The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 28, 1929, Page 6

Page Six DAILY WORKER, National Daily JBSCRIPTION RAT: fail (in New York only): $4.50 six months three months (outside New York): 50 six months months n Published by the P ROBERT MINOF WM, F. DUNNE .. checks to 28 Union Trotskyites Take to Armed Counter -Revolution; | The Soviet Power Must Destroy Them. When the workers and peasants of Russia, under the leadership of the Communist Party headed by Lenin, over- turned the capitalist government and set up the first So- cialist Republic—many backward, untrained workers were for a while bewildered to see that certain so-called “socialist” parties took up arms to fight side-by-side with tsarist offi- cers and capitalist agents against the revolution. But in time they learn the meaning of the words “menshevik” and “social-democrat,” as descriptive of traitors who operate for capitalist “democracy” inside of the working class. Again a conflict of the same political content appears in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. About a hundred and fifty followers of L. D. Trotsky are exposed as having organized an underground group within Soviet territory for the purpose of overthrowing the Soviet Power. This group of counter-revolutionaries is seeking to undermine the con- fidence of the workers in all countries of the world in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. At the same time its operations within the Soviet Union constitute a help to, and would ultimately constitute an armed co-operation with, the imperialist powers seeking to crush the workers’ and pea- sants’ government. It is therefore absolutely necessary that the workers of the whole world understand just what these Trotskyites are—what they mean historically to the revo- lution. Trotsky was no stranger to the Russian labor movement prior to the revolution. For fifteen years Lenin fought Trot- sky and his whole political concept as inimical to the work- ing class. In order to build the Bolshevik Party as the leader of the revolution, it was necessary to tear the mask off of the petty-bourgeois ideology of Trotsky, showing him to be basically the same as other Mensheviks, despite a few wordy differences—and some of the greatest works of Lenin were those in which he thus exposed Trotsky. In 1917 Trotsky apparently gave up his differences with Lenin and was welcomed into the Communist Bolshevik Party, his services being used in spite of his very dangerous errors, in the overturn of the capitalist state. But after the death of Lenin the old menshevik ideology of Trotsky began to show itself in more dangerous ways. The period of intense labor in building up the socialist economy of the Soviet State tested the proletarian character of all elements in the Com- munist Party. Trotsky failed in the test. Around him gathered all the elements of pessimism and discouragement. Trotsky’s menshevism began to bloom again in full flower, and began to make itself the political expression of the views of petty capitalist class (being crowded to the wall by the ad- vancing new socialist forms of economy), that “socialism in one country is impossible.” Trotskyism does not openly admit its menshevist character. Under the historical conditions, that would be impossible; functioning within the land ruled by the workers’ dictator- ship, this peculiar type of menshevism must necessarily ex- press itself in different words. Trotskyism, attempting to displace and refute the ideas of Lenin, noisily proclaims itself to be “more revolutionary” than the Leninism of the Com- munist Party. Certainly there is a difference between the present-day menshevism of Trotsky and the old menshevism of the time before the revolution. But this “neo-menshevism” of the Trotskyites differs from the menshevism of the social- democrats only as the period of time is different. It is inevitable that in this period of imperialism and the proletarian revolution, when the comparative class forces throughout the world are such that the proletarian revolution is victorious in one country, and, on the other hand, the capi- talist class still rules in other countries—it is inevitable that groups of fresh types of mensheviks should make their ap- pearance. In the Soviet Union the proletariat desires the ex- termination of the other classes. These other classes cling desperately to their existence. Given the chance to maintain their class existence for a time by the New Economic Policy, and yet condemned to ultimate extinction by the development toward Socialism, the petty-capitalist groups form the foundation of the new menshevism which today finds its expression in Trotskyism. Can these have faith in the power of the working class to inaugurate a socialist system? Certainly not. Their pessimism permeates the weaker elements, especially the non-proletarian intellectuals, within and on the fringe of the Communist Party. Demands which are the essential class demands of the petty-bourgeoisie find their way into the platform of the neo-Mensheviks: demand for “freedom of opinion” in opposition to the views of the Communist Party, demands for the right of separate factional organization against the Party of the working class—in fact, the right of a petty capitalist party to organize and make its fight against the proletarian dictatorship. It is indeed the iron logic of history that the Trotskyites have taken the next step. Repudiated by the working class and membership of the Communist Party practically unani- mously, and obtaining no footing among the non-party masses of workers, the Trotskyites have resorted to the formation of an underground organization for civil war against the working class state. Where will the support of this Trotskyist movement come from? Obviously from all elements which wish to overthrow the Soviet power. Thus Trotskyism shows itself as genuine _menshevik counter-revolution, holding the basic common plat- form of the international bourgeoisie: the overthrow of the Soviet power. _ It is absolutely certain that the Communist Party of the ‘Soviet Union, and the workers’ government under its Lenin- _ ist guidance, will mercilessly crush this new counter-revolu- tionary conspiracy. It is their duty to the international ~ working class to do so. Meanwhile the ideological pressure of the still upward- ; American imperialist oligarchy creates a revival of ro among weaker elements of the Workers (Com- ynist) Party of this country, who have lost faith in the city of the working class to overthrow: the imperialism ich flaunts itself today in such seeming “omnipotence.” t is significant that this movement in this country finds its almost entirely among non-proletarian, student and al elements. It is also significant that it comes at e time of the rottenest degeneration of Trotskyism—when yism has by its own logic come to open counter-revolu- z “FRAME-UP? | | | WHAT OF IT? THEY’ NEW YORK, MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 192 9 — RE AGIN’ T By MOISSAYE J. OLGIN. Two innocent workers serving prison terms of 2% to 5 years. | Seven more awaiting trial for be- | ing loyal to their class. Fur manufacturers, F. of L. bureaucrats, “socialist” daily, po- | lice, gangsters, Ku Klux Klan and | class “justice” united in frame-up | against militant strikers leaders! | Aid must be rushed to frustrate | | | this assault on workers! * | TWO workers, Franklin and Malkin, | * went to jail Jan. 10 to serve a |prison sentence of 2% to 5 years. |Seven more workers: Mencher, * * | Schneider, Leonard, Maileff, Weiss, | | Katz and Rosenberg, were to be tried |Jan. 27 on the same charges that | placed the other two workers behind iron bars. What is their guilt? | They are accused of having raided a furriers’ shop in Rockwell Center, L. I, and wounding one of the own- ters. The crime is supposed to have been committed on April 19, 1926, during the great furriers’ strike. The | Rockwell Center, was proven by aj |accused were then active in New| host of witnesses beyond any | York. Some of them, like the head| of a doubt. There was a shop chair- | 19 The Mineola Fur | Fur Bosses, A. F. L. HE GOVERNMENT” By Fred Ellis Bureaucrats, Police, “Socialists” Work Together \the prosecution had confessed to hav- ing been involved in the attack upon the Rockwell Center shop. Last but dence” weve stories by detectives |—conferring on ways and means to | “get” the militant leaders, Flimsy Evidence. This flimsy “evidence,” so trans- parent that every unbiased observer ‘could see thru it the bosses’ hands that moved the puppet-witnesses, was shattered into nothing by the |very circumstances of the struggle as elucidated during the first trial (April, 1926) of these workers. The presence of every one of the accused in New York on strike duty during the very time the raid occurred in shadow not least in the prosecution’s “evi-| | who had spent hours in the offices) | of the right wing scab union organ-| |ized by the reactionary bureaucrats! }ance of the employers in one of the most stubborn fights ever waged by organized workers. The Mineola “case” is intrinsically interwoven with the fate of the strike and with the struggle of the Green-Woll bur- eaucracy against the furriers’ Left leaders, The furriers’ strike began Febru- jary 16, 1926, and was accompanied | by police brutalities on an unpre- | cedented seale, with 1,455 arrests, }imprisonments and fines. It was Frame-Up |conscientious objectors during the | war, and whether they had gone to Japan “as Communist delegates.” While the trial was going on, Mat- thew Woll and other A. F. of L. |eusing them of being ruled by Mos- |cow and of being hostile to “Amer- | ican institutions.” The same bureau- jerats, aided by the “socialists” of |the Jewish Daily Forward, accused the strike leaders of having corrupt- ed the New York police by a hundred | thousand dollar bribe. “Civil gov- j ernment is on trial today,” declared William Green at a conference March 21, 1927, while Matthew Woll declared at the same meeting that | the struggle against the militant fur- bureaucrats were conducting a press) campaign against the defendants ac-| tf hi | Tiers was “a struggle against the We sheet ptihgueeige ea Med eit at of the Soviet government.” |were tried and convicted on the|_ Before and during the trial, the |trumped-up charge of having at-|Jewish Daily Forward was conduct- | tacked the Rockwell Center shop, the| 8 & poison gas propaganda against entence later to be annulled by the the furriers calling all of them Com- ppellate division of Brooklyn, which | Munists, “Communist gangsters,” ordered a new trial. .It was only| “underworld men,” alleging that when the chieftains of the A. F. of ™any of the accused were profes- L. had decided to declare war against| Sional strong-arm men. This was the successful union that three more only part of a campaign, conducted September, | by all those elements with the aid jof the police and detectives and in |leaders were arrested in Copyright, 1929, by Internationai Publishers Co., Inc. Blid HAYWOOD’S BOOK Snowed Under at Silver City; Old McCann, A High-Grader and A Dope Fiend But Something of A Hero All rights reserved. Republica- tion forbidden except by permission. In former chapters Haywood told of his boyhood among the Mormons; young manhood as miner and sowboy; vanished hopes of a homestead; hardships; wife and baby and no job; with Coxey’s Army; leaving Nevada for Silver City, Idaho; the Western Federa- tion of Miners organizes the camp; Haywood an officer of Local 66. Now go on reading.—EDITOR. * kd ae By WILLIAM D. HAYWOOD. PART XX, HAVEN'T described Silver City, which was built in a canyon between two towering peaks, War Eagle and Florida mountains. The bot- tom of the gulch was full of bowlders and rocks which had been turned up by the early gold diggers. The town was but two streets wide, the rear street occupied by prostitutes, black, white and Chinese. There were seventeen saloons in the town, besides other business houses. In the winter the snow was often packed as deep as the first story windows. The little houses and cabins of the miners would be covered, nothing but the stovepipes stick- ing up through the snow. I had marked the trail to my house by sticking willows down on either side, and pulling them up as the snow increased in depth. One night I dropped into the corner saloon. There is a corner saloon in every mining camp, and this one differed little from any of them. There was a billiard and pool table, a stud-poker and a faro game were run- ning. I went over to the faro game, put down a dollar, and won on the turn. “Give me silver,” I said to the dealer, and asking the boys who were standing around to have a drink, we went over to the bar. I noticed a@ man sitting in a corner with his hat pulled down over his face. I asked Ben Hastings, the bartender: “Who is that man?” Ben answered, “That’s old McCann; he don’t drink much, but he’d sell his soul for a dose of morphine.” I called to McCann, “Come on, pardner, have a drink.” came up, he pushed his hat back a little, and said: “Hullo, Bill, you don’t remember me, I used to know you in Tuscarora.” Staring at his emaciated face, at last I recognized his features, haggard and aged by the use of the drug to which he was addicted, As I went out later, I noticed McCann speaking to one of the boys who worked in the Trade Dollar mine. * * The next morning, on my way to work, I saw a light in McCann’s cabin, and that evening I heard that he had gone to the stage office early in the morning, having dragged down a box on a hand sled, to be shipped off. The sheriff was at the stage office when McCann arrived there. He took McCann and the box to his office. When the box was opened there it was found to contain a lot of rich ore. McCann was charged with robbery and put in jail. After several hours in the cell, his cravings began. | sheriff and said to him: As he He called the | “A. B., you know that on account of my nerves I have been taking morphine, and I’ve got so I can’t get along without it. You'll get me some at the post office drug store? If you tell them there it’s for me they’ll know how much I want.” “Why, sure, Mac, I’ll do that,” said the sheriff. and Mae began pacing up and down the cell. | were throbbing, his body wet with cold sweat. | down he went, more restless and goaded every minute. The hours dragged along, but the sheriff did not come back. In the night he thought he was going to die. His tortured nerves seemed to crack and ravel inside him. Before morning came he longed for death. He called to the guard, his voice shaking: “T’ve got to get some morphine. You can get it!” The guard answered: “I can’t leave here any more than you can. till the sheriff comes in the morning.” It was late when Crocheron, the sheriff., came back. Mac was standing at the door of the cell. He reached a scrawny arm scarred with many jabs of the hypodermic needle through the bars of the cell, and said desperately: “Give it to me, sheriff, for God’s sake give it to me! I’m dying.” The sheriff pulled the little blue bottle out of his pocket. “T'll give it to you, Mac. But I must have the names of the men who gave you that ore to ship out.” Mac staggered, tripped on the food pan, and collapsed on the floor. Dragging himself back to the bars, he looked the sheriff in the eyes and said: He went away, Already his temples Up and down, up and You'll have to wait of the picket committee, Mencher,| men’s meeting in Manhattan Ly-| jand the chairman of the furriers’|ceum, New York, on the very day joint board, Schneider, belonged to| and hour when the raid in Rockwell |the top leadership of the strike.) Center took place. Most of the ac- | Others were engaged in highly re-| cused were active at that meeting. sponsible strike wprk, in a strike in-| The others could prove their pres- | volving 12,000 workers. | The scab shop they are supposed \to have raided employed, all in all, two women workers. Nine respon- | sible strike leaders from New York are accused of having traveled all the way over to Long Island to at- tack a shop of two workers! Stoolpigeon “Witnesses.” Could the district attorney produce any evidence to prove this silly charge? His “star” witness was a creature by the name of Bassoff, a stool pigeon and friend of the own- |ers of the Rockwell Center shop, a degraded former worker who first attempted to extort money from the leaders of the furriers’ union under | threat of causing them “trouble,” | and whc.. this failed, offered his ser- vices to the district attorney of |Mineola. Another witness was a man | by the name of Weisenblum who, previous to becoming a “pillar” for By NANCY MARKOFF, 0’ the fifth anniversary of Lenin’s and Peasant Correspondents) of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics are proving that they are true Len- inists. This is shown by the fact. that they have accepted it as their duty to give the lie to the vicious propaganda spread broadcast by the enemies of the working class about the workers’ republic and are realiz- ing the necessity to do their share to fight the war danger. Their death, the Rabseleor (Workers) jence in other parts of New York. In face of such iron-clad evidence it seems grotesque that the charges were pressed. Yet the supreme cour of Brooklyn confirmed the sentence of the Mineola court covering two of the accused and ordered a new trial for the others. The machine of the “law” is about to grind more lives of courageous j}and devoted workers. : Workers Innocent. The nine union members are not guilty of the crime they are being accused of, but they are guilty of a crime that is more unpardonable and grave in the eyes of the capitalists: they are guilty of having led a successful militant strike of 12,000 workers in face of the opposition of the A. F. of L. bureaucrats and the right wing traitors within it, are guilty of having broken the resist- Rabselcors Carry on Teachings of Lenin weapon is the pen and their battle- ground the international workers’ press, . “It is not enough that we have fought our revolution ‘and are now engaged in grappling with our prob- lems for building Communism. We must help the workers in capitalist countries make their revolution.” That was the message of Maria Ulianova, sister of Lenin and head of the Rabseleor movement in the U.S. S. R. to the delegates at their PN AAMAS Ge A RN MASON A ports with all of its strength the Bolshevik Party of Lenin in the severest measures that may be necessary against the Trotskyist conspirators in the Union of Socialist Soviet Re- publics. It also supports the ruthless expulsion of all the followers of this counter-revolutionary movement from our Party in this country, 26, on the same charge. ; And it was only when the bureau- crats had decided to organize an op- position union to break the victorious furriers’ union that a few more left jwing leaders were arrested and a trial begun (April, 1927). There is| an ominous coincidence also in the) |fact that, after the accused had been |free on bail for 21 months, a new trial has been ordered immediately upon the formation of the new needle | workers militant union of which the \furriers are an integral part. A Political Trial. This is not a trial for an ordinary {class trial. During the first trial (April, 1927) the district attorney started his concluding speech with the following words: “Gentlemen of the jury, you are dealing here with men that are crime. It is a politcal trial. It is a/ open co-operation with the employ- ers, to force the workers to register in the opposition union and thus lose | | the advantageous position conquered | |after a great victorious strike. | Aid Needed. And now two of the accused are | serving sentences while seven are to be tried in the same poisoned atmos- phere of a small town infested by the Ku Klux Klan, before a petty | bourgeois jury hostile to organized workers and frightened by the spectre of “Moscow.” The ‘situation is grave. The fur workers are being tried as the ad- vance guard of their class. They are being tried by the united forces of the bosses, the A. F. of L, bur- eaucracy, the police, the socialists of the Jewish Forward and the Klan. The workers who are conscious of the imminence of new strikes and “T can’t tell you.” him: The sheriff walked off and left Mac in his agony. A short time later the court was in session, and Mac, more dead than alive, was brought in for trial. The prosecuting attorney told “McCann, the mining company has no desire to prosecute you. But they do want to know the names of the men who gave you that ore.” McCann, lifting his worn and exhausted face; said: “I cannot tell you.” He was convicted and sentenced to seven years in the Boise peni- tentiary and he died there while serving his term. Ben had said he would sell his soul for a dose of morphine, he suffered untold agonies rather than sell his friends, * * 8 In the neat instalment Haywood writes of his life at Silver City, domestic cares and hardships; mine “buddies” killed by falling rock and injudicious handling of fulminating caps; the eight-hour | law and a labor faker of the Knights of Labor; Haywood elected a delegate to the W. F. of M. convention of 1898, But Worker, Peasant Correspondents Fight Foes of Soviet Union against the government.” In examining the defendants, the district attorney was very much in- terested whether they read the Com- munist “Freiheit,” whether they knew Ruthenberg, Lovestone or Weinstone, whether they had been new and much more far-flung ‘strug- gles must unite behind the accused to help them win this battle, Aid must be forthcoming. The battle in Mineola must be fought with relentless energy and deter- mination, new machines, I would want to ask Ford workers many questions about the highest development in production. We should not be en- tirely at the mercy of our engineers, We need only remember the Shakh- ty case to realize how important this is for us,” was the eager con- tribution to the discussion from a worker of the large automobile plant in Leningrad, Want Truth About U. S. Workers. “We are told by some Americans visiting Russia that Ford workers ride to and from work in their own automobiles, that they work only 5 days a week and receive big wages. That workers in New York and Chi- cago live in luxurious apartments and earn enormously high wages, “Yet we know that fierce battles are being fought in strikes. We know that capitalist rationalization Fourth Congress recently held in Moscow. “No political articles, no letters giving high sounding phrases of praise and. telling nothing. We should not say for instance, ‘Every- thing is beautiful here. When will you make your revolution?’ or such inanities. We should write about the way we live and we will ask the workers of our industry in capi- talist countries to tell us how they live.’ A miner from the Don Basin explained, “Tovarishchi (comrades), I can see very good results from interna- tional correspondence for the im- provement of our technical develop- New Bedford and their struggle with the false bureaucratic labor leaders. That the vast majority of textile workers previously unorgan- ized are now organizing under the revolutionary, militant textile work- ers’ union. We want to ask ques- tions about these things of the tex- tile workers in America.” This from a woman textile worker of the large textile centre, Ivanovno Voz- nesensk. Basis For Mass Paper. The worker and peasant corres- pondent movement is a big mass movement in the Soviet Union, The “Pravda” and the Bolshevik papers before the revolution considered worker correspondence one of the solid bases for a mass workers’ pa- per. After the revolution with the development of the proletariat and the abolishment of illiteracy in the villages this movement grew by leaps and bounds so that now 11 years after the revolution hundreds of thousands of workers and peas- ants and Red Army men write for their enormous working class press. Now, 11 years after the revolu- tion they are still militant workers and in their present class struggle with the kulaks in the villages they are in the forefront sacrificing their lives in the fight. Upon them rests the responsibility of rooting out bu- reaucratism wherever it is found, ment. Many “are the questions)in America is shortening the lives 4 which arise in our factories, when of workers. We know about the we are considering the purchase of revolutionary textile workers of often causing hardships to them- selves and their families, They are the “eyes of Lenin” on watch night and day for the faintest suggestion of irregularity and what they will write to American workers will bristle with the life and struggles of the working class for its eman- cipation from its exploiters and ene- mies. Interchange With Soviet Union. The American workers have much to write to the workers of the U. S. S. R. and much to learn from the letters they will receive. Ford workers, metal workers, chemical workers, steel workers, railroad workers, transport workers, textile workers, shoe workers, clothing workers—every man, woman and child who works for a living, you are invited to write to the worker: of your industry in the Soviet Union. ~ Write in English. The original letter will be published beside the translation, when it appears in th newspaper in the Soviet Union. Let ters should be addressed to the In ternational Workers Correspondeny Department, Daily Worker, 2 Union Square, New York, N. Y. Every letter received will promptly answered to inform thi writer. of the disposition of his 0; her letter. Another reply will com from the workers of the Sovie Union when it is received there Give your own name or use a pen name—if your letter is published the Daily Worker your neme v not be used unless requested. | |