The Daily Worker Newspaper, November 10, 1927, Page 6

Page Six THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1927 THE DAILY WORKER 4° THEPENNSYLVANIA COAL MINERS’ DOOR Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO. | Daily, Except Sunday H 82 First Street, New York, N. Y. Phone, Orchard 168¢ Cable Address: “Daiwork” Papa SUBSCRIPTION’ RATES By Mail (in New York only): By Mail (outside of New York): $8.00 per year $4.50 six manths $6.00 per years $3.50 six months | $2.50 three months 0 three months Address and THE DAILY WORKE EDITOR... ae paeeee ASSISTANT EDITOR..... il and make out checks to 33 First Street, New York, N. Y. \..1+..ROBERT MINOR WM. F, DUNNE | —| | at New Ye N. ¥., under the act of March 3, 1879. rk, The Elections The elections are over. “The peaceful and orderly processes of American democracy” have been in operation again and wherever there was evident any real resistance to the various dominant capitalist party machines, gunmen, tear gas, kidnapping, slugging, shooting, repeating, bal- lot-box stuffing, etc., were the order of the day. Returns available indicate that reaction was strengthened by the elections. There was not a single upset of any city or state machine. In Philadelphia the Vare crowd swamped the opposi-! tion and in New York Tammany Hall was again victorious. | The “non-partisan” policy of the official labor leadership is! seen in the elections just past to be a major factor in contribut- | ing to the demoralization of the working class. 5 | Supporting the republican Vare machine in an important in-| dustrial city like Philadelphia, aiding the equally corrupt and anti-working class Tammany Hall machine in New York, local labor officialdom again successfully smothered class issues. | Another factor contributing to demoralization is the socialist! party leadership, steadily refusing to enter a united front move- | ment for a labor party or a united labor ticket, and at the eee time actively cooperating with sections of the republican and | democratic parties. | The socialist party leadership has lost all faith in the masses. It bases itself upon middle class elements, disgruntled “indepen- dents.” The statement made by Norman Thomas, socialist candidate | for alderman in New York City and one of the outstanding lead-| ers of the socialist party, relative to the causes of the defeat of his ticket, clearly indicates that contempt for workers rather than hatred of reaction is the dominant feeling. of socialist leaders. Thomas, in a statement to the press following the election, said: “The east side is cowed for the sake of a little peace or the! promise of a job, and such petty considerations. It was the cow-| ardice of the district that defeated us.” (Our emphasis.) | i Jacob Panken, socialist candidate for judge in the second} municipal district, after citing the intimidation and corruption | evident in the election, contributed the following gem: “Many socialists have told me they will never vote again be- cause of the fall-down of the whole system.” Tt seems not to occur to these two spokesmen of the socialist party that large sections of the working class were disgusted by the character of the campaign carried on by the socialist party, that the united front with lawyers’ associations and other middle class professional groups, and the concession made to their “lib- eralism’’—such as the endorsement of a ,000 per year salary for the governor—disgusted many former socialist supporters. The socialist party helped to demoralise the forces of the working class in the election struggle. The vote polled by the candidates of the Workers. (Com- munist) Party is small—as we expected under the circumstances. But we should have made a better showing than we did by con- centrating on local issues and the attack on the labor movement. We need not however, minimise the fact that in many sections, where no watchers were on duty, the vote of our party is never counted. The chief lesson of the last election is that without a labor | party the labor movement is at the mercy of the capitalist par- ties; that the longer the organization of a labor party is delayed the greater the demoralization of the forces of labor and the greater the influence exercised by the capitalist parties on the upper layers of the labor movement. With this lesson learned it is obvious that the main task be- fore us is the establishment of a labor party, or at least a united labor ticket for the 1928 elections. Failing this the only thing the working class will get from the 1928 elections will be the experience of more open reaction than has yet been witnessed without any additions to the weapons in the arsenal of the labor movement. Thompson Breakfasts at the White House A group of eminences of Illinois, with the redoubtable Will- iam Hale Thompson, mayor of Chicago, at their head, descended upon the capitol of the United States and breakfasted with Presi- dent Coolidge on election day morn. The excuse for this pil- grimage was a discussion of the Mississippi river flood problem. But the real purpose was an attempt of the Thompson-Small- Insull republican machine to influence the national leaders of the republican party and to also advance the interests of Mr. Insull’s power trust. No consideration of flood control is possible with- out discussion of the water-power possibilities of the Mississippi, which directly concerns the Insull interests. It is an open secret that the Illinois republican machine is a tool of Insull and is in- terested in flood control only inasmuch as the government can be induced to assume responsibility for the major part of the construction work involved in developing waterpower for the Chicago public utilities magnate. The Coolidge breakfast was mostly a formality; the real in- trigue was for the most part conducted in the rooms.of senators | and congressmen in Washington. Whether Coolidge took part in| the discussion beyond the restatement of the administration policy | of strengthening the levees, that fruitful source of “pork-barrel” | middle-west political machine is the instrument of Samuel Insull) graft, is unknown. | Thompson’s journey was also timed to detract from the ridi-| cule he has heaped upon himself as a result of his grotesque} crusade against the “stoolpigeons of King George.” If he is to! play the role in the national republican convention to which he} _is entitled by virtue of his domination of the Illinois republican, machine he must have some other platform than that of combat- ing British propaganda in the Chicago schools and the public program of Wall Street by endorsing the world court as the back | library. | Most illuminating was the personnel of the Thompson en-| Money Writes juice of a lime.” Such are the tastes }of a gentleman of letters. But per- sons who have not sense enough, to share such tastes do not need: to worry; they are in no peril from ogy effort on my part to extend their joys.” No propaganda, you sce! (Continued from Last Issue.) And then “Balisand,” the story of a landed gentleman of Maryland dur- ing the revolutionary war; here again is “stateliness”’ to the nth power, and as usual written around an article of furniture. Under an il- lustration in the “Dower House” book you find this caption: “The walnut sideboard, inlaid with long conch- shells in apple-wood, had rare brasses stamped with an Ionic temple. It bore Philadelphia and Georgian silver and a shameless cocktail shaker.” It But these joys cost real money, and so Mr. Hergesheimer takes a trip to the fountain-head of real money in the arts, and writes a series of ar- ticles for Colonel Lorimer, describing life among the movie stars in langu- age of the most top-lofty stateliness. All in the sacred cayse of high art | was gazing at this last object de joie |that generated the story of Richard Bale of Balisand. We see him in the opening chapter getting elaborately drunk; he is drunk in gentlemanly and aristocratic fashion most of the | way through, until he is killed in gentlemanly and aristocratic fashion in a duel over a woman. When I j read this novel, I said to a friend, “This Hergesheimer is an eighteenth century Tory.” My friend, a victim of the “art for art’s sake” bunk, in- sisted that the book might be a lit- erary exercise. But now we don’t have to dispute any more, Mr. Herge- sheimer has settled the matter in his spiritual confession. “Politically, I | discovered, writing ‘Balisand,’ I Was a Federalist; a party soon discredited, and—or for this era—completely | lost.” He goes on to tell us what he likes \in life: “privilege and the exercise of | privilege;” “pleasantness and secur- ity;” “time to choose neckties;” “a room with a graceful Hepplewhite table, and on it a box of Cabanas cigars—Tabacos Del Almurezo—and Balkan cigarettes;” “a measure of dry gin in a glass with British ginger beer, and ice, and a few drops of the we learn how Mr. Lasky ties his neck- tie, and how Mr. Goldwyn’s car is up- holstered, and how the valet at the Ambassador looks at the red suspend- ers which Mr. Knopf gave to Mr. Hergesheimer; we are tuken the round of luncheons. and dinners, and meet the exquisite young “shapes in light” in their homes, and gossip with them and play cribbage, and in all my reading of the literatures of seven languages and four thousand years, I cannot recall any artist lending his fancy language to the glorifying of more empty vanity and pretense. The climax comes in the home of one of these money-stuffed dolls; the spell of Cytherea begins to steal over us, and we sit lost in it, until the beau- tiful “shape in light” asks what is the matter, and we reply, “IT was just thinking what in the name of God I’d say if I happened to be in love with you.” To this the “shape” re- plies, “Don’t be silly,” and we agree with all our heart. The ivory tower artist goes hack to Dower House and Dorothy, and we leave him in the domestic scenes: he has told us about. “On the wide blue rug of the dining room walnut and, in the morning sunlight, the engaging tourage, as revealing a cross section of American political cor- ruption. The labor agents of Insull were represented in the person of John H. Walker, renegade socialist and president of the Illi- nois State Federation of Labor. Thomas J. Hill, who supervises the Insull interests as secretary of the “Chicago flood control con- ference,” acted in an advisory capacity for the delegation. Len Small, who jobbed a million dollars out of the Illinois taxpayers while state treasurer and who is present governor of that state, contributed to the gayety of the occasion. The only luminary who was missing was Frank L. Smith, of Dwight, Hlinois, who was trained in the Kankakee machine of Len Small and who rivalled Bill Vare of Pennsylvania in the delectable art of steal- ing, through bribery, a seat in the United States senate. But his place was adequately filled by the odoriferous William Lorimer, former senator from Illinois, who in 1910 was the precurser of the modern Newberrys, Vares and Smiths in buying his way into the United States senate. The difference in the case of Lorimer being that he merely instructed his agent, Lee Oneal Brown, of Streator, Illinois, a member of the state legislature, to buy the notes of a majority of the legislators with the expenditure of a! In those benighted times the system of | few thousand dollars. direct election of senators was not in vogue, hence it was only necessary to buy a few people instead c#’ an army of mercenaries to debauch one’s way into the cave of the winds at Washington. | After a period of eclipse the peculiar talents of Mr. Lorimer are again recognized by Mr. Insull, thereby proving the truth of the bourgeois shibboleth: “Virtue is its own reward.” The one lesson to be derived by the working class is that this and other exploiters of labor. As Insull’s interests have grown beyond the boundaries of Illinois and reached the proportions of a powezful national trust, so his political machine enters the arena of national politics, as a powerful, if bizzare, contribution to the industrialists who, for the present, oppose the policies of the ma-/¢: {sidered the most skilled group in the jority of the republican party that carries out the imperialist door to the league of nations and in general defends the interests of finance capital in Eurcpe. By Fred Ellis shadows of the fiddle-back chairs, made a very pleasant pattern against the blanched walls.” This delightful picture may be compared with a para- graph from an address delivered by Mr. Karl de Schweinitz, secretary of the Family Society of Philadelphia, a charity organization. “Of the thou- sand families studied in December (1926) many lacked what are the nec- essities of modern city life. There were 387 that had no bathtub, while another 230 were obliged to share a ilies. Less than half of the thousand femilies had toilets in their houses One hundred and ninety-one families shared a toilet indoors with one or more families; 324 families had out- side toilets and 42 families were obliged to share an outside toilet with other families. There were actually 60 families that did not have running water in the house.” hey Railway Workers’ By MARGARET GRAHAM. when to be a member of a Union was to be “outside the law,” Kuch- nisterov, a blacksmith of Moscow, or- ganized the Railway and Transport Workers’ Union. Today his memory is honored by the 1,025,000 members of the Union in the huge Railway Workers’ Club of Moscow, dedicated in his name. In contra-distinction to the Ameri- ean method of luring the workers away from class consciousness after working hours, diverting their alle- giance to amusements organized by y. M. C, A.’s and fraternal organiza- tions, the Russian workers find in the ‘lubs organized by their own Unions, all the cultural and recreational activ- ities they can possibly desire. The Club to the memory of Kuch- nisterov is one of 700 such institu- tions, all sprung to life after the Revolution. The dues paying mem- ‘bership of these clubs jumped from /5,800 in January 1923 to 260,000 in October 1926. This particular club was built on the ruins of an old munitions factory, at the terminal of the Karkov Rail- way. It was-completed in 1925 and now boasts 5,000 members, 1,500 of them women. Members pay from 5 to 40 kopeks a month, according to the amount of their salaries. (A kopek is one-half an American cent.) {Members of workers’ families can al- so join the club by paying 5 kopeks a month, : | In the one brief hour at my dis- posal there was hardly time to get a “bird’s eye view” of the countless activities all going on at the same time. First there was a district del- egate conference, The beautiful meet- ing hall with its painted frieze of locomotives in brilliant colors seated 540 persons. It was overflowing, so | that the 68,000 workers of the district must have been well represented, and |this was the sixth day of the confer- |enze. Next we went from lecture toom to lecture room: in one an engineer | training oilers to be locomotive as- |tors being trained for the position of station master (the course takes six months; only telegraph operators are eugible for this class as they are con- industry). dates were being instructed in how to the Committee for better relations between town and village was train- By Upton Sinclair a tub with one or more other fam-| Memory of Kuchnisterov gE a time in the history of Russia,) |sistants, in another telegraph opera-| In another room: candi-} take their examinations; in another| Our ivory tower artist describes for us his bedroom, in which he makes use of the brocaded pajamas of burnt orange and cerulean and glass green. He says: “The bed in the curly maple room had a canopy like a film, a sus- pended tracery of frost; and under it many delicate and beautiful women had slept. -cocled in the white si- lence of winter.” And against that lovely sentence let us set one fronr' an article in the “Survey,” December 15, 1925, by Dr. I. M. Rubinow, -di- rector of the Jewish Welfare Society of Philadelphia: “The working man’s |apartment in Philadelphia is not an apartment at all, but only two or three rooms sublet without any neces- sary adjustment for a separate decent family existence, for it has no priv- ate bathing or toilet facilities and very frequently no separate water supply.” (To Be Continued.) ) Club Dedicated to the ing surveyors to send to: the villages to help their less fertunate comrades. The Club has its own library housed in an adjoining building. In addition ;to magazines, the library owns 60,000 |books. There is a dining room which | Seats 500 workers at one time and |feeds on the average 2,000 a day. In addition to the main dining room, workers can get sandwiches and tea jat a buffet. The theatre has just be21 complet- ed. (It has 1,700 seats and is equipped with every modern appliance for lightning and shifting of scenes. Here movies alternate with legitimate dra- ma and the store rooms in the cor- ridors were literally bursting with wigs, masks and costumes. Classes in art, English, French and the co-operative movement competed with the women’s sewing circle and the billiard room where 30 workers were waiting their turn at the two tables. There is a special effort to interest women in the cultural work and to | get them to attend their Trade Union meetings, 80 of which are held in the club each night. For this pur- pose special lectures and discussions for women have been arranged and an evening nursery has been estab- lished where mothers can bring their babies and little children. Here milk and bread are served, there is a }woman doctor and a nurse and there is always a member of the Young Workers’ League to play with the older children. The room for babies ‘bad its ten little beds filled. Each night the doctor examines the children and once a week there are lectures fur mothers. We followed the railroad signals which point the way from room to |room and finally out to the waiting -automobile which the railway union had placed at our disposal, But the \echauffeur, who was also a member of ;the union, had not been sitting “on duty,” while we were inside. This} | was his club too, and he had spent a profitable hour in one of its many ac- tivities. At least he must have had his fill of recreation, judging by the |speed with which he returned us to} ‘our hotel, | Built by workers, run by workers, j uniting mothers and fathers, children /and grown-ups in constructive effort} -Study, recreation. Engineer and} r, station master and cleaning, woman. This is a trade union insti- tution which can well be copied in ey- ery part of the world. | pointed. Red Rays E are informed that an assortment of A. F. of L. chiefs are on the way here to fjght the injunction asked by the I. R. T. to prevent the Amal- gamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employes from unionizing the subway lines. A good time will be had by all, but the trac- tion employes might as well know now as later on that those corpulent officials will not do any organizing. The winners will be the lawyers on both sides and the traction barons. Until the traction employes take the bit between their teeth and unhorse the labor fakers who are holding them in check there will be no change in the situation for the benefit of the workers, * NDEED the policy of the labor leaders in the traction situation is somewhat similar to that of the British government in India. The in- habitants of that great country are chafing under the British yoke and are actually laboring under the de- lusion that they could survive if the British withdrew thei troops and left the natives to the mercy of the tigers. The British, being philanthro- pic souls, hesitate to take the Hindoos at their word, so they have appointed a commission to look into the situa- tion. By the time this commission gets thru making its report a new situation will have developed and a new commission will have to be ap- This tomfoolery will con- nue until the natives dump a com- mission into the Red Sea and thumb a polite Oriental nose at Great Britain. Ditto in the case of the trac- tion situation in New York. * * N° doubt you have noticed that Upton Sinclair, one of the best known of our novelists, is running a series of articles on this page. It is the best stuff he ever wrote in my opinion, and I must confess that the tribute is dragged out ‘of me, because I am somewhat prejudiced against Sinclair. Tho born to the confessional I can never completely forgive an adult who fell for Woodrow Wilson’s fourteen points, but it must be admitted that Sinclair did his best to atone for the days he spent sowing his patriotic wild oats. However, this is not what I pickled a rod for use on Sinclair’s literary anatomy just now for. * * a his chapter entitled “The Charm- Poacher,” Sinclair takes occasion to hurl a brick at James Branch Ca- bell, one of our most advanced novelists. Cabell’s crime, in Sinclair’s eyes is that the author of Jurgen con- tributed to the delinquency of our youth in that he excited them sexually by his Jurgenistic writings, with the result that his readers might be found standing in line at dispensaries, sorry testimonials to the efficacy of Cabell’s propaganda. ® * * * * * * ees is to laugh at Sinclair. An uncharitable person, on reading Sinclair’s expedition into the wilds of Freudianism would be justified in assuming that Upton was suffering from serious polygamist repressions and was obliged to resort to extreme measures in order to survive the in- ternal disorder. Indeed no less a celebrity than Frank Harris once said that Sinclair might write the great American novel if he only had a decent love affair. Which, means in the Harris sense, a violent love affair. * * * Now, Sinclair is not that kind of a person, yet thanks to our revolution- ary god for him. Because he is the greatest of our pamphleteers and has noble intentions. Furthermore he must have some weaknesses, other- wise he would be a greater nuisance than he is now. And since every man must have a weak spot it is well that Sinclair errs on the moral side. What a calamity it would be if such a prolific writer as Sinclair had Cabel- listie tendencies? There would be no youth left to carry on the work after three or four years of serious writing. * * * AS a matter of fact, ninety-nine out of every hundred persons inter- viewed on the subject will testify that the great majority of those suffering from the diseases so properly abhorred by Sinclair, never read a book in their lives—not even the King James ver- sion of the bible. enopgh intelligence to apprecitatn either Cabell or Sinclair nfs _ sumably intelligent enough to/ keep out of harm’s way. Indeed, the bath~ ing beach episode in Sinclair’s “Oil” has contributed more to his royalty chest. than the excellent scenic de- scriptions that take up so much space in the first part of the book. And it is not surprising that this part of the novel will constitute the core of the play based on “Oil” which will be produced on Broadway by William A. Brady. * me BECAUSE the famous memoirs of Charles Greville told of an illicit love affair between the mother of Queen Victoria and her secretary, Sir John Conroy, they were issued in ex- purgated form until last week, A hardy publisher turned the whole busi- ness loose on the public and red anger is raging in Buckingham Palace. The British monarchy is by no means the shakiest of the few that are left but if the people are to respect it, they must be given the impression that royalty cannot be normal. —T. J. O'FLAHERTY. | Male adults with f