The Daily Worker Newspaper, November 14, 1927, Page 6

~ Page Six THE DAILY WORKER Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO. Daily, Except Sunday | $2 First Street, New York, N. Y. Phone, Orchard 168° Cable Address | Sane Seer SED * a i} SUBSCRIPTION RATES an By Mail (in New York only): By Mail (outside of New ee | $8.00 per year $4.50 six manths $6.00 per years $3.50 six mont! $ .50 three months $2.00 three months Be | “Dai work” ‘Address and mail and make cut checkn to. __ | THE DAILY WORi:ER, 33 First Street, New York, N. wee } ....ROBERT MINOR Entered as second-class mail at the the act of Right and Wrong Policy in the Struggle Against the Traction Trust’s Injunction and Company Union Enough has been said and written about the injunction Wits ceedings started by the Interborough Rapid ae age against the American Federation of Labor as a whole sand e Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway re ployees in partic to convince every worker that issue raise is a momentous or nvolying the existence of the American la- bor movement. The Interb group of traction eel the oniy leg: ganization for traction workers—it de- mands that the American labor movement be outlawed and its right to unc nged rule over workers it employs be sustained. If this inju United States v thrown around it. The important and state in one inch in the struggle in which the first blow. Tt must fight now or abdicate. The Amalgamated Association is violating an already exist- ing injunction openly by holding mass meetings and urging trac- tion workers to join its ranks. Legal talent has been engaged to contest the I. R. T. injunction in the courts. But this is not enough. Side by side with these formal de-) fiances of the traction barons goes a policy of pollyannaism which, if carried much farther, will be fatal to the waging of successful struggle. First, there is the assumption on the part of officialdom, which is put forward at its meetings and in its published state- ment, that Tammany Hall and its leaders are on the side of the union and against the traction barons. ish acts and utterances could have been made than the acceptance as genuine of the published newspaper reports of decisions of the Shea-Coleman-Mayor Walker-Quackenbush conference of last July. cting in this case directly for the entire | s and indirectly for American capital- > demanding that its company union be ro ion is granted, every company union in the have the mailed mantle of the government American le ement, with its most powerful and the United Mine Workers, hemmed in by federal netiens which are strangling it, dares not retreat the Interborough has struck It is clear that Walker maneuvered to have all strike action | stopped without being able or willing to force the I. R. T. to agree to anything. The announcement by union officials that the call- ing off of the strike was a victory for the men created great demoralization and suspicion among the traction workers and actually aided the traction barons. The state and city governments will not raise a finger to aid| the organization of the traction workers but they will, as they, have in the last few days, mobilize the police reserves to aid the| the great magazines, with circulations traction barons the moment a strike seems possible. Second, the assumption on the part of union officialdom that} the traction workers can be organized without a great struggle} against the traction barons and their government, that by some | miraculous mean union ts place, is a dangerous delusion at best and outright) deception of the traction work at the worst. Organization work will have fo be conducted with the idea in mind that the traction workers have to prepare to strike to en- force their to organize and secure better wages and work- e , the traction barons have nothing to fear. ‘amated Association will have to adopt a fighting it is to be the instrument for freeing the traction workers from the slavery of company unionism. No one but a fool or some one deliberately trying to disguise the reai i s of the present struggle can or will say that the traction tr cannot demand and obtain 100 per cent support from the city hall and the state house in a struggle where the issue is the clear cut one of the interests of workers versus the interests of big capitalists. Support for the traction workers will come from the rank and file of the labor movement—from the organizations of the working class. Only enmity, open or disguised, will come from the various branches of government. This the traction worker be based the whele policy of the present struggle against slave injunctions, against company unionism, and for the right of the labor movement to exist and act as an instrument of the work- ing class. 's must be told and upon this must! Fascism and Soviets eS 2 a Money Writes No more futile and fool-| |few are clear-sighted. As we set out If organization work is carried on only in the} ? THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, WONDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1927 IN “SUNNY ITALY” more shall we stop at the Ambassador (Continued from Last Iesue.) and exercise cur vocabulary upon the i : sereen beauty parade. From now on XX jwe have to live on our book royalties, with here and there an article in The Ex-Muckrakers highbrow or radical papers. | POME had Juvenal, as well as Pe- tronius; and in the same way there ;are writers in America serving as | antibodies to the poisons of pluto- jeracy. Some, like Virgil in Rome, i aeat back to the good old days of ithe founding fathers; others are |merely muddled, groping blindly; a The last writer I can recall who was able to publish in a big popular magazine any hint that there might be something wrong with the Amer- iean plutocracy, was Winston Church- ill. We left him in 1910, so let us glance at his later career, and then at some other veterans of those muck- {raking days. Mr. Churchill wrote a jnovel. “The Inside of the Cup,” ac- tually troubling the conscience of his \Episcopal Church, which hed not turned over in its slumbers since Charles Kingsley died. I was sick | just then with the long agony of the to study them, make note of this fact at the outset, we part company with up in the one or two and a half mil- lions. No more shall we present wal- nut sidehoards to Colonel Lorimer, no ular will formerly achieved through extra-legal marauding bands the company union will disappear and a real’ o¢ mercenaries. Those who imagine there is in the fascist system the slightest ‘resemblance to the Soviet system, suffer from a severe form of political myopia. Never before in history has there been two | systems existing in the same world that were so far apart, so diametrically opposed one to the other. Fascism’s “new” system bases its representation in the cham- _ber of deputies upon fascist organizations exclusively. The thir- |teen economic, industrial and agricultural organizations that have the right to suggest names of candidates are composed of capital- jists and alleged representatives of the workers, themselves se- ‘lected through the operation of fascist terror. These names are | passed upon by the “grand council” of fascists and all under the slightest suspicion of opposition to the regime are eliminated from consideration. The chamber of deputies itself is a mere | vassal of the fascist central body, without power to initiate any | measure whatsoever. Its sole function is obediently to approve the demands of Mussolini. Diametrically opposed to this tyranny is the Soviet system which enables every worker, every useful member of society of ‘adult age, directly to participate in political life. There is no su- |preme body that passes upon candidates selected by the local Soviets, and the representatives to. the All-Union Congress of Soviets in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics are not sub- servient to any other power. They are the supreme legislative and executive power of the country and their word is law and from | their decisions there is absolutely no appeal either in this or any |other world, Far from restricting the franchise the Soviet sys- |tem has resulted in bringing hundreds of thousands, even mil- wee & : ; 4 ‘ .., ., | lions, of workers and peasants who never before shared in political Mussolini's “reform of parliament,” which abolishes officially | activity into active political life. i By Upton Sinclair Lawrence strike, and I remember writing a letter to Mr. Churchill; sit- ting up till three or four o’clock in the morning, pouring out my elo- quence in an effort to persuade him ‘to deal with a great mass strike. He replied that I myself was the person to do it; as if the Epsicopal Church would listen to the author of “The Profits of Religion!” But I must have made some im- pression on this dignified and con- scientious gentleman; for three or four years later appeared “The Dwelling Place of Light”; a novel with scences laid in a New England mill-town, and a strike for its cul- mination. But alas, it was a serial for the “Cosmopolitan Magazine,” written down to the Hearst level. A stenographer. of good family, of course, though fallen into reduced cir- cumstances, and how she was seduced by her employer---all the anguish of a great strike serving for a pic- turesque background to such a theme! J think Mr. Churchi!l must have been made ashamed, for ten years have passed, and he has not published a novel since. The other day I wrote, asking him to tell me why, if it was not a secret; and he answered that it was a secret from himself as well as from me I spect that means he has had some ind of religious experience, reducing the importance of wordly affairs in his mind. I can understand that; I too was brought up in the Church of Good Society, and carried the bishop’s train in the stately ceremon- ials; I too have hade magic hands laid upon my head, and magic for- mulas pronounced over it. Also, I realize that we don’t know very much about this universe; we walk, as it were, upon the quaking top of a vol- cano. But I take my stand upon the conviction that whatever gods may eontrol our destinies, it will not dis- please them that men should cease to slaughter one another, and to rob one another of the fruits of toil. We left Robert Herrick, a univer- sity professor, writing novels full of keen insight into the faults of his country. He is still doing it, in the same spirit of grave and rather mournful despair. He has no hope; | but he is not among the academic jones who hold a vested interest in |pessimism, and are ready, like Paul swim against the current. The other day she handed dewn her opinion upon th~ bent seller of the day, “Gentle- men Prefer Blondes,” “I have just wot Lending what seems to me to be the great American novel.” For the benefit of those who read this book ten years from now I explain that “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” is a witty and cynical sketch of the high- priced young harlots of our interna- ; tional bourgeoisie. It isn’t a novel, and to call it “great” represents an abdication of judgment hardly to be believed of the woman who wrote “The House of Mirth.” Who else from those old muckrak- ing days? Ernest Poole wrote “The | Harbor,” a really beautiful novel of the class struggle in New York; now he writes amiable and unimportant | stories of the demestic problems of |the well-to-do. Herbert Quick wrote a noble fighting book, “The Broken Lance,” the story of a rebel clergy- iman; and then he toned down and | preduced a three volume chronicle of Towa, apologizing for the graft and waste he had formerly denounced. And then Brand Whitlock, who wrote the best story of all “The Turn of the Balance.” Nobody else has | portrayed so completely the mixture of graft and cruelty which calls itself \“crimina] law” in capitalist America; not even “An American Tragedy” has a more heart-shaking climax. And now what? The cne-time radical mayor became ambassador to Bel- guim, and a popular hero with strings of titles and decorations; he comes home and settles down to write about a wealthy carriage manufacturer of the middle west who renews his youth the misfortune to be caught by the fire department. That is “J. Hardin and Son,” and it is pathetic enough, but where is the old vision? And then “Uprooted,” about the elegant idlers whom Ambassador Whitlock watched in Europe; but what has happened to make them so dignified and so im- portant, both to their creator and to us? The spiritual transformation is re- vealed in one sentence of the book, where the author turns aside from his | story for a sneer at the French work- ers: “hangdog ragamuffins we slouching on the benches, reading in By Fred Ellis | with a pretty little milliner, but has. | Red Rays Roe ELDER, sometime ago known N as the wife of a fellow by the name of Lyle Womack, celebrated Armistice Day by returning from Europe and flying into the arms of contracts worth $200,000. When the honest wo- man was informed of her good for- tune she exclaimed, “Oh, isn’t that nice.” This frankness should immedi- ately make Miss Elder the most popu- lar lady in America; indeed she should grab off the vacancy left by Mary Pickford, America’s erstwhile sweetheart. il Bune i] AM of the opinion that the people are almost tired of Lindbergh by now. In the first surge of excitement over his flying feat, they were ready to believe anything, but his repeated | objections to accepting money raised |doubts as to his sanity in the minds jof the sophisticated people of this |great country. And when he finally |landed on the Guggenheim payroll it learned that he had collected in |the vicinity of one million dollars from various sources since his return |from Paris. _ * & | THERE are thousands of maimed | * victims of the world war scattered | thruout the country in hospitals. Only jon Armistice Day is there any notice taken of them. The great majority |of those unfortunates will be crippled |for life physically and many of theni |are gibbering idiots. They were pa- | triots. They saved a country that was in no danger from attack. But |more important they saved Morgan’s | billions that were in danger because |they were wagered on an allied vic- jtory, a victory that was almost blown |sky high when the United States en- | tered the war. *“ * 8 F those wrecks had the use of their mental faculties last Friday it must have been a great consolation for jthem to learn that all traffic was |stopped in this great city for two | minutes in honor of the glorious end- ling of the war with victory resting {on the banner’s of the allied powers. ; And it, must also give them a thrill |to read that. General Motors, one of | Morgan’s pets, declared another col- jossal dividend. And when a New York banker tired of amassing more j wealth decides to hire a ship for a |tour around the world, our heroes | should feel happy in the thot that jthey did not get crippled in vain. * * * (tee efficacy of prayer that comes from the fullness of the clerical heart was demonstrated in Pottsville, |Pa., last week when under pressure jof supplications from severa] hundred clergymen, sent up to heaven in be- jhalf of the coal industry, snow began to fall and the temperature dropped. An anthracite co-operative congress was scheduled to meet in a few days when boss and worker, the exploiter and exploited would gather to devise ways and means of getting the an- thracite industry out of the trenches before Christmas. Why can’t the la- bor fakers and the operators take a rest and let the sky-pilots pray the business back to normaley? The God that lowered the temperature thru mass prayer should not find a little matter like stabilizing the anthracite industry beyond his powers. | * as We are going to have a merchant | *" marine naval reserve. This is the |reply of the Washington militarists to the growl emitted by the British | war-lord, Weymss, in the house of jlords a few days ago. The naval race | between the two empires is on. The | purpose of the Geneva conference was to see if some means could not be found to obviate the necessity for a deadly competition that will end in the destruction of one or the other of |the two greatest naval and military | powers in the history of the world. * We Tee Geneva conference was a fail- ure. The conflicting interests be- tween the imperialists of the two countries could not be reconciled and the decision of the navy department to recruit officers and men from the United States merchant marine for service in the next war is a long step forward on the road to another im ternational holocaust. The war to en@ | war was eminently successful in pay- ing the way for another and more frightful war, | * * * s | WILLIAM J. BURNS was not. too busy with his jury-fixing iubles in Washington to attend to hig duties socialist newspapers of the happy | s chief stool-pigeon for the I. R. T. | time to come when all men every-|at the mass meeting last Friday night | where would: knock off work and live | where efforts to organize the traction jon the stock on hands” I wrote a let-| employes were made by officials of ter to the author of that sentence, |the Amalgamated Union, Burns feels sking him to justify all semblance of the voting privilege for the masses merely cloaks with what the fascist tyranny calls legality the actual condition that has existed since the ‘march on Rome” that brought to power that detestible regime. Although there has not heretofore In the last analysis fascism is the most open, brazen form of |# pee Hees eg ed you if you ven- | Bans rs j ture sugges at m ys capitalist class tyranny, guaranteeing the supremacy of a small | gay eis his Pikshe Toler osc |minority and exercised in the interest of that minority, while the! would be glad of a faith, but he has Soviet system is the direct, immediate rule of the vast majority no knowledge of the labor movement, : Devan uater sy agrye the ‘ it. I haye been|more at home as. strikebreaker scis ee specifica -fascists mt : e Nia Ne eont * * o 10 society. i . reap 7 | hid ae - yn ower a - iat oti e s or bg in the interest of the majority. Fascism is the negation even of {© f the new society. His | rending socialist , magaZ rent-provocateur where the victims ee. Ri A ay aacetaa 4 pa eidgtina dons Re 4 Pe ors a the democratic forms under which capitalism in most countries (\res * pect eer und books both here e abroad, for | re of the working class than getting black-shirt hordes prevented any expression through the use of| cloaks its dictatorship, while the Soviet system is thé dictatorship | sebuke: g twen e years, an in a » between two he ba issenti sleme rhage A ‘A step“ 2s too ex the ballot of dissenting elements. . | of the vast majority realized through the most demoératic system | treme, but I laughed as I read his In spite of all boasts to the contrary, fascist Italy faces a' the world has ever seen. |novel—I ara well content with his pic- steady economic decline. The discontent of the masses has grown Those philistines who prate about some abstract democracy.” of capitalist-endowed education! eminously for fascism since the abolition of the eight-hour day) that transcends classes fail to understand the motive forces of |, And then Edith Wharton and the institution of the nine and ten-hour day with reduced history {hit this vigorous mind a j ‘cole : ¢ They cannot perceive, or else blindsthemselves to the|.p. then . ow lwhich it is impo: wages. It is the old game of trying to impose upon the working’ fact, that all governments by their very nature must be class Pils Beate ete a preg eal class the burden of-a declining economy. E ° French, and then American. Now she | i tatorships and that there can be no such thing as an abstract/|has gone back to writing novels about The new decree, reducing the number of members of the | democracy that-ignores and transcends class lines, The charac-|S™t society, bit the sting is gone chamber of deputies from 535 to 400, and giving the “grand coun- ter of a government is determined by the class in whose interest | (tor stnctteg 1S pegthat we, axe NO cil”—that euphemism for fascism’s central organ of despotism— its exists. : leameacandueaeatenita: among the | Portraits of woalthy idlers, Surely the authority to decree who shall be candidates for office, is in-| Naturally a government that exists in the interest of the |rich? Or is it that Edith Wharton ae necearaih Moca he ci a icati 3 isc: “i i | m ‘ + herself has grown used to the PA chien Mba, tertc Wear ne dicative of the fact that the discontent with the regime of Musso- broad masses of workers and peasants, as is the case of the Soviet 8 Spec- | ex-ambassador did not reply to this lini is so widespread that the full power of the state must hence-| Union, must be a far higher form of democracy than any other tacle, and tired and hopeless? Un- 1 2 id a : doubtedly the latter; sh ‘aoe letter. What could he have said? forth be utilized to realize that degree of suppression of the pop-| form of state power. sity pleic and i oseneeanede fe (To Be Continued). a hint of such an id lenged the ex-amh h a line in any soe’ tion. The fact is that the s lin France, as ev tps of capitalists. The money is od either way, but it much more asant for Mr. Burns to be hailed s, | universally in the capitalist press as » bulwark of law and order than to »¢ lampooned by one section of the le, for anyone to} press and treated to faint damns in five without working. But in Brand] another section as is the case with Whitlock’s novel are portrayed a/his jury-fixing escapade. {group of people no one ef whom is | | doing any useful work—with the pos- | sible exception of the hero, who paints See ae, J HE moving picture magnates of Holly.wood are preparing to describe a circle with the axe and one of the necks scheduled for the attentions of the lethal weapon is that of Pola Negri. Here is one axe we are in sympathy with, .~f. J. O'FLAHERTY. f i years old, and it is not so easy to a on