The Daily Worker Newspaper, June 12, 1929, Page 6

Page Six Published by the Comprodaily Sunday, at 26-28 Union S Telephone Stuyvesant 1696 SUBSCRIPTION R (in New York on. six months (outside of New York): six months $2.00 three months to the Daily Worker, 26-28 Union Square, w York, N. une ): $2.50 three mon $8.00 a year $6.00 a year Address and mail all checks Ne Democrats Claim Their Party Is Alive. NDER the tutelage of John J. Raskob, national chairman, and Jouett Shouse, chairman of the executive committee of the Democratic National Committee, leading democrats gathered in Washington, Monday, to claim that the demo- cratic party is not dead, that it has in fact excellent chances of victory in the congressional elections next year and in the presidential poll in 1932 Raskob lectured the faithful on the necessity of organiza- tion. The former chairman of the finance committee of the General Motors Corporation, who has again taken up his duties in the financial direction of this great automobile monopoly, claims that with better organization in the election districts, victory could have been achieved in the electoral college last year. Under these circumstances it is not to be expected that the democratic party leaders would raise any fundamental question of principle at their post-election resurrection, but rather proceed as they did with plans for the raising of a $250,000 res tation fund, to be supplemented with a like sum for organization purposes as soon as possible. Raskob did, however, make an attack on what he called “the continuation of the tendency of the republican party to centralize greater and greater powers in the federal govern- ment in Washington, instead of building each of our 48 states into strong sovereignties,” declaring that this “is bound to result in a power so colossal as to be unwieldy and incapable of administration.” Raskob thus raises the issue, as old as the nation itself, of state’s rights as opposed to increasing centralization of power in the hands of the federal government. This is un- doubtedly a play to the southern democrats, who had been won over to support of the Washington re-union Monday, after it had been rumored that they would boycott it; In fact, the Southern democrats seem to have captured the gathering with William Jennings Bryan dead, with William G. McAdoo forgotten, and Al Smith making money in the banking business in New York City, Raskob called Jeffer- son to his assistance, played heavily on “a reassertion of democratic principles,” and threatened: “The lack of respect for such a government (centralized) and the tyranny under which our people will have to live in conse- quence thereof may well result in a revolution which will divide this country into two or three republics and our prosperity will then suffer the ills which the countries of Europe have suffered through jealousies, lack of trust, standing armies, etc., for count- less generations.” The increasing centralization and oppression by the government drives toward revolution, but not of the kind that must keep Raskob awake nights. It does not divide the nation sectionally, as between north and south, east and west, Atlantic Coast and Pacific Coast states; but instead sharpens the class antagonisms on a nation-wide basis. Rascob rails at the failure of the republicans to keep their tariff pledges and weeps over the unrestrained stock specula- tion. Due to the increasing industrialization of the south, however, the Southern members of the congress are becoming as good “protectionists” as those from the north, and no one has as yet dared to insinuate that the democrats do not make as eager and successful gamblers on the stock ex- changes and the boards of trade as the republicans. It is very evident that the democratic party, although it may be somewhat alive and pride itself on the 15,000,000 votes it received last year compared to the 21,000,000 cast for the republicans, nevertheless, it is floundering hopelessly. In spite of R&kob’s words, it is more like the republican party than ever, a fact that was brought startlingly to the front by the declarations of Al Smith, as presidential candi- date, during the closing days of last year’s presidential cam- paign. There is no great difference in principle. The anti-labor character of the democratic party be- comes clearer with the open attacks on the textile workers at Gastonia, in North Carolina, and Elizabethton, Tennessée, and in New York City under the Tammany Hall regime. Raskob, financial wizard of the open shop General Motors Corpora- tion, who stands out more than ever as the present leader of the democratic party, will not be able to sell its shoddy goods to the toiling masses. He typifies the speed-up, low wages and long work-day of today’s industrial rationalization. The Communist Party that alone fights the monster capi- talist class tyranny centralized in the hands of the Hoover republican administration, also exposes the democratic party as the enemy of the workers and poor farmers. Both these parties have their sprinkling of liberal supporters, both num- ber their lackeys in the ranks of the American Federation of Labor, while the Socialist Party does not wage a class fight against either. The Communist Party alone leads the struggle of “Class Against Class!” the fight that must be supported by wider masses of exploited workers and farmers in the local elections this year, in the congressional elections in 1930, and the presidential election in 1932. This support grows out of the leadership by the Communist Party of the daily struggles of the working class. Machine gun diplomacy in Nicaragua is to be rewarded, Hoover having urged upon Secretary of War Good that Brig. Gen. Frank R. McCoy, who raised the flag of Wall Street “democracy” against Sandino, be promoted to the rank of major general. This is supposed to increase the morale of Yankee imperialism’s fighting forces in the colonies and semi- colonies. This will not be considered “good news” south of the Rio Grande and in the Orient. - ‘ Trotsky has asked MacDonald for permission to come to England, and why not. It would give the “left” and the right sections of the counter-revolution an opportunity to get closer together in their common effort against the triumphant | power of the Russian workers and peasants. MacDonald | might even add Trotsky to his numerous cabinet as Lord High Chancellor of the Counter-Revolution. . Soa eee ne renter emmy en | i | United Textile Workers Takes ' the Law Into Its Hands By JOHN HARVEY. When Mr. Kelley of the United Textile Workers’ Union directed deputy sheriffs of Washington and Carter counties (Tenn rest organizers of the Na |tile Workers’ Union and raid the room in Johnson City, this M progressive had good reasons for feeling nervous. For with “Brother” Hoffman and other members of thi group he had just put over one the worst betrayals in the history lof the American labor movement. | | And though he had banked on the} inexperience of the workers of Happy Valley who have only re- |cently entered the rayon mills from the farms, he knew that nothing would be more disastrous than for these workers to be told the truth about the U. T. W.. sell-out. Especially at a time when all of Happy Valley is seething with dis- satisfaction over the terms of the settlement. Wanted Names. This was made clear in the more than four hours during which we were held under arrest in the room of our boarding house in Johnson City (Bill Dunne, spegial organizer of the N. T. W. U., Walter Trum- bull, representing the Int: i Labor Defense, five Gasto ers including Fred Beal, Organizer of the N. T. W myself), when the deput only the leaflets addr workers of the Bemberg < stoff mills telling of the and ransacked our room search of names of E workers with whom we had con) tions, | when Kelly of the U. T. W. entered |the room in which we were being held under arrest, and after trying |to pass himself off as a government officer, wav-d his arms and shouted: “If you make any attacks on me I'll {take the law into my own hands!” ie. if we told the truth about hi role in betraying the strike, Background of Betrayal. | What were the truths contained in this leaflet of the N. T. W. U. |which Kelly so feared the workers of Happy Valley would read? On Friday, May 24th, the strike \of the rayon workers in Elizabeth- ton, Tennessee, was in its sixth | week. Despite all pacifying efforts |on the part of Kelly, Hoffman, Mc- | Grady & Co. the local workers were showing great militancy. This mili- tancy was winning the sympathy of workers thruout the country and as a result relief for the strikers was pouring into Elizabethton in large sums. The strike was at its height. The strike was winning. No one thought of calling it off until some- thing had been won for the workers, That is no one but Kelly, Hoffman, McGrady, and the government con- | ciliator, Weinstock. At Friday’s meeting the speakers | all called for the continuation of the |strike until the union was fully | recognized, and said that none would go back until all were taken back. But on Saturday, May 25th, the strike was suddenly surrendered by the U, T. W. leaders without the winning of a single demand, after |consultations with the companies behind the backs of the workers, through the government conciliator, | Weinstock. But it was not enough |for these “leaders” to send workers back to the mills to face the same intolerable conditions against which so-called progressives, Kelly and | Hoffman, conspired with the com- pany officials and Weinstock to in- e DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 1929 = and recognition of the union. They did this by vouching for Wilson, the rs never got back- to} Glanzstoff employment director who at all. And with gall never | has been brought to Elizabethton before equalled Kelly and Hoffman | from Passaic to install the blacklist put over this blacklist on the work- | system with the help of these U. T. ll a blacklist by means of regis- tration and thus see that the most r-,ers under the guise of a “victory” | W. and A. F. of L. officials. Wilson, “Real Workers Democracy tor Toilers in Soviet Union What real workers democracy, Paroshin, head of the State Labor means in the land of the proletarian | Exchange of the Sakolniki district, ictatorship was‘ recently drama-|was dismissed from office because tized in a striking manner at some |of his rude and negligent attitude of the most significant court pro- | toward unemployed women worke: ceedings ever held in ‘the Soviet |he was also forbidden to occupy any Union. Before a workers’ tribunal, |1esponsible office fof the next two in the presénce of thousands of | years. Since Paroshin is a member toilers, government officials are ac-| of the Communist Party his case cused and tried and* convicted for | was also referred to the proper Con- |he is to be allowed to remain a mem- of all this is a startlingly | ber of the Communist Party of the nent in fighting bureau- | Soviet Union. A similar sentence cratic! In bac new experi cracy in the Workers Republic. To-|W@S Passed on the government at-| ward the end of February, 1929,|tormey, Borrisov, along with his two about 1,500 workers, chosen from |subordinates, who were found guilty the tv e largest industrial con- of treating workers in a supercilious cerns, Moscow, made arrange- and bureaucratic manner. in rude and negligent and bu-|trol Commission to decide whether | This was made clear again they had gone on strike, but these} ments with the Workers and Pea- Inspection—the government n that leads the fight against Lureaucracy—to conduct a number of “raids” on the various govern- ment offices so as to check up how who have to deal with state officials are treated. The “raiders” were to report back to the Office of Complaints of the Workers and tion was to be taken sants In these raids about 300 govern- ment officials in Moscow were vis- ited. Workers, as individuals and in groups, came to them in the char- acter of petitioners, making requests or suggestions. They came with complaints and demands. They came with reports and information. They came at the most unexpected times and occasions. This work was conducted with considerable secrecy so that the government officials who dealt with these “raiders” did not know of their official character and dealt with them as they would have dealt with any worker or group of workers, The results of the inves- |tigatipns were submitted to the Commissariat of the Workers and Feasants Inspection and were there worked up for action. At the initiative of the Office of |Complaints of this Commissariat a Workers’ Tribunal was organized (consisting of the head of the Of- fice of Complaints and ten work- |ers) which held its sessions in a |large theatre in Moscow in the pres- ence of over two thousand factory workers. Before this tribunal the accused bureaucrats were called, tried, convicted and _ sentenced. Among the bureaucrats who were called before the tribunal were a few high state officiais who thus learned through experience tho meaning of workers’ democracy as practiced in the Soviet Union, The verdicts passed characterize very well the significance and purport of this mass offensive against bureau- cracy. e Lieberman, the head of the Cen- tral Office for Social Insurance, and Strelnikov, his secretary, were ac- cused of treating applicants rudely, impatiently and with bureaucratic arrogance. The charges were fully proved. Lieberman was _ severely reprimanded and demoted to a lower category for one year, while Strel- nikov was entirely dismissed from office, % Bie MIRE FE Of course not all of the officials were such high functionaries, A | co-operative store salesman, who had |been rude to proletarian customers, |an official in a hospital, and many |other similar creatures were called |up, accused, tried and sentenced to the lively satisfaction of the audi- ence. The sentences usually in- |volved severe reprimand, demotion, | | dismissal, prohibition from holding office, ete., depending upon the se- \riousness of the transgression. The sentences were submitted for confir- mation by the Workers and Pea- sants Inspection. The Moscow workers lead the way, |scon to be followed by the Lenin- | grad proletariat and these “anti-bu- reaucracy raids” have spread to the most important regions of the Sov- iet Union, This form of mass strug- gle against bureaucracy is bound to assume a profound significance in the practical functioning of the pro- letarian democracy in the U. S. S. |R. The “Pravda” writes as fol- lows: “The Workers’ Courts are an in- stitution of great social signifi- cance. It is not a question merely of sentences or of the decision of the workers to remove sonfe bu- reaucrats from office. The chief significance of the Workers’ Tri- bunals lies in the fact that they prove in a convincing manner that we are determined to bring all the burcaucratic abuses of our State apparatus out into the light of publicity. . , . The raid and the trial will serve to remind the of- ficials in our apparatus that they are there for the purpose of serv- ing the working class.” The American worker also hears that “his” government officials are “the servants of the people.” But he hears this on election day. He soon learns that the politicians and officials are there to serve the bosses and enrich themselves, “feather their own nests.” The slightest \experience with these of- ficials soon teaches him that the worst sort of bureaucracy and cor- ruption is the fine flower of our “glorious democracy.” He soon be- gins to see the difference between the “pure” (i, e., capitalist) “dem- workers’ democracy of the Sovieg Union, The Workers’ Tribunal against bureaucracy ocracy” of the U. S. A. and the real | who is one of those specially skilled type of stool-pigeon known as a |“personnel director” was employed} by the Passaic textile bosses to blacklist hundreds of workers at the end of the Passaic textile strike. | How the Workers Feel. | These workers in Elizabethton "have gone on strike twice during re- |cent months without any help from |the U. T. W. fakers and without jeven any organization. Therefore | they feel that the U. T. W. and A. F. of L. officials came into Happy Valley not to help win the strike, but because it was winning to betray it. It was top wages of $13.44 and shifts of 10 hours which forced them into struggle, and there is not a worker who, faced with returning to the mills under the same condition, | does not say that there will be an-| other strike within a month. These | workers, 75 per cent of whom are] young workers, and almost all of whom still are farmers living on their farms within a radius of 25 miles from Elizabethton, cannot junderstand why the strike was called | joff and are still ready for further | militant struggle. | But now it is no longer a question | of a new strike in a month or so,| for the blacklist and the spirit of the workers makes the present time the best for renewing the struggle. For only 25 per cent of the workers have registered and out of the few who have been taken on at the Glanzstoff | mill, 125 have already been laid off} vith the help of Mr. Wilson. The} Glanzstoff mill is taking its time| in resuming work hoping to de-} |moralize the ranks of the workers and smash the union before fully re- suming operations. Thus we find| that the workers have not gone back | to work, that they are daily learn- ing by hard experience the truth about the U. T. W. misleaders, and that their militancy is increasing in such a way that neither U. T. W. | officials, government conciliators or local armed forces will be able to stop a renewal of the strike. When this strike is renewed it will be much more militant than the previ- ous struggles and will be over the head of the U.T.W. company agents, under the leadership of the class National Textile Workers’ Union. The fact that the Bemberg and Glanzstoff plants can be turned in- to munition plants manufacturing. TNT, gun cotton, etc, within 24 hours explains to a large extent the panicky way in which the U. T. W. officials dropped this struggle and the great attention which the gov- ernment has given to the situation, This fact also makes a militant leadership the only hope for victory in a struggle which must necessarily face all the forces of the capitalist state and its-reformist agents. For a militant leadership the fact that this is a war industry, the fact that the workers get an average pay of from $8-$10 for the most dangerous of work, is only an argument for in- tensifying the struggle and for bet- tering the conditions and organiza- tions of the rayon workers. Under a militant leadership the workers of Happy Valley will be able to build a real union based on department and mill committees, and to,continue their struggle until their demands are granted and they win recogni- tion of their union, PLANE HITS WIRE; 1 DEAD TRENTON, N. J., Jétne 11.—Mrs. Hanna M, Jones, 56, was killed and John Stevenson, 32, was injured critically today when an airplane in which they were flying became en- tangled in telephone wires at Wash- are a shini ington Crossing, Pa,, north of here, | Tile and stashed, 1 ee Or Al By FEODOR CEMEN GLADKOV Translated by A. S. Arthur and C. Ashleigh All Rights Reserved—International Publishers, N. Y. Gleb Chumalov, Red Army commander, returns to his town on the Black Sea after the Civil Wars to find the great cement works, where he had formerly worked as a mechanic, in ruins and the life of the town disorganized. He discovers a great change in his wife, Dasha, whom he has not seen for three years. She is no longer the conventional wife, dependent on him, but has become a woman with a life of her own, a leader among the Communist women of the dist Dasha goes with Badin, chairman of the District Executive of the Soviet, on an important mission to a place at some distance from the town. On the way he makes advances to her which she tries to repulse. Their carriage is attacked by Cossack bandits, the coach- man is shot down, Badin disappears and Dasha is taken prisoner, * * * ND as it became lighter and freer around her’and the air no longer melt of moist wool, Dasha realized that she stood alone between this mounted officer and the band. She looked attentively at the Colonel. Her scarf had been torn off and trampled in the melee, Fight- ing with all her strength against the trembling in her knees she stood firmly planted in the earth. “Your hair’s bobbed. Are you a Communist?” “Yes, a working woman.” “Who was with you in the carriage?” “Comrade Badin, Chairman of the Polkom,” * “Polkom? What language is that? “Russian. What else?” i “You lie. The Russian language is not like that. It’s your Jame } gon—Yiddish or thieves’ slang.” 4 “In Soviet Russia we haven’t many thieves. We shoot them with’ out mercy.” } «| Someone guffawed behind her like a horse. ya “The damned female, She chatters like a magpie!” 4 “Til hang her to one of these branches and then she'll chatter another tune.” i Neither Dasha nor the Colonel ceased their steady gaze, one at, the other. | “And are all your Communists like this Chief of yours? the proper thing to abandon comrades in danger?” i “That never happens. I acted of my own accord.” 1 The Colonel twisted his moustache. His cheeks quivered slightly } and puffed out. He smiled. i Your own accord? -Were you reckoning on our stupidity?” 4 “It’s your business to puzzle it out. I did it—and that’s all!” 4 The Colonel was swinging his riding-whip and looking at her with a smile of a Kalmuk idol. Is it, i = es AND all the time Dasha felt an extraordinary relief. She breathed regularly and calmly; her mind was empty—no thought, no pity and no fear for herself. It was as though she had never been as free and young as now. She was wondering why that lonely pine-trea on the cliff attracted her so; just at the very top of the mountain— oh, how high! Why did she see for the first time this dense vapor over the mountain slopes, purple in hue? But neither the pine-tree nor the purple air was really important; there was something else, deep down, near, winged, to which she could not give a name, “You speak frankly and without fear, you short-haired girl. You carry it off pretty gaily. This is the first case of its kind I have had. Usually when you Communists fall into my hands, you squirm like a lot of worms, Perhaps you count on my letting you go be- cause you're a woman? Don’t imagine that for a moment. I’m going to hang you. I shall not shoot you, but just have you hanged.” “It’s all the same to me. I was prepared for it.” The Colonel puffed out his cheeks, and his moustache was alive like a spider. “I am your implacable enemy, and I destroy every Communist without mercy. However, I must admit that you carry yourself well. Now I want to see how you'll be under the noose.” ! * Wisour taking his eyes off her he lifted his whip above his head, “Baistriuk!” A bearded Cossack in a black shaggy fur cap walked out from the group. His beard did not hide his lips, which were red; his eyes were green. He was mute, meek, heavy. He took hold of Dasha and his hand was also heavy and clammy, It seemed it was not his hand leading her but that she carried his hand; the hand seemed enormous to her as though at any moment she might fall beneath the burden of it. That pine-tree on the mountains in the opaque fiery air. Oh, how high! There was a sweet intoxicating smell of spring; the young leaves were uncurling and ghanging their colors like glow-worms into rainbow hues. The brook played with the stones as though they were yattles, And this heavy intolerable hand was dragging her down, Dasha’s mind was so clear, although without thoughts; instead, purple, shimmering air. Everything was so clear, so transparent and winged. And because the hand was pressing like a dead body upon her and because the pine-tree on the peak was beckoning her, Dasha wanted to remember something, but could not: something extremely important which could not be put off. How sweet was the spring af¥? The pine- tree in flight leaned over the precipice, stretching its wings. Oh, how high! Yes, yes... . This was the essential: Comrade Badin was alive, Comrade. Badin, a valuable militant. And she, Dasha, is only a blade of grass; she was—and is no more, i She * * Nee her the hairy man was sniffing and blowing his nose. did not see him; she saw only the air and the purple depths. There was the rasping of a rope somewhere . . . far away... « at the back of her neck . + . it did not touch her senses or hurt her at all. Yes, yes, Gleb . . . but that happened so long ago. Dear, stupid Gleb! He’s so big and near and foolish. He flashed across her mind, but she felt no regret. Oh, how far away: the purple depths, the pine-tree and the rain of fire among the spring trees. Again the rope came sliding through her consciousness, and again the heavy hand like a dead body pressed upon her shoulder. Yes, she was walking back under the sky. In front was the brown slope and behind the dim forest; and behind that, in the airy distance, up to the very sky, was the green mountain, The Colonel was again looking at her stubbornly like a bull. His moustache hung wet like a rag upon his lips and chin. Except for herself and this man on horseback no one was there. “You're pretty brave, you with the short hair! You played your ‘ part well. Especially as you’re a woman. You,can go. Not a dog ~ will touch you.” With his whip he gave a swinging cut to his horse. of bounds it had disappeared in the thicket. * * * The Puffed-Up Chicken. | sacs could never remember how she came out of that valley, i She did not remember whether she met anyone upon the road orf whether she was alone, whether she ran like a scared hare or crawled with the last remnants of her strength. She remembered only one thing, bright and joyful: little grey-tufted birds flew away end sa i In a couple aa H 1] returned again. They twittered as she passed, flew away and bac! again. Perhaps this didn’t really happen then in the valley, but only}, now—the little grey birds with tufts, oN In the wide spaces before the mountains, spreading out in gently | sloping lowlands, she felt that she was alone among these hills and | bare misty distances. The road ran glowing and ash-colored; and all the land seemed imbued with a primitive dread. The slopes crawled _ toward her like a blind intangible emptiness, transforming her into | a grain of invisible dust. it The mountains behind her climbed, terrace upon terrace—preci- | pices, cliffs; green slopes and valleys were slit with black ravines, | shaggy with trees, ’ The ravine was deserted. Among these isolated silent hills, checks, ered with squares of ploughed land and pasturage, with the ashe’ colored road broken, by hills like camel-humps—she became helpless,” lonely, condemned, abandoned to this limitless solitude, The valley . . . the unbearable heavy hand... . Yes, yes, the pine-tree on the far-away ‘mountain top, ou ” * ° * *Polkom, meaning the Political Committee of the Soviet, is one of those composite words which have become so common after the revolution and which are formed by combining the first syllables of two of three words,—Tr. F| gets (10 BE CONTINUED.) 4