The Daily Worker Newspaper, June 14, 1929, Page 6

Central Organ of the Communist Party of the U. S. A. Mobilize Against a New Electrocuti ‘HE tremendous historic textile strike at Gastonia, Nor coming ever more clear. The struggle began as a fight a for elementary economic demands. I ing into a political struggle of jor import the working class and the bourg: It would be superficial to say th between the workers and the police are the These clashes are rather an evidence of the fact goes much deeper. The Gastonia wor attempts of the capitalis Yr duction” program. Thus it has ch being followed by the capitalis struggle into the sharp forms it has Reduced to simple terms, the program had the double aim of stren; its struggle for foreign ma industry better prepar sary for these purpose visie. the open gthenin t was to get cheaper labor calized sections of the working class. It i ‘ that those industries which suffered most from the national crisis of capitalism began to move South namely, the coal industry and the textile indu , these k also important for war purposes since are the ducers of gun-cotton, power, etc. In carrying out its program there can be no doubt but that the capitalist cl ement for pperation with the A. F. “tional Civic Federation of which Vice-president is an agency for j this is not mere speculation is ev leading texti federation. Tayon mills (which can in twenty-four hours be turned into gun-cotton plants for war purposes) is a mem! Samuel Mather, director of United States Steel Corporation, which the largest coal producing corporation the U.S;; i close Matthew t such a purpose. That enced by the fact that the in member. T. E. Crowley, president of the New York Central Railroad, and owner of many coal subsidiaries is another member. Is it accidental that Woll, the “labor leader,” and DuPont, the rayon magnate, are members of the same political bod and that the A. F. of L. through the United Textile Workers Union entered éhe Elizabethton strike and twice betrayed it? The workers fully know of the breaking of the mi union through Lewis’ and Green’s sabotage of the organization of the southern miners and betrayal of the nc rn mine These facts are the explanation for the situ South. Especially the explanation for the fact that the Gastonia strikers, led by the Communist Party and the Na- tional Textile Workers’ Union and against the A. F. of L. are fighting a bitter militant struggle which has not been broken, where the bosses are forced to resort to the power of the strikebreaking government, the frame-up of the strike lead- ers, and attempts at lynching. That the capitalist class realizes that it is the Commun- fist Party which is the backbone of the workers’ struggle is umade evident by the fact that Fred Beal, Communist, who was among the pioneers in organizing the Southern workers, and jwho was many miles away from Ge a when the armed ‘ighting took place, was picked out with twelve others to be tharged with the murder of the bloodthirsty chief of police, ‘Aderholt, who was the victim of his own villai f The favorite weapon of doing away with working class | Yleaders is to use the due process of capitalist law against them. The whole history of the working class of the United States is replete with examples of battles between the work- érs and bosses over the prisoners whom they captured from outefour ranks. The most recent case of Sacco and Vanzetti = as warning and a battle-cry to the American pro- letariat. \ The Communist Party of America is engaged in a strug- pe to free Fred Beal and the other Gastonia prisoners from he clutches of the master class who would electrocute and ,mprison them for having led the strike of the textile slaves. All organizations of the workers, the trade union and relief organizations and especially the International Labor Defense must hurl their forces into the fight. _ Workers of America! We are faced with a new historic struggle. No sacrifice is too great to make a victory possible, Workers of the South! The best leaders in your fight are prisoners of the bourgeoisie! You must organize your energies to help free them! __. Demonstrations for freeing the prisoners, collection of fumds for defense, added relief, these must be the rallying points for the work on behalf of the Southern textile strikers and prisoners. Promoting the Murderers of Communists. The Portes Gil government has now taken the next logi- eal step after the murder of Communists and left wing lead- ers of the workers and peasants. It has rewarded the as- sassins as the best representatives of its own murderous, anti-working class regime. | General Medinaveytia, who ordered the summary execu- ‘ion without even a court martial of the leading Communist and peasant organizer of Durango, Jose Guadelupe Rodriguez, ‘as been cited for “merits” and “special services.” Medin- veytia says Rodriguez was shot down on special orders from lies, former “socialist” president, who was the leader of ‘the recent Portes Gil government resistance to the clerical- r lonary counter-revolution. Medinaveytia says Calles d that Rodriguez might induce the masses to revolt nst both the clerical reaction and Portes Gil government, tool of Wall Street imperialism. Thus the Portes Gil-Calles government in Mexico car- ies out the bloody commands of the American ambassador, ght L. Morrow, partner in the House of Morgan, that htens its grip over the Mexican masses through re- bilitating the Roman Catholic Church, re-establishing the etion everywhere in power, and seeking to crush revolu- y elements with the firing squad, deportation and press sion. _ This is not only the policy of the Wall Street govern- ment but also of the American Federation of Labor, that perates through the Pan-American Federation of Labor for e carrying out of this imperialist policy of oppression nst the toiling masses in all Latin American countries, Greens, the Wolls, the Hillquits and the Thomases ought ‘ uso to be cited, but by the Hoover government for “special { he textile bosses idly develop- e between The cause enged the at in American nd to free cer- ain strategic industries from contact with the more radi- co- ie magnates and coal barons are members of the Coleman DuPont, one of the biggest owners of SREMEMS3ER SACC By BILL DUNNE. 1 except by fear publicity for the new capitalist class rs-on, characterizes | South and i and their hang the press in and around Gastonia. | There is noticeable the old, old tactic ruling class wh: C of the whi s-in for the h has manifested between work- itself in ev ers and the merceharie: from Homestead to Centralia when the dead and woundéd have not all| been in the ranks of the workers. | This tactic is: To make due obeisance to “legal” methods by a few words counselling restraint and to then proceed to stimulate pre- judice and murderous frenzy by painting the workers and their lead- ers as bloodthirsty monsters and “enemies of civilization’ and the| paid gunmen, thugs and police as | innocent lambs. | Typical of this method and of the tenor of the comment of the press of the textile barons is the follow- | ing extract from an editorial in The | wel] and died in their service. Their| “Mills and Military,” appearing in Charlotte News for Monday, June 10: (Charlotte is 21 miles southwest of Gastonia). “It is not unreasonable that the people of Gastonia and good peo- ple everywhere should be aroused to a high pitch of resentment and ill will that such a deed of violence has been committed and such a i ade upon the of- le engaged in their > shot down like so Is.” “Cer y this climaxing out- break on the part of hot-headed strikers, by whosoever may have been the actually guilty parties, must now invoke the best there is in the law, the most unrelenting, | the most uncompromising. It is | no longer possible or reasonable to | assume a petting attitude toward these outsiders who have come | down here to make trouble and | who made it in abundance.” | “When rattlesnakes shake them- | selves, it is time to strike at them | many an. and not try to coax them back | into friendliness.” (Emphasis j mine.) | The effect of. such utterances | upon those elements who are de- | sirous of showing concrete evidence | | of their loyalty to the textile barons, and in the present situation, can be imagined quite easily, | The chief of police of Gastonia was killed and a number of deputies | wounded when they and others, |carrying out the instructions of | superior officers whose sole thought |in life is to make good with the “big monied interests from the North,” linvaded the strikers tent colony | maintained by the Workers Interna- tional Relief. The shooting came as | a climax to weeks of persecution of | the strikers and their families by | Soldiers, police and special deputies sworn in at the request of the Man- ville-Jenckes company officials, | On the evening the shooting oc- curred new brutalities had been visited upon the strikers. The Man- ville-Jenckes Company was ready to do anything and everything to pre- vent the workers in the Loray mill, who were ready to walk out, from joining and strengthening the ranks | of the strikers. Class Struggle. Fatal shootings are too common | in this part of the country to arouse much interest. Even police chiefs \and sheriffs have been killed with- | out arousing great public outcry and | instant vengeance—unless the shoot- | ing was done by a Negro, The cla: O AND VANZETTI! DAYILY WORKER, NEW YORK, FRIDAY, JIJNE 14, 1929 “When Rattlesnakes Shake” The Vile Southern Boss Press Insane with Rage at the Strikers’ Heroism struggle, and the class forces, which appear in this conflict in sharpest | Chartist revolts symbolized the rise | of a whole series of attacks on their opposition, account for the furious|of the proletariat, the southern | headquarters, their persons and their reprisals and the demand for eom-| ruling class, nurtured on the semi-|wives and children, attack: plete suppression of the strike and|feudal traditions of the old slave | by the hired lackeys of the textile the National Textile Workers Union| days, fights cruelly and stubbornly | barons in the most cold-blooded and of capital | its officers and organizers who are| against the new recruits in the| deliberate manner the “outsiders,” The underpaid and half-starved slaves of the textile industry—the pride and glory of the new capitalist advertisements of the volted—their patience has been that of oxen but, tired, beaten and bleeding, they fought with arms in their hands. It is not for a dead chief of police that the mill-owners and their hire- lings mourn—altho he served them tears are not hot with sorrow but with anger—anger against workers who dared to defy the mandates of their masters. The mourning is for a period of power that is passing. For it is only in the formal sense that the issue here is the death of a police officer popular with the cham- ber of commerce crowd and the wounding of- other exponents of blackjack and six-shooter “law ‘norder”—the law and order of the textile barons and their government, Fear Workers Revolt. The real cause of the anger of the white-collared mob is that they sense in the battle in the tent colony the rising consciousness and might of workers they have until now been able to exploit and subdue at will. The ruling class of Gastonia quite correctly considers itself in the front line of the class struggle. The word has gone out to crush mercilessly those workers and their leaders who challenged the rulers. The mill- owners and the merchant class think criminal charges and convictions whi-h lead to the gallows and prison cells can stop the drive for organi- zation of the southern textile and rayon mills, Arch-Exploiters Henry Ford, exploiter of tens of thousands of low-paid auto- mobile workers, congratilates Matthew Sloan, new president of the National Electric Light Acsce’e! ‘en open shop league, «! a cor workers, | ke. patience exhausted, | Plax | Like the English rulers when the |ranks of the American proletariat | -—the workers in southern industry. | In the hymns of hate against the | workers and “outsiders,” in the de- | class south of the Smith and Wesson| nunciations of the Communists, in| shaft at the bosses of southern in- line: the “poor white trash,” “the|the paens of praise to the textile | dustry, -has its own ax to grind. cheapest labor in the world” (see the| barons and their loyal retainers, | Catholicism does not exactly flourish southern | there is audible, nevertheless, a note | in the south—it is too exotic for the {chambers of commerce) have re-| of fear. | In the same issue of the Charlotte | News from which we quote there ap-| pears another editorial of a de- fensive character—there is the note} of fear in the would-be defiant sen- | tences. The editorial referred to is| | written in reply to one entitled “America,”—an organ of the roman catholic church published in New | York City. This article character-4 izes labor conditions in “Tennessee, |the Carolinas and other states” as| “scandalous.” $ On Defensive. The Charlotte News leaps to the defense of the maligned textile} barons and other capitalists. It says: | “If the word of the Communist leaders is to be taken about the| matter, of course, it would be| natural for the long-distance philos- | |phers to think that we are in a |terrible state down here, that we |have no conscience about this in-} | dustrial status, that our mill owners | are bloated and wicked barons, that | our society is shot through with so- cial and industrial iniquities, for the relief of which the people have no desire, in the first place, or should they be of such a notion, have no way to combat the entrenchments of capital.” “Well, all of that is bosh and worse. Labor conditions in the Carolinas are not scandalous; the mill owners are not wealthy male- factors ... neither does our’ so- ciety tolerate conditions of injustice the clect apparatus bosses’ By Fred Ellis and inequality to become general | within our ranks.” All of this, mind you, in a paper which chronicles joyously on_ its front page the fact that 65 workers are in jail charged with murder and attempted murder for resisting one | made as part of a plan to break the strike of workers in re- volt against starvation wages and in- | human working conditions. The catholic church, in aiming a ICEMEN Translated by A. S.' Arthur and_C. Ashleigh All Rights Reserved—International Publishers, N. Y. By FEODOR GLADKOV 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 to n disorganized, He wins over the masses to the task of Gleb discovers a great change in his wife, Dasha, reconstruction, whom he has not scen for three years. She is no longer the con ventional wife, dependent on him, but has become a woman with @ life of her own, a leader among the Communist women of the town. vith Badin, chairman of the District Executive. of the Soviet, on an important mission to a place some distance from the pute between and Saltanov, two Sovict offic g the arrest of the to the crowd of Coscacks and peas- Dasha gocs town, where he settles a disciplinary di Borchi latter, Badin explains ants that gathers about their cart. ca ee Children of the Devil! Listen to what the Chairman of ve has to y to you! What’s all this row about, we en’t any vodka. If we had we'd beat the drums.” He grinned broadly. And this of Bore went like a wave over the crowd and stopped the uproar. Borchi was a Cossack of the same village, one of their own. In the front row you could see white teeth tening over bear “Citizens, Cos SOG ENCE, E wful acts the chief of the District Militia has been a: Harness your horses and go back home with your goods. You will be excused the supplementary requisition of grain which the Government had levied in order to aid the Red Army— to help your own sons who are fighting the nobles and the generals, I tell you this straight: our anxiety is not about the war now. We don’t want blood flowing in our fields. Our main anxiety is about people’s economy and reconstruction. But it’s not our fault, it is our misfortune, if the nobles and generals won’t leave us a moment’s peace, We're not worrying about blood, but about the land. We don’t want soldiers, but workers in the fie! We want peaceful work and plenty of cattle. The grain requisition is over; you won’t hear it any more; but we want to see the granaries full and all your fields ploughed. We want crop-rotation. . . . Manufactured goods for the hamlets and villages.” Badin spoke about taxation, the co-operative movement, the de- mobilization of the Red Army, iron, manufactured goods and groceries. And also of Comrade Lenin who had dedicated his life to the peasants and workers, * 'HE crowd shuffled on its feet, snorting and sniffing, forming a dense herd at the feet of the two Chairmen. Badin stopped short, raised his hand, desired to say something further, but a staccato clamor arose from the crowd where the peasants and women mingled in confusion. In groups or singly, they beckoned with their hands and with joyous faces climbed upon the wagons. As soon as they became quieter and the sweaty faces were farther away and the cart-wheels creaking, Borchi showed his white teeth, laughing. “Now, Comrade Badin, I beg you to release Comrade Saltanov from arrest. We were both a bit beyond ourselves, We shall be wiser in future,” Badin became cold and distant. “Comrade Borchi, all quarrels and mistakes by responsible work- ers must be made to serve as a lesson not only to themselves but to all other Comrades. What I said will be done. Get a reliable Com- rade to act as a substitute for you while you’re away. Tomorrow you will go with me to the town.” Near to them a drunken Cossack swayed on bandy legs. He was a very drunken Cossack with a thin beard and bloodshot moist eyes; he was waving his hat and shouting in an exhausted hoarse voice: “Puffed-up chicken, Naked and bare-foot, Went for a walk on the square. He was caught! She natives and they prefer the gyra- tions of the evangelical sky pilots | to the dogmas of the pope. The) southern clergy is subservient | enough to please the big bosses and | they are not ready to switch dope peddlers. The press, therefore, is| not averse to trying to convince the faithful that both Communism and catholicism are enemies of those bounteous benefactors—the textile barons. | Moscow and Rome against the peace and prosperity of the Sunny Southland! Only a southern editor driven to desperation could conceive of such a combination. The mill owners are in rather a bad way| when they have to depend upon the | support of such weakly vicious ele- | ments. A Wave of Strikes. significance of the wave of | s in the textile and rayon mills must be understood. It is no spor- adie outburst. It is the method by which the southern workers are com- ing into open struggle for organi- zation, for better wages and work- ing conditions, for more power—it is a struggle against the speed-up—- against capitalist rationalization. It is a revolt of workers the bosses have hitherto looked upon as for- ever docile. They are native work- ers. The bosses and their agents cannot blame the immigrants and their “European ideas.” Fury and fear—this is the dom- inant note in the capitalist press of the southern textile districts follow- ing the Gastonia battle. Gastonia marks an advance by the battalions of the working class—an advance from which they will nov retreat in spite of the fury and frame up which will undoubtedly take heavy toll from the ranks of the National Textile Workers Union. The Communist members will be picked out for the most intense per- secution. The main task now is'to build the strongest possible defense —to make the Gastonia frame-up an issue in the entire labor movement and at the same time to build the union solidly in every mill town in the South—and North. It is to prevent this that the tex- tile barons and their hirelings are going to such desperate lengths. They are trying to close the breach in the fortified front of the textile industry, which the workers made in Gastonia, with the bodies of the militant union men and women they now hold in half-a-dozen different jails. This they must not be allowed to do. Speaking of rattlesnakes, since the press of the textile barons has raised the question, it will do no harm to remind them that the revo- lutionary flag of the ancestors of Ci ing coploitore of American these mill workers carried the pic- ture of a coiled rattlesnake with the mottos “Don’t Tread on Mel” Naaman inne oh andi panne ot He was pinched!” * * | Wee stopped in front of the drunken man and, without moving an eyelid, looked fixedly at him with the eyes of a warrior in the Devil’s Hundred. 4 The little peasant began talking incomprehensible nonsense, stag- gered and fell to the ground. Once or twice he clutched in the air with his black swollen fingers and began to babble, terror-stricken. “Well, well, well, Ataman—Executive. You are our father... . We're just corpses ... sons of bitches ... well, dear, dear, dear!” And he laid himself down, resigned to the worst. Dasha spent the day and evening with the women of the Cossack town. Badin was with her too. They both spoke with the women. There were many of them there on this day of rejoicing. And Dasha performed her task successfully. Work among the women of a Cos- sack town is the devil of a job! Dasha had never seen Badin as he was that evening. Whenever she met his gaze the golden flowers by the roadside shone in her memory. In those eyes Dasha saw silent ecstasy and an unquenchable fire of love for herself. He did not leave her for a minute all the evening, tender and shrewd, And in the guest room of the Executive Committee, Dasha (how it came about she never knew) spent the night with him in one bed, and for the first time during the past years his stormy blood brought to her in the night hours the unforgettable passion of a woman. * * * Chapter IX. THE ROPEWAY. 1. THE MASSES. c was not the support of individuals that Gleb felt, but rather the combined power of the masses about him. Bathed in perspiration he worked like a bull, turning over with a shovel the chalk and clay which was to become cement. This brute strength of his carne not through his intelligence but from the pro- fundities of his strong body; it did not explode within him but flowed upon him in great waves through the thunder of the earth, across the stones and rails, from this enormous ant-like crowd who with shouting and moaning were rising from the depths with spades and hammers, emerged from smoke-stacks and the factory buildings, from the breaches quarried in the rock, from the smoky depths up towards the obelisks supporting the power-cables, White, woolly balls of cloud were rolling in the blue sky; and on the green slopes of the mountains the first spring flowers sparkled in swarms. In an opal mist, the bushes blazed among the stones and in the fissures. Here, to the right and left, are the huge mountains; over there, the sea, blue as the sky, rimless, with a horizon higher than the mountains. Between the sea and the mountains the air vi- brated from the glaring of the sun. But all this was unimportant. What was important was this: the rushing tide of toil of the ant-like masses, There they were before him; it was impossible to count or touch them separately or distinguish individual faces. This countless crowd were living flowers. Red scarves were dance ing; these were the women like mountain poppies. Blue, white and brown shirts and jackets played in the light, There it was: that of which Gleb had been thinking only a short time ago; that which he had wanted to create in an agony of labor. * * * ir 'NGINEER KLEIST, leader of the technologists, long and gaunt, leaning on a thick stick, was directing the work of the masses, Sedate officials and technicians, and alert foremen were constantly near him, almost dropping with fatigue and requiring instructions. Engineer Kleist, grave and stooping, would calmly and coldly throw them his quiet orders. Engineer Kleist was a devoted technician of the Soviet Republic. : + . The workman Gleb Chumalov could now become a friend of Engineer Kleist. The engineer stopped near Gleb, preoccupied, and several times attentively surveyed the work on the mountains which was now in full swing, and Gleb noticed in his eyes flashes of pleasure and excitement, (TO BE CONTINUED.) * a ri ilk le aa co ee oy