The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 29, 1928, Page 6

m sta ic Ne no na 30 da. to; “*e he ore ar 4 he he tis: ine ve \ B em lar ee os, Chi Mai reey vor Page Four _ struggle?” rage Six "Baily SE THE DAILY WARKEP wow van. anim oer nen ++ Worker Central Organ of the Workers (Communist) Party Published by N Union S$ Daily Worker Publishing Sunday, at 26-28 Telephone, e Address “Daiwork”® Stuyvesant 169 ROBERT WM. F. DUNNE MINOR . Editor Assistant Editor SUBSCRIPTION RATES: By Mail (in New York only): $4.50 six mos. By Mail (outside of New York): $ $2.00 three mos. $8 a year $2.50 three mos. $6 a year 0 six mos. Address and mail out checks to T#e Daily Worker, 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. Y. For, President For President WILLIAM Z. FOSTER VOTE COMMUNIST! ®Q| 3K | workeRs (communist) Parry For V.-President For Vice-President BENJAMIN GITLOW Wm. Z. Foster For the Workers! Cor For the Party of the Class Struggle! Ben Gitlow Against the Capitalists! “The Next President Would Be William Z. Foster” The Baltimore “Post” printed the follow- ing very characteristic editorial: “Police Chief Black of Wilmington, Del., offi- cially has gone on record in favor of lynching. “His stand was revealed through the arrest of William Z. Foster, candidate for President on the Workers’ Party ticket. “Black said a meeting scheduled for Tuesday night in Wilmington would be broken up if the speakers discussed such ‘inadvisable’ subjects as Negro equality, abolition of lynching and inter-racial marriage. “Now, The Post has no sympathy with Com- munism, which Foster represents. It believes Negro equality and inter-racial marriage are debatable subjects. But it most certainly does NOT believe in lynching. “Just the same, we believe that anyone, any- where, has as much right to discuss Com- munism, Negro equality and _ inter-racial marriage as they have to discuss abolition of lynching—or the tariff, or prohibition, or re- ligion, or any subject that was ever conceived. “Chief Black probably is too ignorant to know that the surest way of aiding a cause is to persecute it. “The only thing he can possibly have accom- plished through his arrogance is to have made a few hundred more Communist votes in Wil- mington, and to have increased the attendance of Foster’s meeting in Baltimore last night. “If all police officials were like Black, the next president would be William Z. Foster.” The above editorial of The Post is another expression of the “liberal” shilly-shallying in the turmoil of the present election cam- paign. The editorial reveals a whole series of in- teresting facts: First, it tells us that The Post has no sympathy with Communism. All right, we can tell ‘The Post that we don’t have any sympathy with its shallow and obsolete liberalism. The Post declares that anyone has the right to discuss Communism. The Post is very gracious to grant us the right to dis- cuss Communism, but that solemn declara- tion is more worthless than the paper on which it is printed, because The Post and its ilk will never move one finger to fight for the right of the working class to discuss its own fighting program, the principles of Communism. The Post declares that “Negro equality and inter-racial marriage are debatable sub- jects,” but that it “most certainly does NOT believe in lynching.” Liberalism manifests itself in that statement in its most typical form. It is against Negro equality and inter- racial marriage, and it is against lynching; and it does not see that the Jim Crow phil- osophy which takes a stand against Negro equality and inter-racial marriage leads logically -and inevitably to the practice of lynching. The Post gives Police Chief Black of Wil- mington, Delaware, the benefit of doubt, stating that he “probably is too ignorant to know that he violated” the provisions of the Constitution for free speech, assembly, and equality of races. The Post is too cowardly to state that the provisions of the Constitu- tion for free speech, assembly, and for the equality of the Negroes with the whites is a scrap of paper and is violated every day and every hour in all sections of the United } States. Virtual Negro slavery and peonage is the fundamental institution of the “Solid South.” Negroes are disenfranchised by the millions in the Black Belt. Communist meet- ings are being broken up everywhere. The Communist ticket has been ruled off the ballot in a series of states. Constitution and democracy do not exist in this country for the working masses and for the oppressed Negro people. But to be fair we have to admit that there is at least one statement in the editorial of The Post on which we agree, to-wit: “The only thing he (Police Chief Black) can possibly have accomplished through his arro- gance is to have made a few hundred more Communists votes in Wilmington, and to have increased the attendance of Foster’s meeting in Baltimore last night.” Persecution can not intimidate the Commu- nist Party, and will not be able to cripple its election campaign. In the last few days of the big struggle our Party is conducting to mobilize the masses against imperialist war, against Negro lynching, for a determined struggle against the speed-up and wage-cuts of capitalist rationalization, for social in- surance, for immediate unemployment relief, every Party member must increase his ac- tivities tenfold, must make the class meaning of the platform of our Party clear in every shop, every trade union. Comrades, do your duty! Mobilize the masses for the Communist ticket, for the Platform of the Class Struggle! The Ten Million Dollar Banquet Twelve hundred leading members of the boss class gathered at a dinner at the Hotel Astor to do “honor” to a group of seven “Pioneers of American Industry,’ Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Charles Schwab, Julius Rosenwald, Harvey Firestone, Orville Wright, and George Eastman. Many speeches were made, many lies ut- tered, high-faluting phrases were sent over the air, all possible common-places were ex- hausted. But all these speeches and phrases mat- tered very little. The single outstanding Himalaya-high fact was the tremendous financial power these “fat boys” represented. Their official estimate stated that the entire gathering represented not less than ten billion dollars’ wealth. The real powers behind the capitalist polit- ical parties sat at those banquet tables at the Hotel Astor. These industrial magnates and finance-capital cutthroats are well able to finance the election campaign of Hoover and Smith. Ten billion dollars at one banquet, and there was not one single dollar which was not the deadly enemy of the Workers (Communist) Party of America. These leading representa- tives of the boss class are class conscious and know that the Communist Party is their deadly enemy, is the destroying force of capi- talism. Workers, Vote Communist! Send your contribution of at least one dollar today direct to the National Election Campaign Commit- tee, Workers (Communist) Party of America, 43 East 125th Street, New York City. (Continued.) that the revolutionary sistance of the “kulak” and of the corps grow. been AC ti ith Maxim Gorki Translated by SOL AUERBACH. written a literature of liquidation. |But there are other forces which With his artistic turn he feels all | accumulate for the struggle against organizers |the petty bourgeoisie, and to edify | have seen and proved by their|the man who marches resolutely Leninist analysis: the stubborn re-|from today to tomorrow. The new 2 The worker corres- ty producers, this residue that |pondents, whom the large proletarian left by the revolution,|newspapers have drawn to them- which would live, sleep well, eat|selves in demanding their readers some talent. Let ten years pass and the writers of these letters will no be qualified writers.” What Gorki will do in the future, he does not exactly know. What he does know is that he will work for \the great working class community |which has been installed for the last delicacies and flutter about its dear to be their collaborators, have al-| ten years on the ruins of the empire little pleasures, This human ob-|ready, in such a short time, given|of the czars. Lenin had already an- le presents itself on the literary | some hundreds of journalists and |nounced that Gorki, “the great rep- writers of merit. Believe me, in five resentative of proletarian art who “Will you yourself undertake this | years all the Russian literature will has done much for it” would be cal- simply modest: ee wetter of His Time. “My work is that of a writer of mum of culture. time he the masses and disclosed the ved disappeared posarnts We hav wl 8 y |be occupied, and brilliantly occu- led “io come across some day”. And ‘His response was a little evasive, pied, by worker correspondents.” | Maxim Gorki, by orientation and the But he insists on the necessity to | efforts of his whole life’s work, and, give to these newcomers the maxi- jin a more immediate way, by this |force of hope and of confidence, by | of my generation. We have| “In the letters which I receive! this recognition and by his willing- from workers correspondents of a class which has gone Italy I received ten a day) there are | himself more and more into service. mmatical faults and there is also | (in ness to devote himself, will press (The End) THE DA longer make mistakes, their talent | will remain with them and they will | TLY Wi ORKER, NEW YORK, MONDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1928 _ “TOOTLE TOOT TOOT!” By Fred Ellis Polish Fascist | By LANSUSKI | FTER four years of imprisonment the Communist member of the Polish Diet Comrade Stanislaus Lansuski has been released. In} these four years the real features | of fascist Poland have been revealed. flowing and the penal system is be-| coming more and more severe. The struggle of the revolution- aries is not at an end when the| |prison gates close behind them. In | prison a fierce struggle is carried on} |for the elementary rights of hu-| |man beings. Every hour of light,| every opening of the jevery quarter of an hour’s exercise, jevery five minutes extra on the | visits, all these things cost bitter struggles. The political prisoners who are cut off from the outside world by iron bars, have not many | weapons at their disposal in this |struggle. Very often they must use | desperate remedies. One of these is | the hunger-strike. Hunger Strike. At the present time a hunger- strike is taking place of the polit- |ical prisoners in the Warsaw prison of Paviak. One of the demands for | which these men are fighting des- perately should find a. prominent | place in the history of the decline of the bourgeoisie. These political prisoners are fighting for the aboli- tion of the so-called “moral and | sanitary examination” of the female | political prisoners who are treated |by the Polish authorities as though they were prostitutes in order to | humiliate them. In his recollections Comrade Lan- suski describes the terrors cf a hunger strike with unusual simp- licity and power. The hunger- strike in question took place in the | prison of Mokotov in the summer of 1924, * * In 1924 the Minister of Justice Vyganovski, a notorious reactionary, ued an order abolishing all the | rights of the political prisoners. The | prisoners answered this attack with a series of hunger-strikes. Although | the comrades were not aware of the {contents of this order, they could feel the struggle approaching. It is |perfectly clear that this struggle was not confined to the prison in Mokotoy. It was absolutely neces- sary for the other prisons in War- | saw, Paviak and Serbia, to partici- |pate. We informed the comrades | still in freedom and the comrades |in the other prisons of the situation |in Mokotov and proposed a joint | action. The attack on the political prison- ers took place hewever, before we had received word from the others. On Saturday the 25th of July we learned that the comrades in Paviak and Serbia had already been on hunger-strike for two days. Decisive action was necessary, for it was ‘clear that the authorities were try- ing to break the resistance of the | comrades in Paviak and Serbia first, \in order then to attack the political prisoners in Moktov. At the motion |of our committee the political pris- oners in Mokotov decided unani- mously to go on hunger-strike in solidarity with the political prison- ers in Paviak and Serbia. Refuse Supper. At 4 p. m. the political prisoners then unitedly refused to accept their supper. All the food was taken out of the cells and put into the corri- dors. Our chairman then went to the Prison Director and informed him that the political prisoners had gone on hunger-strike in solidarity with the political prisoners |Paviak and Serbia and demanded that the Public Prosecutor be in- formed of the strike, The 12-day hunger dtrike in Moktov had begun. The /group of political prisoners numbered 70 men. The committee of the political pris- oners -released one Why, windows, | e-Russian | ‘Prison Memories of a Victim of the Pilsudski_ Fascist Terror in Poland pating in the hunger-strike owing eT the state of his health. On the very first day of the| hunger-strike the prison authorities | showed their intentions clearly! enough. On this day the light was) turned out two hours earlier than | usual, i.e. at 8 o’clock. At the same time the windows were closed. In| \this way the comrades lost at one| blow two hours of light and fresh air, The various cells held confer- ences as to what was to be done. |The first proposal was one of our committee to re-open the windows. The locks on the windows were of poor quality and the windows were opened without much difficulty. The spirit of the comrades was confi- dent. Lying on their mattresses they told stories of their experiences, and the older and more experienced comrades told the new ones of for- mer hunger-strikes. Punish Leader. The next day the prison author- lities refused to permit our chair- |man to leave his cell in order to prevent the committee from ex- pressing its opinions. The comrades | \then demanded that they should be let into the courtyard for exercise. | Usually political prisoners do not (exercise during hunger-strikes. This time however the exercise was neces- |sary in order that the members of |our committee could get into touch |with each other. The prison au- |thorities did not realize the aim of \the exercise at first and agreed |readily. No sooner had our commit- | tee finished its deliberations than to | |the great surprise of the warders| |the comrades commenced to return \to their cells. Afterwards the com- \rades did not go exercising any more although it was terribly close |in the'cells. The second day passed jon the whole quietly. | The following day, Monday, did |not pass without incidents. As is | known, the third day of a hunger- ‘strike is particularly unpleasant and painful. The hunger-strikers | feel very weak and suffer from ter- |rible headaches. The comrades lay |on their mattresses. At midday the | inspector appeared and ordered 18 |comrades to pack up their things. It jturned out later on that they had |been transferred to Vronki. On the same day a number of comrades were also removed from Paviak and Serbia. The authorities wished to \break the hunger-strike by trans- \ferring a section of the comrades to |various prisons in the provinces. |The comrades who were left behind | gave the comrades who were leaving |a warm farewell. The prison walls shook from our singing. The com- rades in all the cells joined in the singing. All the comrades were ex- cited and had forgotten their weak- ness and hunger. When the sing- ing was at an end the comrades fell jexhausted onto their mattresses again. Other Strikes. ‘The fourth day of the hunger- strike passed without incident. A number of the comrades had high fever. Instead of feeling hungry we all felt weak and had a bitter taste in our mouths. Two of the comrades whose health was poor fell sick. On this day we received news that the hunger-strike in | Paviak had been called off. In Ser- bia the hunger-strike was still going on, as we learned later. We in Mokotov decided to continue the hunger-strike under the slogan of “Re-establish all the rights of the political prisoners!” This demand was placed before the prison au- thorities. The answer was short and sharp and consisted of a refer- The prisons are being filled to over-| comrade from the duty of partici-| ence to the order of Vyganovski. The fight went on. The spirit of the prisoners was good, but the uncer- tainty of the situation weighed upon them all. Will still other comrades be taken away, this was the ques- tion which worried all of us. The fifth day of the hunger-strike was the most exciting. The inspec- tor appeared again and ordered 10 comrades to pack up their things. All of them were convinced that they were being transported to other prisons. When the comrades were being escorted away accompanied by the singing of those who remained behind, shouting suddenly com- menced in the prison yard. “They are placing us in solitary confine- ment!” “They are chaining us!” “They are beating us!” The strain of the last few days broke like a} storm. White with rage and fury the prisoners leaped to the windows | and shouted furiously “Let them alone!” “Let them alone!” Then the prisoners commenced to smash at the doors and windows with the privy pails and everything that came into their hands. The shouts of fury and the smashing and crack- ing of the doors and windows created a terrible noise. A minute later all sorts of things, bottles, spoons, plates, everything the pris- oners could lay their hands on went flying out of the cell windows into | the courtyard. The storm of noise, the breaking of glass, the smashing of missiles falling from the second floor into the stone prison yard lasted about a quarter of an hour. The cries of anger and indignation from all the cells finally resolved themselves into one furious long drawn out chorus: “The Public Prosecutor! Fetch the Public Prose- cutor !”” Noise, Confusion. The noise and confusion lasted a long time. All round the prison the streets were full of people attracted by the noise. A force of police sur- rounded the prison. Mounted police drove the groups of people away who had collected round the prison doors, ‘ Finally the prisoners collapsed onto their mattresses from sheer ex- haustion, unable to remain on their feet or shout another word. From that day onward the prison author- ities commenced to place individual comrades into solitary confinement in order to break their resistance in this fashion. But no one thought of capitulation. All the political prisoners were unanimously in, favor of continuing the struggle. On the sixth day, Thursday, the Public Prosecutor finally appeared. When he entered the cells the cbm- rades were lying on the mattresses. No one thought of getting up. In order to get over the embarrassment he gave them permission to do what they were doing anyhow. He said: “Remain lying gentlemen, you need not attempt to rise.” The comrades answered with iron- ical smiles. The Public Prosecutor continued: “I cannot recognize any rights which are not contained in the prison regulations. I can also not recognize your chairman.” “In this case we shall hold out to the bitter end,” declared the com- rades unanimously. Another Visit. After the Public Prosecutor had gone we received another visit, this time from the Prison Inspector who conducted a search, allegedly.to take away from 1 things “which are not provided for in the prison regu- lations.” In reality the authorities were searching for concealed food, in order to bad ty to the press Jay The History of a Hunger Strike and thus to influence public opinion against us. Of course, nothing of the sort was found. Six of our com- rades were already lying in the hos- pital and two of these were continu- ing the hunger-strike.: On the seventh day another com- rade was taken to the hospital by force. Here, he continued the hunger-strike, but he was forcibly fed. Results of Torture. On the eighth day, Saturday, the 1st of August, the authorities tried forcible feeding with all the pris- oners. This forcible feeding was ordered by the doctor. The com- rades were determined to prevent this. Every prisoner was fetched separately by the inspector and a number of warders. The prisoners addressed the warders in order to make propaganda. This made the in- spector furious and he caused a number of comrades to be placed in solitary confinement. Our chairman was also put into solitary confine- ment, because when he was dragged into the passage where the forcible feeding was to take place, he kicked over the coffee pot with his foot. The forcible feeding took place with the utmost brutality. The warders twisted the arms of the prisoners up behind their backs, tore their cloth- ing and beat up a number of them. The comrades defended themselves as well as they could in their weak state and against the weight of numbers. Despite the moral and material pressure upon us, our spirit was still very high and con- fident. On the eve of the ninth day of the hunger-strike 20 comrades were still on hunger-strike in their cells, an- other 20 were on hunger-strike in solitary confinement and 10 com- rades were in the prison lazarette where they were being forcibly fed. On the 10th day bad news came from outside. It turned out that the decision to abolish the rights of political prisoners was part of the new policy of the-Grabski ministry. From other prisons news had come that the authorities were prepared to go to any length in order to smash the struggle of the political prisoners. We had no choice. The struggle once begun had to be continued to the end, although there was little hope of victory. The new comrades held themselves heroically. ‘The doc- tor made continual rounds and or- dered that the weaker comrades be forcibly fed two and three times a day. - On the eleventh day of the hunger strike our chairman was released from solitary confinement and put into one of the common cells. At his request the food was removed from the corridors where the polit- ical prisoners had placed it on the Yirst day of the hunger-strike. The aim of leaving the food there had obviously been to tempt the hunger- strikers with the sight of food. In consequence of the heat the food be- gan to go rotten and its stench filled the cells. On this day our comrades went out to their relatives in the visiting room in order to learn from them what was happening in the outside world. This was done at the instance of our committee. The news was not particularly consoling. Amongst other news, was the report that the fighting groups of the Polish socialist party had murdered comrade Biely, an old prisoner of Mokotov, at a meeting. Forcible Feeding. The hunger-strike continued. The terrible exhaustion of the comrades and the physical pain caused by the forcible feeding began to have their effect. A number of the comrades began to swell from hunger and others turned yellow. Some of the comrades confessed that in their insane and desperate ideas. | tinguish White Terror | On Increase! (Continued.) é In the summer of 1925 the 15-year |) old Itzak Gutfrainder was arrested i for having in his possession a num- ~ ber of newspapers, As Gutfrainder was still a minor the authorities were unable to arrange a political process against this “dangerous ene- my of the state”, as: he was termed. The authorities however, were not at a loss, they simply postponed the case for two years and put Gut- © frainder under police supervision in the meantime. He was compelled to report himself to the police twice a week where he was often kept wait- ing for hours. He lost his work of | course, for no employer was anxious © to have continual trouble with the |police and loss of time. When for |some reason or the other Gutfrainder was a little late in reporting him- self to the police, they would haul him out of his bed the next morning |at-three a. m. and drag him off to |the police station. | passed and Gutfrainder came of age, |17 years old. He was then arrested, The two years put on trial and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment. The capitalist law had done its duty. Children Arrested. The arrest of children is nothing uncommon in Poland. In 1925 145 young members of the Tailors’ Union were arrested. One day they went as usual to the trade union rooms in order to talk and pass the time pleasantly after a day’s work when the secret police, thirsting to dis- themselves, raided the rooms and arrested everyone present. All the young workers were sen- tenced to three weeks imprisonment. The boys were put into the same cells with common criminals and the girls with ‘prostitutes. Only a little while ago the final sentence was announced in the fa- mous Zelenko process, so-called from the place where the arrests took place. The history of the affair is as follows. About 30 boys and girls arranged an excursion to Zelenko. In Zelenko they were all arrested and charged with having formed a branch of the Young Communist | League. The charge was based upon the statement of a police spy, named Pshevosniak. The preliminary ex- amination lasted two and a half years and when the trial finally took place Rossolek and Koriblit were sentenced to 3 years imprison- ment each, Dobrovolski, Voitzekovs- ki, Mlenek, Sviotkovski and others to two years imprisonment each. In Radom two young workers, Geltzmann and Fuchs were arrested and charged with having distributed illegal working class newspapers. After having been’ 8 months in prison awaiting trial the court was forced to acquit them for lack of evidence and they were then re- leased. Early the next morning | however, they were again arrested at the order of the public prosecutor. The young workers Tennenbaum and Tkatch were sentenced to 6 years hard labor, each for having allegedly transported illegal literature. As a result of an appeal the sentences received 6 years imprisonment for the same “crime.” After maltreat- — ment at the hands of the police in Brest a pupil of the Russian Gymna- sium (high school) fell sick with tuberculosis. The Pinsk district court then sentenced him to 5 years imprisonment. In Lodz in 1927 the 19 year old were reduced to 4 years hard labor each. Neither of the accused had reached the age of 18 when sén- tenced. The 17 year old Goldfarb Gluechstadt was sentenced to two terms of imprisonment each of three years, each for having taken part in a meeting of the textile workers and in a street demonstration. “ In May 1926 the young worker Landau was sentenced to 6 months imprisonment in Zaglemb, The basis for the sentence was the following: During a demonstration a young worker carrying a banner of the Young Communist League supported himself for a moment on the shoul- der of Landau. rua In Lodz in the autumn of 1926 the 17 year old young worker Mosh- novitz was sentenced to 1% years imprisonment for having allegedly participated in carrying shoulder high the Communist deputy Sochatz- ki after a speech at a meeting. The 17 year old young worker Wachs- mann was accused of having or- ganized a demonstration in January 1927 before the prison building in Lodz. For this crime he was sen- tenced to 2 years imprisonment. The young worker Spiegel, a boy of 16 years, was sentenced in June 1927 to 4 years imprisonment for having taken part in a meeting. oy THE POLITICAL PRISONERS OF THE MOKOTOV PRISON, (Taken from the material of the Press Bureau of the E. C. of tha International Red Aid.) strike was broken off. At the-pro- posal of our chairman We com- menced to sing the “Internationale.” The chairman then went to the prison director to inform him that in view of the imminent danger of death threatening the prisoners, they had decided to bréak off the hunger-strike, but that they had no intention of abandoning their rights and that they would continue the worst moments they suffered from | portunity. On the twelveth day the hunger-a defeat. / } struggle at the first favorable op- ee The hunger-strike had ended w'