The Daily Worker Newspaper, December 8, 1927, Page 6

Page Six THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1927 THE DAILY WORKER Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO. Daily, Except Sunday 83 First Street, New York, N. Y. Cable Address: 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 year .50 six months $2.50 three months. $2.00 three months. Phone, Orchard 1680 “Daiwork” > ae Address and mail out checks to THE DAILY WORKER, 33 First Street, New York, N. Y. .ROBERT MINOR WM. F. DUNNE 21 Editor....... Assistant Editor. Wntered as second-class mail at the post-office at New York, N. ¥., the act of March 3, 1879. "There Is Nothing “Nonpartisan” About the Coolidge Recom- mendation for Coal Mining Anti-Strike Legislation under ’ The coal miners must be on their guard more vigilantly than | ever before. The Coolidge message openly urges a “Watson- Parker” law for the coal industry—a measure which has as its primary purposes the destruction of the right to strike. At the time when the coal miners are fighting for the life} of their union, with thousands of miners’ families thrown out of | their homes by eviction processes, with the union being slowly strangled by federal and state injunctions, when the Lewis ma- chine has cut off the Illinois district from the rest of the union by a separate agreement, while hunger stalks in the coal camps, the official leadership of the union is conspiring with Coolidge for the enactment of an anti-strike law disguised as conciliation but which is really compulsory arbitration. This is the meaning of the clause in the Coolidge message to congress under the head of “Coal” and this is the meaning of the visit paid Coolidge by John L. Lewis recently. The struggle against the coal barons, their coal and iron) police, injunctions and evictions in the coal fields will have to be connected now with the fight to prevent the passage of the anti- strike law urged by Coolidge. The Coolidge proposal shows more clearly than ever the need for a labor party as the weapon with which to carry on the fight on this front. The lessons learned in the strike struggle, in the fight against injunctions, must be carried into the election cam- paign by worker candidates who speak in the name of labor and who owe no allegiance to the parties of the coal barons and other capitalists. Relief for the miners must be collected with the greatest en- | ergy, the picket lines must be maintained, the organization of the non-union fields must be begun and together with these strug- gles there should be Labor Party candidates making their chal- lenge to democrat and republican candidates in every city, county, state and national election. The campaign for a Labor Party is not something separate | from the struggle to maintain the right to strike and picket, the right to organize, to gain better wages and working conditions, but is a part of this struggle. The Coolidge recommendation for anti-strike legislation in | the coal industry shows the political character of the struggle | | | } | | | IS ON HIS WAY The path of the righteous is strewn with thorns, according to scripture but the ghost writers of two thousand years ago could not know of the existence of manholes and sewers. And it comes to pass, that Al Smith, beloved of Tammany, and in good standing with the great god capitalism, would like to be president. But even as in the case of Warren Gamaliel Harding, who had his Teapot Dome, “AI” Smith has his $16,000,000 Queens Borough sewer seandal which now yawns before his onward march. Verily indeed graft is a thing of evil and a hole in the ground. ———— “The Centuries” Is a Play for Says Em Jo Basshe — An Interview with Author By SENDER GARLIN |4¢QUTHOR! Author!” | Em Jo Basshe, who wrote “The | Centuries” now playing at the New} Playwrights’ Theatre told me yester- day a few things about himself and jabout the play. The tiny reception room of the} \theater was jammed with various} |callers: applicants for parts, drama- |tists. who were bringing MS. with | them and others who were carrying \them away; friends of the family. | |Basshe invited me to follow him up! some improvised rickety steps to aj | | } | } EM JO BASSHE ‘Labor, “The men of God,” Basshe said, “never had any use for the workers, | neither in ancient times nor at the present time. Here and there the ‘Taimud speaks kindly but apologetic word for the poor; but ordinarily the workers are held in contempt and placed almost in the same class as lepers.” | * * * i HE author of “The Centuries” has |* seen much of the United States in the 15 years that he has lived here. | And various activities have given jhim a curious insight and sharp ac- !quaintance into many things. Basshe passed thru the pubiie schools, finally —~? UPTON SINCLAIR tiny dressing room where we could graduating from the Latin High ‘ALVIN COOLIDGE does not havel to run very fast in order to keep] j warm the rest of his life if it is true | that he saved $400,000 from his salary during his four years in the white’ |house. The president is no crap- shooter like his predecessor, Warren Gamiel Harding, who lost large sums| of money at games of chance when| he should be reading his bible or re-} cuperating in blest repose for the tasks of the next day. * * * | fF the tale of the president’s re-) | markable thritt accompusnment| |is weil founded, doormen, beil boys} |eullman porters, taxi drivers and} Washington bootieggers wiil not re-|} gret that Coolidge aid “not choose tol} run.” As far as they are concerned the president can spend the rest of! his life running atter trolley cars. The chief execuuve’s salary is $75,000, a year with $20,UU0 thrown in for ex-) penses. Kvidentiy Caivin put every-) thing in the sock. More than that, he must have bummed his meais from) the white house janitor, while in} Washington. * * * iw a way it is a matter for regret that the president did not choosy to run. Perhaps he feeis that he ha) done one man’s share in proving tha! it is possibie tor an American citizen to live within his salary. In four) more years of national service he would have saved a million dollars and proved that the late William Jen- nings Bryan was wrong, when the de- ceased fundamentalist said that no) man could make one miilion dollars during a lifetime without leaving his’ honesty open to question. To even) doubt Coolidge’s honesty would be te risk losing the vote of Vermont cider’ makers and the bill collectors of the) nation. | * * * i Wa Coolidge reiterated his de- cision that he would not run, stocks took a nose dive in Wall Street, but they recovered almost im-| mediately, proving that presidents| may come and presidents may go, but the exploiting of labor will go on until the workers put ,an end to it, Whether the next occupant of the} white house is Al Smith, the demo-) crat, Charles G. Dawes, the republican} or a black nag, who is yet beyond) suspicion, American imperialism will) continue to function to the satisfac- tion of Wall Street. s + PMOTHY HEALY, president of the International Brotherhood of Fire- men and Oilers exchanged his birth- vight for a banquet. For the past of the miners. There is nothing ‘“on-partisan” in this recom- talk uadisturbed. | few years “Tim” was not. damned by mendation and “non-partisan” political action must be discarded and replaced by a Labor Party if the fight to save the unions is | to be victorious. Another Banker-Ambassador for Latin America Next to recess appointment by President Coolidge of Dwight W. Morrow as ambassador to Mexico was the appointment, now before congress for approval, of Col, Noble Brandon Judah, Chi-| cago bank director, lawyer, and militarist, to succeed Major Gen- eral Enoch H. Crowder, as ambassador to Cuba. Judah is a millionaire banker, a political lackey of the Mc- Cormick Harvester trust and the Samuel Insull public utility trust, who married Dorothy Patterson of Dayton, Ohio, daughter of the scab-herding National cash register corporation and heires to the Patterson millions. & Trust Company, one of the most powerful of the mid-west finan- cial institutions. As ambassador to Cuba, Judah will be, ex-officio, a member of the United States delegation to the Pan-American conference, where he will also be host to Charles Evans Hughes, chairman of the delegation, and the other agents of dollar despotism. This second banker-ambassador for Latin"America is evidence that representatives of great combinations of bank capital are to be sent to the southern republics to replace the “career men,” the professional diplomats who are mere agents of imperialism. This is indicative of the fact that the situation is considered so delicate that the ruling class itself must directly administer its affairs instead of entrusting them to professional politicians. This new policy of the administration at Washington should be a warning signal to the Latin Americans and impel them to- ward the creation of an anti-imperialist bloc of nations that will wage a fight to exterminate yankee imperialism and drive its agents from their borders. The Pan American conference should be used as a forum from which to hurl defiance at the arrogance of the blood streaked government at Washington and pave the | way for determined resistance to its power. Textile Wage Cuts Textile companies in Augusta, Biddeford and Lewiston, Maine, have made a flat 10 per cent reduction in wages. The wage cut in one company alone, the Pepperell mills, affects 3,500 workers. The ‘textile industry usually is the first to reflect a coming depression in industry. Altho the whole New England textile | industry is depressed due to the rise of the textile industry in the south where wages are even lower than in New England, these drastic wage slashes in Maine can be taken as signs of a campaign of attempted general reductions coinciding with the general de- cline in production. In some of the Maine mills the workers have asked that union organizers be sent, showing that the wage cuts are not going to be taken tamely. A campaign of organization coupled with energetic efforts to| form joint amalgamation committees in the section of the textile industry where cuts are made will form a basis for struggle against the lowering of the living standards which the textile bosses are carrying on and which will undoubtedly become more vicious as unemployment increases, ' i He is a director of the Chicago Title | * * * i “T agree with you,” he said, “that | it’s the proper thing to try to find jout just what a writer is trying to do.} | And some facts about his previous ac- | tivities sometimes help in understand- | ing what kind of a play he is trying) to get over. | “The only kind of plays of any tality are revolutionary — plays,” Basshe continued. “Nearly a hun-} dred plays have been submitted to} |us since we began our theater,” he as-| ed, “but only those with workin, class implications have any signifi-| jeance. Handicapped by lack of money | ‘and proper equipment, the New Play-} vrights’ Theatre is nevertheless ting the basis for a genuine pr starian theatre in the United States.” Basshe is one of the five directors |of the theatre which started last year with the presentation of John Howard | Lawson’s “Loud Speaker,” followed by |“Earth” by himself. The other direc- |tors, besides Lawson. are Michael |Gold, John Dos Passos and Francis | Edwards Faragon. “I met Mike Gold | way back in 1914 in Boston only two {years after I had arrived in this | country from Russia with my father,” |Basshe related. “Gold was then | working as a reporter on a newspaper \there and helping to edit a magazine |ealled ‘The Blast.’ Some of his ar- | ticles and short stories first attracted me to him and to the radical move- ment.” * * * {NOW barely 27 years old, Basshe |*" has worked alone in America since |he was a boy of 12. For his father |remained in this country but a short time before returning to his native |town of Vilna to continue his work of Jewish colonization as an escape from the pogroms of czarist Russia. Basshe’s father is now in the United | States on a brief visit. He was one ‘of the prime movers in the organiza- |tion of “Icor,” the Jewish agricul- |tural colony in the Soviet Union. Basshe has worked as a shipping clerk in Boston; in a foundry in Har- risburgh, Pa., and at miscellaneous occupations in various cities of the | United States while he was bumming |in various sections of the Middle and Far West. the strike scenes and the descrip- tions of the sweat shops I saw in |Boston, Philadelphia and in New York,” he said. | “We want to produce labor plays and we want labor audiences,” Basshe said. “Every author writes for an audience; we want to wifte for a la- bor audience for then we will know that our work has truth and vitality.” “The Centuries” now being prv- sented, is a genuine labor play, he feels. The grinding exploitation in (Drawn By DON BROWN) 'HE fact that the setting for the play is in a Jewish community does not limit its significance, he feels. “The economic implications hold good for workers everywhere,” Basshe told me. “Whether they be garment workers, furriers, auto workers or miners.” The author of the play pointed out that the owners of the Triangle Waist Shop where over 100 girls were burned to death because of the negli- gence of the owners were never con- victed, while pickets during the re- cent furriers’ strike have been sen- tenced to long prison terms for peaceful picketing. _ The fire scene in the “Centuries” is one of the most dramatic in the entire play which is a thrilling de-| scription of industrial servitude on the East Side during the beginnings of the sweat-shop system in New York. “My play has ween criticized by some,” said Basshe, “on the ground that it describes a revolt which is primarily an aesthetic revolt against the machine. I believe that such an attitude is unfair. In the United States, or any capitalist country, for that matter, a revolt against the machine is of fundamental signifi- cance. There is nothing glamorous about machinery; its test of value is its service in reducing the misery of the workers. “In this country the machine is used to increase the degredation and slavery of the worker, and any re- volt against it is the beginnings of a revolt which may easily grow into a class-conscious organized fight upon the system of exploitation. In the Soviet Union machinery is being util- ized to build a new society; here it is used merely to increase the profits of those who are in control.” . *. * “THE Centuries” has been bitterly attacked by a number of New York rabbis, Basshe declared. “This is-quite understandable,” he said, “in view of the fact that the play makes a direct attack upon the quackery upon which the Tabernacles of the Penny Jehovahs thrive. In addition it exposes the dubious past traditions which are being used merely as a shield to parasitism.” Basshe said that this charge applies not only to the orthodox Jewry, but | School in Boston. He is a graduate | pharmaceutical chemist, but he has |spent only two years in that precise \and circumscribed work. {| A migratory newspaper worker, |Basshe has been a reporter on the | Journal and also the Globe in Boston; {the Chicago Daily News where he of chapters will appear in The concluding “Money Writes!” knew Carl Sandburg, Ben Hecht and | the other literary graduates of jour- nalism. Later he was employed on various small-town papers in the the West. Basshe has also been a pugilist in his day, too, he confessed. In the lightweight class, his promising career was cut short however, “In my first fight I was knocked out—cold and flat in the third round. For this I received $25; in the second fight I was knocked out without pay; the} third bout was a draw, and in the fourth both I and my opponent were arrested for violating one of the lo- cal ‘blue laws.’” The DAILY WORKER beginning with tomorrow’s issue. Sinclair’s book, which is a scath- ingly ironical examination’ of the economic basis of contemporary American novels, has aroused a storm of controversy. : “Money Writes!” is the fifth of a series of books under the general title “The Dead Hand.” Other volumes are “The Brass Check,” “The Profits of Religion,” ‘The Goose Step” and “Mammonart.” Editor, the Daily Worker: \ On display at 1670 Broadway and! 52nd Street in New York might be seen the most unusual story of the Spanish Inquisition in fourteen por- traits by Franz Vinck, the famous Belgian portrait painter. These oil paintings were suppressed by the Belgian Government since 1883 and only recently saw the light of day in that country. | What unquestionably would re-_ quire hundreds of pages narrating in! detail all the tortures of the Inquisi- tion instigated at the behest of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in close al- liance with the feudal monarchs can be reviewed at this art gallery in the space of thirty-five minutes—a_pic- ture story so horrible that it serves as the most damning indictment ‘of | the Catholic Church. The Inquisition required no proofs of culpability. Any sort of false in- formation or unfounded suspicion {were sufficient motives to bring to the rack and the stake hundreds of thousands of innocent victims. One of the portraits represents the dung- eons of the Inquisition. in the 1th century, consisting of subterranean vaults situated at a depth of more! |than thirty feet underground/ Un-| fortunate sufferers were condemned _ to sojourn in these dreadful hdles and |many of them mad with despair put an end to their torments by: killing , | themselves, | Another oil painting entitled “The |Strappad Torture” describes an in- ‘fliction of torture in which the vic- The Workers Forum floor, a weight of two hundred and fifty pounds having previously been hung to his feet. The “heretic” is submitted to this kind of torture, while standing at his side is a Dom- inican friar prepared to catch the least murmer resembling an avowal. If the prisoner does recant and recon- cile himself to the church, he by no means is let off lightly. He is “mer- cifully” granted the favor of being strangled before he is thrown to the flames! The Spider Torture is the subject of another portrait, an apparatus which was ingeniously »used to tear the breasts from thousands of women who dared to express thoughts, which, however slight they may have been might reflect upon the “godliness” of the church authorities. In this paint- ing we see the breasts of a woman , being torn off, and the wounds left by this horrible mutilating being cau- terized with red hot irons, All for having been accused of nursing a heretic child! , The exhibits shown order are as follows: Apprehensions and House Search- ing; Common Prisons of the Inquisi- tion; The Inquisitorial Tribunal; The Strappads Torture; and Mysterious Disappearances; ‘he Water Torture; The Spider Torture; The Torture of the Feet; The Scourg- ing; Spanish Boot Torture; The Rack; Exposition of Victim’s Limbs; The Procession of the Auto-Da-Fe, and the Auto-Da-Fe, All of the above portraits are des- ined for the art galleries of Mexico in numerical Nightly Seizures | the East Side shops, the contempt for|1lso to the so-called “reformed human life, and the strike scenes arc} ples” presided over by men like all part of the general portrayal o.|Stephen 8. Wise whose job, Basshe the life of the garment workers jus }declared, “is to flatter the whimsies prior to their achievement of th«|of the comfortable members of the unions, owning class.” |time of the Inquisition is first strip-, City and will remain in’ New York ped of all clothing after which both only for a short time, Readers of The much praise from the bureaucracy of the American Federation of Labor or by the “friend of labor” who occupies the post of secretary of labor in the Coolidge cabinet. * * * “"TIM’S” fall from grace was due to his espousal of the cause of So-) viet recognition which was anathema| to the heads of the A. F. of L. and| the Coolidge administration. “Tim” was punished by finding himself) eased out of the presidency of his) union. Now poor “Tim” has the fol-| lowing bouquet handed to him by) secretary of labor Davis, at a_ban- quet in Healy’s honor at the Hotel) Commodore: o labor leader has’ ever had more friends than Healy for) the reason that he has given labor a} new dignity, a new title to public re- spect.” Had “Tim” gone out of the labor movement without a heavy meal he would not have this burden to his} | grave. oN, | * * * j 9. J. SHEA, executive board member | i of the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Em- { - jployes of America, gave much-) needed adyice to fearless spotters of,' the traction magnates’ who attend union meetings in order to turn in the names of those traction employes) who attend, to the traction officials Shea informs all and sundry that hi) |men will make a list of spotters avhy | turn it over to maik order firms, ~ 7— the more likely probability to “toca unions where the names will 7 reac aloud at meetings. * * x PVRITERS of accident and amcaet insurance might read the promised — |list with profit and interest./ There i nothing more killing than) a heavy | daily mail asking the recipient to buy | this, that and the other thing. There § is nothing more nerve-wracking, ex- cept to have your door bell ring every | fifteen minutes by sewing machine salesmen or furniture _ collectors. Spotters would not.do much worrying if Mr. Shea carried out his threat to have their names read at trade union — meetings. Neither would the under- | takers. | © . * | HERE is no more contemptible | louse masquerading as a human | |being on the face of the earth than’) |the stoolpigeon. He is almost with- out fail a brainless individual, Bill Haywood attributes his baldness to this species. It was Bill’s practice when illustrating the mental de- ficiency of this type to pluck a hair from his head and inform his audience that the brains of all the ystool- pigeons in the United States could rattle inside the hair. Bill delivered hands are strongly tied behind his|DAILY WORKER would do well to back. Then by means of pulleys and'see these oil paintings before they rope fastened to his hands, he is fiers United States, | raised to a certain distance from J. P. PADGUG several thousand speeches and he never forgot the stool-pigeon, | has still a few hairs left. _ ‘