The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 11, 1929, Page 6

Central Organ of the Communist Party of the U.S. A. Dai Inc K Cit DAIWORK. Published by hing Co., at except x. i $8.00 » year 0 three months $6.00 a year $2.00 three months Adésess and mail all checks to the Daily Worker, 26-28 Union Square. New York, N. Y. =—>.. a Demonstrate Against Police Oppression. The mighty protest planned for today in Union Square against police oppression and brutality is no ordinary demon- stration. The fact that it is called for the immediate purpose of rage against the police terror , and to expose the May Day s and the arrest of hundreds of registering rising working cl: in the strike of food worke murder and maiming of scor German workers, reveals only partially the significance of the great gathering set for today. The “socialist” attack on the Communist May Day in Germany grew inevitably out of the developing radicalization of the German working masses who had given Communist candidates overwhelming majorities against the social-demo- cratic candidates in the election of shop councils. The dum- dum bullets fired by “socialist” command, that took their murderous toll of 29 dead, were in fact fired against German working class resistance to the killing speed-up and brutal conditions intensified under the Dawes Plan of American fi- nance capital. In the same way, police oppression in this country seeks to choke down protest against rationalization in American industry, that parades under the appropriate name of “the stretch out system” in the Carolinas. American capitalism also seeks to straightjacket the growing radicalization of labor in this country. Here is the connecting link, the com- mon struggle that binds rising labor throughout the entire capitalist world today. Police oppression weighs heavily at all times upon the lives of the toiling masses. Its threat is ever present. It is capitalism’s fist ready to strike against aspiring labor upon the least show of real activity. This oppression becomes especially vicious in times of strike struggles. Last year it evicted striking coal miners from their homes in Western Pennsylvania and Ohio, fighting even to deprive them of shelter in tented colonies. Labor will never forget the “Ludlow Massacre,” when this same oppres- sion applied the torch to a tented colony of striking miners in Colorado, many women and children being smothered and burned to death. The tented colonies of Alabama mine strikers, both Negro and white, have suffered a like fate in the past. Today wholesale evictions of southern textile strikers, driying workers and their families to the open highways, tor- tured by cold and hunger, easy victims of disease, bring to light the latest horrors of capitalist tyranny. Every strike in New York City sees the police club of the employing class wielded against labor, whether it comes in the form of an injunction against picketing, the mass ar- rests of workers mobilized against strike-breaking, or the shooting down of Garry Smith, striking chauffeur at the George L. Storm Lumber Co., on Thursday. It is the food workers today, with the arrest of a thousand cafeteria strike pickets. Yesterday it was the shoe workers. « Recent strug- gles of the needle trade workers saw 1,500 strikers arrested, some of the leading officials of the union facing the most seri- ous charges that could be framed-up against them, as in the Mineola case. There will be future struggles under the leader- ship of the new union in the needle trades, when the same vicious opposition, the unity of the police oppression of the capitalist state allied again with the American Federation of Labor reaction and the treason of the Socialist Party, will confront struggling, class conscious labor. This is the same police oppression that unleashed its butchery campaign against the workers of Berlin, Germany, who were striving to assert their claim to celebrate Inter- national May Day as they saw fit. In Berlin, the role of the socialist and trade union reaction as assassins in the service of capitalism, was clearly revealed in the fact that the at- tacks on and murders of the Berlin workers was directed by the “socialist” chief of police, Zoergiebel, who apes the butcher, Noske, the social-democratic assassin of the workers’ struggle for all power in the days following the overthrow of the Kaiser. In times of great crisis, the master class is forced to muster army and navy in its oppressive campaigns against labor. Thus the United States launched actual war against the Union of Soviet Republics, it rushed battleships and marines to China; makes a war on the revolutionary move- ment in Nicaragua, and establishes perpetual war against many Central and South American countries. to keep them in what it hopes to be endless slavery. It is against this capitalist police oppression that labor raises its fist in Union Square, New York City, today. Against the brutalities of capitalism the massed might of the working class! This demonstration is in a sense the opening of the municipal campaign of the Communist Party in the nation’s metropolis. Nothing reveals better the actual role of the anti-labor parties, than their carrying out in actual practice of the attacks of the employers on the workers. Oppression finds willing instruments in democrats, republicans and so- cialists alike. There is nothing to choose from, in this respect, as between “Jimmie” Walker, Hylan, LaGuardia, or Norman Thomas. Just as Walker has his Mussolini, so Thomas has his Noske and Zoergiebel. German socialists were in full control of the German government in 1919. Socialist minister of defense, Noske, and other agents of the German social-democracy, did not hesitate to turn their machine guns in wholesale massacre against the revolutionary workers, culminating in the as- sassination of Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxembourg and many other courageous fighters in the ranks of the rising masses. Thomas, Hillquit and Lee, the last of “victory arch infamy,” with Cahan, Green and Matthew Woll, hesitate as little to unite with the police of Yankee imperialism to wage open war against the growing militancy of American labor. Strike at police oppression by joining the demonstratio: today in Union Square. This protest should witness a might: \utpouring of workers, raising their voices against past griev- aces, making: their demands for the future, that will in time ister sufficient strength to wholly paralyze the bloody fist ‘apitalist tyranny. Unite today and prepare for the vic- s of the tomorrows. ~ cs DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY Rationalization in German and By ANNA ROCHESTER. ! Nearly a million miners in Ger- many and France have been hard hit by the international coal crisis sve| the coal owners’ efforts to save themselves by rationalization of mining. The miners’ condition in Germany and France is only less desperate than that in the British coal fields, for in Germany five years ago, and more recently in France, the coal operators began a drive to lower production costs with | brutal disregard of the effect upon| the miners. Strong Operators Union. | German operators are organized in | one of the most powerful and com-| pact syndicates that capitalism has | produced. When the French occupied | the Ruhr in 1923 and the German government backed up the policy of “passive resistance” with small spe- | | cial subsidies for unemployed work- | ‘ers, the coal magnates made use of | the weeks without production—and ‘of workers paid by the government —to begin a thorough overhauling of their mines. The syndicate has “rationalized” with systematic thoroughness, clos- ing down small mines and concen-/| trating production in large mines, With the help of Wall Street capi- \tal, they have installed modern ma-| chinery. From 1925 to 1927 the num- ber of cutting machines in Ruhr coal mines rose from 35,798 to 71,876. | With the help of the social demo- | crats, they secured a permanent compulsory arbitration law in De-| | cember, 1923, andthe following year | |a “temporary” lengthening of the} nominal working day underground from seven hours to eight. Actu-| ally, however, a writer. in the Inter- national Labor Review (of the In- ternational Labor Office at Geneva) | admitted in 1926 that miners in Ger- man Upper Silesia were working |from 10 to 12 hours a day. Great Rationalization. By 1927, in one bituminous mine | 500 workers were producing what | 6,500 workers had been producing | before the war. In the Golpa lignite mine 280 workers had the output which formerly required. 3,600 work- ers. These mines are exceptional, but the general advance has been so great that the output of German coal has risen‘while the number of mine | workers has been greatly reduced. German coal mines employed | more men in ‘1922 than in any year before. or since, and in the Ruhr | district—the principal bituminous coal ‘field of Germany—about one- third of the men working in 1922 |haye been permanently crowded out |of the industry. This fact is far more important than any official figures of unemployed workers. Unemployment’ benefits are paid | only for a limited period and many | thousands of workers, still without jobs at the end of that period, are | dropped from unemployment regis- | By J. B. . Jerusalem). In the summer of this year, when the parliamentary elections in Great Britain have cleared the political at- mosphere of that country, Mahomed | Mahmud, dictator of Egypt by the grace of the British high commis- sioner, will resume the negotiations with the British Foreign Office. By that time the internal political situ- ation of Egypt has to be so far ‘noeked into shape that even in the ease of a victory for the Labor Party, he, as representative of the Sgyptian people, can play the part of the only force capable of guar- anteeing the maintenance of law and _ order in case of emergency. This is the reason why Mahomed | Mahmud is putting the screw on the anything against the king. On the: French Mines | ters and transferred to relief funds|three days of disability occurred at| ing” of the industry without resist- the rate of 1,655 per 10,000 men employed. That is, 10 men in 60 met with some sort of accident every ear. In 1927, the rate had risen to 61 per 10,000 men employed; 10 men in 44 were injured. The death rate has also been rising, but Ger- : man mines have not yet overtaken Mechanization and Accidents. American mines, which have the Meantime, for the minors still at| highest death rate in the world. work in Germany the mechanization | About three years ago the race and speed-up have meant a marked | for speed-up and mechanization be- or thrown back on relatives for sup- port. The German capitalists have been carrying out a similar ration- alization in other basic industries be- sides coal. Capitalist industry does not need the displaced miners and cannot transfer them to other jobs. ‘increase in mining accidents. In 1913,| gan in the French mines also, Over the Prussian authorities reported for | 33,000 workers—or about 10 per all mines (including coal, ore, and} cent of the total—were crowded out votash) that in the course of the | between January 1927 and June year accidents involving more than} 1928. Most of the discharged men Wall Street’s “Unofficial” Delegates The London correspondent of the New York Herald Tribune, writing of the hostile reaction of the British imperialist press to the American proposals for a reduction of the British share in the repara- tion booty says in his dispatch of May 8: “There is a general failure on the part of the British commentators to appreciate that Mr. Young and J. P. Morgan are not official American delegates to the reparations conference, and to assume that their actions at Paris are dictated from Washington.” Nothing of course could be farther from the truth. The British editors are of course quite right in suspecting that Messrs, Morgan and Young exercise political influence entirely disproportionate to their humble status as unofficial delegates. But to assume that “their actions at Paris are dictated from Washington” is to do these arch-imperialists a great injustice. They speak for both the state and treasury departments of the United States government, They hold the purse-strings and the political power. Behind the American demand for heavy reductions in the German payments to the allies (especially to Great Britain and France) is of | - course the desire to create as much trouble as possible for Wall Street imperialism’s chief rivals—England and France—and especially to prove to France that the Anglo-France alliance is a ruinous adventure. The imperialist antagonism between Great Britain and the United * States has been sharpened by these developments which in themselves are startling testimony to the acute stage the conflict had already reached. The reparations conference makes clearer than ever the danger of imperialist war. Making Peace with Reaction in Mexico. Disarm the peasantry—make peace with the catholic church: This is the policy of the Portes Gil government of Mexico. The mailed fist for the masses—an olive branch for the clerical—feudal reaction whose military forces have just been defeated with the aid of the masses. The Mexican masses should resist all attempts to disarm them. The attempt itself is proof that if successful the workers and peasants will face a united front of feudal and middle class oppressors operating with both the blessing and the material aid of American imperialism. Portes Gil, taking his instructions from Dwight Morrow of the house of Morgan, intends to ape Mussolini—to unite fascism with clericalism and with the offspring of this union—a military dictatorship—try to force the workers and peasants into complete submission to his Wall Street masters. He will not succeed but to defeat this plan it is necessary that the working class of the United States tender all assistance to their Mexican comrades—moral and material. The same government—Wall Street government, typified by Hoover—is the instrument by which both Mexican and American workers are exploited and oppressed. Increased Repressive Policy of Mahmud Dictatorship in Egypt party of his opponents, the Wafd, and taking measures which will rap- idly lead to its complete destruc- tion. As Mahmud announced in the speech he made in February, he in- tends to proceed in the most ruth- less manner against agitators and enemies of the state. In view of the ineffectiveness of the reforms proclaimed by Mahmud at the commencement of his govern- ment, of the growing dissatisfaction of the population, and especially of the working masses in the towns, with the British-Mahmudistic dicta- torship, these threats mean nothing less than that the organizatory over- throw of the Wafd is now to form a prominent part of the government’s activiti re leo % The Wafdists fight shy of doing| the contrary, for a number of months the leaders of the Wafd have been trying feverishly to arrive At an understanding with the king, so that they may form a block with him and his reactionary “Ittehad” party and thus isolate Mahmud, The latest phase of the Wafdist “fight” against the dictatorship is therefore taking the form of a pe- tition-campaign to the king. The “constitutional” king is requested to do away with the dictatorship, re- establish parliamentary life and help the Wafd to gain power. It may, however, be assumed that many of the supporters of the Wafd are not in agreement with this treacherous policy of the “National” party. This js apparent whenever masses parade the streets to have been foreign-born miners who are not eligible for unemployment | relief. About one-third of the coal | miners in France were foreign-born, and mine-owners and reformist trade unions have been systematically ap- |pealing to nationalist sentiment in | the hope of carrying out the “cleans- ance from native French miners. The |reformists have been launched the palozen: “The coming unemployment jerisis must be outlived at the ex-| | pense of the foreign workers.” Increase Working Day. The working day in French mines | was lengthened in 1928. Nominally it is still 8 hours by law, but the operators insisted that the 8 hours must be reckoned underground and ;not—as formerly—from bank to bank. Wages have been pared down} by various devices also. The actual | cash average received by the miners | the cost of living went up, so that| mine workers now have definitely | lower real wages than they had two | lyears ago. Reformist union officials in both |countries have accepted rationaliza- | tion as not merely inevitable but de- | sirable. This past winter the left wing miners union in France, with | its 35,000 members, led a strike of left wing and unorganized miners in the Loire, Gard and Avergron | Basins. The right wing officials ac- | tively helped to break the strike and |defeat the miners’ demands for |higher wages, more generous social | insurance, and a genuine 8-hour day. |The General Federation of Labor has also approved the government proposals for compulsory arbitra-) tion of all labor dispu Right Wing Expels Communists. In Germany, the collective agree- |ment governing wages, hours, etc., jin the Ruhr coal mines is now due for renewal. The Communists have led a vigorous demand for return to the regular 7-hour day under- ground, which was abrogated in 1924, and for a wage increase of 25 cents a shift for all workers. Meantime, the unions, under right wing control, have been expelling all active Communists from mem- bership, and the reformist officials stand for renewal of the old agree- ment without change. But the rank and file miners are growing more militant. That they will not forever endure the official betrayals is evi- dent from the recent marked in- crease in the proportion of Commu- nists elected by thé miners to rep- resent them on the works councils of the Ruhr mines, The banner of the British jobless workers on their march to London said: “Only Cowards Starve in Silence.” Miners are no cowards. The real struggles in coal are only beginning. demonstrate against the Mahmud dictatorship. There are always seri- ous collisions between the police and the demonstrators; there are broken heads, the police arrest dozens of demonstrators and bring them be- fore the court. The bitterness on account of the brutality of the po- lice is general, and every street dem- onstration proves clearly how little faith the masses have in the con- stitutional methods, which the Wafd executive would gladly see employ- ed exclusively, In spite of the treacherous man- euvers of the Wafd pashas, the more rigorous course of the dictatorship of Mahomed Mahmud is resulting in an increase of vhe revolutionary fer- mentation mong the Egyptian masses, +, |\CEMIEN | room but an empty hole. | door, whirling in gusts, redolent of spring. He opened his eyes. It was By FEODOR “ GLADKOV Translated by A. S. Arthur and C. Ashleigh All Rights Reserved—International Publishers, N. Y. Gleb Chumalov, Communist and Red Army commander, returns to find his village half in ruins. His wife, Dasha, who has become a self-reliant Party worker, greets him with reserve. The great ce- ment works has been looted of everything movable. At the factory committee, time is spent in endless quarrelling. Gleb speaks there, urging restoring of the works. When he returns home that night, he quarrels with Dasha, about her life while he was away. She insists upon the same sexual freedom as he. Nadee ores, Enemies? She, with her eyes smouldering; he, sturdy, bold, his jaws clenched till his cheeks sank in. Was it Dasha looking at him with the cruel gaze of an uncon- querable woman, or had he never_understood her real soul, which in these three years had revealed itself, obstinate and indomitable? Where had Dasha absorbed this power? Not in the war, not with the food-scroungers, bag on her back, not in the ordinary duties of a woman; this strength had awakened and been forged from the collective spirit of the workers, from years of deadly hardship, from the terrible heavy burden of the newly acquired freedom of women. She crushed him with the audacity of this strength, and he, a Red War Commissar, was confused and lost. It happened all of a sudden: he seized her in his arms and hugged her till her ribs cracked. “Now then, what is it to be—life or death?” “Take your hands off, Gleb? You won’t put your hands on me You’re only an ordinary human being, Gleb.” Her muscles were writhing like snakes under Gleb’s hands and she was desperately trying to spring free. “Now tell me where you’ve bestowed your love while your hus- band was away? Come on, tell me!” “Let me alone, you brute, I’m going to hit you! I'll fight, Gleb!” Frenzied, drunken with the heat of his own blood, he carried her to the bed and threw himself down with her, tearing her shift, hungrily clasping her, as a spider will a fly. She was turning and twisting, fighting silently with clenched teeth and without shame, tearing away from him her naked bruised flesh. With a final effort she flung him off on to the floor and leapt like a cat to the door. She looked away from him, breathing deeply, and setting her clothes straight. “Don’t touch me, Gleb! It will only end badly. take care of myself. These ways don’t go with me, Gleb. you're a soldier, but you can’t overcome brains.” Gleb, stunned, felt as though ulcers were burning in his soul. The pain was greater than any bodily hurt. One has to fight at the war, but at home Where was the enemy hidden in her, who I’ve learnt to It’s true He must not beat her. one must find other ways. was so strong and elusive? He sat on the floor, leaning against the bed, tamed, grinding his teeth with bitter remorse. Dasha’s eyebrows quivered; she laughed and went into the corner to her own bed. “Turn the light out, Gleb, and lie down. You need rest. overtired that is making you crazy.” It's being “Dasha, darling, where is our love? Has hard work turned you into a devil, and have you ceased to be a woman?” “Lie down and calm yourself, Gleb. I’m worn out from work. To- morrow I’m ordered into the country again, to organize the Women’s Section, and there are bands of roughs throughout the district. There is no assurance against death. Don’t be silly, Gleb.” She moved to the table and turned out the lamp; then she lay down, covered herself with the clothes and was silent. Gleb could not hear hr breathing. He sat in the darkness and waited. Suffering and insult. A burning in his soul. near and ¢0 distant. He waited for her voice and for her love. He expected her to come to him and gently, as of old, to press his head to her boson, whispering like a mother, like a friend. She was lying there a stranger, her heart shut against him. And he was alone with his longing and his pain. “Dasha, love me as you used to. You know I’ve been through fire and blood. I have had no caress for a long time.” She took his hand and laid it on her breast. How foolish you are Gleb... so strong, but so foolish... No, not now, Gleb. I’ve no strength for caresses. Calm yourself.... The time will come for you and me.... My heart is steeled against love- making; and you, you’re passionate and I’ve no words for you yet. Lie down and go to sleep.” He looked forlornly at the blue window. The sky was studded with stars and somewhere, most likely in the mountains, distant thunder rumbled with a rolling echo from the depths. The wood was singing in the steep valleys under the breath of the north-east wind. He got up, shook his fist and fell heavily on the bed. “T shall find a way ... or it won’t be me. Take care! never given in yet, not till to-day. Remember that.” Dasha was silent, cold, near and ., . a stranger. In the morning, Gleb, still asleep, felt that the room was not a A breeze was blowing between the window and Dasha at once so I have true; the sun was blazing through the window. Dasha was standing at the table, adjusting her flaming headscarf. She glanced at him and laughed. An amber light shone in her eyes. “We don’t sleep as late as this here, Gleb. The sun is beating down liké a drum. I’ve already worked out a report for the Women’s Section on the children’s creches and the estimate for the linen and furniture. T’ve got it worked out, but where’s the money coming from? We're so beggarly poor. Our Party Committee should be given a jolt, so they'll squeeze something out of the bourgeois. I’m going to kick up a row about it from now on. And you, remember you haven’t seen Nurka yet. Do you want to go with me to the Children’s Home? It’s close by.” “God. One—two—and I’m ready! Dasha, come over here to me for a moment.” Dasha smiled and stepped up to him with a question in her fresh morning face. “Well, here Iam. What next?” “Give me your hand.... That’s it! That’s all. You are the same woman as before, and you are a new Dasha also. But perhaps I’m no longer the mechanic of the old days? I’m perhaps a new Gleb, grown like a new crop of corn? Well, we shall learn, Even the sun shines dif- ferently now.” “Yes, Gleb, the sun and the corn have changed. Make haste.” All the way to the Children’s Home Dasha walked in front, along the path among the bushes and brushwood, disappearing at moments till the red headscarf showed again like a flame. Gleb felt that she was avoiding him purposely. Was she teasing him or was she afraid? Dasha, in whom lay a riddle. A woman remains a woman, but her soul travels slowly. The Children’s Home, “Krupskaya,” was there in the mountain gorge among clusters of trees, the red roof bristling with chimneys. The walls were of unworked stone, well-built and firmly cemented. The windows were large as doors, wide open, and from the dark interior a birdlike din of voices came. From among the green bushes round the yard also came cries and chattering. There were two storeys, each with balconies, and with massive steps; with verandas ornamented with Grecian vases, On the verandas, like melons ripening in the sun, were the heads of children. Even from a distance one could see that their faces were like skulls, Boys? Girls? Impossible to say. All were long grey shirts, The nurses in grey too, with white caps, also stood drinking in the sunshine. On the right, behind the buildings and above them, was the sea, intensely blue and flecked with dazzling sparks. A motorboat like a black-beetle was churning away from the coast leaving a triangular wake betscd. The town and the distant mountains looked very distinct and near. The burning air vibrated with a humming of golden strings. It was the bees darting starlike and the flies buzzing. Without understanding why, Gleb felt wings unfolding in his soul. All this, the mountains, the sea, the factory, the town and the boundless distances beyond the horizon—the whole of Russia, we ourselves. All this immensity—the mountains, the factory, the distances—all were singing in their depths the song of our mighty labor, Do not our hands tremble at the thought of our back-breaking task, a task for giants? Will not our hearts burst with the tide of our blood? This is Workers’ Russia; this is us; the new world of which mankind has dreamed throughout the centuries, This is the beginning: the first indrawn breath before the first blow. It is. It will be. The thunder roars, (To Be Continued), aaacrnen ape I’m waiting. ...