The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 7, 1928, Page 8

Poge Kight | ; } THe DAILY WORKER Published by the NATIONAL DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING ASS’N, Inc. Daily, Except Sunday 83 First Street, New York, N. Y. Cable Address: “Datwork” 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 $3.50 six months $2.50 three months. $2.00 three months. Address and mail out checks to THE DAILY WORKER, 33 First Street, New York, N. Y. Fo .-ROBERT MINOR were a Editor wo Assistant Editor... ..WM. F. DUNNE | Ehvered as second-class mail at the post-office at New York, N. ¥., under the act of March 3, 1879. Phone, Orchard 1680 A Consistent Record of Twenty-eight Years Today in New York City in its home at 350 East 81st street opens the Twenty-eighth Annual Convention of the Hungarian Workingmen’s Sick Benefit and Educational Federation, repre- senting 5,000 workers and which has as its official organ, the fighting working-class daily newspaper, “Uj Elére.” For more than a quarter of a century this organization has played a notable role among the thousands of Hungarian workers who came to these shores. It has-been realistic and has been able to become an affective force in the United States because it has responded to the demands of the workers here, and not merely existed, as do so many similarly named organizations, as a for- eign organization held together on American soil by social ties alone. It has met and solved the distinct problems of those workers coming here who speak a foreign tongue and now, with a second generation of Hungarians in this country playing a role in its ranks,-it has become an effective agency in the class struggle, participating in all the drives to defend the elementary interests of the entire American working class. The DAILY WORKER greets this Twenty-eighth Convention and expresses our confidence and the confidence of the vanguard of the American proletariat that it will be a point from which ever more effective work in the class struggle will be put into | effect. : 2 Gag Rule in Senate on Nicaragua | Bombs continue to fall upon the inhabitants of Nicaragua. nd the empty “brave words” of cowardly opposition senators die into silence. No debate of major political significance, especially dealing with foreign affairs and affecting the imperialist policy of the United States, is permitted to run its course on the floor of the United States senate. Gag-rule has come to be the customary procedure of that “most august” body. Nowhere is the fact that capitalist democracy is a mere fraud, a cloak to veil the most arrogant despotism, more clearly revealed than when even the most impotent of the opponents of the Mellon- Coolidge-Kellogg administration attempt to interfere with the murderous course of United States imperialist policy. hen the opponents of the world court put the administra- m the defensive in the famous 1926 debates on that question the Wall Street republican-democratic coalition invoked cloture— a shutting off of debate—and like marionettes voted as their masters told them to vote. On Thursday Senator Heflin of Alabama tried to open a de- . bate preliminary to obtaining a vote on his resolution to withdraw the marines from Nicaragua where they have been carrying on a _ savage warfare against the national liberation movement led by _ the mine worker, General Sandino. After a few inept attempts of two ornaments of the now defunct Daugherty-Harding Ohio “gang of corruptionists, Senators Fess and Willis, it was apparent ‘that further discussion would expose to the whole country the _faet that the Nicaraguan war was a predatory imperialist venture and give the lie to the claims of Secretary of State Kellogg that there is any justification for the wholesale butchery against a small nation other than to protect the thievery of the banking houses of Wall Street. So the administration henchmen hastily caucussed and decided to adjourn the senate until Monday so that debate could be shut off. __ Meanwhile the Mellon-Coolidge henchmen will line up the ad- ministration fugelmen in an adroit attempt to kill the resolution by referring it to some committee where it can be buried until , reinforcements of the marines, the navy and the air forces can be rushed to Nicaragua in order further to drench that land in the blood of the heroic fighters against Wall Street domination. ~~ It is extremely doubtful if Helfin himself will not become one of the parties to this treachery if he is compensated politically, as his record is that of an unprincipled trimming politician. He supported the storming of the Mexican port of Vera Cruz by the Wilson administration in 1914, when a similar war—illegal in the sense that congress was not consulted—was being waged in behalf of the oil, land and mineral thieves in that country. This ravaging of Nicaragua should arouse the most deter- a resistance on behalf of the workers and farmers of the d States, who will be called upon in ever increasing numbers ht and die or rot of fever in the swamp-infested jungles of ical countries only in order that the investments of the Mor- gans and the Rockefellers may be made secure. Every labor or- est sc. every farmers’ organization should adopt ringing and resolutions demanding instant withdrawal of the armed s from Nicaragua in order that the inhabitants of that coun- y may be permitted to establish and maintain a government of r own choice, independent of Wall Street. - Unless this action is taken the murders in Nicaragua will some only a rehearsal for ever more ambitious expeditions ‘inst other countries. Tt is not the Helfins and their ilk that will force the hand merican imperialism, but the mass indignation backed by the er of the workers and farmers of this country. tor, DAILY WORKER: organized the Women Workers’ of things in this country is millions , unemployed, the miner strikers strug- lucational Club of Lake County,/¢ting against coal kings dor better i a, last June. We want to edn. | conditions and higher wages. The cate the women workers of this steel coal operators do not want to recog- erritory, and help the strikers in the |nize that the workers who produce fields all we can. millions for them cannot live on air, held three affairs so far, and but need homes, food and clothes. We was sent to the Passaic suf-|¥@t to do all we can. | whose fathers are class-war . The present picture we get Comradely, y \) 4 ’ eae VIVA NICARAGUA. LIBRE! THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 1928 “Nicaragua shall not be the patrimony of imperialists and traitors, and I shall fight them as long as my heaft beats.”—General Sandino. Bankers and “Amate By MARTIN ABERN Capitalism turns, or tries to, all it touches into cold cash. From so- called legitimate business and indus- try, from brothels or from “pure” amateur sports, the aim is money— profits. Employers are broad-minded: they seek their profits without dis- crimination from all possible sources. And now the bankers have laid their hands on the cash boxes of the college athletic departments. Amateurism is once again defiled. But money makes all things holy. The Business of Sports Was Very Good in 1927. 1927 saw the greatest crowds in history in attendance at sport events of every description. Indeed we have mass movements toward footbali fields, ball parks, boxing establish- ments, etc. In this sense we can say that sports are a mass movement. But of course, the real aim of sports, mass participation and physical upbuilding, is not realized under capitalist con- ditions. The masses are but specta- tors to events played by a few skilled ones and profited from financially by even a smaller few. The Big Fight. Over a 100,000 persons crashed their way into the Soldiers Stadium in Chicago to witness Jack Dempsey and Tunney slap away at a few rounds of boxing and a like 100,000 watched the college football teams of Noire Dame and Southern California muss each other “for the glory of God and col- lege,” also at the Chicago stadium. Attendance records were broken by. numerous colleges and universities, as were also those of bicycle facing, box- ing, hockey, etc. College Spirit Becomes Labor-Hunt- ing, Ku Klux Spirit in Labor Struggie Sports are pretty well commercial- ized and recognized so by more peo- ple all the time. But college footbali nas paraded always as a pure amateur sport in which the players and the student body are interested through loyalty, enthusiasm and so on for their Alma Mater. As a matter oi fact, the enthusiasm, noise and rivalry worked up by the colleges is only the Rotarian, Kiwanian and Ku Klux Klan spirit spending itself harm- lessly. It is without intelligence and real constructive aims. This same “loyalty and spirit’ could just as easily be worked up into a fever for mobbing and lynching of workers and labor organizations which fight for elementary rights of union organiza- tion and better wages. The Colorado Strike. The Colorado Miners’ Strike now going on against the Rockefeller cor- porations is a case in point. With a few militant exceptions the student elements are being lined up against the fighting strikers. Some are scab- bing at this very moment. This is the common case in the United States, Very often the athlete is the leader of scabby and reactionary elements of the student body.... It would be interesting to point out how these “amateur athletes” live after leaving college and what is the trend of “col- lege spirit,” but here we are con- cerned with another angle—the prof- its from college sports and who gets them. Vast Stadiums Bring Coin— To Bankers Many colleges and _ universities throughout the country in 1927 and earlier built new and huge stadiums to hold the increasing crowds, Michi- gan, Ohio State, Minnesota, many ( ur’ College Football Eastern colleges, are but a few of them. Of course this resulted in the employment of thousands of workers, mainly building trades workers. Need I state here that almost without ex- ception the work was done by non- union labor? The Bankers’ Graft. At any rate the stadiums were built. Millions of people throughout the country poured their doliars into the college athletic cash box, or so they thought, if they were at all concerned about the matter. The vast amounts of money taken in did not go to the college players, it is true, so far as one can- say. Coaches and other hired help gev their salaries. One might assume that the money goes to more equip- ment and the drawing in of more elements into athletics. To be ac- curate, however, the bulk of the money goes into the coffers of bank- ers. Here’s how. Huge Sums Needed. The building of huge stadiums in- volves large sums of ready money. Material, wages, etc. have to be paid for. A terrific financial responsibility is put on the coilege or board in charge. The money for buiiding is obtained in the customary business manner, through loans. ‘The loans are made from the bankers. What has resulted? “Pure Sport” Proves to Be Money-Maker. One Eastern University, to cite one example, borrowed money from the banks and built a big staa1um. As m all things of business and capitalism, siumps came. Keceipts of the games were greatly curtailed. THE BANK FORECLOSED AND NOW CON- TROLS THE STADIUM. ALL IN- COMING MONEYS GO TO THis BANK TO SALISFY PAYMEN1s DUE. What is left goes, we presume, to the athietic assuciation treasury. Many of the athietic directors and committees at the universities are lamenting. Sport, in all its lustrous purity, is being dragged in the mua and defiled. Honesty or otherwise, what delusions are theirs? For now- adays the WAY OF ALL SPORTS IS tHe BANKERS, \ What can these people do? Quit playing? No payments? How crudely then would be exposed the mockery of the “pure” sports of today! And so the games goes on. Capitalism clutches all in its wake: labor, youth genuine loyalty and spirit and crushes them all on its back-breaking wheel. Workers’ Sport Movement Is Answer To Corrupt Capitalist Sports. Only the workers, and particularly the working youth, can solve this problem. Youth needs its amusements, its sports and games. It needs physi- cal development and recreation from its labors in field, factory, mill, mine or school-room. Sports are needed and should be participated in by all in an open, honest, comradely fashion: the spirit of fun and development; and not with the cheap, profit aim and competition methods of the busi- ness men who control and dominate sports of today and who wither and corrupt all they touch. A workers sport movement is the answer to capitalist sport corruption. The labor movement must begin to give consideration to the wide de- velopment of sports in trade unions, in the shops, ete. and steer clear of capitalist connection and the profii aim. Class sports by and for thc working class is the answer to Bank- ers and Sports. From Historian to Hysterian By A. BIMBA. (Continued from Last Issue.) A Few Crimes of Mr. Oneal. After reading Oneal’s tirade against my book I opened his book, “The Workers in American History,” at random to see if my critic is en- tirely free of the errors and blunders. And here is what I found: On page 168, Chapter X, embracing the period of the most important and most militant labor movement of America, starting with 1858 and end- ing with 1888, he names “An Era of Violence.” Only a bourgeois intellec- tual could dare to give such a name to so important a period. In his discussion of Lincoln (pp. 172-3) he says nothing of Lincoln’s expressions against interfering with slavery where it existed, and leaves the impression that the républican party was the champion of the slaves. On page 180 Oneal deals with the great railroad strike of 1877, During that memorable strike in Pittsburgh alone 26 workers were killed by the government forces and employers. even mention a single case of the most Our pioneer historian, Oneal, does not bloody attacks upon the workers, He does not utter a word about the slaughter of the workers by the rul- ing class in that strike. His treatment of the Molly Maguires (p. 181) is drawn from pre- judiced sources and joins hands with the provocateurs against the miners, He treats the Haymarket affair of 1886 in the same way. I think these random examples suffice to indicate that our eminent historian, Mr. James Oneal, himself has committed many very serious crimes—much more ser- ious and fundamental than those he was able to cité against me. —A. BIMBA. * * - Mr. Calhoun On A. Bimba’s Book. My Dear James Oneal: Are you game to publish this letter in The New Leader? I examined the manuscript of Bimba’s “History of the American Working Class” and recommended its publication, While I did not take time to check up on details, I was satisfied with the evidences of exhaustive study. I knew that the book was not the last word on the subject; but I was sure that it represented a great advance, I have just gone through the book again, and in spite of your criticism, I am satisfied that the book does, in the large, convey a valid, instructive, and impressive picture of the fortunes of labor in the United States. To be sure there are incidental flaws, as is to be expected in so vast a job, but I doubt whether any of them are of a sort to spoil the total picture in the minds of the people for whom this book is intended. University special- ists are to be sure, entitled to apply their own standards. My disappointment at your reac- tion to Bimba’s effort is the deeper because of my memory of my use of your book as a text in college classes in the years before the war. In those days, we could take a man’s contri- bution and use it gratefully, even tho’ we might have picked flaws in it. It is too bad that another spirit prevails today. ARTHUR W. CALHOUN, Brookwood, Katonah, N. Y. (From the New Leader, Dec. 17, 1927.) Hunger The same kind of hungry eyes That look into Tiffany’s diamond window And then wonder whether That ten thousand dollars Would not be better invested In Steel, preferred and common, Look at the buns in a Busy-Bee window And then wonder whether That last quarter Would not be better invested In Sleep, preferred and common. —SAMUEL CAMIEL. In Memoriam (Maricopa Slim was a railroad gunman on the Southern Pacific in Arizona, He was notoriously brutal. He was later killed by a Negro tramp.) Where crawls the deathly rattlesnake And Gila monster slowly grim Along the sullen desert-ache— There once lived Maricopa Slim, As low, as foul as any poison thing; Cursed be the likes of him! Rest not in peace, you murderous scamp, Whose cudgel beat the young and old; Whose pistol dropped the friendless tramp— All, all for the wage of gold. I'd make these words your epitaph; Here lies the serpent-souled. —H. H, LEWIs. ce 2 BOOKS MINOR MUSIC. By Henry Reich, Jr. Parnassus. $1. Distributed by Jimmie Higgins Bookshop. . From the many poems he has writ- ten, a large number of which origin- ally appeared in The DAILY WORK- ER, Henry Reich, Jr., has selected 29 to compose a 44-page large size blue pamphlet with delicate gold lettering. It is the sort of artistic typograph- ical work that the alleged “blue- bloods” of the ladies’ literary coteries ejaculate “perfectly lovely’s” over, yet the table of contents lists the poems under such classifications as “Songs of People,” “Songs of Earth” and “Songs of Protest.” If members of Browning Societies are seduced by the typography, they will be truly in for a few shocks. | Reich can write such a potent qua- train on Wall Street as this: | “Here empires rise and fall, here wars are made And in their chairs the bankers, gray and staid Here daily plan, as calmly as can be, The destinies of man from ten to three!” Some of Reich’s songs of people like “Timothy O’Toole” and “Pious John” have an ironic flavor like a glass of bitters. And the “Tale of Ye Dizzy Knight—A Ballad of Non- Resistance” will make many of the Theosophists and Quakers in the so- cialist party assume wry faces. Reich made a very poor choice of a title for his pamphlet, however. The songs of the underdog are never minor music. Every rebel hymn, even though it be crude and partially un- loaded, is a major note. When you pén sonnets to milady’s poodle dog, no matter how perfect your rhymes and meters, you are twiddling minor music. Chocolate eclairs, although they be cooked to perfection, are not the staples of life that beefsteak and bread are. Ve HENRY iconic ii, sit. Reich is a rebel poet; such singers are all too few amid the quagmires and marshes of American literature. —WALTER SNOW. OUR FAR EASTERN ASSIGN- MENT. By Felix Morley. With an introduction by Henry Morgen- thau. Association Press, N. Y. $1.25. cE IS only in the light of a titanic struggle like the one that is being conducted by the workers and peas- ants of China that the shabby puni- ness of the liberal point of view be- comes fully apparent. When Felix Morley, young Ameri- can newspaperman, despatched his articles about the Far East to the Bal.imore Sun in 1926, his interpre- tation seemed picayune enough, When his liberal journalese articles are col- lected in a book, read in the light of the recent struggles of workers and peasants thruout China, they appear absurd. . For Morley, the Chinese situation traliza-ion and provincial rights”; in other words between two political phrases picked up in a middle class college. It’s not (for Morley) a strug- gle between groups or classes of peo- ple with conflicting sets of interests. ar * Morley wrote his book in 1926 be- fore the middle classes had complete- ly broken with che workers and peas- ants and turned against the national- ist revolution. He therefore is tepid- ly sympathetic, without, of course, committing himself too definitely. Buc there is one point on which Mor- which liberals show in every revolu- tionary situation—his hostility toward the mass forces, In discussing the Government of Kwantung Province in 1926, he lists as its major problems “the gradual elimination of Russian influence” and the control of .he Committee in charge of the anti-British boycott. In dis- cussing the boycott, he says: “The second problem is govern- ment control of the Strike Commit- tee, in charge of the Hongkong boycott. This commi.tee operates independently of the Government, ...As recently as June 27, 1926, five Chinese seeking to travel from Can- ton to Hongkong were shot dead by. these organized ruffians.” It is academic, but interesting, to speculate on Mr. Morley’s attitude to- ward the wholesale shoo.ing of thous- ands of workers arid peasants by Kuo- mintang reactionaries that is now going on in China. |ARRY FREEMAN. © . ‘ is essentially a struggle between “cen-" ley is clear—with the deadly clearness | ae 5A ag GEST RT BE B y