The Daily Worker Newspaper, December 7, 1928, Page 6

Gieeremesene ~ — Page Six Published by National Daily Worker Publishing As’’n., Inc. Daily, Except Sunday, at 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. Y. Telephone, Stuyvesant 1696-7-8. Cable Address “Daitvork” ROBERT MINOR WM. -F. DUNNE.... The Textile Strike In Rhode Island The strike of the 350 textile workers in the Parker Mills in the Pawtucket Valley in Rhode Island should be the signal for a general strike throughout both the Black- stone and Pawtucket valleys. For months there have been wage cuts following upon wage cuts. In the Parker mill where wages are so low that the bos feared an- other cut would evoke a strike, a vicious blow was struck at the workers by the announce- ment of the immediate inauguration of the 53-hour week in place of the 48-hour week, without any change in wages. In these mill valleys of Rhode Island the officials of the United Textile Workers Union, affiliated with the A. F. of L. have been busy in their familiar role of aiding the mill barons put through wage cuts, the speed- up and lengthening of hours of labor. At this moment, when the mills are be- ginning work on spring goods, the workers in all the mills should seize the opportunity to strike for the purpose of resisting the arro- gant drive of the bosses and establishing their union. The workers in every mill should instantly go out in sympathy with the Parker mills strikers. To fail to aid these strikers and permit them to be defeated would only be an invitation to every textile mill owner to slash wages further and in- crease hours, which will only result in further unemployment. First and foremost, in entering the strug- gle the textile workers should avoid any con- tact with the treacherous United Textile Workers Union, which is merely a company union for the employers. There is but one union in the textile industry that fights in the interest of the working class and that is the National Textile Workers Union, born out of the struggle of textile workers in Pas- saic, Paterson, New Bedford and other places. Rhode Island textile workers! Make the strike general! Join the National Textile Workers Union! Defeat the wage cuts and lengthening of hours! Establish the union in the two valleys and fight for union wages and conditions! many Captain Paxton Hibben Captain Paxton Hibben, who died Wednes- day at the age of 48 was prominently known to Communists and friends of Soviet Russia because of his many years of effective work for recognition of the government of work- ers and peasants. Captain Hibben, despite the opinions of the jingoes and imperialists to the contrary, was not a Commun In the early years of his life he was successful as diplomat, author and soldier. His diplomatic career began as secre- tary to the American embassies in Petrograd (now Leningrad). Later he served in a simi- lar capacity in Mexico City. He also served in a diplomatic capacity in other Latin Ameri- can countries, besides serving at the Hague tribunal. During the war he was a lieutenant in the field artillery, later being promoted to a captaincy. At the conclusion of the war he was en- gaged in relief work in the Near East and in the Soviet Union. It was during his activity in the land of the former czars that he be- came an advocate of recognition of and trade relations withthe Soviet government. On his return to the United States he engaged pub- licly in the campaign for famine relief. Saptain Hibben’s work in behalf of recog- .wton of the Soviet Union was not prompted by motives that by any stretch of the imagination could be considered as a general defense of the class struggle. His actions were predicated upon reverence for old American traditions; the literal aceeptance of the declaration of independence, and the state papers of Thomas Jefferson regarding the recognition by the young republic of America of the revolutionary republic of France, which held that a government estab- lished by the revolutionary action of the people was entitled to recognition by the United States. In his many speeches and writings, Captain Hibben emphasized those early traditions and heaped ridicule upon the utterances of such special pleaders as Charles Evans Hughes, Frank B. Kellogg and others who perverted the policies of the revo- lutionary founders of the republic into apolo- gies for imperialist aggression. It was this attitude of his, the fact that he still defended, in this period of imperialist frightfulness, the ideals of the infancy of the republic, that brought Captain Hibben into open conflict with the military authorities and prevented his promotion in the ranks of the reserve forces of the United States army. He was attacked by the 100 percenters in the im- perialist army of the United States as a Rolshevik, although his real principles which DB aily On Worker Central Organ of the Workers (Communist) Party SUBSCRIPTION RATES: By Mail (in New York only): $4.50 six mos. $2.50 three mos. By Mail (outside of New York): $6ayear $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. $8 a year he was defending were those of a past era. The policies enunciated by Jefferson were so strange to the ears of Hibben’s vicious and ignorant prosecutors that they could not tell the difference between them and Bolshevism. The past few years of Captain Hibben’s life were spent in literary pursuits, which he put aside during the Sacco and Vanzetti cam- paign to go to Boston and participate in the demonstrations against Fuller and his asso- ciated murderers, Captain Hibben’s death removes from American political life one of the few up- holders of the old traditions of this country. He aided in exposing the malignant character of the agents of imperialism today without, however, realizing that the course of history is not back to the declaration of independence but forward to a higher form of society and that it is the revolutionary working class whose historic mission it is to deliver the death blow to the tyrannies of today. Hooverizing the Newspapers Announcement was made yesterday of the perfection of a process by which type can be | set in an unlimited number of printing of- fices in response to the operation of a type- writer keyboard by one person. This in- vention, when in general operation, will make it possible for an agency to write news in New York and have it transmitted almost simultaneously to typesetting machines in Chicago or San Francisco, thus doing away with news editing as well as operators of the typesetting machines. Any number of type- setting machines can be operated from the | one typewriter keyboard. The finished pro- duct can be in any size type or any width of line desired. This particular invention is the achieve- ment of Walter J. Morey of East Orange, N. J., and was yesterday put to a practical test in Rochester, N. Y., by the Frank E. Gan- nett string of newspapers. The mechanics of the new invention are quite generally familiar to all engaged in the production of newspapers. The typesetting machines are operated on the same principle of electrical control used to operate the tele- type machines used in all newspaper offices receiving service from news gathering agen- cies—the machine that took the places of the telegraph operators that used to be in every daily newspaper office. Such an invention a half a century ago would by no means have had the effect that it has today. In fact it would hardly be worth manufacturing for the simple reason that newspapers then were organs of opin- ion. No two great papers in any part of the country were alike. Articles appearing in Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune would be of no use to Henry Watterson’s Louisville Courier-Journal. Each newspaper spoke for some particular social or economic group, each one of them represented some shade of political opinion. But today, under Hooverism, such an in- vention is useful. At a time when imperial- ism has produced the nation-wide chains of newspapers, all publishing identically the same material, all serving the same preda- tory interests, when no class that stands be- tween the imperialists and the working class | has sufficient vitality to lead an independent political existence, an invention such as the “teletypesetter,” fills a definite demand. It is a sign of the times. Its immediate effect upon the labor move- ment can be seen when we consider the fact that it will displace thousands of skilled linotype operators. One machinist can take care of five machines operated mechanically. That means that one man can do the work formerly done by six in the composing rooms. When the printing trades unions, even today, are faced with serious unemployment prob- lems, and under a leadership that is more concerned about the interests of the pub- lishers than the workers, it can readily be seen that revolutionary changes must take place or the organization of labor will be destroyed. More than ever will it be es- sential as a prerequisite for existence that the unions be consolidated into a powerful industrial union and that militant leadership replace the present reactionary and traitor- ous bureaucrats, Correction In one of the editorials in yesterday’s edition it was stated that Hoover that day visited Chile, when as_a matter of fact he visited Peru and stopped at Chile the next day. Throughout the editorial the name Chile was substituted for Peru. But the eco- nomic facts, i. e., the reference to copper and nitrates *and to the struggle between American and English capital were correct as applied to Chile. This error was due to the fact that the editorial writer, because of other duties requiring that he be absent from the office did noi get the see the printer's proof, DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1928 a By Fred Ellis Achievements of the Cultural Relations By A. LUNACHARSKY. The slogan of a “Cultural Rev- |olution” was most emphatically New Type of Education; Proletarian Theater and Literature proclaimed at the XV Party Con-| gress of the Communist Party of| the Soviet Union, but it is no novelty |for the Communist mentality. Lenin on Culture in U. S. S. R. Lenin frequently expressed his ideas on the subject and declare in his famous theses that the chief} and only obstacle in the way of| Socialism in the territory of our! | Soviet Union lies in the low cultural |level of the masses, If this level is |sufficiently raised, so Lenin as- sumes, nothing more would stand in the way of the realization of our Socialist aims. | True, Lenin immediately went on| |to declare that culture itself costs} |money and that the provision of} |sufficient means for the cultural work in the country can—in view) jof the great demands made by the! |revolution—only be attained by further achievements of our economy |and a further growth of our budget. | At times ‘we encounter the fortu-| nately not very widely-spread opinion | that these reflections on the part! of Lenin are not a direct proof that} jhe considered the construction ‘ of| |Socialism possible in a country and wished to underline the immense importance of the fundamental pre-| |sumption therefor, in the shape of ja high cultural level; on the con- |trary, the relative passage is inter- |preted as follows: Seeing that we |are culturally backward and that jour economy is backward and does not provide sufficient means for cul-| ture, we should harbor no illusions) ‘regarding the construction of So- cialism. It is hard to imagine a eruder distortion of the leading) ideas of Lenin. | Meanwhile, however, practice has jn.ade clear the real sense of this/ jidea even to such circles of economy jas allow immediate economic needs| to blind them to the requirements| of the so-called “third front,” i. e.| the cultural struggle. At the XV Party Congress all the) leaders of the Party with the full) support of the Crngress itself, de- | cl.red what was subsequently re-) flected in the corresponding resolu-| tions, viz. that, in comparison, let | us say, with the growth of our in- dustry, our cultural development is yroving backward and that it is} necessary that lost ground should be caught up with on this front and that our culture must be deve’oped| \in‘errupted development of the in- |rrovement of our agriculture jite transfcrmation into a collective} |:griculture are to be ensured. | Cultural Budget Increasing. The budget of popular education | \increased in the course of this year | \(I speak of basic figures, as the) jdetails are not yet known) by 40) per cent as regards its central, gov- |ernmental section. It must, however, | |be pointed owt at once that this in-| jerease in the budget was made to a} considerable extent for the sike of | higher technical institutions and in- | custrial high schools. If this sort of growth of the budget appears | \cre-sided at first sight, seeing that |the other branches of the cutural campaign make relatively smaller progres, this first impression must rot engender the opinion that our development is actually one-sided. For surely the tasks of industrial- ization are our foremost tasks. The) misproportion between the training of the specialists needed for industry and the general growth of economy doubt but that in the near future—| in the next few budgets, at any rate—agricultural education, fol- will veceive due attention, |stantial sums out of their cultural In the present year the budgets, of the municipalities can provide} ordinary difficult one. But it cannot| be denied that the local organiza-) tions, too, have done much to put) through the principles announced by the Party. Illiteracy Being Reduced. A second presumption for the realization of the slogan of a cul- tural revolution should be a wide- spread and general movement in the circles of the Party, of the. young| generation, of the trade-union or- ganizations, the various cultural or- ganizations, and among the popula- tion in general. Recently such a movement has been clearly apparent. Thus of late years the attention paid to the liqui- dation of illiteracy among adults has fallen off regrettably. Now we can again see an increase of atten- tion to this task; the trade unions and cooperatives have set aside sub-| funds for this purpose and a whole} number of organizations in the pro-| vinces and in the Moscow district) huve set themselves the task of a| rapid and complete liquidation of| illiteracy. Finally, the young gen- eration recently started and carried through a big compaign, known as tle “campaizn of culture” and is| yreparfffe Sunday work throughout| the country on behalf of the schools. | Education Growing. The growing attention paid te eul- | tural work is everywhere decidedly | noticeable. “Contribute te education” | now one of the daily demands | whenever the workers come into im-| mediate touch with the government. | The urge towards knowledge,| which has at all times been strong, is more and more enhanced. The indepndent initiative of the popula- | tion in this connection cannot be} doubted for a moment. In the circles connected with the People’s Com-| missariat for Education the laudable | idea has arisen, that large furds be} provided next year in support of | cultvral work, funds which would f'nd their basis in cvtlections among the populaticn. Naturally far too shor a time ha: for the achievements of the cultural | rather to give a general character-| ization of the achievement of the years, for the XV Party Congress merely represented an accentuation of the class character apparent in| our cultural development, but not the beginning of our cultural crea- ion itself. Or the contrary, I was alre tly in a position to speak of our achieve- ments in this dir.ction on the oc-| casion of my repcrt at the test've session of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union on the tenth anniversary of the revolu-| tion. The said session then expressed | in a special resolution how far we, still are from our objective, and from the satisfaction of the require- ments of the population, but how! far we have nevertheless progressed along certain lines of cultural de- velopment. Elementary Schools. | In respect to elementary education | the four-grade primary schools at.) tended by children between the ages eight and twelve, we may com-} country 104,000 schools; now there| are 150,000. But our success lies| d but little for cultural purposes, see-|not so much in the number of the| 6 ’ ing that the present year is an extra-| schools as in the number of children| being continued. frequenting them. In this respect we can record an increase of 45 per cent, for in the current year 10,500,- 600 children are being taught as against 7,200,000 before the war. The percentage of children taught in the elementary schools has in- creased by at least 20 or 25 per cent. The government has worked out a plan for general compulsory edu- | cation in the four-grade elementary schools, which will affect the first) grade, i. e. the children of eight years of age, in the course of the school-year 1952-23. At Moscow, Leningrad, Ivano-Vosnessensk, in the Crimea, in Georgia, and in the Kama district, almost 100 per cent] of all children are comprised in the) caucationa! system. In other regions} tke sitnation is less favorable; in the Republic of Dagestan, e. g., only 26 per cent of the children are in- cluded. It must be pointe dout that no effort is being spared to widen the educational system and to com- prise the children of such republics as are inhabited by undeveloped na- tionalities. Sedndary Schools. With regard to the - secondary schools we may witness the same development. Before the war there were 1780 such higher schools for general education (high schools and academies). We now haye 18i1 suc> schools, no very great numLer, espe- cally if it is remembered that un er the influence of the first g-eat rev- oluticnary enthusiasm in 1920 we increased the numb>r of these schoo!s to 4163, a figure which exceeded our capabilities, as regarcs toth the financial means required and the qualigied teachers. If we transfer our attention to such figures as reflect the increase in the number o’ pupils, we can record a more satisfactory result. Befcre th wat these higher schools compris2d 564,000 pupils. At the time of the great enthusiasm just af~er the vev- c.ution the number rose only to 569,000. Now we have a total of 869,000, that is to say, an imerease at a “revolutionary” rate if an un-/ 3; pred since the XV Party Congress | f more than 50 per cent. It must be added that very great |dustry of our country and an im-! yeyolution to be available in detail,| progress has been made in the di- end | with referente to last year. I intenc | rection of vocational schools. In pre- war Russia there wire some 3900 such establishments. In the current | Calural revolution during all the ten| Year the R. S, F. S. R, alone com- prises almost 6000 schools of this type, so that the total may be. said to have doubled. With regard to the number of pupils the result is still better. In the ten years since the revolution the number of pupils in the vocational schcols -has advanced from 266,000 to 638.000. Less satisfactory conditions obtain as regards the remuneration of the teachers and the available funds for the requirements of the schools. Our budget is still poor, but we expect it to increase rapidly during the next few years. New Type of Education. Mere figures, however, do not give a proper conception of the actual irowth of our schools, whether pri- |mary, secondary, or vocational. The aims ‘and objects of our schools are directly opposed to those .of the schools under the czarist regime, A ‘was quite obvious. There can be no! which is effected in this country by |great deal has been done in the di- rection of the complete methodical, pedagogic transformation of the schools, their social composition has lowed by other forms of education, pave the following figures: Before) been changed, the former material the war there were in the whole |jhas been replaced by altogether dif- st ferent elements, and our schools have been brought nearer to. the ideal of a uniform, technical, work- ing school. enumerate the achievements effect- ed in this direction in a short»article. have visited us have delineated them in full, Creative work in the schools is The increasing means and the growing attention of the Party, of the young generation, and of the entire Soviet publicity, together with the growing care of the economists for the enlightenment of the population, provide the pos- | sibility of making big strides for- ward in the course of the next few years. i In regard to schools, increased at- tention is being paid to the seven- grade working schools. In the school-year 1932-33, simultaneously with the introduction of compulsory education, especially as regards the rural districts, all the municipalities thickly inhabited by the proletariat will be provided with such seven- grade schools. These schools will have a decidedly industrialized char- acter and will approach that type of proletarian school which was roughly outlined by the hand of Marx. Colleges and Universities. Colossal changes have also been brought about by the revolution in |regard to the colleges. The social | composition of the student staff has completely changed, now consisting to 70 per cent of workers and peas- ants. A new type of colleges has been established which did not exist before the war and which enables the workers to acquire the most es- sential knowledge in four years, suf- ficient to qualify them for a college training. These are the so-called workers’ faculties, a peculiar crea= tion of our popular educational system. In the whole Soviet Union there are 129 colleges as against 91 before the war.: A. growth of more than 40 per cent. The number of students has meanwhile advanced by more than 25 per cent, from 124,000 to 157,000, In this connection it must be remarked that the: 124,000 stu- dents of pre-war times were re- cruited exclusively from the privil- eged classes of society, including at most the poor intelligentsia. At pre- sent our students derive mainly from worker and peasant families. It is obvious that such a change called for the provision of great sums for the support of our students. Great interest to certain types of schools,’ such as the schools of the young peasants (of which there are now more than 500), training the peasants, in particular for the co- operatives and for the collectiviza- tion of agriculture, and the working schools for apprentices, which have become (and will, it is hoped, re- main) the most important. institu- tions for the training of the main cadres of the working class and which approaches the Marxian type of a proletarian school. To Be Continued 3 Workers Play Into Open-Shoppers’ Hands in Anti-Trust Case CHICAGO, Dec. 6,—Playing into the hands of the capitalist courts and the open-shoppers, three mem- bers of the Glaziers Union, which is dominated by reactionaries, entered pleas of guilty to charges of vio- lating the Sherman Anti-Trust Law in federal court’ today. The action of the three workers thus sets up a precedent which paves the way for future attacks It is not possible to} Celebrated foreign pedagogues who! Misleaders in the American Labor Unions By WILLIAM Z, FOSTER Following “Skinny” Madden came Simon O’Donnell as head of the 80,- 600 organized Chicago Building Trades Workers. O’Donnell was a pupil of the master faker, Madden. While a policeman in 1901 he be- came business agent of the’ Plumb- ers’ Union. For several months he drew salaries from both jobs. A bold and unscrupulous type, O’Don- |nell soon forced his way to the front. | He became president of the Building Trades Council, where he remained till 1920, when he resigned after a defeat by 4 to 1 in his own union. He died in Feb. 1927, and was given a spectacular funeral. His | coffin alone cost $10,000. | O'Donnell’s regime was the golden (era of graft in the Chicago building trades. The various unions were in |the hands of a clique of gumm:n | and croo!:s, who freely roboed work- ers and employers and ruled their unions by sheer terrorism. ‘'t was a period of labor shootings and labor trials for graft, such as has never been equalled in the American la- bor movement. Ordinarily the Chieago employ- ers tolerated and encouraged the building trades grafters, because they helped them maintain their monopoly control of the industry and they stood guard against too radical demands from the workers. But often, either in a period of unrest in the industry, when strikes threaten- jed, or when the graft demands be- jcame too exorbitant, the employers protested vigorously. Then would follow exposures in the newspapers and jailings of labor leaders for grafting. Many such exposures took place. ‘Ihus in 1916, to cite only one, 14 local building, trades officials were convicted of extortion. Of these 6 were sentenced. to jail for from 1 to 3 years and 8 were assessed fines of from $500 to $2,000. As |usual these grafters were-played up as martyrs in the unions and their trial was made. the occasion for col- lecting huge defense funds, a large |share of which found its way into the pockets of these same grafters |and their pals, -. The nation-wide post-war attack |against the building trades unions | brought about an exposure of O’Don- |nell’s grafting and produced a whole jSeries of extortion trials in 1921- |22. This discrediting of the union leaders was a prelude to the great building trades strikes of 1922, in which the unions, attacked through the infamous Landis Arbitration Award, fought to preserve their existence, The most important ‘(be many labor trials in this pe- | which altogether totalled 218 | defendants in the state courts and | 297 in the federal courts (including | many employers charged with con- |spiracy), was that of O'Donnell, Green Artery, and others. In this trial the employers for | days poured out stories of graft |paid to O’Donnell and his clique, for insurance against strikes, for calling off strikers, as fines for us- |ing non-union material, and for violating union rules and jurisdic- tions, etc. In these shady deals the workers were used as mere pawns. They were often called on strike without knowing what the griev- | anee was, and ordered back to work without an inkling of the settlement. One member of the Wrecking Contractors’ Association stated that his firm always added 20 per cent to their contracts to cover labor graft. He declared that they main- |tained a “Christmas box” where ;money was placed for business | agents, in the shape of donations to \sick and death funds, Christmas presents, etc. Other firms alleged that they paid as high as 35 per cent of their contracts for graft. The Lubliner and Trinz people claimed they had paid $250,000 graft to O'Donnell and others. Charges were also made that the’ following items, among others, had been paid as graft to the O’Donnell clique: State- Lake Theatre, $40,000; Roosevelt Theatre, $15,000; Woods Theatre, $40,000 Brighton Theatre, $39,000; Somerset Hotel, $20,000; Union Station, $10,000, etc. The sums al- leged to have been paid to labor leaders during the previous five years ran to several million dol- lars. The graft took many forms. In one case the labor fakers collected from $1.00 to $5.00 per theatre seat ;from the employers as a penalty for installing non-union-made seats. In another, the Painters’ Union agents fined the theatre owners 25 cents per seat for having painted the seats before they were installed. Large sums were also collected “to fight Bolshevism in the unions.” In these and dozens of other ways vast amounts of money were collected. | Much of it was supposed to go into the union treasuries, but it found its way instead to the bank accounts of the grafters. A typical sample of corruption was where an em- ployer was told that if he wanted to avoid labor troubles on his ice plant job he would have to give the contract to the Refrigerating Ma- chinery Co., in which Chas, Rau, an O'Donnell henchman, was interested. He did so and had no strikes, —_. on labor unions on the ground of “restraint of trade” it is pointed out by militants. Already the bosses have won two such victories in the Bedford Stone-Cut case and the in- junction ‘handed down by Judge Schoonover against the United Mine Workers preventing it from striking against the Pittsburgh Coal Com Dany. | SF