The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 24, 1928, Page 1

| cL THE DAILY WORK TO ORGANIZE THE UNORGANIZED FOR THE 40-HOUR WEEK FOR A LABOR FOR A WORKERS’ AND FARMERS’ ER FIGHTS PARTY ED Vol. V., No. 226 Published datly except Sunday by Th Publishing Association, Inc., 26-28 Union Sa. © National Daily Worker “4 ss New York, N.Y. oir FINAL CITY ITION SUBSCRIPTION RAT! Outside New NEW YORK, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1928 NEW TEXTI Thousands of Illinois Miners at Huge Meet in Hills R GITLOW EXPOSES FARM ‘RELIEF’ OF HOOVER, SMITH NDS With Hope Tells Bismarck, Meet Alliance Workers Only Stresses War Danger Knutsen Scores Fake | Progressives BISMARCK, N. D., Sept. 23.—Ex: posing the hollowness of the capi-| talist presidential candidates’ pre- tentions towards helping the farm- ers, Benjamin Gitlow, vice-presiden- tial candidate of the Workers (Com- munist) Party, spoke here in Bis- marck, the heart of the spring wheat belt, on Saturday. Gitlow showed familiarity with the farmers’ problem. After show- ing that the republican and demo-| cratic parties were tools of the cap-| italists who have kept the Ameri-| can farmers in bondage, Gitlow read| and explained the platform of the Workers Party on the farm ques- tion, and stated that the solution of the farm problem was for the farmers to ally with the workers in| the cities for the overthrow of} capitalism and the establishment of a workers’ and farmers’ govern-) ment. Conditions Worse Gitlow stated that the condition of the farmers was steadily becom- ing worse. He produced facts showing that the mortgage tenantry evil was increasing, that the en- tire farm family was exploited, and that farm population was actually| decreasing. North Dakota was cited as a concrete example of this. “The farmers ‘have not partici- pated in the Wall Street prosper- ity,” Gitlow said. He emphasized, the fact that the foreign born had produced great wealth, but had not shared in it. Explaining the McNary-Haugen bill, Gitlow pointed out that both Hoover and Smith opposed the equalization fee because itt was a tax on big business. Since Wall Street would have charge of exe- euting the act, the McNary-Haugen Bill would not solve the farm prob- Jem. Al Wants Fake Probe Concerning Smith’s desire for aj} board to investigate farm condi- tions, Gitlow said: “We have had| too many of such investigations.”) Gitlow showed the benefits of the) workers’ and farmers’ government to the farmers of the Soviet Union.| He also stressed the war danger. Alfred Knutsen, candidate for U. S._ 8B ‘armer-Labor ticket, | and backed by the Workers Party, was chairman. In introducing Git- low he stated that the so-called) progressives and fake farmer- laborites, such as Norris, Nye, and Frazier, who rushed to the support of Hoover and Smith, were not for poor farmers. “We are fortunate to have in the field the candidates of the Workers (Communist) Party,| who really represent the interests| of the workers and farmers,” he said. NEW DANGER IN RISING. FLOODS Starving Refugees. Roam Florida | WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Sept. | £3.—While hundreds of refugees | roam the country homeless and in a semi-starving state, danger to new disaster appeared imminent as | news was received here that the flood waters in Lake Okeechobee | and in the region for several miles | hack of its shore line are continu- ing to rise. The Kissimmee River, which drains the Central Florida ridge and lake section, is pouring twice as much water into Lake Okeechobee | as the outlet canals can carry away, | reports; state, end there is great danger{ that one road to Belleglade id yAcinity will completely HOS: = Chiefs of New National Textile Workers’ i | Amidst tremendous enthusiasm, delegates to the convention which formed the new National Tex- Union 4 4 tile Workers’ Union of America late last night elected James P. Reid, veteran labor fighter, as president of the new organization and Albert Weisbord, leader of the famous Passaic strike and other textile struggles, as secretary-treasurer. 14 YEAR STRIKER Strikers Here YQUNG TEXTILE LEADS STRUGGLE E. Rodriques Fights For New Union By SOL AUERBACH. There was a meeting. of strikers in fall River recently. The Textile Mills Committee was leading the workers of the American Printing Company. At this meeting a small girl with lively black eyes, long curl- ing hair and a rebel’s snub ‘nose | asked the chairman if she could speak. “But what will you say to| the workers?” asked the chairman. “Leave it to me, I know what to| tell them. I’m a worker myself.” | And when Emma Roderiques, 14-| year-old worker and striker of the| American Printing Company spoke, | she went straight to the hearts and thoughts of the listening workers. Since then she has been a militant leader in Fall River, striking cour- age and the unbreakable determina- tion of the working class struggle into the hearts of adult workers as well as their children. Slave To Machine. Her father worked in the mill, her seventeen and twenty year old sis- ters worked in the mill, and when Emma reached her fourteenth year and was in the seventh grade she did as all other workers’ children in the New England Textile centers must—she turned her fourteen} years over to the machines. Emma| became a “doffer” in the American) Printing Company and sold 44 hours Continued on Page Two | LONDON, Sept. 23.—Twelve per | leent of the world’s supply of tin! will be in control of a handful of | Malayan Dutch tin corporations who | of have secretly merged |fiance to the millowners. |New Bedford and Fall River they To Build New Textile Union By AMY SCHECHTER. The New Bedford and Fall River convention delegations, picked fight- ers, coming out of the struggle and going back into the struggle, were | a living symbol of the .nilitant new union launched at the convention. From the moment the strikers marched into the convention hall here, singing strike songs, swinging | down the aisles in picket formation, they became the heart of the great millworkers’ gathering. They came straight from the |picket lines, from marching up and down ‘the windswept streets before the millgates, from being clubbed and arrested. there again today ready to carry on the fight. Even their leaving for the convention was a gesture of de- Both in tried to block the delegations, real- izing the new strength that will flow into the strike when the dele- gates return with word of the new fighting national organization back of the strike. It is interesting that Continued on Page Three prac- SEWER GANG ON TRIAL. The cases of the politicians in- volved in the Queens sewer scandal, which has been dragging through the courts for more than a year, will be tried at the Queens County Courthouse, Long Island City, today. Although enough evidence exists to convict many of the sewer graft- ers, including former borough presi- dent, Maurice E. Connol\y, of Queens, jt is thought that the prose- cution will continue to soft-pedal the case, merely making the show the coming elections. PREDICTSSTRONG UNION Reid Tells of Fall River Textile Strike By A. B. MAGIL Textile worker for many years, president of one of the early tex- tile unions in this country, leader) of strikes, active on the political field as a member of the socialist labor party and of the socialist party where he was always iden- tified with the left wing—this has been the career of James J. Reid, one the l¢aders of the Fall River strike, who headed a dele- gation of 26 Fall River mill work- ers at the National Textile Con- vention. * Reid is one of the, real textile veterans in this country and his ex- perience has included all sorts of tight situations. felt a little proud, as he sat at the great convention in Irving Plaza, that the Fall River delegation had outwitted the b Continued oh Page Three They will be back) “prosecuting” to gain more votes STRIKER SPEAKS Figuerido Tells of Mill Struggle By EDWIN ROLFE Joe Figuerido, a nineteen-year- old youth who went on strike with 20,000 of his feliow-workers in New Bedford 23 weeks ago, is small and pale. But one can tell the moment he begins to speak that there is strength and fire in his factory- stunted body, and a consuming faith in his fellow-workers, and a mind that sees sharply the struggle of the workers against the capitalist system. When I began to speak to him Saturday evening, perhaps a min- ute after he fimshed his fiery speech to the ycung workers gathored at the Workers Center, the crowd was still cheering him. Panting ‘a bit from the exertions of his speech, he walked quietly to a corner of the hall with me, genuinely happy at the sight of so many young work- ‘ers pledging their solidarity toward | the cause of his comrades, quiet. to- tally unconscious of the shouting about him. Joe Fiquerido came to New Bed- Continued on Page Two BOOK BOOTHS T0 FEATURE BAZAAR {Upholstery Workers Meet Tomorrow Workers who attend the great | Daily Worker-Freiheit Bazaar (and | what worker will not?) at Madison Square Garden, October 4, 5, 6, and 7 will have no excuse for being ignorant of ‘any subject pertaining to the revolutionary movement. The special booths containing hundreds poe books will enable every worker to acquire not the equivalent of a college education, as the fake bour- |geois advertisements say, but a |thoro grounding in the theoretical trends, as well as a knowledge of Consequently, he the labor movement thryout the world. | * | New York City is seething with eye ses and police in| #ctivity—all for the hazaar. But the immediately after work at a %pecial | Bedford,” National Daily’ Worker-Freiheit LE UNIO ‘DIGCERS IN HUGE ‘MEETING snowy Delegates from Ma N FORMED Price 3 Cents efuse to.Pay Fishwick Dues ny Mill vaLey, HILLS Centers Launch National Rank and File Roars Refusal to Pay | Machine Dues Great Ovation Given) | Freeman/Thompson Over 2,000/ miners with large} |delegations from all the central and| northern fields called together by| |view Park, by unanimous votes de-| ou aba |cided to pay no dues into the Uni-| Resentment Spreads ted Mine Workers of America and to start from Collinsville tomorrow Thru China PEKING, China, Sept. 23.—In- with an auto caravan of striking tense resentment has followed the in this city yesterday. miners to cover the entire northern fields bringing all out on strike and then to move en, masse on the south. Committees were elected, arrange-|closing and sealing by officials of | ments coe and one be the Nanking government of 31 union mass of workers came the first ;_ phe) RAS x font divin’ io ‘breale dhe strangle headquarters in this city on charge: lhold of the faker-operator combine that they are Communists in char- \and clear the deck for the National acter. It is estimated that similar ae Union. oe a wonderful | action will be taken in all Chinese and inspiring _meeting. | A small leaflet issued by Local |‘ \2708 called this meeting of miners | into effect. \together. But there was. more to|..Leaders .off the unions, which hee ignores oF on apeetine ane grew from nothing to a membership | the call. ie hard day by day wor! b i | carried on by the old Save-the-Union| Of 8t least 39,000 since the Nanking | Committee, the mass meetings held| armies entered this city, were hid- |during the last six months, all of ing yesterday while Kuomintang of- | Bs eae earemed aby oe left ficers ransacked the working class | wing in many a hard fight was now... % ; \bearing fruit. The latest steal of| ‘stricts of Peking and the neigh- |the fakers in the referendum vote | boring country in a fierce hunt to |the brutal police-gangster tactics of unearth them. It is understood that Lewis at Pittsburgh, these were the oyccution faces the leaders should | points which joined to the wage re- they h duction brought the miners up in| they be caught. Heavy guards around the former roaring revolt. Old Spirit Still Alive! _ headquarters are attempting to car- Pend od an aaa anifare TY out the instructions of the gov- of conversation rose over the wholc |€fnment to watch for and seize any gathering. Remarks like these were of the leaders who may have eluded heard on every side: “Do you think the search of the buildings. It is Leea cee ihe cate.” “Well! hodde, the opinion of the officials that cer- tain of the Continued on Page Four MINOR, DUNNE TO BE AT RED RALLY \Red Candidates Will Score Hoover Lies ally establishing t 131,623 mill hing Of wails LR (SBORD REPORT AT-MEET Time Ripe for New Union, He Says cities where it has not yet been put It was after the leaders of the other militant unions had greeted the delegates, and after workers repre- senting the textile strike centers of New Bedford and Fall River had spoken, that Albert Weisbord was introduced to deliver the report on the general situation in the textile industry as a whole. Holding the keenest interest of every delegate and visitor in the convention hall fbr over two hours, Weisbord launched into an exhaus- tive report of the status of the in- dustry nationally and internationally, the relation of industrial conditions to the tremendous problem of ham- mering out a national orgaxization | of mill operatives, and the thods of struggle the new union will use in accomplishing this aim. succeeded in in the head- leaders secreting themselves quarters. News of the closing of the union headquarters in Peking is reported to have reached Shanghai and other cities farther south and to have led to the opinion that it will have strong repercussion among workers in various sections of the country. Needle Trades To Hold Meeting Tomorrow Despite all the resources and years of familiarity with the textile in- dustry which the leaders of the A. F. of L. union are presumed to have, Weisbord declared their real ignor- ance and incompetency is exposed every time they try to talk concrete- ly about either the trade or the po- sition of the workers in it. To sub- stantiate this Weisbord pointed to the public statements of McMahon, president of the U. T. W., wherein he spoke of the “1,500,000 textile workers in the country,” when in William F. Dunne, Communist |candidate for governor of New York} The Needle Trade Campaign Com- and Robert Minor, Communist can- mittee of the Workers (Communist) didate for U. S. senate and other! Party will carry its campaign to the state and local candidates on the! great masses of needle workers by | Workers (Communist) Party plat- beginning a series of open air’ eel stirs mas on EO is form of the class struggle, will ad-| meetings, the first of which will be | aR ~ #8 se wor ee aa t E dess the first huge political rally|held tomorrow evening at 110th St.|P0Uly When there are 2o0,000 and other similar pompous guesses. to be held in New York this Fri-| and Fifth Ave. day, September 28, 8 p. m., at the Central Opera. House, 67th street, |near third avenue. How can a union leadership hope to plan for nation-wide organization work, when their acquaintance with Among those who will speak are L. Rosenthal, chairman; H. Koretz; F. Cooper, of the Cloak and Dress- One of the major problems con-| makers; Skolnick of the Furriers; oo aaa one bassist fronting the workers of New York Liptzen of the Amalgamated: Eva OF Tumors and unchecked misinform- state, that of unemployment, will Shafran of the Millinery Warkers S100. ihe necessity of obtaining be thoroughly analyzed by the Com-|and Nicholas Napoli, Workers /S\7esinz {he necessity of obtaining munist speakers next Friday, and (Communist) Party candidate in the the lies of the efficiency expert | eighteenth senatorial district. Hoover exposed with regard to that presidential candidate’s roseate pic- DELAY FLIGHT. ture of the lot of American work- FRIEDRICHSHAFE, Germany, ers. The fake “statistics” of Sec-| Sept. 23.—Flight of the new German retary of Labor Davis who recently | dirigible Count Zeppelin will be de-| manufacture to its present position issued a statement saying that “in| layed until next Wednesday, it was of undisputed leadership in quantity a remarkably brief period of time| announced yesterday, pending thoro-' of production, Weisbord showed the |our country has reached a prosper-| going alterations. Continued on Page Three lity higher than ever before” and ts that “for this remarkable feat the | American people are largely indebt- ed to Herbert Hoover,” will also be unmasked by the Red candidates as campaign bunk. Other speakers at the of the industry before challenging its masters. Struggle Sharpening. Tracing skillfully the line of de- velopment of United States textile STRIKE LEADERS SPEAK Murdoch and Keller Tell of New Union Central Continued on Page Two |Bazaar Committee says it will have) phe iextile workers of New tile Union, in an interview yester- to do a lot more seething if the p49, eat > salvas | day. | * ediord feel that their only salva : ; |bazaar is to be a success. Tickets) ~ William Murdoch, organizer of the tion is to form a real textile work- must be sold, articles collected and i A New Bedford Textile Union, his |side of the various revolutionary |greetings and names for the Red crs union that will fight militantly | short and stock frame afire with | Honor Roll gathered in far greater for the interests of the workers.’ the spirit and enthusiasm of the |numbers, it is stated. | That anion is being formed here to- Tomorrow all upholstery workers |day and I will take the message of who wish to take part in the work | the National Textile Workers Union for the bazaar are asked to’ report back to the eager workers of New said Eli Keller, general bazaar meeting at 30 Union Square. | organizer of the New Bedford Tex- | convention of fighting workers, ex- claimed: “The workers have learnt | their lesson—the old union has tailed, and they have also learned that the foul Batty. crew has playd@ Continued on Page Three Al Body at Convention Here Jim Reid Chosen President, Weisbord Sec’y- Treas. of New Mill Workers’ Organization. HEADQUARTERS Workers Party ‘Grecia Must: Hails Militant Program; Pledges Support in Struggles A new national organization of textile workers was launched One hundred and sixty-nine delegates, coming from 21 cities in seven New England and Middle Atlantic states, sent here by an electorate ofg18,320 members who influence and lead enthusiastically voted a resolution form- National Textile Workers America. Union of After a convention now com- pleting its second day, held here at Irving Plaza Hall, 15th St. and Irving Place, the delegates, with remarkable efficiency and dispatch, hammered out the frame: work of a union that will be indus: trial in form, highly centralized and yet completely under the domination of the rank and file. James Reid and Albert Weisbord were chosen as the chief officers of the new national or; anization. Great enthusiasm and prolonged cheering marked the selection of these two figures in textile struggles as cole leagues in the leadership of the des- tiny of the union. Reid was elected president and Weisbord, secretary» treasurer. A national council of 30 was then elected, who in the nes® future will meet to elect from among themselves a smaller executive cen- ter of 11. Extending the warmest greetings and congratulations of the Workers (Communist) Party at the consuma- tion of their historic task, John J. Ballam, told the delegates after the tumultuous ovation had _ subsided, that the Party members always stand at the forefront of the work- ers struggles and are always willing to sacrifice their time and energies for the workers. He pledged the moral and financial support of the Workers Party to the strikes now going on and to be called in the fu- ture. M. Yusim, greeted the con- vention in the name of the Young Workers (Communist) I Presenting a remarkable picture of fre: optimism, fire and enthusiasm, the delegates, rang- ing in age from white haired but stu men and women to young workers under twenty, reported of the miserable conditions in their locality, of the absence, or de- generacy of a workers’ organiza- tion in their sections and told how the masses of textile workers were eagerly wai a real union to come 0 the field. Leaders of the needle trades unions, of the miners union of the Workers International Relief and of the International Labor Defense then addressed the delegates and extended to them the greetings of the masses of workers they repre- ented. Fred Biedenkapp, spoke for the W>I. R., Max Schactman for the I. L. D, After a Fall River strikers, a New Bedford strike and a Passaic workers had addressed to the convention, the resolutions and credential committees were elected and went to work immediately, The report of Weisbord which has listened i with close attention by the delegates, was interrupted by a recess for dinner, the completion of the report being made after the con- vention had come together again. A discussion, illuminating with simple words the terrific exploita- tion of the textile workers, then took up the rest of the session. Delegate after delegate rose and in the discussion of Weisbord’s report stressed the dire need of the mill slaves for an organization that will not act as an agency of the bosses by helping to depress conditions, Continued on Page Three: acter