The Daily Worker Newspaper, June 24, 1929, Page 1

THE DAILY WORKER FIGHTS For a Workers-Farmers Government To Organize the Unorganized ‘Against Imperialist War For the 40-Hour Week Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office at New York, N. Y. under the act of March 3, 1879. ker ED FINAL CITY ITION Published daily except Sunday by The Comprodaily Publishing "SUBSCRIPTION RATES: In New York, by mail, $8.00 per year. Outside New York, by mail, $6.00 per year. j Vol. VI, No. 92. LYNCH PERIL STILL THREATENS GA Company, Inc., 26-28 Union Square, New York City, N. ¥. NEW YORK, MONDAY, JUNE 24, 1929 IN FURRIERS GENERAL STRIKE TODAY; * LABOR CONFERENCE PLEDGES SUPPORT Ben Gold Announces That Committees Will Today Visit the Homes of Workers Who Have Not Yet Joined the Strike ‘Socialist’? Chiefs of Cloak Company Union Begin to Cajole Workers for | Cash Even Before Fake Strike is Called LABOR PROMISES AID TO STRIKE Hear of Suffering of Fur Workers A giant mass picketing demonstration is expected to take place this morning at 7.30 in connection with the general strike of the furriers which be-| § gan last Wednesday. | Not only furriers are called to| the picket line, but also all mem- bers of the Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union, which is leading the furriers’ struggle, and all left wing and progressive workers who want the furriers to win their strike | for union conditions. Against the furriers are aligned the bosses and all the dark forces of teaction: the scab “Joint Coun- cil”, the labor traitors of the A. F. of L., the brutal Tammany police, the boss-serving courts, the “social- ists”, and the gangs of the under- world. It is against these forces that the | Industrial Union is calling for this mighty demonstration, to show clear- ly and -unquestionably. the temper | of the fur workers and of the New York left wing. A large number of delegates repre- senting over 100 left wing and pro- gressive labor organizations attended a conference Saturday at Irving Plaza, 15th Street and Irving Pl.,| and decided upon specific measures | for strengthening the general strike of the furriers which began last}! Wednesday morning. Ben Gold, secretary-treasurer of | the Needle Trades Workers Indus- Death Avenue The open tracks on ileventh Ave. still make that street, in a working- class neighborhood, Death Avenue for the workers’ children, who lack- ing parks, can play only in these dangerous streets on which the New York Central Railroad runs trains. DEMONSTRATION MILL. FRAME-UP Union Sa. Tomorrow; WIR Meets Thursday Memories of the huge Sacco-Van- zetti demonstrations will quicken to life in Union Square tomorrow at 5 p. m. when thousands of New York workers will gather in a demonstration to protest against an- other attempt on the part of the capitalist courts to send militant workers to the electric chair on framed charges. This time the AGAINST GASTON: trial Union and chairman of the) frame-up is on a larger scale, with | General Strike Committee, reported on the progress of the strike and | pointed out the necessity of broaden- ing and extending th2 strike in the next few days. At the same time Gold announced 14 textile strikers and organizers in Gastonia, members of the National Textile Workers Union, facing mur- der charges and eight charged with assault with intent to kill. Called by the New York District | autocratic power in the hands of the| ty and the world. CLOAK WORKERS WILL HAVE SAY Clique Issues Fake “Referendum” Results Why the fake stoppage by the I. L. G. W.? 1. So that the right wing of- ficialdom of the International La- dies’ Garment Workers’ Union, which is virtually the company union of the cloak manufacturers, can collect several hundred thousand dollars for distribution among their chiefs, their “boys”, the business agents, and among their strong-arm guerillas. This they hope to accom- plish by forcing the workers who hate the I. IL, G. W., to pay “back dugs” and various assessments. Al- ready the fakers are talking about @ $250,000 fund. 2. Because the company union wants to force more cloakmakers into their outfit. 3. Because the manufacturers want the “strike,” not only in order to build up their company union, (Continued on Page Three) HOOVER'S GROUP START PUBLICITY ATTACK ON LABOR ‘Ohio Gang’ Man, KKK Senator Sponsor It WASHINGTON, June 23.—Hcov- er’s gang yesterday developed a sec-| ond main offensive against workers, N. Y. COMMUNIST ELECTION GALL OPENS CAMPAIGN Convention Is July 14, Points to Intensified Struggles by Labor Fight for Organization Oppose War; For Worker Government The New York District of the ; Communist Party of America ycs- |terday announced the opening of its city election campaign, with an elec- | tion call to the workers of New | York, It sets July 14 as the date for a great convention to which all units |in New York are to send delegates. |All unions, factory and shop com- |mittees and left wing groups in unions or other workers’ organiza- tions are invited to send fraternal |delegates, The city convention of |the Communist Party will adopt a platform and nominate Party can- |didates for city office. | The election call is signed “with |revolutionary greetings” by the/| Communist Party of America, New York District, W. W. Weinstone, dis- trict organizer. It reads as follows: | | “The municipal election campaign | | to take place this year finds tens of | |thousands of workers in New York \City engaged in bitter struggle | against the capitalist class. Strikes jare on the increase. The intensity |of the struggles is sharpening. The | |capitalist state, with its police bru- |tality against strikers, with its in- |junctions against pickets and its breaking: up of meetings of work- jers, has demonstrated time and ‘again it is the organized force of | |the bosses against the workers. | “During the past year there have | |been great strikes, involving the \dressmakers, shoe workers, cafeteria | workers, dairy and grocery clerks, |ivon and bronze workers. At pres- |ent, a furriers’ strike is taking place. There have been spontaneous strikes lot unorganized workers in many fac- |tories throughout the city, In all lef these struggles the workers have |found arrayed against them in one | |solid front, the bosses, the state, | jthe reactionary trade union bureav- | eracy and the socialist party, who are but agents of the capitalists in| \the ranks of the workers. “The struggles of the workers are on the increase, not only in New | designed to assist in placing more | York City, but throughout the coun- | that a huge picketing demonstration of the International Labor Defense, | president, and to fight labor organi- (Continued on Page Three) (Continued on Page Three) zation. | Hoover’s group yesterday an- |nounced the formation of a huge |fund to monopolize as far as pos- @ | sible editorial and news sources. | Dr. Work, Senator Watson of | Indiana, majority leader in the | senate; Senator Burton of Ohio and DIG DEEP! NOW soe ” ? ' Friday the DAILY WORKER was forced to suspend! WBerseamtetive Wart or tea oe Saturday we could only publish in four pages! : | head of the republican party con-| The furrier strikers’ picket lines on Friday had to go without | gressional committee, are circulating the Daily! | a petition for financial contributions | jto back the National Republic, a! , All news had to be cut in half on Saturday! |monthly magazine published in} a | Washington, which for many years | Monday we can barely make four pages! | was edited and managed by George Unless a big response is gotten during the next few days the B. Lockwood of Indiana, former sec- | only militant working class English newspaper may be oases (eater tha Sneedeat| forced to suspend! | (Continued on Page Two) i The Gastonia workers, faced with a frame-up murder trial, are in DANGER OF LOSING THEIR STAUNCHEST DE-| FENDER, THE DAILY WORKER! | \We must not only save the paper immediately but go on to _. six pages, casei Unless we go back to six pages:*the DAILY WORKER will be forced to cut down on the amount of workers correspon- dence published. We will be forced to leave out the daily f feature article on page 6. The DAILY WORKER which published the most interesting foreign news in the U. S./ will be forced to print foreign news only in summary. The) splendid new features that were prepared for publication | such as the remarkable document called “Black Haiti” will have to be postponed indefinitely. Workers! YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO LOSE YOUR FIGHT- ING ORGAN! We know you are in difficult financial circumstances. But you| will be in infinitely worse political circumstances without a militant organ. That means wage cuts, longer hours, | persecution, etc., can be more easily, carried through. DIG_DEEP AND SEND A SUBSTANTIAL. DONATION! Use the blank below: The Daily Worker, 26-28 Union Square, New York. After reading the appeal for aid in the Daily Worker I am sending you the enclosed amount, $ COUNTY JAIL, CHICAGO, (By Mail)—The 27 workers jailed here, behind the prison bars of | one of capitalism’s most notorious | bastilles, because of their mass protest against the frame-up of the Gastonia textile strikers, send their greetings to the Daily Work- er and urge all workers to come to its aid in the present crisis confronting it. The greeting fol- lows: | To the Daily Worker: We, revo- lutionary workers, in the dungeons of the capitalist class, see clearer than ever the necessity of build- ing the Communist Party, the leader of the workers, and_ its English-language press, the Daily Worker. “We call upon all workers to rally to the campaign to combat the financial erisis that now faces | the Party and its press. The working class needs a powerful | mass Party, a strengthened Daily Worker to prepare for the greater \ will be published in the “Daily” without Chicago Prisoners Urge All | | Labor to Support ‘The Daily’ Powerful Party and Press Needed to Fight the Gastonia Frame-up | North Carolina. In the United | | States today, besides numerous min- | ers’ strikes in Ohio and Pennsyl- (Continued on Page Two) MacDonald Plays With Recognition of USSR; Plans Half Step First LONDON, June 23. — It is re-| ported here tonight that the Mac- Donald regime, pledged to full recog-! nition of Union of Socialist Soviet | Republics, will proceed only to a half way step, unless pressure from Brit- | ish workers forces more activity. In- | stead of an exchange of ambassa-| dors, MacDonald, his friends say,| will propose that a charges d’af-| fairs be sent from each capital to/ the other. struggles ahead, to prepare the battle for the lives of our com- rades now imprisoned in Gastonia, The call of the | Party and its press must be im- mediately and effectively heeded | everywhere, “Signed: Theodore Asnes, Ly- dia Bennett, Anthony Bimba, Carl Carlson, Helen Childs, Jack Childs, Clara Cline, Paul Cline, Mary Dizoff, J. Louis Engdahl, Morris Fein, John Haecker, Irv- ing Herman, Lydia Hilden, Ben- | jamin Horowitz, William F. Kruse, Anna Liggett, Charlotte Melamed, Max Meltz, Alise Nasrak, Anne Newhoff, Jack Ninel, George Re- pressas, Carl Sklar, Ethel Stevens, Edward Stevens, Sandy Williams. The Chicago prisoners are plan- ning to put on a burlesque per- formance of their arrest, impris- cnment and trial for the purpose of raising funds for the Interna- tional Labor Defease and the Daily Worker. — iia Save.the Victims of the Gastonia Conspiracy CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY APPEALS ! TO WORKERS OF WHOLE WORLD TO SAVE WORKERS FROM ELECTRIC CHAIR The American capitalist class, its hands still dripping with the blood of Sacco and Vanzetti, is at this moment conspiring to murder the southern leaders and organizers of the National Textile Work- ers Union. Fourteen men, women and youth—union organizers and strikers—are in the grim shadow of the electric chair charged with murdering the chief of police of Gastonia, while 58 others face long sentences in the dungeons of North Carolina, charged with as- sault with intent to kill. The events that culminated i: made perfectly clear to the mass the battle at Gastonia must be 2s of workers in the United States and of the world in order that such storm of fury may arise against the murderous capitalist class of the United States that they will not dare carry out their bloody conspiracy. ORGANIZE THE UNORGANIZED. | The frame-up against the Gastonia prison- ers is an attempt on the part of the capitalist forces to stifle the campaign for the organ- ization of the unorganized workers in the southern slavé pens. For years the South has been heralded as a place where there is an abundance of cheap, unorganized labor. The strike wave in the textile and rayon industry of the South exploded this myth. In practically all the principal textile centers the workers show unmistakable signs of increas- ing readiness to fight against the miserable conditions imposed upon them by the mill owners. Workers in many other industries of the South are making. demands upon the em- ployers. The movement for organization into fighting unions is gaining tremendous im- petus. The entrance of the new National Tex- tile Workers Union into the situation gave a determined, fighting leadership to the work- ers in that industry. Hence the wave of fury unleashed against the leaders of this move- ment. The organization of the unorganized work- ers in the South is of tremendous significance for the whole labor movement of the United States. So long as one section of the country is unorganized it increases tremendously the difficulties of fighting against the employers of labor in any other part of the country. Thus the drive to organize the unorganized masses of the South directly concerns every worker in the United States. FIGHT AGAINST RATIONALIZATION. The strike of the workers in Gastonia against the rationalization process that mak human wrecks of the workers in an incredibly short time. The Strike was for a living wage | instead of the paltry $8 to $10 a week r2- ceived by the average worker for a twelve- hour day. It was against the frightful speed- | up system and for decent living and working conditions. In two and a half months the workers of | Gastonia have been subjected to the most unrestrained violence on the part of the mill owners and their agents. They have been beaten into insensibility. Women, old and | young alike, have been assaulted and mal- | treated. Strikers have been arrested whole- | sale. The militia has bayoneted scores of | workers on the public highways. A masked mob of 200 demolished the headquarters of the union, while the militiamen looked on | with approval. More than 150 strikers’ fam- ilies were evicted from their homes, which they had paid for many times over in rent, their furniture was thrown into the street. The union organized a tent colony to shelter the evicted strikers, their wives and children. The very fact that they were able to exist infuriated the mill owners, hence the mur- derous attack upon the tent colony. POLICE FIRED ON COLONY. These comrades, these men, women and youth, who are in jail awaiting trial for mur- i der, an dassault with intent to commit mur- der, who are daily slandered by the reptile press of the South are not guilty of murder. But the dead chief of police of Gastonia, him- self, like the other city officials, an agent of the Manville-Jenckes concern, attacked the tent colony with the plain intent to commit murder. He and his associate thugs and gun- men opened fire on the men, women and children in the tent colony. They fired shots into the tents. Joseph Harrison, a union or- ganizer, was the first wounded from gun- fire. But the long series of provocations and assaults had taught the workers the nature of the enemy they had to deal with. AVERTED ANOTHER LUDLOW. Had it not been for the fact that the ' strikers had the foresight to prepare defense forces the story of Gastonia would have been a repetition of the story of Ludlow, when the militia of that state, under the command of an agent of John D. Reckefeller, Jr., destroyed the tent colony of evicted miners and burned alive in one dark hole eleven children and two women, as an act of vengeance because the miners challenged the profits of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. It is because the heroic workers defended themselves and their families against a mur- derous attack that they are singled out as the next victims of the rapacious murder machine of the capitalist class of the United States. Because they refused to submit to being shot and burned to death by Chief of Police Aderholt and his mob of hoodlums, the entire power of the state of North Carolina has been mobilized against them in an effort to murder them under the cloak of legality. The same ruling class that in reply to the world-wide protests of the workers, hurled the tortured, mutiliated bodies of Sacco and Vanzetti at our feet, in order to terrorize us, is now eagerly preparing to torture and mur- der Fred Beal and his comrades becaus2 they dared defend themselves from the mob viol- ence of the lackeys of the textile corpora- tions. WORKERS OF WORLD MUST ACT! The workers of the United States and of the rest of the world must rally to the de- fense of these latest victims of American capitalism, these workers who defended them- selves against such an attack. The ruling | class must not be permitted to wreak ven- geance upon these workers. The fundamental question of the right of the working class to defend itself against the attacks of the capitalist class murderers is here involved, and upon that ground these workers must be defended. We will not be terrorized into accepting the theory that workers must permit themselves to be mur- dered en-masse without protest or defense. Let no one imagine; for a moment, that the Gastonia frame-up against the striking tex- (Continued, on Page Two) Betrayed by A.F. of L Porters to Hear Green| at Meeting on Sunday Ather betrayi is * @ month, or 400 hours of train ser- deve tank May Aiaeiae ba a ae | vice with no allowance for overtime | which was overwhelmingly for a |" Waiting time. strike, William Green, president of | * month, the porter hes an accupa- the American Federation of Labor last night let it be known that he would “initiate anorganization drive” of the porters at a meeting to be held | day afternoon. exploited workers States, now get an Executive Council in the Abyssinia Baptist | mecting, i , Church, 132 W. 138th St., next Sun- Out of this $77.50 | tional expense of $33 a month, |Deportees, Held Under The porters, among the miserably, Unbearable Conditions in the United | average of 77.50 | at Ellis Island, Mutiny A story, kept secret by the author- ities until chance made it known last | night, tells of 65 held at Ellis Island for deportation, who defic the | guards to shoot them and drove The present “organization drive’ some of the gun wielders into a is said to follow a decision of the corner, from which they were later made at its Thay rescued by reinforcements. aitablamaiiiilibniar tke sn | The treatment of all foreign born ¢ v ; Price 3 Cents STONIA PRISONERS PLAN FOR SMALL ARMED GROUP TO SEIZE THE JAIL Could Hold Town for 24 Hours and Kill Strike Leaders Not to Spare Women |Labor’s Alertness to | Save Prisoners’ Lives | —— By BILL DUNNE. (Special to the Daily Worker.) GASTONIA, N. C., June 23.— | The black shadow of lynching hangs over the ional Textile Workers Union organizers and local strikers jin jail here. From the most reliable |sourees comes information checked }and rechecked to the effect that or- ders from the higher ups are to soft | pedal open talk of lynching and wait | patiently for other instructions. | On the surface all is quiet. Un- {derneath in Chamber of Commerce and the Loray mill official circles, lynching propaganda stews and simmers. All defendants including Fred Beal, with the exception of George Carter still held in Ashville, are in the Gastonia jail. The hatred of the local ruling class and its hangers-on for these workers has no limits. Especially is there hatred for Beal whom the workers really love and trust and whom even the Chamber of Commerce crowd re- spects and fears for his quiet energy and obvious sincerity. Louis Me- Laughlin, steadfast and loyal to the union is another target for the mill owners’ venom. All through the bit- ter struggle he has shown great mili- tancy and ability. More even than |that, they resent the coming of capable union organizers from other |textile centers especially in the @uorth. The local rulers fear the development of union and _ strike leadership from the ranks of the na- tive workers. Not even the women prisoners, {Vera Bush, Amy Schechter, and | little seventeen year old Sophie Mel- vin, are safe in the Gastonia jail. The danger does not come from any {popular source. There is not the slightest danger of a huge crowd as- sembling and demanding the heads of the worker defendants. The danger comes from a more or less organized and disciplined group of the middle class operating through the various secret and semi-secret organizations, An attorney who comes from one lof the oldest and most conservative j families in this state, whose inclina- [tions towards even philosophical {radicalism are nil, but who stands simply for legal procedure as against |lynching and who has no reason to, magnify the danger, told your corre- spondent this morning that he fears for the lives of a number of the prisoners if they remain in the Gas- ;tonia jail. Much to my surprise he (Continued on Page Three) LABOR DEFENSE BAILS OUT EIGHT ‘ASSAULT CASES ‘Strikers Flock to WIR | New Tent Colony \ (Special to the Daily Worker.) GASTONIA, N. C., June 23.— | Yesterday the eight strikers and or- ganizers held on “assault with in- jtent to kill” charges were released ‘on $750 bail each, provided by the International Labor Defense. ‘@heir |trial is set for July 29. They will participate in the organization work of the National Textile Workers | Union, ard the defense and relief | work, Those released are: Clarence Mil- \ler, Ernst Martin, Walter Lloyd, Clarence Townsend, R. F. McDonald, Robert Litoff, C. M. Lell, and J. Re | Pittman. | Applications from Loray mill strikers to live in the new Workers International [-lief strikers’ tent colony established here several days 'ago, are flowing into the Gastonia |office of the W. I. R. Tents are jbeing erected daily, but not fast — jenough to take care of all who are in need of immediate shelter. Con- tributions for this purpose should be sent to the W. I. R., 1 Union Square, New York. workers entering tho country ig 3 enough, but the Ellis Island auth ties outdo themselves with those be- ing driven out. Bad food and rotten on the ee housing conditions brought