The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 1, 1929, Page 6

Page Six “v__ DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 1929 eee Daily SNe as Central Organ of the Workers (Communist) Party National Daily A SUBSCRIPTION RATES: (in New York only): ar $4.50 six months $2.50 three months fail (outside of New York): a year $3.50 six months $2.00 thr ronths The Increase of the Executive Power in the American Capitalist Government In the course of the session of the Political Committee of the Workers (Communist) Party of February 18, there was a thoroughgoing discu United States government @s a war machine of the imperia presents to its readers the lin n of recent trends of the rike-breaking agency and The Daily Worker e of policy adopted by the Cen- a tral Committee towards this increasingly important ques- tion: (1) Our policy in conne of the president and general the government should be the (a) To utilize the fact of ction with the increased power ly of the executive branch of following: the growth of the power of the president and the executive branch of the government at the expense of the so-called legislat combat the democratic illusions ive branch of the government, to of the working class. (b) To expose the almost unlimited power given to the president in matters of war and peace as measures of transition from a parliamentary dictatorship of the bourgeoisie towards an open dictatorship; as measures dropping gradually the forms of democracy, adopting in an increasing degree methods and ways of open forces. (©) To expose the almost unlimited dictatorial powers given to the president in declaring an economic embargo against any other power and especially against the Latin American coun- tries and the Soviet Union, as of war preparations. (d) To expose these meas strengthen the role of the bourg economic life of the country, as the state capitalistic tendencies. one of the most effective means ures as methods to increase and eoisie government over the whole methods to develop and increase (e) To expose the propaganda of the bourgeois and petty- bourgeois liberals which try to foster illusions about the so- called “democratic institutions,” ’ and to put forward the Com- munist point of view which characterizes all branches of the government as instruments of the bourgeoisie, as state apparatus of the capitalist class. (f) bills to propagandize the Thesis To utilize the opportunity of the Porter and Capper of the Sixth World Congress and the program of the Communist International about the increasing role of state capitalistic tendencies in most of the capitalist coun- tries and about the declining role of bourgeois democracy in favor of more open reactionary, more fascist forms of capitalist dic- tatorship. (g) To expose the socialist party, which puts forward the proposal of a democratic revisit ion of the bourgeois constitution of the United States as a substitute for the revolutionary strug- gle to overthrow and destroy the bourgeois state apparatus. (2) Comrade Bittelman that the president and the executive br The Political Committee rejects the conception of | increase of the power of the ranch of the government is not an essential part of imperialist war preparations and dots not constitute a further step towards the abolition of par- liamentary forms of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, NO RACE PREJUDICE IN NEEDLE TRADES UNION By HENRY ROSEMOND. (Vice-President of the Needle Trades Workers’ Industrial Union.) Under the leadership of the Left wingers, race prejudice has been completely abolished in the Needle ‘.vades Industrial Union, which in-| cludes in its membership large num- bers of nationalities. olored people of various) This new union wages| | Wednesday, February 6, the first strike of this new union, a great number of Negroes have been mili- tantly active in it. Over 40 of them have joined the Strike and Picket Committees; one of them is a mem- ber of the Strike Finance Commit- |tee, and another is a member of the Joint Board. During the strike I have been | ‘ By ALBERT WEISBORD. Few of us in the U. S. really ap- |preciate the situation that exists in| |Cuba at the present time. It was! only when I met with a group of} Cuban emigres in Central America| that the full meaning of the Macha-|® do terror became impressed upon| me. These proletarian emigres| from Cuba informed me that in the| past year alone over 500 workers had been murdered by the butcher gov- ernment of Machado with the con- sent and approbation of the U. S. It was with these figures begin- ining to burn in my mind that I de- jtermined to make it my business to inform the widest possible section of jthe workingclass in America of the | true. situation. in Cuba, so that we might wipe out the huge obligation | that we owe to our Cuban comrades | \and rectify our serious shortcomings’ jin this regard. | | __ Industrial Differentiation. The economic situation in Cuba is now much worse than it was in| 1920, the period when sugar pro- duction ‘was especially low. Of a population of 3,000,000, 300,000 are industrial workers, and 450,000 are) ‘agricultural workers. There are re-| latively few semi-proletarians and) peasants. The workers are divided! industrially, as follows: -+180,000 | Ww orker | HILLQUITS LITTLE RED RAID The Situation in Cuba ; RUS WEE Oe tr ‘Butcher’ Machado Murdered Over 500 Militant 2 Workers During the Past Year struggle against American imperial-|is trying to get new loans and he ism. One of his first moves was to has abolished the restrictions on the put an import tax on U.S. goods| production of sugar. However, these and to try to reduce the production | measures have not been very suc- of sugar by reducing the hours of |cessful. Of the 123.plantations, I work and-allotting quotas of produc- | was informed by the Cuban emigres, tion to the different estates, | ever these moves were simply the| working. moves of grafters who wanted to blackmail or put pressure on Ameri-| can companies for more graft. The curtailment of production of sugar |the masses. As the economic situa- did not hurt the big companies, but tion grew worse and as he became only the small estates. | more and more exposed as the pup- Now Machado tries to overcome'mor tightened his stranglehold on the crisis which exists in Cuba. He! and more the forms of democracy slogans Machado has more and SOLDIERS AND MINERS FRATERNIZE IN STRIKE By PAUL BOUTONIER. (Translated by Valentino V. Konin from I'Humanite.) jleries at Verdun a young soldier, driven to desperation by injustice and ill treatment, loaded his gun The soldiers and the striking min-| and killed himself, ers have fraternized in Grand’combe.| Liverywhere in the workshops, in The miners fed the undernourished | the factcries, in the fields, in the mines, the proletarians stand up against the exhausting rationaliza- |tion and expensive living and de- mand raise of wages. How- 73 are not working, and only 50 are | } Starting with popular national more tightened, his stranglehold, on| \its strength in the past year. around and have spoken to many of the strikers: Marie Franklin, Edith Brown, Edna Kemp, Mattie Brian, Louise Martin, Eva Mayo, Laura Smith, and many others. They a militant struggle against race dis- crimination and although it was formed only a short while ago, the effects of its policies are already being felt among the colored work- ers in the shops. This is not the policy of such unions as the yellow International Ladies’ Garment Work-| ers, that are under the control of The four last ones mentioned went the A. F. of L. In these unions|back to work, they being strikers ace prejudice and race discrimina-|from shops that have signed the tion are encouraged because they) agreement concluded by the new serve the besses to keep the work-|union. These colored girls stated ers in constant struggle ageinst | that they will do their very best to each other and thus help the bosses| support the union and also see that to keep all the workers in slavery. | their parents and friends who are in i x, ion w: ae teh eoree Necio worhers|dle_ ‘Trades Workers’ Industrial ing an active part in the con-| Union of the U. S. A.—the only one vention as well as in filling some|in the trade that really fights for cf te bighest positions ir the union,|the interests of the workers, not Since the strike started on only white, but colored as well. Bellingham “Labor’’ Paper ally by the leaders and the white all said that they were treated roy- | strikers in the halls and elsewhere. | the trade join this union—the Nee-| for Everything But Labo (Special to the Daily Worker) BELLINGHAM, Wash., Feb. 27.— Although the Bellingham Central Labor Council"has a weekly news- paper, and that newspaper is called “The Labor World,” that must not be taken as evidence that the coun- cil or its official organ has any par- ticular interest in advancing the cause of labor. To arrive at such a conclusion would be very much of a mistake. For example, in the issue of Feb- ruary 20, the so-called “Labor World” has, as its leading editorial, a plea entitled “Help Coal Company To Increase Sales,” which quotes the officials of the local mine company as declaring that Bellingham could _ use more coal than it does if the - citizenry really wanted to “encour- age local industry.” Evidently, the Bellingham work- ers, having attained all they can possibly desire in wages, hours and conditions, have no need for consid- ition by the Central Labor Coun- il, which has its hands free there- to improve the conditions for bosses for which these happy deign to devote their time. ‘, Another editorial or two, when they mean anything at all, are equally as rotten support of capi- talist rule. Why, oh, why, do they {call it “The Labor World’? PROBE PAPER MONOPOLY. WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 (UP).— The Schaal resolution directing the Federal Radio Commission to ascer- tain whether any monopoly of news print manufacturers is violating the anti-trust laws by controlling the price of news print paper, was adopt- ed today by the senate. SUSPEND BUS SERVICE. YONKERS, N, Y., Feb. 28 (UP). —Bus service on seven routes of the Merchants Community Transit, Inc., was suspended today when agents for the Mack Truck agency here seized the company’s 12 buses in accordance with terms of sales agreements. LYNN UPHOLSTERY STRIKE. LYNN, Mass. (By Mail).—Twenty upholsterers of the Oriental Up- holstery Co. who struck against poor conditions returned to work due to Jack of leadership. | Sugar |soldiers. The soldiers helped the | (cane an |miners to carry out their class duty. | | Tobacco ...-.-..-++++++. 60,000 | Both have realized once more that | (factory) |their interests are identical. Alcohol + 20,000 | “Not a single farmer, not a single] Coffee — -+ 10,000 | worker, not a soldier or a sailor can Wet (Being ousted by sugar) |remain indifferent to the news of} | Eee 30,000 | such an event. | airy | 8,000 | | (8 regions—actual workers work- | ing for middle peasants) | Shoe 7,000 | Needle 40,000 | Perfume 8,000 | Fish 20,000 | | Mining 2,000 | | Railway 35,000 | | Food 20,000 | | Porte. 30,000 | | Metal 15,000 | Building 50,000 | In most places, see by \the figures, the petty-bourgeois |counts for very little. On the one |hand we have huge landowners, big \bourgeoisie generally; on the other lhand we have the city and country workers. The class struggle stands jout in all its nakedness. The city | worker is a little bit better off than ithe country worker. He gets on the ‘average $2 per day for 10 hours |work. The agricultural worker |works 12 hours for 85 cents to $1 ja day. When we consider that the lcost of the most meager subsistence is a minimum of $1.50 a day for a family of 8, then we can appreciate \truly the terrible destitution that prevails. | In the countryside it is really |peonage. On the hacienda (big estates) there dre company stores, and no other goods are allowed to |be sold. In these company stores the masses are fleeced mercilessly, and are perpetually kept in debt and bondage. The’ situation is worsened today by the fact of the great un- employment.. On the sugar fields, while the usual time for cutting cane is 6 months, last year it was only 15 days. This has increased the misery of the population. The Machado government {s be- coming a typical fascist goevrnment, I mean not in the sense that every form. of reaction is fascism, but in the purer sense that the methods of Machado government are similar to the methods of the other typical fas- cist government. In the beginning, in 1925, Machado sailed under the banner of nationalism, and with At the time when the class strug- gle is sharpening, when the imper-| ialists are feverishly — preparing arms for.new massacres, when the bourgeois diplomats are plotting a | cowardly attack upon Soviet Russia, this act of fraternization between the miners and the artillery of Gard serves aS a magnificent prelude to the future -revolutionary armies battling with capitalism. Shameful Exploitation. On the boats and in the barracks discontent is obviously arising. The shamefully exploited. and «half- starved sons of workers and peas- ants in the army are offering a growing resistance to the militarism of their exploiters. bat But the repression. against “thi rages with more strength every. day. Recently on the boat “Jules Mich- elet” a group of sailors: were: shot to death because one of the origin- ators of the miners’ In this way the soldiers and the | proletarians meet, united in the com- mon front against their common} enemy—capitalism. United Front. That is why the miners of Loire have joined the claims of the sol- diers with that of indignant work- ers in their manifestations. That is why they have furnished food to the soldiers whom the government has offered into the service of mine owners, That is why the soldiers, repeating the glorious gesture of their predecessors of 1917, have not left the miners alone. The proletariat won the victory over the bourgeois. The govern- ment withdrew the troops from the mine regions. It replaced them with the’ cavalry and the Senegals, The miners must respond to this change of tactic by regarding the oppressed colonial troops as their brothers and by making them under- stand that the workers are on their side, against the colonists, who ex- ploit and slave them. And now, forward, towards fur. among them. In one -of the artil- ther fraternization! iat strike was! To Those Who Rule By MILDRED L. GAIMS. You think you are safe behind your walls, That stones will keep us down; And you dance and drink in your revelry, And make merry all night till dawn. You dance on the bodies of comrades dear, And their blood is the red wine you drink; And you drink and you shout, till noise without Is drown’d to a murmur, you think. But the ghastly crimes that are deck’d with flowers Shall be stripped and be held to the day; And the mask that covers the skeleton’s head Shall fall and be torn away, For one of the dawns will be a Red Dawn That will flood all the world with its light; “Left” phraseology, to fool the masses into believing ‘that he would “When ‘the walls that: surround you shall fall, By Fred Ellis | | many places. | on strike; the entire state of Colorado was in conflagration, nor did | it stop at the state borders, The coal miners who had joined forces |were abolished and open terrorism} |reigned. Machado is now actual dic-| |tator of Cuba. No other. political) |party is allowed to exist in Cuba. | At the last elections only 2 per cent | |of the population voted, the rest ab-| |stained because it could not put up| |any candidate against Machado, Be- hind Machado stands a large police force and American marines who! jare atways in Cuba on one pretext) or another, not only at the naval |stations, but in the interior as well. | Party Mlegal. In Cuba the Party is completely jillegal. In spite of that and in spite of the terrible conditions which face the Party has doubled 90 per cent of the party are industrial workers both in the city and in the| country. The Party functions reg- ularly through nuclei and fractions and is a power to be reckoned with in Cuba, Due to the tremendous repression by the Machado government, the trade union movement has been definitely smashed and is rapidly! disappearing completely. The re-| formist influence in Cuba 4s prac-| tically nil. Only the railwaymen| had joined the Pan-American Fede- ration of Labor in Cuba, but even! they left the Pan-American Federa-| tion of Labor. The Cuban govern- ment does not permit any union to exist that carries on a class strug- jgle policy. Everywhere spontaneous | strikes break out. In these strikes {the Communist Party usually has| the leadership and although the} |various revolutionary unions have} been’ smashed, still the Communist |Party has been able to build smail| militant groups in different indus- tries than on a moment’s notice can take hold \and win the support of Jarge mass demonstrations and strike movements, The comrades maintain that with a liberal situation in Cuba the Com- munist Party would be able to have definitely the ideological leadership over the greatest part of the work- ingelass in Cuba. However, all such strike movements are put down with a great deal of bloodshed. As I have written above, last year alone over 500 workers have been killed, many of them sympathizers of the |Party and actual Party members. Today. in Cuba 22 Party members are in jail. Many of them are destined never to return because jail in| Cuba for a revolutionist ustally ends in death. W. (C.) P. Must Aid. The bare enumeration of the fore- going facts must cause the prole- tarians, particularly the Communist section of it, to blush with deepest jour comrades, .|shame at the fact that we know so little of the Cuban situation and have done so little to help out the Cuban comrades. Every appeal that the Daily Worker makes is re- sponded to by Cuban emigres in the U.S: in Florida, in the South and in the North, but when we question ourselves about how much we have aided the Cuban Party, then indeed we must see why some Cuban com- rades still count us as a part the imperialist forces and not as brothers who have really helped them in the fight. A most vigorous campaign must now be launched in the U. S, against the white terror of the U. S. govern- ment through its Machado puppet tule in Cuba. The most energetic support must be given by the workingclass as a whole, and the Party in particular, to the struggles of Cuban masses for national independence and for !complete emancipation. In this way we will be able to make good the ideep obligations we owe to the Cuban masses for our criminal negligence ‘in the past, tes, Copyright, 1929, by International Publishers Co., Inc. BILL HAYWOOD’S BOOK Colorado In Strike Conflagration; Coal Miners Join Metal Miners; Strike Spreads to Other States In previous chapters. Haywood told of his early Ufe as miner, cowboy and homesteader in Utah, Nevada and Idaho; how after years in the Western Federation of Miners he was elected ite Seoretary- Treasurer; of the union struggles in the crucibles ef Colorado. He is now writing of the famous Cripple Creek strike ef 190%, how the union issued a “Green Book” giving its case against the Mine Owners’ “Red Book.” Now go on reading. . * . PART XLIX. jee appearance of the “Green Book” was a bad jolt to the Citisens' Alliance and the Mine Owners’ Association, They were completely in the dark as to how we had gotten the material, and do not know until this day that the proof sheets were given to me by a newspaper writer. We distributed the “Green Book” free throughout the mining camps, and it was scattered broadcast throughout the West. ‘The miners were delighted that it had appeared before the “Red Book”; the members realized that we were on the job at headquarters. From the correspondence that was pouring into the office I could visualize the situation in the min- ing camps and smelting towns of the West. The strike at Colorado City had thrown out sparks that had kindled the fires of the eight-hour struggle in The big smelters of Pueblo were now All rights reserved. Republica~ tion forbidden except by permission. with us had extended their fight to Wyoming, to Arizona and New Mexico, covering all of district fifteen. + * prox various parts of this territory came reports of the terrorizing that was being carried on by the Reno Detective Agency, and other thugs and murderers employed by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Com- pany and other coal companies, including those of southern Utah These reports made gruesome pictures; the homes of miners being destroyed by dynamite, striking miners being shot to death; families being evicted from miserable shacks, their only homes, that were the property of the Rockefeller interests; miners being deported from homes, wives and children; the cruel beating of organizers Warjeon, Mooney and others. As fearful as any other picture were those of the spies and detec- tives who had joined the organization to ferret out the plans of the union and report the work and whereabouts of the organizers, + * & eee the newspaper reports and those brought in by messengers, there were letters, phone calls, telegrams from all sections. A tele- gram came saying that thirty-five miners had been killed in the Daly- West mine in Utah by an explosion of powder which had been stored unlawfully and criminally in the mine. We got word that three hun- dred and thirty-eight men had been blasted to death in Wyoming by a mine explosion. What with Fernie, the Independence disaster, and many others, this made a total of more than 1,087 deaths in pre- ventable mine disasters that were charged against the mine owners and backed by juries’ verdicts. Many were charged against the West- ern Federation, but these charges were not once upheld by the coroners’ juries. I got letters about a strike in Keswick, California, and the deportation of miners from Dutch Flat. Then came news of scabs being shipped from the Coeur d’Arlenes. In addition to the regular correspondence with the secretaries of the unions, I sent them frequent bulletins of the strikes and asked for information about all the unions. They sent me pictures of the strikers, the union halls, demonstrations and so on, and I ran these in the magazine to create a wider mutual interest among the mem- bers of the Western Federation. I was trying to make Arizona ac- quainted with Alaska, Montana with Colorado; a sort of long-distance handshaking. I wanted to create a spirit of fraternity, and I did. There never was an organization like the Western Federation of Miners in that respect. Pk, WHEN I had been elected secretary-treasurer I was a novice in the Jabor movement. But the three years since I had shut off the air on the drill in the Blaine mine had been‘a severe course of training in the class struggle. I was never satisfied that the problems of labor could be solved by trade unionism, -and parliamentary socialism was not a remedy. ‘ The membership was now being tested in the crucibles of Telluride, Denver, Cripple Creek, wherever the strikes were on. The ore was proving to be high grade. m sg | abe Colorado Federation of Labor called a convention to be held in Denver. Three hundred and fifty delegates, representing ajl kinds of unions, gathered in ‘the club building. There were delegatys from the striking coal miners, from the striking miners of Telluride and the Cripple Creek ‘district. They discussed many things that had happened during thé eight- hour struggle. They appointed a ways and means committee, the duty cf which was to provide as much relief as possible for the many strikers and their families, A resolution was presented to the effect that the entire delegation visit Governor Peabody and demand the recall of the soldiers, the rescinding of the vagrancy order and the protection of. all deported miners returning to their homes. It was finally decided that a committee should visit the governor with these’ proposals. The’ committee met the governor in his office, a place that had become historic’ in the struggle of: the miners. Governor Peabody blatantly informed them that no one had been deported except for- eigners and rowdies. He could not see that in the committee were several who had been deported, among them Guy Miller, president of the Telluride Miners’ Union, and he did not know that some of the best union men had been compelled to change their names in order to avoid the blacklist. He told the committee that all miners would be protected in their rights. Needless to say, the governor reserved the right of determining just what the miners’ rights were. The convention adopted the following resolution: yes organized labor in the State of Colorado is fighting a deathless battle for the right to ‘organize and live; and Whereas, the chief executive and the state administration have conspired and entered into collusion with the Mine Owners’ Association, the smelting trust, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, and the com- mercial allies: known as the Citizens’ Alliance in defeating the political mandate of the people, as expressed at the polls in November, 1902; and ‘ Whereas, free speech has been strangled, the press muzzled and the writ of habeas corpus suspended by military imperialism, backed by bristling bayonets; therefore, be it Bt am Resolved, that the delegates and representatives of organized iabor in convention assembled, condemn and denounce the assaults of the : state administration upon the rights: and liberties of citizenshiy by trampling under the iron heel of military despotism every principle of the organic law of the state, 2 Resolved, that we demand the immediate withdrawal of the troops, so that law and order may again prevail in Teller and Sar Migue! counties. : Resolved, that we commend and admire the gallant and anflinching battle of the Western Federation of Miners and the United Mine Work- ers of’America, who”have bared their breasts to corporate power. who are now forcing greed to hoist the white flag. 3 Resolved, that we call upon the membership of organized labor in every city, town and hamlet, and every liberty loving citizen of tke state, to march :to the polls in November, 1904, and bury the present administration so deep beneath an avalanche of ballote that a millica blasts from Gabriel’s trumpet will not be able to awaken it frera polb- I was one of the thirteen signers of this resolution. In the next instalment Haywood writes of his firet meeting with Harry Orchard, the scoundrel who later tried to ewear away the lives of Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone in Idahe, tn the great trial where Senator Borah was Haywood’s prosecutor. Do you wamt to get Haywood’s memoire in @ bound volume, now and freef It can be dne by sending in one yearly subscription, renewal or extention, to the Daily Worker. Get it for your bookshelf, or give it to your friend.