The Daily Worker Newspaper, November 8, 1928, Page 6

ARR eT RT eR i 6 Worker Central Organ of the Workers (Communist) Party Published by National Daily Worker Publishing Ass’n., Inc., Daily, Except Sunday, at 26-28 Union Square, New York, N, Y. Telephone, Cable Address “Daievork” Stuyvesant 1696: ROBERT MINOR WM. F. DUNE . Editor Assistant Editor Yes, It Is a Big Vote The biggest vote that was ever cast for a reactionary political order was cast in this | election. The vote for Hoover, more than 17,000,000, plus the vote for Smith, more than 12,000,000, was an outright vote for the capitalist system, while the small vote that was cast this year for the socialist par- ty was also a vote for the capitalist system in spite of the fact that thousands of work- ers followed this petty-capitalist party with the illusions created by the name “socialist” and by traditions long ago meaningless. The unprecedented vote for Hoover, the scion of Teapot Dome, open advocate of the biggest finance-capital and of world imper- ialism, was the largest vote ever cast for any reactionary candidate in any country in the history of nations. While Smith, his rival, really represented reaction no less extreme, nevertheless, the vote for Hoover was on the whole somewhat more consciously cast in favor of the blood-and-iron, graft and mon- opoly which is today incorporated in the government at Washington. Is ti then, “democracy”? This is the dictatorship of the capitalist class. * But, large as the vote for capitalist reac- tion is in this election, there is on record a larger vote—against capitalism. For the largest vote that was ever cast in any coun- try in the world is the vote that is cast regu- larly by practically every adult person in a population of 160,000,000 in the elections in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. This vote, however, is cast,in favor of the social- ization of society and the development to- ward a free Communist order, in support of the dictatorship of the working class. It is democracy of the masses, as distin- guished from the “democracy” of the dic- tatorship of the financial-capitalist oligarchy which rules through the Coolidges, the Hoovers and the Smiths. * * * * * What is the most important sign on the horizon of this country in this election? It is the small but growing support of the Workers (Communist) Party. This tends to build the revolutionary party which, by rev- olutionary leadership of the masses’ outside of the capitalist parliamentary forms, will bring the greatest democracy—the demo- eracy of the working masses. Are Communists Grateful? “COMMUNIST GRATITUDE.” “‘Comrade’ Gitlow’s slap at Governor Smith shows that ingratitude is not a trait peculiar to republics. There is a hint in it that some- thing of the sort may be carried over into the Communistic state. Gitlew, who is running for vice-president on the Workers Communist ticket, would not have been able to denounce either of the old parties before a Detroit audi- ence this week if it had not been for Governor Smith’s action in pardoning him, after he had served a fraction of his sentence in Sing Sing fer criminal syndicalism or something of the sort. “The other moral to this incident is that governors, aspiring to higher office, should not open prison doors to mouths that have no bet- ter manners than to bite the hand that frees them.” The above editorial from the Detroit Free Press was published just after Ben Gitlow, Communist candidate for vice-president, spoke in Detroit. It deserves an answer. We are very glad that this capitalist paper SUBSCRIPTION RATES: By Mail (in New York only): $2.50 three mos. $4.50 six mos. By Mail (outside of New York): $3.50 six mos. $2.00 three mos. $8 a year $6.2 year Address and mail out checks to The Daily Worker, 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. Y. , composed of seasoned class fighters who do }~not let their political actions be influenced by considerations of personal comfort, safety and freedom from prison. | Communists carry to the workers the same | message, the same political principles, the same call to action in class struggle regard- less of what personal sacrifices it may cost to the Communists. What reliance could the workers place in any “leader” who, upon being released from a capitalist prison, would then become friendly to the capitalist jailors, hangmen and goy- ernor out of personal “gratitude’? None | whatever. That is one of the differences between the | Workers (Communist) Party and the yellow “socialist” party, whose leaders soften their | voices, refrain from any action that would displease the ruling class and that would cause those “leaders” to suffer imprison- ment. It is the so-called “socialist” party whose program is one of perpetual gratitude to the | capitalist ruling class. The Workers (Com- munist) Party receives favors only from the working class, and expresses “gratitude” to no capitalist hangmen of the working class. | Can Fuller Be Libeled? | For carrying a banner in Boston reading “Fuller—Murderer of Sacco and Vanzetti,” Harry Cantor, recent candidate for secretary of state on the Workers (Communist) Party ticket was arrested for criminal libel. That Fuller was the instrument through which the ruling class of this country spent their vengeance upon Sacco and Vanzetti because they were active in labor organization work among the foreign born workers is known to everyone\capable of examining the facts in the case. Every passing day adds to the mountain of evidence that convicts Fuller as having consciously, with cool deliberation, committed the murder of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, knowing them innocent and actively concealing evidence of their inno- cence while he lied publicly to facilitate the crime. But it is not enough to say that Fuller is a murderer. It is necessary to say that the act of murdering Sacco and Vanzetti, a per- sonal] act of Fuller as governor and of Thayer as judge, was also the crime of murder by the | State of Massachusetts, as a state, and by | the whole capitalist class of which the state | | is but the instrument. Not only Fuller is a monstrous and cowardly murderer, but the record of his fake investigation in which he was aided by the president of Harvard University, a re- tired judge whose class prejudice against Sacco and Vanzetti was notorious, and the president of the Massachusetts institute of technology, proves that the whole crew are unprincipled liars, swindlers and murderers of innocent men. The torture and finally the murder of Sacco and Vanzetti were perpetrated by the lowest, meanest, and most vile aggregation of unprincipled lackeys of capitalism. Their depravity might be duplicated, but never sur- | passed. Neither Harry Canter, or any other revolutionist, can find words to describe the perpetrators of the murders of Sacco and Vanzetti, say nothing of libeling them. traditions of these murderers to jail people who call them by their right names. It is the prerogative of the capitalist state to do such things against the working class. But each of these despicable acts brings nearer the day when the dictatorship of capitalism will be replaced by the dictatorship of the prole- tariat—the day when the Fullers and their ilk will answer for their crimes before the revolutionary tribunals of the working class. admits that what it calls “the Communistic | State” will be established in this country, and that it sees that the Workers (Communist) Party’s principles and practices will be carried over into the workers’ state. ‘We will inform the Detroit Free Press that the leaders of the Communist movement do not harbor gratitude toward the governors and other tools of capitalist dictatorship for any ‘of the actions of the capitalist state which may affect the persons of these lead- ers. If a capitalist governor or judge or any other tool of capitalism issues any decision of acquittal or any pardon in the case of any working class revolutionary leader, such ac- tions are not favors, but merely the carrying out of the policies of the eapitalist state. the powerful capitalists behind Smith felt that the circumstances of the particular mo- ment did not make wise, for the moment, the savage vengeance they would prefer to take. In fact, among the reasons why the Work- ers (Communist) Party is and remains the revolutionary party of the American work- we the fact that its is If Smith “pardoned” Gitlow, it was because | A MAN WAS KILLED By NICHOLAS TARNOWSKY | (Translated From the Ukrainian) A man was killed. This news I found today In the columns of abulky paper, Hidden away in a corner Of page twenty-four. He was coming from work To wife and children With dreams of decent living . . . But under car wheels He went into oblivion... . A man was killed— | I read in type so small, In a paper’s most obscure corner. . . And on the front page: “Society leader’s dog— Sick from overfeeding, And nursed by doctors”... . And the whole big page Articles, articles tbout the dog, And dog’s picture in plenty! 4 (Arian { | To be sure it is quite in keeping with the! hunters rubbed their ears, THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, THURSDAY, THE. NE {W EXECUTIONER By Fred Ellis The Com By W. M. HOLMES (London) | With the beginning of the autumn, | all parties are furiously pushing jahead their preparations for the | general election in May or June, and |we are entering-a phase of intense | political activity. tional conferences of conserva- | tives, Liderals and Labor are shortly |to take place and will lay down the plan «of campaign for the election. The conservative party is likely to be exclusively concerned at its con- ference with the thorny question of | safeguarding industry, a very strong |minority being in favor of the wid- est extension of this scarcely veiled |form of protection. | Tactics. | The liberals will be chiefly exer- |cised on the question of their tactics after the election, for no one ex- pects them to do much better than hold their present position, with per- haps the addition of a few seats in rural constituencies. With them therefore, the question of whether or not their support shall be given to a conservative or labor government lis of first class importance. There seems little doubt that the left wing Communist Party Puts ing British 20 Candidates in Field for Big Test { Elections various liberal leaders is going on. Although a big increasé is certain no one really believes in the “abso- lute majority.” The Communist Party is holding its conference in November and is | preparing the first big test/for its | new policy in the municipal elections pressed in the influential “Manches-| challenges the programme at all,|the same month, when undeubtedly, ter Guardian” are the majority. Whether they will be able to win over the party machine and fund: which are firmly in the hands of collaboration with the liberals will) year, and the successful Party fight} | willgnot do so on fundamental is- sues. It is unlikely that the question of |many seats will be won. Twenty |candidates are now in the field for |the parliamentary elections next Lloyd George is a matter for some|be discussed at the conference, but | at Aberdeen when 2,618 votes were doubt. The Labor Party Conference at Birmingham is to be concerned ex- clusively with its programme, to which no amendments are allowed. The I, L. P. is to move the reference back of certain sections, but it is unlikely that they will press the matter to a vote and in any case they would be certain of heavy de- feat: ‘ Solidly to Right. The conference will be solidly to the right and it is doubtful whether any. revolutionary voice will succeed \it will be in all minds. Snowden is \the chief protagonist of the liberal- supported labor government on a strictly liberal programme. He has dropped the surtax entirely out of his financial policy for the future labor government and openly states the labor government wilh look for revenue to death duties, income tax ‘and land values, the three pillars of the liberal administration from 1906- 1915. Snowden is making a deliber- ate bid for the premiership and would undoubtedly be the man most ‘acceptable to the liberals. | Openly, the labor leaders are talk- polled and the Communist came | ahead of the liberal, has proved that | big support awaits them. Aberdeen also showed that no real test of its strength can be made so ‘long as the Party is confined by or- | ganizational weaknesses to a limited |number of constituencies. The Gen- eral Election can only be a General Rehearsal for the Communist Party. whose real importance will be felt at the election following that, The most important result of Aberdeen was that where formerly there were 10 Party members, there are now 60, and the independent fight of the in getting heard. The opposition of|ing of an “absolute majority” at the| Party is undoubtedly going to build Maxton will be confined to the limits| election. Secretly there is no doubt up its membership in the coming of the party, whose views are ex-|of the I. L. P. fraction, and if it|that a great deal of intriguing with’ years of political instability. By MARTIN MORIARTY. cr was still dark just before seven o’clock and the blue lights that \east no shadows but made blue-lip- ped ghosts out of the punch pres- sers gleamed in the windows of the plant. At seven two men swung open the big iron gates, and the group of unemployed strolling up and down the sidewalk stopped for |a moment to watch the gates open. |FORD was busy, The new model had arrived, It was cold and the wind blew from the Detroit river. The job stuffed River The Jobless Wait and Hope in the Cold and| Wind | AT 7.26 the straw boss took out his; |** watch and looked restless. He had been a sergeant in the British army for 21 years, and still retained the military scowl. He compared the times of his watch and the time | clock critically. | | One minute before the half hour | the first bell rang. The men jumped A handful of men followed the clerks to the office. watched for the next call, Ed left the lines and tried the staff office. He saw the personnel man. No, they had nothing open for production |clerks. They usually gave those jobs to the men who worked in the shop. He would have to see Mr. Reidy in \the office near the main gate for a lunches under their arms and thrust) off the benches and walked to their joh in the shop. The personnel man their red hands deep into their coat pockets. ‘They listened to the dreary whistle of the ship’s siren on the river . . . “Yeah, I heard they were |hiring this morning.” A few workmen passed the gates and the unemployed looked envious. | mouth and with the tip of the tongue | At 7.15,|Fushed a few out onto the head of| The crowds got bigger. they were pressing through the en- trance, the men throwing open their numbered badges to e gatemen. The guards watehed: they had time to catch fleet- ing visions of tired faces above numbered badges. Then the street |cars, jammed tight with workmen, |pulled up at the end of the car line |near the gates, and the gatemen saw only numbers on shining metal against a background of greasy cloth . .. 939, 954, 967, 806—“Hey, wher ya badge? No, you ain't goin’ through here, March right back and get it.” Sitting on unfinished car seats and the benches overlooking the river, youngsters of 19 wise-cracked |bald-headed veterans of the curtain department. They talked about the local vaudeville, the prospects of more overtime and the women... “Sure, we'll go there Friday.” In the sho}, full of shining black cloth and electric sewing machines, |the voices of 981, 997, 878 .... jsounded strange and irreverent, as |incongruous as the slaughter of leg- show girls on the altar of a church. | Maybe it was a church, preaching a \religion of production, dedicated to \the manufacture of curtains, altar \cloths of the Ford, where the wor- shippers prayed, prayed hard with their hands, prayed without ceasing Se eel ee ere | Stations. Strips of cloth were in- erted in the sewing machines. hears were thrown on the table. | Cushion workers spit out chewing | tobacco and grabbed a handful of tacks. They put the tacks.in the fa magnetized hammer. The shop sweeper reached for his broom | when the clock ticked the half hour }it was necessary for every move- ment to be a productive movement. The bell rang. The straw boss pul- | led the switch, and 200 electric need- | Hes stabbed out the stiches on 200 | strips of cloth . . . one, press pedal, |two, pedal, three, four, five, six, | seven, eight, nine . . ten, front curtains, roadster model. |The punch press banged little metal |buttons into square strips of cloth, | rear curtains, touring model. Ham- | mers clinked, hitting punches, fixing fasteners in front curtains. Cushion | workers reached for the second | mouthful of tacks. Ford was busy. The new model had arrived. oe | HEN the machines started Ed Vallin began his second day in the curtain department. In the shop he had no drag. He was a new- comer to the town, and didn’t belong to the Knights.of Columbus or the Orange Lodge. But he’d had a good break, and got a job just before they stopped hiring... Five hundred men had stood in j line opposite the gates. Two clerks |camee out of the office. | pressers, sewing machinists, cushion workers” , . . “Sure, I’m a sewing |machinistl” /. . chalk up first} “Punch| hammer rhythmically and keep time \gave Eda pass to get through the main gate. He answered a few ques- |tions. He was hired . . . Jesus, it |took ten minutes to dope out all that jagain. He could see the time clock _as he took more strips. He was one ‘pf four on a bench. Every 15 minutes they were given | strips of black cloth about four feet | long. Four fasteners had to be fixed in the strips. They inserted the four- | pointed fasteners, reversed the strip, | fitted the noints in covering plates |and clinched them by covering the plates with a ‘little punch and hit- ting the punch with a hammer, The boys bent their heads over the strips. You could dawdle over each for a full minute and a half if you were sure,a shop-bull wasn’t watch- ing. But from 7.30 to 12, and from 12.30 to 7 (two hours overtime—the’ new model) the bench was a jumble of fasteners and strips and strong fingers. Pushin fasteners, reverse cloth, “Hey, Mac, take a look at the clock when you get a chance. . .”, fix plates .. . “What's that? Jesus Christ, the time’s going slow, gimme the punch”... , one, two, three, four punches and the strip’s fixed. “Say kid, this is the softest job T ever had and ya don’t getcha hands greasy either.” Sometimes Ed got moved to a long bench alongside the windows where you could see the rum-runners’ boats cutting across the river. You could sing to yourself on the job, too, and for novelty hit the punch with the with the tune. , It took three minutes to sing “Pie in the Sky” and that . }wasn’t a bad song, it The others } “Ford Is Busy;” Speed, Speed, More Speed {and you got six minutes. Three |songs, repeated, every 20 minutes. And if you sang in slow time you could get surprised by the quitting ‘bell at noon before you were thru | with the chorus. ’ | Or you could count the strips |slowly. One, fix fasteners . . . two ... 24 meant half an hour. Look hard at the black strip and forget about the river and the guy working meri to you. Look hard at the bright fastehers and wonder how long they would keep that shine after the car was in use, and forget about counting. Kill three minutes and go to the toilet on the other side of the shop, pleasant walk. ) “Hey, you took three minutes over that last strip. If you wanna stay in Ford’s you'll have to work faster than that.” c scowl. eo ee ‘A SYMPHONY of tooting car horns and ferry boat sirens and clinking dinner pails greeted 938, 976, 954 as they left the gates. On the op- | posite side of the road was a vacant |lot, parked with flivvers, belonging to the firmly established citizens of the border cities who worked in the plant. Some waited for the street car or walked across the railroad tracks, passed the “You Have Seen Ford City—Watch Us Grow” sign and boarded the bus. The others walked. There was no, talk as they trudged up the Walker- ville Road, dinner pails swinging rhythmically to the beat of heavy shoes serunching on the snow. They would get home, scrape their shoes carefully outside the rear entrance, and flop on the couch in the kitchen for 15 minutes before the wife hust- led them down the basement to wash. Then they would eat, losing them- selves in the “Border Cities Star” while the woman made fruitless at- tempts ‘to tell them how they paid the taxes in the morning, the strug- gles of the “Mick” family next door, not one of whose’ members had been able to locate a steady job in, the Ford or any other plant since their arrival from a Glasgow slum two years ago, and to ask them about the Stare at the black strip | It was a) He looked up and saw the military | lk fixed ‘The Writings of Tolstoy and the Bolsheviks By EM. YAROSLAVSKY. (Translated from the “Pravda” by Valentine V. Konin.) (Continued) br Tolstoy did not understand the proletarian movement; the revolu- tion was strange to him. For many decades, Tolstoy used all the pow- jers of his artistic talent and all his tremendous influence only to prove \the futility, the harm, and the ruin lof the revolutionary way, and to |convince the toiling masses that |they must renounce the class strug: |gle and the forceful resistance of | evil. { Is it right, therefore, for the |Bolsheviki—the representatives of the class which has overthrown with its own arms the class of the land- owners and capitalists, and which is rebuilding the world in a revolu- tionary way—is it right for them to. | honor Tolstoy in connection with the 100th anniversary of his birth? Is it right for them, who have chos- |en revolutionary force as the means |for the remaking of human society, to celebrate the jubilee of the writ: | ‘er who denied on principle revolu- \tionary resistance and preached | submission instead? Is it right for |the party which considers religion |the opium of the people to publist the full set of Tolstoy’s works im i which the most reactionary reli- |/ gious teachings play such an impor- if tant part? (And we must add that i it is only during the Soviet regime that the works of Tolstoy will ap- pear as they had been originally written.) ¢ = Yes, we think we are right in at- tracting the wide attention of the | public to our way of reckoning up the accounts of Tolstoy’s enormous literary inheritance and of showing | without any falsehood and hypocrisy jour attitude towards Tolstoy. For many decades Tolstoy had been not only the son of his class— J | the class of nobles and landowners —but their principal voice as well. No one else among the Russian au- thors had even given such an analo- gy nor had written such a hymn of praise to the Russian nobility ag did Tolstoy in his “War and Peace.” | For he himself had for a long time been no more than a landowner in- terested above all in the problems of his household. It is known that jat one time Tolstoy was greatly in- terested in breeding a certain kind of pigs whom he kept in buildings specially constructed for that pur- pose in Yasnaya Palyana. At that period he was indifferent to the fate of the huge army of the half- serfs, half-slaves, which constituted an overwhelming mass of the popu- lation of our country. Tolstoy be- jgan life when on the Senatsky Square of St. Petersburg the shots were fired at the Decembrists; he had no sympathy for them. Even at the time when his literary talent was flourishing he wrote in his diary the following concerning the Polish rebellion of 1865: - “I do not sympathize with those who forbid the Poles to speak Pol- ish, but I am not angry at them for that. I am perfectly indifferent; let them choke all the Poles. Butch- ers kill cows which we eat; I am not obliged to accuse them or to sympathize with them.” His contemporary, N. G. Cher- nishevsky, appeared to him as writer “with the odor of bedbugs.’ Tolstoy of that period did not un- |derstand the life of the other classes of society. He himself wrote about it in one of the unpublished |prefaces to “War and Peace.” 1 “In my work the characters are all counts speaking and writing — French, as if the whole life of Rus- ' sia were concentrated in those people. The life of clerks, mer- } chants, clergy, and peasants is \neither interesting nor wholly com- prehensible to me.” s However, there are peasants in “War and Peace”; for even then, Tolstoy extolled Platon Karataev in comparing’ him to the educated |) landowners, Bezoukov, or Bolkan: || sky.’ In “War and Peace” he speaks leven of the factory workers; but |how does he represent them? He | ‘represents them as drunkards |gambling away their fatherland— | |quite a comparison—to the virtuotis landowners, the Rostovs. As a |whole a worker has no luck in Tol- |stoy’s writings. Not one of them | appears ever as a jero in his novels. |For in him Tolstt," perceived the “ulcer of proletariantsm.” And that ‘not because he knew nothing of the |workers’ movement; he had been ‘abroad, and was acquainted with the workers’ movement in western Europe; but the movement wes if strange to him. More than that, it. 4 |frightened him, just as victoriously. 4 5 ’ FE i L | 5a SS RRSP f if e sabi approaching capitalism frightened the landowner in hi. And Tolstoy reflected in his writing the hatred of his class towards capitalism, (To Be Continued.) 4 ns from the sidewalk to' the entrance éf the house before the spring thaw. ~~ The pages of the “Border Cities’ Star” rustled ... “Yeah, they latd off a hundred in the assembly shop: today. We may be on a four day: week—temporarily, one of the times keepers told us. After the elections, he said, the. whole plant would bé kinda busy. Lots of overtime, after. the-elections . . . What’s that? No; guess, we'll stay home =— figured on going to bed early. ie CR TA ne The alarm clock rarig at 6.15. At twenty-five after the wife lis! for signs of life in the bed “Jim, the coffee’s gettir~ cold, it’s twenty-five ir. mi