The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 9, 1929, Page 4

- led by the Trade Union Educational DAILY Ww ORKER, Ww Y ORK, , THURSD: AY, M. AY 9, 1929 Grane Shops in 1 Chicago a - Living Hell tor the ‘Slaves, . Says Worker Correspondent “BLACK GANG” SLAVES; LEWIS AIDS BOSSES; AUTO WORKERS ANGERED WESTERN BELLE 4 POISON FUMES ARE INHALED BY FOUNDRY MEN Bosses Train Sons To Be Slave-Drivers By a Worker Correspondent) CHICAGO (By Mail).—Co n the Crane Plumbing Plant are terrible. The founder xre so terrible that no living thi nuld inds exist there except hw e to go there and in poison to make our shorten our lives for the livin bo: Do Work of 100. foundry workers in the Crane | can shops hardly see each other] gh the dense smoke. They are ing e and more labor- | machinery every day, throw- nundreds out of work, For ex- | mple, in the core room, there used » work 100 workers; now 25 men} e doing the work of 100. Before y used to make cores and dry now they are making wet} ard do not dry them, Moul-; making moulds and core-moul- | s all work piece-work. Speed Slaves Up. They don’t get piece-work rates, however, so they are not making more under piece-work than before. The idea was to speed the workers | up. If the worker is very fast, they /ers in Hocking Valley, A ARTE ae After a long day of inhuman sla on the Gulf Line freighter “Western a seaman correspondent. Western Belle” type, aground. The very, the “black gang,’ Beile” the stokers | are fed stinking food, says | Photo at left above shows a freighter of the | reactionary Lewis machine left a wrecked union behind in the Logan, Ohio mining si Second photo shows Ohio miners, spondent writes. families starving, forced to sift culm Marks Lewis Traces 'n Ohio’ (By a Worker Correspondent) LOGAN, Ohio (By Mail). — The Lewis machine has brought the min- from the let him have from $40 to $45 aj strongest of organized mine sec- week, but he has to work like hell. | tions, to one where the open shop If a worker is too “slow” for the is king. bosses, he is put cn such work that) Betrayed by Lewis and Co. into he has to quit. Train Slave Drivers. The bosses are always behind the | workers, speeding them on. All these big bosses have sons in school, and as soon as these sons are fin-! ished school they bring them to the shop and train them as_ slave Grivers, | In Department 1, E-5, they are ining three of these young slave- | crivers. Sure they are real slave- drivers. They have the power to discharge the workers. The Crane workers trong for a fighting union. ‘ave had would be They erience with the A. F, of L, feke: In 1920, the A. F. of I, drew the Crane workers on strike, ecllected dues, taking as high as $10 from them, and then, after collecting $35,000, they told the workers to go back to work. The remember this, and many ere afraid of any union, thinking the same may happen again. But a real union can convince them of this, League. CRANE SLAVE. DRIVERS MAY STRIKE. PITTSBURGH, Pa., (By Mail).— Following the discharge of 12 union | men, replaced by non-union men, 500 | garbage handlers employed by the | Walkers-Stratum Co., of this city have threatened to strike. LOW WAGES IN KNIT GOODS. | WASHINGTON, (By Mail).—An average wage of $988.86 a year, or $19 a week, is reported for the work- ers in the knit goods industry. This | includes the knit underwear indus- | tries. Long Live the Revolutionary Struggle of the Oppressed Colo- nial Peoples! giving up their long strike and go- ing back non-union on the promise that work would be plentiful on a $5 a day scale, even on this starva- |tion scale they found they were | fooled, for little work was to be had. The mines are putting up shut-down notices all along the line. Loading machines are cutting down the forces also. Modoc mine No. 281 is closed for good. The Sun- day Creek mines, which employed hundreds of miners, are on half time, and soon are to close down in- definitely, it it said —HOCK MINER. Green Advertises Collier’s, Which Has Shut Out Union Men (By a Worker Correspondent) I wish to call your attention to the fact that William Green, president of the A. F. of L, spoke recently on the radio over station WJZ, on the| Collier Radio Hour. Perhaps you don’t know that the strike of Collier’s union printers is still on; union printers are locked out. It seems rather unusual, or maybe it is usual for Green to come out in the open and advertise a scab publication as he does. He spoke on “cooperation.” I and other union men would like a little co- operation, but not the kind he is giv- ing to a notorious anti-union firm like Collier's. —UNION WORKER. “ MOVING PICTURE STRIKE MINERSVILLE, Pa. (By Mail).— Moving picture operators here are on strike against poor working con- ‘ditions. SLAVES OF “Faster, Faster!” Cries Baltimore Boss| (By a Worker Correspondent) “You may eat all the candy you want in the factory but you may not take any home”, that was the slogan of the bosses of the Baltimore Candy Co., Baltimore, Md., and that easily became the slogan of the floorlady of this factory. At one time a girl was punching her time, just before | leaving, when a few candies fell out) of her purse. At once all the girls were called together and told to line up at the door and were thoroughly searched | for the “golden treasury’-chocolate | i candies. Following this incident, the method of searching was prac- ticed quite often without warning. At this rate many a girl was found having committed the “crime” of trying to take two or three can- dies home. The punishment for this act was either being fired or a de- duction in wages—what usually hap- pened was the deduction of a cer- tain’sum, surely more than the cher- ries cost, from the wages of the girl. “Work Faster!” Every day from seven in the! morning until 5.30 or 6.30 in the! evening this floorlady was present | urging the girls to work faster, al- | Ways with the cry of “if you cannot | work faster than this, you will have to leave.” Very seldom did one of | these $12 a week workers have the! herve to answer her with the few words of “being tired’”—there was usually a punishment for this too, that of being fired. | The operations were many, some | of the girls dipped the candy, others put the ready candies in the box, others had to carry the trays full with hot, wet candies from the can | dy dippers to the packers, still others had to carry the boxes | | Hithe tables to the wrappers. abs. | |eandy had to be put in a candied| |to be placed in a certain place in the | greatest wage achieved by the most CANDY CO. Stand All Day. | No one could sit at work, the bos-| ses logic for this was, that had the| tables been lower, the girls would | want to sit, when sitting the hands are not so free and therefore stand- ing is more profitable as far as speed-up is concerned. I worked as a candy packer; the! candy came down on the belt; each) paper cup, and then placed in the box. Each girl usually had three! or four candies to put in the box in this fashion. All the time the belt moved and in order to get in| had to work fast. Work In Lunch Period. If you miss a candy, the floor- lady knew that it had been you, for you had one certain kind of! candy to insert and this kind was box. Often the girls spent the last half | of their half hour for lunch prepar- | candy so that they might not fall behind in packing and not receive | a bawling out from the forelady. | The dippers work piece work, as | a rule, no matter what time we came | to work, five or ten minutes earlier than the work demanded, that is, earlier than 7 a. m., we always found most of the dippers at their places working. When we left, at 5.30, if we did not have to work overtime for a half hour or more, |we always left the dippers working. They worked piece work and the experienced dippers was $22 to $25 |a week, It was on the basis of this that the factory soon moved into a larger plant. Profits are plentiful aoe Workers are so exploited, ee | GROWING FAST) oy <0 Speed-up Is Murderous In Detroit (By a W Correspondent) DETROIT (By Mail).—I work | nights at the Chevrolet Gear and | Axle Plant, No. 2. We have to} work 114% hours a night for 45 cents | r, with 30 minutes for lunch. We work on the last process of fin- ishing up the axles on the produc- | line. Then the axles are ipped by freight to the various | points in the country. The work here on the production heavy. Very few men re- main here for more than six months. The bos: main concern is speed- The first night that I worked re we put out 800 axles, and the so great that on the ht the rate of production increased to 1,400 axles a night. This is an increase of 600 axles, or a 75 per cent increase. At the same time less men were being employed. The men here are boiling hot with discontent. All of the time they are complaining among themselves about the long hours and low wages. But the worst thing here is the speed- up. Speed Up Worst Evil. This is the thing that kills the ife out of them. When we get through with our 11% hours a night we can just hardly stagger along back to home. And, when we work such long hours, we have no chance to do anything but go to work, come back to sleep, to wake up only to go back to work again. Speed-up is the curse of the auto workers. They hate the ruinous speed-up system even worse than wage cuts, At the same time, the | bosses are carrying on their can. paign of slashing our wages ever more by making one worker do the work formerly done by two,.and by | rationalizing the industry even more. The workers here at Chevrolet are |ripe for organization, as they are | everywhere in the auto plants of | Detroit. Departmental strikes are taking place here in Chevrolet every day, but the bosses are able to “set- | tle’ them by maneuvers and prom- ises that are never carried out. CHEVROLET WORKER. FANCY NAMES iCa feteria | Workers Determined | er does screening, two cutting and) HIDE DUMPS, *B.C. Tow ‘er Correspondent) PORT ALICE, B. C. (By Mail).— Fifty Japanese workers of the Bri ish Columbia Pulp and Paper Com- pany here have been forced to IGaye this town by the open shop company, | |because they were union men. It was a great hardship for these work- | jers to suddenly have to lesve town, as they all had families. The company owns this town lock, stock and barrel, and is backed up by the legislature of British Co- lumbia, in Vancouver, in doing what- ever it pleases. They have the right |to run any workers out of town, simply because the workers are ac- tive in the union. | The wages are very low among! the open shop workers here, who have as a rule a 12 hour day. —PULP WORKER. SLAVE DRIVING — AT ADLER SCREEN Workers ‘Get $20 for| 50 Hour Week (By a Worker Correspondent) The Adler Screen Works at 1604 | Coney Island Avenue, Brooklyn is at) | present open for a few weeks. The, season started in March; before that | in the winter a different crew of! faster work. workers work on weather strips for| the boss, There are 10 workers employed making screens for the boss. Only young workers are employed, and Adler speeds them up. The work is more than 10 men’s work. One work- | sandpapering lumber, one nails moulding, two are gluers, three| painters, and man working inside and outside the shop. The workers make $20, except the carpenters, for a 50 hour week. The! boss gives us a daily lecture, telling | us we must double the number of screens we make. Good workers can’t be kept there; what Adler wants is obedient slaves. The men work for a few hours and either quit or get fired for “talking back” to the boss. To gat a drink you must get it in the toilet, in the washing basin. | The last man at lunch time must | wash the basin up. What is needed | \in this industry, which, tho small, is not young, are shop committees to | protect the workers, I. K. Rumanian Communist Leader Dies; 10,000 Workers at Funeral (By « Worker Correspondent) The cafeteria workers went on strike to improve their living con- | your allotted number of candies, you ditions and abolish the 12-hour day. Manian labor movement has lost one |This is the slogan of the Cafeteria | Workers Union of the Amalgamated Food Workers, I can’t find sufficient words to describe the conditions of the cafe- | teria workers. Some of these cafe- terias are under such fancy names as “Truefood,” “Paradise,” “New Way,” “Blossom,” ete. But you \fmd the opposite when you work \ing the cups for the insertion of the | there. The workers in “Truefood” get | \garbage. The “Paradise” is really | a hell hole for the workers. In the “New Way” the workers are treated | like slaves of the 16th century. In this strike we have met the or- ganized resistance of the bosses, the terror of their hired gangsters and police brutality. We have been thrown in the jail by the dozens for picketing. In spite of all this we intend to go ahead with the strike, determined to win our demands. We will picket |the cafeterias every day. For a Six-Hour Day for Under- ground Work, in Dangerous Occit- pations, and for the Youth Noni | Hodcarriers here have formed into | BUCHAREST, Rumania (By Mail).—By the death of Gh, M. Va- | silescu-Vasia, on March 18, the Ru- of its most devoted leaders. Though |only 37, he had been worn out by | consumption contracted in the vile | Been of the Rumanian dictator- ship. Ho helped to found the Rumanian Communist Party in 1921, when all the delegates were arrested. He was editor of the Party paper, “Social- ism,” until it was suppressed in 1924, and br of the “Communist Struggle,” which was also sup- pressed. After 1926, he edited the organ of the left wing trade unions, |“Workers Life,” and was secretary lof the Bucharest Left unions. Ten thousand workers attended the funeral, bearing Red flags, in the streets of Bucharest for the first time since the general strike of 1920. The police attacked the funeral procession as it started, but the workers repelled the attack and marched through the main streets to the cemetery. HODCARRIERS ORGANIZE. PUEBLO, Colo., (By Mail).— a union, and will fight for an 8-hour 18% jae day and better wages and c tions. }and make an hour, |very slow and wait for hours for a job to come and then we make only ction, a miner corre- unemployed, their dumps for fuel. “The men here are hot with discontent,” Chevrolet plant. beiling ing be ys an auto worker in | the Detroit Photo on right shows auto workers at the belt, mount- yy) WORKERS KNOW REAL SPEED-UP |Chevrolet Plant Is| Disease Trap (By @ Worker Correspondent) OAKLAND, Calif. (By Mail). — About 3,000 workers, mostly youths, are employed in the auto industry in Oakland. Chevrolet plants are the largest and the Chevrolet employs about 1,500 alone. All these workers are unorgan- ized. Unorganized, we are exploited to the limit in the Chevrolet plant here, miserable. We work nine and ten hours a day in a closed, dusty place with- out any ventilation, which hurts our health. In the wocd department, due to the speed-up system, the workers mouthful easy, ing nails al day long. In the repair department \ers catch up with all the lines. Finishing is done mostly by elec- trie and air buffers, which is also very unhealthy work, because most Our working conditions are | are mages to keep a} , disease-breed- ! the | speed is such that but a few work- | The Durant and the | of the filing dust enters the lungs | while heating. In the whole body department piece-work is used and by this sys- jtenr the workers themselves are forced to drive each other on to If we work too fast half. Some days we work 10 or 12 hours. One day we work very fast 1 average of 65 cents and other days we work 5 cents an hour. BRING BELT TO WINNIPEG NNIPEG (By Mail).—The belt will be brought to enslave Winnipeg workers, when Henry Ford con- structs his new plant here. He has | the boss thinks we are making too | much and cuts the price almost in Shows Joys The film now running at the pitth| Avenue Playhouse, named for some | reason “Red “Red 1 Majesty” and being the pictorial record of an explorer named Harold Noice, is well worth seeing. It is not |film of chance scenes on a voyage up the Amazon and Rio Negro rivers, Andes where the Tariano Indians live. Half the picture is taken up with river steamers and rubber col- lection, done by poorly paid or peonized Brazilian Indians, and the other half, introduced with a short lecture by Noice himself, shows some Indians who haven’t been en- slaved yet. Boy, what a life! Next to Com- munism based on machinery, give me primitive Communism. These fel- lows spend their time making a liv- ing in just the way that I always hoped to take a vacation. They live lin big community houses made in a fine artistic manner with logs and lattice work and palm leaves. The picture shows the building of a new house, about twenty feet high. Everybody works; there are no dead heads or idle bosses. When it 1s built, they call in all the other vil- lagers for miles around, sling the babies up in hammocks under the eves and hold a grand party. The women spend weeks making beer enough. The men spend most of several hours a day hunting and fishing, and go swimming in the rapids the rest of the time. The women put in part of the day raising manioca, from which a variety of food is made, The raw pulp is full of prussic acid, but these “ignorant savages” have learned the chemical process, all by themselves, ages ago, for removing it and making a palatable and nourishing flour of the substance. The photography is unusually good for what must have been very bad conditions, dampness, a long canoe trip in which to transport the machines and films, etc. The pic- tures of naked natives standing on | crags and shooting fish with the bow and arrow, swimming through “white water,” and at work in the forest are what you might call inspiring—though not conducive to announced his intentions to build a| 00d work pounding typewriters in plant in St. James, a suburb of this |" office. city. Go and see this film and en- Books gee OR WORKERSaumm JUST OFF THE PRESS! Women In Soviet Russia 25¢ Wage Labor and Capital by Karl Marx. 10¢ (NEWLY TRANSLATED AND REVISED EDITION) Ten Years of the Communist Inter- national by I. Komor Reminiscences of Lenin by Zetkin Proletarian Revolution by Lenin 10¢e 35c 50c (NEW EDITION) Recent of Communist International . 1c Communism & International Situation 15¢ Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies abe lbe Complete Report of ia, PN of the Communist International $1.25 eae ee ee WORKERS LIBRARY PUBLISHERS 35 East 125th Street New York City SOURCE OF ALL REVOLUTIONARY LITERATURE “majesty” at all, but the | to a spot in the edge of the| valiantly | | Ruined Union ‘DISCONTENT IN Pulp Co. Runs ‘QAKLAND AUTO 42/m of Tariano Indians CHEVROLET Is /2eanese, O of Communism n “Kibitzer,” Royale Theatre. now playing at the courage people to take more pic- tures like it before the rubber com- panies come down on the last of these untapped labor markets and |put the Indians on an eighteen-hour day.—V. S. Sending Delegation On| Study Trip to U.S. 8S. R. BUENOS AIRES, May 8,—The “Alianza Libertaria Argentina,” an | organization of Argentine anar- | chists sympathetic to the Soviet | Union and opposed to the cther Ar- | gentine anarchist organizations, | which are attacking the Soviet Union, has decided to send a dele- gate to Moscow to study conditions | there. The “Alianza Libertaria Argen- tina,” called generally in South America the “anarcho-bolsheviks,” consists mostly of those anarchists who left the “pure” anarchist trade | union federation, the F. O. R. A,, ta join the U. S. A., in which the Com- | munists are also members. They | counteract to an extent the anti-| Soviet propaganda of the “pures” Argentine Libertarians |. | jobs, a few months ago, because the SEAMEN SERVED. STINKING FOOD Captain Slugs Men Who Kick (By a Worker Correspondent) After being a reader of the Daily | Worker for quite some time I have decided to write this letter. We seamen working on the Gulf Line ship “Western Belle,” especially down here in the black gang, have the worst conditions possible. We have to shovel coal into furnaces seven and a half feet high. The gruy* is like garbage. i We used to get stinking meat mixed together with potatoes which jwere fuli of worms. The fellows on |the ship could not stand it any longer so four of us went to the cap- tain to demand better food. The captain came out of the ca¥ée with a large iron dinner bell in his hand. When the fellows told him what we demanded, he hit three of the fellows over the head with the bell and knocked them out. Later, not wanting any trouble while we were at sea, he separated them to make it look better. It still has the same stink anyway. We seamen are rapidly becoming } class-conscious and ready to fight. I | urge all seamen to read the Daily | Worker and the Young Worker, and to join the Marine Workers Progres- | sive League. —SEAMAN CORRESPONDENT, i | ES Janitors of City Hall In Los Angeles Ask Wage Increase (By a Worker Correspondent) LOS ANGELES, Cal., (By Mail). —City Hall janitors, 147 strong, are demanding $5 per d or $1.30 a month, which is the pay received by city laborers. The jaintors at said “graft-proof” institution of invisible municipal government are now paid | $100 a month the first year, $105 the second year and $115 the third year. “Dust-eating” is one of the few occupations Negro workers are per- mitted to have. Scrubbing, dusting and polishing, ete., is dirty work. Many of the jaintors lost their civil service commission was not | satisfied with their knowledge con- nected with the “3 Rs”’—Reading, Riting and Ritmetic. The real rea- son, however, was something else, others claim. in South America, where the anar- chists still have some influence in a few countries. The Federal Committee has pub- lished a declaration of the delegate, Vidal Mata, which says in part: “It is with much feeling that I am undertaking the. journey to Red Russia, . . . There can be nothing more exulting for a revolutionary militant than to be the guest of a country redeemed from capitalist | slavery and take part in the fervent enthusiasm of a proletariat occupied \entirely in the task of constructing a new social order... .” Theatre Guild Productions 7 H 6 AMEL Through the Needle‘sEye MARTIN BECK THEA. 45th W. of 8th Ave. Evs. 8:59 fats., Thurs. a Man's Estate by Beatrice Blackmar and Bruce Gould BILTMORE Theatre, w. 47th Street Eves, Mats. Thurs.&Sat. LAST THREE WEEKS! CAPRICE newiey4 hed in GUILD tien,” Mate, ‘Thurs. and Sat, 2:40 LAST WEEKS! Strange Interlude 7 EUGENE O'NEILL Jonn GOLDEN, thea, sath of B’way EVENINGS ONLY ‘AT 6:30 ARTHUR HOPKINS HoLipaY Comedy Hit by PHILIP BARRY PLYMOUTH Thea, W. 45 St. Ev. 0 Mats. Thurs. & Sat. 2.36 ACTIVE PRESS, Inc. 46 UNION SQUARE zw YORK CITY Theatre 45th W. of B'way, MASQUE Mats. Wed. & Sat. First play (in a? from Soviet Russia THE FIRSTLAW Adapted by Herman Bernstein and Leonid Snegoft with FRANCES CARSON — LEONID SNEGOFF — REGINALD GOODE Wilfred Seagram Samuel Schneider MOROSCO THBA, W. 45th st. Eve. 8.50. Mats.Wed.&Sat.2:30 JOHN DRINKWATER’S Comedy Hit BIRD IN HAND) Chanin’s MAJESTIC Theatre 44th St. West of Broadway Eves, 8:30; Mats.: Wed. & Sat. 2:30 ‘The Greatest ond Funniest Revue Pleasure Bound The Thrilling Story of a South American Communal State “Red Majesty” Filmed and Presented By Harold Nolce, Wrangel Island Rescue Hero 5th Ave. Playhouse 66 FIFTH AVENUE, Corner 12th St. Continuous 2 p.m. to Midnight Daily 's