The Daily Worker Newspaper, December 20, 1928, Page 4

Page Four Only UNION OFFICIALS BOSS’ PARTNERS IN DRIVING THEM Calls Fellow to Fig s Workers nt Exploiters Before cc ‘espondent ) hard work Steel or heard that working hours hours a day; York, the c bor organiza tions should be found them, cond long, and hours as long twelve, fou sixteen or even eighteen on a t home for five or six hours’ sleep and re- peat the same hours the next day— that would have sounded liev- able to me-—if—if I had not come to experience and witness that mj Before this 1 worked in a grocery \ store where h: Iso long and conditions compare with the work ent. Do n grocery clerk: very you endure, 1 know what you have to stand from grouchy custom- ty, i ed groce: Keepers, but if your j slavery then there is no word to describe elf. mine. The joke is on us, dry clean- ers, and we are worthy of your derision—if that could only shame ns into activity, if that would only help to wake us from our lethargy. Tam w ing in one of the larg- est shops in the trade, where depart- mentafization, speed-up ‘and isola- tion of departments is carried out to a considerable extent. That will fecount for the incompleteness of my description. I do not come in contact with all workers, and can- not tell the wo: pert , of the conditions. Th a union shop, controlled by a right wing alist nion gang who he work for their own benefit, and whose chiefs are ‘now being tried for slug- ging workers who want better ronditions to the wh The work is highly seasonal, de- nending upon the change of weather end holidays. The spring season, together with the Jewish holidays, make a three-month busy season in a city like New York. The fall ehange of clothing, together with certain other Jewish holidays, make a enother similar busy season. The summer and the winter-are the slow months. In jhe busy season men work until the fall sick from ov Work, and as soon it becomes slow they are laid off or work just @ few hours each week. This is be- ¢au. > the union never control the working h ditions in the shop: the fact that I work about half of the w in the place do not belong to the union; some because the union re ‘ #ake in new members, e : Jaw paid workers, fearing their mili- taney; othe do nat see the necessity of supporting the union job-holders to the extent of “three dollars a month, but these 7 workers would come in if the union “hecame a rank and file union. The “union officials allow non-union men ‘to “work ‘with union men, because they get part of the difference that ¢ boss saves in paying these men “extremely low wages, in graft and “favors trom the bosses. The non- union workers, who are termed help- ers, actually work longer hours than the union men, thus taking away ‘work from ihe members of the ‘The so-called helpers, though some tf them work as long as five years receive wages low as eighteen and twenty dollars a “week, and they are not paid time ‘and a half for overtime (though eyen the union men do not receive the time and a half that the agree- ment calls for, but only time and a emarter, and in many shops they pre only pad st e), nor sre they paid for Niays; therefore, it to hire as many he! wossibly use. Of cou as they e, this cut into the work of the union mem- hers, and they all complain that annot ask for a r because but the ‘go many cheap worker it on officials never raise a finger sept to sluz protesting workers) slve any of the numerous prob- that engulf the union and is likely to swamp it entirely. by little the union is losing 1 of the shons, but as long as gh three doar a month cues are coming in to pay the gang salaries the officials can afford 6 wait a little longer. 8 it let us return to the working jn the shop. I said that in the ‘we work until exhausted, but m the slow season some of pecially the helpers, work long hours, and this is the only such low paid workers, espe- = ke a living and stay in the neg the benef't of the bosses. began working in the slow sum- rm seavon, and I have kept a rec- of my working hours and money ; “since the month of July, d I think that this record will ry and exploitation is f ‘ ‘union and shortening the seasons. | Ten Hours of Sleep Inte [ May Abandon Liner Celtic Wrecked on Rocks Off Irish si ‘A UNION THAT iS Provincetown Playhouse to FISHER FOREMAN Revive O’Neill’s Sea Flays | Dy a a8 | Sipe jae = oma * Se tae areas huge White Star liner Celtic, which went eground on rocks near the entrance to Queenstown | Ireland, may be abandoned, all salvage efforts Harbor, Celtic when she was fe aoede having failed. wrecked were a number of survivors of the Vestris disaster. ed to labor all sorts of hours to save the cargo. DAILY WORKFR, NEW YORK, THU | 4 Among the passengers on the | The crew has been Jewish ‘Workers Theatre By A,B. MAGIL, | On Dee. 15, 1925, a group of left wing Jewish workers in New York Cisy, organized as the Freiheit Dra- Studio, began the t atre. Only five days later a nee of 130 working class organiza- tions founded the Workers’ T..catre Assecia‘ior,, (ARTEF), to which the Freiheit Dramatic Studio was affili- ated. Thus the cornerstone was laid. But many such cornerstones have been laid—and that’s about all. In this case, however, the initiators of tke mevement for a Jewish workers’ theatre approached their task with an earnestness and devotion that carried on despite all obstacles and whipped the idea cf a non-commer- cial workers’ theatre iato a living reality. The lath and plaster work had te be done if the structur to stand up, the raw material, work- ers in the 3, had to be molded into convincing actors. This couldn’ be done in a weck or a month or even @ year. And so a complete dramatic school was established, a director Jacob Mestel, an actor of many years experience, and other teachers engaged, and work was started. Work it was, requiring tire- less devotion and sacrifice. After! hours of toil in the shops or on the picket jines the members of the Freiheit Dramatic Studio would come to their classes every night of the week and all day Sunday and spend long hours of difficult study and yehearsal. For three years these workers studied, aud now at the 43th Street Theatre, just off Broadway, the Workers’ Theatre Assoeiation ! pre- f sents the Freiheit Dramatic Studio in the fir sh Workers’ Theatre, Beinush Sveiman’s trilogy. “At the Gate.” The produc- tion opened Sunday and will be given twice a day on successive Sundays. At the “age of 21, Beinush Stei- man, a Russian Jewish worker, gave | up his life fighting for the Russian Revolution. He left behind him his dramatic trilogy, consisting of “At the Gate,” “Messiah Ben Joseph” and “The Red Child.” | So much for history. | The first production of the Jew- ish Workers’ Theatre proved to be} a twofold surprise. Surprise number 1: the acting and the production as | 2 whole attained a level equalling | and in some respects surpassing pro- fessional performances. theatrical technique “At the Gate” requires no apology. Surprise number 2: the play it-| self is a weak, ineffectual piece, | thoroly alien in dramaturgie ma- terial and treatment to the class-| conscious proletariat? Amazing as it may seem, the first production of the Jewish Workers’ Theatre is a| play built on—a messiah theme! But this is not auite so, N. Buch-| wald, dramatic critic of the Freiheit | and a member of the advisory board of the J-wish Workers’ Theatre, as-! er |compounded of reactiona Gives Its First Production sures me. The messiah in “At the Gate” is meant to represent not the conventional redeemer who is to lead the people out of bondage, but the very reverse: he is the collective will of the people, agitating against the idea that salvation can come thru a redeemer and urging that in the people themselves lies tho power of their liberation. If so (I am judging only the act- ing version as I haven't read the original text), this idea simply didn’t “get across” in the produc- tion—not to me at least, nor to sev- eral others that I tclked to. The entire action of the play as present- ed revolves about the messiah or leader as an individual, not as a metaphysical concept. So much so that the synopsis of “At the Gate,” print.d on the program, fails almost ly to bring out (2 idea which Buchwald assures me underlies the play. Beinush Steiman died fighting for the proletarian revolution with vis fons ¢ a new world floo eyes. ‘But let us be frank: his dra- matic trilsgy, “At the Gate,” is not a revolutionary ploy, not a cla conscious play, not even a play con- taining ideas of social protest that an adult mind can bite on. At best it is a feeble excursion into bo geois utopianism; at wo y materials (whatever its symbolical intent may | be), it is full of religio-mystical hys- teria and naive, sentimental allegory in the conventional bourgeois man- ner. That it is “poetic,” that it is a sincere if confused : Jempt to envisage mankind’s progres towar! complete emancipation doesn’t ex- cuse its weaknesses. The truth is that the play, aside from its serious ideolezical shortcomings, is a rather pretentious dud, banal in every re- spect, and fails for the most part to be interesting. The fact that chosen as the first production of a king ei theatre seems to me to indicate ous confusion in }-he minds cf the directing spir of this theatre. Confusion or worse. Turning to the first issue of “Ar- tef,” the organ of the Workers’ The atre Association, I read in an article | f the by Jacob Mestel, the director theatr electing the rep for the first nerformance two ary principles were cons:/>ved: the purely spectacular and what may ‘be called the util! The play 3 As far as| selected had to offer the possibility | have it figured out that U. S, will is concerned, | of crcating a purely theatrical per-| not Jet Bolivia be beaten, and while |formance, but at the same ti me it had to make possible the presenta- tion of the students in practically all the studies that were taken up during the course of the three ycars of studio work. “A third principle (and necessar- ily cxe of the most important) was also a decisive factor: the ideologi- cal o' ‘2 of the pley selected.” In other words, the two primary considerations fcr Mestel were the the- effectivencss of the play z his} 1 tle possibilities it contained for exercising his students, while the ideological content, tho important, was of secondary consideration. This seems to me a false and dan- gerous approach for a working clas® theatre, an approach which ean be uce to justify all sorts of bourgeois tendencies. It need hardly bo cb- served that proletarian actors alone do not constitute a prel<' -‘2n the-| atre. I also have my quarrels with t! direction of “At the Gate.” Its style | seems to have been materially influ- enced by the methods of Vachtan-| gov, director of the Habima Theatre. | The theatre of Vachtangov is the theatre of mysticism, grotesquery, nuarce and shadowy mood. It had its social roots in the period of dis- illusion that followed the collapse of the 1905 revolution in Puccia, when the timorous bourgeois intelli- gentsia sought refuge in mysticism | and “god-seeking.” In the particu- | lar effects which it strives for the! jnumerous peals to fellow workers; and a lavish |disbursement of placards and leaf- lyour the city fathers. sult? known as City Hall, openly scorned|B. G. De Sylva, the lyrics! by De peeved about it. aires, realtors and property holders |couldn’t have their merely to provide increases in salary |for firemen. |what did he do? The usua] thing— DECEMEER 20, 1958 MILITANT NEED | OF THE FIREMEN yk Provincetown Playhouse is | O’Neill’s sea cycle of one-act plays, to open about January 9. The group was first performed by the Prov- Begging for Increase |incetown Players in 1916 and 1918. | It has been called the finest example Does No Good jof the early works of O'Neill. The _ plays are: “In the Zone,” “Bound (By @ Worker Correspondent) | East for Cardiff,” “The Long Voy- The firemen of Philadelphia have |#ge Home,” and “The Moon of the been waging an intensive campzign | Caribees.” during the past two:weeks for an| The New Playwrights production increase of salary. They are muni-| of “Singing Jailbirds,"” now playing cipal employees, who frequently risk | at the Provincetown will continue their lives for the munificent sum of | through Jan. 5. $4.50, Some of them “advance” to the stage where they secure as much as| The Shuberts are planning to $5.50 per day or a total of $33 per | Stage “Make Bcom Boom,” a new week, out of which sum they have | musical expenses, including McIntyre and Ann Seymour. The “shakedowns” to swell the campaign | Score is by Werner Janssen and the chests of the republican organization | bcok ard lv-ies are respectively by before the primais and regular elec-|Fe-=y Todd Mitchell and Mann tions. The campaign to secure a decent standard of living took the form of | radio broadcasting; person# | service for “Angela.” a Jack Linder has accuired a play tin A, Somers, who is in the cast * 53 Ots T Ne) erm oration Erte Reng SeUASHGWS xT at with Mark Linder, author of that FIRE! FIRE! | play. Ths play may reach Broadway The Philadelphia firemen protect | sometime in February. homes. Help Them Protect | By sending word to the| Theirs! “Follow Thru,” the new Schwab | |mayor that you are in fAvor of an| and Mande! musical comedy, opened | Guard Kills Negro increase of salary... Please write a}at the Hanna Theatre, Cleveland, letter to the mayor and councilmen. | last night. The cast includes: Irene Oh! yes, please send a letter to| Delroy, Jack Haley, John Barker, Well scores’ of | Zelnia O'Neal, John Sheehan and With what re-| Madel'ne Cameron. The book was One Councilman, Hall, often| written by Laurence Schwab and thousands were sent. all the suggestions. In fact, he was The poor million- | Sylva and Lew Brown, the 1 by Ray Henderson. Folowin a short tour the production will oven here} at the Chanin 46th Street Theatre on Jan 9. taxes raised “LUCREZIA BORGIA” AT THE CARNEGIE PLAYHOUSE FRIDAY. The mayor, the Hon. Mr. Mackey, nothing. But the avalanche of letters grew : : daily. Something had to be done! «tneasy Money” will end its run| DUE Yachtangov is wnsur-| about it. And so something was| at the Little Carsegie Pleyhouse to- reel foe a Werke hese ee | done, The firemen were promised | night. The theatre will’ then be motel for a workers’ theatre. Its mysticism and attenuated estheti- | cism have nothing in common with} the dynamic, bold, intransigert spirit cf the revolutionary proletariat. | And it is this dynamic quality which the highly stylized direction | of “At the Gate” fails to grasp. | Fortunately, the great errors of the first produc*ion of the Jewish Workers’ Theatre can be remedied. The three yesrs of intensive study | have been well, superbly well spent; | the worker-actors have acquired the tools of their trade, the foundation has been laid. I have also nothing but praise for the settings by M. Zolotareff and the choral effects for which A. Elstcin wrote the music. All t is needed now is a real working class play. I know there are such. And those two precious “primary” principles ean—if need be—go.by the board for the sake of the third and all-imp.rtant one: ideological content. If the Jewish Workers’ Theatre is to be a real weapon in the struggles of the work- jers, it must be sharp, a; nd str Assurance That Wall Street Is Supporting | War (Raises Bonds Bonds of the Anacende Conner Mines Co., the concern that owns so many metal mines in South Ameri- | ‘ea, rose yesterday on the New York bond merkst as did also eovernment jbonds. of Bolivia. The big skylocks not averse to allowing the normal de- | pression accompanying a war scare to take place. could not keep their fingers off Bolivian and Anaconda bonds long enough to allow them to go down very far or stay very long. Trading volume barely reached the two million share market in ves- |terday’s stock exchange session. That ‘and a dron%n call morey to 6 ner cent were the features ard the for- ces which helned s-st values in} ‘various sections of the list. | | Record of Hours, Average Average Month weekly hours hourly pay |: July . 54 50 cents August 50 cents September 50 cents October ... 69 50 cents November .......67% 56 cents December (half) .54% 56 cents But my figures will talk louder if I add a few exvlanations. I cal- culated on the entire week, because not all days are of the same work- ing length. Friday and Saturday are ally short days (to a dry aner a day of seven or eight hours come to m an remely short y, practically no wo at all), and Mondays I either work only two or three hours or nothing at all, so that the bulk of the work falls on three days. Then, too, I have responsibility of a family and al- Pa |I canrot get away too early because |that throws the work on my fellow- |workers and lengthens their hours lunduly. I know of workers in the |shop who have worked over 80 hours |a week in the séason, some days do- ‘ing a stretch of eighteen how that my sad tale of | Once, coming in to work after mid-| the custom th eh night, I met a worker, leaving the | tnust be finished the same day, and place for home, who had come to'the work must continue day and! | \ work at six o’clock in the morning. When I expressed surprise on see- ing him, he said: “Oh, I am coming in late tomorrow.” “Yes,” I asked him, “how late?” “Oh, about eight or nine oclock in the morning.” was the reply. And this worker had, to ravel from downtown to the Bronx. You can see what this means in terms of life to a dry cleaner. Swal- low your meals in a hurry, five hours’ sleep, dizzy from overwork, eyes inflamed from the chemicals used, brain drunk and feverish, bad temper home (the only poor dev'ls that will stand it); but plenty of time for work, plenty of time to coin shekels for the boss. Yes, the worker gets paid for the overtime, but he will have to use the money during the slow time when he earns some fifteen deilars a week, or he it in doctor and drug store bills, as ly men with families to support, | ways get away as soon as.I can, but|a good many of us do. Now, -why must we work such long hours? I said before this is due to the seasonal nature of the work, but this does not explain all. Others have seasons, too, and yet they do not work such inhuman hours, The trouble in our trede is at all work brought in |n‘ght until all is finished. Of course, under present conditions, the bosses | would say thet if they do not send | back the work the next dey some) other shop will do it, but it is ob-| vious that if the union had control over the trade the union could easily limit the number of hours one may work in one day or in one week | throughout the entire trade. Bvt, | so far, the union gang has not even ised the auestion. It stands to yeason that if the hours were lim- ited the pay would have to increase in arder to enable workers to make a living, and a lengthening of “the seasons and a guarantee of u cer-| tain number of weeks throughout the year would become necessary. Rut this means ra‘sing serious trade problems, this means serious dis-| cussion and free expression inside no | will, perhaps, have to pay some of | the union, this means also fighting the bosses for real and not-fake de- |mands; and all this the gang who! faked a ike last February in col- | tusion with the bosses and without | getting anything for the members | —all this the gang cannot and will | not do, These and other problems, |which stand before the dry clean- | ers, will have to wait until there is | a ronk and file m'litant left wing | union administre!icn. LEON MASSOF. wigh, make a real effort to better | (sometime in the future) a raise of a whole 50c a week. Whether this promise will be kept remains to be seen. Philadelphia politicians are always good promisers, so the fire- men can rezard the matter as highly! Conrad Veidt, famed for his char. unnromising. : acterizations in several screen pro- However, the firemen can, if they) qucticns, enacts the role of the de- closed uatil the following evening, when “Lucrezia borgia,” a new Ger- man film, will be given a gala American premiere at a special per- formarce beginning at 8:30 o'clock. their conditions. Build a_ strong to please write a letter to the mayor union, organize all the firemen,|but demand a living wage for them- hosemen, and laddermen into one selves and their families. big union, and not ask~the citizens! Cc, RABIN. CUT OUT THIS BLANK Signe Put Your Name on This List of GREETINGS! to the THESE NAMES ARE TO BE PUBLISHED IN TH Birthday Edition of the WHICH IS TO APPEAR JANUARY 5, 1929. | Amount —.)1———————$—— eee Remit to Daily Worker, 26-28 Union Square, New York City LT SD COLLECTED BY: STREET ........ CITY ... decceseecesecrseneees STATE seeerettnn Se Rates: $1.60 per name. All names must be turncd in by December 29th. preparing a revival of Eugene) comedy featuring Frank) Holiner, who performed a_ similar} called “Memories,” written by Mar- | 3 3] In “Wings Over Europe”, Theater | Guild play at the Martin Beck The- |atre. | generate Cesare Borgia. The title te is played by Liana Haid, a Ger- au cinema actress who makes her ~n_ screen dekut in this pro- du.tion. Paul Wegener and Hein- jvick Georg cre also cect in the | film. Directed by Richard Oswald, |the phctoplay was filmed in the | Ttuiar locales where the Borgias made history. The picture is’ de- | seribed as a dramatic pageant of hisvory. Who Cursed Him BATON ROUGE, La., (By Mail). —Wiley Alleh, a white trusty guard at Camp E, Angola prison farm, death. Allen claims that Brown cursed him, whereupon, for this great pro- vocation, Allen shot him six times and concluded by striking the dying man upon the head with the butt end of the revolver. Allen is a second termer, and about a year ago shot and killed Lee Bell, a convict, who was attempting to escape. He was made a trusty guard. West Canada Fruit Workers Organize VANCOUVER, British Columbia, (By Mail).—Fruit workers of the British Columbia fruit belt, both skilled and unskilled, have formed the Fruit Workers Union. The fruit workers of the Oskanagan Val- ley receive starvation wages, work- Alexander Kirkland shot Jeff Brown, a Negro convict, to} rrupt Twenty-four of Slavery in Cleaning, Dyeing Plant DOES THE DIRTY WORK OF BOSS e Only Fighting Union Can End Slashes (By a Worker Correspondent) FLINT, Mich., (By Mail).—In De- partment 3B of the plant of th | Fisher Body Co. here, there is a sub- foreman just recently promoted from the ranks who has become all jears and eyes in his anxiety to find | ways and means to cut the wo wages. further. He just put thru a price cut on the quarter-panels in this department. | Before he was appointed sub-fore- |man, he used to be one of the fir: |to complain against wage cut that he has become a straw bos |shows absolutely no sympathy for nbi- |the workers. Now his only tion is to prove himself a slav jdriver. He prays for the day when |he will succeed in pulling some fere- 'man down and get his place, When lany renairman is short of work. he puts him to work trucking and la- jboring. There is only one to stop such price cuts, and that is to organize a union which will fight for the workers of the auto industry. Wederal Reserve Says | Less Deposits, Loans The Federal Reserve Board’s con member banks in leading jof December 12 s) the week of $89.01 5 aiscounts, of $12,000,C05 in in ments, of $12,000.090. in net deman| deposits, and of $15,000,000 in go grmment deposits, and an i of $7.0C0,000 in borrowings from federal reserve ban! | The figures seem to inc | divicuels posit, cour credit, deliberately brought about & the government which has refw: to make deposits. The fewer lo: may be the r° alt ¢* the hieho discount 2 in |eral Reserve Board 2 | Department—and the | generally. | We demand the mm ition of Se: Union States covernmen ing as long as 12 hours a day. Yee, LEY SSCS | | WingsOver EUROPE MARTIN BECK THEA, 45th St. West of Sth Ave. Evenings 8:30 Thurs. and Sat. Major Barbara GUILD ° Thursday Strange Interlude John GOLDEN ,thea, oan Mats. 2:30 ea We atna St Eves, 8:30, Mats. ‘nd Saturday 220 B'way 6:30 EVENINGS ONLY AT Y 14St fivic REPERTOR Eves, 8:30 50c; $1.00; $1.50. Mats, Wed. &Sat.,2.3¢ EVA LE GALLIENNE, Director Tonight, “Peter Pan.” Tomorrow Eve., “Hedda Gabler.” Stalin’s Interview with the Union Delegation 1928: The Presidential Elec! John Pepper ........ Why Cooperation—George If you have some of these i of above enumerated up-t 35 EAST 12STH STREET WORKERS LIBRARY PAMPHLETS Workers—Jay Lovestone . The Trotsky Opposition and the Ri, BAL REMA LIM GUAR inicss tec hapssddbstagsvoades <s nntheGh Why, Every Miner Should Be a Communist— ‘The Communist Nucleus—M. Jenks ‘ American Negro Problems—John Pepper. America Prepares for War—Jay Lovestone..... Wrecking the Labor Banks—William Z. Foster. Full set at a. special price of only $1.00 re away and order a full set at this special price. One’ year’s subscription to THe Communist ($2.00) and full set RN CSR A “ED Order from WORKERS LIBRARY PUBLISHERS | TH AVENUE PLAYHOUS: 66 FIFTH AVENUE — ALG. Continuous Performa —T Wo to Midnight —Popilar Prices | Professor IVAN PAVLOV'S “Mechanics of the Brain’ LITTLE | 146 Ww. ARNEGIE Noon etn PLAYHOUSE | Popular Prices “UNEASY MONEY— |THE AMAZING ADVENTURE OF A BANKNOTE” Produced by KARL FRE ARTHUR HOPKINS presents “HOLIDAY” a new comedy by Philip Barry | PLYMOUTH Phea.,W.45th ves.8.30 Mats. Thurs. & Sat. MEAT CUTTERS GAIN. MIAMI, Fla, (By Mail).—Meat ‘eutters of this city have forced the 'Tip Top and Piggly Wiggly chain | grocery st.zcs to recogn’se ‘their | unien, Attend the ‘Daily-Freiheit cos- tume ball at Madison Square Gar- First American Trade tions and the American ight Danger— 25 Halorien Total price pamphlets already, give them ‘o-date pamphlets #for $2.50. NEW YORK CITY { {i