The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 25, 1928, Page 6

Page Six THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 1928 THE DAILY WORKER ——__—_———— | Published by the NATIONAL DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING ASS'N, Inc. Daily, Except Sunday 33 First Street, New York, N. Y. Cable Address: ‘Dalwork” SUBSCRIPTION RATES 3 ly): 1 (outside of New York): 3 $3.50 six months Phone, Orchard 1680 By Mail (in New £2.00 per year per year $9.50 three $2.00 three months. “ ss and mail out checks to THE DAILY WORKER, 33 First Street, New York, N. Y. LE TOES SRST: ETD SU ROBERT MINOR Assistant Editor............000++ WM. F. DUNNE | tered as second-class mail at the post-office at New York, N. Y., under | the act of March 3, 1879. H War on Women and Babies | While fifty-one women and girls and five nursing babies are held by the brave troopers of Ohio in a pig-sty jail of St. Clairsville without sleeping or toilet facilities, fed on garbage, and mistreated in other ways, the war against the coal miners is being intensified in Western Pennsylvania by the skull-crack- s of Governor Fisher and his superiors, the coal cor- ing cos roratio: The state power, in both these states, expressed through bayonets, clubs and tear bombs, is in full use in the effort to break the coal . In the most “peaceful” times the state forces are used against the workers indirectly; but in moments like the present, armed force is directly applied for the purpose of breaking up picket lines and destroying a great Union; the working class in these revelations learns rapidly the nature of the | capitalist state. | The work should learn from the fact that the same | trade union bureaucrats who are egging on the gunmen of the | state giving signals for the attacks and conspiring with the coal | operators against the mine workers, are at the same moment | feverishly at work trying to sell working class votes to the highest | bidder of the capitalist political parties which are in power and | are directing the strike-breaking activities of the state. The} workers must recognize their enemies. They must learn to fight to overthrow the political power of the capitalist class, and to | overthrow the agents of that class in the Unions. The nature of this particular struggle reveals a deeper pur- pose than merely to break a strike. In this case the state power in the form of armed men is being used actively for the purpose of destroying trade unionism in the most important field of in- dustry in the United States. The Lewis bureaucracy is in reality | collaborating in the drive for the destruction of the Union, ex- | | pecting only to preserve a fragment of the organization, reduced | virtually to a company union. | The situation is remarkable because it presents a clear pic- | ture of the armed forces of the state used directly for the purpose | of suppressing a movement of the workers against a corrupt and treacherous official bureaucracy of the Union. What is the “offi- | cial family” of the trade unions doing in this situation? John L.| raudulent “president” of the United Mine Workers’ Union coal operators and the police and troops, even begging for still more severe violence against the mine workers who pay him $12,000 per year salary while they starve. The “official fam- ily” of the American Federation of Labor is asking for more clubs n the heads of mine workers,:more miners’ wives thrown into prison in the effort to break up the picket lines. The sight of their women and babies being herded by troop- a ith fixed bayonets and their picket-lines being charged by mounted cossacks ought to rouse tha®last coal miner in the farthest coal field with determination to defeat these enemies. It ought to rouse the workers in every other industry throughout the country, and the workers of all countries must be waked to the real meaning of the struggle so that they will aid to repel this attack. Food and clothing must be sent in all haste to the mine work- ers to help them beat back the attack. The miners are fighting, not only for themselves, their wives and families, their right to live, their right to maintain their Union, but are in reality fight- ing for every member of the working class. They are in the front line of the class struggle. Other workers must come to their rescue to the full extent of their resources and at any sacrifice. Tents are needed. Evicted miners’ families are standing in the rain with their furniture, waiting for you, brothers and sisters of their class, to send them food and shelter. All possible aid should be sent to the Pennsyivania-Ohio Re- lief Committee, 611 Penn avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. HEALTH BUREAU FIGHTS CARBON MONOXIDE PERIL : Fans will pull the fangs of deadly carbon monoxide, asserts the Work- ers Health Bureau, in drawing up a code to protect the health and lives of 500,000 garage workers. The bureau’s report results from the first national labor health conferenc 1 Cleve-€—— ine aay ee. land last year, wher al trade | Ventilation” and specifies the num- union committee was named to in-|ber and capacity of fans required. quire into garage health menace: and | Other provisions protect workers remedies therefor. Representatives of |@&4inst fires and hot chemical solu- the Machinists’ Union, which organ- | tions and acids, prohibit basement re- izes auto repair workers, worked with |P@ir shops and require proper light- the bureau on the code. ing and washing facilities, y 3 Every garage, under the code, must : The trade union code provides that have on hand an oxygen inhalator to under no circumstances shall gar- revivify victims of carbon monoxide ages or repair shops be maintained poisoning, and a person to adminis- without adequate systems of artificial |ter first aid in a qualified manner. MORE GARAGES BUILT _ THAN SINGLE HOMES LELAND OLDS (Federated Press), alism with its accompanying p ofiteering in land ing the popustion ae ue mpartment life of city flats. ; S. department of labor survey ae x een hea r survey of building permits amilies provided with i-family homes and the corresponding inerease in the while the family a vercentage provided with multi-family ation in 2-family or multi-|homes is shown in the following fig- dwellings increased from |Ures: to 61.7%. In 1927 more priv-| The figures show that between 1921 garages were built than single |2%d 1927 the percentage of families family homes. provided for in apartments practically Decline In Homes. doubled. The department’s survey covered | Building Drops In 1927. $3,593,839,405 of, building in 302} The number of families provided cities. Of the total $353,398,271 went |with new housing in these cities for repairs and alterations and the|reached a peak in 1925 when all balance for new construction. The |classes.of new construction provided cities had a combined population of ‘living quarters for 491,222 families. 43,919,581, so the per capita oxpendi-|The number of families provided for ture on building was $81.83. in 1927 was 406,095, a decline of Tho decline in the percentage 4f|1%% from 1925. BEEN of 'y homes fe 192' single 8.35 in 192 ate T \try? “HEY, BROTHER, SEND US A TENT!” By Fred Ellis The mine workers, fighting for the whole working class, are being evicted. They need tents on the “front”! relief to the Pennsylvania-Ohio Miners’ Relief Committee, 611 Penn Ave., Pittsburgh, Pa. PARTS EN ird By MELVIN P. LEVY On the first day of April, in a battered Pittsburgh hall situated next door to an ancient synagogue and approached through squalid blocks of a typical American colored section, more than 1,100 men gathered; they were the delegates to the Save-the- Union Conference of the United Mine Workers of America, and they had come together to consider those in- ternal problems, political and, econ- omic, which account for the gradual disintegration of their union since 1921, the ineffectiveness of the strike which they are at present carrying on in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, and the breakdown of wage- scales and decent working conditions which is rapidly making the skilled and dangerous occupation of coal- mining also one of the poorest paid and most miserable. When the conference was called it was as the radical wing of a still great, though failing, trade union. By the time the business of the meet- ing had unwound and the rank-and- file backing of the convention become clear, it was plain that these delegates were the spokesmen of a majority of the coal miners, organized and unorganized, in. North -America—a majority forced into progressivism by necessity rather than theory; reeog- nizing, as a colored delegate later said, that “there are only two classes in America, the workers and the bosses, no niggers, no wops, and no kikes,” and recognizing too that ad- vantages gained by one group of workers at the expense of another are of necessity transitory and un- certain. “You have been willing to push us| down,” the same colored miner said, “and you have done it, too, But you have held yourselves down at the same time. It is like two little boys fightinyz and one pushes the other into the mud. But he can’t do it with- out lying in mud, His arms are against the other boy and the other boy’s arms are around his neck too.” This speech, wildly greeted, was tc become the sense of the conference. Every attempt was made to wipe out the disaffection between white and, colored workers, organized and unor-| ganized, young and old. This was| done both in the procedure of~ the conference itself and in its plans for) future activities—activities which) will include,’ if the program of the! conference is carricd out, the capture of the United Mine Workers union By I. AMTER. What is the sentiment in this cqun- Is there a soil from which a, labor party may be developed? . Miners Militant. If one has spent only a little time in the mining fields and in the ins: dustrial sections of the country, then one has a different opinion as to the. possibilities of building a labor party in this country. Particularly in the mining section the present struggle has opened the eyes of the miners, + There probably is not one miner | who does not understand the nature | of the struggle. He sees the fight | against the coal operators. He has, been served with injunctions prohibit- ing this and that—and particularty | forbidding the. most éssential thing | for winning the strike. When the miners of Ohio were prohibited from |: mass picketing; when Judge Hough prohibited the foreign-born miners from going om the picket line and ed from its present incompetent and greedy’ leadership under President John L. Lewis, a return to national rather than local agreements between the union and the operators, the even- tua] nationalization of the coal mines, and the formation of a labor party based on nearly 400,000 coal miners in the United States and their fam- ilies. It is natural enough that this state- ment of proletarian principle should have come from the coal miners. The nature of the industry has been such as to form an hereditary coal-mining class, and to discourage the “get- ahead” and “rise from class to class” principles which have been typical of other American laboring groups. There has always been a good deal of child labor—or at least young labor—in the industry. Boys, as they grow up in the camp, become useful as assistants to their digger fathers or find work above ground. And the isolation of the collieries, as well as the fact that merchandising in the coal-fields has habitually been carried on through company stores, has worked against a desertion of the mining industry by young men and women for “business” in the form of small shop-keeping salesmanship, or clerking. Moreover, the vast vlent and huge wealth represented by a colliery have made it impractical for the superior young miner to “go into business for himself” in the field in which he has received training. His obvious course has been to stay and work for an improvement in the industry in which his life is bound up. This condition has reflected itself in the history of union activities among coal miners. Since the for- mation of their union, thirty years ago, they have followed a policy of national strikes and national settle- ments. Jchn L. Lewis broke this pre- cedent at the end of the 1922 strike. That strike was of national scope. Not only the then 300,000 members of the U. M. W. A. were affected; they were jojned by 100,000 unorgan- ized miners from Illinois and the coke-fields of Pennsylvania. At the end of the strike the Lewis leader- ship unceremoniously sacrificed the unorganized workers in r to ob- tain advantages for the a ite miners; the former were excluded fron: the strike settlement and were sent back to work under conditions far less advantageous than those they had deserted in a body to answer the strike call, Since that time these men have stood in the way of any national str:ke movement. Yet they sent one of the largest delegations to the Save-the-Union Conference,’ ex- pressed a willingness*to strike under any lcadership other. than that ‘of Lewis, and have actually’ answerdd Education By HENRY GEORGE WEISS. Hungry and chilled and desperate, Three fingers-of soup and some bread, ~ .-.. - That’s all we've had: since the morning, And both of us nearly dead. No hope in the missions, they’re crowded, The station is full, and no more Can be jammed in the cells, and the hallways Are packed with the men on the floor. Move on, says the cop, and’ we’re moving, The limousines -passing us by With the parasite rich of a nation That has turned out its workers to die. The cafes, we can see ’em and smell ’em, The warmth and glitter and cheer @f places where people are dining With never a thought of us here. By god, whispers Jake, but we'll pay ’em! . The “Reds” that I laughed at was right, We'll starve and we'll die in the gutter Until we have unions—and fight! prohibited the use of any other lan- guage than English, “when Judge Schoonmaker of Pittsburgh denied the miners who were about~to be _jevieted from the company houses the tight of-appealing to the union for. support; when sheriffs, marshals, constabulary and national guard were used against the miners—-and not one department of the government oper- ed to protect them, then it. became clear to the most primitive miner that a government arising out of either of the major political parties was no government of benefit to the miners. This was all the clearer since there are Communists to explain the situa- tion to them and to make it perfect- ly elear. The result is that whenever the labor party -is- mentioned the miners immediately realize the need of one, and will line up 100 per cpnt for the labor party. ik < Not so, the officialdom §f the Unit- ex-secretary of the union, is a demo- erat; John L. Lewis is a man of in- fluence in the republican party. The officialdom in the districts and sub- districts following the lead of Lewis does not dare to take a position for the labor party. But the rank and file, that is in favor of mass picket- ing, that is starving while the offi- cials of the union are living on the fat of the land—the rank and file is enthusiastically in favor of a labor party. And not only in. the mining sec- ‘tions is the response today immediate. In the industrial cities, where condi- tions are bad, where the workers see government. appropriations for every- thing imaginable, plenty for the army, navy and air department, but nothing for the 4,500,000 unem- ployed; in Cleveland nothing for the Green, Canton, hungry, but plenty to receive the agents of the bloody Horthy govern~ ment; in Warren, Youngstown, Akron, nine ey Best Flag Is Red, Says 11. Year Old Girl EAST LIVERPOOL, Ohio, April 24.| —The best flag is the Red Flag, the workers’ flag,” begins the “composi- tion” of an ll-year old girl of aa | Liverpool, Ohio, whose teacher had asked the pupils to write an essay on what they believed to be the best flag in the world. In order that there should be no misunderstanding as to what she meant, the young author illustrated her essay with a crayon drawing of a brilliant red flag under a bright blue sky. “Do not ever think,” she points out, “that the red white and blue is the best flag, be- cause it is not.” The child was sev- erely reprimanded by her jingoistic teacher. The teacher, after marking paper after paper that dutifully sang the praises of “the red white and | blue,” was so absolutely surprised | and shocked that she has refused to} grade the child’s work. This in spite! of the fact that it has been pointed) out that the child had done the worl( assigned to her. Union Head Retires CINCINNATI, Ohio, April 24—E. H. Fitzgerald, for 10 years grand president of the Brotherhood of Rail- Send a general sirike call issued to the Pennsylvania coke-fields by the con- ference, to the number of more than ten thousand. From the time of the 1922 strike the story cf the United Mine Work- ers has been one of steady disintegra- tion, The Colorado strike of 1925 was fought under the auspices of the I. W. W., the Lewis machine having refused to make any militant effort in thas state. At that time President Lewis, enraged at the “outlaw” strike actually shipped union miners into the strike area to act as strikebreak- ers under protection of the operators and the coal-and-iron police. At the present time, under the dis- trict-agreement policy inaugurated by Lewis, single companies have mines in which strikes have been set- tled and other mines which are still on strike; so that union miners are in effect working to furnish their employers with the means to wage the bitterest warfare against their own unicn. It was to oust the present leader- ship, as a prelude to more extended union activity, that the Save-the- Union Committee, under the leader- ship of such as John Brophy, “Tony”. Minerich, John W. Watt, Pat Toohey, and Powers Hapgood, was formed and the Pittsburgh convention called. The question of wage cuts, unemployment, discrimination against Negroes and young workers, and the organization of the unorganized were considered. Resolutions in favor of nationaliza- tion of the mines and the formation of a labor party were adopted. A per- manent national committee was formed to evolve tactics. But above all a spontaneous note ran through erence: “Lewis Must Go.” is last will not be easy—and the surgents know it. A union can be- come a valuable piece of property, too ‘good to be let loose without a Struggle. In the last six months John L. Lewis himself has drawn $11,098 salary and expenses. This while more than 100,000 strikers were living in -hovels or flimsy barracks and receiving from their union strike relief the sum of one dollar weekly for adults and twenty-five cents for children—when they got it. It was asserted at the Pittsburgh conference that the Lewis official family, had drawn more in salaries during the past year than the total amount spent by the A. F. of L. for mine way and Steamship Clerks, will retire from office July 1, he announced here yesterday. e Drive to Save the Miners’ Union Moreover, the machine threatened with suspension of relief and even eviction from the union barracks any locals which should send delegates to the Pittsburgh conference. During the very progress of the conference news came that relief had _beenj stopped in many camps and eviction notices served. Since that time a pledge has been circulated through the strike camps by the Lewis organ- ization. The strikers are asked to repudiate the Save-the-Union Confer- ence on pain of a veritable excom- munication from their union and any’ benefits they may receive from it. In Avella, Pennsylvania, and other; camps, attempts on the part of the Pennsylvania and Ohio Relief Com- mittee—the relief organization of the insurgents—to distribute necessities have been met with physical opposi- tion on the part of the Lewis group. Yet rank-and-file conferences aro new. being held in the counties of Greene, Fayette, and Westmoreland, and locals throughout the mine coun- try have taken steps to join in tha district union conferences to capture the leadership of the U. M. W. A. These -district conferences are the core of the Savé-the-Union Commit- tee’s program. The hope is that a large enough backing will be gath« ered to declare all offices in the United Mine Workers vacant, and to proceed to the election of new offi- cial. The present Jeadership haa countered with wholesale suspensions of rebellious“ miners—and the sus- pensions have been largely disregard- ed. But it is plain that the miners’ trouble is not all political. They-are \ fighting an economic condition as well as graft and the enmity of their employers. During the war new coal- fields were developed to meet a de- mand that ended with peace. More- over, coal substitutes have stopped the growth of consumption at the greatest ‘pre-war figure. Operators declare that there are 200,000 extra men in the industry and advise them to get out. The men answer that there is no place for them to go. No industry is capable of supporting 200,000 additional families. And the men also believe that a largé part of. the present unemployment in the coal’ fields arises from increased machine efficiency rather than slackened de- mand. They call for a share in this benefit, a redistribution of the work over a six-hour day and five-day week. relief. tion is intense, where speed-up finds ino end, where the spy-system rules —the workers are responding more and more to the call for a labor party. Government corruption, republican and democratic alike—these things which an American supposedly has got used to-—are not passed by un- noticed by the American workers. Riches, waste, extravagance — as*' against poverty, stinting and pinch- ing. The American worker is resent- ful and wants a change—and not a change from the republican to the democratic party. Can a labor party be formed? It may be questionable whether it can be formed on a national scale, owing to the backwardness of some sections, and the illusions that still prevail. But unquestionably in such states as Ohio and Illinois, a labor party is within the realm of probability. -—Reprinted from The Nation. ‘What is the Natural Sentiment for a Labor Party? and what is required is the work of stirring up the masses—beginning with the miners, who will follow the call of a labor party and proceeding. to the big industrial cities and lining| them up in one phalanx. The work must be started—the sit-, uation is very good, The response of! the miners in eastern Ohio to the call) of the Save the Union Committee for: the conference in Pittsburgh on April 1st, shows conclusively that the de- fiance the Ohio miners showed their officials, despite all their; threats, will be followed by material-; ization of one of the issues of tho; Save the Union Committee, the labor: party. All progressive forces in Ohio must; get together for the labor party.. The need is here—the forces wait for or- ganization—let us organize the Labor Party. Its organization will help im Pennsylvania already has a labor par-* ty and the outlook is very good. Ohio furnishes a likewise favorable field, ‘the political development of the mass of workers who still follow the bosses’ parties, ee