The Daily Worker Newspaper, December 24, 1928, Page 6

Page Six =— Published by National Daily Worker Publishing | As’n., Inc., Daily, Except Sunday, at 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. Y. Stuyvesant 1696-7-8. Cable Address “Da $8 a year $6 a year ROBERT MINOR . Editor | WM. F. DUNNE 3ritain’s Latest Conspiracy Against the Soviet Union Even though the tory imperialist govern- ment of Britain is engaged in mobilizing the highest degree of resistance to the new and aggressively insolent turn of American im- perialism signalized by the election of Hoo- ver, it still finds time to engage in provoca- tions and armed conspiracies against the So- viet Union. Thus, like the United States government, it fights against the first work- ers and peasants republic while at the same time carrying on intrigues against its capi- talist rivals. Just as the United States is desperately trying to extend and consolidate its powers in Latin-America, so Britain, in its war preparations, tries to encircle the Soviet Union with bayonets in an effort to isolate and destroy the Bolshevik government. The rebel bands now engaged in waging an at- tack upon Kabul, capitol of Afghanistan, are bought and paid for mercenaries of Baldwin and Chamberlain, equipped with British arms and munitions. Their purpose is to over- throw the government of Ammanulla, pro- gressive Islamite king of that country and establish in its place a government servile to | Britain so that it can create a buffer state against the Soviet Union and obtain a base from which to launch military operations from the south in an eventual war of ag- gression. But thus far the Afghanistan government has succeeded in repelling the imperialist hirelings. That Britain is preparing for direct intervention with British troops is indi- cated by the fact that British planes have been dropping leaflets over the Afghanistan | lines threatening intervention in case of “harm befalling British subjects.” This intervention is another source of danger of another world war; a war against the Soviet Union. In such a war the class struggle will be concentrated on an interna- tional scale—the fight of the Soviet world to resist the attacks of the capitalist world. In such a fight the Soviet power will have re- serve forces among the seething millions of the colonies and among the proletariat of the home countries engaged in the war. Every resource of the working class and the peasantry of the countries affected should be mobilized to prevent the war on the Soviet Union. But if, in spite of all ef- forts to prevent it, war against the Soviet Union does come, the capitalist nations will face the mightiest power ever generated in the world, the power of the world proletariat and the colonial peoples of the world, under the leadership of the vanguard of the ex- ploited masses, the Communist International. In such a war the one demand will be, not fraternization of the soldiers at the front, but wholesale desertion of the imperialist armies to the camp of the Red Army, the army of the workers and peasants. In such a struggle the question will be plainly put:— Desert the imperialist armies and with guns in hand go over to the side of the armies de- fending the Soviet Union. In the imperialist countries themselves the workers will be urged to paralyze the war industries and take advantage of the economic and _ political crisis to overthrow the imperialist govern- ments and set up Soviet republics. When the United States, Britain or any other country plays with war, they are only invoking the powers that will eventually de- stroy them, for just as surely as they dare launch another war just so surely will they face the next stage of the world revolution before they have gone very far. system is the phys During the si mentality by the planation was late candidate keepers and revolutionary workers who should send in revolution. SUBSCRIPTION RATES: By Mail (in New York only): $4.50 six mos, By Mail (outside of New York): $3.50 six mos. Address and mail all checks to The Daily Worker 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. Y. It is notor prisoners is vile, that most prisoners emerge from a period of confinement physical wrecks. This systematic destruction of the physical man is accompanied by a warping of their D $2.50 three mos. $2.00 three mos. Prison Depravity One of the feStering sores of the capitalist prison regime. -Most criminal laws of capitalist society deal with crimes against property. majority of victims of capitalist criminal law are workers deprived of an opportunity to earn a living’who were driven to desperation in order to obtain means with which to en- able them and those dependent upon them to exist. No prison regime can ever change the economic forces that impel men to violate the laws of private property. in vogue in United States prisons, far from aiding the individual to improve himself. i y and mentally, i: deprave him in every conceivable way. By far the overwhelming And the system calculated only to past year there have been a number of desperate prison revolts by prison- ers who knew from the outset that their chances of success were hopeless. ply chose to die fighting rather than en- dure the fiendishness of the regime. They ious that the food furnished depriving them of an oppor- tunity to receive literature other than that approved by the ignorant prison chaplins— ordained preachers and priests saturated with superstition of preaching submissiveness and servility to the chained and helpless victims of capitalism. Only a few days ago the warden of Auburn | Purpose. prison excluded the Daily Worker. the dark ages and No ex- given. None was needed. The warden, one of Tammany Al Smith’s favorite jailers, is in charge of the prisoners. A paper that so relentlessly exposes the fraud of the for Wall Street, as well as all by hangmen of capitalism is a tribute to the Daily Worker—one of the many things of which we are proud as we near the | the wri Fifth Anniversary of the founding of this |already chartered a course and were | paper. All workers, all readers and supporters of our paper should remember that we are known as favorably because of the enemies we have made during the past five years as {had been to create a magazine that by the friends we have made. And all those | ist present the whole movement have suffered in capitalist dungeons, or who have relatives or friends or comrades in the fight who have suffered greetings, get organizations to SOCIALIST CONSTRUCTION IN U.S.S.R. AILY WORKER, NEW YORK, .».4* DECEMBER. 1344 a “nt IN THE WINTER OF PROSPERITY By SOL AUERBACH ‘HERE have been journals and vaguely calling them- s of proletarian litera- |ture, without taking the trouble to formulate that initial clarification |and definition of their function and. Some of these journals |take on a nebulous and undefined |form, launching into their vroject without first clearly stating their conception of what proletarian art is, what form such an art takes in |# bourgeois country. Such journals more often tal lious tone, rather than a constcuc- other capitalist illusions is dangerous to the | tive revolutionary one. ruling clique even of prisons. i One specific reason why our paper is ex- cluded from prisons is the fact that in every prison outbreak we have exposed the loath- some conditions that provoke such outbreaks. While other papers loudly acclaim the fright- ful massacres of unarmed prisoners drunken depraved police guards, we defend the heroic and desperate action of the re- volters, we explain that no person accused of a crime against property should be re- garded as other than a victim of capitalism, that "prisons are built not for the big crim- inals, the big thieves, the oil swindlers, the | political grafters, but for the poor exploited workers; in a word they are class institutions. To be excluded from prisons by the prison For some time Hen has been formulating his Barbusse views of proletarian literature, chiefly in the | Moscow journal, “Culture and Rev- \olution.” Last June “Monde” made its appearance in Paris, under the direction of Barbusse, and is an at- tempt to put the editor’s views into practice. MONDE has an interna- tional circulation and twenty-five of jits numbers have already crossed the Atlantic, offering enough ma- terial for a balancing of its pro- fessed purpose with its actual ac. complishments. MONDE was launched under a fa- jvorable breeze which blew strongly {in one direction. In the fi: place Barbuss= had already charted the direction in which the ship must go, jgiving it plenty of motive power in a concise and uncompromising basis |for its work. In the second place well on their way towards the con- struction of a proletarian literature in the environment of a proletarian | society. Barbusse’s often expressed wish of revolutionary proletarian litera- ture, to interpret that new man— the worker—as a part of an inter- national revolutionary class struggle to overthrow bourgeois society and | donate to the Daily Worker on this Fifth |¢Place it by an international chain | Anniversary so that we may be able to con- tinue our fight until the time comes that the | clutionary struggles of the colonial walls of the torture chambers for the work- | peoples, the struggle against imper- ing class fall before the avalanche of the |ialism. the struggle of the working jof Soviets. Such literature in its | broad aspects would include the rev- | jclass in capitalist countries, in fact the whole many-sided and profoundly | deep mass movements shaking the foundations of the present society land directed to the construction o¥ a new world. One of the greatest illusions about proletarian art is that it, is By E. KWIRING. superiority of h on the y extent. These important capital in- conceived by many people in the old The past twelve months repre-|collective farms in comparison with| vestments enable the collective| ‘once ot a “literary cchoal,” with sented a great step forward on the| individual farms, so that we can| farms to increase their area under| one writer at its head and with one way to a socialist transformation|h¢re restrict our Ives to a single| cultivation very considerably and to|ichnique and spirit, And it is of the Soviet villages. It is only| instance. |augment both the total output and) ointed out that outside of the jow that we can fully understand| _In the year 1927 the harvest yield now timely was the slogan of the XV Party Congress, which pofnted she way to collective economy in the hand, and of the individual peasant farms, on the other, figured as fol- mural districts. The slogan met) lows: with much approval among the In the case of . deasant masses, During the sowing | collective farms Rye Wheat time last spring the collective move-| Ural District 67 71 nent grew to such dimensions as| North Caucasus 121 66 nad not been experienced in past! Middle Volga District 59 51 years, extending above all to broad) Crimea 69 72 masses of the village poor. In the individual Collective Farms Increase. peasant farms Suffice it to point out that in the Ural District 64 55 yast economic year the number of North Caucasus 82 59 sollective farms was doubled. This| Middle Volga District 42 36 Crimea 62 57 tendency among the poor peasants, 0 collaborate on collective farms is | As a result of the extremely poor n the first place to be explained| provision of the poor peasants with oy the fact that they have been con-| agricultural implements by the gov- vinced by the collective farms al-| ernment, substantial capital invest- ready in existence of the advan-| ments for the support of the newly ages of big agricultural enterprises formed collective enterprises are re- over small ones, and also by the fact| quired. In this respect great pro- that the material support afforded) gress was made last year. The col- ‘he collective movement was great-| lective farms were accorded long- er this year than last. termed credits to an extent of 61 In the pres, indications have fre-/ million roubles, which is an increase quently been published showing the|to more than three times the former| of 1021 collective farms on the one} the marketed portion thereof, This is confirmed to the full by the following figures: 1926-27 Area under cultiva- tion in 1000 hect Total production in 1927-28 876 1700 millions of roubles 103 189 Commercial quota of output in mill.ofr. 35 84 | Large State Credits. As we see, the area under cul- tivation has in one year been dou- bled, with output increasing in about the same proportion. Absolutely speaking, these figures are natural- ly still small, but the rapidity of | their advance opens a very satisfac- | tory prospect. As regards the esti- | mates for the economic year 1928- |29, there is a prospect of no less |than 100 million roubles _long- | termed credits, while we hear that \the area under cultivation is to be | increased to about 3 million hectares and the value of the total output to be raised to 260 million roubles, To Be Continued | Soviet Union there is no group of writers which can be definitely called proletarian, that there are not many novels which can be |tormed proletarian. This is almost the same as saying that there is no revolutionary struggle in the bour- there is no international working class revolutionary movement. For |these mevements have already found | their expression in literature and Jit should be precisely the function |of such a journal as MONDE, if it is to properly fulfill its function as a proletarian journal, to present this literature of revolution against cap- italism. Henri Barbusse very correctly points out that besides this positive work of laying the foundation for the literature of the future society by presenting end coordinating proletarian literature during the period of revolutionary struggle, such a journal as MONDE professes to be must also carry on a relentless fight against the bourgeoisie in the on a general rebel- | of the Soviet Union had | |}geois and colonial countries, that | Tendency of United Front With Bourgeois Writers Hurts Proletarian Aims |field of culture, combat its pessim- ism, mysticism, get a stranglehold on its decadence. The bourgeois scribblers, both great and petty, are combatants in the ranks of the enemy, carrying in their writings all the poison of a decaying society. Perhaps the chief reason for not having thus far a clear picture of | the rising tide of proletarian revolu- tionary literature in bourgeois so- ciety is the lack of a clear criticism whose principles are based on the revolutionary tenets of the Soviet Union and the working class lead- ers of the international revolution. Such a criticism can only be based upon the Marxian conception of his- torical materialism, used as an effi- cient tool in the appraisement of literature and in directing the ef- \forts of the revolutionary writers. | 8. ON would then expect that such a journal as MONDE would limit itself to these three main tasks— the presentation of the movement in revolutionary proletarian literature, the function of Marxian critic elari fying for proletarian writers their role, purpose and aims; and a crit- and art which is bound to lead only to an attack upon them. I say “limit itself’—but one can readily see that the three tasks mentioned |above are by no means limitations, | but, on the contrary, a field as wide and profound as anyone would de- sire to tackle. Perhaps the best contribution that MONDE has made is its intention, which has been better formulated than is usually the case. It is the only magazine I know of in a bour- geois country which has defined its purpose and aim as a proletarian journal with some degree of pre- ciseness and with an appreciation of its tasks. It is not a spontaneous offspring of some nebulous thought on the subject of revolution, but its program, at least as Barbusse ex- pressed it, is definite and revolution- ary. What has it actually done? Has it contented itself with merely for- mulating a program, or is it actu- ally carrying it out? Jt has been most successful in |this one respect—in actually pre- ical analysis of bourgeois literature | senting some proletarian literature of high merit. It has run in seria’ form the vagabond memoirs, ef Pa- nait Istrati; a novel called “The Worker,” by the Flemish proletarian author, Stijn Streuvels; it is now |publishing a novel of the Mexican revolution by Mariano Azuela; Jean Tousseul, the Belgium waterfront worker, writes in its pages; it car- prolific Soviet literature, which has barely been touched by translators. It is well illustrated by revolu- vera, Zilze, Grosz, Serge and others. Following the dictate of its cover that it is a weekly bulletin of liter- ary, artistic, scientific, economic and social information, it carries pano- ramas of happenings in the literary and artistic worlds, a full page of paragraphs on international affairs, which 2re very interesting and’ in- structive. It follows the struggle of Sandino closely as well as the countries against United States im- |perialism. There are reviews of the cinema, the theatre, music, phono- graph records; criticisms of paint- ers, old and new; of architecture, of house construction, of writers. In fact it is a curious mixture of odds and ends of information thrown in to make a very paradoxical journal. I find no fault with choosing such a variety of subjects—in fact it is commendable if the fight is to be carried out against the whole of a bourgeois culture in one journal. But all these subjects, if the orig- inal purpose of MONDE is io re- main intact, must be treated from a consistently revolutionary point of view, There are almost unbelievable paradoxes in the sheets of the MONDE, which leads one to believe that its collaborators are not united in their aims and efforts and as a result make concessions to bour- geois lite. ;.ure and criticism. eh wae IF MONDE has succeeded in pre- senting some proletarian writing of high merit, it has not thus far succeeded in the two remaining tasks. In fact it tends to confusion among the ranks of proletarian writers, when they see criticism of bourgeois “ters which lacks all the | } | (By Federated Press) “Except from the 18th day of De- cember to the following 24th of De- cember, inclusive,” reads the N. Y. labor law. The section on hours of work for women in mercantile estab- lishments begins with this exception. All bars are down for employers during the week before Christmas. The so-called 48-hour law, which really allows 51 hours.of work a week for women in shops and fac- tories, is shoved aside during the Christmas good will season. “It’s a wonder they don’t make us work Christmas Day, too,” said a tired woman at Wanamaker’s, as she sorted handkerchiefs mussed up by the last customer. “Yes, we get pay for overtime work, but not ex- tra pay, only the usual rate.” The usual rate is $10 a week in wages and a small commission on sales. To the woman patiently waiting on a fussy lady, who makes no pur- XMAS IS BOSS’ EXCUSE ‘TO SPEED UP. WORKERS isis ie se chases, there is no compensation for time lost, “No time even to lunch decently,” said another saleswoman. “We'll be here more than 12 hours tomorrow, and get maybe 10 minutes for lunch and 10 for supper. I'll be so tired by Christmas Day, it won’t be any holiday at all. I'll just want to stay in bed all day. Oh, yes, we’re open on Monday, Christmas ¢ve.” Woolworth’s 5 and 10 cent stores are open every night of the week hefore Christmas till after 9 p. m. More than 12 hours on their feet, in the close air of an overcrowded shop, leave the girls longing for Dec, 26 and the end of the mad rush. Many saleswomen taken on for the busy season, till Christmas, will be paid off after Dec. 24, “We need a rest all right,” said one girl. “You've said it. But a rest is no rest when thefe’s no money coming in,” ries interesting selections from the | tionary artists, such Di Ri- | a i y. » eS end vthere, NOW carrying on to ascertain if | faker. struggle of the Latin American | | backbone of Marxian revolutionary philosophy. The dangerous develop- | ment of MONDE is towards a united | literary front with the best of bour- |geois writers. There is absolutely |no need for that, and I think it is a| mistake, for our own field is much | |tco big, our three tasks are great, | and the leadership of such men as} | Romain Rolland, Upton Sinclair, De | Unamuno, Leon Werth and Tagore are to be combatted strongly if we are to have our own revolutionary | |literature. Instead MONDE cepts writers as collaborators and even points a commending finger at them. What would best indicate this trend of MONDE towards the lib- |eral bourgeois writers and its illu- sion that a united front with them ‘an be achieved is the inquest it is | proletarian literature ‘is possible and | \if so what is its role. Its inquest posts two questions: | 4. Do you believe that artistic and literary production is a purely individual phenomena? Do you think that it should or ought to be | the reflection of the main currents |which determine the economic and social evolution of humanity? 2. Do you believe in the existence of an art’and literature which ex- presses the aspirations of the work- ing class? Who do you think are its principal representatives ? Aside from the vague and mi leading formulation of the second | part of the first question—should |it not have been, rather, the economic | factors which determine social evolu- |tion and its main currents ?—the the American Labor Unions By WILLIAM Z. FOSTER Such men as “Skinny” Madden, Sam Parks, Simon O’Donnell and Brindell were highly destructive fac- tors in the labor movement. They poisoned union progress at its source. But upon occasion they had a certain regard for the demands of the workers and sometimes made fights to protect them. This they did in the realization that if they were to be able to advance their own personal intersts a basic con- sidcration was that they maintain a ong trade union organization. Crnsequently, often their unions of skilled or strategically situated workers, were very powerful, usu- ally at the expense of the other trades and the unorganized. But in many places the building trades grafters, in their greed and general spirit of reaction, killed the goose that laid the golden eggs by liter- ally “selling” ythe unions to the point of their extinction, Philadel- phia is such a place, Frank Feeney. One of the chief figures in the unsavory history of the Philadel- phia trade unions during the past quarter of a century is Frank Feeney. For ten years he was president of the Building Trades Council, and for seven years presi- Jent of the Central Labor Union. He is now president of the International Union of Elevatcr Constructors. For two decades he has been a key man in the right wing national machine of the A. F, of L. Within recent months he became a trember of the executive council of the National Civic Federation. Feeney is one of trade union lead2rs w towards Barbusse’s New Journal Monde #33 of the country. They have “pe dled” the movement in every conceivable way. Feeney is cynical about his graft- ing. At the 1914 convention of the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor, when Feeney was being tried for disloyalty to the workers, Jim Maurer quoted him as saying: “Sure I’m a grafter. Whenever you hear that Frank Feeney goes after something you make uy your mind he is getting his price. I’m fcr Frank Feeney.” This misleader of labor maintains ac-|his hold on the trade union move- j ment by virtue of his-firm seat in | the saddle at the head of the Eleva- tor Constructors. He follows a pol- ‘icy of furthering the interests of | this little group of skilled workers at the expense of the other related unions, especially the Machinists. | This is a commor trick of the labor Feeney haus had his hand in every fe of, betrayal. from running crooked papers to ig out strikes. |He was on the jayyoll of Martin | Mulhall, the arch betrayer, who re- |lates the following to show how Feeney earned his pay: “Thers was an agitation on to amalgamate the printing trades and |that would have been fatal to the employers; that we didn’t want; we | didn’t care how loyal Frank Feeney | would be to the typographical union, so long as he prevented the amalga- mation, and that is what we put him | in to prevent, aad it was prevented.” | A specialty of Feeney’s is capi- | talist politics. He has long been a | labor agent of the republican party, |a lieutenant of the reactionaries | Quay, Penrose, McNichol, et al in very posting of these questions is| the ranks of the workers. For this, | an admission of uncertainty. It may} he and his friends have been re- |be answered that the immediate | warded-from time to time with well- purpose for these questions was to| paid political jobs. Of McNichol, an | arouse controversy between bour-| avowed enemy of labor legislation geois and proletarian critics and|and a supporter of the thus lead to the further clarification | stabulary, Feeney said lof the proletarian view. It has state con- So far as my ‘friend ‘Jim MeNichol is con- | aroused controversies judging from | cerned, let me say to you that I am the numerous answers in Monde and) proud to call him my friend.” | has even broken out into the ever- jsnooping Parisian bourgecis press. Even the ultra-conservative Temps | Souday. | By far the most inconsistent as- pect of these questions is their bid for a united front with the bourgeois | intellectuals. Perhaps the Parisian | literary tradition delights in con- | troversy and loves such fights, but ; to my mind to carry the controversy ‘to those who are known to be the jenetnies' of the working class and | its ideology and to open the pages of Monde to these individuals is an| function Monde should be intended to serve. Jeang Cocteau, that flip- pant, decadent’ parlor wit; Waldo Frank, the decadent reviver of de- castles in Spain and rose gardens; the extreme individualist, De Una- muno; Emile Vandervelde, a traitor to proletarian revolution, they and others like them answer these ques- tions in Monde. What can they tell us about proletarian art and the aspirations of the working class? Their views are separated from ours by a whole society. If the purpose of the inquest fs to clarify the purpose of Monde let the proletarian writers and critics clar- ify it and develop their views by mutual exchange and a mutual fight against the’ very ones who have been invited to write in Monde. This united front tactic is the greatest danger to Monde and to its expressed purposes. We can only hope that it will make a sharp change in the direction it is travel- ing, drop some of its literary salon atmesphere and really devote itself | \task’ of a revolutionary proletarian | | journal, x entirely wrong conception of the} | to the execution of the three main) pointed to the State Industrial Coz | In 1905, largely through Feeney’s | efforts, the Philadelphia unions put vup an Independent Labor ticket. | carried an animated answer by Paul| Feeney was the candidate for sher- | iff. Labor, enthusiastic, rallied to the workers’ ticket. The Labor Day parade of that year, consisted chief- ly of floats extolling the labor ticket. But at the eleventh hour Feeney withdrew his name iv far or of the republican candidate ané in- duced the new party to endorse the whole republican ticket. “iis hz» trayal made Feeney a big cog ra the local republican machine. | Feeney has sabotaged various im- portant pieces df labor legislation in Harrisburg. Secretary Quinn of the State Federation of Labor accused him of being responsible for the defeat of the Workmen’s Compensa- tion Bill and of facilitating the pas- sage of the State Constabulary Law. In the past quarter of the century every attempt of the work- ers in Pennsylvania to move -for- ward, on either the economic or po- litical field, has had to confront the opposition of Feeney. That is one reason why their trade unions 97 in such a demoralized condition and also why Feeney is wealthy, owning a palatial yacht, a large estate, and a summer home in Atlantic City. vames C. Tronin. Jim Cronin, business agent of the Molders’ Union, who at the age of 24 got elected as president of the Philadelphia Central Labor Union, was a pal .. - 2eney’s and the other building trades crooks, and partici- pated in their union wrecking enter- | prises. Cronin was a darling of the republican politicians and upon Feeney’s recommendation was ap- mission, of which he became cha’ man, a wr \ Misleaders in 2 i es