The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 8, 1929, Page 6

Page Six é ° DAILY WORKE e NEW YORK, FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 1929 } by Internationat) AGAINST IMPERIA Copyright, Publishers Co., Inc. 1929, PILL HAYWOOD’S tion forbidden except by permission, Rockefeller and the Crimes Against Labor; The Conference Which Called the I. W. W. Into Existence. In previous instalments Haywood told of his early life as miner, cowboy and homesteader; of his work as union man in the Western Federation of Miners;* his election as Secretary-Treasurer; the W. _ M. battles in Idaho and is speaking now of the great Colorado Now go on reading. 6. Te RT Live By WILLIAM D. HAYWOOD. PART 55 TER a long and hard-fought battle in the southern part of the tate, the United Mine Workers of this district called off their strike. The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, with various other coal companies, continued to violate the eight how 1 rip law, which forbade the companies i; i o the workers; the law that prohibited the companies from compelling the workers to trade at company stores, and other laws. Seven labor laws were being ignored with impunity. Not the least of them was the check-weighman law, by evading which the com- es got thirty-eight hundred pounds of coal to the par ton. During this eriminal lawbreaking the snifling old profligate at the head of the Rockefeller interests was nibbling his hypocritical Baptist communion, wielding more power with his golf stocks than could the people of Colorado with their ballots. HEN the legislature finally passed a new eight-hour law the smelter men of Denver declaréd their strike off after a struggle lasting twenty one months, during which time, in spite of the work of the detective agencies, there were few desertions from the ranks. i Industrial unionism was rapidly developing. The 1904 convention of the Western Federation had outlined plans for the amalgamation of the entire working class into one general organization, and had instructed the executive board to carry out this program. There had been some informal conferences in Denver with Dan MacDonald of the American Labor Union ‘and George Estes of the United Railway Work- ers, and we had had some correspondence with Clarence Smith, sec- retary of the American Labor Union. A secret conference was called to be held in Chicago on January second, 1905. The letter or invita- tion, which was sent to about thirty people, contained the following aragraph: z Reerting our confidence in the ability of the working class, if correctly organized in both political and industrial lines, to take pos- session of and operate successfully . . . the industries of the count pelieving that working-class political expression, through the So al ballot, in order to be sound, must have its economic counterpart in a labor organization builded as the structure of socialist society, embrac- ing within itself the working class in approximately the same groups and departments and industries that the workers would assume in the working-class administration of the Cooperative Commonwealth - wwe invite you to meet us at Chicago, Monday, January second, 1905, in secret conference to discuss ways and means of uniting the working people of America in correct revolutionary principles, regardless of any general Jabor organization of past or present, and only restricted by such basic principles as will insure its integrity as a real protector of the interest of the workers. OYER, O’Neill and I were elected by the executive board td rep- resent the Western Federation of Miners at this conference. We met in a hall in Lake street, often used as a meeting place by the Chicago anarchists, where Parsons and Spies had spoken to the work- ers. When the conference was called to order, I was elected permanent chairman, and George Estes permanent secretary. At these sessions we formulated the manifesto that brought into existence the Industrial Workers of the World, which read: Social relations and grouping only reflect mechanical and industrial conditions. The great facts of present industry are the displacement of human skill by machines and the increase of capitalist power through concentration in the possession of the tools with which wealth is pro- duced and distributed. Because of these facts trade divisions among laborers and com- petition among capitalists are alike disappearing. Class di ‘ions grow ever more fixed and class antagonisms more sharp. Trade lines have been swallowed up in a common servitude of all workers to the ma- chines which they tend. New machines, ever replacing less productive ones, wipe out whole trades and plunge new bodies of workers into the ever-growing army of tradeless, hopeless unemployed. As human beings and human skill are displaced by mechanical progress, the cap- italists need use the workers only during the brief period when muscles and nerves respond most intensely. The moment the laborer no longer yields the maximum of profits, he is thrown upon the scrap pile, to starve alongside the discarded machine, A dead-line has been drawn, and an age-limit established, to cross which, in this world of monopolized opportunities, means condemnation to industrial death. The worker, wholly separated-from the land and the tools, with his skill of craftsmanship rendered useless, is sunk in the uniform mass of wage slaves. He sees hfs power of resistance broken by craft devisions, perpetuated from outgrown industrial stages. His wages constantly grow less as his hours grow longer and monopolized prices grow higher. Shirted hither and thither by the demands of profit-takers the labor- er’s home no longer exists. In this helpless condition he is forced to accept whatever humiliating conditions his master may impose. He is submitted to a physical and intellectual examination more searching than was the chattel slave when sold from the auction block. Labor- ers are no longer classified by differences in trade skill, but the em- ployer assigns them according to the machines to which they are attached. These divisions, far from representing differences in skill or interests among the laborers, are imposed by the employers that workers may be pitted against one another and spurred to greater exertion in the shop, and that all resistance to capitalist tyranny may be weakened by artificial distinctions. Wie encouraging these outgrown divisions among the workers the capitalists carefully adjust themselves to the new conditions. They wipe out all differences among themselves and present a united front in their war upon labor. Through employers’ associations they seek to crush with brutal force, by the injunctions of the judiciary and the use of military power, all efforts at resistance. Or when the other policy seems more profitable, they conceal their daggers beneath the Civie Federation and hoodwink and betray those whom they would rule and exploit. Both methods denend for success upon the blindness and internal dissensions of the working class. The employers’ line of battle and methods of warfare correspond to the solidarity of the me- chanical and industrial concentration, while laborers still form their fighting organizations on lines of long-gone trade divisions. The bat- tles of the past emphasize this lesson. The textile workers of Lowell, Philadelphia, and Fall River; the butchers of Chicago, weakened by the disintegrating effects of trade divisions; the machinists of the Santa Fe, unsupported by their fellow-workers subject to the same masters; the long struggling miners of Colorado, hampered by lack of unity and solidarity upon the industrial battle-field, all bear witness to the help- lessness and impotency of labor as at present organized. i Ya worn out and corrupt system offers no promise of improvement and adaptation. There is no silver lining to the clouds of darkness and desnair settling down upon the world of labor. This system offers only a perpetual struggle for slight relief with- in wage slavery. It is blind to the possibility of establishing an in- ' dustrial democracy, wherein there shall be no wage slavery, but where the workers will own the tools which they operate, and the product of . ‘which they alone will enjoy. _ It shatters the ranks of the workers into fragments, rendering them helpless and impotent on the industrial battle-field. i“ Separation of craft from craft renders industrial and financial solidarity impossible. _» Union men scab upon union men; hatred of worker for worker is e idered, and the workers are delivered helpless and disintegrated hands of the capitalists. * * * ¥ Un the next instalment Haywood gives the remainder of the his- pie industrial union manifesto of 1905; more of the Colorado strikes; he introduced his children to family responsibility. Readers who to obtain Haywood's book in regular bound volume, may get it ith a yearly subscription, renewal or extension to the Daily To the working women of capital- jist countries, International Wo- |men’s Day means above all, a day| |of reckoning with the ruling power | which controls their fate. This day is also a day of review for the |masses of working women. In Russia, Red October, 1917, crushed the power of the propertied classes and gave it into the hands of the victorious proletariat giving birth to the first proletarian dictator- |ship in the world, the U. S. S. R. The proletarian state, led by the} Communist Party, correctly solves | its fundamental problem—to re- model the state and all forms of social life on a socialistic basis in order to build socialism. U. S. S. |R. is the only country which actually | succeeded in establishing full social | and personal freedom for the toiling | woman and gives her actual equality. The important factor is that Soyiet laws not only recognize the complete equality of the woifiaii but practic- jally abolish exploitation. The sub-| jection of one human being by an- |othc> is forbidden by laws actually |carried into effect. The principles of government es- |tablished in bourgeois countries stand in glaring contrast to the theory and practice of the proleta- jvian state. The former are conse- | crated to the perpetuation and safe- guarding of the rights of exploita- tion and the rule of the minority over the overwhelming majority of the people. Even when the work- ing women in capitalist countries have equal rights according to law, | they are subjected to merciless ex- | ploitation and subjection, because their rights are the rights of slaves |beneath the whip of the capitalist | boss. } | | it boasts vainly of the sham democ- racy, capital has achieved unbounded monopoly and power. It is master | not only in government, in industrial | undertakings, in the factories, in 'the banks, but in politics. The | plundering of the working women as creators and consumers is carried jon just as mercilessly, if not more mercilessly, today than formerly. The protection of woman in her role of toiler, mother and housekeeper and in her cultural development is more deficient—than before. In Hindenberg’s republic, although | LIST WAR International Women’s Day By Clara Zetkin doled out to the unemplgyed, and the is unkearable. The capitalist class | working women are subjected to] utilizes its political power to squeeze | humiliation intg the bargain. |out of the people the enormous sumsg Ove by one the workers are being| Which are demanded by the con- deprived ot the advantages which ucrors of the world war from sleat- they managed to win, before the| tered Germany. war, by dint of sore martyrdom in| Bourgeois demo€ratic governments the political and economic field. The|are forced to herald their “democ- eight-hour working day became ajracy” by special decress, In order myth. The working women lost the}to palm off the consequences of privilege of Saturday afternoons off.|their guilt upon the innocent pro- ‘fhe employer has the “ght at any! letariat, petty bourgeoisie, and peas- moment to discharge a pregnant|antry, and to whitewash the trust woman or nursing mother, if that|owners, all the burden and infamy be to his benefit or if it satisfied|of their oppression is concentrated his fancy. with unusual vigor upon the Com- The rent increases have aggra-|munist Party—the, only revolution- vated the housing shortage for the | @tY class-conscious party of the pro- poorest sections of the people. The|letariat, the only guide the ex- prices of the prime necessities of|Ploited and suppressed workers. , life are inflated enormously cider In order to satisfy its greed for the dictatorship of the syndicates|money and power, the bourgeoisie erd other capitalist institutions, All|tramples upon culture. It turns the sorts of taxation ai@ in robbing the|elementary schools over into the workers. The burden of the taxes|hands of the priests; it utilizes the Women Workers Helping Build Soviet Industry = Rationalization is being instituted in the state, in society, and in ad- ministration at the expense of the working women as well as at the expense of their fathers, husbands and brothers. As a result of this rationalization the working women in the factory or in institutions are suffering intense fatigue, depletion of muscular and nervous energy, beggarly wages, unheard-of speed- up at their work, sometimes punish- ment by discharge and deprivation of their beam Ritg of food are| Economie emancipation for women in Soviet Russia means that women are taking their places in fields of industry formerly reserved only for men and are being promoted to more and more skilled and responsible jobs. Above are Comrades Kovalenko and Golan, lock- amiths on w steam engine in the Urals, N $ By Fred Ellis Published by the National Datly Worker Publishing Association, Inc., Daily, Except Sunday, at 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. Y.,_ Telephone, Stuyvesa: 1696-7-8, Cable: “DAIWORK.” Pn ROBERT MINOR . WM. F, DUNNE ..... As Editor . Editor Baily a Worke? Central Organ of the Workers (Communist) Party SUBSCRIPTION RATES: By Mail (in'New York only): $8.00 a year $4.50 six months $2.50 three months By Mail (outside of New York): $6.00 a year $8.50 six months $2.00 three months Address and mail all checks to The Daily Worker, 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. Y. Ae GES of the women workers. The rivalry ef the various imperialist powers for control of natural resources and raw materials, for markets for goods |and investments, for labor power to |exploit, brings ever nearer the dan- ger of world conflict. | In the Far East the imperialists of | England, France, Italy, America and Japan are aiming to impose capital- \ist “civilization” upon the “barbar- \ians” of the Eastern countries and especially China. Withgthe help of their fleets they destroy peaceful villages in China and murder great masses of peasants and workers. | Cooperating with the Chinese Jun- kers and bourgeoisie they seek to extinguished the flames of revolu- tion in blood. The young and feeble | bourgeoisie of China have concluded peace with all the imperialist powers and have betrayed the national rev- olution. The peasant uprisings in tion, In the towns and villages the working women and peasants fill the schools organized to wipe out illiteracy and patronize all - other courses. In the factories, universi- |ties, academies and other educa- tional institutions the ambitious women worker students sit beside the men. The Red Pioneers and Comsomol8 also include many girls in their ranks. In the Communist Party, trade unions and cooperatives the women work on all the workers’ commit- tees and study as “practical work- ers.” The working women’s delegate conferences are at the same time schools for the training of working women in social and political prob- lems, The number of women who vote and those who are elected to |the Soviets is constantly on the in- |erease, as are the women who are |chairmen of soviets and members the country and the disturbances of | of the Soviet Executive Committees. the workers in the towns indicate|The best indication of the growing that the class war is developing| equality of women is the fact that |youth for strength again in China. Native and foreign capitalists have united their |forces against the revolutionary movement of the Chinese workers and peasants. The attempt of the imperialist powers to crush the Chinese revolu- tion has a twofold aim: to gain new spheres of exploitation for the im- perialist powers and at the same tim to open the road for an attack on the Soviet Union from the Far East. The power of the proletarian dictatorship stands as a stumbling block in the way of the imperialist advance. Capitalism is making jall means at its disposal to crush the Soviet Union politically, econo- |mieally and with military force. It jeannot reconcile itself to the fact \that this government of workers and |peasants covering one-sixth of the surface of the globe, possessing enormous natural resources, produc- tive forces and population refuses |to be subjected to imperialist ex- | ploitation, and worse than that, dares |to call to the exploited and oppres- |sed masses all over the world: Arise! Don’t hesitate, and you can also throw ‘off your chains and become the rulers of the world! The Soviet Union, surrounded as it is by the hatred and persecution of all the capitalist countries, is the only country which holds out the possibility of emancipation to work- |ing women, Only in the Soviet | Union have complete freedom and | equality for women workers been \achieved, The position of the work- police and the most unscrupulous |ing women, the peasant women and laws; it crushes the striving of the |all classes of women toilers is im- education. The rising |proving every year. The laws that generation must serve it as cheap|have been enacted for the benefit and obedient subjects for exploita-)of women are rapidly being put in- tion. jto effect. Working women receive It must be sai equal pay for equal work in Soviet struck by Oe ee ‘Norra we | Russia. They receive by law two March 8 is increased poverty and | Weeks a with pay, also. two misery. That, too, is the fate of|months’ leave with full wages be- her sisters in all the capitalist coun- | fore and after childbirth. Laws pro- tries, including the countries that Viding for the health of women have conquered in the world war,| Workers and for social insurance that is France, England, Italy, and and old age pensions are being put | mighty efforts on all fronts and with | | more than a thousand village |soviets count peasant women among |their chairmen. Women participate in the highest legislative and execu- tive functions of the Soviet republic. | Thus in all the spheres of socialist construction have become more fully co-workers equal to the men in their rights, importance and responsibility. The proletarian revolution has | opened an enormous field of activity |for the working women in the build- ing of socialism where the power¥ |of working women are being used to the utmost. What have the working women of the Soviet Union done toward the achievement of this jaim? History will record the glori- |ous work of the Russian women in the revolution, when they fought heroically on the barricades during the days of October. They contribu- ted with the men workers to the final victory. Since the revolution the working and peasant women have given all their energies to the development of the Soviet power and the resistance to the attempt to crush it by blockade, intervention and civil war. Their efforts in build- ing socialism in the Soviet Union are a long story of heroism, sacri- fice and untiring effort in the face of the greatest difficulties and ob- stacles. They accept their equality not as a gift and a privilege but as a great responsibility. The Communist Party of the Sov- iet Union has done work of the ut- most importance in drawing in mil- lions of women to participation in the building of socialism in Soviet Russia and in the Soviet Republics of the Far East where the masses of women have awakened to the call of the proletarian revolution and are throwing off the yoke of ancient tradition, religious laws and social | subjection.’ The Soviet power uses \all social and political measures to |break down the obstacles that ham- {per the development of women and |aims at establishing the equality of | women with men in all spheres of |life. Thousands of women in the jeastern Soviet Republics have thrown the United States of America. There the bourgeoisie is also trying to stabilize and strengthen its shaky lelass domination and undermined |economy, and is resorting to greater exploitation of the working class, both men and women, In England the miners and their families suffer from terrible need, because of the crisis in the mining situation. In England the poverty of the working men and women grows steadily. Each day sees an increase in the army of the unem- ployed and the unemployment doles grow steadily less. The laws passed in England forbidding trade unions takes away the right of the workers to strike. That is the state of af- fairs in the bourgeois country of Great Britain, In France, the land which, during the great bourgeois revolution gave bitth to women’s organizations for equal rights of _women—in that France where woman has shown herself to be an incomparable fight- er in all the revolutionary struggles —there they have not yet at the present time achieved the right to vote. But the so called “socialist” Boncour has formulated a military law which is to affect the entire population, including the women, for the military purposes of the government, In Italy the fascist government has forced a considerable reduction of wages upon the men and women workers, and it has abolished all tue organizations of the workers and Poorest peasantry wherever it ‘no- ticed the slightest pulse-beat of class-conscious life. In the United States, that “ideal” country of capitalism extolled by the reformists, we see the monster strikes and merciless exploitation of the industrial slaves. But it is in the colonial and semi-colonial coun- tries that the masses of toiling women are suffering under the heaviest burdens. There capitalist imperialism utilizes the old instru- ments of social and political oppres- sion in the subjection of the work- ing women, the superior power of the male sex, the power of the church, tradition and prejudice. Wherever the working woman looks on the eighth of March she will see world capitalism intensifying the en- slavement of the workers especially 4 ‘ into operation, The working women | off their bonds and become fighters are sent to hospitals and sanatoria,|in the revolutionary movement and houses of rest and recreation, lo-|are devoting all their energies to jeated in the palaces and villas of | the achievement of full emancipation former nobility, aristocracy and|and the building of socialism. The | bourgeoisie. Much attention is given in the |Soviet Union to the training of | working women jfor more skilled | work through special courses and |technical institutes. The factory |management works together with |the trade unions under the super- vision of the Communist Party to |safeguard workers in the introduc- |tion of rationalization against un- employment and the speed-up. Work- ing women are members of the fac- tory committees and all other or- | ganizations and institutions which organize and guide the internal life of the country, She is benefitting especially by the introduction of the seven hour day which is being car- ried out without wage reductions in the land of the proletarian dic- tatorship. None of the capitalist countries with their tremendous wealth can boast of such social institutions and undertakings for the benefit of mothers and children as the Soviet Union. Educational institutions and schools for older children help great- ly to solve the problems of mothers az! parents. A whole series of in- stitutions for the care of mothers and children has been organized during the last year. During this time the number of children’s nurs- eries and playgrounds organized in connection with factories has great- ly increased. The peasants are de- manding that such institutions be organized in greater numbers in the villages also, and they are estab- lishing themselves from public funds. Great public restaurants have been opened in Ivanovo-Vosnesensk, Nijni-Novgorodd and Moscow and other towns which have proved the success of the experiment and have created a desire for building sim- ilar institutions in other towns. Pub- lic laundries and similar institutions are being fostered for the relief of household drudgery. Working women are participating actively in the new cultural life of Soviet Russia, They seem to want to make up for all that they had to miss during their years of subjec- glorious example of these women |throws its light far beyond the |boundaries of the Soviet Union to the millions of enslaved women in the East. The working women in the Soviet Union do not accept passively the fact that world imperialism is pre- paring an attack on the proletarian state. They are arming themselves against this deadly enemy. They know that the most effective de- fense of the first proletarian govern- ment is work for the building of the socialist economy. They are train- ing themselves too in military prac- tice, are arming themselves to re- sist the onslaught of the enemy and are preparing themselves for the struggle on the social, cultural and political fields, and are organizing themselves for sanitary and other kinds of work at the front. In the capitalist countries and the colonial lands working women are mobilizing for the struggle against capitalist imperialism and the war danger. In Italy the women work- ers have shown tremendous courage under the brutal dictatorship of Mussolini in fighting fascism and also the bosses’ offensive to reduce wages and install rationalization. These struggles have been carried on by the women in the face of the fascist terror, and prison sentences. In China the number of women workers in the peasant organiza- tions, the trade untens and house- wives’ organizations is growing every day. The women students, teachers and peasants show the greatest heroism and determination in the revolutionary struggle. In the International Labor Defense the working women stand out as trained and daring workers bringing aid to the victims of the white terror, bourgeois class justice and fascism. On International Women’s Day working women must develop and strengthen their forces for the struggle against the war danger. They must unite to transform their defensive action against the capital- ist offensive into a conscious and decisive attack against exploitation and subjection, against the class rule of the bourgeoisie,