The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 3, 1928, Page 8

Page Eight THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MARCH 8, 1928 cee Except Sunday “WB Ficst Street, New York, N. Y. Cable Address: ——_______ Phone, Orchard 1680 “Daiwork” By Mail (in New York only): $8.00 per year $4.50 six months $2.50 three months. SUBSCRIPTION RATES| By Mail (outside of New York): $6.00 per year $3.50 six months $2.00 three months. and mail out checks to reer TBE DAILY WORKER, 33 First Street, New York, N. Y. oa Rattor a Aseiatant Editor... . se ROBERT MINOR .. WM. F. DUNNE Epiered as seccnd-class mail at the the act of March 3, post-office New York, N. ¥., under 18 Hays Lies for Coolidge Before the eyes of American workers the senate oil-graft shows convincing evidence that the president of “investigation” the United States is the titular head of a shake-down gang which ig different from the average city gang of burglars only as the United States is different in size and political significance from a three-room flat. Will H. Hays, as the former chairman of the republican na- tional committee who handled the criminal job of bribery, per- jury and larceny by which Coolidge was put into office with Harding, lied Thursday under oath, as everyone knew he would. He was lying not only for himself, but for Coolidge—lying to) sover from the eyes of the masses the fact that two presidents in | succession (not to speak of former ones) functioned as the “prin- tipals” of the most monumental gang of criminals ever exposed— | or partially exposed—in the history of the world. It is a gang which has on its roll of present and former members several con- yicted criminals, four ex-cabinet members who were steeped in | graft, one would-be cabinet member shot by his underworld com- | panion as he was about to become ‘ “respectable” enough to rule | the nation in Harding’s sumstances—alleged “ptomaine cabinet, one mysterious suicide (or mur- jer) in the living apartments of a grafter-cabinet member, and me death of a president of the United States under strange cir- poisoning’’—while on a wild voy- ige to Alaska at a moment when the graft ring of which he was thief was in its first apparent danger of exposure, Will H. Hays, biting his lip till the blood ran, lied to protect jot only this gang, but to protect the government of the United 3tates from the contempt of the masses. iny doubt that the fake “Continental Trading Co.” was the fiction vy which the bribery was covered thru which Harding and Cool- dge became the rulers of the United States. sublican committee told the public in the 1920 campaign—that ‘nothing more than $1,000” would be received as a contribution © Harding’s and Coolidge’s Yoolidge and Harding knew it, ‘ campaign fund, it was a cover and for the three and more millions xf dollars with which they were being bought by the capitalists who put them in. The mountain of falsehood built up by Will Hays, John D, Rockefeller, Jr., and the other witnesses, and by Calvin Coolidge is a silent but active participant, encouraged by Walsh’s com- nittee of senators in spite of their bluster,—is regarded by one 6 ind all as a “patriotic” lie told in order to cover up the nature of | the United States government. By common consent the screaming farce proceeds to pass all) juestions up to: John T. Pratt, who is dead. John W. Weeks, who is dead. Fred W. Upham, who is dead. Daniel G. Reid, who is dead. That was the best Will Hays could do. aave traced the matter to: But other witnesses H. M. Blackmer, who is missing, James F. O’Neil, missing, Col. Robt. W. Stewart, who won’t testify. Coleman T. DuPont, who “had his larnyx cut out and can’t talk.” It is because this lie is too gross to win credence, that Calvin | Coolidge is not to run for a third term, Coolidge will be succeeded big business, equally steeped in éxposed to put over gn gullible masses. It might even be little Dawes. may be Smith. “Refcviners” san government. by another flunkey of American | corruption, but not yet too much | It may be Hoover. It pxcressence of a form of class government which is essentially the dictatorship of big capital. and controlled by the same men who bought Harding, Coolidge, | Coolidge’s successor will be owned Weeks, Fall, Daugherty, Will Hays and Jess Smith. Theoretically (tho not practically) the direct bribery could be stopped by plac- | ing in office such “honest” servants of these dominant capitalist | interests as would be owned without open purchase at the moment of election. But to dislodge from state power the owners of and bribers of the Harding-Coolidge administration, would be to over- “throw the United States government. by servants of the capitalists, nor within the legal forms of tho | eolitical structure built to express their class rule. Let no man imagine that it began with Coolidge or with Harding. Woodrow Wilson was as much the hired servant of the It is now too clear for | And when the re-} | | | The cor-! |of hostility on the part of the reac- | By ROSE WORTIS. Capitalist development, which is in its most advanced stage in the United States, with its mass production and specialization, has removed the barriers against the employment of women in practically all industries. The influx of women in industry re- ceived great impetus during the world war when. millions of men were drawn into the war machine, with the result that in the 1920 census we find that eight and a half million women are gainfully employed. When women first began to come into industry, they met with a spirit tionaries in the labor movement. They saw a great competitive menace in the influx of women workers, and in- stead of adopting a policy of organ- izing them so as to raise’ their stan- dards to the level of men workers they adopted a policy similar to that of the English workers in the early Needle Trades Leader in the coming campaign will try to make the} Harding-Coolidge graft regime appear as the exception in Ameri- | It is not the exception, but the rule. ruption that appears on the surface is nothing but the natural | Rose Wortis, Joint Board, Cloak and Dressmakers’ Union. stages of the machine age. They op- posed the entrance of women in in dustry, claiming that woman’s place is in the home, When, however, their opposition proved to be useless, it was substi- tuted by a new theory, namely, that women are an impermanent factor in industry; that they only remain until chey marry. Therefore any attempt to organize women into trade unions WORKING WOMEN OF THE WORLD, UNITE! the fringe of industry and because of that are more strongly affected by industrial depressions and are sub- ject td greater unemployment. Dur- ing the industrial crisis of 1921 there were four million unemployed work- ing women. The American Federation of Labor is primarily an organization of skilled workers and has concerned it- self but little with organizing the un- skilled and particularly the women workers. Only at such times when the woman worker became a real trade did they take notice of the women workers, and that only in of- ficial resolutions at conventions. The Yecognition given to women in offi- cial circles of the A. F. of L. is more an act of chivalry than a recognition of the common interests of working men and women. While the A. F. of L. has time and again at conventions adopted reso- lutions favoring the organization of women and their admission into the existing unions, it never extended its unions. menace to the men in a particular As for the International unions, the The Working. Woman in Int'l Labor Defense By ROSE BARON. From the international battle front of labor a chorus of greetings arises to celebrate International te Day. Greetings! International Labor Defense can) well be compared to the first aid of | the front line trench of militant la-| Men and women alike concen- | trated on the task of freeing their | bor. political prisoners from the clutches |of the enemy and save them for greater tasks that lie ahead. Shoulder to Shoulder. The working class woman today fights side by side with the male worker against the system that ha been built and maintained by the eco | nomie exploitation and oppression of human beings. On every field—in the | factories, in the trade unions, in th political parties of the working clas women are playing an increasingly important role. Every new strike brings vividly to our attention the in- , spiring activity of the working wo men, their militancy on the picket} line, their heroic self-denial, their willingness to sacrifice all for the sake of their proletarian ideals. In the Passaic strike, the furriers’ and cloakmakers’ strikes, and now in the coal strike, women have played their |}! part equally with the men and have borne the brunt of the struggle on the And this can not be done | is 2 waste of time and energy. Many Women Workers. An examination of the facts con- cerning women in industry presents an entirely different picture. Women workers are not only employed in the needle trades and textile trades, but big Wall Street finance-capitalists as Albert 8. Fall was the |are also entering in ever greater paid thief of Harry Sinclair, Hanna, etc., etc. While the capitalist class agents, including the Back of Wilson—-McKinley and ““investigat- ors,” are covering the essential nature of capitalist government, the militant and conscious workers must work over-time to ex- pose the abyss of corruption. The workers must break from cap- italist parties, owned by the capitalists and used for strike-break. ing, defrauding, and making possibie the exploitation of the work- ing and farming classes. The formation of the American labor party will mark the next great step towardytlass consciousness of the workers. A | | i jt numbers into the heavy industries. In the steel and iron industries the num- ber of women workers has increased 145.4 per cent since 1910. In the au- tomobile industry the increase was as high as 108 per cent. This is also rue of the chemical industry. The woman worker in industry is | the most underpaid and exploited, She is handicapped not only by lack of skill, but also by the antagonism of the men workers, both skilled and un- skilled alike, who see in her a danger- ous competitor, Women as unskilled picket line as well as in the homes. On Picket Line. And when strikers are clubbed and arrested, women are among them. The International Labor Defense, the central defense organization of the American working class, is being railed on to defend increesing num- bers of women workers who feel the heavy hand of the capitalist courts. Moreover, when we talk about the class war prisoners throughout the world, we should stop to think; what about their wives? what about the suffering and heroism of a Lucy Par- sons or a Rose Sacco? In Strikers’ Family. The working class woman, both the industrial worker and the housewife thus finds herself vitally concerned in every phase of the class struggle; workers are generally eyeaged on | she is most concerned when the work- — Labor Defense Fighter ! i | Rosa Baron, secretary, Interna- tional Labor Defense, New York District. ing class is being directly attacked hru the most insidious’ instruments of capitalist oppression, the courts. When she is not herself a victim of this attack, she is perhaps the wife or mother of someone who is. Thus is it not for nothing that wo- men are playing such en active part in the work of the International La- bor Defense. The working class wo- men, of this country realize that the only way to fight the frame-up and the numerous devices of “legal” sup- pression effectively is by building the International Labor Defense, by mak- ing it as strong a weapon in the hands of the working class as possible. In the work connected with our an- nual bazaar, which this year will be held March 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 at New Star Casino, 107th St. and Park Ave., we are depending upon the women to By Fred Ellis “The Proletarian Revolution cannot be won without the masses of the working women.”—Lenin. _ The Problem of Organizing Over Eight ~ Million Women in Industry position of women there is similar to that of the Negroes in the southern states. There are no constitutional bars in most unions against the ad- mission of women, but the official- dom would rather have the women remain working in the unorganized shops than take them into the unions on a par with men. These unionofficials look uponwoman as a wilful intruder rather than a worker drawn into industry by econ- omic necessity. Whatever activities were undertaken by the A. F. of L. unions to organize women, in most instances it was done without any preparations and without any under- standing of women and their psychology, with the result that after some effort the organizer declared it a useless expenditure of energy as women could not be organized. (gn Woman Be Organized? ‘4e best answer to this question can be given when we look into the history of the needle trade workers, the textile workers, the famous strike of the telephone operators of 1921, ete. The annals of the Dressmakers’ Union are a testimonial of the fight- ing capacity, idealism and spirit of self-sacrifice of women workers. The importance of the role of women in the present internal strug- gle in the needle trades cannot as yet be fully estimated. The women have been and are today the most stubborn fighters. There were fewer desertions on the part of women than men. This is conclusive proof that not only can women be} | organized, but that they can be the | progressive factor in the labor move- | ment. Another interesting illustration are he millinery workers. For years the men workers made agreements with the bosses which only benefited the few men at the expense of the thou- sands of underpaid girls. The argu- ments advanced by the men in de- fense of their action was that the millinery workers are flappers, that they come into the trade temporarily until they marry and therefore can- not be organized. With the develop- ment of the left wing in that union pressure was brought to bear to un- dertake the organization of the women. Within less than three years the local of trimmers has grown from the negligible number of a few hun- dred to four thousand and is today one of the best organized locals of women, developing women leaders, educational activities, and _partici- pating in the general life of the union. This is also true of the fur work- ors where the women, many of whom are of the Greek nationality and were but recently organized by the left wing administration, have actively participated in the strike. Approaching the Problem. In approaching the problem of the organization of women one must bear in mind that women are but new- comers te public life and lack organi- do their share and more if necessary. And in every other phase of our work we find the class-conscious women of the working class helping in every way they can. .* zational experience. Social activities play an important role in attracting women to the trade unions, The club, circle, the social affair with .\shop mates, may become the nuclei \Experiences in Working Women’s Club By MAYMN NURML (Secretary, Finnish Working Wo- men’s Clubs of Minnesota, Wis- consin District.) There is considerable discussion these days about the ways and means of organization and education of the great masses of working women not employed in industries, This is a big and important problem. The millions of women isolated on farms and the homes in villages and small towns should be reached by our messzfre of emancipation. They should be organ- ized into some kind of working class organization. Bere the problem arises, into what kind, by what methods. Grew Slowly. Like “Topsy,” our women’s organi- zation wasn’t ever born—it “just growed.” A club organized here and there, some in Massachusetts, some in Michigan, some in Minnesota-Wis- consin district. Ever since the Fin- nish Federation isolated itself from the socialist party and became af- filiated with the Workers Party, a women’s mass organization has been growing. This mass movement is al- ready a vigorous youngster tho not old in years. There are now about 150 Finnish working women’s clubs scattered all over the country, but they are not consolidated into a uni- fied organization as the general Fin- nish workers’ clubs are. These women’s clubs function in- side the same district lines as the workers’ club and the central body of the clubs in each district is their sec- retariat. They are loose mass organi- zations, held together and kept alive and active by the issues that appeal to these working women. What are the issues, it may be asked—edueation and organization of the children and youth; the fight against the terrible liquor traffic; women’s part in the co-operative movement; farmer-labor movement; anti-war work; assistance of the re- cent big strikes. These and many other matters have been the work and life of the clubs. Then of course the social side of the club meetings and affairs has its appeal. Work Among Youth. One of the most vital questions of the clubs in our Minnesota and Wis- consin district was at first teaching of working class principles to our children and youth. Tho much has been done in this field of work, there is still much to be done. During the 20 years existence of the Finnish Fed- eration, the education of the youth has been shamefully neglected, very little was done. The women’s club have taken up this important work. We have urged that youth courses be | organized and we havé assisted the courses financially. We have helped to organize the Y. W. L. and to keep up the league units, with financial and other assistance. Sunday schools, summer schools and some camps have been organized and financed by us. The farmer-labor question has been one of our issues during the recent year and at present. The pessimistic attitude towards workers’ political ac- tion is giving way. The extremely ex- ploited tax-burdened farmers, who have been at the mercy of the rail- road and other trusts and who have been compelled to mortgage their very souls to the bankers, are getting their eyes open, They are rebellious, they are losing faith in the old par- ties and so the farmer-labor issue finds receptive minds among farm men and women. The discussions in the women’s clubs have proved that the necessity, the character and the aith of a working farmers’ and la- borers’ party is well understood even by women. Most of the women’s clubs have applied for membership as fra- ternal organizations in the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Association, but they have not been admitted. first step toward organization. ‘They are unaccustomed to the daily routine of organization. One must therefore appeal to their imagination and dramatize the struggle in order to arouse their interest which once aroused proves to be more steadfast as indicated by the fact that there are fewer desertions of women strik- ers during periods of struggle than of men. Educational work should also play a very important role in woman’s organization. Women must be taught administrative ‘work so that the fruit of many successful struggles may not go to waste as ‘was the case in the past. There are eight and a half million exploited women workers in the United States. They find themselves in even a worse position than the unskilled men workers. The A. F. of L. bureaucracy remains deaf to the ery for help from these 81 workers. It becomes the task of the left wing both within and outside of the existing unions to give their at- tention to the problem of organizing women workers both on the economic and political field. The left wing must equip itself with the necessary knowledge od understanding. The left wing has the virility, the courage and the idealism to tackle this great field of unorganized women workers. The growing interest of the progressives in the women’s movement is an in- dicatig ze that the left wing and pro- gress@e elements are sertening So their responsibility toward the un- organized women workers,