The Daily Worker Newspaper, June 19, 1929, Page 6

Page Six © cata DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 1929 Daily 3a Worker Central Organ of the Communist Party of the U.S. A. Published by the Comprodaily Publishing Sunday, at 26-28 Union Square, New Telephone Stuyvesant 169: Cab SUBSCRIPTION RAT By Mali (in New York only): $2.00 a year $4.50 six months By Mail (outside of New York): $6.00 2 year $3.50 six months New York, N. Y. $2.00 three months Qs: Co., Inc,. Daily, except York City, N, Y. *DAIWORK.” $2.50 three months A@érese and mail all checks to the Daily Worker, 26-28 Union Square. | Middle Class Liberals and Socialists Join the Gastonia Frame-Up. HEN the burocratic government machinery does not function fast enough against the toilers, the bosses always call upon the watchdogs of capitalism, the lynch squads. Many of the best of the working class have been killed in this way including Wesley Everest, Frank Little, and:a host of other uncompromising fighters against the capitalist class have thus met physical death. The wealth accumulated by the rich of the South was ground from the blood and toil of the black race. The strug- gles of the Negro masses for better living conditions was therefore the greatest menace to the boss cl Every as- sertion of the Negroes for the right to better life, no matter how remote it may have seemed from economic questions, was met with brutal attacks from the upper cl whites who frequently succeeded in fooling many white workers into fol- lowing them. In the South for these reasons the lynch weapon “vas mainly directed against Negroes. With the beginning of the efficiency production (ra- tionalization) program, especially that feature of it which resulted in the process of industrialization in the South, large masses of poor white country and village folk were drawn into the factories. The struggle of these workers, many Negroes among them, now begins to menace the growing profits of the bosses. The tradition of lynch law is a strong one; the bosses now turn it against all workers, black and white. In the Gastonia, and even in the Elizabethton strikes lynch mobs ran loose. In Elizabethton they found a portly prosperous looking group of A. F. L. representatives, whose mission the gangsters did not understand at first. An under- standing was reached and the lynch mob was called off. Woll and DuPont, the “labor leader” and the rayon magnate got together in the Wall Street financed Civic Federation, of which they are both active members, and the Elizabethton workers found themselves betrayed. In Gastonia the lynch mob found a group of what even the middle class liberals had to admit were “fearless, ener- getic and determined men who were loyal to their tasks”. Such a group of organizers led by the Communist Party and the militant National Textile Workers’ Union the bosses con- cluded could not be expected to betray the workers and so had to be lynched. -*.A whole series of such attempts were made. Pershing, Beal and others had dynamite thrown at them. Another day only the miraculous appearance of a union automobile saved Pershing from the hands of a mob. Food supplies for relief were destroyed. The union and relief headquarters were attacked with rifles, bayonets and axes. Women and children as well as men were mercilessly beaten up by depu- ties while on picket duty. And finally a group of bloodthirsty thugs, headed by Aderholt, tried to wipe out, with the same methods .as those previously used, the tent colony set up by the workers after the textile barons had evicted them. It was in defense of this colony that the workers made a stand. Better than to have even these frail homes destroyed, j better than to have their meager food supply taken away, k better than to be shot down in meek submission, these work- ers, (all honor to them!) defended themselves militantly, as every worker should, and prevented the attempted massacre. It is well known that the lynch mobs in the south are largely recruited from the middle class. If the middle class of the north do not physically participate in the lynchings they certainly encourage their southern brothers in their activities. This encouragement is given not only by the most reactionary of the northern middle class but even by the so- called liberals and socialists. The Nation of June 19, organ of the middle class liberals and socialists, carries a sharp criticism of the Communists because they tried to house the workers after the company evicted them. The Nation believes that it would have been better had the Communists let the workers out on the streets so as not to offend the mill owners. They say: Certainly the Communists were foolhardy in attempting to maintain a colony of strikers at a white heat of enthusiasm, weeks after the strike had been lost when there was scarcely any legal outlet for the enthusiasm... . ” With the above quotation the Nation joins the lynch mobs of the south who are crying that tHe strikers are fight- ing “unlawfully” and must be taught a lesson. The Nation also joins the lynch crowd when it tries to paint the thug, Aderholt, as an angel of peace who was a victim of the strikers. The fact that Aderholt met his inglorious end on the grounds of the tent colony must be explained in order to make out him an: angel, so the Nation prints the obvious fairy tale it he came with his armed deputies on “hearing reports of a fight in the colony between two strikers.” The Gastonia strikers can only laugh bitterly at this new frame-up theory. if As if to cover their own infamy the Nation gloats over falsehood that the “feeling of the community” is “against trike leaders.” If the community consists of the local ess and the bar association than this is true. But community consists of the mass of toilers then this written only to justify and encourage the legal murder lings now taking place. fhe Nation concludes that “the strikers in both Gastonia established authority.”” Why “dangerous?”, we must “A very necessary lesson to the workers, we believe. gerous” only to the: capitalist system with its open up by the big bourgeoisie and its hidden support to ip by the little bourgeoisie. ey try to throw fear into the Communists and praise e local police gangsters, when they say, “only the iveness of the local officers has saved the Communist s of the strike from being lynched.” We have already i y’s issue printed the facts as to how Fred Beal with his life. These expose the lies of the Nation d not be reprinted here. Throughout the strike it alertness of the workers’ guard which saved the as well as strikers from lynching. The workers of e country must learn the lesson from this in their rs | “AMITY” CELEBRATIONS TO HIDE WAR PREPARATIONS. | ‘Sx By Jacob Burck By BILL DUNNE. 1 GASTONIA, June 13 (By Mail).| —A stranger coming into this city |gets the impression that it is in a state of siege, that any moment, So the business men believe, a hos- | The Electric Chair in the Background for the Strikers and Their Leaders in Carolina Jail | The Stage Setting in Gastonia ling’.” But the second 12 point cap line is good. It says: !Was Known Here as George nea “Denounces | Bosses. What worker will object to this? | Humorous as some aspects of the tile army may descend upon this community. The number of armed men at the main street intersections is amaz- ing. Others walk up and down the main streets apparently without anything in particular to do except |to gather in groups and eye any | Stranger who comes in by bus or jtrain, Some are in uniform, some 2 jin ordinary civilian dress but ali|state. The editorials which are suf- |pack a gun on their hip. ficiently bloodthirsty for it to quote | The city itself is quiet as a grave- \with unreserved approval come only |yard. There is no excitement—on from such papers as the Stanly |the surface. While I sat on the |NewSs-Herald—published in a town | jof three or four thousand popula- \tion. The Gastonia editor makes a tremendous effort to fit an editorial from the Statesville Daily into the |Manville-Jenckes mosaic but actu- ally this editorial does nothing more than withhold judgr nt, altho it is published in an industrial city of pany and its loyal lackeys whom he has christened, with more fulsome- ness than originality, “the forces of jright and righteousness.” Strange it is to say but the truth must be told and it is an actual fact that the Gastonia Gazette is getting very poor support from the press of this courthouse steps a young fine look- ling special deputy, who said he had |worked in the mills for six years, complained to me ofthe lack of ex- citement. We read the latest issue of the Gastonia Gazette together. When we came to the names of the strikers who have been feleased ng : the young deputy expressed great |*°me’ $5,000 population. pleasure. “I know most all the boys| With the Raleigh News and Ob- in jail,” he said. “I got lots of |server and the Greensboro News the friends among them. I hope they |Gastonia Gazette is in open combat. get out all right.” He asked if the|For the Baltimore Sun it has re- North was “torn up with strikes” Served the lower depths of the bap- like the South was. I told him it|tist hell. The consequences are that was just about the same. He con-|by the time it gets around to the fided to me that he wanted to go Communists its invectives are ex- north and get work as a carpenter, hausted and its arguments about as I spoke to him about union wages convineing as is an advertisement of and one-company towns, the cost of |an astrologist to Professor Hinstein, living, ete. He agreed and said:| The editor attempts to make up \“There ain’t nothing for the young |for this deficiency by publishing, people to do here lessen they go to| word for word, what he considers jwork in the mills.” Wages used to|are damning extracts from the Daily |be higher in the mills, he said, but! —.2— port for the Manville-Jenckes com-| Worker. At the risk of cutting down may be, important as is the con- ravings of* the Gastonia Gazette} the publicity for the International |fusion created among the Southern Labor Defense, the National Textile ruling class by the growing indus- Workers Union and the Workers trialization and the increasing will \International Relief in and around of the industrial workers for strug: | Gastonia, we must say here that the |gle against low wages, long hours, | jmost important parts of the state-|the speed-up and for organization | ments by these organizations which, \of a militant character, the fight of | jowing to the suppression of work- |the mill owners, their press and their | ers’ meetings in Gastonia and the/goyernment against the National extreme difficulty of distributing |Textile Workers. Union is unrelent- leaflets and the Daily Worker be- jing, | cause of police repressions, would! The mill barons, with the Man- have reached only a srfall percent-| ville-Jenckes Company taking the | age of the mill workers, have been Jead, are determined to send Fred | given a circulation equal to that of |Beal and others to the electric chair | the Gastonia Gazette itself. There|and railroad dozens of workers to| is almost a full column of first class /prison for long terms. | union, defense and.relief propaganda, They are trying to exterminate | published on the editorial page of the N. T. W. They fear this fight- today’s Gastonia Gazette. ling union and will stop at nothing| Gazette Gives Daily a Page. to destroy its leadership, Earlier in the week the Gazette $250,000 for Frame-up. | Bere us almost a full ‘page. One! it is common talk here. that the article running about three columns |y7,nville-Jenckes Company will have [wes Ze-published from the Daily lin the neighborhood of $250,000 con- |, orker and even its original head-|tributed by the textile interests to ing, “Gastonia Strikers _Prepare oa spend in trying to electrocute the Fight Lynchings,” was included. {15° tnion members and, ey mothe® Page of the same is-) charged with murder and ti Sue, cune ie) tne wazetie reprinec ithe 58 chcarged with assault with a story by me running one and @/ intent to kill. I believe that this is jquarter columns. The eae Bokoie dy too low an estimate if one judges }plaint that can be made against the lng the: number of lawyers the. com- |manner in which this story was : A |handled. in that the copy reader|Pa"y has already retained to aid : i at ithe prosecution. They number 14 to made a slight error by saying in the| head: “Story by Bill Dunne ‘Who date, some of them the best North Carolina affords, and negotiations they have been getting smaller for the last three years. “There don’t seem to be no help for it,” he con- jcluded. Read Daily Worker. | While we were talking a Daily| | Worker was passed around among| a group on the upper step. I could \not see the article they were inter- | lested in but from one it evoked \the following comment: “The fellow |that printed that ought to be hung jup and ridden through the town on ja truck.” With the fervent hope that ithe article was signed by some one |who was not sitting on the court- |house steps, I got out my handker- jchief and wiped from my forehead jsome beads of sweat for which the heat of a North Carolina summer leculd not be held solely responsible. | | Such remarks as that quoted} above, if made to larger gatherings, | jundoubtedly serve to convince the |Manville-Jenckes officials that the | editor of the Gastonia Gazette is} earning his money. Today the whole | ‘editorial page of this mill owners’ 'sheet—barring the advertisements— German Imperial Militarists Lead Army are going on with others. Anyone who knows lawyers will realize at once that a quarter of a million dollars will be too small a |sum unless they kill one another in |the scramble for it. This trémendous array of legal talent, the Gastonia Gazette’s daily demands for workers’ gore and plenty of it, the army of police and ‘special deputies, the demonstrations staged at the city hall by mill of- ficials, superintendents, bosses an ‘company tools of various. ratings— ‘all of this is public expression of malevolent. determination to create an atmosphere in which no one will |be bold enough to challenge the pro- ‘gram of the textile barons. But the mill workers are not be- ing deceived. When their turn to ispeak comes again—and it is com- ing very soon—their sentiment will be known by words and deeds. | More spontaneous requests for ap- plication cards of the N. T, W. are ‘being made than at any time since lits organizers came into this Man- 'ville-Jenckes barony. This, and the , ever-growing national movement for | were concealed. Polia was lying on her stomach, shooting also. lis devoted to the struggle against | ‘the “reds.” Every editorial is in-| tended to create prejudice and in-| cite hatred of the arrested strikers | and organizers. | Insufficient Bloodthirstiness. | The editor hunts far and wide for ‘appropriate quotations from other |papers—naturally, of course, he hun- The present republic of Germany is nothing but a government of the big industrial magnates of Germany, altho the social democrats serve the bosses in pretending as a cloak for imperial and monarchial activities. Proof that the German republic is a bosses’ government and that the social democrats work hand in hand with the old generals of the kaiser is given in the above photo, showing General Mackensen, a bitter foe of the workers, and an old aristocrat, review-* ing the German troops. The social democrats in their govern- mental capacities entrust the army to the same generals who served |the defense of the 71 workers, is jsufficient answer to the offensive of the textile barons for the short |time that has elapsed since the his- toric battle in the W. I. R. tent colony. In this great movement the Com- munists are playing a leading role. This is the guarantee of its final \gers for signs of sympathy and sup- the kaiser in si ightering workers in the imperialist world war. \victory. | i | ideas for making a case against the strikers. We have as | additional evidence a statement issued by the American Civil Liberties Union, which “deplores the tragedy .. . through the use of arms by the strikers against the police.” Nothing to them that it was the police who attacked the tent | colony seriously wounding strike organizer Joe Harrison and others before they were stopped and not the other way as 4 | they try to imply. The balance of this statement is along the same line as the Nation editorial. The workers of America will draw the lessons from the events and the reaction of various groups in the population to the events. If the workers ever harbored any illusions as to the “friendliness” of the middle class liberals and socialists to their struggles the Gastonia frame-up is an eye-opener. By FEODOR CEMIEN GLADKOV Translated by A. S. Arthur and C. Ashleigh All Rights Reserved—International Publishers, N. Y. Gleb ‘Chumalov, Red Army Commissar, returns to his town on the Black Sea ajtcy the Civil Wars to find the great cement works, where he had formerly worked as a mechanic, in ruins and the life 0, the town disorganized. He discovers a great change in hie 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 women of the town together with Polia Mekhova, secretary of the Women’s Section of the Com- munist Party, Gleb wins over the leading Party workers to the task of re- constructing the factory and work is started. It is, however, inter- rupted by a surprise attack by Cossack bandits from the moun- tains. Gleb takes command at once and after sharp fighting, dur- ing which Gleb vanquishes a Cossack in a bitter hand-to-hand fight, the bandits are repulsed. hey - EN were running from the coppice in all directions, stumbling, fir- ing, falling and rolling over. The tumult of shots, smoke, fire and yelling voices came from just beyond the summit where the Red soldiers The rifle kicked her shoulder painfully, but in wild excitement she was snapping the breech, aiming and firing among the figures in the dis- | tance who were running and jumping here and there like hares. She was dimly conscious of Gleb running past her up the slope | and of the dull echoes of his shouted commands from the other side of the summit, * * * 3 THE FIRST TRUCK. 1 wheels in the power-house were humming; their metal spokes swung round, beating like black wings at various slopes and angles. Like cobweb threads, the steel cables wound and unwound themselves on the rims of the fat coils. The electricians, laborers and young Communists, headed by the bronzed Lukhava and Engineer Kleist, were looking in silent admiration at the electric flight of the wheels, and listening to the resurrected music of the machinery. An avalanche of people came running down the valley, a mile deep, over the cement and slate—gnawed by the wind and rain— among the boulders and through the gullies. The mass was boiling, heaving, roaring with its thousands of voices, It seemed to sway in muscular convulsions, spasmodically, like the convulsions of the body of a gigantic centipede. From the highest point of the cable-line down to the bottom, where | lay pyramids of stones, the human cataract was divided in two parts, between which four taut cables stretched over a track of cinders, hum- ming strange tunes. And, cleaving these two human torrents, far down, was moving a square tortoise, clinging to the cables by pulleys which gave out a flute-like whistling. “Hurra-a-a-ah! Hurra-a-a-ah!” You would not have thought that this was the roar of a crowds but rather the roaring of a storm in the funnel-like crater of a high mountain, eerie (Eee detachment of armed workers was now descending from the summit of the mountain in ragged formation. The Red soldiers had resumed their posts up there, and were keeping watch on high like vigilant birds. Gleb and Mekhova were leading the armed workers. Behind them the body of a comrade was being carried on rifles, The workers’ detachment came down to the machines and stacked their rifles. Their faces bore the trace of recent emotion, and were covered with dust and sweat. They laid down the body of their dead comrade—his head was a bloodied mass—on the concrete at the feet of the crowd. Pressing against each other, crying discordantly, the crowd rushed up to the detachment, surrounding it closely. Laughing and yelling, they jostled the workmen and seizing Gleb, swallowed him up in their midst. Then, with arms and legs flying, he was flung into the air like a dummy, falling back into the thick mass. Again seized, amid laughter and uproar, they tossed him again above their heads; and again . . . and then again. Another crowd, silent and stern, faces drawn with grief, was gath- ered round the corpse. It was impossible to trace in this blood-clotted head the features of Mitka, the concertina-player, who by force had grasped a rifle and thrust himself into the Communist detachment. Amidst the tumult of the crowd, the girls of the Young Com- munist League were bandaging the wounded, “You’ve been sweating, Comrades! You do look pretty! Well, we've let them have it! They’ve dug their own graves, not ours!” “Ho, ho, workers! We’ll smash them to Hell, the bastards!” A voice was choking with joy: . “Yl crush them all! Bring up a thousand more generals—we'll send them to the right-about! Oh, my little brothers, with breeches or without—! Let’s sing the ‘International’! We got them then! The women, the dear little mothers—how I love the Women’s Section! Bring the whole Women’s Section here so I may embrace them all!” * * * Woke people were approaching, cheering. And again Gleb was en- thusiastically tossed up in the air.. Then they crowded round the corpse, murmuring with grief. Mekhova was elbowing her way through the crowd, shouting all the time: “Comrades! Comrades!” Her face was all eyes. Engineer Kleist approached Gleb, his face working nervously; with his usual gravity he @ilently pressed his hand. ‘ And Dasha, in passing Gleb, laid her hand on his shoulder and looked at him with wet eyes in which was a new and wondering joy. “Gleb!” “Little Dasha!” But she went on and was lost in the torrent of the crowd. And now, the most important thing of all—the masses. The thun: der of toil. The winged flight of the wheels. That night the eyes of the factory opened, like electric moons; and the dead opaque bulbs in the workmen’s dwellings suddenly re-lit their twined threads. The factory! It trembled already; already its hidden power was resound- ing in its underground depths and its windows looked out yearningly, like a human. The masses had awakened the mountain which had died in wilderness and mildew. The ropeway was crying out with its iron voice, Black clouds will eddy from the smoke-stacks’ mouths, and the tortoises of the air will fly down to the docks and back to their heights, devouring the chalk in the quarries. The goats . . . the pipe- lighters . . . the mouse-like squeaking of the little hand-tools . . - this will be finished. Lukhava stood near the machines, waving his arms and crying out to some people below. There was an iron clanging somewhere; the wheels stirred and then stopped again, . * . Bete ran down the steps t6 the engines. A large flat truck, cov- ered with grey dust and smelling of decay, stood on a level with the platform. He ran up, and with the habit of military command, shouted to the crowd: “Place our Comrade’s body in the truck. He shall be carried down with honor. Let everybody see—all who are here—let them see it right to the end.” Many hands raised the body. Silently and with care they carried it down the steps and put it on the truck. “Comrades—! My lads! His pick! And his rifle! Lay them by him, Comrades!” Gleb stood out on the abutments, between the blue obelisks, and raised his arms in a great gesture. “Let her down now! All together! Ready!” And to the noise of the wheels, the truck went down the slope, riding like a bird, easily and airily. Again Gleb raised his arms on high. “Comrades, listen! A sacrifice to labor. . . . With our united strength. .”. . No tears or sobs! The victory of our hands... the factory. We have won. ... We shall make ourselves heard with fire and machinery, The great work of building up the Workers’ Republic. « «+ Ourselves, with our brains and bodies... . The blood and suffering of the struggle—These are our weapons for winning the whole world. Let it go now, Brothers!” And he began to sing, waving his arms. Then the crowd took it up, ever louder. The mountains seemed to be torn by the clamour; rhe me eddied as in a storm. The earth trembled as with an earth- quake, And the truck floated and swayed in the air like a little bird amidst the tempest and shattering thunder. mz, {10 BE CONTINUED.) ; t ¢ i c §