The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 31, 1928, Page 6

\ 4 ‘xm DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, TUESDAY, JULY 31, 1928. | DIGGING IN BEHIND THE SMOKE SCREE -E was a man for you! Alex. ander Peacock once owned an es. tate worth $15,000,000. He died | leaving only a paltry $100,000. But |he was a game Peacock. Once his_ | | butler brought him an egg that al- » |most warbled, In anger Peacock ordered his real estate director te purchase a chicken’farm for his own | Published by NATIONAL DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. Y. ASS'N, ine., Daily, Except Sunday work” | Cable Addre: SUBSCRIPTION RATES By Mail (outside of New York): | $6.00 per year $3.50 six months $2 three months | Phone, Stuyvesant 1596-7-8 | | By Mail (in New York only) $8 per year $4.50 six inonths $2.50 three months —<$_$_ Address and mail out checks to THE DAILY WORKER, 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. Y. | personal use, It cost $60,000. That’s ROBERT MINOR | | wot we call a bloomin’ gentleman. De ..WM. F. DUNNE | A ata ad Entered as second at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. ONE never knows what to eat nowa —— ue ae days unless one is wise enough to eat what he darned well likes, provided he has the price. The | writer was talked into a diet of sour milk and cheese recently by 4 glib-tongued amateur health expert, It is true that he sneaks away somes times and surrepitiously devours a beef stew but he also indulges in sour cream, Fancy his embarrass- ment when he read in the papers a few days ago that a whole family went to the hospital for eating sour milk and cheese. * VOTE COMMUNIST! WILLIAM Z. FOSTER — si For Vice-President BENJAMIN .GITLOW Q | ‘A | workers (communist) PARTY For the Party of the Class Struggle! Against the Capitalists! For the Workers! * * South and all the traditions of the South. I have voted the Democratic ticket from the time the Re- publicans forced Negro office holders on the people of my State and I shall vote this ticket until I die. “I shall vote the entire ticket, from Governor Smith down and if the true Southern democracy stands by the party true democracy will win its most sweeping victory since the days of reconstruc- tion.” For all-round ubiquity you can’t beat the House of Morgan. It is here, there, and everywhere. You will find a member of the House cheek by jowl with Al Smith at his commodious headquarters in the Biltmore Hotel or on the golf links. You will find another one advising Calles of Mexico how to run the government. And you will find still another visiting Calvin Coolidge at his summer white house, no doubt giving the President tips on how to catch trout with worms. Al Smith for Negro Slavery. | ‘A very interesting situation is created in the contest of the Republican and Democratic parties for electoral votes in the Southern states and the effect of this upon the rotten Babbit-bourgeoisie of the South. The demo- cratic party is busy, from Raskob’s office down, persuading the southern ruling class that if it does not accept Wall Street’s Tammany can- didate, as against Wall Street’s Republican can- didate, the masses of agricultural laborers and other workers whose faces are black may slip . | But of course the fear that the Republican | party will really do anything to let the masses of Negro slaves loosen their chains is only an instrument for Tammany politicians to use on C i i as | the stagnant minds of the Southern Babbit- into possession of some of the rights of citizen- | bourgeoisie. On the other hand the Republican ship. | party is busy proving by actions which speak Smith headquarters at Atlanta, Ga. has|louder than words that it wishes to ingratiate given out a very illuminating piece of propa-| itself with the same Southern Babbit-bour- ganda from the pen of old Richard Cannon| geoisie ,and will do absolutely nothing that | Watts, chief justice of South Carolina, who| would tend to give elbow-room to the enslaved | says: |labor of the South. The Republican party is a % F : saa Wie wl completely and absolutely through with the} Eig aaa pa eae eae oli Negro, as far as furthering his political rights | _ to do this very thing now do not realize the gravity | af concerned, as was dramatically announced | | of their deeds. It is like spreading gasoline ove: | aS early as 1920 by no less person than Warren the whole South from the Patomac to the Rio |G. Harding. Would the textile barons and _ Grande.” other Northern capitalists that are now mov- ing into the almost virgin labor field of the! South with their mills and factories to take ad- vantage of the cheap labor conditions—would | they do anything to disturb that peculiar con- | dition of enslavement which is facilitated by | the “Jim Crow” division of the working class? No! Anything that disturbs the Jim Crow line in the South would tend toward Bolshevism. The spreading of that sort of “gasoline from the Potomac to the Rio Grande” is not going | to be done by a capitalist party. The political} | arty that will in fact “spread gasoline” over the whole social institution of race suppression in the South must be a party seeking to over- throw the whole system of exploitation of man |by man. There is such ‘a party—the Workers (Communist) Party. * * * There is excellent team work in the House of Morgan. It appears, too, that the most complete objec- tivity prevails among its members. For instance, while the masses yell themselves hoarse over the merits of their respective capitalist favor- ites in the boss parties, the Demo- cratic lookout in the House of Mor. gan and the Republican watchdog take their political duties as serenely as they would the granting of a loan to strengthen the Fascist power in Italy. | * * x The foregoing paragraphs were inspired by a news dispatch announ- cing the arrival of Thomas Cochran, a partner of J. P. Morgan & Co., at Cedar Island Lodge, where Coolidge is spending the summer. It is signifi- cant that Secretary of the Navy | Wilbur arrived almost simultaneous- ly.. It is additionally significant that Wilbur brought a report on the situation in Nicaragua to Coolidge, and, of course, nobody has to inform you that Morgan is interested in Nicaragua. Of course when the 75-year old chief judicial representative of the law and order in South Carolina says “the Negro will be the sufferer,” it means a threat of lynching or other armed ‘violence against the Negro masses in the event the latter should attempt to claim the right to vote or other political or citizenship rights, which he points out have not been exercised in the South generally for fifty years. The nightmare that is conjured up in the mind of the old man by the idea of letting masses of black workers and farmers vote, is indicated by the following words of the state-| ment: ermany’s Red Front Fighters (Reprinted, Courtesy of ‘The Nation’) | By AGNES SMEDLEY Berlin, June 12 HE Red Front Vighters come to Berlin once a year to celebrate |the future. They are an organiza- |tion of over 200,000 men, 30,000 Red Front Oath. After the second song the bugles called again, and simultaneously |from every part of the vast con- course speakers arose—standing on eae teps, boxes, statues. They had all and shouting “Red | © ar, A s v rane heen given their points to emphasize, Di 'p! » visions from the brother \and fifteen minutes in which to de- ‘Storm Troops of the Prolétariat’ in Impressive Berlin Parade & . * The same news dispatch informs us that Cochran is a close personal friend of Dwight Morrow, Morgan’s ambassador to Mexico. Did Cochran clenched fists | marching began, and in the “respec- ; | Front.” ‘ who lived through the dark days cat Rate “4 table” parts of the city the comfort- of reconstruction in the South after the end of the war between the States any thought or suggestion of bolting the Democratic ticket is unthinkable and | inconceivable. “To these men the whole period of reconstruction was like a hideous nightmare, when men and boys went to bed with shotguns, and wives, sisters and daughters cowered in their homes with hearts torn with fear as forests of bayonets swayed before their eyes.” The old reactionary continued: “What can a Southern man mean when he talks @ of bolting the Democratic party? man to think of such a think is traitorous to the when mothers, For a Southern ; Women, and some 50,000 youth. Al- And that party is in this national election | though ‘he leadership. is Communist, campaign for the first time getting on the bal-| only one-third of the weWibers be- lot in many Southern states. The Negro workers and farmers, and the class-conscious white workers equally, will have their first chance in the South to show their desire to destroy. the |ecutives of the party. This is the institutions of labor-ensl. Communist ticket. Negro and white workers of the Communist this year, and join the Workers |cist (Communist) Par | believe in slavery. |long to the party. The president is |Ernst Thalmann, transport worker |and Communist Reichstag member from Hamburg, and one of the ex- l|avement by voting the | °rganization ‘that the minister of the interior, von Keudell, tried in vain to declare illegal about two South, vote | months ago, while leaving the Fas- “Steel Helmets” untouched. That is, unless you, too, These Red Front Fighters are |known as the “storm-troops of the MY OWN STORY. By Fremont Older (Revised Edition, 1928). Macmillan Co. $2.50. | Reviewed by WALT CARMON. IN the twelfth anniversary of the Mooney: Billings frame-up, a book by Fremont Older assum special interest. For it was Fre- mont Older who, after Mooney tence to death, as editor of the San Francisco Bulletin and then the Call, threw a capitalist newspaper into the fight for two labor prisoners. The activities of Older became an invaluable aid in saving the life of Mooney, after the victorious Russian workers centered world attention on the issue with a demonstration be- fore the American embassy in Mos- cow in 1917. A book by such a tire- t less worker, who still continues the fight for their freedom, becomes of some interest then to workers, tho the author be a liberal with no spe- ial interest in workers as a class. * * Here is truth truly stranger and y more times readable than most ion. A young man with no so- cial ideas becomes an editor. In a fight in which he is involved for ye he gradually sees the system live under in an entirely new it. His fight, at first a means getting circulation for his paper. mes a more or less real hat- “against big interests—against corruption, control of the, and the government, here’s the result of his life’s| ices compressed into his hy: “From being a savage fer against wrong and injustice “saw them’in the old days, I , e clear over to the point : I do not blame anyone for ” warrior nee,” the old “even for the intolerant. philosophy, disillusioned tho “not cynical,” he has- assure us. He is yet ready scarred as he may be. He ues his interest in hu- side in the leadership which ¥ The Story of Fremont Older E is still the old fighter in behalf of Mooney and Billings for whose freedom he has fought since they have been imprisoned. But even here events tend to shake loose his faith in “this so-called human race”: “The little faith in human nature I still had,” he writes about the Mooney-Billings frame-up, lesSened still more when I discovered that ten of the twelve prominent lo- cal labor leaders were either active- ly conniving at keeping these men in prison or doing nothing to help them. This threw me into a des- pondent mood. I had learned to ex- pect that kind of attitude from the rich and the powerful and those who fawned upon them, but to find the foremost local leaders of labor either acting or thinking with them was more than I could calmly bear.” The Mooney-Billings frame-up is only a concluding c ter in the eventful years of Fremont Olders’ public activities beginning in 1895 San Francisco and all California were in the hands of the Southern Pacific railroad then. The real gov- ernment office was in the office of the S, P. manager in San Francisco. * * * The picture he gives us of those and the succeeding years is an il-| luminating commentary on Amer- ican government. Here are facts presented by one intimately involved Many later nationally prominent figures run thru these pages: John- son, Wm. Burns, Clarence Darrow and others. The Frisco fire marks a milestone in his record. And in- terwoven are faint zlimpses of the labor movement, especially its closely interlocked with the crooked politics of San Francisco for nany years. The book presents an anusual back-ground for the Mooney-Billings case. its worst, where even a government investigator sent by the secretary of labor, who secured dictaphone evi- dence in the Mooney-Billings frame- 4 “was | A stronghold of capitalism at} [proleaeete organized in 1924 to jcounteract the growth of Fascism, |to defend the wor class, and, in ease of another war, “to turn upon the capitalist class and change the | war into a civil war for the destruc- |tion of capitalism and the estab- lishment of a workers’ and peasants’ government.” They are organized |on a military basis and wear < gray uniform that looks much like the Russian Red Army aniform or the uniform of the Chinese Nationalist soldiers. The coat is half shirt, open at the throat and caught in at the waist and over the shoulder by Fremont Older at this time, by the | leather straps. The cap, of the same nature of his class affiliations, was | material, has a solitary red star in ready to believe Mooney and Billings| front. Practically all men over guilty. On learning the facts, how-|twenty“five had military training in ever, he threw himself wholeheartily | the last war, and even the Red into the battle for their release. He| Youth—young men from the ages of writes later: | 16 to 21—look as if they had had | it when they swing down the street. The Masses Come. Their fourth national gathering |has just ended. They meet each }year during the Whitsuntide holi- days, and on Whitsunday is the great demonstration. This year 100,000 un‘formed men and a few thousand womeny marched, followed by as many more non-uniformed {Communist Party “members. Sev- |enty-five thousand came from out- | side Berlin—walking, riding bicycles, | traveling in trucks of fourth-class railway carriages. i ib- In addition to the record of his| uted the athar 85600, tor tava political battles, Fremont Older als>| advance the working-class sections records his succeeding humanitarian _were busy preparing for their com- efforts among ex-convicts and pros- | ing. Beds for 68,000 were arranged titutes. | in the private homes of the workers, and it did not matter if some of Ea i |these beds were bales of hay. The No realistic worker can pecome i bapa |other men were housed in barracks enthusiastic about a philosophy of! tents. The various diyisions life that Older finally evolves for .. i, himself. These are sadder but ate, inde Wesel gregh! Maen days when workers are not so prone | jen. they gan to arrive the rail- to accept simple humanitarian ‘deals| “@¥ Stations were a mass of uni- as a cure-all for their ills, They|‘ormed men waiting. to start the have ‘earned the value of organiza-/ Music and escort their euicanes |tion and struggle. Yet there is a| through the streets. The workers’ good deal of extremely interesting Sections were a blaze of red; red reading in this book by Older. My flags and banners, red flowers, red Own Story is a frank, courageous |*treamers; red flowers or ribbons up, does not dare to present it in court krlowing that “justice” as ad- ministered there would nct give him protection New York Tammany Hall in the old days, and the pres- ent Chicago Thompson-Crowe ad- ministration would have much in| common. “That these two men are entire- ly innocent of the crime is now | known all over the world. No one who has heard the facts doubts it, yet Mooney and Billings are both serving life sentences, one in Folsom and the other in San Quen- tin, and the state seems willing that they should ren there un- til they die. Search criminal his- tory back, down thru the Dark Ages, and a more glaring and cruel case of injustice cannot be found.” * * * kind of a book. Thru its vages in *he buttonholes or hats. runs a warm human feeling. You} Impressive Demonstration. may not agree with the author's) On Whitsunday the buglers awoke |philosophy. But you will be,extreme-| the Red Front Fighters at six. From ily interested in this—the record of eight to ten there were concerts and a relatively honest ‘ighter among gatherings in the many halls and on | capitanisy editors: "rr M ‘the many squares. At ten the mecca = able ladies and gentlemen turned uneasily in their beds when they |heard the steady marching of thou- | sands of feet and the blare of bands playing the “International” and Red Front organizations in Czecho- | Slovakia, Austria, Switzerland; and | France marched also; there was al small Chinese group, and now and | |then the lines threw up the faces | “Out to the Sun and the Light.” If|of Negroes, Indians, you were in tha workers’ sections,|There were individual it seemed that the whole city was|from the , Scandinavian countries, | marching. Eisenstein could have | England, Australia, Russia, and In- | made a marvelous picture of whole |dia. The “Young Pioneers”—boys streets marching, seemingly cross-|and girl8“tinder’ sixteen—marched; | ing and recrossing, their red flags} and the “Young Spartacans”—little | caught in the wind and blazing in /|éhaps under twelve——scereamed “Red the brilliant morring sun. The| Front! Hoch! from their big motor streets were seething with workers | lorries. The Red sport organiza- in their Sunday best—not only |tioris, with their many members Javanese. | delegates | | out for this occasion. Thousands of |in Moscow, marched, both men and | working women and girls stood| women in white shorts‘ with bare | along the lines with baskets of |arms, heads, and legs. The white- sandwiches and ffyit, distributing | clad Workers’ First Aid, which num- food free to the marching men.|hers some 80,000 men and women Communists, but all workers turned | training for the Workers’ Olympiad |’ Glasses of water and beer appeared by the thousands along the routes— workers’ restaurant keepers giving free—and girls ran along beside the marchers waiting to take back the glasses. THE, Lustgarten was the goal of the marchers. On one Side of the square is the former imperial palace; on another the cathedral; on the third the Museum of Ancient Arts, with a long flight of broad steps leading up to it; on the fourth the canal. Roads and bridges lead to it from six or seven different directions. Rows of police helmets gleamed on the top steps of the vathedral and the museum, and back of the museum hundreds of them were camped, with rifles ready, | while across the canal were big po- |'ice lorries, filled with men. | Clear | * * * across the front of the cathedval, al- most hiding the policemen, was a long, broad slash of red bunting. with the white words “Red Front Fighters, join the Communist Party.” Across the face of the imperial pal- ace was another: “Each factory a fortress of the Red Front!” Shades of imperial ancestors! — Look Out! They’te On Time! The Red Front is frightfully punc- tual. At 2:30, on the scheduled mo- ment, the first columns began to pour into the Lustgarten. Their red banners fluttered beyond the green trees and the bands blared their ap- proach, Within a few minutes the garden was a gray sea of rhythm- ically marching men, a médley of music, a mass of great red flags and banners, while above the noise vame the repeated triple shouts of “Red Front“ as each new division received and gave their greeting. Divisions arrived from feudal Hast Prussia, from the Catholic South, from the great industrial centers of the Rhineland, the Ruhr, and Sax- ony, “amburg and Stettin contrib- uted not only industrial sections, but contingents of the “Red Marine” in seamen’s uniform, raising their \ throughout the country, moved through the crowd, carrying stretch- ers or first-aid kits on their backs, ready to take any person who fainted to one of the many stations where physicians were in charge, On the | broad steps of the museum stood a chorus of 300 Communist Wworking- men who shouted “Red Front” in} unison as the columns marched past. With each call of “Red Front” the right fist, clenched, is raised. This is the greeting of all Ked Front} men and women and their sympa- | thizers and supporters, Endless Columns. Two hours passed, but still the columns kept marching in and long after the demonstration was at an end they continued coming. The | Lustgarten was filled to overflow- | ing. The crowds spilled over into the squares beyond the palace, down | | Unter den Linden before the opera and the university, and blocked all the streets leading toward the gar- den. The crowd that gathered to watch and take part in the demon- stration was estimated at from five to seven hundred thousand. PAG * * At four the bugles sounded a warn- ing from the statue in the center of the Lustgarten—then sounded it again. "The audience became silent. From the steps of the inuseum the ‘chorus of 300 men singers began “Out to the Sun and the Light.” The museum served as a sounding board, the men’s voices were strong and well trained. There are some thousand such Communist singers under traiting in Berlin. You could hear them as they sang, far on the other side of the garden. I doubt if I have ever heard anything so gripping as those strong, deep voices singing the songs of the revolution to a great audience standing in si- lence, the bright sun streaming up- on them and their gleaming ban- ners, the wind catching their flags and moving the green background | of trees. liver them. Then the bugles called again and the oath of the Red Front was given. The speakers read each line, with clenched fist raised, and the vast crowds repeated it. The cath was: I swear: | Never to forget that world im- | perialism is preparing a war | against Soviet Russia. Never to forget that the des- tiny of the working class of the whole world is bound up with So- viet Russia. f Never to forget the experience and the suffering of the working class in the imperiafist World War. | Never to forget the 4th of Au- | gust, 1914, and the betrayal of the | reformists. y: Always and forever to fulfill my revolutionary duty to. the working class and socialism. Always and forever to remain a soldier of the revolution. Always and forever, in all pro- letarian mass organizations, in in- dustries and factories, to be a pioneer of the irreconcilable class war. On the front, and in the army of imperialism, to work only for the revolution. To lead the revolutionary fight for the destruction of class rule and of the German bourgeoisie. To defend the Chinese revolu- tion and the Soviet Union by any and every mee f Always and forever to fight for Soviet Russia and for the World Revolution. The bugles sounded again when the last rumble of voices had died away. The chorus sang the “Inter- national” and the program was at an end. I swear: Farewell Demonstration. On Monday there was a great farewell meet. Many of the Red Front men from outside the city re- mained for a few days to see the sights. Most of them had never seen Berlin before. Some had brought their girls or wives along, simply or very poorly dressed, and for the next few days you could meet them in groups of fifteen or twenty looking at public buildings or, in curious scorn or amazement, at the fashion- ably dressed men and women sitting in the cafes on Unter den Linden or Kurfurstendamm. Not one could afford such luxury. For weeks their members had been taxed ten pfen- nigs a day for this Berlin trip. They carried their sandwiches. wrannad in come with instructions from Morgan to Coolidge how to act in the present crisis in Mexico? Perhaps the pri- vate wire that runs into Morgan’s office from his Mexican embassy keeps him supplied with information of a character so secret that it can- not be entrusted to the State De- partment in Washington. And since Mr. Cochran had an appointment with Mr. Coolidge to discuss the Mexican situation, perhaps he phoned Wilbur to meet him, so they might consider the advisability of send- ing more marines to .Nicaragua. Anyhow, we are of the opinion that here we have the slickest-working dictatorship of Big Capital in the world. di newspapers, and every extra pfen- nig meant a sacrifice. Only the Best. Ts strength of the Red Front Fighters’ Federation cannot be judged by its numbers alone. The duties and discipline imposed upon members are so exacting that only the most determined men and ‘women can remain in it. Every spare minute is claimed. There are mass meetings, study groups, or- ganizational work. There are the many proletarian celebrations where propaganda is carried on. There was the work for Sacco and Vanzetti, for the Chinese revolution, for strikes in various parts of the world, for the Vienna uprisng. Just now the organization is working against the Fascist sentences in Italy. The man or woman who can nitet the rigid discipline imposed by either the Red Front or the Communist Party and ofen the workers belong to both— is exceptional. But this keeps the organization down to from two to three hundred thousand. Those who do remain are steeled by the con- viction that theirs is an historic mission—that history is with them. Red Berlin. Berlin remains red. In some of the workers’ sections the Communist Party stands first. The next four years will be filled with intense and bitter struggle. The Red Front has plans, in the eventuality of war, that will not stop with parliamentary agitation, They do not hide the fact; they warn the German bour- geoisie, they proclaim their inten- tions before the entire working class and call for recruits. The Red Front Fighters may one day be sup- pressed. But to suppress three and a half million voters is not so easy, and if the federation is sunpressed,. all Communists may be called upon ta jain them,