The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 17, 1928, Page 6

Page Six THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 1928 THE DAILY WORKER 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 e 2.50 three months. $2.00 three months. Z Address and meil out checks to THE DAILY WORKER, 33 First Street, New York, N. Y. GER Eiditor........+ Part Ts ..ROBERT MINOR Assistant Editor..... . ...WM. F. DUNNE Entered as second-class mail at the post-office at New York, N, ¥.. under the act of March 3, 1879. Oil and the War Danger-—Standard Oil Starts a New Drive: on Its International Rival The world struggle between Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell for oil markets and oil resources has broken out into the open. Standard Oil of New York has answered the attacks of Sir Henri Deterding, the head tion of war. Royal Dutch Shell is the pet child of British imperialism and the bitter struggle between it and Standard is a sign of the sharpening conflict between the American and British empires. The DAILY WORKER in its issues from November 30 to December 5 published a series of articles entitled “Oil and the War Danger,” by William F. Dunne, which pointed out growing antagonisms between the two giant oil monopolies and predicted the developments which the capitalist press gives much space to now. The articles, as a matter of fact, were written last August, shortly after the hurried visit of Walter Cc: Teagle, head of the ; Standard Oil of New Jersey, to Europe where, failing to reach an agreement with Deterding, he made plans for the oil war which has been declared. It is important to note that the two centers of conflict, which the Standard Oil declaration mentions as reason for its offensive, are first, the oil reserves of the Soviet Union, completely closed to Royal Dutch since Great Britain broke off relations, and second, the Indian markets where Standard, by reason of its access to the Baku fields, is in a position to undersell Royal Dutch. Thus in reference to a major source of crude oil, the Soviet Union, Standard makes an open challenge to British imperialist policy and in the struggle for markets for the refined product in- vades the principal British colony—India. | There is a direct connection between the open declaration of war on Royal Dutch Shell by Standard and the demand of the navy department for an appropriation of $725,000,000 for cruisers There will be more open attempts to speed up militarizaticn of the American masses as the battle for oil and oil markets 84 continues. Unlimited supplies of oil are a necessity for a ruling class seeking world domination and oil seeps thru the whole struc- ture of imperialist machinery. It is for this reason that the strug- gle between Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell, representing the two most powerful imperialist nations, carries within it the geriis of imperialist war. These germs have past the stage of incubation and their virus now is poisoning the world atmosphere. The bonds between the masses of Great Britain and the United States must be strengthened. The Communists in these two empires must take the lead in the struggle against their rulers and in organizing the struggle of the working class and colonia! peoples ruled by imperialism, in company with the masses of the Soviet Union, for struggle against imperialist war. The campaign for world trade union unity must be pushed. The reactionary leaders of the labor movement must be exposed as agents of the war mongers and their influence destroyed. The masses of all countries will see in the increase of the antagonisms between the rulers of the two great imperialist na- tions, exemplified by the oil war, the growing danger of another world conflict in which they will be called upon to give their lives, surrender the few liberties left to them and accept a still lower living standard. Mass organization against imperialist war must be a first point on the order of business of the labor movement of all coun- tries—especially in America and Great Britain. ” The imperialist war danger is very real. This is what the drive against Royal Dutch Shell by Standard Oil means. ie ~ sate Cowardly Evasion of Nicaraguan Question In his speech before the opening session of the conference of the Pan-American Union, President Coolidge did not even men- tion the question of Nicaragua. Almost within sound of the mur- derous bombardment of the defenders of the Nicaraguan libera- tion movement, the Wall Street puppet president in a prepared speech reeking with sophistry, had the effrontery to assert that “the sovereignty of small nations is respected,” and to declare a it Published by the NATIONAL DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING ASS’N, Ine, | | Phone, Orchard 1680 | of Royal Dutch Shell, with a declara-| SOUTHWARD HO! By Fred Ellis The Loan Sharks of Wall Street Follow the Flag. RELIGION. AND FACTORY SYSTEM By EDGAR HART. Since Roger Babson wrote his “Re- | ligion and Business” there has grown up a more practical view on the part of capitalists towards spooks in rela- tion to the exploitation of workers. Babson went to the extreme when he warned Wall Street that “the value of our investments depends not on the strength of our banks, but rather up- on the strength of our churches.” But the practical use of religion has re- ceived the serious attention of the vulgar economists from Dr. Ure to Professor Fisher of prohibitionist fame. Amid the maze of graphs and stock | market statistics in a recent issue of Forbes Magazine appeared an ar- ticle which dealt not with worldly things. “Religion as a Basis for Busi- ness,” by Charles Stelzle, was quite a deviation from the purely mundane sereeds that adorn the pages of this typical rentier’s sheet. The Common Lot. Speaking of the capacity of the workers to sacrifice themselves with- out self-interest, this writer says: “They accept it (personal sacrifice) as a matter of course. To go to work, in spite of headache and heart-ache; to perform routine tasks which are drudgery; to face problems of life with little wealth or resource—that is the common lot.” He goes on to point out to his cou- pon-clipping readers and exploiters of labor that the “workers today are paying a heavy price for our supre- macy in the industrial world....Work- ingmen’s death rates are still abnor- mally high....The death rate of the workingmen of middle age is nearly 40 per cent....Deaths from accidents among industrial workers is two and one-half times as great as among non-industrial workers... .Pneumonia is twice as high among industrial and so on about the hor- folls among the industrial rible workers, Pie In the Sky. As a solution for all these ills he offers religion. What is necessary for the workers is not unions, not or- ganization campaigns to strengthen the economic forces of these decimat- adoption by the bosses of the golden \rule, It has been repeatedly called to the attention of the bosses that religion is a necessary element of capitalist production, not alone by sky pilcis but by economists. Dr. Andrew Ure, an English econ- omist in the days when Marx was writing “Capital” advanced the view (in “The Philosophy of Manufac- ture”) that, “It is excessively to the interest of every mill owner to or- ganize his moral machinery on equal- ly sound principles with his mechani- cal. There is, in fact, no case to which the gospel truth ‘godliness is great gain,’ is more applicable than in the administration of an extensive factory.” Factory System in Religion. The owners of the factory system, now that this form of production has become more extensive as well as in- tensive, readily realizes that “god- liness is great gain.” It is not uncommon for church or- ganizers to issue circular letters to factory owners, bankers and capital- ists generally appealing for funds on the ground that their organizations keep the workers contented. An ex- ample is the National Committee of the Northern Baptist Laymen (New York) which appealed to the profit- squeezers as follows: “Your business would be in a fine way, wouldn’t it, if it were not for the stabilizing influence of the church and its preachers, who put am- bition and determination and love of honest service in the hearts of your working men?” Worker As Machine. Marx described the proletariat un- der capitalism as appendages of ma- chines, but it was left for our modern pseudo-economists with religious ten- dencies to talk of the worker as a machine and actually set a price on him. Marx said that the bosses “buy the labor power of the workers as they do so much electrical energy in hour units, but our modern American capi- talists have gone a step further and have considered the entire working ed, disease-ridden producers, but the class as machines which add a speci- fie sum to their national wealth, OOOO what transpires at the conference is of no concern to the rest of the world, but. is exclusively the business of the United States. Emphasis was laid by Coolidge upon the Monroe Doctrine; and here the imperialist policy of perverting this hundred-year-old de- fensive measure into an instrument of modern imperialist aggres- sion was stressed. At Havana Coolidge repeated his military program for the subjugation of tthe southern republics by demanding the estab- lishment of air routes throughout those countries, under the cloak, of course, of encouraging closer communication through commer- cial aviation. He broached the question of “good roads,” the pre- tense under which a net-work of military highways are to be constructed from the Mexican border to the farthest points in Chile and the Argentine. “On the “Tun yet connec said Coolidge, that “nowhere among these republics have great military estab- lishments been maintained for the purpose of overawing or subju- gating other nations.” At the identical moment Coolidge was delivering his dirty eulogy of imperialist aggression before the sychophants assembled to do homage to the malevolent tyranny of the United States \ government, additional military and naval forces were being dis- i patched on their murderous mission to Nicaragua, there to try to destroy the one audible and effective force striving for national liberation. The servile government of Cuba, which set the stage for the farce now being enacted at Havana, saw to it that the represen- tatives of the anti-imperialist sentiment in the southern republics . did not gain admission to the country, so there was no one in the auditorium where Coolidge delivered his speech to arise and chal- lenge his lies. { While indulging in exalted sentiments about peace, good- will and democracy, the Coolidge address, not merely reaffirmed the imperialist attitude of the United States against the southern republics, but also contained a note of warning to European im- “hangs a map showing proposed hi: connecting the prin- cipal points of our two ofttinents.” Only a conference of abject slaves of imperialism would listen to such a declaration of impending imperialist militarization for the exploitation of the natural resources and the enslaving of the |populations of their countries without launching a counter-blast perialist nations that the American continents are the exclusiv ; that would shake the imperialist edifice to its foundations. If omai treet ion, declaring that th i |among these delegates of the southern republics are any men Oe Bia code est aa thelr cen Naeatiniea a Fp tgp /other than pawns of American imperialism they will devo‘e their “ A H han a direct refereni lenergies to devising means of aiding Sandino in Nicaragua, and ; aes es eccrine notice on seta srg dP creating a bloc of anti-imperialist nations that would drive y use the imperialist league to interfere with the rival rapacity of from their countries the armed forces of dollar despotism. American imperialism. This slap at the league, however, was softened by the qualifying observation that: “The existence of this conference, held for the consideration of measures of purely American concern, involves no antagonism toward any other sec- tion of the world or any other organization.” Even this qualifica- tion is a defiance of the league, which says, in so many words, that Are there any men among the puppet delegates at Havana? If so, let them raise under the nose of the little would-be emperor of a Wall Street empire the cry: “Viva Sandino!’’—and proceed to disrupt this imperialist conference, to build in its stead a bloc of Latin-American republics to fight to the last ditch against Coolidge’s empire. a Billion Dollar Workers. The latest apostle of religion as a bedmate for business puts it this way: “Every workingman may be said to be worth the equivalent of a $10,000 machine. There are probably 10,000,- 000 workers in factories alone. (These are the proletariat which the A. F. of L. leave well enough alone.) This means:a total value of $100,000,000,- 000 or one-fourth of our total wealth today. These workers come to busi- ness without cost on its part. They are ready to produce—all they need is direction.” This is the basis for the exploita- tion of the workers put in about as concrete and as crass a form as it is possible to express it. It coincides with Marxism in its explanation of why a “free” worker under capital- ism is more desirable to the capitalist that the outright ownership of him as a slave. Yet there is one draw- back. Though the worker is consid- ered as a machine and at best is a mere appendage, he does have a mind, feelings, tonsciousness, fears, hate, love, Might Rebel. Even a $10,000 (value to the eapi- talist) worker theorizes about his existence, the use of it all, his op- pression and the injustice of his sta- tion in life, All the forces of eapi- talism do not seem sufficient to pla- cate this machine, and the capitalist calls into service one of his mightiest weapons for the preservation of the system which counts the workers in factories as “one-forth of our total wealth,” or in round figures $100,- 000,000,000. Our new religious theorizers, how- ever, realize that preaching by it- self can accomplish nothing. Reli- gion does not have the direct hold on the worker that it did on the feudal serf, to whom excommunication was not only a terrible spiritual calamity but was at the same time an econ- omic loss, Mr. Stelzel assures us that “the workingman fears being out of a job more than he fears going to hell.” Hence, we see religion taking a new step. As someone has expressed it, “the last refuge of religion is so- ciology.” The future life is not so important now. That is left to the spiritualists. The more substantial churches with their billions of dol- lars of property and their yearly in- come of over $500,000,000 must come closer to earth if they are to remedy the frame of mind of the worker {who would rather go to hell than lose a job. Now we have religion in its new dress. The rabbi is replaced by: the flapper social worker. The catholic priest, to get closer to the worker, leaves off his skirts, dresses like a lawyer and acts as field worker for the Catholic Welfare Conference. And our protestant sky-pilot becomes the “peppy go-getter” of the Y. M. C. A. Christ said the lowest, cheapest sin- ner was worth saving and certainly 10,000,000 of $10,000 machines must be saved. Whether the preachers of all de- nominations are effective or not is now determined “in business and in lindustry, for here it is that we have jour daily contacts with those with {whom we must live out our princi- |ples.” That is the shop nucleus in re- \ligion. The march from fable to fact has ;been a disastrous one for the church jand religion. In England the sharpen- ing of the class struggle has made deep inroads on the ‘church. In Rus- jsia religion is in a death-gasp; in China the nationalist revolution is a bed of thorns to the Standard Oil missionaries. The twilight of the gods becomes a reality only in the red dawn, WANTS MORE FEATURES Letter Proposes Special Sections Editor, The DAILY WORKER: in your issue of Dec. 31, there ap- peared a letter signed “S. L.” giving a few suggestions how to ircrease the circulation of our daily. I whoie- heartedly agree with this comrade and 1 am saying this from practical experience. Personally I would not be withoui che paper for a day, because I am interested in the news that I could not get in any other paper. My wife, on the other hand, does noi find it in- teresting enough to really want to read it; at the same time she reads all the instalmen: noveis in the capi- talist papers, and most of the news they see fit to print. There are lots of other attractive features by which a proletarian news- Paper could gain new readers, such as, daily short stories, health hints, advice on the care of children, advice on how to prepare boys and girls to become Pioneers, short cu.s you used to have were a very good feature, and many other features, of a human sind, that would directly be of in- terest to the readers in their im- mediate life. Comradely, —SAMUEL ORCHOW Philadelphia, Pa. * * * Editor, The DAILY WORKER: In your issue of Sept. 19, I find a very interesting article entitled “Wel- lesley Hills Leonomics,” by H. M. Wicks. It would be well if you would print more such articles, for if the workers want to fight the big bank- ers, they must know something about the financial system. Lditor, The DAILY WORKER: I noticed an article appearing in a recent issue relative to the great in- dustrial depression now sweeping the east and middle west. You forsaw tis many months ago, therefore, by reading your paper one keeps posted and knows how to prepare for the future. The capitalist papers out here just print news about the great prosperity and development going on, which is ail the bunk. The depression has hit hard out here, too. Many workers from the east are flocking out here only to find conditions worse than at home. Times are hard all over. I am enclosing an employment let- ter from the “Four L,” a company union (which I do not belong to since it is a company union dominated by the bosses). Even they say that un- employment out here is tremendous. Workers in the east should be warned not to come here looking for work, I hope to send a contribution to the Ruthenberg fund soon. Trusting that the workers will soon organize a unij'ed front against the bosses and eliminate unemployment evil, I am, Fraternally yours, —HERBERT MANSOLF. Seattle, Wash. i CHICAGO, Jan. 16. (FP). — The Workers’ Bookshop, managed by Sam Hammersmark, is moving into new quarters at 2021 W. Division St., Chi- cago. The store specializes in labor | off. —AN OLD FARMER. |books and publications. “N SPARKS From the NEWS ‘HE announcement of the State De- partment that the ban against the flotation of French industrial securi- ties is to be immediately discontinued: is of tremendous importance for the American workers and farmers. Very likely the ban against the French government loans will also be lifted soon. Why this change of policy after three years of opposition by the gov- ernment on the ground that the debt of France has not yet been adjusted? Coolidge says that it is a mark of friendship. Is that true? There are three basic reasons for the significant change of policy by the American State Department. These are: (1) American imperialism is lit- erally supersaturated with credit, The surplus of capital is threatening to choke the finance capitalists domina- ting the country. New outlets for the export of capital must be found or the whole credit structure will be weighed down by the superabundance of monetary gold. Hence, attempts will now be madé to stimulate the export of American capital to France. There are French railroads, shipyards, and chemical corporations to be controlled. (2) This move is also a manoeuver against British imperialism. It will inverfere with British exports of capi- tal and will tend to weaken the Eng- lish bankers’ influence on French in- dustries. It is an integral part of the whole manoeuver of the United States to separate the European imperialist powers, to divide them, to pit one against another, and thus to lessen the menace of European resistance to American imperialist domination. Such motives likewise constitute the basis of the much-heralded efforts of the American government at a peace treaty with France and even at the so-called multi-lateral peace treaties with other imperialist governments. (3) Last but not least, the lifting of the ban on French industry loans, and soon government loans, despite the fact that the French debt has not yet been settled to the satisfaction of Washington, is calculated consciously to streng-hen tne reactionary Poin- care government which is facing a severe trial in the May national elec- tions. Here we have the crux of Wall Street’s peace and friendship—and service to capitalist reaction every- where as well as the systematic war preparations. * * © a HIS recent address to the Race Betterment Conference, the multi- millionaire Secretary of Labor Davis declared: “Today nearly every labor« mg man in the United States has ime to think, and he owes this mostly to science.” This is certainly very modest talk By Mr. Davis who is an open-shop steel owner. For a change he does not claim that everything is due to the magnanimity and efficiency of the capitalist class. But at the same conference the amazing, yet unchaliangeable, declaration was made by Dr. J. A. Stucky of Lexington, Kentucky, that two million peopie are living today in the United States in as backward a condition as did the early sectlers, These people live in log cabins, burn home-made candles, spin their own clothes and make their own furni- ture.” This authority hastens to tell us that these people, for the most part illiterate, are not foreigners, Dr. Stucky says: “These are the pure- blooded hundred percent, Anglo-Saxon Americans who established this coun- try of ours.” * To say the least, our notorious la- bor-hating Secretary of Labor Davis “slightly exaggerated” his glowing description of the wonderful condi- tions of the great mass of people in , the United States. While Davis was working his imagination over.ime, the leaders of big business in Massachtt- setts were openly advocating the lengthening of hours of labor and the cutting of wages for the New England textile workers. Long hours of night work for women in the textile mills, banned as far back as a quarter of a century ago, were also proposed by these supporters of Cool- idge and Fuller. The report of Gov- ernor Smith’s Industrial Survey Com- mission was especially quoted to sup- port the last ultra-backward move. And at the same time hundreds of thousands of women and children, the families of the locked-out Pennsyl- vania and Ohio miners, were starving, oil workers were being thrown out of their jobs, and shoe-workers either laid-off or being given a substantial wage-reduction, We do wish that Mr. Davis had told the truth. We do wish the work- ers had some time to think and think right. Then Mr. Davis wouldn’t get the chance to talk so much nonsense— and the workers would be much better —JAY LOVESTONE. —