The Daily Worker Newspaper, November 25, 1927, Page 6

Page Six THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1927 THE DAILY WORKER IN THE COAL MINERS’ FIGHT AGAINST SLAVERY Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO, 83 First Street, New York, N. Y. By Mail (in New York $8.00 per 3 three Address THE DAILY WORKER, Editor.. mont Assistant Editor. . econd-class Dai Except Sunday | Phone, Orchard 1680 | Cable Address: ‘Daiwork” A | SUBSCRIPTION RATES nly): By Mail (outside of New oYrk): 8 onth 6.00 per year $3.50 six months $2.00 three months ind mail out chec First Street, s_to New York, N. Y. ROBERT’ MINOR | .. WM, F. DUNNE mail at the act of Mar “Fight or Surrender”---The Lesson of the Injunction Drive On Labor > injunction granted the other day to the Clearfield Bi-| tuminous Coal Corporation against the United Mine Workers of America—one of series of similar restraining orders which out-| law the union and the strike in West Virginia, Ohio and Penn- sylvania- “We therefore do strictly enjoin and command you . . rth desis yiracy among you you do hencef tion or co says, among many other things: . that | : From attempting any scheme, combina- | selves, or with others, to annoy, hinder or interfere with or prevent any person or persons from worki or the plaintiff or seeking employment with the plaintiff, | or from any and all acts, and from the use of any ways, means or | method plaintiff from operating t application made by the Interborough Rapid | The injunction . which will tend to hinder, impede or obstruct the |} he said Rossiter Mines.” | Transit Company of New York asks that the American Federation | of Labor, the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees and a “From doing any act l labor organizations be prohibited: whatsoever knowingly and wilfully, by way of advice, persuasion, or otherwise, to induce the employees | of the plaintiff, pr their several contracts o ent and future, or any of them, to breach | f employment with the plaintiff or to| leave or abandon the service of the plaintiff without plaintiff's | consent, or to strike, or fully reasonably caleulated to produce such results, or any of | (Our empha: | The West Virginia injunction prohibits any act “calculated to them... . rom doing any act knowingly and wil- | +) | | | interfere” with the production of coal as an article of inter-state | commerce. The Pennsylvania injunction granted to the Pitts- | burgh Terminal Coal Company against the United Mine Workers not only outlaws strikes and organi tion which interferes with | the production of articles of interstate commerce but legalizes evictions. The West Virginia injunction and the I. R. T. application both oe— “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.” XXIX. legalize the “yellow dog” contract and thus gives company unions a higher status than genuine unions while at the same time giving | the protection. of the government to these company unions and individual contracts. In Colorado the strike of coal miners was declared illegal by the state government and six miners have been shot down and killed like common criminals and dozens wounded. The Colorado massacre is company unionism and the injunc- tion proc carried to its logical conclusion. ng Once the legal principle is established that unions, strikes and organization campai, The only org: s are illegal, made so by injunction or oth- erwise, and the working class will soon hear the rattle of machine- | guns in the hands of the upholders of American institutions : ations which the capitalists of the United States intend to tolerate are those directly under their control. More than this, altho it may sound extreme, there is a large sec- tion of the capitalist class of this country which opposes any form of unionism, both company unionism and the efficiency unionism advocated by the off cial labor leadership. William H. Barr, president of the National Founders’ Associa- tion, the organization of foundry capitalists, speaking at ‘the thirt “st annual conference of that body held in New York re- The Ex-Furnaceman (Continued srom Last <csue.) PP yeNty years ago I had what the New York newspapers were pleased to call a “socialist colony”; and one day there turned up at this | place -a runaway student from Yale University. Harry Sinclair Ww his name, and we called him al”; he was tall and la |headed and talkative, me: learned later, observant. He ap- ied for the job of tending our fur- ace without knowing anything about t; and as none of us knew any more} than he we let him. our four-sided fireplace in the even- every aspect of the radical movement, which was far more useful to him than anything he could have got at Yale. Now he is the most famous of American novelists, and I shine in his reflected glory. About fifty per Lewis | He sat round} ings and got a complete education inj cently, stated, according to the New York Times: ‘ “The time is here when the open shop must increase in effec- tiveness. . . . It may be that many well-meaning persons feel that the unions are towers of strength against communist ideas in this country. £ a matter of fact there is little difference be- tween communism and a labor union oligarchy.” The fact that communism and “a labor union oligarchy,” if such a thing can be conceived, are as far apart as the poles, is not | wrong in his records, and what will the important thing here. What IS import ant is that this powerful section of manufac- | turers for whom Barr speaks is against any kind of unionism, any form of working class organization. cent of the strangers I meet tell me jhow much they enjoyed “Main Street”; or else they frown, and I ow they are blaming me for Elmer Gantry.” Even newspapers the editor of a religious paper st damned me for having chal- |lenged God in a Kansas City church, I am getting uneasy for fear the |recording angel may have got it I do if I wake up in hell? My ex-furnaceman’s books are so well known that I won’t take the time |to tell about them, but will come at }once to my point, which is that he These capitalists of course welcome the attack of the reac-|does not make as much use of .his tionary leadership upon the Communists and left wing workers | They know that it weakens the labor movement | movement, aad it motivatentiesertie| in the unions. radical education as the good of his country requires. He’ knows the and they have no objection to making a united front with labor |cism; but some day I hope that he officialdom against militant trade unionism. But these bosses have no intention of recognizing unions and allowing the workers in their plants to organize just because offi- cialdom claims to be more patriotic than the bosses themselves and interested only in “defending Ame creasing production. af These capitalists recognize the fact that sooner or later, when , labor leadership systematically betrays masses, a revolt takes place and under the ican institutions’ and in- the interests of the pressure of falling liv- ing standards and capitalist tyranny, unions become organizing centers for struggle. Even company unions revolt. The drive against the labor movement with the injunction as its principal weapon has for its purpose the destruction of unions —especially mass unions like the United Mine Workers which are the core of the labor movement. The hopelessly inadequate measures sanctioned by the emerg: sency conference of A. F. of L. officials in Pittsburgh erve only to give encouragement to the capitalists and to demoralize the la- bor movement. e It is clear that the present policy of labor officialdom, ex- pressed in such acts as the endorsement of the republican Pinchot for the U. S. senate, the sickening appeal the purely formal call for aid for the striking miners, the failure | to President Coolidge, to endorse and organize mass violations of injunctions, the dis- graceful attack on the rank and file miners’ delegatio s, contains al] the essentials of the general policy of surrender which has pre- vailed previously. ‘Lne deep crisis which the labor movement faces, the impend- tug industrial depression, the growing unemployment and the ob-| labor movement ; ; fl | won't feel he has to camouflage his knowledge so carefully. In “Main reet” there is a “wobbly,” but we lare elaborately kept from knowing | that he nything so dreadful. That was all right, because Hal was a |young publisher’s reader who had made a little money writing for Colonel Lorimer, and taken a vear off in an effort to win his freedom. Money Writes {But now that he is the most famous {novelist in America, and close to a| | millionaire, surely he might venture ito tell the whole truth! I take the case of “Arrowsmith,” erning which I have facts to con- tribute. There is a character in this jfine novel by the name of Max Gott- lieb, represented as being a master | scientific researcher. It bears re- semblance to Jacques Loeb, so much |so that everyone takes it to be Loeb. But it isn’t; and it so happens that I knew Loeb intimately, and can say exactly what Lewis did to Loeb to turn him into Gottlieb. co} £ The most conspicuous fact about Loeb was that he was a thoroughly trained and ardent Social-democrat of the old German type. He never— at least not until the war—made the slightest concealment’ of his revolu- {tionary beliefs. But that was an} aspect of Loeb which would not have | endeared him to the American novel- i reading public; and so what did! Lewis do? He performed a major surgical operation and cut out Loeb’s Socialism and threw it into the gar- | bage can. And what did he put into} its place? Why, Max Gottlieb gets} volt against capitalism, but it is quite respectable for him to revolt against prohibition! | “Arrowsmith” comes down to the |post-war period; and so I mention another aspect of Jaeques Loeb—a great scientist from Germany brow- beaten, cowed, literally dying of hu- miliation at the treatment he has re- ceived from American public opinion. In 1922, when I made a tour of Goose-Step,” I visited Loeb at Wood’s Hole, and he poured out his heart to me; telling the story of the tinie- ‘serving and Mammon-worship he had seen during twenty years of Amer- jican academic life, first at the Uni- ‘versity of Chicago and then at the University of California. I made copious notes under Loeb’s eyes; but | no sooner was I gone than fear seized | him, and he wrote me the most ab- ject and pitiful letters--do not for |God’s sake mention his name, do not write anything that could be identi- fied as having come from him, for \fear of ruining his research work. | Will anyone say that is not drama? | Will anyone say that such a Max viius ‘ntention of the bosses and their government to take the fullest officvinldom to action. They prefer to retreat rather than break with their friends | t parties, publicly admit the class character of | » the labor movement for organiza- tion of the unorganized and establish a labor party to unite against | in the capital American government, mobili advantage of these developments have not aroused labor | capitalist government all the force of the working class. Labor officialdom fears the masses, fears struggle, more. It prefers than it fears the capitalists. rather than on the workers. to base itself on the bosses ~ But efficiency unionism and the “nonpartisan” political . pol- icy produces only a fiercer attac! . ‘ s + i The American working class, organized and unorganized, has | to meet the drive of the bosses for the destruction of the labor | movement by mass organization campaigns, the organization of | a labor party, mass violation of ‘organized struggle for the defea k on the labor movement. injunctions—and purposeful and t of a labor officialdom which is ‘leading the labor movement straight to disaster. Fight or surrender-—~these arg the two alternatives before the drunk. A great scientist may not re-| America to gather material for “The | Gottlieb could not have been made interesting in a novel? I wrote to Sinclair Lewis, protest- |ing against the lack of social under- | standing on the part of this charact tand others. I have a right to do this, because I) have been his friend for | twenty yéays. I had heard that he was going, to write a “preacher nov- jel,” and I\ begged him not to repeat | this—shall| I say evasion—in his new jbook. I pdinted out that however ig- norant a hacteriologist may be, it is | impossible/for a Methodist clergyman |in Americh not to have some infor- | mation or) social questions; because |Harry F. Ward hes an organization |for the pjirpose of seeing that they |get appedled to and informed. In order to make certain that my friend | knew what the Methodist clergy are getting, I sent him a copy of the four- page semi-monthly paper, the “Social Service Bulletin,” published by the Methodist Federation for Social Ser- vice in New York City. And what came of it? You have read “Elmer Gantry,” and you know that nothing came of it. Elmer knows nothing and hears nothing about social justice, and neither do any of the other clerical persons in the book. Instead, Elmer Gantry, the | villain, does like the scientific heroes |—he gets drunk. I do not mean to assert there are not Methodist and | Baptist clergymen who get drunk, and carry on intrigues with the married ladies of their congregation; but will anyone seriously maintain that the problem of the clergy who so behave is anything like so general or so ur- gent as the problem of the clergy who have rich parishioners, and dg net speak out against wage slavery and political corruption for fear of | | | | | Sneerer at couritry ; Curser of oppression! | Cursing ‘God damn!’ Weeping, In my room, In my library.” Ly i ‘show bureaucracy and graft in the Song for Intellectuals By JOSEPH KALAR. Onward and ever onward! Past the bleached skeletons and crumbling bones Of Frank Little, Joe Hill, Sacco and Vanzetti, August Spies, George Engel, chanting this song: “I am a thrower-up of barricades; Iam a singer of the red dawn; Crumbler of the roof of the earth; “Hear me shout with black caustic fury, See me weep the bitter agony, the corroding sorrow, Thrust a clenched fist toward God, When Sacco and Vanzetti Are tumbled by a blue bolt into. physical oblivion. “See me! Hear me! Watch me close, I say! What monstrous beautiful barricades these hands Have reared, a bloody curse to God! “See me! Hear me! Watch me close, I say! Throwing up gigantic barricades, By Fred Ellis Ye - np By Upton Sinclair what these parishioners may think end-say and do? It is an awkward matter for me to criticise “Elmer Gantry,” when I have a rival novel on the market, and | am being beaten in the sales. But let me record that when I read “Bab- | bitt,” I emitted a whoop of delight, and that whoop was widely adver- tised by the publishers. Nothing | would please me more than to whoop again—but it won't be for a novel which jeers at the Protestant churches of America because they put the pro- hibition laws on the statute books, and are going to stick to the job until they get the laws enforced. My friend Hal has promised me to write a labor novel; and that is what I beg for. I do not ask a work of propaganda, but a work of facts that will introduce the American people to this unknown world. Let the novelist old-line unions—nothing needs more to be done. Let him show the weakness- es of the radical movement, its mis- erable factional ‘wrangling, its dog- matism and narrowness—I have been pleading against these errors, and ‘I am ready to “stand the gaff.” But let the novelist also make clear—he knows it as well as I know it—that our society is in agony from the pois- oning of the profit motive; and let him portray the new forces that are germinating among the organized workers and farmers, to put an end to the poisoning. If he will write this, he will displease a million or two of his readers, and perhaps lose them fer a time; but-he will per- form for the American people the greatest literary service in their his- tory. (To Be Continued). | NE of the most significant state- ments made on Thanksgiving day issued from the white house and con- |¢retely from the president. The his- | |tory-making announcement resulted , |from the visit of a football team. a |Looking at their trousers, the presi- |dent observed, “I am glad to see that | your trousers are not flopping around |on the ground.” Should Calvin choose jto change his mind and run again he may lose the clothing manufacturers’ | } vote. Pe =) * | THE most remarkable story that ap- | peared in the United States press | for some time went over my head a jfew weeks ago. A friend of mine | called me on the ’phone and informed me about it. It appears-that a per- son afflicted with leprosy was ar- sted for being at large. He ex- plained his predicament with the | story that Commissar 505 of Siberia i ailed him the leprous germs; The i imarkable thing about the story is } the fact that any newspaper pub- lished it. Sacoar aan * * * Wels RANDOLPH HEARST did not have to publish an exposé cf. the world-wide ramifications of the conspiracies carried: on against capitalism by Elias Plutarco Calles in yesterday’s edition of his papers. Calles had a priest shot for attempt- * ing to assassinate Obregon, the presi- pat ! dential -candidate. Hearst felt that a dead priest would create enough 4] prejudice against the Mexican gov- ernment to do for one day. * * ae 'ARCUS GARVEY, former head of the. Universal! Negro Improve- ment Association, will be deported on his release from Atlanta, where he has heen serving a sentence after conviction on the alleged charge of using the mails to defraud the colored people. (Tho holding no brief for tha teircus methods of Mr. Garvey and his W crazy scheme for the solution of the Negro problem by turning Africa into a Negro ‘empire, witn Marcus ag | Chief Cook ‘and Bottle Drinker, we jare of the opinion that the govern- ment punished Mareus because ha aroused a considerable section of the }cppressed Negro population of Amer- {ica to a sense of their own power. * * THE Chicago police are again en gaged in one of those “finish fights” with the gangsters. When the new police chief was inducted into : cffice he promised to make the city i safe from gangsters inside of forty- eight hours. It is now considerably more than forty-eight days since he tcok the chair in city hall and ap- | parently the result of his efforts has é been that Chicago has been made safe for the gangsters. As long as the guns of the gangsters count the votes in elections, so long will the gang- sters be immune. And as far as the workers are concerned. the guns might. as well be the vote tabulators as the more respectable machines that steal them for Tammany, * * * Mage England and. Italy are worried over the decision of the Soviet Government to send delegates to the forthcoming “disarmament” conference at Geneva. The Soviet Union spokesmen have made it quite clear that they intend to speak quite > frankly on the question and will pro- Fi pose immediate disarmament. That ; is just what the imperialist powers do not want. On previous occasions vhen Moscow refused to participate { jin these fake meetings the Soviet governnient was charged with re- sponsibility for the heavy burden im- ed on the magses for military and naval budgets. Now, that the Rus- sians are participating, the same powers charge them with a desire to | make trouble. | * * * ‘HERE is a serious rift in the ranks : of the British Labor Party over , the action of James Ramsay Mac- Donald in supporting the government on the Indian question. This labor-im- perialist flunkey accepted an ap. pointment on the government . com. 1 mission whose task is to “look into” i tne Indian situation. Some years agof MacDonald wrote a book on India from every pege of which the he | kind of imperialism oozed. iy even some sympathisers with e yadical movement still: give this mountebank eredit for some degree of honesty only goes to show how ig- norant most people are of current + histery. ae 'T is interesting to note that George Lansbury, a socialist of the evan- gelical type and for years considered one of the reddest of Great Britain’s radicals, is now sleeping in the same political bed with Ramsay MacDon- ald. Lansbury ran his own show for many years but the days of the lone pelitical wolf are passing and with them the time when one could exist ith me degree of political "and ranterial comfort by playing both ends of the working class movement against the middle. The pressure from both sides is getting so strong nowadays that one must choose one sile or the cther unless he wants to get his ribs crushed in. * * * * Hendrik Willem Van Loon historian and cartoonist, got on the front page when the story leaked out that he did not live with his wife. Haldeman Julius got there when he caused it to be known that his daughter intends to live with her husband. Haldeman- Julius wins the publicity contest. —T. J. FLAHERTY |.