The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 8, 1927, Page 5

THE NEw MAGAZINE Section of The DAILY WORKER SATURDAY, OCT. 8, 1927. This Magazine Section Appears Ever y Saturday in The DAILY WORKER THE CAUSE OF THE MARTYRS » gaa on the scaffold forty years ago the Haymarket martyrs warned the hangmen that their case was by no means ended. “The day will come,” said August Spies, “when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle to-: day.” Events are bearing testimony to the truth of this assertion. The Fortieth Anniversary of their martyrdom shows their memory greener than ever before. Their spirit was alive in the great movement for Sacco and Vanzetti, and the militant workers generally, especially the rising generation, are learning to es- teem more highly than ever before the priceless heritage of the pioneers who died for the cause of labor in November 11, 1887. Their very names have become a battle-cry to stir the blood of the revolu- tionaries of today, and we dare assert they will be heard in the triumphant shouts of the final victory of the working class tomorrow. The holding of the Third Annuai Conference of the I. L, D. on the Fortieth Anniversary of the Hay- market martyrs gives to that occasion an excep- tional significance and importance. “Third Annual Conference of International Labor Defense—Fortieth Anniversary of the Haymarket Martyrs.” The very words ring like a slogan, and indeed they are a. slogan, for they signify the binding together of the fight of the living workers with the imperishable. memory of the illustrious.dead. A true commem- oration of the men. of Haymarket could not be a funeral affair—their tradition and spirit are a call to battle. The memory of Parsons, Spies and their com- rades in life and death were very dear to those two who followed them on the path of martyrdom a few weeks ago in Boston. Sacco wrote with great warmth of “the celebration day of the martyrs of Chicago, that in the mind of humanity oppressed never will be forgot.” In our estimate we put Sacco and Vanzetti beside the giants of 1887, and properly so, for they were of the same heroic stature and they died in the same fight, which was not an individual nor an isolated one in either case. The rope which strangled the Haymarket martyrs, the chair which snuffed out the lives of Sacco and Van- zetti, the prison walls which confined them all— these instruments of torture and death are weapons in the class war employed against prisoners taken on the field of battle. The martyrs of 1887 understood this well and used the courtroom and the scaffold as a forum from which to proclaim it to the world. Sacco and Van- zetti understood it no less, as all their utterances testify, and they knew and understood also—what so many around them did not know and under- stand—the indissoluble bonds which united them, their cause and their fate, to the other militants of the labor vanguard who languish in the prison THAT'S RIGHT, BOYS ! (LL DO ALL THE By JAMES P. CANNON cells of capitalism today or await trial before the courts of the class enemy. “See if you cannot do something for Tom Mooney,” Vanzetti used to entreat those who came to see him in Charleston prison. “Tom is a sick man. He will die in prison soon if something is not done for him,” he told a writer who visited. him during his last days. « These great and noble spirits who died in the electric chair felt themselves to- be, as they were in fact, blood-brothers to all the persecuted, imprisoned and tortured fighters of the liberation struggle of the workers. They saw the great movement of the masses which was set into motion in their behalf as a class awakening and, they wished it to become a liberating force for others as well as for them- selves, Sacco told Judge Thayer on the day the death sentence was pronounced: “I know the sentence will be between two classes, the oppressed class and the rich class. . . That is why I am here today on this bench, for having been of the oppressed class.” Shall the Sacco-Vanzetti case he “wound up” now? Shall the record be closed and the fight be stopped and the magnificent movement dissolved? The. other side has proposed this. They have agreed to a conspiracy of silence in the papers about the case, they have burned the films and they want us to “forget.” Having killed Sacco and Vanzetti they want also to kill the Sacco-Vanzetti movement or, at least, to reduce it to a sterile cult, separate and apart from the burning issue of the others who suffer in prison or face trial in the same cause. Our task as militants is to defeat these aims, and the Third Annual Conference of the I, L. D. will be the concentration point for the higher development of our fight. We will not allow the Sacco-Vanzetti movement, called into life by their examples and by the untiring energy and sacrifices of the class-con- scious workers, to be dissipated. The memory of Sacco and Vanzetti, like the memory of the Hay- market martyrs, must become an inspiring force in the living struggle of today and tomorrow. The various elements which compose it must be bound more closely together, and the full class significance of the martyrdom of Sacco and Vanzetti made clearer to all the workers who participated in the fight. The driving power of the Saecco-Vanzetti movement as a whole, enriched and broadened in its outlook by its merger with the glorious memory and tradition of the Haymarket fighters which shines with brighter luster than ever before on the Fortieth Anniversary of their martyrdom, must be directed, with all its driving power into a new fight for the liberation Lilie of the class fighters, many of them obscure, some of them all but forgotten, who suffer in the prison hells of capitalism today. The basis of this fight which we take up anew in the name of the martyred dead is the united front of all workers, regardless of party or viewpoint, who stand on the platform of the class struggle. This was the line and policy of the heroie dead. The guiding lines of Parsons, Spies and their com- rades harmonize with our united front conceptions and can very well illuminate our pathway in the common fight today. For they were men of the broad movement and the open fight; all sectarian and clique tendencies were alien to them. The Boston martyrs likewise stood for common action and united struggle, despite the stupidly sec- tarian and even reactionary influences which sur- rounded them. Vanzetti told me with his own lips that He believed in the intrinsic worth of all.demon- strations and protests and the necessity of united action of all.forces when the issue to be fought for is a common one. In a letter to me dated April 11, 1927, signed jointly by Sacco and Vanzetti, they say: “When free and in solidarity with others, we have believed that there are circumstances under which a unity of efforts is desirable. What is essen- tial is good faith in each and all, for that would harmonize and direct to the common good all the different elements, characters and actions.” There is power in heroic example to stir the im- agination of the masses and inspire them with that eourage and solidarity and faith without which there can be no fight and no victory. The martyrs of 1887 and those of August of this year have alike set before the present ahd the coming generation an example of noble dignity and selfless daring unsurpassed in the history of all times and all classes. And when these qualities of personal con- duct are combined—as they are combined in both instances—with clear-eyed vision and practical wis- dom for the regulation of the common fight, then the story of their life and death becomes indeed a heritage of immeasurable value. The class move- ment of the workers proudly claims that heritage as its own and draws upon it for strength and in- — in its struggle for a better and higher ife. The Third Annual Conference of International Labor Defense will mark a mile-post in the develop- ment of the American working class. The class- conscious elements meeting there will organize their forces for new battles against the lynch-law and frame-up system of the exploiters and will bind to- gether, more closely and indissolubly than before, the issues and struggles of today with the undying tradition of the martyrs of the past. The Third Annual Conference of the I. L. D., meeting on the Fortieth Anniversary of the Haymarket martyrs, and animated in its work by their spirit and ‘the spirit of Sacco and ¥anzatti, will demonstrate be- fore the world that the alms of the executioners have been defeated. The cause of the martyrs is alive and is fighting on to victory.