The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 13, 1928, Page 6

4 5 4 : is et Page Six THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 1928 THE DAILY WORKER |‘ uranr WORKING CLASS JOB Published by the NATIONAL DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING ASS'N, Inc. | Daily, Except Sunday 33 First Street, New York, N. Y. Cable Address SUBSCRIPTION RAT By Mail (in New York only a $8.00 per year $4.50 six mont Phone, Orchard 1680 ‘Daiwork New York): $2.50 three months. nonths. Address and mail out checks to THE DAILY WORKER, 33 First Street, New York, N. Y. Editor.. a ROBERT MINOR Assistant Editor.. WM. F. DUNNE at New York, N. Y., under 1879, Entered as second-class mail at the post-of the act of March Mooney Speaks Aloud Again The drive of the Inter: ir the hearts of every worker. It is good to know that Tom Mooney himself writes “that the present policy that I’have been following for the past five yea will not bring justice to Billings and Mooney,—that our appeal will largely have to be centered upon the gre ete. These words show the fogs of an old illusion—an ill and Warren Billings should s x I Mooney’s eyes are penetrating the sion with the aid of which the cap- italist class s enmeshed and royed many a champion of the working class. Mooney and Billings and our whole class must come thoroughly to know that reforms are a by-product of cla struggle, and not the willing concessions of benign slave-drivers. Sad to say, Sacco and Vanzetti were sacrificed to the executioner partly because the illusion prevailed among those officially charged with their defense, that “Justice” would somehow come out of a capitalist clas if only the evidence were convincing. Release of class war prsioners is, like all reforms in capitalist society, solely a by-product of class struggle. What of all these years that have been allowed to pass while our brothers Mooney and Billings have suffered in prison? When they were first arrested the entire official trade union bureaucracy of the State of California, dominated by such men as P. H. McCarthy (later caught taking $10,000 from the bosses dur- ing labor troubles) and Brouillet (who was thrown out of the pres- idency of the San Francisco Labor Council by the workers for con- spiring with the prosecutor of Mooney) —this official bureaucracy was the active agent for the hanging of Mooney and Billings. Also the national bureaucracy headed by Gompers was for the hanging of the two militant labor leaders. who had dared to pull a strike against the United Railways which the corrupt San Francisco trade union “leaders”? had agreed to protect. The so- cialist party official leaders, with a very few notable exceptions, were willing to accept the hanging of Mooney, a member of the socialist party, in those first months. 7 x * * ° Under those conditions the defense of Mooney, Billings. Nolan, Weinstone and Rena Mooney was “unavoidably” an affair ef revolutionary workers. For three years the whole of the mil- itant labor “Mocne: The defense movement became a mass movement of the great- est importance, and it can truly be said that this was the first ed left wing in the trade unions. By 1919 the capitalist was driven to lay the Seattle general strike to this move- ment in the trade unions for the release of Mooney and Billings. The terrific labors of the revolutionary sections of the workers were so ¢ to win the great m of their cl: to solidarity with i The official A. F. of L. moved ponderously over fr ution to take up a pose_of be- ing on the popular si ocialist party leaders in the end, at least formally, Debs over to the defense. Then the helli was made. The mass movement stopped, and the cowardly labor bureaucracy was relied’ on to do the job. The revolutionary workers’ demonstrations in Petrograd had in the earlier period saved Mooney’s life. Now came the period of “respectability”—the period when il- lusions began to stifle the defense of Mooney and Billings. Some dirty politician of the capitalist , some “nice” judge was “just going to do something if you would only keep quiet.” ‘“Re- spectable” gentlemen couldn’t do anything while rough working class militants were making a noise among the masses. Samuel Gompers whiled away his entire time from then until his death in the act of being about ready to start to do something if the workers would only quiet down. The mass movement was deliberately sacrificed as a price to pay the bureaucrats for empty promises. The Mooney-Billings defense fell under this stifling deadly illusion. This is the period which Mooney’s letter describes as lasting five years. The total results of this policy are wasted years and grey hairs for the two brave men who suffered for us, now, twelve years of torture. » * Tom Mooney is right to throw to the winds this ruinous pol- icy of cultivated and systematized timidity. We repeat: The re- lease of Mooney and Billings will only come as a by-product of class struggle. Every worker should gladly spring to the aid of the Interna- tional Workers’ Defense to build an organized mz movement for the release of our brothers, Tom Mooney in San Quentin prison and Warren Billings in Folsom. Hail the Young Pioneers! Today there meets in New York City—the Young Pioneers. There can be no doubt that among these delegates of the young Communists of from ten to sixteen years of age are men and women who will participate in guiding the Soviet republic of ihe American workers. Meanwhile the tremendous struggle is to be won, the revo- iution made, by which the workers will become the ruling class. And in this struggle and in the victory of their class, these Young Fioneers of today will be no grey-beards! These youthful work- ing class fighters are fighters of today—not of tomorrow. The fight is to the young! Boys and girls of Communism are not the children of the side-lines, but active participants in the class struggle. Every serious working class father and mother should take pride in helping his boys and girls learn about and enter the ranks of these young conquerors of working class freedom. And the Young Pioneers can be counted on to win over the youthful members of their class. Hail, Young Pioneers! Sons and daughters of Lenin and the Communist International, The DAILY WORKER salutes you with pride! six months ational Labor Defense to arouse the} movement of the workers again for the liberation of Tom Mooney | ‘at mass of workers,” | | | e of the workers was bound up with ene | By JOHN PEPPER The national convention of the so- ist party bf America shows a sasically different . socialist party from that of the previous period. The socialist parity today is in every respect an anti-proletarian and pro- sapitalist organization. The whole aistory of the socialist party for the ast fifteen years is but the history of reforymism, gradual degradation, and the big post-war strike battles of the American working class were; he chief instruments in bringing about the transformation of the so-] sialist party. Since the splitting off of the left wing and the creation of he Communist Party the socialist oarty has never been able to recover. Its road. was destined clearly towards »pportunism and betrayal. Last Militant Leader. But the post-war socialist party | still had many good proletarian ele- | ments, and a part of its leadership | |even tried to put up an appearance) | of militancy, at times suppor‘ed the| ‘aetions of the Communist Party, and made certain attempts to drag the socialist party in‘o the class strug- gle. Eugene Debs was the last hon- est leader of the socialist party. Despite all his shortcomings he rep- resented the sentiments of large sec-| tions of the American wofking class. He took a stand for the Russian Workers’ Republic, supported the! |Trade Union Educational League, | wages a fight for all class-war pri- soners, and came out for a united front with the Communist Party. The death of Eugene Debs and the complete merging of the socialist By WALT CARMON. | Tom Mooney has appealed thru the} International Labor Defense to the} workers of America to raise their} voices to bring about the liberation of} | Warren Billings and himself from the | California prisons where they have} been confined for nearly 12 years on framed-up charges. In the summer struggle was raging in San Fran- cisco between the bosses, organized in the Chamber of Commerce and the workers in the trade unions. Strikes | were the order of the day. The build- ing trades workers, steam-boat work- ers, longshoremen, cooks and carmen} were fighting for existence. A state of open warfare existed. The strikes} were featured by violence, shooting, clubbing and murder. Grafters in Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce raised a fund of a million dollars to crush the workers, With the press, the po- lice and the local government in their hands, and taking advantage of the war preparedness hysteria, they saw an opportunity to, break the unions and beat down the workers. The administration chosen had for The Transfor reason that they felt themselves so \its district attorney, ‘Fickert, a no- of 1916, a ieee 22. Every union man was forced party in the LaFollette movement of 1924 marks the end of this period in the life of the socialist party. Up until 1924 there was a more or less strong left. wing within the socialist party. The open letter I wrote to Eugene Debs (“Underground Radical- ism”) rightly characterized the so- cialist party of that time as a house divided in itself, as a party of two wings without a body. Our Party used correct tactics toward the so- cialist party, offering a united front with its left wing as against its right! wing. Only the Loreites in our ranks opposed these tactics, solely for the] near to the socialists that they did| not dare make any united front with any section of the socialist party. A Petty Bourgeois Party. The transformation of the socialist | party from an opportunist mass par- ty, which claimed to be a party of the working class, into an anti-pro- letarian, petty-bourgeots, party has been consummated. There is no justi- fication for continuing our united front tactics with the socialist party | in the old form. It is no longer ne- cessary to appeal to the leaders of the socialist party or to any left wing (which no longer exists) in the socialist party. Any united front at- tempt must assume the form of a direct appeal to the working class, rank and file followers of the social- ist party over the head of the party| itself and of its leadership. We must sharpen our attitude toward the so- cialist party. In our agitation and propaganda we must treat it as an anti-proletarian and pro-capitalist or- ganization. In our election tactics we must follow as a general rule torious labor-hater, who at once squashed all indictments against the grafters, and who was in the midst of the struggle for the bosses in 1916. Preparedness Parade Explosion. To whip up patriotic hysteria and use it to crush the labor unions, a preparedness parade was organized by the Chamber of Commerce for to march. in it under the threat of losing his job. The feeling between the bésses and workers was now at white heat. The parade began at 1:30 and at 2:06 a terrific explosion on Stuart Street near Market, killed 6 people and wounded 44, “Get Tom. Mooney.” At this time police again begar looking for Tom Mooney, who war then’ organizing the carmen on the United Railroads. Mooney and _ his wife were arrested a few days pre- viously for distributing handbills call- ing for organization among the car- men. The United Railroads also, thru Fickert, had hired a corporation de- tective, Martin Swanson, to “get” Mooney. Swanson had offered Wein- mation o To get Tom Mooney and Warren Billings out of the capitalist hell-holes cf San Quentin and Fe!som penitentiaries! By Fred Ellis Bosses Like Dawes Record; Aid His Drive | | WASHINGTON, April 12 (FP).— Vice-President Dawes is finding it jmore difficult every day to maintain | his pretense that he is supporting Lowden and is not an active candidate |for the presidency. Word has come |to Washington that Gen. Atterbury, | president of the Pennsylvania Rail- |road, has thrown his strength in Pennsylvania and New Jersey in fa- vor of Dawes. The anti-labor record of Atterbury and Dawes is almost identical. On pages 299 to 806 of the demo- cratic campaign book for 1924 is seb | forth Dawes’ record as gas and elec- | trie magnate, collector of campaign \funds for Mark Hanna in 1896, de- | fender of Lorimer, and partner in the |Pure Oil Co., which figured largely |in the Teapot Dome and Daugherty | investigations. There is also recited his record as a foe of organized la- | bor, both in the Harding administra- | | tion and after his own nomination to the vice-presidency, Dawes organized the anti-labor inute Men of the Constitution after talk with President Harding at a use party in Florida in March, ie In support of his claim that he was an apostle of law and order, Dawes asserted that his Minute Men had saved from defeat in the last election Judges Sullivan and. Holden, who had been branded as injunction judges. School Superintendent Sues ‘Big Bil? Thompson CHICAGO, April 12. — Suit for | $250,000 libel against Mayor William Hale Thompson was filed in the su- perior court here today in behalf of former Superintendent of Schools William McAndrew. McAndrew charges that Mayor Thompson, in his “war against Eng- land,” maliciously attempted to de- stroy McAndrew’s reputation for pa- triotism and as an educator. the policy of not voting for any can- didate of the socialist party. We shall put on our own candidate or shall} participate in labor party campaigns. Only exceptional local situacions might justify an exception to this general rule. Without going into details, I shall try to enumerate the most important changes in the character of the so- cialist party which constitute its transformation: 1. The socialist party today is not a mass party ‘at all. As an organiza- tion it has no roots|in the working class. Workers Desert Socialists. 2. The social composition of the socialist party has undergone basic changes. The working class elements have deserted it, and it is composed today largely of certain strata of highly skilled workers, small busin- e@ssmen, salesmen, and professional people. 8. There is no longer any substan- tial left wing within the socialist party. If a few years ago it was a house divided in itself, today it is a shattered shanty. If a few years ago it was an organization of two wings without a body, today it has only a right wing and even that has lost most of its feathers. : 4. In the previous period there was still a special socialist party trade union leadership as distinguished from the typical bureaucracy of the A. F. of L. Today this is a thing of the past. The socialist party trade union officials have merged com- pletely, in every union, on the whole front, with the worst, most reaction- ery anti-socialist elements of the A. | party had a real influence, the Com- F. of L. berg, a jitney driver, $5,000 to swear he had driven Mooney out to the hills 10 miles south of San Francisco, where on June 11th transmission tow- ers of the United Railroads had been} dynamited, and for which both! Mooney and Billings were nearly) framed. Swanson also offered Bil- lings $5,000 and a good job for evi- dence that Mooney had blown the transmission towers, Following the bomb explosion at the parade, on July 26, once again they attempted to “get” Mooney Mooney and his wife had left for a vacation two days after the explo- sion. On learning. that they were wanted they immediately wired the police of their whereabouts, and were arrested on a train returning to San Francisco. The Frame-up. Police Captain Matheson declared later he had no evidence against Mooney at the time of his arrest. Yet Mooney! was kept “incommunicado” for eight days—not permitted to se- cure legal aid or to see friends. Three of their friends, Warren K. Billings, Israel Weinberg, a jitney driver and Edward Nolan, radical la- bor leader, had already been arrested. f the Socialist Party 5. In the most important trades— the outstanding example is that of the needle trades—wheve the socialist munist Party has been able to de-! feat the socialist party; and today not the sccialist party but the Com- munist Party is the dominating fac- tor in the needle: trades as far as the masses are concerned. 6. In the most important mass movements of the American working class at present—which are bound to decide the whole fate of the Amer- ican labor movement for the imme- diate future—such as the heroic] struggle of the miners and the de- veloping movements in the textile and shoe industries, the socialist par- | ty as a party has not played any| role at all. Its membership stands} apart from the struggle, and the so-| cialist party leadership \is backing sthe infamous Lewis machine. 7. In its present election campaign the socialist party is making frantic} and hectic attempts to abandon the last remnants of its old form of membership organization and trans- form it into a ward organization of voters, aping the old capitalist par- ties. These are the most significant fea- tures of the transformation of the socialist party. There is no longer anything left of that socialist party which at least claimed to be a party of the working class and the class struggle. Debs carried to his grave the last remnants of socialist party militancy. The socialist party today | is the worst slanderer of the Work- ers’ Republic in Russia. It fights the battles of Green and Matthew Woll in the labor movement. It spreads On August 1 all of them jointly were indicted for murder of each of the victims of the bomb explosion, eight of whom had died by this time, In September, Billings was convict- ed of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. In January Mooney was placed on trial for murder. Be- tween these two trials, the defense obtained a court order permitting them access to the negatives of photo- graphs held by the district attorney, which he did not present in full at the trial of Billings, showing the Mooneys on the roof of the Biler Building, a mile and a quarter away from the scene of the explosion, with the parade in progress below. A clock in the picture showed the exact time the explosion occurred, with the Mooneys on the roof in full yiew! Despite these now fsmous photo- graphs, Mooney was convicted on February 9. Only two witnesses were presented by the state claiming to have seen the Mooneys at Stuart and Market Streets just previous to the explosion. Both Frank Oxman and MacDonald were proven frauds. The first even was tried for perjury and the shallowest and silliest pacifist ideology about the imperialist war. It helps American imperialism to conceal the looming imperialist war danger. It is now definitely clear that the formation of a labor party in America can be brought about only against the A. F. of L. and the so- cialist. party. Must Expose Socialists. The members of our party must take cognizance of the transformation of the socialist party. We must ex- plain this basic change to the whole | working class. We must sharpen our attitude toward the socialist party. That is the only effective way to take away the last true proletarian followers of the socialist party. Our par'y must be aware of the real situ- ation, which is fundamentally dif- ferent from the situation in most of the European countries. In Europe the socialist parties are powerful mass parties, and one of the basic tasks of our Communist parties there is to carry out a life-and-death strug- gle with them for the masses, for the majority of the working class. In America the problem of approaching the masses, of conquering the ma- jority of the, working class, presents itself in a different form. The so- cialist party of America must be ex- posed; its last remnants must be era- dicated from the American labor movement; but the winning over of the proletarian masses for Communi- ism has very little to do with the socialist party. The main road to the masses of the working class leads over the head of the socialist party. Tt leads to the trade unions and even more directly to the vast masses of unorganized workers. How Open Shoppers Framed Up Tom Mooney and Warren Billings hang in May. On presentation of new evidence, an investigation by a com- mission sent by President Wilson, an exposure published by Densmore, = special investigator who with govern- | ment agents had planted a dictaphone | in the district attorney’s office, pro- tests of labor the world over and the threats of a general strike, the sen- tence was postponed to August 28, then to December 13 and was finally commuted ‘to life imprisonment. Rena Mooney was acquitted on July ; 26. On October 27 Israel Weinberg, was acquitted. Both, however, were acquitted only on one indictment, be-, ing released on bail on seven other, identical indictments. | ! Indictments against Edward Nolan | were dismissed 2 years, 6 months and) 2 days after arrest for “lack of evi- dence”! Yet Nolan spent 9 months of this time in jail and was out on bail, the balance of that time. { Tom Mooney and Warren K. Bil-, lings have now spent twelve years in, jail. For the rest of their natural lives, Tom Mooney and Warren K. Billings are doomed to rot behind saved from jail by official whitewash. . Judge Griffin sentenced Mooney to prison walls. Only Labor can free