The Daily Worker Newspaper, November 22, 1928, Page 6

ally Published by National Daily Worker Publishing Ase’n., Daily, Except Sunday, at 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. Y. Telephone, Stuyvesant 1696-7-8. Cable Address “Dattvork”” Inc. 8 ROBERT MINOR Editor WM. F. DUNNE t.... Assistant Editor Profiteering and “Wageteering” John E. Edgerton, president of the nation- a! association of manufacturers, in replying to President Green’s charge before the New | | | Orleans convention of the American Fed- eratio E nor that the members of the Edgerton anization were 2 “menace to Am ? tions during the war” cha ers with “wageteering.” The implies of, Edgerton is that the Amer- ar Federation of Labor officialdom, dur- ir, encouraged struggles for in- 3 discussion between two groups of imperialist supporters we are quite certain that Green has the better of the argument. The war record of the reactionary official- i Gorpersism in its most men- as far as the working class is It was the official policy of the council of the Federation to dis- courage strikes and increases in wages on the plea that workers should refrain from seeking wage increases and improved con- ditions in spite of the great demand for labor. In fact Gompers, as a minister without portfolio of the war cabinet of Woodrow Wilson, kept a horde of “organizers” busy roving the country and telling the workers in the war industries to work long hours and for low wages “to make the world safe for democracy.” The workers were told that they were heroes, fighting in “the sec- ond line trenches,” the basic industries with- out which the war could not be prosecuted to a successful conclusion, and that after the war was over they could get anything they wanted. | Then when the war was over this same Gompers and his cohorts worked overtime to sabotage the efforts of the workers to real- ize some of the “democracy” they had been promised. In the first great struggle after the war, the steel strike, Gompers and Co., while pretending to favor the strike, did everything in their power to aid the com- bined forces of the steel trust, the govern- ment ‘and the private armies of company po- lice and gunmen to crush it. The members of the national association of manufacturers, who owned many of the war industries, reaped the most bountiful harvest ever garnered by them up to that | time. Profiteering was the order of the day | and he who dared suggest that such patrio- | tic gentlemen were utilizing the war to en- rich themselves found himself facing a fed- eral court for violation of the espionage act. Mr. Edgerton, like many of the ruling class, sometimes fails to recognize his best | friends, otherwise he would appreciate the | services of the American Federation of La- | bor bureaucracy during and since the world | | war. The national association of manufactur- ers can rely upon their fellow servants of imperialism at the head of the A. F. of L. in the next war to do precisely as they did in the last war—endeavor to deliver the workers bound and gagged to the war mo- loch. | Green and Co. will never, by the wildest | stretch of the imagination, favor what Ed- | gerton calls “‘wageteering,” because that | would interfere with the profiteering of the war-mongers, whom they serve. So This Is “Libertarianism” | H. L. Mencken, the little } sche of the American middle class, in an article entitled “What's Wrong with the Nation?” writes in the colunins of that once ever-sweet journal of liberalism: “The main thing wrong with it (The Na- tion), I believe, is that in its laudable progress from liberalism to libertarianism it occasionally hangs back and moos sadly, like a cow torn from its calf.” Not bad from the point of view of the more brazen defender of imperialism. “From liberalism to libertarianism” at least ex- presses the transition now going on in a sub- stantial section of the petty business and professional classes. What can a poor pro- fessional “intellectual” do, when bie finance- capital, more powerful and raucous than ever hefore can set up its own straw man, Al Sm'th as the national leader of “liberalism,” | and then knock him over with one hand? W ‘n they do, when anti-trust laws are shown up as plain “hooey” that no one will any more, when the proprietor of cigar-store on the corner has gone k for the “Wnited,” when the grocery- who used to read the “The Nation” is counting pickles in the chain-store and 1os skeptical of the “hopeful” dope of do” As the. Baltimore they turn sadly away from ard the ynicism that a) S25 Worker Central Organ of the Workers (Communist) Party THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1928 <—S SUBSCRIPTION RATES: By Mail (in New York only) $2.50 three mos. $8 a year $4.50 six mos. By Mail (outside of New York): $3.50 six mos. $2.00 three mos Address and mail all checks to The Daily Worker 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. Y. $6 a year cheers where faith is lost. The moral indig- nation that once thundered for Christian probity, began to stutter for the “liberty” program of Tammany financed by Raskob. The “liberalism” that once scolded oil mag- nates for not getting a licence before raping Mexico, now praises Morgan’s man Morrow for complicating the rape with seduction. What once was a voice crying almost for Sandino (“if,” “but” and “unless”), now whispers yes to the slaughter of Nicaragua if only the grave be decorated with flowers. The Nation is in fact in rapid transition from “libera ” to the frank upholding of the blood-and-iron policies of United States imperialism. It is a curious coincidence that in the same issue of that paper with Mencken’s article is a leading editorial which rea i “Mr. Hoover’s decision to go to South Amer- ica was a splendid piece of personal and inter- national strategy for which the President-elect deserves the warmest praise. The months be- tween election and inauguration with their empty publicity and their tedious political intrigue have always been embarrassing to our Presidents- elect. Mr. Hoover escapes from besieging office- seekers and goes where his presence will do most for international good-will. He will sail down the West Coast, cross the Andes, and come back to the United States after visiting Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argen- tina, Uruguay, Brazi], and Venezuela. Since no President or President-elect of the United States has ever visited these countries, Mr. Hoover’s visit will be interpreted as an unusual gesture of recognition and friendship. He will doubtless spend most of his energy in preparing the ground for improved international trade, but can scarcely escape the critical comments of the South Amer- ican press concerning our military policy in the Caribbean. The understanding developed by such a visit may prove of lasting value in checking the grosser expressions of our imperialism.” This full-blown imperialism is different from the imperialism of, say, the New York Herald-Tribune, only in that it is more co- wardly. It sprinkles its guns with flowers. Or, to go back to the simile of Mencken, it is a bull rather than a cow that is mooing sadly for the calf of sentimental (and ineffectual) talk against imperialism. The Nation makes itself another defender of Hoover and im- perialist war and conquest of Latin-America. This “cow torn from its calf” of liberalism, and transformed from a cow into a bull of militarism, is mooing only very faintly—the best a bull can. For a long time The Nation has been changing, along with its audience of middle- class intellectuals, from “liberalism” to what might be called “libertarianism.” 1t found vent for its sense of “justice” in giving its columns to a defense of the ludicrous “Anas- tasia” whom a lot of half-witted American ladies of wealth proclaimed the “daughter of the dead czar.” From that denunciation of “injustice” The Nation passed quickly to condemnation of the Massachusetts police for being “‘too lenient” with New Bedford textile strikers, and at a time when the world was ringing with new additions to the proof of the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti, it found a new dignity in hints of skepticism. American capitalist imperialism is conquer- ing the ideology of certain new sections of the middle class, and The Nation is among the conquered. But that is the historical role of “liberal” journals. Now we may expect The Nation, and perhaps many others of its school, to how! for the liberty of the marines in Nicaragua rather than the liberty of Nica- ragua, and otherwise to devote itself exclu- sively to the rights of the sons and daughters of the rentier class to booze and adultery. It has ta be “liberal” about something, doesn’t it?—-or at least “libertarian.” ° What Or Who Is the Center Of the Universe? The capitalist press, in reporting the pro- ceedings of the meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, revealed yesterday “that the center of the Universe had been dis- covered by astronomical observations extending over a number of years and that Miss Henrietta Swope, daughter of the president of the General Electric Company, had been associated with him (Professor Shapley of Harvard Observatory) in the observations of the past year.” At first blush it might seem a little con- fusing that the center of the Universe is so inextricably mixed up with the daughter of the president of the General Electric Com- pany. But we hasten to explain that the progeny of the head of the Electric Trust, or even his poodle or his drink-mixer, cannot but.be of greater importance to the poor pro- fessors who live from his purse, than a mere scientific discovery. Truth is that the poor scientific men, in locating the center of the Universe, have stirred up an embarrassing contradiction. It is that the findings of their instruments fix the center of the universe, astronomically speaking, at a definite point far out among the stars--47,000 light-years from the Sun—while the innermost most sacred feelings of the scientific men—-eco- Z “WE PULL THE STRING—HE JUMPS” Misleaders in -the American Labor Unions BY WILLIAM Z. FOSTER. | John Brophy, former president of | District 2 in are) Api in an lelection circular afainst Lewis, some time ago, describes the disas- \trous betrayal: “The Consolidated Coal Co, in 1922 had approximately 40 mines in northern West Virginia, others in Maryland, and seven or eight in Somerset County, besides additional mines in Kentucky. The company agreed to sign up for West Virginia only and the National Union accept- |ed this proposal over the protests of the Pennsylvania union miners. The West Virginia men went back | to work under the policy of the Na- |tional Union. In Maryland and Pennsylvania strikes for union rec- |ognition continued but were of no use. The company filed orders with | West Virginia coal and used its | West Virginia profits to ship strike- |breakers into Maryland and Penn- sylvania. Finally the Maryland and Somerset strikes were lost. | And then the Consolidated broke | with the union in West Virginia and used Maryland and Somerset coal |to crush the strike that resulted. |The company is now 100 per cent scab. Bethlehem Mines Corporation, Hillman Coal and Coke, and other big concerns were alfowed to split |the workers and destroy the union jin the same way.” After the 1922 strike Lewis, be- sides abandoning the Connellsville | miners, also split off the anthractie |from the bituminous miners, letting |each section deal with the employ- ers separately. Consequently dur- ing the anthracite strike of 1925, the bituminous miners produced coal | This is the third installment of the stenographic record of the demonstration for the release of | John Porter and against imperial- | | ts¢ war, * « * The Clerk of the Court: The next may may come around. your right hand and be sworn. | witness presenting himself in his jown behalf, after having been duly affirmed, testified and stated as follows: Direct Statement. If I do not speak as loud as the other speakers, or as the other brethren who have testified here, it is because since Saturday at five o'clock I have only had a roll and a ae of coffee. I have been in a cell-— MR. GIVEN (interposing): Your honor, I suggest that the witness be required to confine himself to the issue here. MILLER: I want to explain it. MR. GIVEN: You are any complaint about your treatment. while in the jail. THE COURT: You will confine yourself to the charge brought against you here. MILLER: I thought this had to dc with why we were arrested, and with the way we were treated after we were arrested. I want to show that in order to show you—— THE COURT (interposing): As to the way you were treated, that does not come up before this tri- bunal. There is another tribunal that such matters come before. This is a court to try the charge brought against you. trial in Washington, D. C. of 29 | workers for participating in the | Hold up CLARENCE MILLER: I affirm. Whereupon Clarence Miller, another | in the} wrong place if you wish to make! Demonstrators Jailed for Demanding Porter Release, Define Views on Capitalism MILLER: I want to bring evi-| |dence in my case because—— THE COURT (interposing): Con- fine youself to the information. Prison Conditions. | MILLER: I am giving informa-| tion that this was all a precon- ceived plan to railroad us, and to keep us from presenting our cause | |to the workers in this country, and \also from presenting our statement | to Secretary Davis. Now, in the jail we were put. four of us in a |cell, with cockroaches, with one bed, and the most of us sleeping on the floor-—- | MR. GIVEN (interposing): Your | honor, I suggest that that is not the proper charge here. THE vOURT: That is not the| charge you are being tried on here. | |Confine yourself to the case here. | | MILLER: Al right. If you ob- ject to my presenting the facts—— MR. GIVEN) (irterposing): No; | |we do not object to your giving any | facts here that have a bearing on| \this case. But what you are now) | saying does not have anything to do with the charge against you | here. You have a remedy else- where for anything of that kind. | MILLER: Well, this was the | way I was kept in order to be pres- ent here this morning. | MR. GIVEN: You are here to tell | us what you did on the sidewalks on the West Executive Ave. | MILLER: I want to show you} ing our views. And the treatment accorded us—— MR. GIVEN (interposing): Tell | the court how many times you pa- |raded around the building? MILLER: I will explain that. MR. GIVEN: That is what the court wants to hear. Program of Young Communists. MILLER: I was here to present a petition to Secretary Davis, démand- ing in the name of the organizations affiliated that John Porter be re- leased. The organization that I rep- resent is the Young Workers (Com- munist) League. It is an organiza- tion of young workers fighting for the betterment of the young work- ers, whether they are working in the | textile industry, or whether they are working in the coal mines, or whether they are fooled into the army and wearing uniforms for the present. If they are a part of the working class, if they come from the ranks of the workers, we will fight in their interest, and will defend them in every way possible. Government Suppressing Workers. When we came here to Washing- ton we came with the intention of presenting a petition, in a quiet and peaceful manner, to a secretary ap- pointed by the president of the United States, who is elected, or sup- | posed to be elected at least, by the honor, I think he has had his say. people of this country. I maintain that the fact that we were not per- mitted to present our case} and have | been exposed to this treatment, is why we are here, and that is that | because this official is nothing but| it was all a preconceived plan; that |a tool of Wall Street, whom he rep- this was all planned out to perse-j resents. I say that is the reason leute us and keep us from present-'why we were arrested and stopped |while their anthracite brothers | struck. Meanwhile, the bituminous | operators, openly repudiating the agreement, reduced |three years the union has lost 200,- x ee |000 members mostly in the bitumin- | from presenting the petition, jous sections, and Lewis does noth- More Money for War Preparations.| 15 to, stem the tide of defeat. Tt Especially at this time is the gov- | was indeed timely that the left wing ernment interested in stopping the} and progressive opposition, united Communist, the Young Communist behind the candidacy of Brophy in jmovement from presenting their/ the 1926 union elections,’ fought jviews. It is because that at the) with the slogan of “Save the present time more money is being | Union.” Under Lewis’ reactionary appropriated for armaments, for pre-| administration the very existence of paring the army and the navy for/the Miners’ Union, which is the jthe coming war, whether it be with | backbone of the whole American la- | England or what country, in order) ho, movement, is most seriously |that they may make more profits | threatened. | for themselves, who are looking for| As I write this (in 1927, N. B.) laid ; | jmarkets. It is for those who made! some 175,000 bituminous miners are | profits in the last world war, for) jogkeq out. Due to the misleader- ship of Lewis and his like, they find ;whom hundreds of thousands of j7oane. Atocricans. ‘were llled and | themselves confronted with an ex- |crippled, and as was described by! tremely difficult situation. They Becomes aegis when he) face gigantic stock piles of coal said thal the las war was bat (which of course the union railroad mercial war. Bee ee war will| workers haul freely to market) and |fiso be a commercial war—unless it! great districts like West Virginia, re Sy bikahs EE) je poviet Union, | Kentucky, Alabama, etc., producing , | where the workers established thei/79 per eent of all bituminous coal, |own government, where the workers| 516 non-union and remain at work. jare not working 12 and 14 hours @ Lewis made no effort to organize 4 |day as they do in this country, but/and strike these districts. The 160,- eM ie aaa tte ee 000 anthracite miners are also Pa PEE |working. To make the situation | time are introducing the 7-hour day, worse, pein has inaugurated a pol- i ri 4 c : ~ | dividua agreements. nly the (Sen eee hat Dene Seary ig greatest solidarity and heroism by jworker between 14 and 16 years of /the miners can win the strike. The } Me = * take, the U. M. W. A. is in tl | instructor; where young workers be-| wa” gine us orisis VE He Cato” {tween 16 and 18 years of age do not! On’ the. Railroad work, as in the textile industry here, u hai pica Ire Like the miners, the railroad 9, 10 and 12 hours a day, but they work only six hours a day— workers have conducted a long and | MR. GIVEN (Interposing): Your bitter struggle to establish an or- ganization capable of defending and |He is not talking about the charge | advancing their interests. And like |made against him here at all. | the miners also, among the greatest ‘THE COURT: Confine yourself | obstacles they have had to contend |to the information here. |with is the conservatism and dis- MILLER: I am trying to give you| loyalty of their own leaders. ‘To the ore |the information why I was present | with them. {To Be Continued.) | activities of union misleaders, | than to any other factor, is due the deep crisis in which the railroad ‘unions now find themselves. By WERNER HIRSCH. PE years have passed since Bismarck made his assault on the young German labor movement. On October 2ist, 1878, the chancellur of blood and iron finally put through |his will in a Reichstag put together junder the terrorism following the | attempt sof Hodel and Nobiling, and achieved that emergency law against the socialists without which he imagined it would be impossible to continue ruling. The “Socialist Law” meant the prohibition of all socialist news- papers, the ruin of all socialist printing-works and other enter- prises, the dissolution of the Party organizations, the destruction of the trade unions and their organs, arrest for the agitators and func- tionaries of the infant movement, and finally the proclamation of a “small state of siege” in numerous districts and in connection with it the expulsion of many hundreds of social democratic pioneers, many of | whom were at barely 24 hours’ no- ;tice torn from the circle of their friends and relatives and from their calling and exposed to direct pen- ury. The “Socialist Law” meant the entire impact of the apparatus of authority in a semi-feudal and Bismarck’s Law Against th 50 Years Ago “Iron Chancellor” Made Assault | pressure brought to bear upon them | on Young German Labor Movement semi-absolute state, of the reaction-, ary bureaucracy, “Junkertum,” and bourgeoisie upon the frail and in- cohate proletarian party. Bismarck’s Mistake. Bismarck’s assumption that by this system of brutal violence he} would be able to break the back of} the proletarian cause, was’ based} upon a fallacy. He calculated on demoralization setting in in the ranks of the class conscious work- ers once his knout and his cuiras- sier-boot were put into operation. This calculation started from the experience which the reactionary Prussia and Germany of that time had made with bourgeois liberalism after 1848. At that time violence and oppression had sufficed to bring the bourgeoisie and the petty- bourgeoisie to its knees. But the same presumptions did not apply in the case of the prole- tariat. Quite on the contrary. The young working class had developed | classes. under quite different conditions from those attending the growth of the other parties in Germany. Its sentiments and thoughts were ac- tuated by a single social factor, the pressure of capitalism. Thus the will to fight and the class conscious- ness of this particular class had de- veloped just as naturally as had the smug complacency of the other In this misunderstanding of the historic conditions accom- panying the fight against the la- bor movement, lay Bismarck’s chief mistake. Party Awakens. At first, it is true, it appeared as though he was right in his assump- tion. The decree of the emergency law immediately destroyed many thousands of existences upon the surface of the Party by the destruc- tion of all Party enterprises. Driven in many cases from their habita- tions, these leading members of the Party were exposed in the small e Socialists nomically speaking—convince them that the center of the Universe is close to the hearth of the biggest official of the General Electric Company on whose bounty they live. The | compromise report couples the center of the ' Unjfverse as a matter of equal intefbst with *. the favorite progeny of the industrial king. While capitalism rules, scientists must be slaves and speak as slaves, May we expect the center of the Universe hereafter to be known to astronomy as “Hen- rietta?” ‘ | The betrayal of the railroad | workers by their leaders is greatly | facilitated by the existing craft junionism. This system is the union- ism par excellence of the labor fak- ‘ers. It is the policy of organizing | the different categories of worker® in many separate autonomous unions and having each fight its by the bourgeoisie and other|°W” battles regardless of the other classes. Thus the first effect of | Unions. Eton the’ See ate aes the law was to loose all such forces| ‘@ft unionism has enabled the com- within the Party as secreted within| Paves, with the help of reaction- |them the poison of petty-bourgéois | °"Y ares senor be cal the |Smugness and decay. Suddenly up-| whole Dodyat Fay Api piel ak by rooted, they knew but one desire, | Playing off ‘one: ‘section of them |and that was to be rid of the So-|*Sainst the others. A hundred rail- cialist Law or of its effects. | road strikers tell this deplorable | But it was just this first disas-|St"Y., The great battle of the |trous effect of the Socialsit Law,| American Railway Union, the V. B. subjecting the Party for more than | © Q. strike, the I. C.-Harriman line a year to a chaos of “Philistine” strike, Lac Badass taps switehmen tendencies, defaitism and “squeam-|i" the northwest, the great nation- ishness” (as-Engels calls it) that al strike of the railroad shopmen; |finally aroused in the proletarian --all record: the-#ame! tragic: Dolley masses of the Party that strength of whole sections of the organized | which only the working class was railroad workers kept_at work and ] strength of the class conscious will actively striving to better their con- to fight, relying entirely upon it-| 2°" + self. - In the dialectic process of this| gM or Moye yineen te ohne reciprocal effect of the development. upon the one hand, of all bad petty. Lh the, <workeare than. on. Se bourgeois tendencies by reason of Creek Shin Sends Out the emergency law, and, upon the other, of the subsequent mobiliza- S OS; Rudder Broken (By United Press.) tion of the proletarian resistance to this very development, the Socialist A tug boat has been sent from |Fayal, Azores, to the aid of the Greek ship Alexandria, which has sent out an SOS. No word has been received from the tug. The Alexandria was north of. Fayal when it sent out the SOS saying its rudder was broken. The ship left Montreal Nov. 9 for Italian \| | towns and rural districts to the di- |Yrect social ostracism and to the) Law became a lever to raise the young and immature social demo- cratic party to the height of a truly revolutionary mentality in the sense of scientifie socialism, (To Be Continued.) LETHBRIDE, Can., (By Mail). —Two miners, George Lothian and John Labdex, were asphyxiated in the mine of the International Coal and Coke Co. i