The Daily Worker Newspaper, November 18, 1927, Page 6

Page Six nermrenmenerenemernsreensran THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1927 Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING co, Daily, Except Sunday 83 First Street, New York, N. Cable SUBSCRIPTION RATES By Mail (in New York only): By Mail (outside of New sore) $8.00 per $4.50 six manths $6.00 per years $3.50 six months 50 three months $2.00 three months Phone, Orchard 1680 | Address: ‘‘Daiwork $: 1 out checks to 3 First Street, New York, N. Ad DAILY WORK x. ROBERT MINER .. WM. F. DUNNE t New Y nt Editor. . N. Y., under Stop the Wall Street Drive With a Latin American Anti-Imperialist Bloc! It is obviously the intention of the United States government to use the Pan-American congress at Hayana in January to con-| Solidate further its power in Latin America. The agents of dollar | imperialism have beent working overtime preparing the stage for their own show. If the Coolidge-Mellon-Hoover government has | its way the congress will be a spectacular glorification of the role of Wall Street in the southern republics. | Steps have been taken to try to bar from the sessions of that congress all anti-imperialist elements. The unrestrained fright- fulness with which Nicaragua has been ravaged during the past year is a guarantee that the “official representatives” of that | country will be bribed tools of Yankee despotism, who will grovel | in the most servile manner before the power that holds that na-| tion in chains and silence. “Officials” from Haiti and Santo | Domingo will likewise pay homage to the despot. Every other agent of American imperialism that can be furnished with a} credential will try to perform for his master. It will require a particularly abject and unprincipled array of | sychophants to conceal from the world the crimes of the United | States ruling class against the Latin Americans. Against this organized drive in behalf of the plunderbund | should be mobilized the full force of anti-imperialist sentiment in| the southern republics for the purpose of turning the congress | from a glorification of the crimes of the United States govern- ment, the international policeman and bandit for Wall Street, to a denunciation and complete expose of those crimes before the | whole world. The necessity for such a campaign is only now beginning to) impress itself upon the victims of Wall Street in Latin America. | But thus far there is no concerted effort to organize a counter-| blast against the United States delegation and their lackeys. | In commenting upon the brazen forgeries against Mexico and Nicaragua, now running in the Hearst publications, Dr. Pedro) Zepeda, Mexican representative of the dispersed liberal govern- ment of Nicaragua, declares that at the Pan-American congress | the liberal forces will “present irrefutable proofs” that they have | “never had any compromises or any obligations with any foreign government in the whole world.” While such proof will be added evidence of the unprincipled aracter of the Hearst campaign, it is certainly not called for from the standpoint of the best interests of the Latin Americans. Instead of proving that there is no connection between the op- pressed nations, suffering under the iron fist of Wall Street, the anti-imperialist forces of all nations should immediately launch a | drive to align those nations in a powerful anti-imperialist bloc that will utilize the coming congress to erect a monument of shame to the United States plunderers and to begin immediately preparations to drive from their borders every agent of the Yan- kee tyrants. Let the Pan-American conference be turned into a mighty protest against the rape of Haiti, Santo Domingo, Nicaragua, the conspiracies against Mexico, the Panama steal, the Tacna-Arica border scandal, and all the outrages that have resulted in making the very name of the United States’ despised from the Mexican border to Cape Horn. Let it be the signal for such a furious wave of anti-imperialism that the Pan-American building at Washing- ton will henceforth be used only as a museum for American offi- cial and unofficial forgeries. Let the rallying center of the Latin-American countries be established within the borders of one of théir own countries as the center of anti-imperialist activities. | | 1 The Lesson of the Pittsburgh A. F. of L. Conference The deep crisis in the American labor movement has been brought forcibly to the attention of both organized and unorgan- ized workers by the sensational occurrences at the Pittsburgh A. F. of L. conference. That the rank and file of the miners’ union is ready for real struggle against the injunction menace was shown by the delega- tions from 17 miners’ unions—denied seats in the conference by officialdom—which came with a program endorsed by their or- ganizations representing, in all probability, the great majority of ' the strikers in the Pittsburgh territory where the struggle is the most bitter and the injunction the most sweeping and vicious. J.S. Otis, the delegate of the Pittsburgh Central Labor Union, who was permitted to speak after the miners’ spokesmen had been | thrown out, brought forward a program for mass picketing in} violation of the injunction, a nationwide relief campaign and the organization of a labor party in opposition to the official “non- | partisan” policy. Both President Green and Vice President Woll were forced to! reply to Otis. Their speeches reach the depths of futility and | reaction. Their program, of formal opposition to the injunctions, the | ort of “friends of labor” on the tickets of the capitalist par- ties, of appeal to Governor Fisher and President Coolidge, holds out no hope for the labor movement, President Coolidge actually rejected the appeal made in Pitts- burgh by labor officialdom before it was conveyed to him offi-| cially. No sooner had the news of the coming appeal been sent | out than the White House issued a statement saying that Coolidge | “considers his hands tied because there is no compulsory arbitra- | tion law under which he could act with specifie direction.” Coolidge thus places the stamp of approval on the injunctions issued by federal courts and at the same time makes propaganda for further reactionary federal legislation—a compulsory arbitra- | tion law. { In Colorado, Governor Adams, supported by labor officialdom as a “progressive,” uses the state machinery to smash the miners’ strike. In Pennsylvania, ex-Governor Pinchot, who was elected algq as a “progressive,” never repealed the state constabulary law iy { s # American imperialist interests that crushed the liberal regime in Nicaragua and wish to control all Central America have opened a new fight on Mexico thru the use of forged documents, Mexico being the most formidable obstacle to Wall Street’s aims in Latin America. ~ Money Writes SES nt comfortable living, and nobody in America is willing to live any other | way; so, with two or three exceptions that I can think of, our rebel poets are dead, or silent, or turned into fat poodles, lapping cream in bourgeois | drawing rooms. Speaking’ to God | There is, as you may know, a Ee |chanical problem in magazine editing. 0 FAR we have discussed the nov-| stories aa articles as a rule do not elists and the critics of capitalist | come out the right length; you have America, There remain the poets, parts of pages blank, and as nature and I have to begin by confessing |abhors a vacuum, there was evolved that while I have read a thousand Orla type of composition known as “fil- two of modern novels and critical works, I have read only a hundred or two of poets. I like to get some retura for the trouble of running my eyes over printed lines of type. When I read a novel by any of the pew men, | I get at least some facts about the world I live in; but in a new poet I (Continued from Last Issue.) XXIV. a simple rhyme pattern, dealing with flowers and sufisets and the polite aspects of sexual desire. But fifteen years ago there came a change; the highbrow magazines took to giving whole pages to what was apparently meant as poetry, because it didn’t go ler”—a certain number of verses with | find a creature spinning a cocoon out of his own juices. Sometimes he im- itates the poets of the past, figuring out ways to vary their phrases; or jelse he makes a desperate effort to |be different, and succeeds only in | being odd. This is an age of material \all the way to the right hand margin, and every line began with a capital letter. I used to read it in a state of wonderment—it must be supposed to have some quality, and what could that quality be? It had no beauty of sound, no melody; on the contrary it glory, and the first condition of true} poetic impulse is revolt, But there |no depth of thought—it had seldom is no way for rebel poets to get a|any thought whatever. Here are lines 8.8 EEE but gave a new excuse for the existence of the state cossacks— “the enforcement of the prohibition law.” The cossacks are now terrorizing the mining camps, riding down women and children and herding scabs. Pinchot, nevertheless, again gets the endorsement of labor officialdom—this time for the U. S. senate. He will run on the republican ticket and once more official labor will endorse the party of Mellon, Coolidge, Vare, Standard Oil, the steel trust and the coal barons. ; The labor movement is fighting for its life. Labor official- dom knows it. Their analysis of the situation, their estimate of the determined and dangerous character of the attack, differs little from that of the left wing. Labor officialdom knows that the capitalists and government are trying to smash the labor movement. But labor officialdom, far from being stirred to militant ac- tion, draws the conclusion that less militancy is the solution—that the labor movement must make still more concessions, must iden- tify itself more closely with American capitalism, with capitalist government, with the capitalist parties. Instead of a policy of militant unionism, labor officialdom proposes more efficiency unionism. This is the gist of the statements made by and Lewises in Pittsburgh. But the rank and file of the labor movement will contrast the speeches of Otis and Woll, will compare the program of the read like the baldest prose. It had the Greens, Wolls ‘rank and file miners’ delegations and the official program—a pro- gram of inaction. It is clear that labor officiafdom is going to do nothing ex- cept to continue its war on the Communists and the left wing, to continue to strike hard at every evidence of militancy and class consciousness and to attempt to lead the American working class | deeper into the quagmire of capitalist politics and union-manage- ment co-operation. There must be a speedy gathering of all honest forces of the labor movement willing to {ght to save the unions. There must be made an open challenge to the leadership which meets a cam- paign of destruction waged against the most important union in America with an appeal to a president who grins with glee at every new blow struck at labor. Organization of the unorganized, a labor party, a national campaign for support of the striking miners, nationalization of the mines, abolition of all union restrictions which throttle the rank and file—-around this program, already supported by thou- sands of workers as the Pittsburgh conference showed, can be built a movement which will have as its first task the exposure and defeat of the official leadership whose reactionary policies are responsible for the serious crisis in the labor movement. By Upton Sinclair taken from a presumable poem en- titled “Attitude Under an Elm Tree,” which appeared on the front page of the “Literary Review” of the New York Evening Post, one of the half dozen great capitalist organs which determine what you and I and the rest of America shall consider cul- ture. You were veiled at the jousting, you remember, ‘i Which enables me to imagine you without let or hindrance from the rigidness of fact; condition not unproductive of charm if viewed philosophically. Besides, your window gives upon a walled garden, Which I can by no means enter with- out dismounting from my maple red charger, And this I will not do, Particularly as the garden belongs in- dubitably to your ancestors, A Read that over several times—a score of times, as I have done. Can \you find one trace of beauty or |charm? Can you find one melodious or pleasing sound? There was more to the poem, but the rest would not help you, The “Attitude Under an Elm Tree” is merely the attitude of Amy Lowell standing on her head, because that was the only way she could get anyone to look at her. How could such a phenomenon have few thoughts of consequence to other human beings, have become the great lady-Cham of the world of tea-party poets, the founder of a school, or more accurately of a church, before whose altar the leisure class choir bumped its forehead? I have lived for the past twelve years in the wilds of the west, where the only art centre is Hollywood, so I do not attend the poetical tea-parties and gather the gossip of the salons. It wasn’t until I went to Boston five years ago, to get material for “The Goose-step,” that I came to realize who that lady- Cham of poetry was, and how her reputation had been made. She was the sister of that able lawyer whom the Lee-Higginson banking interests have selected to convert Harvard Uni- versity into a training school for strike-breakers; she was a Lowell, and I, in my ni&ive innocence, had tions with those famous lines which celebrate Boston as the land of the bean and the eod, where the Cabots speak only to Lowells, and the Low- ells speak only to God. ” Amy spoke to God, and He told her that since she was personally un- beautiful and stout, and partly crip- pled as result of an accident, she must find some other way of being distin- guished than as a leader of the smart set. He told her that to smoke big black cigars and swear volubly was not enough, because nowadays so many smart ladies are doing the same; the thing for Amy was to be a poet, and the founder of a cult. Thus Amy’s God, who had led her jout of the house of bondage, and pre- sented her with ‘an income derived from the labor of some hundreds of mill-slaves in the town which bears her honored name, And Amy, having centuries of pride and dominance be- hind her, set out to conquer a new world, She had a huge «mansion to live in, full of all the old books, and her mill-slaves enabled her to buy FRESE, A come to be? How could a woman with | scant trace of singing gift, with very | failed to connect her poetical lucubra- | the new ones. She sat herself down and practiced for eight years, to see if it was possible for a woman with no trace of inspiration to fool all the critics and editors. Her success is one more demonstration of the fact that if you have money and social prestige, you can get away with mur- der in America. Reading her stuff in the magazines, {I would find ‘myself exclaiming, “This woman must live in a junk- |shop!” Chinese vases and Japanese prints, Arabian shawls and Persian | carpets, pearls from Ceylon and ivory from Africa—all these things are the regulation stuff of poets, but with Amy they became the whole of exist- ence; her poetry is a jumble of met- aphors and allusions to articles of merchandise. After she died, and her biographers and friends conducted us jinto her home, we were able to un- derstand; she had made the mansion |into a curio shop, full of exotic wares, ‘and these and her library and her |garden made up her world. It was {an elaborate and expensive garden, | and comprised the whole of nature to this sick and frustrated woman; sup- plying her with a thousand images |while she sat on summer days, lift- {ing manfully at her literary boot- straps. Alas, that the muse does not recognize social position, nor even willpower and grit! As Swinburne puts it: Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear, She would not hear! ‘The lady-Cham of New England letters travelled in state and attended poetry conventions, and wrote critical articles, assigning poetical rank to her social inferiors. Also she dis- tributed checks subsidizing magazines and invited poets and editors to visit her, Poor devils of young writers, trying to!suvvive in our chaos of greed, would go away singing grati- tude, and editors would shiver with awe to find themselves inside a Low- ell mansion; so, year by year, the bubble of Amy’s reputation swelled. Since she didn’t have to put either rhyme or reason into what she wrote, it was possible for her to turn out a vast quantity of copy, and for years to monopolize the poetical output of our highbrow magazines. I submit this chapter to a friend who is on the “inside” of the mag- azine world. He says, yes, there can be no doubt that Amy Lowell bought her literary position. But you have to know how to do it; her money was not enough, it took also her mansion and her name. My friend reminds me of an elderly gentleman by the name of Frederick Fanning Ayer, who inherited a great fortune and wanted to be known as a poet; he tried the method of newspaper and magazine advertising, and spent a small fortune, and succeeded in sel- ling only ‘a few copies of his book. understand, and also the money had |come from sarsaparilla, which connot. | be taken poetically. Says my cynical friend: “If that old gentleman had made his money out of good Scotch, and had known how to distribute a carload, he might easily have become the Amy Lowell of New York.” (To Be Continued.) WANTED — MORE READERS! ARE YOU GETTING THEM? - Red Rays EDWARD RUSSELL, one of the most prominent of the t renegades that left the so- party because of the St. Louis , has donned | the armor of battle for various causes since he returned from his trip to R ia with Mlihu Root, in the in- Ss of wesld imperialism. He usually attaches himself to move- ments that arouse enough opposition |to bring him into print and enough support to keep his larder filled. Tho he rendered service to the allies, |among them Great Britain during the |war against Germany he became an | Irish patriot when that profession was jless hazardous than it was when | Woodrow Wilson was the chief prose- jcutor of real Irish rebels against British imperialism in the United | States, | * * * ATER on Russell took» up the i cudgels for Filipino independence, |but it is likely that his interest was |greater in the Quezon treasury than jin the sufferings of the Filipino masses under the Wall Street yoke. Perhaps his contract ran out, anyhow, we don’t find the gentleman writing any more in behalf of Filipino inde- | Pendence, but he has broken into the | headlines again by espousing the cru- |sade conducted by William Hale | Thompson against Brittsh propaganda in the United States. iWE are by no means in accord with those who regarc Thompson’s cam- Mpaign as a Quixotic tilting at windmills. There is plenty of British imperialist-propaganda in this country and almost every British lecturer that comes here, from the socialist Ber- trand Russell to the most reactionary tory, does his best to boost the em- pire. Thompson’s campaign is a far- sighted recognition of the growing in- tensity of the competition between this country and Great Britain and as a politician he is not making any mis- take in getting in on the ground floor, Our attitude is one of “a plague on both your houses.” Peace can only be established in this world by the exploited workers and subject peoples when they wrest power from the brigands who are now in control, While Thompson is fighting the British empire for carrying on propa- ganda in this country favorable to its interests, he has not a word to say against the imperialist campaigns waged by the United States in Latin America, the Philippines and China. * * * (BARLES EDWARD RUSSELL served on the Commission of Pub« lic Information in London during 1918. His job, in conjunction with others, was to misinform the public about the war. While he was in Lon- don, many of his former comrades were in jail for opposing the war, They dared to be on the unpopular side. At that time fighting . the British empire meant jail, even in the gE Ree re ee ee 6 United States. It was Russell’s mas+ ter, Woodrow Wilson, who gave the information to the British govern- ment that resulted in the arrest and execution of Roger Casement, whe came from Germany to Ireland on a submarine. You see, the postry was too easy to| bm Russell will pull the British lion’s tail at so much pex jerk. He would feed the lion for a similar consideration. * * * | Rowe Robert Cecil in explaining the reason for the flop of the Geneva conference on naval armaments de« clared that Great Britain’s refusal tq admit parity of naval strength with the United States “bangs, bolts and bars the door” to any hope of agree. ment with the United States. The noble lord is right. The two great empires are liable to be at cack other’s throats in a comparatively short space of time, unless they firs{ start a war on the Soviet Union. the latter case there may not be waned left of imperialism by the time the battle is over. * * * TE police department of Bethlehem Pa., has a rather novel method of paying its way. On Saturdays it puts jin a few hours arresting people or vague charges of disorderly conduct Inmates of bawdy houses are ar rested, fined and turned loose again This activity nets the departmeni, ’ labout $40,000 a year. We subpni( |that this is a mighty good way oj | keeping a police department going, | * * * ‘ |RICHARD BEATTY MELLON, o: |®* Pittsburgh, brother of “Andy” out secretary of the treasury, erected «7 $100,000 pavilion in which the receyh |tion to his daughter, the supper and | |the ball that fpllowed her wedding were held, The wedding gifts wert estimated to cost more than half 4 million, At the same time thousandt of coal miners in the Pittsburgh dis trict and their families are starving |The Mellons are heavily interested ix coal. | * * * |MOVERNOR Fisher of Pennsylvaniy will give careful study to the cony plaints of misuse of power made by ja delegation of labor leaders read by William Green, that called on thi governor. According to press reportt the main object of the labor leader: is to obtain “a better spirit of unden standing between the men on strike the employes and the police agencie of the state government.” The coa operators have little cause to worry as long as their slaves are led by leaders who beg instead of demand, Lha,m! Mellonjl— —T. J. O'}FLAHERTY