The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 17, 1929, Page 6

! Page Six Central Organ of the Communist Party of the U.S. A. Daily Published by the Comprodaily Publis! Sunday, at 26-28 Union Squa Telephone Stuyvesant 1696-7-8. SUBSCRIPTION By Mail (in New York only): 34.50 six months $2.50 three months il (outside of New York): six months $2.00 three months to the Daily Worker, 26-28 Union Square. ew York, E>, except Y. $8.00 a year By $6.00 a year $ Adéress and mail all checks Use Police First Against Strikers. The unprecedented mobilization of police to battle the workers in the various industrial struggles now sweeping the city is revealed in a letter written by Police Commis- sioner Whalen to Robert Moses, head of the Moreland Com- mission investigating the state banking department. in rela- tion to the City Trust Company failure. Commissioner Moreland, like all petty satraps of big business, demanded that at least half a dozen police officers stand about continually, gracing his august presence. Com- missioner Whalen at first accepted to the whims of his friend “Dear Bob”, but later recalled the police officers and sent them out to beat up strike pickets instead. Whalen wrote to Moses that every man is “needed for actual duty in connec- tion with industrial disputes.” This shows quite clearly that the first duty of the police department is to club workers on strike. There may be an epidemic of murders, a wave of other crimes of all descrip- tions may sweep the city, Times Square may become tangled in traffic, the political lackeys of the moneyed interests may clamor for an imposing array of attendants, but all this is forgotten in face of labor’s intolerable demand for an im- proved standard of living through increased wages, the shorter workday and better working conditions. This is the crucial and vulnerable point in capitalism’s armored front against the working class that must be defended at all costs. If the exchange of letters between Whalen and Moses revealed only this fact, it was worth while. Let alf workers carefully note:this deep concern and extreme care shown them by the Tammany Hall forces in the city hall, so that not a single blow from a policeman’s club will be wasted, so that not a single policeman shall be missing in the attack against them. It would be the same in the future, as it has been in the past, under a republican administration. A Nor- man Thomas-Morris Hillquit administration, like Zoergiebel’s “socialist” police in Berlin, would be adept in the use of ma- chine guns against workers. Against all these, in the forth- coming municipal campaign, the Communist Party will have its own candidates, the spokesmen of the toiling masses, the standard bearers of the struggle of “Class Against Class!” While Whalen mobilizes the police against the workers, envied by the LaGuardias and the Thomases, let revolutionary workers mobilize for the membership drive of the Commun- ist Party now going on as a preliminary for the Communist election campaign not far away. Central Park—Playground of Parasites. Central Park is supposed to be a public recreation cen- ter. Recent events indicate, however, that the “public” in this case refers exclusively to the parasite rich. While 58 arrests were being made of workers and their families last Sunday, seeking a breath of fresh air in the park after a week of toil, plans were being completed to build a $500,000 Central Park Casino, called “the world’s finest restaurant,” around which “the cultured life of the city can rotate.” Fifty-three of the arrests were made because workers, most of them from the working class East Side, had dared step on the sacred grass of Central Park, with Magistrate Henry Goodman in the Yorkville Court imposing fines “and aghast with horror in the best society manners of Fifth Avenue. Last Sunday was one of the first really warm week-ends. There will be hundreds of such arrests before the summer is over, to impress upon the workers that every tree and flower, and blade of grass is not for them, but for the enjoyment of the plutocratic automobile traffic that flows through the park, and for the bridle path habitues. The snobbish New York World announces that the half- million dollar restaurant will have prices that “do not “indi- cate anything like cafeteria standards for the hungry prole- tariat.” It offers as the promoters of the affair the sons of some of America’s most notorious big business bandits, such as A. J. Drexel Biddle, Jr., W. K. Vanderbilt, Jr., William Rhinelander Stewart, Jr., John Randolph Hearst, a few movie and musical comedy promoters, like Adolph Zukor, Joseph M. Schenck and Florenz Ziegfeld, who will try no doubt to give Central Park more of a “400” atmosphere, even if “Wana- maker” Whalen, police commissioner, and Mayor “Jimmie” Walker will be forced into commanding the defenders of “Jaw and order” to entrench around the park and dig in with machine guns, liquid fire, poison gas and other instruments of war in order to hold off the working section of the populace. It is not likely that the workers will easily surrender Central Park to become the playground of the idle and use- less section of the population. There are too many workers in the nearby sections of the proletarian East and West Sides. A few tens of thousands of workers ought to take over the park Sundays, and week-days, too, and tweak the nose of the arrogant few wherever it shows itself. CORRESPONDENTS’ MEET 31 * Prepare Cleveland Conference, May DATLY WORKER, NEW YORK, FRIDAY, MAY 17, 1929 | ‘THE FOOD WORKERS’ UNION CAN GRIDDLE HIM WELL! Workers’ Health and By LISTON M. OAK. “Stati clearly indicate that hotel and restaurant workers have an unusually high morbidity rate. The occupation of food work volves long and irregular hou vitiated atmosphere, o amin- ated by tobacco fumes, and other odors. Many employees have inferi sleeping quarters. Cooks are posed for long hours to exce: temperatures. Waiters show rates of sickness from tuberculosis and pneumonia. From long hours and indoor confinement they become anemic, and are liable to suffer from headache, constipation, and digesti derangements, including ast ulcer, varicose veins, flatfeet, ulcers of the leg, ete, from prolonged; standing, are common among waiters.” This is a quotation from a book \“Industrial Health,” by two experts on the subject, George Kober and \Emery Hayhurst. What they say about the effect on the health of the hotel and restaurant workers of the open-shop conditions under which they aer forced to work, is doubly {true of cafeteria workers, who work | under much worse conditions. The Sanitary Code requires an an- nual inspection of all food handlers. | Dr. Harris, Health Commissioner of | 28 pointed out that most restaur- | ant and cafeteria owners hire some incomy broken-down physician who is a failure in his own profes- | sicn, to make the al exam- ination” of food wo: per person. The e is cursory and a important public health function has | been commerce ed.” “In many in- stances there has not even been a pretense of an examination, to sce if the food handlers are suffering from communicable diseases.” (See N. Y. Times, May 19, 1928). Harris also pointed out that “un- clean dishes in N, Y. restaurants con- stitutes a menace to public health. Drinking glasses which are in con- stant circulation from mouth to mouth, are not properly cleaned and | endanger the health of thousands ot patrons.” We have quoted Dr. Harris. Now let the workers speak. They are bet- ter qualified than any “expert” to tell of prevailing conditions in the} places they work, usually 12 hou daily. Ask any of them the next} time you go into a restaurant. They | will answer that the Sanitary Code jis a joke. | “The kitchens where I have worked |as a cook are all excessively hot, | filled all day with odors from the| |food, the garbage, and from the | toilets, which are filthy breeding | with dust, smoke, and fumes. The | store rooms in the cellars are almost \ always dark, unventilated, with leak- |ing pipes, and infested with rats, |and mice. Here the workers must Prepare Big Eating Places change their clothes, and lockers are seldom provided. They leave their clothes lying all day on sacks of s afid onions. After work the kers take off their uniforms, wet | with sweat, and put on their street clothes, permeated with the smell of onions, over their sweaty underwear. There is never a chance to take a shower bath, or even a decent wash to remove the accumulation of dirt, sweat, grease, ete., basins and clean towels.” This from a chef with 15 years experience. “T have worked for five years in a job.” straighten up. get another job. $) By Fred Ellis , ford to take a day off to be sick in bed, but I am half sick all the time. | I am ten years older today than I | was five years ago. The doctor tells me I have to find some other kind of A lowly dishwasher—“My hands are swollen with rheumatism and are sore from using cheap soap. They are always in dirty greasy hot water | for 12 hours a day. -My back at the end of the day is so stiff I can hardly | I am too sick to | work, but I’ve got to eat and can’t I have a health} smell. Jand consumption. All day long 1 have to cough over the dishes I am washing. There is no time to use a| | handkerchief. The boss keeps me| | because ke only pays me $15 a week | and couldn’t get anyone else to slave |so hard for that money | “Tf you think that the dishes you| |eat from and the glasses you drink| \from, are clean, you should watch me| |during the rush hour. I wash the| dishes so fast it is impossible to get them clean. As for a dishwashing machine, the boss says he can’t af-| ford one.” Another cook takes the stand and} \testifies: “The boss buys the| | cheapest supplies he can get. Some- | times when the meat arrives it is} so rotten that I can hardly stand the Sometimes I wait until the Loss and his spies are not looking \CEMEN overs.” “My clothes are wet from sweat throughout the day. As a result I get a bad cold every winter which card which says I haven’t got any Ms communicable disease, but the fact | and throw it in the garbage can be- lis that I have several of them. 1|cause I cannot cook such terrible) have some kind of skin disease as a| food. The worst of it is fed to the hangs on for weeks. I can never af-| result of my work, kidney trouble Sowing for War By C. E. It is a death chant the dynamo is mumbling. Wheels spin frantically. Batteries of smokestacks crack the skies like cannon. A crop of crucifixes push through earth, the electric poles shouldering their deadly message. Trembling wires rip the sky to shreds of black lacework. We sow munitions, preparing the crop of weapons. We sow munitions, to be nailed to our palms. The dynamo mumbles. Wheels spin like planets. The black tongue of smokestacks feverishly lick the sky. Black clouds lope through heaven like hounds to war, baying smelling blood. The sun is a black shell | soon to explode in a thousand cities. \ \ And then, comrade, | in that blackness, they will discover too late a dreadful crop of rebellious steel. Negro Week Organization Campaign !strong fight will be carried on pion, workers.” “The other day the cat jumped |through the window and landed in the soup. I started to throw it out and the boss gave me hell for throw- ing away good food. The ice box is a filthy stinking place. The water |pipes all leak all over the kitchen | and the floor is always wet. My shoes are wet most of the time. When the flu epidemic hit the town | last winter, I was about the first to get it. But I kept on working for | several days until one morning I | could not get out of bed. I had to | go back to work before I was well, | because I had to pay the doctor's | bills and I was broke. That means | I was coughing and sneezing all over) the food for days when I should have | been in bed. _ | “Cockroaches, water bugs, and mice run all over the kitchen, store-| |rooms and toilets. Flies swarm) |everywhere during the summer.| When it comes time to eat, after the; customers have all gone, I am so disgusted that I haven’t any appetite. No wonder I have chronic indiges- | tion and constipation. Have I got a health card? Don’t make me laugh. The examinations and in- spections are a joke and everybody knows it. The inspectors don’t get} as far as the kitchen. They stop at the cashier’s desk.” All of these workers are now on} strike—together with hundreds of others—for the 8-hour day, wages that will enable them to live a little more decently, to take care of their) health, and for sanitary conditions | in the cafeterias. This last item in their demands, particularly, gives) their strike a personal as well as a class interest for every worker who has to eat in the cafeterias. And the) working class forms the overwhelm-| ing majority of the patrons of the) cafeterias. This is an additional rea-) son why every class conscious work- er should support the cafeteria work- ers strike for union conditions. | the revolution from 1791 to its suc- The national headquarters of the Communist Party of the United States has sent out to all the dis- tricts of the Party the call for the First National Conference of Work- cr Correspondents in the United States, to be held in Cleveland on Friday, May 31, immediately pre- ceding the great Trade Union Unity Conference in that city, to be held June 1 and 2, under the auspices of the Trade Union Educational League. The districts are urged to arrange for local conferences in all indus- trial and agricultural centers, for the purpose of choosing delegates to the Workers Correspondents Con- ference, At a conference of the editors of over a dozen Communist Party papers, and editors of the left wing labor press, held ii w. York City, ( Cleveland conference. All the papers represented, many of which have will publish the cail. The purpose the first of its kind, on a national American worker correspondents, Communist press, into a solid body which can most effectively use its power. Delegates from the great industrial centers, such as Chicago, Pittsburgh, the mining and _ steel jcenter; Kansas City and Omaha, \packing house centers; Buffalo, the steel canter, and Detroit, the auto- mobile center, and the New England srected to attend thi At | The District 2 Negro Committee \full preparations for an intensive or- left-wing labor organizations during Jaccording to Harold Williams, head | trict. |against the artificial racial barriers full support was pledged to the icf the Communist Party has made erected by the exploiters and which ‘the bureaucracy of the American Feredation of Labor helps to main- large groups of worker and farmer | £@nization drive, intended to draw | tain by discrimination againsi Ne- correspondents, have published or | Negro workers into the Party and gro workers in most unions. Well in the forefront is the task of the Cleveland the period between May 10 and i9 \cf recruiting the unorganized Negro Worker Correspondents Conference, |set aside as National Negro Week, workers, the formation of shop com- mittees, together with the white Lasis, will be to unify the army of |of the Negro Committee of this dis- workers, and the assurance of a good representation at the Metro- both of the shop papers and the | The full membership of the Party |politan Trade Union Educational is being mobilized to carry out the | League Conference, May 18 and 19, tasks of intensifying organizational jin preparation for the Trade Union work among the Negro workers, he|Unity Conference to be held in said. Members for Party. The primary task of the campaign, which is to be especially intensive during Negro week, is to draw the Negro workers into the Communist nions. In conjunction with this a Cleveland June 1 and 2. Building of A. N. L. C. The Communist Party, well aware ‘of the importance of building a strong American Negro Labor Con- ‘gress, will participate actively in the and other textile districts, are ex-|Party and into the new left-wing building of the congress, together ith its” organ, the Negro Cham-!cral, Accordingly, Negro Week will be opened with a dinner, at the Work- ers Center, 26 Union Square, tomor- vow at 7 p. m., the proceeds of which ‘will go toward the building of the A. N. L. C. and the Negro Cham- pion, cessful conclusion in 1804, when the first independent Negro republic was declared, Unit Discussion. Throughout the entire week the} discussion of the task of organizing | the Negro workers, winning tiem to the Communist Party and the new revolutionary unions, will be «the chief subject of discussion in the units of the Party. The fight against discrimination, Jim-crowism, peonage, lynching and cther results of the artificial divi- sions set up by the employers, will be especially intensified. It is intended to assure a constant reserve fund for the Negro Cham- pion to make certain its regular ap- pearance and its growth, to which end special quotas have been desig- nated for the various districts to be Restaurant Picketing. During the week there will be demonstrations before restaurants and theatres who discriminate against Negroes. The first of these is to take place tonight, in Newark, at the Ideal and Hellman Restau- rants, both of which refused to serve Harold Williams, Negro organizer. Meetings will be held throughout New York City, as well as in other cities in District 2, to commemorate the life and werk of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the leader of the Haitian slaves who revolted against the oppression of Napoleon’s gen- d By FEODOR GLADKOW Translated by A. S. Arthur and C. Ashleigh All Rights Reserved—International Publishers, N. Y, : x ~<l { Gleb Chumalov, Communist and Red Army commander, returns to his town to find the cement works in ruins, Dasha, his wife, an active Communist with no time for him, and the factory committee talking about getting the factory going, but to no effect. Gleb gets to work immediately. He goes to the Party Committes, where he meets Shuk, an old army acquaintance, Serge, Shidky, secre- tary of the Party Committee, and Shibis, head of the Cheka, * * * , (Eee came up to the table and stood at attention. “Pye been demobilized as a skilled worker and am at the disposi tion of the Party Committee.” Without taking his eyes off Gleb, Shidky held out his hand and his nose wrinkled with friendly laughter as they gripped. “Comrade Chumalov, we have appointed you secretary of the factory group. It is disorganized now. Smugglers and speculators—they’ve all gone mad over goats and pipe-lighters. The factory is being openly robbed. You probably know all about it. You'll have to put it straight, and get it in working order—military fashion.” Gleb again saluted. va “All right, Comrade Shidky!” Lukhava leant his chin again upon his knees. He was chewing a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and gazing at Gleb through feverish half-closed eyes with a keen provocative questioning which went deep into Gleb’s soul. And it was really in answer to Gleb’s words that he called coldly and carelessly to Shidky: “Send the comrade to the Organization Department. waste the time of this session with trifles.” He continued looking at Gleb, screwing up his eyes in the cigarette smoke. Gleb threw back his head, his eyes directly encountering Luk- haha’s, but he said nothing. He felt only a sort of dull blow on the breast. Lukhava’s eyes agitated him with a dim provoking suggestion. Shibis glanced keenly at him under his heavy brows. “Yes, you're a skilled mechanic. Also a military commissar. Why did you leave the army already when the factory has been put out of business for years?” - We can't . * * LEB turned to Shibis, but his answer was for all of them. “Put out of business, you say? Yes, that’s so! A rotten place, a dump-heap, a desolate abomination. And what a factory it was: it was a huge thing, a beauty. known al! over the world. You must grab the workmen by the scruff of their necks and drive away the goats. What about production? It’s the most important thing of all even if it kills us to make the factory go. _ Without it the workmen won’t be workmen, just goat-herds.” Again he met Lukhava’s gaze and again met the tantalising sugges- tion and a smiling enmity. Gleb in turn looked fixedly at him and once more from Lukhava’s gaze he felt that dull blow in his breast. “The heroes of the Order of the Red Flag, besides their bravery, must also have an understanding of the actual facts of the situation.” Shibis was leaning back in his chair, cold and restrained, and under the dusky mask of his face it was impossible to know whether he was following the discussion or was merely resting and bored with it all. y : HIDKY sniffed; the lines in his cheeks deepened with a smile. raised his fist for another blow on the table. “T have not yet given you the floor, Lukhava. Sit down. Let’s re- sume our discussion on fuel.” Lukhava’s words, as, provoking as his smile, and the insinuation in his half-closed eyes, made Gleb shudder and his heart was flooded. “Comrade Chumalov, we haven't a single stick of kindling. We're starving. The children in the Homes are perishing. The workers are disorganized. How can you talk of the factory now? What rot! It’s not a question of that. What have you got to say about &elivery of ‘wood from the forests? In what way can you use the factory for that? What have you got to say about Lukhava’s proposal?” “Fuel? Well, let’s take fuel first. here on the spot. T'll be responsible for that.” “Well, tell us how we can get the thing done practically, without a lot of phrases.” “Yes, we'll get down to bedrock.” Gleb paused for a moment, gazing thoughtfully at the window. “There’s only one way. We'll use the ropeways up to the moun- tains; and then the trolleys down to the jetty. Load them up and run them to the town and to the station. We'll have a campaign for volun- tary Sunday labor in all the unions. I’ve nothing more to say.” * . * ‘ As puffing and blowing, perspiring copiously, embraced Gleb, smil- ing joyously. “You sit there, like a lot of old fat-bellied tubs . . . mucking about hopelessly. And then, look! Gleb starts on it. He's really starting things and making them hum. That’s the stuff, show them all up, old pal!” No one listened to him, and his familiar figure disappeared in the crowd, a nonentity. He was ‘always before their eyes, but they never * He In a month we shall have wood | saw him, and his cry which came from the heart was unheard. Shidky, his cheeks patterned with the wrinkles of his smile, was not writing, but was drawing straight lines and long curves on the paper. And his face became quiet and customary, so that he suddenly appeared old and haggard. “I think you wanted to speak on this point, lukhava?” Lukhava jumped eagerly up from his place, passed before Gleb and then returned to his window. “I was thinking more or less on the same lines as Comrade Chum- alov. He put it better than I. We should unquestionably accept his | proposal and invite him to the sitting of the Economic Council to report to them on it.” : : Shidky threw his pencil on the table; it bounded off and fell at Gleb’s feet. He sprang up, his hands in his pockets. “Tt’s Utopian, Comrade Chumalov! Stop gabbling about the factory all the time. The factory is a tomb of stone. It’s not the factory we want—it’s wood! There is no factory—only an empty quarry. The factory for us is a question of the past or the future, not of the present. We’re talking about the delivery of wood now only.” “I don’t know what you mean by Utopia, Comrade Shidky. If yqu don’t pronounce the word factory, the workmen will say it. What are you jawing about: the factory is the past or the future? If the workers are banging their heads against the factory every day—as they are— then the factory is there, and it’s waiting for workers’ hands to run it. What’s all the joke about with you, Comrades? Have you been to the factory? Have you seen the Diesel engines and the workmen? The factory is a whole little town and the machines are all ready to run. Why have the workers been robbing the factory? Why do rain and wind eat into the concrete and iron? Why does destruction go on? And the rubbish heaps pile up? Why have the workers nothing to do except fool around with empty bellies?. The worker isn’t a broody hen: you can’t ask him to sit down on the eggs and hatch chicks! And you keep on telling him that the factory isn’t a factory, but an aban- doned quarry, and he spits on you then and curses with all his might. How could he treat you otherwise? he’s right in stripping the factory and dragging it bit by bit to his home; it would all go to the devil any- way. You've been filling his head with all sorts of beautiful language, but what have you done to make him a class-conscious proletarian in- stead of a cheese-paring haggler? That’s the way you have to put the question, my dear Comrades.” * * * H Sse discomfort which had been oppressing Gleb, both in his home and in the factory, was the same here, and he could not keep silent. It was poisoning his healthy blood with fury. Shidky shuddered and his eyes widened. “Youre making an idol of the factory, Comrade Chumalov. What do we want the factory for, when we’ve got bandits and famine here, and when cur Soviet institutions are swarming with traitors and con- spirators? Who wants your cement, man, nowadays, and all your workshops? Do you want it for building common graves? You're preaching the conquest of industry while the peasants are moving like a Tartar horde against the town.” “J understand that just as well as you do, Comrade Shidky. But you can’t start industry with naked hands and build it up on naked men. To hell with all your petty tinkering!. We must go straight for recon- struction and the re-establishment of production, That’s the question before us! Otherwise we might as well give up everything, and just sit down and wait for the peasants to come and slaughter us.” Shibis got up and walked to the door. One could not tell what he was thinking. By the door he stopped and said monotonously, with long pauses between each sentence for effect: “Our Special Department is poor. While we’re speaking about the factory why can’t we also discuss the situation among the soldiers, and the offensive against the bourgeoisie? These are all fine words, but I haven’t time to relish them, Later on, perhaps.” Rochambeau, and carried on!saised during Newro Weeks sisutin, “> ~~” YS. (To Be Continued), , ~<a