The Daily Worker Newspaper, December 31, 1927, Page 7

} . vided for, namely, the unskilled work- d . that if there is any discontent the Party Leader | Points Need of Organization NOTE: After the interview of | the American delegation, , with | Stalin, he in turn asks this ques- tion which is of special interest to American workers. It is one of the questions in the newly published “Questions and Answers to Amer- ican Trade Unionists,” issued by the Workers’ Library Publishers, ee * * * STALIN’S QUESTION. ’ + How do you explain the absence of | @ special mass workers’ party in the, United States? The bourgeoisie in| America have two parties, the re-| publican party and the democratic | party. .But the American workers | have no mass party of their own.| Do not the comrades think that the absence of such a mass workers’ par- ty even if it were like the British La- bor Party weakens the working class wn its political fight against the: capi- talists? Then again, why do the| leaders of the Labor movement in America, Green and the others, 80 strongly oppose the establishment of @ Labor Party in America? * * * BROPHY: Yes, the leaders did decide that there was no necessity for forming such a Party. However, there is a minority which considers that such a Party is necessary. * Conditions in America at the pres- ent time are such, as has been point- ©» out already, that the trade union| movement is extremely weak. The weakness of the trade union move- ment is to be explained in its turn by the fact that the working class at present does not have to fight against the capitalists because the capitalists themselves increase wages and guar- antee to them satisfactory material conditions. STALIN: But it is the skilled workers mainly whose material con- ditions are guaranteed. There is a contradiction here. On the one hand it would appear that there is no nec- essity for organization because the workers are provided for. On the; other hand it is said that the more secure workers, the skilled workers, are organized in the trade unions. Thirdly, it would appear that the un- organized workers are those least pro- | érs Who most of all stand in nocd? organization. I cannot understand | is at all. : BROPHY: Yes. There is a con- tradiction. But so are American po- litical and economic conditions con- tradictory. BREBNER: Although the unskill- ed workers are not organized. they have the political right to vote, so unskilled workers can express this discontent by exercising their politi-} cal‘righé to-vote. On the other hand the: organized workers who belong to trade unions, when particularly bad times come, do not turn to their union but exercise their vote. Thus the po-| , litical right to vote compensates for} the} lack of trade union organization. ISRAELS:. One of the principal | ifficulties is the very system of elec- | tion in the United States. It is not the man for whom the majority of the votes of the whole country is cast, or! even the niajority of the votes of any | particular class in cast, that is elect-| éd as president. In every state there | je-an electoral college; every” state | has.a certain number of electors who | y) participate in the election of the presi- | dent. must obtain 51 per cent of the votes. Tf there were 3 or 4 parties no one! candidate would be elected and the éléction of the president would have | to" be transferred to the congress. his is an argument against forming a third party. “The opponents of the third party argue in this way: Don’t put forward a third candidate because you wil! split the liberal vote and you will prevent the liberal candidate from being elected. STALIN: But Senator LaFollette in his time was creating a third bour-' geois party. It follows then that the third party will not split votes if it isa bourgeois party, but it may split votes if it is a labor party. DAVIS: I do not regard the fa mentioned by the previous speaker acdundamental one, I think the important point is the followi i quote the example of th city inwhich I live. During the elfsction fa cer- eampaign the representative o: — To be elected, the candidate | jj, r } DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SA1, DECEMBER 31, 1927 Why No Labor Party, Babes Escape Death sla’ Do The children of workers have no nursemaids while their parents are ture shows James L. White, 226 Me- youngsters, Robert 3, and Arthur, 18 months, after they were revived from the effects of gas asphyxiation when they were left alone at home. While Parents Work ving in the shop or factory. Pic- ugal St., Brooklyn, with his two What a Labor Party Could Have Done for Sacco and Vanzetti By MARTIN ABERN. Article IV. in the Labor Party Series Probably in no other field could a mass American Labor Party, rooted in the trade unions, exert a greater influence than in a campaign on be- half of the class war and political prisoners wearing away their lives in San Quentin, Folsom, Leavenworth and other dungeons of American capi- talists. Particularly could this have applied in the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, whose lives were snuffed out by a combination of Massachusetts United States judicial and govern- mental Bourbons, under orders from the financial and economic rulers of | this country. European Labor Parties Defend and Aid Political Prisoners. In all other countries, the labor and revolutionary parties, as in Eng- land, and the working class parties in general, have through their pres- sure on capitalist governments often compelled the capitalists to release tain party gives the trade union lead- er an important job in connection with the campaign and places certain funds at his disposal, which he uses for his own purpose. In this way he atiss high prestige conneeted with his job. Ig urns out, therefore, that the lead of the trade union sup-| port on@Jor the other of the bour- geois parties. Naturally, wher there is any talk of forming a third party, a labo; party, these labor leaders re- fuse {> do anything in the matter. Theyt argue that if a third party were formed there would be a split in the trad union’ movement. rs pone The fact that only skil led workers are organized in trade unilns is due principally to the fact tha) in order to be able to join a UMon a man must have money and be off, hecause the entrance fees high and the unskilled worker cahnot afford to pay. Moreover, the UNskilled worker is under con- stént danger of being thrown out of Wdrk if he attempts to organize. The peace workers can be organized onay with the active aid of the skilled Workers, n the majority of cases this aid is not, forthcoming and this is one of the} principal obstacles to the organi- zation of the unskilled workers. The cipal means by which the work- This in my opinion jis sider Yhe economic con cipal factor in the vino of the ‘unskilled york litical ang rganized stat : ers in the po indus ‘trial fields Y mus point to % speci. al feature of the Amer- ican elebtore’| system. The direc primary ‘eJe-ction, in which any man the election booth, do- may get Pio clare hinfiselt a democrat or a re. publican and cast his vote. T am con vinced #that Gomers could not keep Party. The’ production of Max Reinhardt, and Arnold Korff, s:; Theatre, Monday night, with Richard Rodgers and Lorenz H: Lille is starred, _ at Hampden’s Theatre, New Plays ~*PERIPHERIE,” a drama by Frantisek Lan mopolitan Theatre. The cast Dagny Servaes, Hermann Thimig, Paul Ha: “RED DUST,” a new play by William Collisson at Daly’s 63rd St. Shirley Warde and Leonard Mundie in the cast, _ “SHE'S MY BABY,” a musical comedy, Guy. Bolton, Bert Kalmer and Harry Ruby wrote the book, HAMLET,” Shakespeare’s tragedy, will be revived fo: formances by Walter Hampden ; ger will be the fourth opening Monday night at the Cos- is headed by Alexander Meisei, rtmann, Hans Thimig Sidney Shields, Curtis Cooksey, at the Globe Tuesday night, art the music and lyrics. Beatrice lb r four per- beginning Wednesday afternoon and | rincipal reason why the unskill- prkers are unorganized. I cons ition the prin- vished to act politically, they coula join either of the existing two po- litical parties, get the responsible po- sitions in them and command infly- ence, With this argument Gompers managed to keep the workers away from the idea of organizing the work- ing class and of forming a Labor tims, or compelled them to retreat for a time from their intended work- ing class victims. There is the case of Lanzutsky in Poland, Rakosi and Szanto in Hun- gary, and many others. (New Hun- garian trials against these and oth- ers are now in process.) Mass pres- sure from the unions, Labor Parties, and other organs of the labor move- ment in Europe have often resulted in the diminution of prison sentences, | commutation, aninesties, etc. American Labor Party Could Fight Frame-up. | There is no reason why in the | United States of America a Labor |Party cannot likewise be a powerful | instrument to prevent the capitalists, their police and their courts from torturing and imprisoning class-con- scious. workers whose only “crimes” consist in fighting, organizing and de- |fending the interests of the working | class. ; In the Sacco-Vanzetti case, a Labor Party could have been used as a lever | to force open the files of the Depart- |ment of Justice, which held the truth | about the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti. It is known to nearly every one that the Department of Justice aided in the framing of these inno- their death-hold on working class vie- | Stalin Asks U.S. Delegation| police, “liberal judges” (more fraudu- lent than the outspoken judicial mur- derers such as Governor Fuller and could have been shown, through the educating influence of a Labor Party, | in its true role and real character: as the most corrupt, venal and vindi- cative capitalist governmert in the world. Labor Party Could Push Impeachment of Thayer and Fuller. A Labor Party could have pushed impeachment proceedings against Judge Thayer, Governor Fuller, the heads of the Department of Justice and others invelved in this frame-up, and in this way could have rendered | a service to the masses of workers. A Labor Party could have been ex- pected to raise the general issue of class war and political prisoners in America, a country which still passes as one which stands for free speech, free assentblage, ete. The Labor Party and Other Class- War Prisoners. Not only Sacco and Vanzetti, but Mooney, Billings, the I. W. W.’s in San Quentin and Walla Walla, Mc- Namara and many others—why are they rotting away in jail and prison? Release these victims of American Wall Street government! could have been the cry of an awakened, class labor party. A Labor Party\ would - of «course have to recognize the fact, and act juceordingly, that if the protest move- ment were to mean anything besides words and phrases, its strength lies | not in its resolutions, letters, ete., but in the mass strength and level of class-consciousness of the trade unions and politieal parties and bod- ies in the Labor Party ready to fol- Jow the lead of the Labor Party in a campaign on behalf of political vic- tims. If the Labor Party followed a mili- tant and correct line, the cry of de- monstrations, _mass_ strikes, cou!d have been raised by every local union, every district coungil, and in the coun- cils of the A. F. of L. Executive. A political movement of the work- ing masses, correlated and united with the mass trade unions in all struggles—wage demands, amnesty drives, political demands of broader kind—could cause even the powerful Ameriean plutocracy to think twiee | before it executed workers who fought ; for working class organization and | power. But no one shotld have any illu- sions about what even a strong Labor ¢ |cent workers. | The Labor Party In Congress. “Surely a Labor Party, through rep- resentatives in the United States con- malpractice, skulduggery and stink- ing frame-up involved in the Sacco- | Vanzetti ease. As it was, isolated senators, rep- resentatives and groups fearful of effect on the workers’ minds of the extreme grossness of the co-Vanzetti case, felt impelled sider congressional inve: These groups hoped to still |ing protest of the American jand their loss of faith in eee reer ica institutions of government to resist American capitalism. The polities of the working class were on trial in the Sacco-Vanzetti e t t ts, the so- class, such as the an cialists, the Commu but the poli- ties of a class as a whole, that is, of workers who understood their posi- tion in society as an oppressed and exploited class and tried to devise ways and means to get rid of capi- talist. exploitation. The Real Crime of Sacco and Vanzetti Therein lay the real crime of Sacco rising tide of class-consciousness and revolt (even in the comparatively bet- ter-paid American working class, so largely affected by bourgeois ideas, habits and beliefs.) Labor Party Would Make Issues Clear Through a Labor Party, a party of the working masses of America. real issues involved in the Sacco- Vanzetti case. These issues were not “criminals” and “murderers” against “society,” but the workers versus a privileged ruling class. The respective economic and political views of the various working class ¢roups, such as the Communists and the soéialists, might also have received a broader and clearer hearing and the working class might thus have obtained wider po- litical education. The Labor Party could have con- ducted a mass educational campaign | | Office: 69 Fifth Ave., cor. 14th St., New York TELEPHONE ALGONQUIN 6900 | —mass meetings, leaflets, lectures, papers, ete.—to show how, in this classic case, class justice works. Labor Party Could Show Up “Justice” The complete fraudulence of the | American courts of “justice,” judges, - y | gress, could have raised the issue of | | class justice and demanded a com-! plete investigation of the corruption, | ow- cers ‘ rticu- |Jarly judges and courts, qj hen ah | the mrch-vaunted trial te ary of one’s peers. 3 2 Working*'ass_ Politics Sal tin Sacco-Vanzett, y a Sacco and Vanzet’ eitedion murder charges, ob* tamed and false to every per: ane nee x Ev sas a grain of beiozsar loan Arb understands | American polit’ that Sacco |and Vanzetti w party im y on trial be- ‘ors, were class- causeythey wer a: é MMorkers trying to awaken an ize the workers as a class case; not the politics or beliefs of any particular group of the working and Vanzetti, who symbolized this | there could have been made clear the | Party can do under’ te-conditio>s itations of capitalisy ’ ganizational and political character- istics. Such illusions would make for | reformism, CLASS WITHOUT POWER, but in- | talism and establish its own political | supremacy as a class. Sacco and Vanzetti from the electric | Within the pa chair at least. Certainly it could have |there has arisen a v helped tremendeusly in a vast organ- |‘ ; : ized protest and given American capi- | been met for the most pe t strength when ters, perialistic the ruthles: caused the loss of hundreds uf lives of Nicaraguan workers and peasants, trying to establish a Nicaraguan na- tion independent of Wall Street dom- ination ism w | THE DRAMA OF NEGRO LIFE | enige Thayer) could have been) The Sacco-Vanzetti case presented |PLAYS OF NEGRO LIFE. Selected | shown. us graphically with an American im- A | More clearly than ever before, perialist class, a CLASS WITH and edited by Alain Locke and American justice and government | powrp, beating down brutally a| Montgomery Gregory. Harper & Bro. $5. O field of Ameri fertile with dramat licating its potential power—a rising | ‘lass getting ready to overthrow capi- life is more material than tly this touched. rs, however, interest in hich has by medio- re plays. The two outstanding ex- ceptions to this, “In Abraham’s Bosom” and “Porg: may be said to ave established Negro play as a regular part of New York’s theatri- cal program every year, provided of * * course, equally good plays are writ- etti to death, is also|/o0"in’ the future, There will be no perialism which has | aissiculty in obtaining competent Ne- | gro actors. We have seen the pion- eering work of Charles Gilpin and {Paul Robeson followed by the stellar {performances of Frank Wilson, Rose A A ‘ .., |McClendon, Abbie Mitchell and others, Ae lassie eine erneeicen imperial- | and no one who has seen “Porgy” can ch is responsible for the death doubt the availability of scores of Me mente et aia ast Negroes capable of filling ensemble ing for the indepen i Anal Re rad of China sss foreign and roles to perfection, native exploitation. It is that sam The publication at this time of | brutal, vulgar capitalism which al-|“Plays of Negro Life” should serve | lows, condones and gloats over the|as a useful measuring stick to the| lynching of Negro workers in the|dramatic output of the past and a! “fair south” when these colored work- | convenient guide-post to Negro play- ers assert their human and _ socia j ting in the future. Here is ap- rights. |parent for the first time to a reading Labor Party Can Make a Start on the |and theatre-going audience alive to) Right Track. |the subject the debt we owe to! A Labor Party of the American |Ridgley Torrence for his masterly} toilers and farmers, nevertheless, | reeraiaged vie the v2! of eee | struggle against all these capit! Actas Oda ether pen see | evils: ean start the American working Granny } sakes Va this ay ec ie class on the road toward independent | originally presented by the Stage So- Negro life, and yet until re been scarcely two A Labor Party’ might have saved | field has the Negro on Broad alism of working class released for a mo- ment from capitalist ideological fet- a taste y But the American ruling class, im- America, which burned Saceo and Vz i of figh ' Union. Jud Aisa | political action as a class against capi- talism. } In these struggles, the American working class will learn the necessity of having as its main objective the overthrow of American imperialism and the establishment on its ruins of a workers’ and farmers’ government. Such a struggle and objective re- quires in the last analysis the lead- ership of a revolutionary party of the workers, a Communist Party. Education By Mail in U.S. S. R. MOSCOW, Dec. 18. (By Mail).— Education by correspondence is be- ing rapidly developed in the Soviet At present more than eighty thousand people are being educated in this manner. ee i workers have instituted a | correspondence course. in January the banks are paying in- terest—transfer your money to the CONSUMERS FINANCE CORP. and do not lose any dividends. n SECOND’ BLOCK j OF THE COOPERATIVE WORKERS COLONY (Bronx Park East, at All 6 (uM cOR j Guaranteed dividends are being paic ERS FF DORAN Subsidiary of the United Workers Cooperative Association Build the Cooperative Movement! Another Gold Bond Issue $950,000 secured by the second mortgage on this 00° OF DWELLINGS lerton Ave. Sta., Bronx) A from the first day of deposit AC jis there a rea] theatre in America, \ |ciety of New York and later by a | group of Negro players in the spring |of 1917, is a model of realism and | poetic rendering and blending togeth- | jer of the tragic threads of Negro) \life in this so-called “civilized” land. |The original production of this play | | went by almost unnoticed by the New | day equal O’Neill’s “Emperor Jones” |in power. In comparing the plays by Negroes in “Plays of Negro Life” with those Torrence, Green and O’Neill, per- haps we are doing an initial injustice to the Negro aspirants. After all, most of the pl by white authors on Broadway every year could not hold a candle to the plays by these three writers included. in the present volume. The best of the plays by Negroes * * in this volume is “Cruiter,” by John . Matheus, a teacher of romance lan- guages at West Virginia Collegiate Institute, who received his academic training at Western Reserve in Cleve- land and Columbia University. The play deals with the recruiting of Ne- gro labor in the South by the agents of northern capitalists in 1918. Also worthy of mention are “The Broken Banjo” and “The Flight of the Na- tives,” by Willis Richardson, of Wash- ington, who is the most prolifie of jall the Negro playwrights to date “Sugar Cane,” by Frank Wilson, who is now learning more about the thea- tre through his contact with the Thea- tre Guild, and “Sahdji, an African Ballet,” by Richard Bruce, one of the most talented of the younger group of Negro writers, who is also acting in “Porgy.” The book is beautifully illustrated by Aaron Douglas, whose illustra- tions in “God’s Trombones,” by James Weldon Johnson, have been adjudged among the 50 best book illustrations of the past year, —ROLAND A. GIBSON. Comment. BY ALL odds one of the most fa uous journalistic performances the present year is “The Nation’s Honor Roll for 1927” contained in the current issue. With the annual poetry contests abolished by a recent vil- lardian edict, the magazine has now achieved another bit of buffoonery. Col. Charles A. Lindbergh, at nee York theatre audience except for a.|mt touring the vassal countries 6f truly prophetic comment by Carl Van the American Empire in an effort t Vechten in the New York Press. “It distract them from the presence | is,” he said, “as important an event U. Ss. marines, bombing planes lin our theatre as the first play by ? chine guns, heads the Nation ligt. Synge was to the Irish movement.” Dwight W. Morrow, partner in the Another beautiful one-act play (and Morgan firfh, is saluted for “leaving all except O’Neill’s “Emperor Jones” |0ne of the thrones of the banking in this volume are one-acters) by this world for a minor seat in diplomacy.” |author, “The Rider of Dreams,” and And Will Rogers, the clown of Amer- an exquisite ballet of the Mardigras 1¢an business is described as Mor- |in New Orleans, “The Dance Calinda,” |"0W’s “assistant ambassador.” |are also included in this collections | Under the head of “Literat . Mark Spllivan aga ines aeaee © ure” cash iam eiatant diate Eugene O'Neill is yepresented by for dull Washingto “Lhe Dreamy Kid,” in addition to hook “Our Times,’ “The Emperor.” This play was first reveals the social produced in New York in 1919 by the tight of a police | Provincetown Players, who deserve | _ The paaigicot <4 | great credit for their work in the field | 910" of the name of Negro drama at a time when the agin Model |established theatres were either advertising ia? <8 |afraid to touch it or lacking in imag- | vertising can be.’ |ination to vision its future. It was! The names of | this theatre that later made dramatic Bartolomeo Vanzett | history with its production of “The | bottom of the “Hx | Emperor Jones,” with Gilpin and later | Senator Norris, Mo... | Robeson in the title roles. The repu-| blaclface comedians, and £ | tations at how O'Neill and Robeson Reed have received their . | were made thereby and the attention — of the theatrical world was definitely | SEES drawn to the possibilities of Negro drama. BOOKS RECEIVED | Industry’s' Coming of Age. By h. | The work of Paul Green, of the | ford Guy Tugwell. Hareour' |Carolina Playmakers of the Univer-| Brace & Co. f eee sity of North Carolina, deserves spe-| 4 President Born. 1 mention and is represented in| Macmillan. By Bepest Bat |this book by two plays besides the Juggler’s Kiss. By Manuel Komagie | original one-act version of “In Abra-| Boni & Liveright. 4 ham’s Bosom.” Green was the first Trees At Night: Drawin, es ! Southern white man living in the, Young, Bat & Liveright. sol South to turn to Negro life for gen- The Belt, A Play. By Paul Sifts uine dramatic material, and the uni- Macaulay Co. y versity group where he studied is one | Earth: A Play. By Em Jo B. of the cases in that artistic and social | Macaulay Co. : desert. ' | George Washington: Rebel he ft Vol. 2. By Rupert Hf * . bd | triot. William Morrow & Co. CORONER SITS ON von, Turning to the Negro writers in the | book, we find nothing to match the | ability of the three white masters, but | the reason for this should not be dif-| LONDON, Dee. 30,—Although t? ficult to assign. Negro life to the! remains of two skeletons found in Negro has until recently been too | coffin hewn of solid granite, accoy much of a struggle for him to obtain panied by a horn-drinking ves: the objective viewpoint toward it nec- | probably belonged to two anci essary for the perception of its dra-| Britons, and are calculated to matic possibilities and the clear ar- | wbout 4,000 years old, the British tistic expression of them, And yet} requires that an inquest be made q Negroes have been writing present- as though the deaths occured yes: able poetry for decades ard few novels | day. The bones were unearthed ‘and stories of Negro life have sur-| Rainham, Essex, yesterday. passed those written by Charles W. | Chesnutt thirty years ago. The im-| portant difference between _ these | realms of expression as they have R been open to the Negro, however, is |\) the fact that Negroes even in. slave | SAYS SAURIANS HAD 7. F NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 80/ ven the huge, husky dinosaur days could obtain access to their mas- | 4; tera’ volumes of poetry and fiction | aes scan and could learn how to write from! , H ut them, but in few places outside Albian these ‘prehistine aaa aa New York could they see plays. In | very dumb. z Washington, D. C., for instance, | Coggeshall explained to an assem- where the Howard University Players | blage of scientists here that paleontol- was one of the colored groups to do | ogists have unearthed diseased bones early work in drama, a Negro cannot | and enlarged joints which prove gain admission to a theatre without * so much fuss and sacrifice of self- respect that all enjoyment of the play and artistic profit from it are lost, And then, where else but in New York point. PHOTOS OF COMET. NEW HAVEN, Conn, Dec. 30, - Rare Wotographs and a detailed. port of the Skjellerup comet was p sented before the American mical Society yesterday. STEAMER CREW RESC SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. Cr With the migration of thousands of Negroes to Harlem since the war, however, the publicity given to the “Nigger Heaven” now existing here for young writers, and the coming into its own of Neg‘o drama on|—'The crew of the Broadway, we may soon look for the | rescued by a steamer pa® production of fine plays by Negro] the Doris Crane wer writersg and one of them may weme|far out §r “he So ies plagued with the toothache, tubercu- © | losis, rheumatism and other annoying — jclared Arthur Sterry Coggeshall, curd - —