ng, according to department of com- printing plants, and the circulation of outlawed news- | ™ ied Sas only 56% of capacity papers, books, pamphlets and leaflets. oe a rronenout aie year, To be sure, under such conditions, the mechanical | ted ee eee Pe ae a work ws very poorly done, bad printing on cheap paper | : eget ite tors that quickly fell to pieces thru constant handling. It was often the custom in Russia to mimeograph the | €ontents of books or articles, passing the contents of | chapter after chapter, on unbound sheets, around among groups that would read, study and discuss the material. * * * Organize Study Groups. Such study groups must furnish the backbone of the growing demand for revolutionary literature in the | United States. That they will gradually develop is the} belief of Alexander Trachtenberg, editor-manager of | “International Publishers,” that has issued nearly 60 titles of revolutionary literature in this country, many of them translated works that have never before been available in the English language. This is the time of year when ‘Workers’ Schools” are being organized for the fall and winter terms. These are few in number, however. The New York Workers’ School is the largest of these, far exceeding anything similar attempted elsewhere. Instructors are scarce even for these few centers of working class education. The task of organizing edu- eational groups and even of conducting them falls upon the shoulders of the workers themselves in hundreds and thousands of industrial centers thruout the nation. The foreign language bars to classes in the English language are going down. This is shown by the fact that even Finnish-speaking workers, among the most isolated, are organizing study classes in English. Even in those cities where there are no study groups, individual workers may exert sufficient pressure upon the local public libraries in many cases to have the pub- lished classics of Marxism and Leninism put upon the shelves for common use. Thinking workers become the students of the literature of their class. . * * The Times Are Changing. The lack of desire in the past, among English-speaking | workers the world over, for an education in the classics | of the revolutionary movement, has been the big reason | why these works have not been translated into the} English language from the German, French or Russian. ———-——————— SURVEY REVEALS EXORBITANT PROFITS OF GIANT MILLING COMBINES; FARMER AND WORKER ROBBED By Leland Olds. Federated Press Pr ofits. of the giant milling com- comp: 30, 1 in these con- cerns, which turn out products known in every household, got back in a single year from a fifth to two-thirds of their entire original investment. Compared with the year ended June 30, 1926, the share of the consumer’s dollar taken by these companies ac- tually doubled. Profits Enormous, Washburn-Crosby Co., makers of Gold Medal flours, leads with a daily capacity for producing about 60,000 barrels. Although the company’s gross business decreased from $114,- 506,383 in 1926 to $96,383,137 in 1927, its profit increased from $1,435,726 to 2,550,898, giving common stockhol- ders a return of $29.98 a share. If allowance is made for stock dividends and changes in capitalization in re- cent years this represents a return of about 27%% on the prewar invest- ment of the owners. Washburn-Cros- by’s profit per dpllar of sales in- 1927. Pillsbury Flour comes second in size but leads in profits. It has a daily capacity of more than 38,000 barrels | of flour and 10,000 cases of cereals. | Its total business decreased from $83,- | 255,903 in 1926 to $75,954,115 this year but its profit increased from $1,544,428 to $2,766,271. This year’s - {1.85 cents in 1926, while stockholders | got a return of $5.94 a share. If we |take into account recent stock divi- dends and changes in the par value of the stock, this year’s profit means }a return of about 70 per cent on the |investment of the owners. Standard a Wall Street Group. | Standard Milling Co., with a daily | capacity of about 40,000 barrels of {flour in addition to various package egreals, is the only one of the three | | with direct Wall Street banker con- Its products include Hecker’s meal and Force. It does not reveal its total sales but its profits for the year ended June 30 amounted to | $1,772,752, a return of $11.07 per |share of common stock. If we take jinto account recent stock dividends this means a return of about ‘19.2 }per cent on the owner’s prewar in- | vestment. Flour milling is an industry. in | which the value by manufacture is jonly a small per cent of the sales | value of the product. According to the 1923 census of manufacturers | 15% cents out of each dollar paid the | mills for flour covers the entire cost |of manufacture including the profits ‘and sales expenses of the’ milling companies. Wage earners employed in the mills get only 4 cents out of each dollar which pays them an average annual wage of $1183. The 1927 profit of the milling com- panies, ranging from 2.65 cents on | the dollar in the case of Washburn- creased from $1.25 in 1926 to $2.65 in| Crosby to 3.65 cents in the case of | Pillsbury, thus represents from 16.3 | per cent to 22.4 per cent of the en- tire value added by the milling pro- cess including the cost of competitive selling. Labor gets only about 25.6 per cent of the value added to its effort. Thus the more lucrative mills absurb almost as much of the con- sumer’s dollar in profits as labor gets profit gives the owners 3.65 cents out} of each dollar of sales, compared with for operating the machinery of the production. Letters From Our Readers But this condition is rapidly changing, largely due to the success of the Russian Bolshevik revolution in arous- | ing international labor. | It is now 44 years after the death of Karl Marx in} 1883. It is 32 years after the death of Friedrich Engels | in 1895. Yet only now have the plans been perfected | for the publication, under the direction of the Marx-| Engels Institute in Moscow, of the complete works of | these writers. | It is not yet four years since the death of Lenin, 1924, but the Lenin Institute in Moscow is already is- | suing in rapid succession the thirty volumes that will| contain his complete writings. This reveals the difference in the desire of the Com-, and the pre-war socialist move- | knowledge of labor’s struggle} writings of Marx and Engels lable for years, in fact they were in the cus-| tody of Keutsky, of the German social-democratic party. like Bi stein, th betrayed the trust placed in them! | London Cops Use Harmless Bombs. | of his in Tacoma: Editor, The DAILY WORKER: The eternal vigilance of the New York Police so strikingly demon- strated in recent months by their clever work in discovering “bombs” “Do you believe the should carry arms — and Nearing replied that the | workers | fight?” ruling classes drove the workers to 1 ater juse armed force by using it them- |selves and that the workers must has now been duplicated by the Lon-; beat them at their own game, That don bobbies. machines” before they go off. This method of discovering | “bombs” minimizes the possibility of} round the accident, yet is quite as effective publicity. It is to the credit of modern journalism that when after a “dis- covery” of this kind the “infernal Edouard Bernstein, August Bebel and Karl| machine” turns out to be a package of | But, | Soap powder, our great newspapers | $30.00, representing the donation of invariably make known to the public . In London however | is the kind of an answer the workers mm / they manage to discover the “infernal | want. | The capitalist machine is rotting it- |self and the social revolution is just corner.—Wm. Ferguson, Midland, Wash. * * * | Hungarian Home Sends Donation. | Editor, The DAILY WORKER: Enclosed please find check for the Cleveland Hungarian Workers’ by misusing these writings in ffort t Marx-|the truth, for instance. the following | Home for the benefit of The DAILY lly My oe . i ate a Sc: | one inch in the Times of August 17th: |WORKER.—Albert Henyey, Cleve- re * * ;London ‘Bomb’ Held Flash Powder.) land. | (By Wireless to The New York Times) | ‘é ‘ ‘ New Weapons of Struggle. i In the United States, as well as in other English-| speaking countries, the greatest confusion exists over the struggle of the farmers. The English translation now offered by “International | Publishers,” of Engels “The Peasant War In Germany,” | will help throw light on the restlessness of the farming | Basses. The church wields a tremendous power in this coun- try. But not until now has it been possible for the workers to use a book like Karl Kautsky’s “The Foun- dations of Christianity” in their struggle against the church. “International Publishers” now offers the first English translation. | Kautsky also wrote in German the book, “Thomas| More and His Utopia.” In spite of the fact that Kautsky | dealt with an English writer, More, and his book| “Utopia,” nevertheless, during all these years, it has never been translated into the English language. These are merely examples of new ground that is being broken, of new material that is being made avail-} able for the cla: English language. * * * Developing American Writers. “International Publishers” also strives <o develop writers through publishing their works in this country and to draw attention to the American class struggle. London, Sept. 16.—The “Bomb” found yesterday in the subway tunnel {near Fleet Street and thought to be |a new Sacco-Vanzetti demonstration was discovered today to be merely photographer. The cylinder contain- ing the powder was sent to the Home Office, where explosive experts pro- nounced it harmless. —Shorty Magee, New York City. * * * Dear Comrades: Enclosed find money order for $8. $1 of this is my personal pledge which |should have been sent on the first, the balance of $7 was collected at a meeting held in the city park last Sunday. | I wish that The DAILY WORKER | would take up the case of Tom |Mooney, printing the entire facts of -conscious worker who reads in the|the case from day to day as given jin the circular issued by the defense }committee of the San Francisco: Tom Mooney group. I have a copy of this |and would be glad to lend it to you, in case that you would care to use it. I am going to write to the De- fender and make the same suggestion. It is doing this in various ways. One month after the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, It has a book containing the complete history of this! peculiarly American persecution of labor, in 192 pages, | on the press, It ‘will soon be ready for distribution. is significant that no book contains the history of the! Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone cases in Idaho; the Hay- Swarket case in Illinois, and numerous other historic | dabor cases. These will be brought to life again. There will also be the accounts of great strikes that have taken place. wr ing to be found in the stories of American labor’s pioneers, embrace revolutionary leaders of all countries, there! will be the biographies and significant utterances of | The Centralia case and the Everett case with their history of murder, in- trigue and robbery on the part of the |lumber barons would also make in- | teresting reading. Fraternally—Cora P. Wilson, San | Jose. P.S.—Am suggesting to the sym- |pathizers at our outdoor meetings that they wear crape on either their There is also the great field of biographical| hats or their coat sleeves in memory of Sacco and, Vanzetti. In its series of “Voices of Revolt,” which will} of if he Bosses Drive Workers to Armed Resistance. : many Americans, including William Silvis, the moulder, | Editor, The DAILY WORKER: John Siney, the coal miner, and other early labor lead- | ers; Albert Parsons and other Chicago Haymarket vic- who were} pioneers in the labor as well as the woman’s suffrage movement; Thomas Paine, Wendell Phillips, John cst Johann Most, Daniel De Leon and C. E. Ruthen- erg. Thus the younger generations of workers will possess literature, denied to workers of the present generations, (Continued in column 4) 7. Y we have spent so much time in jail that I have laid off for a while to rest up and get ready for a real round with our masters, which I believe is soon due. I have been out of the I.W.W. a long while. Its policy of passive resistance drove me out and has been the death blow to that or- ganization in the west. I remember a question that was asked Scott Nearing during a lecture flashlight powder, belonging to a} Save The DAILY WORKER. Editor, The DAILY WORKER: We, the Branch of the Minneapolis Alliance of the United Ukrainian Toilers’ Organization, realize the jnecessity of a fund for The DAILY WORKER. Yours is our paper, the only paper in the English language which fights the battles of the work- ing class. Therefore every class- | conscious worker should help finan- \cially in this critical time. We know that The DAILY WORK- ER fought to the finish for our com- rades Sacco and Vanzetti and that the struggle is still going on, even after the murder of our two innocent gom- rades. | The American capitalist class wants to suppress The DAILY WORKER by {all means because it has fought and will fight for the working class. Therefore we appeal to all comrades and working class organizations to help The DAILY WORKER. We aro sending you $38.00 for the fund, —Jonh Riapko, Secretary Minneapolis, * * * Oppose The Legion. Editor, THE DAILY WORKER— Fearful that readers might draw the inference that the American Negro Labor Congress was desirous for Negroes to enroll in the American Legion ranks from the comment which appeared under my name in the columns of The DAILY WORKER for September 15, I am desirous. that you publish the following comment: “The American Negro Congress is | unalterably opposed to the American Legion, not alone because of the Legi- on’s Negro-baiting propensities, but as well because of the vicious attitude of the American Legion to all labor case, tion of this kind. ter destruction of the Legion.” Americ | Continuous Progress In Soviet Union Indicated By Prepayment of Tax AGRICULTURAL TAX PAID IN ADVANCE. | In the Stavropol region (Caucasus) the peasants} | themselves are carrying on a campaign in favor of pay- |ing the agricultural tax in advance. Thirty homesteads }have paid the tax in full. The region has paid alto- gether 120,000 roubles in advance. MEASURES TO COUNTERACT UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE UKRAINE. * It is proposed to take more energetic measures in the coming year to counteract unemployment. Public works will be developed and the number of labor cartels will be increased. Over 7 million roubles will be assigned | for this purpose—700,000 roubles more than last year. Moreover, a considerable grant will be made for public feeding of the unemployed and for the construction of night shelters, AGRICULTURAL SOVIET FARMS IN THE UKRAINE. According to latest information there are 5,000 such farms in the Ukraine with an area of 496,000 dessiatins. The harvest of these farms has been much better than that of the peasant homesteads. These collective farms have also 600 industrial enterprises. 921,985 TONS CORN STORED IN AUGUST. According to statistics of the People’s Trade Commis- sariat of the U. S. S, R., the main organizations in charge of this work stored in August throughout the Union, 921,985 tons of corn and oilseed including 200,202 tons of rye and 666,579 tons wheat. LAST YEAR 778,579 TONS CEREALS WERE DESERTION FROM THE OPPOSITION. After the July Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Soviet Union mass desertions from the Opposition have taken place. Comrades who formerly went with the Opposition are handing in decla- rations singly and in groups to their organizations in regard to complete severance of connections with the Opposition, identifying themselves at the same time with the views of the majority and declaring their readiness to defend these views and Party unity. For instance, of those who signed in Kharkov the declaration of the Op- position, 15 have already withdrawn their signatures, FOR THE UNIFICATION OF THE PROLETARIAN CHILDREN OF THE WORLD. Just now delegations of British and French Pioneers are on visit in the U. S. S. R. Both these delegations frequently exchanged with one another impressions of their visit to the U. S. S. R. This is what British children are writing to the French: ; “Our delegation has visited pioneer camps, children’s playgrounds, sanatoria, rest homes, etc. The workers and their children received all this after the revolution, after they had overthrown the capitalist regime. More- over, all this is at the disposal of the workers free of charge. “In Soviet Russia children are the first consideration because they are the future workers of the Soviet Union and the growth and development of Soviet Russia will greatly depend on them. In Great Britain, France and other bourgeois countries there are no camps for work- ing class children and this will remain so until the workers will have overthrown the capitalists.” The letter winds up thus: “Long live unification of the proletarian children of the world, long live the -U. S58. Ry” WORKING CLASS SPORTSMEN ON THE U. S. S. R. The chairman of the delegation of Finnish working class sportsmen, Carl Ureni, made the following state- ment to a press representative in Rostov-on-Don, U. S. S. R.: “Here, on Soviet territory, I have convinced myself once more of the lying nature of bourgeois information about the U. S. S. R. With our own eyes we have seen gigantic constructive work going on in the U. S. S. R. During our stay in your country we were able to see for ourselves how the free citizens of the Workers’ Soviet Republic live. This visit has been an education can.” ; PREPARATIONS FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NOVEMBER 7 REVOLUTION. In honor of this anniversary various enterprises and institutions will be opened in Tashkent (Central Asia), including metal and leather works and workers’ settle- ments. Courses for the re-education of factory workers, a workers’ university and preparatory courses for the workers’ faculty will also be opened for the benefit of the native population. In some Kishlaks (villages) corn sifting centres, elec- trie stations, schools and hospitals will be opened. More- over, the foundation stone will be laid for new schools, public buildings, etc. A women’s hospital will also be opened. Local trade union organizations, factories, and works are arranging to make the opening or laying of the foundation stone of clubs, peoples’ palaces, workers’ dwellings, creches, etc., coincide with the Tenth Anni- versary of the 1917 Revolution. For instance, Ukrainian miners are opening ten peo- ples’ palaces, post, telephone and telegraph workers are opening for the Tenth Anniversary clubs in the Ukraine (in Kremenchuk and Berditchev), in Archangel and Stalingrad. Paper workers are making arrangements for the lay- ing of the foundation stone of three clubs. Employes of Soviet commercial enterprises are doing a great deal towards the opening of new clubs, The agricultural la- borers’ union in central districts in North Caucasus is opening agricultural laborers’ hostels and also agricul- tural laborers’ red corners and creches, The Central Committee of the builders’ union is open- ing special libraries in already existing clubs. The Literary Arsenal of Lator (Continued from 1st column) to acquaint them with the beginnings of the American revolutionary movement. * * * Stocking the Literary Arsenal. Another measyre of the scope of the literature em- braced in the ambitious plans of “International Pub- lishers” is seen in the publication on the one hand of Prof. Ivan P. Pavlov’s “Conditioned Reflexes—Twenty Years of Experiments in Behaviorism,” and on the other organizations in this country, and|study arrayed side by side with a work of fiction. Both particularly because of the attitude|point a finger toward the future, one holding forth of the Legion in the Sacco-Vanzetti|what may be learned thru the study of the brain; the Boring from within tactics| other telling of man’s progress from primitive times, a {cannot be employed in an organiza-|contribution to literature as well as a knowledge of so- The American | cial conditions, Negro Labor Congress favors the ut-| Thus the worker in the Englis! —William L. Patterson, Pres., pons to aid him wage his , Newto Lahore Cemeteemis Jr apres of Henri Barbusse’s “Chains”, Here is a scientific for us and we are trying to profit by it as much as we|- u BOOKS LIBERAL BANKRUPTCY. Laissez-Faire and Communism, by John Maynard Keynes. New Republic. $1. This book is a particularly fine example of the utter bankruptcy of lib- eral analysis. At the beginning the author attempts to trace the origin of the doctrine of laissez-faire. It is a very erudite performance—with the erudition that mystifies. The author moves*in the realm of pure ideas. It seems that there were two ideas, more or less mutually exclusive running around loose; the Compact Idea (traced to Locke and Hume) which put an egoistic individualism at the center, and the equalitarian idea (traced to Rousseau and Bentham) of the greatest good of the greatest number. The idea of laissez-faire which asserted that the greatest good of the greatest number depended upon each individual pursuing his own interests came therefore as the result of the necessity of harmonizing the above two con- flicting ideas. The pitiful inadequacy of this explanation is made glaringly evident when it is contrasted with Bucharin’s statement: “The classical theory (of political economy) with its free trade doctrine was extremely national in spite of its cosmopolitanism; it was the necessary theoretical product of Eng- lis industry. England, obtaining exclusive hegemony in the world market by reason of a number of causes, was not afraid of any competitors, and had no need of artificial, i. e. legislative measures, in order to assure it the vic- tory over its competitors.” (Economic Theory of the Leisure Class—P. 18.) * * * Keynes pays his respects to Marxian Socialism in the following terms: “But Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of opinion—how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so power- ful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history.” Keynes would exorcise the dread spectre of so- cialism. So in the chapter entitled “The Future Organization of Society,” he gives his universal panaceas. They are chiefly three in number: 1—Joint Stock Institutions—that old myth, brought forth on this con- tinent in its most classic form by the honorable Prof. Thomas Nixon Carver and so thoroughly exploded by Comrade Ruthenberg in the Worker's Monthly, issue of December, 1925. 2—A scheme whereby the savings and investments at home and abroad of the entire community shall be managed along more rational lines (what- ever that might mean). 38—Limit of population to be determined by national expédiency. These suggestions are certainly profound and far-reaching, calculated to do away with all the World’s Evils. It remains but to add that Keynes really puts these forward seriously. The spirit of the work is summed up in the quotation, “For my part, I think that capitalism wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight.” * * * If the first half is bad, the second is infinitely worse. No effort is made to interpret the subject, even partly in its own terms, its own claims. As a result what is revealed is not commurism, but Keynes, And he is revealed in a pretty unpleasant light. He descends to the tactics of the yellow- est journals. The whole performance is a goulash of cheapness, prejudice, vilification. It is so all of a piece that all that is necessary to reproduce the spirit of it is to give a few quotations which are decisive in destroying any serious pretensions of the exhibit. “Leninism is a combination of two things—religion and business.” “Like other new religions, it persecutes without justice or pity those who actively resist it. Like other new religions, it is unscrupulous.” “Leninism is the faith of a persecuting and propagating minority of fanatics led by hypocrites.” “T am not ready for a creed which does not care how much it destroys the liberty and security of daily life, which uses deliberately the weapons of persecution, destruction, and international strife. How can I admire a policy which finds a characteristic expression in spending millions to suborn spies in every family and group at home, and to stir up trouble at home?” “How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement.” . (Scratch a liberal and find a profound snob.) “But I feel confident of one conclusion—that if communism achieves a certain success, it will achieve it, not as an improved economic technique, but as a religion.” “On the economic side I cannot perceive that Russian Communism has made any contribution to our economic problems of intellectual interest or scientific value.” * * * These quotations portray the real nature of the book infinitely better than any criticisms of mine can. At the beginning of his “analysis” Keynes says, “It is extraordinarily difficult to be fairminded about Russia.” That thesis he has proven beyond the veriest shadow of a doubt. —JIM CORK. HOW AUTHORS SHALL WRITE. The Russian press recently circulated its readers as to the relations of readers to authors. The question was: “What novels do you like to read?” One worker, A. W. P., writes: “Of the older authors I prefer Maxim Gorki. Of course, I also read the modern writers. Most of all I like such books which depict the life of the masses. Sorry to say, there are only very few books of outstanding quality in this themé. For some reason our writers ~ are always trying to show how and why the individual lives and acts as he does. But in reality the individual acts quite differently from how the mass acts and it is necessary to write more about the latter.” A factory working girl, A. P. P., writes: “I like-novels, for in them we find questions of human life discussed, of whose existence we know. A novel must be interesting and agitationally written. In novels we can especially talk to the youth and speak to them about the revolution and the civil war, which they did not live through. Of course the novel also must pay attention to the questions of personal life; it must deal with such problems which the individual tries to solve for himself, as sex, love, friend- ship. But the authors must write in such a way, that the masses will un- derstand them and not, as they often do now, so that one throws the book angrily away.” BOOK NOTE Oil! by Upton Sinclair, which has been a steady best seller since the Boston censors got busy on its behalf, and scores of writers and critics came to its defense as a great novel, has just gone into its seventh large printing. Sinclair’s newest book, Money Writes, will be published next month by Albert. & Charles Boni. It is described as “a frank statement of what he thinks of , prominent present-day writers.” ‘ res * * * That Man Heine, by Lewis Browne, to be published October 14 by the Macmillan Company, has been selected by the editors of the Literary Guild as the October book to be sent to its members. . BOOKS RECEIVED; TO BE REVIEWED LATER Songs and Ballads of the Anthracite Miner, by George G. Korson. ‘The Grafton Press, America, by Hendrik W. Van Loon. Boni & Liveright. The Gentlemen From the 22nd. An autobiography of Sen. Benjamin Antin, Boni & Liveright. : Anthology of Russian Poetry, edited by Babette Deutsch and Avrim Yarmolinsky. International. The Americanization of Labor, by Robert W. Dunn. International, Company Unions, by Robert W. Dunn. Vanguard. Foundations of Modern Civilization, by Thomas and Hamm, Vanguard. The Great French Revolution, by Peter Kropotkin, Vanguard. The War Myth in U. S, History, by C. H. Hamlin, Vanguard. -speaking world sees stocked with powerful wea- battle for supremacy against his literary arsenal grow, THIS COLUMN APPEARS REGULARLY ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY. © i 1 4 t if fi bs