The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 9, 1929, Page 6

Published by the National Daily Worker Publishing Association, Inc., Sxcept Sunday, at BSCRIPTION R. By Mail (in New York only): $8.00 a year $4.50 six months 50 three months Address The Da Square, and_mail all checks to Union x New Communists Lead Strikes in Bombay; Reformists Aid Boss The present strike of Bom India, mill workers which the Brit- ish government tried toturn into a religious war, by the use of import- ed strikebreakers who were Moham- medan Pathans, and by constant provocation, was not the first bat- tle of these worke: It follows the victorious stri year ago, of 150,000 textile w in Bombay, which is described the following article by the Labor Research Association. ke, 2 Ss (By LRA Service.) The strike lasted form April 26 to October 6 of last year, and the mill owners complained about the “loss of over 21 million working days t otheindustry.” The work however, rejoiced that they blocked a vicious wage cutting and speed- up drive. In the beginning of 1928 a group of large textile mills in Bombay, mainly under British control, began introducing new work system which compelled spinners to operate two sides of a frame instead of one, and weavers to run three looms instead of two. Along with these changes went discharge of workers, longer hours for those who remained, and cuts in wages. Fakers Wouldn’t Lead. A number of small strikes re- sulted. The leaders fo theold line unions, however, N. M. Joshi of the Bombay Textile Labor Union and D. R. Mayekar of the “Girni Kam- gar Mahamandal,” refused to issue the call to turn the scattered rey- olts into a geheral strike. In March, 1928, a new union, the Bombay Mill Workers’ Union, | was launched, under Communist guidance. Its leaders were J. H. Jhabvala, formerly secretary of the old union, and the heads of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party. Mass in! “superfluous” | +, demonstrations before the mills and rades through the city caused a gradual closing of themi Ina week, 150,000 workers were out, shutting practically every mill in Bomba o Mass picketing began from the first day. Special efforts were made to get out the oilers and others ential service: The police tried to prohibit all picket- ing, but had to back down and allow two pickets at each mill. | Old union leaders refused at first | t oallow the Communists as many | strike the left wing asked, elded. Strike demands es, hour: discipline, representatives on the joint | committee jbut finall covered loom system, standardization of rules, and right of members of the \“depressed classes” to work. Most of these demands the employers ans- wered evasively, or in the negative. Agreement After 6 Months. The strike attracted international support. The workers of Soviet Russia contributed $6,300, the In- ternational Conference of Textile Workers $5,000, and the Interna- |tional Federation of Trade Unions, $2,500. An agreement was finally reached to resume work on October 6, nearly half a-year after the start of the |general strike. Wages for the most part were to be restored to the old levels temporarily. A government s, restriction of the three-| DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 1929 _ The Literature of New Russia The first instalment of this article on the new Soviet litera- | ture discussed its emergence dur- | ing the storm and stress period | of the civil wars as an effort of | the writers to express those | mighty days in a way that would committee of inquiry was appointed | Rushes Arms and Ammunition Across Border” (News Item) Great Variety of Sign: Vitality of New Soviet Culture By Fred Ellis cease or | | other books describing Russian life| since 1917, there have appeared a ificant Works Reflects number of imaginative works revalu- | ating the past in the light of con-| temporary ideas. Thus the 17th} century peasant revolt is the theme| of Chapigin’s “Stenka Razin”; the ea |to investigate all questions involved. |The mass meeting of 15,000 to 20,- 000 which ratified the settlement jenthusiastically cheered the state- ments of the speakers that this was jonly a breathing spell which the |workers should use to strengthen |their organization and prepare for still greater tasks in the future, The Tasks of Winning the Textile Working Women By ALBERT WEISBORD. (Secreatry-Treasurer of National Textile Miners Workers Union of America.) From the very beginning our N. T.W.U. has paid great attention to winning the textile working women. Of course, this is of primary im- portance to us because without the women we can win none of our struggles. In the industry generally over 50 per cent of the textile workers are women and in some of the most important branches of the industry (rayon, knit goods, silk-throwing, etc.) women are a predominating majority. Almost 50 women delegates out of a total of about 150, attended out national convention. Of our small National Executive Committee of 13—3 are women. These 3 women are now full time organizers in the field. Our National Executive has a standing women’s sub-committee |, which is already working out a full program of work both for the fam- ilies (wives, sisters, etc.) of textile workers and for the women textile workers themselves. Our demands for the working women are as follows: 1, Equal pay for equal work. 2. Minimum wage for women, 3. No night work. 4, Prohibtion of work in heavy and dangerous occupations, 5. Vacation with pay for two months before and two months af- ter childbirth. 6. Permission for mothers with infants to leave their work every three hours to nurse their children. 7. Factory nurseries for working women with babies and young chil- dren, to be provided by the employ- vitally influence the masses. Verse rather than prose flourished in those first years. Demyan Bedny sought to influence the masses with simple agitational poems. Vladimir Mayakovsky, leader of the Futurist school, tried to break completely with bourgeois tech- nique, while Alexander Block’s + famous “The Twelve” was the ef- fort of a confused bourgeois intel- lectual to grasp the meaning. of the Revolution. Serge Yessenin, one of the outstanding poets of the Imagist group, represented the psychology of the backward peasant. Lhe conclusion of the civil, wars gave the opportunity for more sober reflection and the development of prose. Outstand- ing prose works of the period im- mediately following the civil wars are, Furmanov’s “Chapayev,” Le- bedinsky’s “A Week” and Serafi- movich’s “The Iron Stream.” * * * The peace following the civil war] jers under the administration of the|encouraged the development of the junion, free of charge to all mothers |so-called “Fellow-Travellers,” writ- |who work in the plant. ers of various types and talents who 8. Rest rooms in the mill to be| Were not themselves of the new or-| provided for the women. jder, but who accepted the revolution, | Already these demands have at. |and were “willing. to travel’ slong tracted wide sections of the toxtile | With it. They came from the peas- women workers. In every local we |2%tY> the intellectuals mu the Urban | have a women’s committee and | Middle classes. These writers lacked| everywhere attention is being paid|the active spirit of the revolution) |both to attracting the working wo-|8nimating the works of pee fhe men into our union, and to develop- Byednyi, Mayakovsky, Serafimovitch | jing them for actual leadership. jand Lebedinsky. They Tetained a z 3 . |good deal of pre-revolutionary pas-| | _Now that the Pz ssaic strike, the|sivism, being content to portray ew Bedford strike and other/|events as they saw them, without! kes have passed into history, the|seeking to extract their full social jlesson of the role of the working |implications. Because many of these women in the strike has become | writers had come from classes which indelibly impressed on all of us. /enjoyed higher eduéation, _ their Our union fully understands the | Works show great technical mastery. importance of women workers. With | This, combined with their sincerity, such an attitude and policy we are enabled them be produce works of sure that we will help give the en-| great social and literary significance. tire working class a most thorough |1 fact, it was they who laid the! ing women and to mobilize the wid- est section of the workingclass wo- men around our union. this stage of its development..The “Fellow-Travellers” also wrote their Wage Cuts, Speed-Up, Give Penna R. R. Record Profit By ROBERT W. DUNN. Company unionism, low wages, and sharper exploitation of 240,000 employees are reflected in a net in- come of more than $82,507,000 re- ported for the year 1928 by the Pennsylvania Railroad, “standard railroad of the world.” These profits—the largest in the history of the road—represent an in- crease of $14,347,000 over 1927 earnings, and are equivalent to nearly $15 profit on each $100 in- vested in the company. They were’ made possible, in spite of a 1928 drop in Pennsy’s gross employed and speeding up the rest. They fol- low a period of union-busting and ‘active company-unionization of the Pennsy workers, directed by Gen- eral W. W. Atterbury, an aggres- “sive foe of union labor. Unions that suffered most from the Atterbury onslaught were the federated shop crafts including blacksmiths, boilermakers, sheet metal workers, machinists, carmen, electricians and molders. To des- ti these unions and set up its “employee _ representation” me the Pennsylvania has re- to. blacklisting, injunctions, elections, and terrorization. d self-styled | first books around the civil war Icom, which they had just emerged. | Among the best of their novels are | Vsevolod Ivanov’s “Armored Train’ |and “Colored Winds”; Yakovlev’s “October”; Babel’s “Red Cavalry” ‘and “Tales”; Seifulina’s “Virineya” ; and “Dung”; Artyom Vesolyi’s “The |Even the Railroad Labor Board Homeland”; Malishkin’s “The. Fall of |charged the company with setting Daira”; Leonid Leonov’s “Badger”, |up “a system which throttles the and Boris Pilnyak’s “Leather Jack- majority and establishes the repre-| ets” and “The Naked Year.” eres of a coerced and subser-|" ‘phe last of these works appeared vient minority. at a psychological moment. It was The Pennsy also company-union-| the first novel which set itself the lized its clerks and tricked its tele- task of reflecting Russia’s social life appreciation of the role of the work-|8"0und for a realistic literature, | {which Soviet Russia is coming to ac-| lcept as the most desirable kind at | |graphers and maintenance of way |men into accepting the slave status |which the company calls that of “a |happy family.” Company officials |boast that it is not necessary for the workers “to resort to a strike in order to get a square deal.” Having wiped out the independent unions that could battle for wages and hav- ing stifled the voice of the workers, | the company is now in a_ position where it can shovel larger and larger profits into the pockets of absentee owners. In January, the road used its “em- ployee representation” to hand shop-craft workers a 4-cents-a hour increase after unionized work- ers on the New York Central had won a five cent increase through a display of union strength. To pre- vent agitation among its men the Pennsy was forced to grant the con- cession through its parasitic com- pany union, a |in the throes of the civil war. The novel presents the various social strata during the famine period, | portraying peasants, city workers, intellectuals, and the Communists— the “people in leather. jackets” re- building Russia out of chaos. As might be expected from a work ‘of fiction prpduced by the famine years, the chaotic and tht rebellious pre- ganizing elements are described in) a much weaker manner; the author was not-yet able to compose a whole, which at that time was still unclear to him. The period of the civil war “and| the days of peace immediately fol-_ lowing it also produced Ilya Eren-; burg’s novels, notably “Julio Jure | nito,” “Trust D, E.”, “Nikolay Kur- bov” and “Jenny Ney,” the last of which was filmed and shown in New York. These works are permeated with scepticism. dominate, while the creative and or-} The author does| |not seek to penetrate the inner mean- | “Tomorrow” and “The Commissars”; | ling of the events he pictures, con- |tenting himself with being merely |paradoxical. This won him a tem- |porary pgpularity at a time when * |literary works dealing with the re- |volution were a novelty. At present | Soviet readers, regardless of their| social status, demand more serious achievements from their novelists. Among the intellectuals of the old |new, but whose works could only |skim the surface of revolutionary \Russia, is Alexis Tolstoy. His |“Aelita”, “Engineer Garin’s Hyper-| |bole” and “Blue Cities” are well- planned, plastic and _ entertaining. His more recent works reveal a lean- jing to the new bourgeoisie created |\By the NEP (new economic policy, since 1921). A writer of a similar \calibre, is Fedin, whose “Towns and | Years,” déal with the civil war, and |(‘Transvaal”—with the village under . NEP. . * * Sooner or later Soviet literature was bound to turn from the civil war to the reconstruction p&riod. The best known novel reflecting this transition is Feodor Gladkov’s “Ce- ment”. The romanticism which marked the proletarian literature of the first period still clings to this book; but this time the problems of the new society are correctly ap- proached and lines are projected poipting to socialist construction. A number of realistic works dealing with the period of peaceful economic growth followed, notably Lyashko’s “The Blast Furnace”, and Lidin’s “The Ships Are Coming.” Soviet writers also began to por- tray the new types of people evolved by the new society. Excellent por- traits are présented in Lebedinsky’s regime who personally accepted the| Tarassov-Rodionows “Chocolate”. Lyashko’s novel “The Break” pre- sents the psychology of the Commun- list worker; while Seifulina’s “Viri- neya” and Gladkov’s “Cement” por- |tray types of Soviet women. number. of well-written novels deal |with the Soviet youth, notably Ma- |lashkin’s “The Right Side of the |Moon,” Panteleymon Romanov’s “Without Flowers”, and Ognyev’s “Diary of a Communist Schoolboy”, which has been translated into Eng- ish, : | The peasantry, also, has its place jin the new Russian literature, One jof ‘the best writers on village life |was Neverov, whose “City of Bread”, dealing with the famine period in Tashkent, has been translated into English. Fedin’s “Transvaal” in a bizarre manner describes the well- jto-do peasantry. The transition of ‘the village from the old to the new |life is sketched in Karavayev’s “The Bears,” and “The Chestnut-Colored Al 1825 revolt is portrayed in Marich’s! “The Northern Lights” and in Tyn-| | yanov’s “Kyukhla”; the revolution of | 1905 in Yevdokimov’s “Bells”; pre-| revolutionary Moscow in Andrey! | Byelyi’s “The Moscow Crank,” and| “Moscow Under the Blow”; the per-| iod of November, 1917, in Artyom| Vesyolyi’s “Russia Bathed in Blood” | and other works. The historical | novel is rapidly becoming one of the | most favored forms of literature in| the U.S. S. R. | The stabilization of Soviet econo- |my in the past few years has ma- jtured the new writers considerably. Even their approach to civil war themes reveals a different perspec- tive. Thus Fadeyev’s “The Smash- up,” which relates the story of a | group of “partisan” peasants (guer-| | Tilla fighters) in Siberia during the} jcivil war ,is free of naturalism and |romanticism. The novel is ripe} and realistic and the images cor- respond to the contents. Fadeyev| also exemplifies the recent trend of | Skin”, and in Akulshin’s “Unbound | Soviet writers to learn technically, Sheaves” and “Village Whispers.” A|from the great heritage of the past, | | strange spectacle of village life is} more especially from Tolstoy. i | Presented by Klichkov in “The Sweet] Of late the futurist poet Maya- | German” and other works, which are|koysky has been experimenting with | |poems in prose rather than novels. |long epics as in “Lenin,” and in per- Vsevolod Ivanov in “The Secret of | sonal lyries like “It”, Others have Secrets” has also essayed to portray also attempted epics, notably, Bag-| | the present life of the Russian peas-| ritsky in the “Thoughts About Opa-| ant. <r y i jnas,” and Selvinsky in his construct- ; The life of city outcasts is de-/ivist poem “Ulyalyayevshchina.” scribed by Leonid Leonov in “The | Pasternak, a lyric poet whose “Sister | Thief,” while petty Soviet officials|T; My Life’ made him famous, has are portrayed in ayev’s “Em-| published a long psychological poem | bezzlers” and Lidin’s “Glotov’s Em-| entitled “Spektorsky” and a histori-! bezzlement.” jcal poem “Lieutenant Schmidt.” Novikov-Priboy has written anum-| The best known of the younger jber of splendid stories of life in the | poets are Bezymensky, whose book | |navy, notably “Stories of the Sea” |The Odor of Life” and other verse | jand “The Divers.” collections articulate the attitudes of | In addition to these and numerous | the Communist youth; and Utkin, |Zharov and Svetlov. The futurist | Soviet Union since the Revolutio Great Forerunner of New Soviet Literature Mazim Gorky, who as far back as the nineties of the last cen- tury, ‘turning towards the workingclass and away from the bourgeois world, sowed the seeds of the new literature that has arisen in the - | group, headed by Mayakovsky and Brick, has produced several talented nov; while the lyrical school of which Yessenin was the best representa- |tive has found adherents in Oreshin jand Nasetkin. | The following works of fiction and [poetry by contemporary Russian writers have been translated into English and are available in the| United States: | 1. Flying Ossip. (International Publishers, New York.) A collec-} tion of short stories, including tales by Boris Pilniak, Vsevolod Ivanov, »Seifulina and others. 2. Russian Poetry. An Anthology. (International Publishers, New York.) A collection of poems from Pushkin to the present time, includ- ing verses by Mayakovsky, Yesse- nin, Bezymensky, Marienhof, Ilya Erénburg, Alexander Blok and others. 3. Azure Cities. (International Publishers.) A collection of short stories by Alexis Tolstoy, Pilniak, Pantalaimon Romanov, Lyashko, | Babel, and others. 4, Diary of a Communist School- boy, by Ognyev, (Payson and Clark). 5. The City of Bread, by Alexan- der Neverov, (A. A. Knopf). 6. Cement, by Feodor Gladkow, (International Publishers). A novel yof the reconstruction period. 7. Three Plays, by A. A. Luna- charsky, (E. P. Dutton & Co.). This volume by the Soviet Commissar of Education contains “Faust and the City,” “The Magi” and “Vasilisa the Wise.” 8. The Naked Year, by Boris Pil-| nyak, (Payson & Clark). 9. The Communist Undergradu- ate, by Ognyev, (Payson & Clark), a continuation of the adventures of | Kostja Ryabtzev, the hero of the) Diary of a Communist Schoolboy, he e poets, including Aseyev and Kirsa-|- Copyright, 1929, by International Publishers Co., Inc. BILL HAYWOOD'’S BOOK All rights reserved. Republica- tion forbidden except by permission. ‘What a Labor Union Should Be, as Stated by the Industrial Union Manifesto at the Birth of the I. W. W. In previous chapters Haywood told of his early life as miner, cowboy and homesteader in the Old West; of years as member of the Western Federation of Miners; of finally being elected to head the W.F.M.; of its battles in Idaho and Colorado; of the conference vat Chicago in January, 1905 which called for a new national labor union center; the first part of the historic manifesto that conference issued was given in the last instalment. It continues as below. Now go on reading. . * * By WILLIAM D. HAYWOOD. PART 55, AFT jealousy leads to the attempt to create trade monopolies. Prohibitive initiation fees are established that force men to become scabs against their will. Men whom manliness or circumstances have driven from one trade are thereby fined when they seek to transfer membership to the union of the new craft. Craft divisions foster political ignorance among the workers, thus dividing their class at the ballot box as well as in:the shop, mine and factory. ‘ Craft unions may be and have been used to assist employers in the establishment of monopolies and the yaising of prices. One set of workers is thus used to make harder the conditions of Jife of another body of workers. 9 Craft divisions hinder the growth of class consci- ousness of the workers, foster the idea of harmony of interests between employing exploiter and employed slave. They permit the association of the misleaders of the workers with the capitalists in the Civic Federation, where plans are made for the perpetuation of capitalism and the permanent enslavement of the workers through the wage system. Previous efforts for the betterment of the working class have proven abortive because limited in scope and disconnected in action. — Universal economic evils afflicting the working class can be eradi- cated only by a universal working-class movement. Such a movement of the working class is impossible while separate craft and wage agree- ments are made favoring the employer against other crafts in the same industry, and while energies are Wasted in fruitless jurisdiction strug- gles which serve only to further the personal aggrandizement of union officials. * A MOVEMENT to fulfill these conditions nfust consist of one great in- dustrial union embracing all industries,—providing for craft auto- nomy locally, industrial autonomy internationally, and working-class unity generally. ‘io It must be founded on the class struggle, and its general administra- tion must be conducted in harmony with the recognition of the irre- pressible conflict between the capitalist class and the working class. It should be established as the economic organization of the work- ing class, without affiliation to any political party. All power should rest in a collective membership. Local, national and general administration, including union labels, buttons, badges, transfer cards, initiation fees, and per capita tax, should be uniform throughout, All members must hold membership in the local, national or inter- national union covering the industry in which they are employed, but transfers of membership between unions should be universal. Workingmen bringing union’cards from industrial unions in foreign countries should be freely admitted into the organization. The general administration should issue a publication representing the entire union and its principles which should reach all members in every industry at regular intervals, A central defense fund, to which all members contribute equally, should be established and maintained. All workers, therefore, who agree with the principles herein set forth, will meet in convention at Chicago the 27th day of June, 1905, for the purpose of forming an economic organization of the working class along the lines marked out in this Manifesto. Adopted at Chicago, January 2, 3, and 4, 1905. * * * * * \N the back of the Manifesto was printed a chart classifying the industrial workers, with a statement of the requirements for an industrial organization of the workers: A labor organization to correctly represent the working class must have two things in view. First—It must combine the wage workers in such a way that it can most successfully fight the battles and protect the interests of the working people of today in their struggle for fewer hours, more wages and better conditions. Secondly—It must offer a final solution of the labor problem—an emancipation from strikes, injunctions and bull-pens. * 'HREE secretaries were elected to attend to the distribution of the Manifesto, one for the East, one for the middle of the country, and myself for the West. Two hundred thousand copies of the Manifesto were distributed, and there was much correspondence and other work involved in preparing for the convention that we had decided upon holding in Chicago the following June. There was a general response to the Manifesto. It was gratifying to see the number of different trades and industries that took an active interest. With the exception of the strike at the Standard Mill in Colorado City, and the strike in the Cripple Creek ‘District, the strikes in Colo- rado had been settled or called off, with a decided gain for the work- ers in the metalliferous industry. After we had returned to the W. F. M. headquarters in Denver, we issued a circular to the workers in the mining industry, reminding them that the Cripple Creek strike was still on, and signed by Moyer and myself. * # «© INE day about this time I went home a little earlier than usual and found the house flooded with a crowd of laughing, romping children. I asked my wife what it all meant. She told me: “T don’t know! You'll have to ask Henrietta.” I could see seven-year-old Henrietta’s red head bobbing un and down among the other's in the dining room. When I could attract her attention I called her to me and asked her why all the children were there. “Why,” she said, “it’s a party!” “Well, why didn’t you say something about it to your mamma or to me?” I asked. “Who do you think is running this house?” “Well,” she answered, looking up at me with flashing eyes, “I guess I’m running part of it!” : jlosted at her. All at once I saw that she was no longer a baby. Said: * “T realize that. But you haven’t made any arrangements to em tertain all these children.” “T couldn’t tell mamma. She can’t keep anything to herself. And besides, it’s a surprise party on her.” a, “Well,” I said, “let’s go out and get some cakes and candy to feed all the guests.” After the other childfen had gone, I called Henrietta and Vernie to the couch where their mother was lying. “This afternoon Henrietta told me she was running part of this house. Now, in that case, you children will have to take part of the responsibility. You must keep an account of the money you spend, and maybe with four of us running the house we can do it better than it has been before.” From that day the children did their share, and we talked things over with them. : * * Ne In the next instalment Haywood tells of. the 1905 convention of the W, F. of M.; of the first convention of the Industrial Workers of the World, of which he was chairman. Readers should not lose the opportunity now offered to get Haywood's Book, in régular book form, for their libraries, free with a yearly subscription, rencwal or caten- sion to the Daily Worker,