The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 10, 1928, Page 6

C | Puge Six THE DAILY WORKER| | Published by the NATIONAL DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING ASS'N, Ine. | ‘ Daily, Except Sunday $3 First Street, New York, N. Y. Cable Address: SUBSCRIPTION RATES y York only): By Mail (outside of New York): six months per year $3.50 six months months, $2.00 three months. | | | Phone, Orchard 1680 | “Dalwork” By $8.00 0 three Address and mail out checks to THE DAILY WORKER, 33 First Street, New York, N. Y. Editor ...ROBERT MINOR Assistant Editor. .-WM, F, DUNNE ;utered as second-class mail at the post-office at New York, N, ¥., under the act of March 3, 1879. q Lewis’ Yellow Dog Pledge 1in we have pointed out that the policies of John L. Lewis, president-by-fraud of the United Mine Workers’ Union, are policies which necessarily make him an ally of the operators against the mine workers and against the United Mine Workers’ Union. Nothi now in re This tr: mine workers could reé especially to shut off the most effective source of relief, that; which is being poured into the mine fields through the Pennsyl- | vania-Ohio Relief Committee. In addition, Lewis is now resorting to other forms of strike- | breaking tr henchmen been circulating a “yellow-dog” pledge forcing mem- | bers of the union to declare their loyalty to his machine and repu- diating their connection with the Save-the-Union Committee. Thus at every turn John L. Lewis shows himself to be an of the operators and not of the United Mine Workers. | ’ only real function with the United Mine Workers’ Union an agent of the operators. His strangle-hold on the organ- zation, secured by election-stealing, is utilized to prevent relief measures through the machinery of the Union reaching anything | like adequate proportions. This gives the weapon of starvation | into his hands, which he uses with the same ruthless cruelty as a scab operator would use it, and with the same effect—to weaken the strike When the mine workers, in desperation, build up their own relief organization so as to bring food and clothing to their fam- ilies and so to enable them to fight the operators, Lewis through | itional with scab operators—he has through his| # i THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 1928 ESE TY IN THE SHADOW Bonita, Moleski and Mendola, enemies of the Lewis-Cappelini machine, face death. They must be saved! Militancy o { By ARNE SWABECK. | Five months ago when the District 12 temporary agreement was signed union and the coal opera- Miner,” official or- gan of the Lewis-Fishwick machine, | tors, the “Illinois his inspired accounts in newspapers controlled by the operators, | denounces the Pennsylvania-Ohio Relief Committee. Hl When the mir begin to repudiate his treachery, Lewis resorts to the “yell g” list in a manner that Don Chapin of | j¢intly by the officials of the mine Logan Cour When the miners balk 'at the “yellow- | workers’ dog” pledge, Lew rts to the methods of the coal and iron po- | lice in trying to evict the miners’ families from their homes even | wi he coal and iron police have thus far failed to accom-| i. | se Lewis’ purpose is mainly directed toward stopping | ; picketing will win the strike. Lewis and} the operators know it. If the workers throughout the United St s support the mass picket-line by sending enough food and clothing to the miners, the miners will win. Lewis wants to stop the mass picketing; therefore Lewis will resort even to stopping food that is coming to the miners. | The answer of the working class to this piece of fiendish | cruelty and strike-breaking on the part of Lewis must be. | pport the § -the-Union Committee! Down with Lewis’ yellow-dog pledge of starvation! Sendj more contributions to the Pennsylvania-Ohio Relief Committee! John L. Lewis must go! The fight of the United Mine Workers’ Union to rid itself of this co y agent now centers in the emergency district con- ventions soon to be held in all districts. Feed the miners, and boost the emergency district conventions to get rid of Lewis. The United Mine Workers cannot afford to lose this strike. The strike must be won. The miners must be fed, and Lewis must go! The Future of the Working — Class Belongs to the Children ler the | in the | called hat it, t delight n one sees |" dership of the Pioneers have 1001 protest strikes against action of the police their iking fathers and Influerced by their school- es, children of strikers, the child- the seabs would come home and beg their ‘ents to leave, and to stop scabbing......it helped! In the mine areas today the strug- future the pictt These the word BRucharin used to describe the neers, in a report on that phi work which he gave at the 14 that Comrade Pio- se of h Con- | gress of the Russian Communist is bitter and sharp. There, Party in 1924. He stated further: , the action of the children is a “The future belongs to that class} symbol of solidarity with their strik- which can win the children ideological- ly.” In Soviet Russin, where workers’ rule pre and where the educa- tional institutions are under the con- tro! of the work the children a trought up in the it of Lenini in the spirit of international wor solidarity. In the capitalist countr on the other hand, and the United Sta ng parents. The children of the scabs | are despised and hated by the strik- ers’ children. The latter will under no circum- ances ever sit on the same bench! with a seab child. And a time| |more active and demonstrative action | is taken against the scab children the teacher is looking. the children is s: so effective the coal barons found it nece lism, all efforts are b ary to hire handits to fire machine- uling class to raise t | guns into a class room full of children. | e influence of capitalism. | Many a time a worker’s morale » ruling class understands, and | breken because of the suffering of his | y conscious of its interests. It| children in the time of a strike. But} that the child of today is the | when a striker comes home from the | rker of tomorrow, the worker who | picket line or jail, and finds his child- | i]! be harnessed to the wheels of in- | ren are with him, he will continue his The capitalist class realizes, | fight and he will be inspired towards t it must raise the child | victory. , and a fit tool, that is} The children are attracted to the| |epiate movies, the press—especially | the “jokes,” which are bits of propa- | | ganda sugar-coated, The children are | especi of to be obed: an unresisting one, for exploitation. In this lies the double importance of win- ning the workers’ children for the ae class. jattracted into military organizations | To win the children ideologically is|in the schools, besides having other fioportant not only for securing the|forms of such training. Children are futs of the working class, but also} urged to join the various jingoistic, for involving the children as an aid |and anti-labor “children organizations in the daily class struggle. On many occasions the children un- | Naval Reserves, etc. \done splendid service-to the operators heralded the dawn of a new day. The | Illinois coal miners were pictured as | marching to the sweet tunes of the} mine whistle armed with a full din-| ner pail. Work was to start up gain. Prosperity was to enter all the little shacks which the coal min- ers call homes. Results of Betrayal. It turned out differently, Only a} few days’ work each pay day. The grocery bills could not be paid. Many men found their wag garnisheed. ; Starvation stalked the field. The [l-| linois miners found that this tem- porary agreement, including the load- | ing machine contracts, spelled the} loss of all the conditions gained through hard struggles of the past. The Illinois miners were taken out of the fight. Their Pennsylvania and | Ohio brothers were left to battie| alone. It pleased the operators, they had everything to gain. They could| concentrate all their forces on smash- | ing the union in Pennsylvania and Ohio and later the turn would come to Illinois. The union officials had and were able to pocket their Judas’ share, Illinois Now Militant. Again the Illinois miners are marching. They are fast becoming disillusioned from the “prosperity” pictures. The betrayal through this jno other way out. determination. They are getting set for the fight. The miners are marching from the camp to the nearest town. There is going to be a meeting in the biggest hall, called by the Save the Union Committee. Maybe when they ar- rive the hall will be closed to them. |comes cause for a lay-off. The com- It is the work of some of the machine henchmen, But it does not matter, the miners march on to get a hall in the next town. Their meeting will be held, nothing can stop it. The miners are marching to the left. They now follow the lead of the Save the Union committee. It is a great movement sweeping the coal field. There is hope in that move- ment, Before this movement began in Il- linois most of the miners were think- ing in terms of accepting a wage cut. The operators demanded it. The union officials, true to their role of traitors, propagated the acceptance of the wage cut. Nobody had any other solution to offer. There seemed | Now this has all | changed. Every coal miner now speaks of how to prevent any and all separate agreements how to joini most effectively in the national strike for a national settlement, The Save the Union Committee has shown the way. Fight On In Springfield. Going down toward the southern part of the state one will find Spring- field the first important mining cen- ter. Here are fourteen mines of which only nine were working prior to April Ist. Those working, the men complained, were terribly over- crowded. Doubling up everywhere, cutting down the earnings of the min- ers, One miner told me he had drawn $18 for five days’ work. rock with veins of clay spread in be- clean coal. of clay appears with the coal on the making it difficult to load If as much as a handful tween, surface the miner is docked, the first time 50 cents, the second time $1, the third time $2, repeated again it be- pany decides and the man has no show. In Springfield is located the head- quarters of District No. 12. The ma- chine, as the staff of officials is} called, has spacious offices in the miners’ building, but the rank) and file miners don’t go near it. The Save-the-Union issue has drawn a sharp dividing line. It is the thou- sands of rank and file coal miners versus the operators with the ma- chine desperately trying to put over the operators’ policies as exemplified in the separate agreements. Some Deserters. The machine is worried at the rapid, tremendous growth of the Save the Union movement. Several of the machine men once posed as progres- sives; now they cannot even hang on the fence but are compelled to take their stand. They all joined with the reaction. There is Gus Fritz, board member, once posing as a progressive now hanging on to the job with the rest of the machine. There is Allan Heywood, board member, once posing as a progressive, and elected as such, now defending the Lewis policies. Joe Loda, board member, also tried once to pose as a progressive. He never knew much about anything. Recent- ly he lead the gang in the slugging attack upon Joe Angelo, the secre- tary of the Save the Union Commit- ite, in Springfield streets. Hind- marsh, the sub district president, district temporary agreement is now clearly recognized. Their faces show Workers .P By JULIUS CODKIND. A good line on the inherent strength of our Party and the politi- cal vigor of the American working class may be gained from a study of the election returns of 1924. La Follette Betrayal. Fresh from the betrayal of the Farmer-Labor Party movement by filing, we had succeeded in gaining a| Massachusetts . the Fitzpatrick-Nockels and the Ma-/place on the ballot in 15 states but Rhode Island to-|there was only one month left to car-| New York ... honey-Starkey-Cramer groups, gether with the betrayal of the prin- ciple of independent political action by the Conference for Progressive Political Action (C. P. P. A.) fol- Farmer e Workers Party ith the necessity disruption of th ty by La Follette, tt found itself faced of hurriedly placing a ticket in the field to help ¢ ilize the ‘idea of a “class” labor party as against the “classless” third party of La Follette and the A, F, of L. bureaucracy. The Conference for Progressive Political Act which firially nomin- ated La Follette officially, had open- ed its convention on July 4th and it was not until the last spark of hope for a labor party in 1924 was finally extinguished that the Workers Party was able to announce the nomination of Foster and Gitlow as the standard- bearers in a new struggle for a labor party. Already it was too late to file nom- ination papers in many of thé states. Preparations had nowhere been made to comply with the varied provisions of the law in the different states. It haphazard study of the law and at- ‘ t Here the coal is shot out of solid “Salary Buying’ Loan Sharks Are Exposed The latest group of “loan sharks” to be exposed in the investigation now being carried on in the New York State courts is the group of “salary buying” brokers. This investigation was brought about by complaints of the Brotherhood of Railway Train- men and the New York Central Rail- ; road. They charge that railway men had in many cases pledged their wages to pay back loans at usurious interest and as a result of the conse- quent annoyance to the company were progressive. Now he goes all the way down the line with the district ma- chine. the Lewis policies as well as the cor- rupt Governor Small republican poli- tical machine, i | dismissed from the railroad. This “salary buying,” which is definitely illegal, is a type of lend- ing whereby a loan shark will give a worker $20 today in return for his next week’s $25 salary. State Attorney General Ottinger | announced that all persons who are under contract to pay usurious rates of interest or have already paid them within the last year should bring suit against the company immediately. Most of these borrowers, however, are workers who would find it impossible to retain lawyers to fight to regain money already paid to loan com- panies, many of which are no longer in existence. Walker to Convert KKK 9.—The ATLANTA, Ga., April ‘coming to this city: of Mayor James J. Walker of New York to deliver the principal address at the unveiling on Stone Mountain of the equestrian figures of General Robert E. Lee is said by labor observers to be part of the hopeful Tammany Hall pro- gram to win over the Ku Klux Klan elements who are now opposing Gov. Al Smith for president. Thus objectively he supports Miners Closing Ranks. The Springfield miners are closing their ranks in the Save the Union movement, The machine fought it tooth and nail, even bringing in po- licemen to one local union meeting to keep the progressives down. The rank and file elected fourteen dele- gates to go to the great Pittsburgh national conference but there were no finances -available. When the time drew near for the delegates’ depar- ture, something had to be done, and it was done. The miners were poor and starving, yet the active members went out to the miners going from house to house and in one day $257 was collected. Everybody did their bit and the delegates went to Pitts- burgh, Militancy in Taylorville. This used to be a progressive sub district. Brophy received an over- whelming number of votes against Lewis in the last election. Yet with the scarcity of available organizers it “was difficult for the Save the Union committee to give the favor- able sentiment in this sub district or- ganized expression, That is until Fred Bode, a local coal miner, took things in hand, The fact that he had the guts to stand up and fight for the interest of the rank and file de- veloped the movement rapidly, but it also earned for him the bitterest en- mity of the machine. They dubbed him the “Iron Dictator” of Taylor- ville. Fred Bode, a picturesque figure, oa f Illinois Miners Is Rising accepted version of Buffalo Bill. Sixty- two years old with a splendid fight- ing record amongst the coal miners, Fred Bode helped to build the min- ers’ union from its inception, He con- siders the United Mine Workers his child. When I met him he discussed the ailments of this child. He spoke slowly and calmly, puffing away on his pipe, now and then showing a twinkle of youthful keenness in his eyes. “Well,” he proceeded, “the machine accuses me of wanting to destroy the union. Destroy my own child? No, but it is sick; it needs medicine which will again make it healthy and vigor- ous, and I am goin& to help adminis- ter some.” There was a meeting in Kincaid, which is part of the Taylorville sub- district. Joe Angelo, secretary of the district Save the Union Committee, came to speak. Progressive miners were invited and about 250 of them appeared, mostly Italians, eager for the fight. In came also the district board member, Allan Heywood, and the sub-district president, Glasgow. They had no interest in the meeting. They did not dare to stop it and so they thought only of interfering as much as possible. Both continued to ask questions intended to sidetrack the real issue. They were accorded the floor unti] Fred Bode, who acted as chairman, thought it was going just a bit too far. He said to Allan Heywood: “Now you have had the floor a little bit too much and I am going to apply one of Lewis’ famous convention rules—You popped up and you popped down, but the next time you pop up again you will be popped down.” Heywood said nothing fur- ther but Fred Bode now carries the once posed quite successfully as a looking somewhat like the generally distinction of the “Iron Dictator.” Must Be Placed on the Ballot for 1928 Elections jtempt to file candidates, Valuable |months that might have been used to/ conduct the campaign were spent in the rush to secure signatur tions or in the hurried of state nominatt ventions to {place our candidates the ballot. | Vote in 1924, | When finally the time was up for} ry on a campaign. In doing this,) even, our Party had performed a} sceming miracle. Still it was out-| done by the workers who rallied | Splendid!y to the support of the move- ment and the campaign, so that when the vote was finally reported, it was found that 34,089 votes had been counted for us, distributed as follows: ++ 2637 289° . $244; - 1560 2735 New Jersey ... Pennsylvania Indiana ,. 987 Tlinois 2622 Wisconsin 3773 Minnesota . 4427 Colorado . 562 Towa . 4037 Washington . 761 Connecticut, 728 Montana ... 357 North Dakota .. 370 Huge Bank and Coal Combines Are Increasing jlowed by the repudiation and final | -Labor Par-} | By HARRY GANNES. | Two bank mergers and a big coal nbine, irivolving in all $1,310,000,- , within the space of a week, in- te a recent spurt in trustifica- \d | tign. Billion Dollar Bank Combine. The, largest of these is the billion jcoltsx consolidation of the Bank of America,” the Manufacturers. Trust land the Bank of Italy, the details of which are practically agreed upon. The Bank of Italy has the greatest jnumber of banking branches in the | United States. ‘The other bank |fusion comprises the Peoples State | Bank of Wayne County (Detroit), fand the Wayne County and Home |Savings Bank. The first of these {banks has 96 branches, a number which is exceeded only by the Bank of Italy. “Poor marketing conditions on high | such as the Roy Scouts, Girl Scouts,|became necessary to make a hurried, |volatile coals in the east” is the ex- cuse given by financial papers for the merger of 17 mines valued at $20,000,000 in Eastern Kentucky. This follows the recent $500,000,000 coal \combine in the Pocahontas and New River fields of West Virginia. | Mining | Trust. The consolidation of the mines is made with a view to reducing pro-| duction costs and increasing profits. The individual operators whose mines become part of the combine are transferred to the rentier class. They are given stock to equal the value of their particular properties. The consolidated enterprise is run as a unit and is really under the domina- | tion of the richer and more powerful operators. Government support is ex- peeted by the mine capitalists. One of the leading operators arranging the merger, Ail Allais, issued a statement in which he said: “Having succeeded in grouping in- will have tc assume its share of the responsibility to keep the industry on a healthy basis by giving full power to the interstate commerce commission ora similar agency to decide when and where new mines shall be opened.” Monopoly on Coal. ‘The operators look to their executive committee in Washington to aid them in developing a few large coal com- bines which will have a monopoly on coal production in the United States and which no doubt could deal “prop- erly” with the miners, Recently in an entirely new field, the retail distributive, a gigantic chain-store system was initiated. Even under territorial difficulties in the United States huge bank combines are made involving branches with scores of branches. With a spurt in the in- ternal development of the imperialist base comes a pressure on the external, world activities of American imperial- dividual properties, the government ism. { In the light of the difficulties en- jcountered, the results achieved were splendid, and are an indication of the tremendous opportunity lying before us if we will enter seriously into the ,; work and make it the chief campaign jof the party in the coming months. Great Opportunity this Year. This year we have the opportunity to accomplish most of the preliminary | work of gathering signatures and holding state nominating conventions to file our candidates during the spring, thus enabling the Party to conduct a real campaign during the whole of the fall and summer, Our first task is to put the P; on the ballot. To the 15 states tab we were on in 1924, we must add at least the following 24; Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Wyoming, Ne- braska, Idaho, Oregon, Arizona, Ne- vada, California, South Dakota. By June 1st, and with an early re- sponse from the membership in the drive to raise funds to put the Party on the ballot, we should be enabled to spring a few surprises by putting up a ticket in some of the southern states, such as Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Flor- ida and South Carolina. Put the Party on the ballot! ~ A quarter of a million votes. Five thousand new members, A vigorous campaign that stimulate the growth of @ labor.