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

Page Eight THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 1928 THE DAILY WORKER Published by the NATIONAL DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING ASSN, Ine. Daily, Except Sunday $3 First Street, New York, N. Y. Cable Address Dalwork SUBSCRIPTION RATES ee By Mail (in New York only): B il (outsid w York): $3.00 per year $4.50 six months § er_year x months $2.50 three months 00 three Address and mail out checks to - THE DAILY WORKER, 3: reet, New York, N. ¥. ‘ Editor......... ROBERT MINOR , Assistant Editor. .. WM. DUNNE &rtered as second-class mail at the post-office at New York, N. Y¥., under the The Fight Is in Coal Camps The splendid accomplishments of the United Mine Workers’ Union in mobilizing its best forces at the big Pittsburgh confer- ence, and the adoption there of a program of action which meets its needs in the present is, the needs for winning the strike and building up of the Union on a huge national scale including the unorganized. miners, is an accomplishment of which Labor will be proud for all time. act of March 3, 1879. Already the reports from the m important coal fields show that the adoption of the p n at Pittsburgh is being greeted with tremendous enthusiasm by the mine workers. Returning delegates from the conference are alr , actively putting its first provisions into real life. This is good news. Union program is valuable to the Mine Workers precisely to the extent that it is put into action. With all the tremendous s ference, the miners will realize that no firht of this sort was ever | won by a conference. he conference was only the | nning— | a splendid beginning, but only a beginning which is preparatory | to action. | The scene of action i ning camps. There the fight | for the life of the United ine Workers will be won or lost. The struggle has been transferred from the national confer- | ence to the districts of the United Mine Workers’ Union. The call | of the Save-the-Union conference for emergency district conven- | tions is the key to the present situation. The first tremendous | victory of the United Mine Workers’ Union against the operators and against Lewis was expressed in the success at Pittsburgh. The second tremen ust be fought for and won in successful eme tions which will throw out ot office the traitors he Union from the inside— | the Lewis machine. ict con\ ho are kill Simultaneously and a part of the second big victory will be the complete strippi of every non-union mine of every man now at work. The unorganized miners who, because of the crim-| inal policies of Le have been allowed to be a reservoir of | strength for the operators by digging coal during the strike, must) now be made the powerful reinforcement of the Union forces by | leing brought out 100 percent. The unorganized mine workers | are the majority of the mine workers. This must not be lost sight of, and this great mass must be brought into the fight, into the victory, and into the Union. No desertion of the unorganized majority! These must be protected, and must be as active as any | in the fight. | Reports from Illinois and Indiana, Western Pennsylvania (both organized and unorganized fields) and from the Anthracite districts show that the sincere and militant forces of the Union are on the move. On to the emergency district conventions! Mine workers, you have your program; now put it into action! | An Old Corruptionist Dies All flags on publie buildings in New York state are at half- mast today because of the death of Chauncy M. Depew. | ese Al Smith, who ordered the public mourning over the death | of this 93-year old politician and railroad magnate, Calvin Coolidge | and a multitude of other capitalist political and industrial chiefs | are filling the press with eulog and “regrets.” Of course the mourning is purely formal, as no one has any real regret over the passing out of the decayed body of one whose whole life was given to the single purpose of helping himself to all moneys and “honors” that he could acquire. The stir among the capitalist great men is due to the fact that Depew for three quarters of a century of active adult life embodied more than any other man that tr lous period of the formation of the mod- ern American capi t cla Depew typified t eginning of the American modern bour- feoisie. He was closely ntified as a member of the old Van- derbilt gang which so thoroughly looted the mas: and suborned the federal government as well as the state government of New York during the decades following the civil war. Politically shrewd enough to foresee the course of history, Depew attached himself from the start to the republican party, cleverly kept out of the army that fought against slavery, to push himself in politics at home and into the rich pickings which came to railroad speculators as a result of the victory of the bourgeois class in the civil war. When old Commodore Vanderbilt was the chief of the railroad looters of the Eastern stat and the older Rockefeller was still a young beginner, Chauncy Depew was already rapidly laying up his fortune, securing his position in the New York Central rail road and making hiniself the political go-between for the big in- dustrial corruptionists with the national and state governments. last-master in financial and legal maneuvers, supreme genius in poutical corruption, expert monopoly builder—and still clever «ough to have obtained what the American bourgeoisie envies ii. the way of “culture,” old Chauncy cannot but express a tender igeal to the great men of the capitalist America of today. It is boasted by his friends that Depew was among the first ut the pirate captains of American business who learned how to corrupt the labor movement. His clever schemes for confusing the masses of railroad employees and of buying off “leaders” is an example which the whole capitalist leadership is now following. Coolidge, Kellogg, Al Smith, Rockefeller, Schiff and all who Phone, Orchard 1680 | The Save-the- | of the great Pittsburgh con- | | THE | | DRAGON OF FOREIGN IMPERIALISM By Fred Ellis The Kuomintang, having become the agent of capitalist countries in China, will be slain by the Chinese masses. © Bosses Fight Compensation Laws in South By ESTHER LOWELL, Winning workmen’s compensation laws in five southern states is the most immediate issue in the campaign of the American Ass’n for Labor Leg- islation. These five states—North and South Carolina, Arkansas, Mississippi and Florida—are the only ones of the 48 lacking legal compensation for in- jured and sick workers. Several thousand southern residents have just been sent letters by Secre- tary John B. Andrews. With the let- ters have gone the association’s latest revision of its pamphlet standards for workmen’s compensation laws. In North Carolina, usually consid- ered advanced among southern states, labor and liberal forces are preparing for a showdown fight in next year’s legislature. No session was held this year. Florida may get her compensa- tion law next year, if the close vote of last year’s legislature is an indica- tion. Arkansas prospects are bright- ened by co-operation of the state la- bor commissioner. But Mississippi is least responsive. Tennessee and Alabama have in- adequate compensation laws, admin- istered by the courts. Many evils of the old damage suit days hang over as a result. In Tennessee no employer with fewer than 10 workers is coy~ ered by the law. Always the Negro question is raised by southern opponents of com- pensation laws. They ask: “Do you think we could get any nigger to work after paying him $8 a week when he got hurt?” Miners Determined to Drive Out: Lewis (Con tinued). Pat Toohey, secretary of the Na- 1 Save-the-Union Committee struck responsive chords when he said: “We are here for only one purpose: to save the Miners’ Union, to win and spread the ke and to oust the gang of ctionaries who are leading it to destruction. “The reactionaries,” continued Toohey, “are the agents in our union of the coal operators like Schwab, Rockefeller, Warden and Mellon. The union faces the most serious crisis in its history, and we meet with the de- termination that these 1,000 miners, representatives gathered from all parts of America and Canada to dis- cuss among themselves, in the absence of their $11,000 a year labor fakers who are betraying the miners, who have lost the union, who are wreck- ing the union, to meet today to plan ways and means of saving this union, the remnant of it, of building it, of saving their conditions and getting better conditions, and bringing our union back to itself where it was be- fore these reactionary thieves took control of it. Lewis a Pretender. “John L. Lewis was never elected to the presidency of the union,” said Toohey as the conference roared “No!” in agreement, “for he stole the election from Alex Howat in 1922, he stole the election from George ‘ey in 1924, and he stele the elec- tion from John Brophy in 1926. He has instituted a Mussolini regime in the unions, a regime of sluggings, of evictions and of beating down and ter- rorizing the rank and file. “Only in the last few days, when many locals in this district elected delegates, a bunch of flat-footed or- ganizers went down the road and told them: “If you go to the conference of the Save-the-Union Committee, we will evict you from the barracks, we will take you off the relief list,” and they have done this. What is the dif- ference between Warden and Osler, the Terminal Coal Company and the Pittsburgh Coal Company. with their policies of evictions, and the policy of By M. H. CHILDS. “Democracy” is safe; the supreme court of Hlinois last month ruled that tutional. cratie parties, respectively, are told xy the capitalist court that their at- tempt to do away with the privilege “which allows the workers to decide which members of the ruling class are going to oppress them for a period of time” is not timely. As good and respectable citizens, they accept the rulings of their court of justice and proceed to elect them- el into the offices of the capital- ist state through “democratic” forms. The primary campaign is on. The rattle of the machine guns and sawed- off shot guns speak the language of vitalist democracy. There is a bit- factional struggle within the re- ublican party of Chicago, The dem- ic machine of Brennan is more are “great” in this land of the exploitation of labor, cannot but envy the hero of a hundred Teapot Domes who “got away with it” without a single slip. ee In Depew died the embodiment of American genius in loot. ‘Al Smith appropriately‘wrders the flag to fly at half-mast. 4 4 ‘ om fortunate. The Thompson-Crowe- Small faction is the more powerful one, and has most. of the political patronage at its command. Its alli- vnee with the underworld is an ac- repted fact. The opponents of the “America First” group, thy is, the & the primary law is legal and consti- Crowe and Brennan, repre-| sentatives of the republican and demo- | terrorization of the union administra- tion? They are the men who do a lot of moaning about injunctions, but they didn’t hesitate to get out an in- junction against the membership of District 7 in the fight against the progressives. Strike Line Holds Fast. Toohey turned to the story of the courageous fight of the Penusylvania and Ohie miners, and spoke of how they were holding out against the terrific odds of the coal and iron po- lice, the clubbings, the jails, the in- junctions, and the courts, the hunger and cold of the barracks and the mis- erable relief of $1 a week given them conditions have led them to thinking more and more that they must~ do something to prevent the complete smashing of the union by the opera- tors and their union tools. “All of Alabama is gone.” he added, “the greater part of Kansas gone, all ef Kentucky gone, no more left in Tennessee. Hardly anything left in Washington.” “We said: No strike in one district while others are practically seabbing.” said Toohey, referring to the separate agreement signed in Indiana, Ilinois and Kansas during the Pen Ohio strike.” Toohey spoke of the unorganized fields, where. as in Westmoreland, Pa. county, there is no tonnage and no checkweighman, and where, as the miners say, “We load coal by the acre.” The miners are being paid as low as 85 and 95 cents per car, which is described as a “street car,” and there is no pay for deadweight. “The non-union fields,” he said, “are our central problem.” Miners, Take Control! “Miners, take control of your union! delegations they begin organizing the forces of the rank and file and de- mand the union,” he said, outlining the program adopted by the Save-the- Union Confetence for calling meetings of local unions to oust Lewis hench- men and install rank and file officials and then follow with the taking over of the sub-district and district or- ; platform of the Thompson-Small com- | bination, are greeted with dynamite ;and bombs. Candidates Labor-Haters. In this primary, which takes place on April 10, the workers of Illinois | have the “choice” to select some of the | most brazen anti-labor representatives that capitalism ever put up for of- fice. No matter which combination is chosen, capitalism will be well repre- sented. Robert E. Crowe’s record in smashing labor unions is well known ; to the workers of Chicago. Governor | Len Small, who walked away with the state treasury, needs no introduc- tion. Frank L. Smith, the personal of- fice boy of Sanmel Insull, is again the candidate for senator. As sen- atorial candidate the Denee faction has put up Otis Glenn, who was the special prosecutor, selected by Brun- dage, present ally of Small, in the attempt to send the miners of Herrin to the gallows in 1922 at the behest of the coal operators. Buy Up Labor Fakers. Terrorism and intimidation are only one form of capitalist politics, Cor- ruption and propaganda are alse used. As in past elections, the capitalist class and its politicians buy up the la- bor bureaucrats and are in turn en- dorsed by these fakers. Most of th by their highly paid officials. Their | We propose that on the return of the } ganizations, to be capped by the call- ing of a national convention of the union for the purpose of establishing the rule of the miners in the union and the ousting of the corrupt Lewis machine. “If there is any split, it will not be by us, but by the reactionaries who will bear the responsibility for it by their policy of discrimination, expul- sions and victimization. It is true that we vote, but it is they who count the votes. The rank and file,” he concluded, “are with the Save-the- Union movement and that is our as- surance cf victory in the fight to win the strike, to oust the Lewis machine and save the union and reestablish it as a powerful force in the mining in- dustry.” atter Toohey’s statement and dur- ing his entire speech tremendous ap- plause rocked the hall. # The Anthracite Reports. The conference continued tn this confident mood as one speaker after another from various sections spoke under the general motion that the reports of Toohey and Brophy be adopted. S. Dziengielewski, secretary of the Bonita, Moleski, Mendola de- fense committee described with dra- matic skill the battle in District 1, where the Lewis-Cappelini machine has attempted with machine guns and {shot guns to kill off its opponents, Reports for Negro Miners. Wm. Boyce, speaking for the Ne- |groes in the industry made a telling | recital of the wrongs inflicted by the ‘administration upon his fellows who |were allowed to pay dues but dis- jcriminated against on every occasion, ; even in the matter of death benefits. The Ohio delegation took the oppor- tunity to announce through Secretary Toohey that they were boycotting the St. James Restaurant because it refused to serve a Negro worker in the delegation and the conference jloudly approved of the Yoycott. | Hearty concurrence was given Boyce. Brother Wakefield of Kansas told ; how a lawsuit holds Howatt, perse- | cuted so many years by Lewis, from attending this conference. Howatt is the man who went to jail when, as clashed with the Kansas anti-strike law. Lewis has never forgotten him, has thrown him out of his office and expelled him from the union for a while. “Stop Lewis from tearing up the whole union the way he tore up our Kansas district!” was Wake- field’s appeal. “Save this union,” said Tom Parry, one time from the sub-district office of Springfield sub-district, in Illinois, when the resounding cheers that greeted his slight but sturdy figure had died away somewhat. “Drive Out Traitors!” Parry told of the Fishwick expul- sion of himself and his militant fel- low officials in the sub-district and of his job now in the auto industry of Detroit where “there are no pit committees.” “Save the pit commit- tees!” he warned again, at the end. “Don’t be led into the I. W. W., leav- ing the masses of the union for Lew- is to rule,” was another of his argu- ments. “Save this union. It is our union! We will drive the traitors out!” Parry considers the expulsion pol- icy of Fishwick part of the campaign for a separate agreement and pre- dicts that the workers will fight it to the end. “When Farrington was president,” said Parry, “Lewis accused him of taking a bribe from the Lester strip mine at Herrin to let the mine oper- ate, and Fishwick and a government official got shares of the bribe. The government official was discharged, Farrington finally admitted being on the payroll of the employers, but Fishwick is president of the district. On the other hand, Lewis has never denied Fishwick’s charge that he got a six hundred thousand dollar bribe to let the Kentucky coal mines oper- ate scab during the strike.” Papcun Reports. George Papcun, reporting on the movement of the youth in this strug- gle, pointed to the delegates them- selves, as evidence that many of the leaders are young. The young men fight Cappelini hardest in the anthra- cite, he said, Delegate George Smith, of Green Valley, Pa., called himself not a young president of the Kansas district, he enemies of labor have already been| endorsed by the reactionary labor! leaders. Not only do they give these politicians a formal indorsement, but | they form so-called jabor clubs to! actively swing the working class vote for capitalist candidates. The “Wage Earners League” of Chicago is one. of these fake political clubs. We also see the springing up of so-| called labor papers at this time, whose | contents have nothing to do with the! struggles and interests of the work-| ing class. In some local unions in Chicago, | vital issues which confront the work- ers in their particular trades are ar-| bitrarily postponed by the bureau-| crats in order to allow the capitalist candidates to appear before the locals and appeal for vetes. Fool Negro Voters. In the last mayoralty election Thompson was able to get the whole Negro vote for his candidacy and the republican party. At present, the more conscious elements of the Negro population see through the fake prom- ises of these politicians and are re- fusing to go along. The Workers (Communist) Party of Chicago held a meeting on the south side on Wed- jnesday, March 28, and explained to the Negro workers the need of int! miner, but a young scab, and said dependent political action in conjunc- tion with the white workers as against! the capitalist parties. The real issues that confront the! working class of Illinois and Chicago, are not mentioned in this capitalist primary. Unemployment does not ex- ist for these capitalist politicians. On Wednesday, March 28, over 1,000 un- employed workers, a part of the army of unemploged, which numbers close te 300,000 in Chicago, met a block | away from where Thompson and his supporters held a political rally. He spoke about “America First” and the drafting of Coolidge to keep up “pros- | perity,” and sent his police to break up the demonstration of unemployed. What about the injunction menace? The pals of Denny Sullivan do not say a word about this, and the labor fakers' who support these politicians are also silent on this most vital ques- tion. Alderman Oscar Nelson, who poses as a labor leader, is also a candi- date in this capitalist primary, yet he never lifts a finger in support of working class issues. The transporta- ion system of Chicago is rotten, At present the Insull lines are appealing for a raise in fares, and not a word ubout this. The politicians are ready to give the traction trust a perpetual franchise and Oscar Nelson is the that he and the other non-union min- ers were more than willing, were an- xious, to stop being non-union. But they did not trust Lewis. He told of the “Frick hump” on the backs of all who toil for that Mellon concern long; the permanently bowed back that comes from putting the “Frick Hump” on the coal cars by piling up the coal the height of the forearm ac- cording to company rules. “Throw out Lewis,” said Smith, “and we will gladly look the world in the face once more, as union men.” Besides adopting the report of the National Save the Miners’ Union Committee, a motion for all district captains to wire home of the success of the conference was passed and an- other motion greeting and promising continued support to Sam. Greco, in the hospital from Cappelini bullets, Bonita, Mendola and Moleski, facing the electrie chair in the anthracite, Corbishley and the other Zeigler case victims, Mooney and Billings (whom Lewis always forgets though conven- tions formally pass resolutions of confidence in them) Dominik Ven- turato in prison for labor, and Gerry Allard, seriously hurt in an Illinois mine accident. Women Delegates. Mrs. Christiane Dolence of Liberty, Pa., and Mrs. Anna Mondell, of Rent- on, Pa., both from the Ladies Auxil- jaries addressed the conference for the district 5 progressive Women’s Conference held recently and resolu- tions introduced by them for the con- tinued organization of the Ladies Aux- iliaries were unanimously adopted. A partial report of the credentials committee showed that there were registered in the delegations at the various hotels a total of 1125 dele- gates, but that many of them had not presented their credentials, and that many more were coming. A total of 1720 eredentials from local unions and groups of the unorganized was dis- tributed as follows: 266 from Pitts- | burgh district, 91 from Ohio, 62 from | Clearfield district, Pa., 70 from dis- trict one in the anthracite, 96 from Illinois, 142 from the. unorganized, and the rest scattering from the rest of the districts, ——————ee— EE ee ee ee eee oe ee All Candidates in Illinois Primaries Have Anti-Labor Records leader in this conspiracy. * Ignore Miners’ Struggle. The miners of Illinois are on the eve of a struggle in answer to the wage-cut demand of the bosses. This big question is also camouflaged with the slogan “America First.” The workers of Chicago cannot use the primaries on April 10 for their interests. Participation in the April 10 primaries means support for cap- italist parties. It means the support of Coolidge and Lowden, the well- known enemies of labor. The working class needs a party of its own, a party that will be repre- sentative of the toiling masses and its interests. A Labor Party must be the answer to the bosses and their corrupt labor lieutenants who continu- ally betray the workers. The Work- ers (Communist) Party asks the workers to fight for a labor ticket for the 1928 elections. If a Labor Party does not become an organizational re- ality before the presidential and state elections, the Workers Party will have its own ticket. we must concentrate our energy. 1 nuclei neighborhood meetings mut put the Labor Party to the fore » increased vigor during this campaign, — : Towards these ends _ ——