The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 30, 1928, Page 6

Sonata as. Tis sn cams LOSE oSrKneRoMaEamNe me A * \ Nhe THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, MONDAY, APRIL 30, 1928 HE DAILY WORKER SO THAT THEY CAN FIGHT Published by the NATIONAL DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING ASS’N, Inc. Daily, Except Sunday 33 First Street, New York, N. Y. Cable Address: SUBSCRIPTION RATES ty Mail (in New York only): f8.0€ per year $4.50 six me $2.50 three months. Phone, Orchard 1680 | “Datwork" ; | By Mail (outside of New York): | $6.50 per year $3.50 six months | $2.00 three months. | Address and mail out checks to THE DAILY WORKER, 33 First Street, New York. N. Y. | “2 Assistant Editor.. as second-class mail at the post-office at the act of March 3, 1879. ew York Workers---All Out for May Day! ROBERT MINOR | -WM. F. DUNNE | New York, N. ¥. | { | Tomorrow is the First of May. Tomorrow the workers of New York must show that splendid spirit which so often ha ade history for the labor movement. What Berlin is to the workers of Germany, what Paris is to the workers of France—New York must become to thg workers of | And what Leningrad is to the Rus- sian workers, New York must become to the workers of this | Metropolitan centers mean much to the advancing pro- this big imperialist country. section. letarian movements in all countries. America the more skilled section of the worki > of the most traditionally under the influ ist ideology. Whereas in Ei. and betrayed only by agents v- In the United States of x class has been .etionary capital- s can be deluded o use deceptive ye working apitalism words of “socialism,” the working class of this country can still be led by outright defenders of capitalism without even the cloak of | “socialist” phraseology; and millions of workers still | deceptive form the membership of the parties of big capital. In New York City it is to be should be more advanced in ideological development than the aver- | age for the country as a whole. workers in the heavy industries—the steel mills, the mines and | the machine industries—will be class consciousness to make of of the Communist movement. expected that the working class Among the most oppressed found the deepest proletarian those workers the logical core Also in the great cities, and es- pecially in New York, the working class life peculiar to big cen- ters of population generates the most mobile and active force in the revolutionary movement of our class. racies, The official labor movement of New York is ridden by the st reactionaries of the entire trade union and socialist party But already there have been heavy inroads in winning the rank and file of this metropolis from the influence cf their betrayers. Today the vast majority of the needle trades workers stand | trmly for the interests of their class and for the class struggle. | Relief cards are issued to mine communities by the National Miners’ Relief Committee, (formerly the Pennsylvania-Ohio Miners’ Relief These tickets entitle miners’ families to the regular allotment of food daily. The portions are pitifully small—of necessity. All workers and sympathizers should send help for the striking miners to the Committee). | quently the supplies at the central station give out altogether. National Miners’ Relief Committee, 611 Penn Ave., Pittsburgh, Pa. \ Fre- D.A.R. Plans | good name of the National Society, 4 to Chastise an Erring One ean April 29.—The Daugh- ters of the American Revolu- tion, irked by the publicity result- ing from its speakers’ “blacklist,” has preferred formal charges against Mrs. Helen Tufts Bailie of Cambridge. Censure, suppression or expulsion from the organization is likely to follow this action. The charges are made in a peti- tion to the National Board of Man-+ agement submitted by nineteen of- ficers and members. The lady is charged with having “conducted herself in a way caleulated to dis- turb the harmony and injure the ; Daughters of the American Revo- lution.” Mrs. Bailie has been in the public prints ever since, about two months s ago, she headed a group of 14 “insurgents” who objected to the D. A. R. approving the huge naval program and who, exposed the blacklist which the organization was maintaining against liberals and radicals. Army Officers Steal Enlisted Men’s Wages DETROIT, April 29.—Six commis- sioned and non-commissioned officers of the Michigan National Guard and two army sergeants attached to the 105th guard infantry, who pleaded guilty to pay check forging at the Detroit armory, were yesterday sen- tenced to terms of from one year and a day to two years in Leayen- worth Prison. | By SONIA CROLL. | May Day has special significance |for the working woman for it is the |day on which the most class: con- | scious sections of the proletdtia) |demonstrate their international solf- |darity regardless of race, nation- jality or sex. On this day woman is considered an equal and her fight for emancipation from the double burden of capitalist exploitation ‘the heroic battles of the membership of the International Gar- | which she suffers is considered a’ Ht truggles in trade union history. st & Werkers’ Union, the Fur Workers’ Union, the Cap Makers |part and parcel of the struggle of already won for these workers a place of honor among the {the whole working class-for libera- nt rank fighters for the freedom of our class, by the side .of | al miners who are now putting up one of the most glorious tion from capitalist exploitation. | On May Day the working class women must realize that they are |not fighting alone, and that they There is still a backward labor movement in New York, but |" free’ themselves only thru co- already there are tens of thousands of New York workers worthy of the name of revolutionary workers. On this May Day—international day of revolutionary soli- jarity and mobilization, these tens of thousands of workers have the opportunity to show the world that the class consciousness ee of the proletarian masses of New York is advancing. The big May Day meeting at Madison Square Garden tomor- |W°™men believe that they support row afternoon will be one of the biggest events of its kind in Ni ew York labor history. Many thousands of workers will assemble at the monster hall as early as two o’clock and the tremen-|on them for not granting such dous demonstration will be in full swing by 8 o’clock in the after- ¢qality. In reality the bourgeoisie noon, the time set for the meeting. This feature of the demonstration is notable. The hour of {operation and participation in the |common struggle against the enemy jof all workers and toilers—the capi- | talist. | A. Hypocritical Women’s Party. | In the United States, the bour- oisie and the trade union bureau- erats endeavor to make the working full social, economic and political | equality ‘for women, in order to |keep the women from opening fire jand their lackies, the trade union | bureaucrats, are against recognizing women as equals to men. the meeting—3 o’clock in the afternoon—is an hour at which |@l! special laws protecting women ._.the bosses claim the ‘workers’ time as their own. The calling of |¥™*ets: Altho this would put the the demonstration for this hour is itself a challenge to reaction | May Da working women even more fully at the mercy of the capitalist, the Na- tional’ Women’s. Party pretends to be a real friend of the women by A good example of the methods used by them is the campaign now being carried on by the National Women’s Party, a party of bour- geois women, for the annulment of making this hypocritical, misleading argument: “‘We want full economic equality for women; she cannot have this unless she can freely meet the competition of the male work- ers on the labor market, without any limiting laws attached to the num- ber of hours she may werk or the depth to which her wages may fall.” They say, if wa demand equal wages for women, the capitalists will employ men. Thus they divide the working class into “men” and “women” competing with each other on the economic field and maintain as Theresa Wolfson does in her book, “The Woman Worker and the Trade Unions,” that “the intensifi- cation of economic competition be- tween the sexes ‘can. only be con- trolled and guided.” In other words they accept the theory that the interests of working women and working men are natur- ally opposed and cannot be over- come. Where a pretense at organizing women workers was made by sepa- rate A. F, of I. unions they quickly sought an alibi for discontinuing even those half-hearted attempts, in the so-called backwardness of the women, the temporary nature. of thei: participation in industry, lack of interest in organization and in many other invented “natural” char- acteristics of women workers. The long and short of it is that the A. F. of L. bureaucracy does not want to organize the over nine million women workers any more than they want to organize the 25 million un- organizable workers, men and wom- en, in the United States. They are “interested in drawing high salaries from the unions and even bigger bribes from the capitalists for pre- venting the organization of the mil- lions. of unorganized workers. What May Day Means, May Day is not only a demonstra- tion, a one-day challenge to the cap- italists and labor bureaucrats. It is a day when the awakened work- ers “take stock” of their position in their own countries and their posi- tion as related to workers and toil- ers all over the world. It is a day when past class struggle experiences are summed up and lessons drawn for future action, It is a day when the proletariat tests its leaders ‘in the fire of the struggle. It is there- fore one of the most important tasks of all revolutionary and militant workers participating in this year’s May Day celebration in the United States to take a firm stand on the question of organizing the millions of unorganized working women and y and the Workingclass Women on all other economic and political problems of working class women. The labor bureaucrats have pushed the “women problem” from pillar to post for years, * It evolves therefore upon the left wing members of the trade unions and/ upon all progressive workers to take an active part in fulfilling this task under the leadership or in the spirit of the Communist Party of America which stands for full equality of women. The Communist Party points to Soviet Russia, the only country in the world where“the working and peasant women enjoy every possibility for taking an equal place with men in society. In Soviet Russia: about three million women are members of trade unions at the present time while there were only 1,449,000 women members of trade unians at the end of 1923, an in- crease of over 100 per cent. These figures alone explode the alibi of the A. F. of L. bureaucrats that women are too difficult to organize but the figures grow even more sig- nificant when one recalls that Soviet Russia’s population is predominant- ly peasant, and that women’s par- ticipation in industry is compara- tively new there. On May Day this year we must take cognizance of the period of de- pression which has set in in the United States and of the four mil- lion unemployed, many of whom are women. Special efforts will have to be made to draw them into the un- employed organizations. Working class and farming women must be drawn into active participation in our Labor Party campaign. We must expose the imperialist inter- vention in Nicaragua by the United States troops showing the women how their sons and husbands are fighting against the interests of the working class and all oppressed peoples by entering the United States Army and Navy, We must point out the danger of war and all * that it involves to the woman of the j working class. Labor Day and May Day. Labor~Day, the “working class” holiday celebrated in September and sponsored by the A. F. of La officialdom stands for deception and betrayal of the interests of the working class, for its division into “men” and “women,” into skilled and unskilled workers, into Negroes and whites, into organized and unor- ganized into craft unions, in short for class-collaboration. May Day on the contrary is the international holiday of the world | proletariat and stands for a united working class; for a_ relentless struggle against all capitalist op- pression and against world imper- jalism. May Day stands for follow- ing the example of the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union who have taken power into their own } hands and are managing the state | and industries of the Soviet Union in their own interests. and a mark of the maturing stage of the advanced sections of i“ New York labor. is to be congratulated on its arrangements for this demonstra- | tion. Many workers who have shown themselves good fighters ~ “Tn the cause of our class, but who have neglected to make them- selves a part of the organized political party of our class; should make it their business to join the Workers Communist) Party at the great demonstration mz den_tomorrow afternoon. All out for May Day! Down tools on May First! Ss meeting at Madison Square Gar- All to the big dentonstration at Madison Square Garden! PRINCIPAL RAGES WHILE SEIZE BULLETINS 5 f CLEVELAND, April 29.—“Get into the office while we call a patrol | ment decided to issue a note which PUPILS “wagon and have you arrested,” was the order of assistant principal Monis pf Lincoln High School to the two League members distributing the bulle-| rity. This note confirmed the preda- in issued by the group of Young® Poneers in the school. Raging Mr. Monks had to save his dignity before hundreds of children vho watched him run after the bul- Jetin distributors. “You can’t beat us, the way you Gee, if we could only say those things to Monks that you did,” an- other said. One remark after another lauded the bulletin as the children grabbed them and rushed back to the school- eat the children in schoo! although |room to distribute them to their com- ve have no big brothers,” was the retort of one of the distributors as Monks screamed that the bulletin was filled with nothing but-lies and tha panions who had not seen them. The bulletin, dealing with the con- ditions in the school, stressed par- ticularly the increasing number of he would send a policeman to the of-|cases of corporal punishment in the fice to have the distribution stopped. He returned to his oifice, shaking his fists and gritting his teeth in anger. The children watched eagerly until Monks disappeared and then came vushing in mobs to ask for the bul- letin. “Give us a bunch of them. We will distribute them inside,” they shouted. “The naper is great.” one, said. Meme iiegeit cen | school. Specific cases were given names of teachers mentioned and the j|form of punishment they resorted to. Monks was called a “big bully” be- cause he never hit any of the chil- dren unless assured beforehand that the child had no older brother, Several requests have been received for free copies of the Young Com- rade and many children are expected to ioin the Pioneers. On May 8, 1917, Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin wrote the following article. That was the period immediately fol- lowing May Day, 1917, when the pro= letarian revolution was developing itoward the seizure of power five and a half months later. At that time the Menshevik parties still had a majority lin the Petrograd Soviei This historical article i- mel read- ing for May Day, 1928 sel OM | (Published in the “Pravua’ of May | 6, 1917.) | PETROGRAD and the whole of Ru sia have experienced a_ serious | political crisis, the first political crisis | since the revolution. | On May 2, the Provisional Govern- ) has since acquired unfortunate celeb- tory aims at conquest of the war suf- nation of the broad masses who, up to that time, had honestly believed that | the capitalists were willing to ‘‘re- |mounce annexations” and were cap- {able of doing so. On May 3, and 4, events in Petro- | grad reached boiling point. The | streets were packed; during the whole | day and night, handfuls and groups | of people gathered into meetings of various dimensions; there was no end to mass demonstrations and nianifes- tations. Yesterday evening, May 4, the crisis seemed to be ended; its first stage was closed at any rate; the Executive Committee of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet and then the Soviet itself stated that they approved of the “explanations,” {. e., (those explanations consisted of emp-' ty meaningless phrases which altered nothing and pledged it to nothing)-— ficiently clearly to rouse the indig- | corrections of the government note) and “considered the incident closed.” ( The future will show whether the | broad masses “consider the incident | | closed.” It is now our task to study: | attentively the forces, the classes, con- | cerned-in the crisis and to derive from | this study the lessons for the Party | of the “proletariat. ‘Lhe great signi- ficance of all crisis is that they reveal what was hidden, that they wipe away | the conditional, the superficial, all) that is petty, that they sweep away | | political rubbish and cxpose the true | | driving force of the class war which | is actually going on. weat the government of the capi- “ talists actually didon May 2 was jonly to repeat their former notes { | which cloaked the imperialist war | with diplomatic turns of Speech. The masses: of soldiers. became. indignant, | beeause they had honestly believed in’ (the -uprightness and the desire. for, | peaze of the imperialists; The dem- onstrations began as soldiers’ demon- 'strations, under contradictory sense- | less and aimless slogans; “Down with 'Miljukov” (as though changing a per- son or a group would alter the nature of the policy). ‘ ‘ ' { } { This ni¢ans. that che broad, unsta- ble, vacillating mass which, in its posi- | tion, is nearest to the peasantry but which, according to its scientific clas- sification, is. petty bourgeois, has veered round from the side of the capitalists to the side of the revolu- | tionary workers. And it was this swing of the pendulum or movement ; of the masses, whose power can de- cide everything, which brought about the crisis, It was theh no lon the middle, but the extreme el its, no petty bourgeois intermediary stratum, but the bourgeoisie and the proletariat which got into motion and began to 4 | adjacent parts of the wealthy Petro- | grad, the Petrograd of the capitalists | “The Lessons of the Crisis”---An The New York district of the Workers (Communist) Party | parade the streets and to organize. The bourgeoisie occupied the Nev- skyaProspect (the “Miljukovsky Pres- pect” as one paper called it) and the and officials. The officers, the stu-) dents, the “middle class” demonstrated | in favor of the Provisional Govern- mont. Their flags could often be seen inseribcd with the slogan “Down with) Lenin!” Tee proletariat came out of its own centers, out of the working class suburbs and organized itself round the slégan and mottos, of the central committee of our Party.-On May 3 and 4, the Central Committes (of the Bolshevik Party—Editor) passed resolutions which were~ immediately transmitted to the proletarian masses through the ‘apparatus of the organi- zation. The processions of workers overflowed into those districts of the town which were less rich and less} centrally situated and penetrated in sections into the Necsky Prospect. The compact: demonstrations of —the proletariat are. sharply distinguished by their mass character from the dem~- onstrations of the bourgeoisie, Their. flags bore’ the. slogan: power to the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviets!” 3 Conflicts occurred on ¢he Nevsky, the flags of the “enemy” demonstra- tions were torn down. The Executive Committee received reports’ by tele- phone from different points that there had been firing on both sides, that there were dead and wounded; the communications in this respect were extremely contradictory and uncon- trolled, The bourgeoisie expresses its fear “All the}: Article by petty bourgeois leaders of the Soviet, the Mensheviki and Narodniki who' among the capitalists, with a view to had so clearly defined party policy, either after the revolution or in the! days of the crisis, allowed themselves to be intimidated. The executive com-| mittee which, only the day before,| that of the proletarian revolution, had been against the government by; almost half the votes,-now voted by) wL to 19 for a return to the policy of confidence jn the. government and| or coming to terms with it. : The ‘fincident” was declared to bi “closed.” What is the nature of the class struggle? i T= eapitalists are in favor of con- tinuing the war, and of cloaking their war policy in phrases and prom- ises; they are caught in the net of Russian, Anglo-French and American bank capital. i The proletariat, represented by its class-conscious vanguard, is in favor of the power passing into the hands of the revolutionary class, into ‘the hands of the working class, the semi- proletarians; in favor of the expan- Sion of the proletarian world revolu- tion, which, in Germany also, is vis- ibly increasing, in favor of putting an end to the war through such a revolution. The broad, chiefly petty bourgeois mags, which still puts faith in the Menshevist, and S. R. leaders, is thoroughly intimidated by the bour- geoisie and vacillating first to the right and then to the left, is carrying: out the bourgeois policy with reser- vations. War is a horror; it is just the broad masses who feel this most acutely; lest the masses of the people should sciousness is gfowing, though it is V. L Lenin account of the rivalries and disputes dividing up the spoils of the capital- its. The situation throughout the world is becoming more and more in- tricate. There is no other issue than which is at present more advanced in Russia than in other countries, al- though it is obviously growing in Ger- many also (strikes, fraternization). The masses are vacillating between confidence in their old rulers, the capitalists and resentment against: them; between confidence in the pro- letariat, the new and sole consistent revolutionary class, which is opening the path to a happy future for atl workers, and an indistinct recognition of its part in history. This is not the first and not the last vacillation of the petty bourgeois and semi-prole- tarian masses. ~ i bao lesson is clear, Comrades, Time ™ presses, The first crisis will be fot- lowed by others. Concentrate all your forces on enlightening those who are backward on a wholesale, brotherly, direct approach (not only in meet- ings) to every regiment, every group of the working strata which are not yet ripe. All forces should work for our own unity, for the organization of the workers, from the lowest to the high- est, in every district, in every factory, in every quarter of the metropolis and its suburbs. We must not allow ourselves to be distracted either by the petty bourgeois defenders of the country, by the advocates of an “un- derstanding” with the capitalists, the advocates of “support” nor by individ- uals who wish to act too rashly orm * it is just in ye ranks that the con- really seize the power, by clamoring still far from ciear, that this war is about the “spectre of civil wax.” Thea crime, that it is being carried on on ery: “Down with the Provisional g ernment,” before the majority “ot te people is firmly united. ©