The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 11, 1929, Page 4

Four CAFETERIA (By a Worker Correspondent) A few weeks ago I came from Homestead, Pa., where I worked in the Cafeteria of the Carnegie Steel Mills, to look for work in this town. I had the address of a friend { and fellow worker and I did not | miss a minute to meet him in his | working place. What a surprise | Worker WAITERS AT THE BILTMORE ARE ROBBED Tipping System Bring: Many Evils (By a Worker Being uner ed, and walking up and down on Sixth Ave., the nest of the New York City employment agency sharks, looking for a job in a restaurant or hotel of any k' though I am an experienced v of 15 years, I found an extra waiter job at the Biltmore Hotel, for one night in the banquet department. The employment agency shark told me that the job would be very good, with plenty of tips. Therefore, he said, I must pay more than 10 per cent as a fee. He charged me 50 cents for a $3 job. He toid me that T must be on the floor at 5 p. m., sharp. A Parasites’ Party. Well, I was. There were about 80 or 90 extra waiters there. After we had set everything, and the parasites started to come in for the party they were to have while we slaved, the head waiter put a sign on the kitchen door, saying, “No Col- lection,” that is, no tips musi be taken by us. If the committee in charge of the party left any tips, he would take care of it, the head waiter said. Now, the system of tips i course not wanted by the waiters, fer they are paid starvation wages, because the boss tells them you get plenty of tips. But, you must under- stand, we were only being paid $3 for the night, and were told the rest of our pay would come from tips. By saying that he would take care of the tips, the head waiter gave us to understand he would divide them equally. Well, we slaved for the parasites from 5 p. m. to midnight, with noth- ‘ng to eat, speeded up as usual to be thru early, and to satisfy the parasites so that they might feel/ inclined to leave more tips. This is what the waiters are reduced to,| licking the boots of the parasites for tips. Headwaiter Disappears. ‘ About 11:30 p. m. we noticed the head waiter had disappeared. We asked the captains if we were going to get the tips promised us. “Tomor- | row you will find out,” they told us. I went there 11 a. m. the next} day for my wages, $3, for 7 hours, | and the “plenty of tips” that had been promised us. The paymaster gave me only the $3, and I went for the head waiter to get my tips. Of course, it turned out, he said we had nothing coming to us. He had kept it himself. This is not my first experience) 8° 0m any longer, and the result| chain cafeterias. being robbed by the head waiter. Organize! Waiters, we must fight for our rights, thru an Industrial Union. Let’s go, fellow waiters, cooks, bus boys, waitresses, dishwashers, countermen, etc. Down with the 12| hour day. Down with the employ- ment sharks. Down with the rob- » bery by the head waiters. Let us| put an end to the tipping system. Join the Communist Waiter. Party.—A Prepare to Smuggle { cafeter Co ST to see such a palace with mirrors and every kind of decorations; I couldn’t believe this was called a immediately I him if there is any chance to get work in this heavenly place where every- thing smiles at you. He glanced at me with pity and with his right hand pressing on mine he wiped off the sweat from his face with the elbow of his left | Slavery? Ask Any Slave in a Cafeteria (By a Worl I am a married man and have two children. I work as a coun- terman in a cafeteria. I quit my job because I got sick of working 12 hours a day for 6 and a half days a week, which every cafe- teria worker does. Today I went to look for an- other job in a different cafeteria and approached the boss there. He asked me 40 different ques- tions and put me to work for the rush hours. He said, “If you suit me, I will give you a steady job.” Dinner time for us is after 2 p. m. I was about to get my lunch when the boss said, “Soup and coffee, that’s all you can have. If you don’t Ike it you can get out.” I said O. K. and he gave me 35 cents for two hours of hard work. And they say the slave days are over. —CAFETERIA SLAVE. STRIKE RESULT OF SLAVE WAGES Fight to End Miserable Conditions By a Worker Correspondent. We are fighting, thru our union, for shorter hours, for better wages, | and will fight till we win these. “In unity there is strength,” we find written én the prison walls, written by workers thrown in jail for mass picketing before the cafe- terias, from which the workers | walked out in a general strike to| fight for union conditions We are told that slaver: has been | “abolished, but right here in New York City workers are slaving 12, 14 and 15 hours a day under the | most miserable conditions. Only a short time ago I worked | as an extra in a 59th St. cafe. After | I got thru with my three hours’) RIKERS DETERM hand and after a few seconds, smiling, he said: “Have patience and you will share this hell, too.” | He spoke to the boss and I got | a job on the hot dishes counter. My friend tried to help me out so I would not get stuck during the neon rush, Well that rush, let me tell you, is worse than the foundries. When this hell was over I felt my coat and shirt and I found out that I was soaked wet from top to bot- tom. I sat with my fellow workers to | eat the Goulash that was left but | my mouth would not open to re- ceive the bite that my hand was trying to put in. I was dying for a little breath of fresh air, for I was not allowed | to go out. I went down to the | DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 1929 cellar to take a smoke and dry my wet clothes, there my friend approached me and told me, whispering, “I can see before you tell me anything that you are ready to quit and starve rather than stay here in this hell hole. Of course I told him, “what the dickens do you think I ama That you are a slave there is no doubt. “Listen, you are very lucky,” he said, “I could not understand what he meant. Then I saw his hand moving into my pocket and he told me, now go ahead to the wash veom and read it. Without an answer I did as I was told and when I read it, still wondering, I lighted a cigarette again and ap- preached my friend. “Well, he told me how do you like it, now NED TO WIN EVERY DEMAND DESPITE POLICE TERR you should not be a coward but you ought to stick on your job and within a short time everybody will walk out in a body and force the acceptance by the bosses of the 8-hour day, better food, €ecent wages, ete.” I stretched my hand toward my friend and he assured me that the day is not long when we'll march in the picket line. OR TACTICS Well here we are, we are march- ing now on the sidewalk picketing the Cafeteria with determination to win all our demands, even the representatives of the law, that the “Daily Worker” calls cossacks, to use their clubs and us while we are ready anxious to arrest peacefully picket. —ARISTO. vrespondence from Cafeteria N.Y, RESTAURANT SLAVES WORK IN FILTHY KITCHENS Low Wages, Slave 12 Hours A Day By a Worker Correspondent. It has been my lot to work in hotels, restaurants and cafeterias from one end to the other of this erous land of the free, (free and prosperous for the ruling class) | from Seattle to Miami, from Los} Angeles to Boston. I have been a waiter, cook, dishwasher or counter- man in cheap and dirty coffee pots as well as in Statler Hotels. But in 15 years of slavery as a restaurant worker, I have never seen | worse conditions of exploitation than in my present place of em- ployment, in one of the big chain} cafeterias located in the garment section of Manhattan. | Argues With Boss—Gets Fired. I landed in this burg broke and hungry. I came here from the an- thracite region of Pennsylvania where I was fired from a job in a swell restaurant because I got into an argument with the boss. He was | damning the striking miners, led by | the National Miners’ Union, for aj bunch of dirty foreign Bolsheviks who hurt business. When I gave him an argument, he got sore and fired me. I hopped the next freight for New York City. A Rotten Job. I saw a sign in a window of a cafeteria “Busboys wanted,” and ap- plied for the job. It seems that it was an extra job during the rush hours. I worked two hours at the noon hour’ and three hours at night. I could not take time for a cup of coffee until my work was over. Then \ the boss approached me and held out $1.25. This and two lousy meals of left-over, soup and hash and bread pudding, was all I got for five hours’ hard work. At the Employments Sharks Next morning, after a night in| a flop-house with bedbugs crawling Agency Sends a Jobless Girl to Empty Lot (By a Worker Correspondent.) I, a girl out of work 10 weeks, went to a Sixth Ave. employment agency. They sent me to a job as waitress for which I paid $3. I spent my fare and over an hour’s time, which I could ill afford, be- ing out of work so long. The proprietor, Davis, on 27th Street, said he needed no one, for he had no girls in his employ- ment for two years. I came back for my money from the agency, and was nearly thrown out on the street. Another time, they tried to send me to a speakeasy on the East Side. They often took my money, and sent me out to places that do not exist. The other day they sent us to a place at 48 E. 29th St. from an employment agency on 49th St. We walked there, to find no such place ex- isted. Its bad enough to get up at 5 a. m. to answer ads in the papers, go downtown, with little money to eat with, tramp around, only to be cheated by the agency sharks. SERVE FILTH TO KITCHEN HELP Conditions Filthy In Cafeterias (By a Worker Correspondent) For the last nine months I have worked for a cafeteria on Fifth Ave. where there are the most disgrace- ful working conditions to be found in this city. There are no lavoratories for the help. Locker room is in the kitchen and when you dress you have to sit | down on a bag of potatoes or onions. | The working hours are 12 hours! Workers SPEED-UP, FILTHY CONDITIONS IN SILVER'S JOINT 72 Hours A Week for} $20 (By a Worker Correspondent) For the past two years I have | worked as a bus boy and counter man at Silver’s Cafteria at 40th St. and Seventh Ave. As a bus boy I got $12 to start and $15 after the | first six months. Then I was given} a counter man’s job for $20 per week. I work 11 hours a day, 6 1-2 days per week. The work is very hard, and when I go home at night to my little dirty room full of bed- bugs, I am s otired I don’t even want to see a movie. | “If Customers Could See—” If the customers could see the way that their food is prepared, they would never come back. The kitchen is unsanitary. The floor is always wet, covered with slps. When the bus boy carries the tray full |of dishes back to the kitchen, all the pieces of meat, bread and but- ter are saved. Hash, stew, bread | pudding, ete., are made from these | scraps—and this is the kind of food | the workers have to eat. Do you think that because we work in a cafeteria that we are allowed to eat whatever \.e want? Not on your life. We eat what is left over after | the patrons have had their lunch or | dinner, | No Time to Change Clothes. I have seen the cook, with sweat jrunning off of his body, especially jin the summer, and running right jinto the food he is cooking. Our |clothes aet sopping wet from per- |spiration and stay that way all day long. No time to change clothes. |No place to wash up. Speed-up, all jday and all night. When I was green, I once thought that I could take an hour off and eat my meal in peace and get a little rest be- tween meals. I know better than to try that now. Tells work the boss paid me 60 cents and a day, often more, as in practically took off five cents because he claim- | ed I ate five cents more of food than I was supposed to eat for three hours’ work, Another week I worked in a 44th! Street cafe. After I got thru with my week’s work as a bus boy, the boss gave me $18, and took off $5/ for the employment agency. I was left with $13 in my pocket for 75 hours work that week. | Most of the countermen in these non-union shops get not more than $25-$30 a week for a 7-day week. The bus boys get from $12 to $18} a week, also for a 72-hour week, or | more. Now, of course, this could not was the present general strike. S| Stimson ForcesHoward | Front in Latest Clash WASHINGTON, April 10.—Sir jstate department discussing the problem of Mrs. Edward Everett Gann’s social position as official j hostess of Vice-president Curtis. Liquor at Niagara BUFFALO, N. Y., April 10.—Re- ports from Bridgeburg, Ont., today indicated the first rum fleet of the ard who sent out the first letter | season was preparing to land liquor on the American shore. Advices said that about 15 fast eraft loaded with wet goods com- prised the fleet. It was believed by guard officials the fleet would attempt to run the) blockade in the Niagara River some night this week. Coast guard and customs boats have been placed at strategic points along the river, it was said. Stimson stated that he refused to lintervene, which means that Sir Esme Howard will have trouble |finding grounds for a graceful re- | treat if Curtis wins, as it was How- |saying that wives of ambassadors | would sit above the vice-president’s ‘sister at functions. The society front is the latest to develop conflict between Britain and U. S., and the combatants take them- selves very seriously, We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the work- ing class ix to raise t to the position of win the battle of a Max (Comm nz class, to ocracy—Karl ist Manifesto) Food Slave on Un as By a Worker Correspondent. It is time for me to speak about » conditions in the cafeterias. it, about the food the patrons de- » We have to tell the custom- everything is fresh. But it is a Everything left over is used day. If meats are left over, ‘are chopped up and served. give it a French name, and the bill of fare. Bread and on the tables is used workers work) 12 “ME FOR FOOD UNION” ton Leading Strike hours a day for 6 1-2 days a week. The pay is the lowest in any indus- try. We have no lockers for our clothes. There is no ventilation and the cellars are dirty as a dumping ground. The mice play around the food there. T hear that there is a union form- ed to organize the cafeteria work- ers and better their conditions, and also get cleaner and better food for the workers and abolish the 12 hour day. Me for that union! ne a | to Retreat on Society | Esme Howard, British ambassador, | to syste spent almost an hour today with} Demand a living wage, no tipping.| Secretary of State Stimson at the| all over me, I applied at an em- ployment agency on Sixth Avenue| for a regular job. After taking my | fee of $3.00, they sent me to a res- taurant where the proprietor told me the job had been filled the day before. The agency refused to return my | fee saying they would have a job| for me in a day or two. Next day they sent me to a coffee pot where I was offered a job as dishwasher for $12.00 per week, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Disgusted I started out to look for myself. Finally, after several days I found my present job in one of the big I work for 12) hours daily, 6 1-2 days a week, as a counterman for $25.00. The dining }room of this place is clean and white. We are forced to keep every- thing spotlessly clean. The menus and signs on the"walls | boast of cleanliness_and servicé ren- |dered the patrons. It is advertised as a place where everything is sani- |tary and the food wholesome, pure food health place. But if the cus- tomers took one look into the kit- chen they would never come back. | There everything is as dirty as it is clean in the dining room. The floors are always sloppy except early in the morning and late at night when they are swept. The shoes of the kitchen workers are al- | ways wet and most of them suffer from perpetual colds, catarrh, rheu- matism and all have had the flu | during the past winter. They lost a | lot of time, but did not stop work until forced to go to bed and return- |ed to work long before they were well. And the health authorities wonder how these diseases spread so rapidly during an epidemic, If the boss or his lick-spittle man- ager sees any of us throwing away | a piece of meat, butter or bread, we {are bawled out and warned we will |be fired if we do it again. The toilet and wash room is the worst of all. It is nauseating to go into the filthy place, Old socks, underwear, and papers stay in the corners for weeks, The cracks in the floor are filled with stinking dirt, pieces of rotten food, soaked with urine. It is unfit for hogs, let alone human beings. Union Union, I read in the Daily Worker that the Hotel, Restaurant and Cafeteria Workers’ Union is going to organize these cafeter’ laves, and I hope this letter will show how badly we need a union to help us fight to abolish these conditions. I have joined the union and am working on a committee to organize the other slaves in my shop. When a strike is called we will go out 100 per cent. every cafeteria. Pay is very small, and the bosses are slave drivers. Only 20 minutes are allowed for meals. They let you eat only stuff left over from the day before. The food served is rotten stuff, and if the customers saw it prepared they would want to kill the owners. —WORKER. PRISON LABOR KILLED IN BLAST Explosion Occurs in the Monterey Camp By a Worker Correspondent. LOS ANGELES (By Mail). — Three prisoners are victims of a blast. J. McDermott, blacksmith, was killed, while Theodore Whiting, Los Angeles, and Augustino Barra- gan, Ventura, were painfully in- jured by an explosion of undeter- mined origin at the Monterey prison camp, March 18. . * ° Foot-loose, class-conscious work- ers ought to try their luck for jobs at the San Gabriel dam. From 1000 to 2000 men will be employed there for the next five years. Live wires are needed to organize the outfit on the basis of the class struggle, “GRAND ST. FOLLIES” OPENS HERE WEEK MAY 6 The Actor-Managers send out an announcement that their annual frolic, “The Grand Street Follies,” is now in rehearsal and will open during the waak of May 6 at the Booth Theatre. Albert Carroll will be back again with his inimitable impersonations. Dorothy Sands, a favorite of “The Grand Street Follies” for many sea- sons, will also be a feature of the production—the seventh of the series, Other members of the cast include Paula Trueman, Otto Hulet, Mare Loebell, Junius Matthews and George Heller. Agnes Morgan is again staging the frolic. THEATER ENGINEERS STRIKE. PORTLAND, Ore., (By Mail).— Twenty engineers of the Dufwin Theatre here have gone on strike. [PIANO TUNING! ———— P. SCHMITT, E: patring. Gi 1419 Lonef yton 0046, The towels we use are filthy. No individual towels. I have seen a cook take a dirty towel that had been used by the workers and use it to wipe off the grease from meat |or an omelette. The bosses can’t afford to give us a supply of clean towels. Oh no. If they did, their wives might not have money enough to take a trip to Bermuda. “Inspection” Is Joke. The inspection of the kitchen by the inspector from the Health De- partment is a joke. He gets his graft from the boss and doesn’t ,even look into the kitchen usually. | Every restaurant and cafeteria I ever worked in was unsanitary. Not fit to prepare food for hogs, let alone human beings. These are some of the conditions that cafeteria workers have to en- dure. Is it any wonder that we are on strike, and will fight until we win decent wages and the 8-hour day. The power of the bourgeoisie rests not alone upon international capital, ug international connec- alxo upon the force of habit, on the force of small industry, of which, unfortunately, there is plenty left and daily, hourly, gives birth to capitalism and bour- Reoisie, spontaneously and on a large seale—V. 1, Lenin (“Left” Commu- nism). |PUSSIAN film directors seem to| |. pursue and intensify their special tendencies more closely perhaps |than the cinema producers of other | countries, who are more inclined to diversify their talents in many di- rections which are often dictated by the varying screen vogues. Eisenstein with his films, “The Strike,” “Potemkin,” “Ten Days that Shook the World” and his new- est, “The General Line,” strives to ate his dynamic effects with ss movements; to give all his |scenes the cool impersonality of | non-individual actions; to paint so- cial and sociclogical landscapes. Pudovkin in the films “Mother,” |“The End of St. Peters ’ and “Storm Over Asia” b |technicai_motives from | but Griffith-like, insists on a hero, heroine and villain with all their personal relationships, definitely etched on the streaming celluloid. Taritsch follows another plan. With his “Czar Ivan the Terrible” and his latest “Flames on the Volga,” he seeks to recreate cen- turies-old periods in the Russia’s restless history and to color his film interpretations to give the photo- grama its necessary purpose of in- direct propaganda. In this tri-cornered race for cin- ema supremacy, Pudovkin perhaps | holds the lead in world popularity, }and his “Storm Over Asia” will | probably clinch the laurels, | “Flames on the Volga,” now show- ing at the Film Guild Cinema, dem- ‘enstrates again the uncanny art of | Taritsch so ably demonstrated in | “Ivan the Terrible,” to take a period and reconduct it in all its meticulous detail, Then his task was simple, {but in this film depicting the revolt |of the Volga peasants fighting for their land rights in the reign of Catherine the Great, he had to cope | with the complete region of the | Ural Mountains, to dramatize the mighty Volga and use it as a back- ground for a cast of 5,000 Tartar peasants who are the descendants of the original insurrectionists. Noted Russian Soprano ot Conditions Cau Soviet Union Film Directors Intensify Special Tendencies IN TCHEKOV’S “SEA GULL’ Barbara Balgakova, who has an important rele in “The Sea Gull,” which will be given at a special mat- inee this afternoon at the Comedy Theatre, All-Russian Program at Final Conductorless season of the Conductorless Symph- ony Orchestra, musical sensation of the season in New York, will be given Thursday evening, April 18, at 8:45 o’clock at Carnegie Hall. Maria Kurenko, noted Russian so- prano, will be assisting artist of the evening. The piece-de-resistance of the eve- ning, performed by special request, will be Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, the famous “Pathetique.” The rest of the program will be all-Rus- sian, except for a single melody by Mozart. The Russian composers in- cluded in the program include, be- side Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsak- off and Moussorksky. Imperialism is at the same time the most prostitute and the ultima form of the state power which na: cent middle-class society had com- menced to elaborate as a means of its own emancipation from feudal- society had finally transformed into means for the enslavement of labor by capital.—Marx. Orchestra Appearance! The fourth and last concert this | ism, and which full-grown bourgeois | sing Strike HEADWAITERS ROB MEN WHO WANTON TABLE Men Strike, Disclose Holdup (By @ Worker Cor | Being unemployed, I went to the | Linardos Agency on Sixth Ave, and | 39th St. They sent me out as an | extra waiter on a one-night job to Correspondent) | the Excellent Restaurant, Engle- wood, N. J. It was to pay $5, no “collection,” meaning no tip. The | agency rged me 50 cents. The | fare was cents, so that left only $4.25 for a hard night’s work. Arriving at the Excellent Restaur- ant in Englewood, I found that there were 12 extra waiters in all. It was to be a party given by the local re- publican pol jans. The party was |not to be given at the restaurant, but in a church nearby. Besides | waiting on table for the politicians, | we were told we would have to load | and unload the food from trucks tak- j ing it to the church. | Waiters Strike. The waiters would not stand for this, and we showed our solidarity | by demanding that there either be a | collection or we get better wages. The boss of the restaurant told us he would fix us up, but we had too much experience to trust him. We said, either pay us $8 apiece or take up a collection, After a collection started one of the parasites giving the party said, | “Stop this collection, we have al- ready given the headwaiter $30 for tips.” Headwaiter Cheats. We found out that the headwaiter and the employment shark of the Linardos Agency were in a league together to divide the money among | themselves, and that the agency shark had come down there in order |to be on hand to get his share. This is not the first time we found the sharks in the agency and the boss headwaiter in a league to cheat the waiters WAITER | Mario Korenko, noted Russian| soprano, who will be the assisting | artist at the fourth and final con- cert of this season of the Conductor- less Symphony Orchestra Thurs- day evening, April 18, at Carnegie Hall. The program will be all-Rus- sian, Something elxe, however, must be snid of the other enemy of Bolshe- yism in the working claxs mo le ently known abroad grew up, formed, that Bolsh: struggle against petit-bourgeo!s rev- olutionism, which resembles, or bor- rows something from, anarchism.—V. yMadicon Sq. Garden Afternoon and it ‘ingling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey 10,900 Marvels Including HUGO ZACOHINI Cannon — Sensation of Century Admission to all (incl. seats) $1.00 cept Saturdays & Sundays, Tickets at Garden Box Offices { j TWICH DAILY 2 and 8 Now! Combined “THE HUMAN PROJECTILE” to $3.50 Inc. Tax, Children under Gimbel Brothers and Usual tal Entertainments Each Shot Through Space from Monster 12 Half Price at All Matinees ex- Ticket Agencies. EPERTORY 4:47 (ivic R COMEDY ‘The 41st St, E. of Broadway. Eves., incl. Sun. at 8.50. — Mats, Thurs, & Sat RUT vraper Mans Estate by Beatrice Blackmar and Bruce Gould TM Theatre, W. BILTMORE “ren streot 50; Mats, Thurs.&Sat. Eves. 8s VAKA'S COMEDY CAPRICE : Thea. W. find St GUILD Tea,» Mats. TI & Sat. 0 BUGENE O'NEIL Strange Interlud John N Thea., 58th GOLDEN,? of B'way EVENINGS ONLY AT 5:30 ARTHUR HOPKINS presents HoripaY Comedy Hit by PHILIP BARRY ‘Thea. W. 45 St. Ev. 8.50 PLYMOUTH jyats, thurs, & gat 2.38 / Chanin’s MAJESTIC Theatre 44th St. West of Brondway Wed. & Sat. 2:30 Funolest Revue leasure Bound Eve and hardened itself in long years of | Is Farewell PERFORMANCE a IN A PROGRAM OF Revolutionary Songs and Dances 18, 19 April 20, 21 Manhattan Opera House TICKETS ON SALE AT DAILY WORKER OFFICE, ROOM 201, 26 Union Sq., New York City and at Box Office. — Popular Prices. adora