The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 31, 1927, Page 6

Page Six THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1927 THE DAILY WORKER WN THE COLORADO BATTLE FRONT Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO. Daily, Except Sunday 83 First Street, New York, N. Y. Sable Ad SUBSCRIPTION RATES By Mail (in New York only): By Mail (outside of New York): $8.00 per year $4.50 six months $6.00 per years $3.50 six months 0 three months $2.00 three months Address and mail and make Phone, Orchard 1680 ‘Daiwork’ ut c| ks to New York, N. Y. THE DAILY WORKER, 33 First Street, ...ROBERT MINOR ..- WM. F. DUNNE mail at the post-office at New York, N. ¥., ander the act of March 3, 1879 The Colorado Strike Shows Up the Lewis Machine. 1ing in connection with the ership is that it comes at most remarkable t! 2» under I. W. W. | ialdom of the United Mine Workers has to Perhaps the Colorado coal st a time when the of , all intents and purpo ered to the coal barons in Illinois and has offered to surrender in Ohio and other “central compe- titive field” areas. By surrender we mean that the Lewis machine which domi- nates the union has agreed to a policy of “efficiency unionism” which will bring production costs for the coal barons in the cen- tral competitive field down to or near to the costs in the non-union fields. For the first time since the rise of the United Mine Workers the wage rates in the non-union fields have become the standard. | Instead of the union fixing the wage, the non-union districts fix the wage of the miners. These facts are admitted by no less an authority than John J. Leary Jr., special “labor” writer for the New York World, who is known in labor circles to be the semi-cfficial capitalist press spokesman for Woll, Green, Lewis and Co.—especially for Lewis. Writing in The World for Sunday, Oct. 30, Leary says: “The settlement in Illinois PROVIDES FOR READ- JUSTMENTS ON MACHINE MINING THAT WILL 7OR GREATER EFFICIENCY AND A MORE NCE TO COMPETE WITH THE NON-UNION MINES OF WEST VIRGINIA, TENNESSEE AND KEN- TUCKY. The readjustments reached in this field may well be the basis for reforms in other fields.” It is clear from the above that “maintenance of the Jackson- ville scale” has become a meaningless formula in Illinois, that al- _gready the miners have suffered an actual reduction in wages and #that in all probability after next February this will be reflected in an open cut in money wages. The “conservative” methods of the Lewis machine have been responsible for this. Normally, the non-union fields such as Colo- rado would have been affected by this defeat and wage-cuts would have been the order of the day. Instead of this, the Colorado coal companies, confronted by the rising tide of militancy, actually offered small INCREASES in wages. But this did not stop the strike which has wrecked the Rockefeller company union thruout the Colorado coal fields and which is bound to encourage similar movements in both the coal ~and metal mining districts of the West and Northwest. Something of the effect of the blow struck by the strike to the “Rockefeller plan” can be glimpsed from a dispatch to the Denver Morning Post from its Walsenburg correspondent who states: “The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company is holding night- ly meetings in its coal camps, in attempts to persuade the miners to return to work. The miners are given assurance of protection while in the mines if they will return... .” All reports from Colorado agree on one point—that the strike is the most effective in the history of the state in spite of the fact that the strike committee has no strike funds and can pay no strike relief until funds are sent in response to the appeal re- cently sent out. The Colorado strike gives a genuine estimate of the militancy of the coal miners. It is proof of the fact that while the Lewis machine has discarded the fighting tradition of the union, the rank and file have not. With capable, honest and militant leadership nationally, with ormination and organizational ability displayed in all as shown in Colorado, with the same tactics used for ,tion drives in West Virginia and Kentucky, the United Mine Workers would today have the coal barons begging for mercy and would in all probability have added some 200,000 miners to the membership of the union. The coal miners are not afraid of “radical” leadership. The contrary is the case. It has been the five-year campaign against the militant elements of the union which has brought the United Mine Workers to the pass where in former progressive districts like Illinois, an efficiency unionism agreement can be put over by the officials the same The Colorado strike can not be separated from the national | struggle of the coal miners. It is part of that struggle and by reason of its outstanding courage and ability in the face of the known control of the state by the Rockefeller interests, should be and can be made a source of inspiration to the miners in other districts. ’ : The Colorado strike has shown up the Lewis machine for what it is—a cowardly and corrupt collection of bureaucrats who have done their best to ruin the best and biggest union in the American labor movement. The rank and file of the United Mine Workers can save the union by throwing to the winds the miserable compromises of the official leadership, setting up mass organization committees and beginning a drive into the non-union fields. This seems to us to be the immediate task of the left wing in the union which must of course be connected with the other} important task of organizing defense and relief on a national scale. ; The appeal for relief which it is said will be made by the official A. F. of L. conference on November 14 must be made by the militant section of the miners and the rest of the labor movement into a genuine campaign to Save the United Mine Work- ers’ union and to defeat the coal barons. Antics of the “Average American” Some publicity man for an alleged scientific magazine started | | | “We Are Watching the Situation Closely’—Governor Adams. By Fred Ellis pus of Princeton University, near which I lived, I used to read install- (Continued from Last Issue.) Money Writes | Social Anti-toxins | | YF a living organism,is to surive, it must develop antitoxins against in- | vading enemies. And so it happened | with the social organism in the days |of my youth; the bacteria of hypo- lerisy mand greed were not permitted |to devour it at will. A group of young writers came to the defense, and, for the reason I have already set forth, |they were able to find an audience. |I have told about them at some length in “Mammonart,” and will here merely summarize briefly. | First, Frank Norris; I shall never forget the bewildered dismay with | which I, the victim of many years of | academic education, read that pioneer | novel, “The Octopus.” Was this a |nightmare of a distorted mind, or |eould it possibly be that such things | had happened in my land of the free jand home of the brave? TU decided |that it couldn’t be—the newspapers | would surely have told me about it! I did not learn the full truth until ments of “The Sea Wolf” in the “Cen- tury,” and it is only a few times in life that we experience such thrills. And David Graham Phillips. I lay a wreath upon the tomb of this noble- hearted, old-style American from the | middle west. In those young days snobbery was still a force against which a man could fight; it had not yet become the whole of civilization. How Phillips loathed the beautiful parasitic female, and how he lashed her, and her male provider, in those perfectly documented pictures of busi- ness and social graft! But alas, the parasitic female now has all the money to spend for novels, and she has raised up a school of secondary dary parasites, the literary lounge- lizards. I do not know how I can better sum up the change which has come over America in twenty years, than to mention that these novels of | David Graham Phillips were pub- lished one after another in the “Sat-| urday Evening Post.” If their author | were to come back to the gorgeous | show-place in which his publishers | now dwell, he would not get by the | detectives in the lobby. | one breaks the rules, and then the police reserves have to be called out to handle the mobs in the bookstores. In this case the writer was not merely a member of real “society,” but an artist as well; never before had this happened in American history, and | was emarrassing for the kept . They couldn’t call this lady a , as they did with the common plebeian muckrakers, who were under the necessity of writing for a living. Mrs. Wharton was admitted to know; }and here she was declaring, in “The | House of Mirth,” that really rich and i socially prominent people idled and ‘avank and gambled, and that a young girl might be morally ruined while | seeking to enhance her charas with | fsshionable clothes. And then Robert Herrick, Here was | another scandal; a supposed-to-be-re- | spectable professor at Mr. Roekefel- \ler’s newly subsidized university, who presumably had opportunity to meet By Upton Sinclair the “best” people, and who implied | that a fashionable young architest | might connive at the violation of) building inspection laws, and that business men might hire him to do this; also that these business men were buying legislatures and jud-es. As time passes, afl popular novelists come to deal with marriage; and here was Robert Herrick, actually sugges ing that weuithy husbands and wives occasionally broke the seventh com- mandment! Underneath all his books, as of Mrs. Wharton’s, ran the theme that when you became extremeiy rich, you did not necessarily become ex- tremely happy. You can see how that meant the undermining of bourgeois idealism, and how necessary it be- came for those who control our cul- |tural life to put up their money and buy out the magazines which were furnishing such reading matter to the |masses of the people. (To Be Continued). Economic Achievements in Moscow Province twenty years later, when I met Ed Morrell, who had stood four years of solitary confinement for having tried to help the settlers of the San Joachin against the railroad “octopus.” Mean- time, Frank Norris had died young, and it was the happiest fate that could have befallen a muckraker. Three decades of heart-sickness and defeat are not to be wished upon any young artist; and still less would one care to see him reformed, a fat and | well-groomed poodle in some large publishing establishment. He died at the height of his pow- ers, shot by a man for what reason the public has never been told; he was buried, and his reputation was | put into the same grave. It is noth-/ ing less than a conspiracy of our kept critics which deprives this magnifi- cent talent of its influence. It is true that his work is unpolished—but will any kept critic assert that the work of Rousseau is polished, or that of Tolstoy? Phillips is one of the great | moral forces of our literature, and | he will come into his own, just as/ President Uglanov of the Moscow Soviet, reporting at the Plenum of the Soviet said: reserves of the most important, branches of economy (industry, agri- culture, houses, trade) were estimated at 5,523 million roubles and at the “If we compare our economic posi- g end of 1927-28 the “control figures” tion with that of before the war, we will find that in 1927-28 the number of industrial workers is 20 per cent greater than in 1913, the gross out- bles, “The national revenue is estimated estimate them at 5,800 million rou-| 4 On the Belt By WALT CARMON. + |¥ TURNED out 354 pieces a day on a machine on the fifth floor of the | Ford factory for eight months at }$4.80 a day. Three months later I | turned out 400 pieces a day. When I quit we were turning out over 500 pieces on every machine in the de- partment. Every day the production mark was posted on a_ billboard. Fvery week it was higher. Then one day men came with stop watches to time every move we made. We said that production could not possibly go er. It went higher. The ma- were speeded up. We were ded up. And production went up week. Next week. And the | week after. We came to work tired. We ruined a lot of pieces but we learned to hide | what we ruined. We had to keep jour job. The foreman followed us |to the toilet. We ate the tasteless jlunch that was rolled on wagons into the shop and we grumbled. But we worked. We were machines. We dragged our tired bones home to rest until the next day. x * * I HAD forgotten all of this night- mare. It’s six, maybe seven, years since I worked there. Last week I sat in the New Playwrights’ Theatre and it all came back to me. “Christ, i'm tired,” the man was telling his wite. Damned right he was! I know it! He couldn’t think. Every bone in his body ached. He was numb all over. “470 doors today,” he said. | “Tomorrow they'll boost it up.” Sure | they will! I know it! Next week |they’ll boost it again! No wonder the man was tired. He was on the belt! In every department of the factory it’s the belt! Pull a lever, raise a lever, press your left foot. Pull a lever, raise- sure that guy was tired! I know it! I did it—a few thousand times a day. * * * ‘HE man’s wife complains, “You don’t love me any more.” He plays | the radio, dazes over his paper and {he’s asleep before he knows it. It’s |hard to love your wife when you’re | tired. “You don’t love me any more!” |The poor sap—he loves his wife, al- jvight! But he’s tired! The shifts t Fords are split up. From 6:00 to 00, from 3:00 to 11:00, from 11:00 | to 7:00—turn about every two weeks. | It’s damnable. No wonder the bird’s | too tired to love his wife. So she jchases around with another guy. | I know, I’ve seen that, too. It isn’t because the fellows in the shop talk about it. The neighbors talk about it. Everybody talks about it. I lived on Labelle street, a block from the plant. The men all worked at Ford’s. | Pve seen plenty. 2 fas: * * . | THEY pinned a ten-year tin service medal on the man. Henry, himself, visits the house. Pictures taken. Re- porters. Old fashioned dances. The poor tired guy was stunned. Some- body in the seat behind me called this Seige “The bunk,” was what they Said, The bunk, is it? It’s a cinch for | some’ White Collar, with lilly white | soft hands to call this the bunk. But ask any one of the poor 4,000 stiffs on three shifts in Highland Park that | work on production. Ask some of | the birds on “the line,”—the guys on | the belt! It’s not the bunk! It’s the ‘ mndest, galling, insulting, low- | down- A bird came to the house one day. put of industry is 36 per cent greater, | the gross output of agriculture 59 per cent greater. by the provincial Planning Committee | Did more than two people sleep in at 2,208 million roubles in 1926-27| one room? Were we keeping a bank and 2,327 million roubles in 1927—an account? Did we belong to a church? increase of 5.8 per cent. The “control figures” estimate the profits in industry at 1.107 millions “The output of the industrial sec- tion of our economy in 1927-28 will be 90.1 per cent of the gross output And then Jack London. In those early days the seeds of decay that were in his character were not ap- parent to us; he came among us as a/ young god, a blonde Nordic god with| only rarely that a member of fash- a halo about his head, and the voice |ionable society takes to writing; they he raised for the oppressed workers |don’t have to, and it seems hardly was a bugie-catl. Lying on the cam-'quite good form. But now and. then surely as the American people awaken from their dope-dream. And then Edith Wharton. It is ———————————————————————————————————————— |select whom they considered their average citizen. The collection jof babbits selected one Roy L. Gray, who sells loud neckties, socks, garters and shirts in his flashy small-town haberdashery store. This small business man, the “average American,” was ques- tioned about various happenings. He knew all about baseball, had definite opinions on life and death and immortality, but had never ‘heard of the Locarno treaties. He goes to church, has a family, ‘drives a car and indulges in other “average” pastimes—when not ‘penny grabbing over the counter. iturers of men’s wearing apparel. A part of the surplus value taken from labor is given to him by the manufacttrers because he ,acts as a peddler for them—steps into their shoes and helps find |a market for some of their commodities. ‘His pathetic ignorance jof everything worth knowing, his contentment with his drab ex-| istence, his position as a non-producer, his cheap prejudices, his gaudy amusements, certainly qualify the Ft. Madison ornament |to be hailed as the average of the small business men of America. But to eulogize this grotesque individual, this nonentity, this average of a decadent and socially impotent, hence politically im- potent, class is to insult the really useful members of society—the workers and farmers who alone produce the wealth of America. Aside from the fact that it is a futile and foolish quest, this ‘cheap advertising stunt for a questionable journal, calling itself | scientific, is a piece of crude propaganda inasmuch as it tries to ‘make this stupid individual the ideal of the working class youth ‘of this country, countless thousands of whom are coming to look with contempt upon what has hitherto been regarded as sacred— ‘the capitalist system and its institutions and the leaders of those | institutions. a | It would be amusing to get this so-called average American on the quest of the “average American.” The mechanical process! face to face with some youngster with a few months’ training in by which he discovered what he considers the average is amusing.|the Young Pioneers—a Communist children’s organization—be- } Address First he sought the average town—which he found to be Ft,|fore a working class audience in order to prove that he is in reality Madison, Iowa. Then he had the citizenry of that town, or as|nothing other than a low-grade moron, whose brain stopped func-| occupation ....... ie a a a N gh ELE SOUL AIRE Oe scheme, to] tioning at about sae" anew sae ns Gis ee ee ee se WRN gaor we csNiaey Ne) aay Socially this creature is a mere distributor for the manufac-| of goods. The remaining 9.9 per cent | falls to agriculture and forestry. | “The relative strength of agricul- ture is declining as a result of the rapid growth of industry. There is an especially rapid growth in the relative strength of large-scale in- dustry. “The growth in capital investments lmay be seen from the following fig. ures. In 1926-27 altogether 326 mil- lion roubles were invested in con- struction work. In 1927-28 we expect to invest 388 million roubles. Most of the investments will affect indus- try and housing. “At the end of last year the main Lenim forward its political leaders and the movement and leading it.” in the fight for: (Enclosed find one dollar for NAME oe ccereesceterceeenesesesrerngguanaee on (ete fee and one month’s dues.) & ie 2 roubles in 1927-28 and last year it) was only 1,000 million roubles. New England Textile Companies Co-operate To Seped-up Work Day BOSTON, (FP) Oct. 30.—The per- sonel heads of the New England cot- ton manufacturing companies are co- operating in handling labor, which means checking unionism and recon- ceiling the workers to speed-up sys- tems. Said:- “Not a single class in history achieved power without putting spokesmen capable of organizing | And he proceeded to organize the Bolshevik Party of Russia | without which the Russian Revolution would have been impossible. | We must organize a strong party in this country that will be! able to organize and lead the masses, The Workers (Communist) Party asks you to join and help) A Labor Party and a United Labor Ticket in the 1928 elections. The defense of the Soviet Union and against capitalist wars. The organization of the unorganized. Making existing unions organize a militant struggle. The protection of the foreign born. Application for Membership in Workers (Communist) Party (Fill out this blank and mail to Workers Party, 48 E. 125th St., N. Y. City) State | Was the fu e hell bu iture paid for? What ess is it—(easy boy, y! that guy came from the Plant! Remember your job!) Bale HE | AS I sit in the theatre it all comes i“™ back to me now: maybe it’s seven jyears—maybe seventy. But I re- member. “The Belt’, The Plant. | Forty-five thousand ants that crawl jin and out of the ant-hill every day. | We lived on the second floor—rear j apartment. From our window we | could see the long lines of men in the, open field before the plant. They patiently, poured themselves into the waiting street cars that dumped them into all parts of the city. At night the blue-white lights gave a weird, uncanny appearance to the plant. Inside we could see the belts from a distance. The rows upon rows, of tiny specks. Turning out production. Turning out’ Fords. Turning out millions. It all: came back to me as I sat in the eatre, i i * * * SCHOOLMATE of mine is a doe-. tor in Detroit. “If you don’t want! to be in a wooden overcoat soon,” he }said, “you'll get off the job!” That: wasn’t so funny. “But I need another b!” “That’ss your funeral, Do ything—get out of it!” My friend octor has lived in Detroit for, I wish he could see the belt. | jt 45 thousand men on the belt! could see “The Belt.” TI know some y enough people will be interested’ in such plays as they could be taken to Detroit. Wouldn’t those fellows on the belt get a kick out of it! But maybe they’d be too tired to see it, Unless they’d show the play on a Saturday night. i'Three British Spies Executed in USSR MOSCOW, Oct. 30,—Three White Guard spies, who in cooperation with the British Mission, were charged with espionage for Great Britain, were executed yesterday. The three had admitted working with the British Mission. a di All on the belt!) »