The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 21, 1929, Page 4

Ey Page Four DAILY | WORKER, NEW YORK, TUESDAY, MAY 21, 1929 - ‘SANDHOGS’ FE SEAMEN DROWN; BERRY, STRIKEBREAKER; “SA NDHOGS” WORK RISKY PRESSMEN PAY & GREAT RISKS IN HIGH PRESSURE Bent Double by Dread | Disease By a Wor I want to d who read the Da Worker the con- ns of the most dangerous of all in the building trades, the in—the “sandhogs,” as who work under high | re aze calied. mandhogs’? workoat ‘building| in all underground and | struction. It is very} ju will soon see, r Correspondent. Slave in Tunnels. To begin with—let me tell what} appened the other day to a couple| of “sandhogs” over in Jersey. Two! nm employed as “sandhogs” by the! McMullen Construction Co., at work Ave. and the Hackensack r were stricken with the ter- rible “bends” last week. One was William Lovelace, of Brooklyn, and the other, a Negro “sandhog,” | ard Jones. I will tell of this disease. Let me describe the work, for in-| nce that we did on the new sub- tunnel under the East River, bet n Fulton St., Manhattan, and Cranberry St., Brooklyn, a job we finished last Wednesday. | Going Under. Each morning, when we come to work, we are lowered in a hoist to| a level 75 feet below the surface of the river. In front of us, in the face of the tube that stretches out under the river, is a huge steel door, like tnat of a vault. We pull it open, and enter a small room where there | are several wooden benches and a table. The door is shut, and a lever | is pulled to put us under a pressure to a square inch; the} While this is done, sa and screaming— your nerves have to be pretty hard end the n . Our noses bleed badly while the air is being lowered to the 8 pound pr e. Then the valve is again opened, and we are put under a pressure of 15 pounds. Then a door is opened in the oppo-/ site wall, and we have to step out nto the tunnel. | Cave-Ins. Hl On the floor of the tunnel car- loads of sand are being drawn on| tracks to the surface. Cave-ins often | are po le, another risk for the} sandhogs. | Under 35-Lb. Pressure. Then comes another bulkhead, an- | other hot, stifling room in which| we are locked. More air, more awful | noise. Then we are put under a pres- | sure of 85 pounds to the square! inch, gradually working up from 20} pounds. Then we step out to dig} away at the sand. | Our ears are ringing. Your own! voice sounds like the voice of some- | one far, far away. Danger All Around. For an hour and a half we dig at the wall of sand. Danger is all around us. If something happens to| the air compressors and the pressure | fails, good-bye—we’ll be drowned} like rats before we can get back to} the airlocks. Hundreds of “sand- hogs” lie at the bottom of the Hud-| son River. | Then there is the danger of ex-| plosion—if a joint gives way under pressure. When this happens, the/ company blames the workers, we “didn’t do our work well,” they say. We can work only for an hour and a half at a stretch—no human being can work longer under compressed air. We have to go thru the same sort of process before we can get out into the normal air, as we went thru before going in—five minutes in each airlock. The “Bends.” Then comes the danger of the “bends”—the disease that gets us all sooner or later. The pressure has filled our blood with bubbles of oxygen which must | be thrown off before we re-enter normal air pressure. Doing this we, are liable to be seized with the “bends,” cramps and convulsions which double a man up with pain and convulsions. After a rest we go back again to the work in the tunnel. For this dangerous work, we get paid $11.50 a day, and are liable to be drowned like rats any time. That’s the “sandhogs” work. —wN. Y. “SANDHOG.” 8 p Reap the benefits of the May Day demonstrations by getting into the Communist Party work- e to the workers | | | | | \ A worker correspondent tells of the drowning of seamen off | the Pacific coast, following which the lumber barons owning the ship are whitewashed. The remarkable aeroplane, shows the S. S. Kajsa photo at the left taken from an sinking in the North Sea after a collision with another boat, going down a few minutes later with the entire crew. ky work of the tunne scribed by a worker corresponden’ shows sandhogs at their w un president of the Pressmen’s Union, misleader par pressman, writing of some of Berry’s tricks in Ten- is shown in the second photo. 1 workers, or “sandhogs”, is de- it on this page. The third photo der high air pressure. They are | often victims of the dread disease, and explosions. The photo at the right shows of the Ietters on this gers, due to unemployment, low wag dein ae Enjoy Below is a letter from a worke in Kharkov. the Revolution. Workers Union. * * Dear Comrades: iabr” Y) r in the Candy Factory, He tells of the freedom the Jewish workers won thru in the United States, write to these workers of the Soviet ‘They are eayer to hear from you, You probably know that in czarist Russia the Jewish people fared worse than all the other nationalities oppressed by Russia in those days. For the Jews there existed a Pale o: had no right to reside. by the landowners and government who had any authority whatever. f Settlement, outside of which they | The poor Jews in the provinces were persecuted officials, police officers and others The czar’s government organized “pogroms” (massacres) of the Jews, and a Jew could not show his permitted to work in factories, mill the heavy industries, in general. punished more heavily than a criminal of any other nationality. it was the poor Jews that were mi: anybody else, not the Jewish bourge face in the street. Jews were not | s or in transport industries nor in If a Jew committed a crime he was But streated and persecuted more than | ‘oisie. The Jewish proletariat, together with all proletarians understood that their goal was revolution, that autocracy, only the dictatorship of nationalities from oppression. So now is the twelfth year th: union with the proletariat of all othe only the overthrow of the Russian the proletariat, can free all the at the Jewish proletariat, in close r nationalities inhabiting the USSR, is building up its fatherland, the first workers’ and peasants’ state in the world, on the principles of socialism. The Jewish people, along with all the nationalities of the USSR, is Jewish people have obtained all the making its cultural revolution. The rights which the other nationalities enjoy, got the rights which the czar’s government would never have given them. The Jews are organizing collective farms, and the Soviet government is aiding them in that direction, giving them land, a; cultural machinery, and financial assistance, so that they should remain on the farms; the Jews have gained free access to big factories and mills, they have got the right to occupy responsible government posi- tions, they actively participate in the Soviet press, The Jewish people are building land of Soviets. up a new culture of its own in the The old, false bible and all religion has been left far behind; the Jewish people are building workers’ clubs instead of syna- gogues, and instead of the religious schools for the children (kheder), they are building Soviet labor schools where they send their children. While under the czar’s autocratic regime there was a fixed percentage of Jews that could be admitted to the high schools and the higher in- stitutions of learning, and only the bourgeoisie enjoyed that limited right, now there is no percentage limitation for the Jewish proletarian students, and the Jews actively tak e part in the reconstruction of the whole country. The Jewish proletariat still remembers the “nagaikas” (whips) of the czar’s cossacks, and the Jewish proletariat will give all their strength for the defense of the fatherland of the international proletariat, the USSR. With fraterni “Oktiabr” * * The next letter will be from a interior town of Kalouga. al greetings, S. MISHUROVSKY, Candy Factory, Mechanical Shop. * Soviet commercial employee in the I. W. W, Pays Cash to Open Shop Theaterman Who Fights Union Men (By a Worker Correspondent) SEATTLE, Wash., (By Mail).—| The small theatre owners have been fighting the motion picture opera- tors for the past three weeks in Seattle, and have been fighting or- ganized labor for over five years.| | John Danz is the owner of about a half dozen of these small theatres, including the Florence Theatre, lo- jcated at 512 1-2 Second Ave, Danz rents the upper part of this | building to the I, W. W. at $150 a/ month. We know that Danz can’t carry on a strikebreaking agency without money, and since we know that the I. W. W. gives Danz $150 a month for rent, the logical con- clusion is that for the past five years the I, W. W. has been collect- ing $150 a month from one group of of workers who are trying to better their conditions. Therefore if the I, W. W. is not a strikebreaking auxiliary of the business men of Seattle then what else can you call it? ers who participated. —SEATTLE WORKER. SEAMEN LOST IN CRASH Whitewash Is Seen Jor Lumber Barons By a Worker Correspondent LOS ANGELES, (By Mail).— Roco Ursich, a seaman, is believed to have lost his life when the Pur- al fishing boat Explorer was rammed ani nd sunk in the collision with the‘lumber schooner Ryder Hanisy off Los Angeles harbor, it swas learned today. Rescue men from the Ryder Han- fished up safely from the shark- d water Capt. H. Frede eke iz free speech fight in San Pedro,| son and seven members of the crew, but Ursich, 345 Fifteenth St., San Piedro, disappeared when the vessel went down. In the opinion of labor-bating prosecutors, lives of seamen and other workers are cheap. So the lumber trust, which was back of the jailings, beatings, deportations and deaths of workers during the 1923- won't get into trouble over this fatal accident, oe Ustone workers to use against another group | SCREEN WORKERS ARE SPEEDED UP Driven to 1 Limit Brooklyn Plant (By a Worker Correspondent) I wish to describe the “paradise” for the workers in Brooklyn and in of New York, Brooklyn. There are | 14 workers employed in the factory | and eight men outside, fitting the \screens. The hours are 49 1-2 a week. A time clock card must be punched four times a day. The work- ing time starts at 7:30 a, m, and lasts until 5 p. m., with an hour for lunch. The workers are paid by checks, The wages are from $17 to | $40 a week, only the foreman get- ting the highest wage. The workers are driven at top speed by two foremen and three bosses. The shop is in a former stable, now whitewashed and re- altered after a fire. There are no lockers for the workers’ clothing. |The toilet is filthy, with no toilet paper. There is a dirty, germ- spreading wash basin in the toilet room, which nobody uses, and a rusty milk pail, used for a drinking cup. Poor ventilation, lights not shad- dust, that blinds the worker. Slav- |ery, miserable pay, long hours, A filthy place. I wrote this when 1 saw a letter in the Daily from an Adler serecn worker, —A. W. r GRINDER KILLED LOS ANGELES (By Majl).— George Haines, 50, was killed while working in a quarry at Pebble Beach, Santa Catalina Island, near here, Pieces of a zprolving grind stone burst and hit him, “WHATPRICECOAL’ ROB MINE . i Rise of Russian Women. Shown BIG SLAUGHTER | Cheated When Injured, Starvation W: Wages Still) the title is rather far fetched, the Families Starve | (By a Worker Correspondent) Since the strike of miners was THROWN ON ri Lowered (By a Worker Correspondent) TIRE-HILL, Pa. (By Mail). — Olga Preobrezhenskaya makes her first appearance in America as a sail with the Sovkino film, “The lage of Sin” now at the Little | Gaeneaia sin involyed seems to consist mostly of the act of a Kulak who rapes his} son’s young wife while the son is far away at war. It may be that in the Russian vi broken during four years of strike | Naum Costoff, a militant miner of are shown, the picture here has a and struggles against the coal op- erators and Lewis officialdom, ne) mine workers are asking themselves, | “What price coal,” not in dollars and cents, but in human lives and limbs. A day does not pass that dozens the Bird Coal Co. at this place was discharged by the mine foreman, ac- cussed of being an organizer. This miner immediately made his way to the Central Pennsylvania District Office of the National Miners Union at Portage, Pa. for some advice, he | kind of sketchy, disconnected abrupt effect which we have learned only too well to associate with the activity of the prejudiced censors of America. But what there is of it is wonder- | The inspired photography, the | ful. views of the country, of flowering | of miners are not sent to butcher | was then initiated into this rank and| fruit trees and waving wheat fields, shops (common term for company file miners union, was sent back into | form a setting for the story of hard controlled hospitals). miners come back home, minus a leg, as he had received one of the open- Many of these | that town to organize the miners, | work and heroism on the part of the | poor peasants and especially the pea- arm, eye or some other portion of | shoppers five day notices to vacate|sant women, and the gradual rise their body. Many never return home | alive. This is due to the speed up| the company house. When the fifth day was up the | and rationalization introduced in sheriff of Somerset County was on mines, and has attained proportions | the job throwing his furniture out Queens Screen Co., at 17 Williams | | Ave., in the East New York section} ed, no blowers to suck in the saw! never before experienced in coal mines of this district. I want to write only about one case, as it would take books to even give a par- | tial description of all cases, | T. Y. was on strike for 28 months. Finally after strike was broken he got a job in one of the Pittsburgh Coal Co. mines. He worked on a| machine and after ten days work his leg got so sore that he had to go to a doctor. The doctor sent him to| West Penn Hospital, where they | had to kill a certain nerve in his leg in order to save him from in- sanity, as the pain was so intense that he was wild about it. The cause | was over-exertion, and his muscle} was sprained, but, Tony not wishing | | to lose his job remained at work for] |a period of nine days and aggravated | |the injury to the extent that the | muscle and nerve had to be killed | with electric needles. The coal company doctor claimed that the i jury was an old injury, | and Tony did not get compensation. That the claim would not hold water | | before any but a company doctor, is| evident from the following facts: 1, Pittsburgh Coal when hiring a man sends him to the company doc- tor for physical examination, and, if found disabled in any way, shape {or form the man is not hired; 2, Tony did not work for 28 months, | and could not have injured his leg, | if he did it would have been evident jon being examined. The last place | he worked his record shows that he was never sick or stayed home on account of any trouble with that leg. When Tony got the job he moved | into a coal company house, After| he got sick and was sent to the hos- | pital, naturally there was no money; to pay the rent. His brother paid for him for a few months and for a few months was paid out of the ten days’ earnings, but a day came when it was not paid. The coal company went to the jus- tice of the peace and got judgment | note against Tony’s furniture. He | got a note from the constable that unless he paid the four month’s rent his furniture would be sold at con. stable sale on May 10th, To the rent for four mnoths at | $8 per month is added the cost of | the case, $1, and unless Tony pays it all, his furniture which is worth to him $600 will be sold for $50. He is not able to work yet, he goes to the hospital three times a week for treatment, and has a bill from the hospital for $285, which he will have to pay, or else the hospital will sell his furniture, or tie up his pay when he starts to work—if ever. He has a wife and young child. Three children died during the 28 months he was on strike, In each | case the doctor’s verdict was “sick- ness due to under-nourishment.” After working in the coal mines for 20 years and giving it the best of his youth, health and happiness, Tony is faced with being a cripple all his life, and even the bed he was sleeping on will be taken from under him and sold to give the last pound of flesh to Mellon and his hirelings. eee 4 —MINER CORRESPONDENT. on the street, with the assistance of | the coal and iron police of the Bird Coal Company there. Much of the furniture was broken into kindling wood in throwing the furniture from the house instead of carrying it out. This family of five had only drawn one dollar on statements for the past two years, and had no funds to hire| a truck to move elsewhere, so the| personal and household goods were left lying on the public highway for| five days before this miner finally called the district office for help in |securing a home or a place to store | his wrecked goods. A Mr. Davis, neighbor of the Cost- off family, was also ordered out of his house for speaking to the Cost- off family. While many others were threatened with a like fate if they were caught speaking to this dis- criminated and blacklisted miner of the Bird Coal Company. Conditions there are rotten. There are three tons of coal loaded in the cars for they are large cars, and they only receive credit for one ton. They are compelled to deal in the Bird company store, and only one dollar’s| left for them to draw on pay day, as} this company has a collection system working very well, and if there| should happen to be a little over the one dollar on a miners pay state- ment, then this difference is checked off on the collection, but none of these miners ever knew of any miner getting any collection, so this collec- tion goes into the large profits of |i these bosses. They steal two tons/| of coal from every three tons loaded by these miners. They pay the men 65 cents per ton for pick coal which is 86 cents less than the 1917 scale which is supposed to be paid the miners, Report of the most important For a Four Weeks’ Holiday for iz Workers? ~~~ of these women from a position of | slavery during which they are bar-| gained off in marriage like cattle) by their relatives, to a place where one, the revolting daughter of the! |kulak, becomes the real leader of Soviet work in the village. This daughter is acted by E. Ces- sarskaya. To say that her portrayal is an exhibition of genius, is merely to be trite, but there is no other word for it. The conception of the character of this daughter Vasilissa is original and striking. She starts her one woman rebellion before the | Bolshevik revolution, by simply tak- ing over the man she wants, and go- ing to-live with him when her father, | refuses to allow a The attempt of village the kulak, marriage. rowdies to shame her by smearing | her door with pitch (a country trick | that is practised in American dark villages too, by the way) doesn’t work, oF She runs the blacksmith shop and does the plowing while her mate is conscripted, and when he comes back, and tries to exercise his authority by stopping her from going to a meet- ing of the Soviet, she tells him, “Those days are gone forever.” When Ivan, the son of the kulak comes back, and makes a fuss about his wife’s illegitimate child, whose paternity has been carefully con- cealed from him, it is Vasillisa who offers the wife sanctuary. the wife commits suicide, Vasilissa takes the baby away, and exposes the kulak, The story ends with the rich peasant shrinking into a corner in guilty fear, and the son approach- | ing him with revenge delineated in every move he makes. Whether we have the whole pic- ture or not, what we do have is well worth seeing. The photography is} The cast is as by K. A. Kuznetsov, follows: Vassili Shironin (the kulak), A. Yastrebitzky; Anna (his daughter-| We Have Just Received from Great Britain a Very Limited Number of the the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International Contains a complete stenographic report of Congress since 1920. WORKERS LIBRARY PUBLISHERS 43 EAST 125TH STREET, NEW YORK CITY page telling of the starvation of the coal dig- ivector’s Picture ion, other incidents | FOR MILL RUN BY GEORGE BERRY Faker Also Runs 2a | Print Shop : By a Worker Correspondent) Some few days ago the Dail: Worker carried the story of Majo | George Berry, head of the Press mens’ Union, acting as an adviso | to Governor Horton of Tennessee {in the rayon strike. Horton sen | troops against the strikers, and h: is advised by Berry, who knows hov jto break a strike. | Just back from a trip thru th: | South, and I went out of my wa; | to see the Carolinas and Tennessee | and conditions are terrible there fo the workers. Did you know that Berry was run | ning a print shop in Rogersville — | Tennessee, and a hosiery mill, wher | he hopes to get the pressmens wid ows and orphans as cheap help. Th members of the International Press mens’ Union, who give him Nev York money, are afraid to ask Berr: why he runs a print shop in scabb; Tennessee, stealing the work fror New York. | There is a story that Tom Henry |a pressmens’ misleader, made a mo tion in the International Pressmens Union Convention to use $80,000 o the union’s money to run the pres room at Rogersville. —PRESSMAN. the “bends”, and of sand cave-ins typical miners, such as the writers and the Lewis misleadership. > ! A TALENTED ARTIST. BUSMEN STRIKE MYRTHYR, Wales (By Mail).— |Bus drivers here went on striki against a clocking-in system intro duced by the Municipal Bus Corpor | ation. ‘Visit Russia LOWEST PRICE 325 and up First time since the re- Dorthy Sands, who plays many | parts in the latest edition of ‘The Grand Street Follies” now current at the Booth Theatre. complete tour New York-Mos- cow and return, incl, all expenses When | in-law), R. Puzhnaya; Vasilissa (his | daughter), E. Cessarskaya; Ivan (his son), G. Babynin; the blacksmith in’s servant and mistress), C. Narbe- kova. —vV. S. ELECTRICIANS MAY STRIKE NEWCASTLE, England (By Mail) Northeast Coast Exhibition here will go on strike if all union workers are not employed on the job. | VILLA “An excellent film seen; Have you seen “MOSCOW TODAY” ——AS GOOD AS A TRIP TO THE SOVIET CAPITAL—— “A picture you should see”.—Daily Worker. FILM GUILD CINEMA, 52 West 8th Street Thentre Guild Productions i CAMEL Through the Needle‘sEye By FRANTISEK LANGNER MARTIN BECK THEA. ely W. of 8th Ave. Evs. rth 9 Mats., Thurs. & Sat. LAST WEE CAPRICE| A Comedy by Sil-Vara GUILD Thea. gina Bt Boe tg Mats., Thurs. and ‘Sat., 2:40 LAST WEEK! Strange Interlude y EUGENE O'NEILL Soni GOLDEN, thea. seen EVENINGS ONLY AT B30 in a restaurant Nicholai (in love with Vasilissa), E. | Maksimova); Matveyevna (Shiron- | —Nearly 200 electricians on the/| volution that you do not need previous visa ap- plications. Salli June 29—Levia | July 24—Geo: | duly 27—Lev! Free Russian Visas; Stopover Privileges; Visas gotten in 3 days, by enble; Frequent Sailings; Every Tour and Tourist Insured. See your steamship agent or | American - Russian TRAVEL AGENCY, INC. (00-5th Av., Chel. 4477-5124, N.Y.C. pas [-AMUSEMENTS>| THEODORE DREISER Hails— GE ? SIN First Sovkino Film Direeted by A Woman with the best cinema photography I have ever among the best so far achieved by the motion picture ad- ventures anywhere,”—(Dreiser Looks at Russia.) Little CARNEGIE PLAYHOUSE, 146 W. 57th St., Circle 7551 NOW PLAYING! GrandSt.Follies with Albert Carroll & Dorothy Sand B ITH Thea. W. 45th St., Evs, 8.3 (00 Mats. Wed. & Sat. 2.30 |MOROSCO THEA. w. 45th st. Eve 8.50, Mats.Wed.&Sat.2:3 | JOHN DRINKWATER'S Comedy Hi BIRD INHANT Chanin’s MAJESTIC * Theatr 44th St, West of Brondway | Eves. 8: 30: Mats.; Wed. & Sat. 2:3 JACK PEARL, PHIL BAKER,. |AILEEN STANLEY, SHAW & LEI In the Revue Sensation PLEASURE BOUND ARTHUR HOPKINS HoribaY Comedy Hit by PHILIP BARRY | Thea. W. 45 St. Ev, 8, PLYMOUTH nate: Thurs, & Sat. 2.8 atronize Our § Advertisers © Don’t forget to mention the “Daily Worker” to the proprietor whenever you purchase clothes, furniture, etc., or eat