The Daily Worker Newspaper, December 31, 1927, Page 8

‘a ce Eight HE DAILY WORKER sblished by the NATIONAL DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING ASS'N, Ine. | Daily, Except Sunday 83 First Street, New York, N. Y. Cable Address: “Daiwork” : SUBSCRIPTION RATES By Mail (in New York only): By Mail (outside of New York): $3.00 per year $4.50 six months $6.00 per year $3.50 six months : $2.50 three months. $2.00 three months. Phone, Orchard 1680 Address and mail out checks to THE DAILY WORKER, 33 First Street, New York, N. Y. .-ROBERT MINOR .. WM. F. DUNNE orn 21 Aditor. Assistant Edito’ iutered as second-class mail at the post-office at New York, N. ¥., under | the act of March 3, 1879. Fighting Injunctions in Miami—-The Latest Retreat of the A. F. of L. Executive Council The executive council of the American Federation of Labor iS going to Miami exactly at the time when the anti-injunction | egislation which some of the farm bloc senators have promised | 6 introduce will come before the senate committee. | The reason: given for the inability of the executive council to | @ present to put its anti-injunction law demands before the sen- | te committee is#that a special meeting of the council has been | galled to lay plans for the anti-injunction fight in congress and the courts. | Tf the executive council is not in Washington to push the leg- | islation sought at the time it ¢s first introduced there will be No | real struggle for it, in the opinion of such sympathetic observers | as the Washington correspondent of the Federated Press and since | the executive council has announced that it will be in Miami on | the date set, the conclusion is forced that the official leadership | 's not even going to utilize a legislative campaign as a means for | veating mass support for an anti-injunction drive. It is doubtless true that an anti-injunction law would have a | lim chance of passing but it is likewise true that the executive | wuncil has based its whole anti-injunction program on the possi- | lity of legislative action. | It now abandons even this ineffective form of struggle and | treats to the pleasant precincts of a multi-millionaire’s winter The contrast between the luxurious surroundings of the ex- “ectitive council and the terrible hardships which the coal miners ‘Ohio and Pennsylvania are undergoing as a result of the en- A r 1 THE DAILY WORKER, NEW i FaA AY, DECEMBER 31, 1927 . ( ; ( a “THERE IS PLENTY FOR SLL” | | | | | i] | | By Fred Ellis While Calvin Coolidge speaks of prosperity hundreds of thousands of workers who have produced an abundance are now unemployed and unable to buy even a decent meal. By B. LIBER, M. D., Dr. P. H., Editor of Rational Living. LL intellectual professions are class professions. They are subject to the desire, caprice and interest of the ruling class. The same thing is true A Doctor Discusses Class Medicine —% During recent years industrial hy- giene has grown. But the doctors occupied in factories are the employes of the bosses. Their object is to see = of state and federal injunctions strikes one very ly. |in regard to the medical profession. The miners and their wives and children are fighting injunc- | ms. They live in flimsy shacks, their water supply has been /as clear and obvious as in other brain ‘aut off by the coal companies, they have insufficient clothing | occupations. When you state the as- [Such a meager supply of food that they are just one step this |sertion here made to the ordinary doc- starvation | tor—regardless of whether he is ra- at “se ‘ ‘ |dically orientated—and even to a The executive council of the American Federation of Labor, |class-conscious worker, they would led by William Green, himself a member of the United Mine |not believe you and would object to rkers, goes to Miami where food is expensive but plentiful, |this view" The answer would be: 18 not necessary to take up collections for the members of the Feet ec tapedaiat oe cea Bee uitive council as it is for the striking miners and their families. | sists of working people?” That seems The salary of President Green—$12,000 per year—would |to be true. Yet when one considers m Hig the matter more closely the fact would Yet in this case the situation is not ant OR mines’ families at the lavel thav ara living naw EUS AG VRE A 9 wd paaey eae See * forcibly strike you that the manner would support another 20 families. in which such treatment_is given is in leaders would only fight one might be tempted to | reality from a class standpoint. that they get well-paid for it. Asitis the retreat} That can be made clear by exam- ve program they adopted because it required a jBles, ot Adee ee cee * g jes ik- | cou aliord space for em. tigi? — leaders as enemies of the strik- | best mown ought ty aa e exposed, defeated and driven from the labor | Examples Given, they betray and the labor movement build into| ‘The medical profession assures the iization which will not tolerate such retreats nor | world constantly that it is the most some of the fice, | the more it is becoming a tool in the hands of the ex; And the more progress it is making ploiters, tients are exploited as much as pos- sible, and swindling surgeons operate on them often when it is not neces- sary, only for financial returns. But that is not different from happenings along the whole line of the capitalist class. People cannot visualize a truly honest doctor who sympathizes with the workers. More important is the fact that the field of work for the sick in hospitals means publicity for the doctor, espe- cially in America, so that the treat- mane ne poor pays, ina wey. The poor “gratis” atient is the one serv- ing for experime]tS and on whose body doctors learn to P#ke operations so that others able to }#¥ the well- to-do and the rich, can YY hand- somely, nd \ Poor Help Doctors. |The more one works among the poor in hospitaisin—America host to it that the workers are in condi- tion to produce more and more work. If that is at the same time good for the workers themselves, well and good. If not—not. Often it is harm- ful to their health. There are even circumstances where the boss uses the doctor to get rid of the most de- voted and most active union workers. They are simply pronounced tubercu- lous and “for their own good” not permitted to work in the factory. The ordinary, average doctor, tho he sees so many workers during his study years and in his practice, knows very little about their lives, their in- dustrial unhealthy conditions and treats them as if they were members of the middle-class. The whole medi- cal study is keyed up in the same way. The life of the workers is very little considered, Such must be the case as long as medicine is a class profession. Need Birth Control. Take such an important matter as tals do either not pay at all or only nominally for such work—the more renowned and richer one becomes. The hospitals and especially the dispen- saries offer favorable opportunities for catching fish in the doctor’s net. One may well assert that the medi- eal profession needs the poor patients more than the latter need the doctors. One must generally treat the work- ers of course. They must be sent back into the work shops to serve ‘worker officials in luxury while 250,000 working men, | charitable body in existence. It gives .eir children starve. jits service to the right and left. At ane certain times and in certain countries such has actually been the case. There e . : 4 re still places in Europe where some Mellon Declines Presidential Candidacy pag ope melagogpincdbpentst ss. andrew W. Mellon, billionaire secretary of the treasury, has Nae blgiseipeas But in America é emphatically than any of the score of presidential possibil- | Hognitalgsand dimpanbariee aeraive declined the offer to head the republican ticket in 1928. That |sre¢ consultations and a great deal Mot mean, however, that Mellon will not continue to be the | of free examinations and treatments. id of the republican administration after March 4, 1929, he is at the present time. is notorious that Mellon dominates the republican party e Coolidge-Kellogg-Hoover administration. Himself one of ost powerful bankers of the world, Mellon personifies the cy of finance capital over industry. His aluminum cor- luding oil, railroads, power and public utilities, steel, ing head of all these diversified interests is the chain of ‘banks controlled by the secretary of the treasury—the Mel- ional Bank, the Union Savings Bank and the Union Trust —which are interlocked with the House of Morgan. on’s control of the administration has been complete and ited since the Harding-Daugherty Ohio gang vanished from e. The federal trade commission has been reduced to a al of the railroad corporations, the Mellon tax program fited exclusively members of the dominant capitalist this country. His first tax program benefited but 6,109 s receiving incomes above $64,000 per year, as compared 6,067 with incomes below that amount who were not d at all. The tax program has aided the great gorporate in which he has investments to evade taxation of cor- profits. ereas such amateur corruptionists as Harry M. Daugherty, Fall, Edwin-I...Denby and Theodore Roosevelt merely in oil and department of justice.scandals and bungled obs badly, the resourceful Andrew °».. Mellor has~jobbed of dollars into his own pockets through manipulation of ver he holds in his hands. The insipid Calvin Coolidge is Marionette in his hands. esident ever exercised the power that Mellon now holds, ould he aspire to occupy an office himself when there K mn of America, through its affiliated and subsidiary com- | controls billions of dollars in industrial and commercial con- | distilling and vast wholesale and retail sales corporations. | capitalism. They may be neglected— and they are much neglected. But not altogether, That would simply be impossible. Even if doctors as a pro- fession could and would do it, the ruling class would step in. |But it is not true that “the richest {and the poorest get the same atten- jion.” The rich are really treated de- jcently, cleanly, respectfully, while... |the poor? The Workers? Well, just as everywhere! True, well-to-do pa- Those Self-Abasing Scientists A collection of alleged scientists calling itself the Association for the Advancement of Science at the opening of its conference at Nashville, Tenn., announced that out of respect to the anti- evolution laws of that benighted fundamentalist state it would avoid discussion of the prohibited subject. They then proceeded |in the most servile manner to carry out their promise not to of- |fend the ignorant legislators who passed an absurd law written iby bellowing back-woods ku-klux pulpit pounders (politely ,re- |ferred to as the protestant clergy) by solemnly discussing such | subjects as the overcoming of bad habits, the exploded DeVries’ |theory of the transmission of acquired characters and similar ‘banalities.- This concession of science to fundamentalism has deep | historical significance, far beyond the incident itself. The dcc- ‘trine of fundamentalism, so militantly upheld by the medicine 'men of the decadent middle class, is the expression in the realm lof ideology of its futile attempt to arrest social development at a point favorable to its economie interests. The fact that so-called scientists are willing to yield to the class prejudices of this strata of society indicates that American capitalist society as a whole/has reached the stage where it looks with abhorrence upon further social development as detrimental to its interests. No intelligent person familiar with the history of the evolu- tion of science can fail to perceive the vast difference between the supine grovellers in Nashville, who speak in the name of gcience | | | | | birth limitation, without which a tami s-cannot. get. | apng. While the profession, as far asit is itself informed about birth- cieties, likewise workers’ indu: ally teaches the poor to have more children. The more the labor movement de- velops, the more a new type of doctor is needed with methods adapted to the life of the workers, with exact knowl- edge of the workers’ interests, with a revolutionary _ medical _ philosophy. That is impossible to get in the bour- geois universities, It requires a spe- cial education and a fundamental change in the entire medical science. Primarily it is needful that the teach- ings which only benefit the specific bourgeois and petty bourgeois condi- tions should be ignored altogether. Until now such a school does not exist anywhere. It should be organized in a country where it could function free and unhampered. That would be possible jim one coun- try only, in the Soviet Republic. Such a medical school should be in\a posi- tion to conduct the courses \in the main languages, as for instance, French, German and English, 8 as to attract the radical and revoiationary medical students from the whole world. It would produce a new kind of doctor, to be employed by work- ers’ organizations, workers’ ci é tives, workers’. sick benefit tions and workers’ mutual hel convol, imparts the methods to the wealiy and the middle-class, it usu- By "ER LOWELL | ¢ ted Press. Although ids with organized ‘e in the eastern ‘hows the trade + most serious labor holding states, the ne union moveme situation since 19x.. Open Shop Mena. What darkens the dawn of 1928 for eastern unions, however, is the grow- ing menace of the open shop. Labor must still beat the Interboro Rapid Transit Co. injunction, when the hear- ing comes January 24, or free unions will face extinction by company ‘unions. The Amalgamated Assn. of | Street & Electric Rwy. Employes is bearing the brunt of the fight against the subway company’s injunction which challenges the whole American Federation of Lahor. The Pullman Co. is another that has not stopped pulling the strings for its company union marionette show. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters has for the first time in its two years’ existence threatened a strike. The union is waiting the de- cision of the interstate commerte commission on tipping, before making active preparations for a walkout. Unions Gain By Struggles. Other transportation unions hav registered the bulk of the wage in- creases given in the east this past year. The railroad brotherhoods — trainmen and conductors, firemen and La w Faces Struggle as Bosses I, n Open Shop Drive in East Lat and sanitary inspectors for all gressive countries, Cap makers won the 40-hour we ek; | but had to fight for the enforcem: 2nt of the agreement. A dramatic ¢gsm- paign conducted by the office workers’ union by way of the Debs station the newspapers and union did not win York State women hour maximum week * of the 48-hour law tH to win from the legislawre, changes for the better in tion laws go into effeci# states, but legislative on the whole been sl New England In New England she United Textile Workers is trying /f0 raise a $50,000 fund to fight wage cuts. The 10 pe! cent cuts at Amoskeag Mills, Mans chester, N, H., and Pepperell Mills, Biddeford, Me. and Lowell, Mass. — both non union—have warned the tex- tile union of its own danger. So far some 20,000 non union workers have been cut. Shoe workers at Haverhill, Mass., have also been reduced by the Shoe | Board chairman, although the Shoe Workers Protective Union which rep- resents the five to eight thousand workers, put in a strong case for higher pay. ig In Dover, N. J., also, the open shop s of available puppets ready, willing and anxious to do |in this, the final stage of capitalism, and those giants, Copernicus, ? The chairman of every important military commit- | Gallileo, Bruno, who raised the torch of scientific revolt against he house of congress is a Mellon man from Pennsylvania. decadent feudalism to help light the path of the ‘bourgeois revo- controls the chairmen of the powerful committees on com- lutions. As compared even to Thomas H. Huxley, in many re- f both houses. The Mellon government is a government | Spects a reactionary even in his time, but who bearded in their d by the great bankers and industrialists—a dictatorship Wn dens the theological jackals of his day and dispersed them y that imposes its will upon all the rest of the pop- | with scientifie facts, these men at Nashville are pigmies. , | The difference, however, is not in the individuals, but is to be cannot run for president because of his known con-| sought in the economic and political conditions of society today as nd antecedents. Someone will have to be found who | compared to the past. In the early days scientists were, of neces- enginemen—won most, under Watson- | is showing its head, five international Parker Act mediation or arbitration. | Unions being hit by the closing of a The Intl. Longshoremen’s Assn. got big machine «shop which formerly five cents mere an hour, but their dealt with labor, work is still intermittent, and uncer-| But despite these troubles eastern tain. Two groups of union truckmen labor is sending some aid to the min- in New York City, organized in the | ers striking in Pennsylvania and Ohio, teamsters’ international union, gained | under the leadership of the United wage increases by short strikes. Mine Workers, and those out in Col- Printers and pressmen won ad-|orado under the banner of the Indus- vances in pay, and the building |trial Workers of the World. It is trades union seale has been continued | realized generally, that a union de- key to Mellon, but who can also be,dramatized for cam-| sity, carriers of progress, revolutionists against a decaying sys- ‘ses as the present puppet in the white house, Cool-| tem; today they are apologists of imperialism, whose role is to “ified into a strong silent by a careful cam- | try 9 gtem the of all future progress, because further social “+ if the country. ; bie class for which thev speak. a s for another year. The electrical|feat in the Pittsburgh-Ohio fields workers in New York are negotiat-| would deal a body blow to the most ing, although the employers’ associa- | important union of the-A. F. of L. and tion is threatening not to deal with|thus weaken the entire labor move- the recognized union. mont aainkt tha nawmmam anamir, | “War to War By DAVID KINKEAD, John was a kind-hearted, idealistic youth. He hated the brutalities of mankind. Worst of all, he hated war. Sometimes he dreamed that he was mutilating young boys like himself, disemboweling them with a bayonet of cold steel. He would awaken wit the stench of human blood in his nos- trils and with the choked screams of dying men still ringing through his tortured brain. For days after such a nightmare John would be sad and shaken. John worshipped President Wilson. It was this great-hearted person who |was keeping sane and clear-headed, | while all the European countries were tearing at each others’ vitals. Then came 1917 and Wilson’s de- claration of war. This was a stag- gering blow to poor John. Wilson had been to him the single remain- ing vestige of sanity in this bloody world of mad-men. And now Wilson had failed him. * End * * At first John resolved that, come what might, he at least would not_ join this bloody fray and slay his fellow men. But propaganda had its” deadly effect even on John. He read © long editorials of how this war dif- fered from other wars. This was a good war, a humane war, a war fought for the inalienable rights of mankind. A rich ammunition manu- facturer, a friend of his father’s, told him what a good war it was. Even President Wilson said it was. This was a war to end wars; a war to make the world safe for de:aocracy. The manufacturer went on to de- scribe the horrors of America, demo- cratic America, ruled over by that despotic fiend, the Kaiser. “Why, yes,” he said, “if we didn’t help the allies, the Kaiser would soon conquer them. Then he would come and get us.” John shuddered at the thought. “Besides,” the man added, “only cowards and slackers refuse to fight for their flag.” So John caught the fever and went to war. He was not afraid of being called a coward. But fight a war to end war was truly a worthy cause. * * * To describe the black depths of hell that John went through would fill many books. Let it suffice it to tell that a mangled, disease-racked man came back in the place of the boy, John, The war had given him a fleshy stump in exchange for his right leg. There remained only a sacred socket where his left eye had been. Gas had left his lungs a pussy mass. His once fine young body wa al a hideous mass of scars. : Ten years later John was again France. He had returned with tl American Legion. His one eye was dry and aching as he leaned on his crutches and gazed at a_ soldier graveyard near Chateau Thierry. Above each grave was a small white cross. The individual crosses dis- solved into long white lines. The lines, as they faded into the distance, / a mass of sod white that — nity. The ammunition manufacturer stood beside him. He was little changed. His hair was a shade greyer. The gold watch chain that stretched across his ample belly was a bit larger. That was all. “Say, John, old fellow,” he re- marked, breaking a long and awk- ward silence, “wouldn’t it have been ” terrible to be ruled by the Kaiser?” Workers Forum Editor, DAILY WORKER: As a comrade who has the inter- ests of the Workers (Communist) Party and those of The DAILY WORKER at heart, I wish to throw out one or two suggestions how to inerease the value and spread the in- fluence of The DAILY WORKER among the less informed and non- class-conscious elements of the work- ing class. How can we make The DAILY WORKER more interesting to the masses? From a vigorous, intellee- tual, strictly Marxian and Leninist viewpoint, your standards are high, and therefore a response from such elements of the working class that are in harmony with these standards can be expected at all times. But Mm order to reach wider circles of work- ers, particularly the vast masses of unorganized workers, I think it is essential that a more simple and ele- mentary method of approach be used. ‘e have within the Party and with- out, ‘svomen comrades and sympathiz- ers who demand newspaper material of a more emotional nature. How di- rect the\emotional antagonism against the capitalist order along Commun- istic lines? I think a well chosen novel, wiih a Communist background or one arcusing such sentiments run in serial torm would be an answer, and attract and keep new readers as well as retain the old. They will then turn to the more serious, concrete daily local, national, international news and editorias, Short stories and sketches of the w4rkers’ and peasants’ lives of a red chafacter are doubtless at hand. “Letters to the Editor” should be / encouraged, so that the open forum would arouse the rank and file sym- pathizers to take more active part in improving the quality of the paper DAILY WORKER. Comradely, . and augment the circulation of The —