The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 25, 1929, Page 6

Page Six ~~ DAILY WORKER, NEW YOR THURSDAY, JULY Published by the Comprodaily Publishing Co. Inc,. Daily, except | Sunday, at 26-28 Union Square, New York City, N. ¥, i] Telephone Stuyvesant 1696-7-8. Cable: “DAIWORK." SUBSCRIPTION RATES: By Mail (in New York only): $4.50 six months $2.50 three months By Mail (outside of New York): $3.50 six months $2.00 three months and mail all checks to the Dafly Worker, 26-28 Union Square, | New York, N. ¥. $8.00 a year a year 2 The Kellogg Pact—Instrument of Imperialism ; Standing in the historic east room of the White House at Washington Herbert Hoover formally promulgated the Kellogg ps repeating the deceptive phrases about the out- lawihg of war, “as a national policy.” History plays peculiar pranks upon its instruments, the human puppets who, at various times, personify the interests of certain groups and classes; one of the most ironic is that the date set for the formal announcement of the enforcement of the pact should occur at a time when the imperialist pow- ers, with the United States government playing a leading role, are endeavoring to wage a war of extermination against the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. But then the Kellogg pact was conceived as an instru- st the Soviet Union. The renegade socialist, Briand, for a long time a defender of the French bourgeoisie, was responsible for initiating the conversations with Coolidge’s secretary of state, Frank B. Kellogg, which led up to the adoption of the pact at Paris last September. Tt was the reply of the imperialist war-mongers to the Soviet nand for complete and immediate disarmament. The re- yn of the Soviet proposal for disarmament exposed the crisy of the*imperialist statesmen who were talking peace while preparing ever greater armaments for war. There was a second motive impelling the United States: the attempt to take the lead {n world reaction from the League of Nations, dominated by its imperialist rival, Great Britain. At the time the pact was formulated in Paris there was not created nor was there intended to be any machinery for its enforcement. Hoover, in his speech yesterday, repeated the Paris twaddle of Kellogg, who with Coolidge was sitting on the platform, about the “moral foree” of the pact. The pact itself is merely the pretext for the United States imperialists to form secret alliances with other capitalist states against the Soviet Union and against its rival, Britain. It facilitates new plots, more sinister intrigues, as is evidenced today by the use to which it is being put by Stimson in order to con- al the activities of the United States in supporting the e of the Chinese bandit hirelings against the Soviet Union. While from imperialist Washington the Kellogg pact is pro¢laimed, while the imperialist powers are engaged in a drive against the workers’ and peasants’ republic, the work- ers of the world are rallying to the defense of the Soviet Union. The tremendous sharpening of all the inherent con- tradictions of capitalism, the increased exploitation, degrada- tion and misery of the working class in the capitalist coun- tries is producing wide-spread radicalization of the working masses, the relentless drive of the imperialist powers against the colonies and semi-colonies evokes anti-imperialist revolts on the part of the masses in those lands. The capitalist states of old Europe tremble before the great mobilization of the masses for the August First strikes and demonstrations in defense of the Soviet Union and against imperialist war. The arrests in France, in Czechoslovakia, the attempts to stifle the movement for August First are not signs of the strength of capitalism, but of weakness, are evidence of the fact that the capitalist class feels the precariousness of its much-vaunted stabilization and is furiously striking at the workers because they fear such a world-wide mobilization for one revolutionary purpose. The reply to the Kellogg pact must be tremendous demonstrations here in the United States against the imperialist war danger and in defense of the Soviet Union. In every city and industrial center in the country preparations are being made that will make August Ist_a red letter day in the history of labor struggles in America. The Automobile Strikes in Detroit ‘The fiction, so carefully fostered, to the effect that the American automobile industry had discovered the secret of avoiding labor disputes, strikes and lockouts, is being shat- tered-by the action of thousands of workers in Detroit auto- body plants who have gone on strike against wage cuts, the speed-up and the other oppressive forms of rationalization \ of industry. i The automobile industry, in fact the motor industry gen- \ erally, has been undergoing the fiercest rationalization dur- \ing the past few years. Workers are used up more quickly in the slave pens of Detroit and other auto centers than in \any other branch of industry. Conditions that have long been ‘miserable have simply become unbearable in the drive to in- trease production. It must also be remembered that the mo- or industry is one of the most essential of all war industries. re rationalization of the motor industry is a part of the war yreparations, therefore every means of terror, blacklist, espi- age and all other devices known to capitalist exploiters is voked against the workers in that industry. But in spite of everything the workers of Detroit are cre- ing their own forms of resistance. The strikes in the auto body plants make the conference auto workers to be held in Detroit on August 11th, in eparation for the national conference of the Trade Union ducational League to be held in Cleveland on August 31st, hich will create an organizational center for the unification the militant labor movement and give a tremendous im- tus to the drive to organize the unorganized workers in ® industries of the country. Dne of the most damning indictments of the reactionary ht of the American Federation of Labor is the fact t it has deliberately aided the automobile magnates in tir efforts to prevent organization of the workers in that dustry. e present strikes are being led by the Auto Workers ion, a militant industrial union not affiliated with the A. f L. These strikes are only the beginnings of a movement must be developed to such proportions that it will in- e the hundreds of thousands of automobile and aircraft ers who will challenge the rationalization schemes of motor industry. he organization of the workers in the motor industry is ‘an essential part of the general struggle of the working against imperialist war. Without servile and helpless ers in the motor industry it will be much more difficult he United States to wage an imperialist war. It will be luty of the Trade Union Educational League conference e definite plans for organizetion of tho wer industries e country. phe FADE! \ By VERN SMITH. At Holy Grov® West Virginia, in 1913, the coal fields there and around in the neighborhood were | the scene of a miners’ strike against such conditions as (quoting the tes- timony before the senate investi- gating committee): “Check weigh- man guaranteed by law but not al- |lowed the miners,’ “Men paid in scrip which they could not cash,” “Men discharged and put out of their houses as fast as talked union- ism,” “Mail burned by store man- ager,” “Men ngt allowed to approach post office on company property,” | “Machine guns and guards turned on peaceful crowd coming from meeting,” etc. | In the strike, the evicted miners} set up a tent qolony at Holly| Grove. Quinn Morton, the largest coal operator at Kanawaha Valley, on the night of Feb. 7, 1918, took out an armored train, used by the militia, | loaded machine gunners and 30} Baldwin Feltz detectives on it, and toured past Holly Grove pouring bullets into the tent colony. One| miner, Estep, was killed; a woman died of wounds; 16 more were | | wounded. It was merely the most | spectacular of several such shoot- | ings from the armored train, usually | known as the “Bull Moose Special.” | Training For Ludlow, But the perfect raid on a tent colony, from the employers’ point of view, came the next year, when these same Baldwin Feltz riflemen, {who had been practising from the| | moving train in West Virginia, were | called out to Ludlow, Colorado, by |did at Gastonia, and were similarly | Mr. Rockefeller, | The miners of the Rockefeller barony in Colorado were talking \strike all through the summer of |1914, and there were several small | strikes, Conditions in Rockefeller’s Colo- jrado Fuel and Iron Co. coal towns | Were unendurable, The nine and| |ten-hour workday for men under |ground prevailed. Wages were low. | |No checks weighman was allowed, |and the miners were consistently,| |cheated on their coal weights. The |towns were. owned by Rockefeller, and all had to patronize the com- pany store and the company doctor; single men had to stay in the com- |pany boarding house. The water) |came from the mine, and was full| of refuse, bits of coal, hay, alfalfa | jand manure from the draft stock underground. Baldwin Feltz Guards Rockefeller’s managers knew of this strike talk, and had plenty of| labor spies on the ground, armed | guards hired from the Baldwin Feltz | detective and strike breaking ‘agency, These company gunmen | \killed several men before the strike | started, the first to fall was Gerald | Lippiat, shot dead August 6 on:the main street of Trinidad, Colo., (near | Ludlow) by two Baldwin Feltz mén, |Beleher and Belk, Men were ‘dis- | charged as a result of spy work three months before that. The j strike in this area started Sept. 23, | \1914. | The companies, following the lead | jof the ‘Rockefellers, had imported | | more armed guards the week before. | |Miners’ families’ were evicted, | thrown out into the snow, even) though the miners owned their own | houses in most cases, these houses | stood on company ground,. The towns were fenced off and guarded. Miners were not allowed even: to| come in for their mail, and the post- | offices were were on company prop- | erty. ‘ * From “The Brass Check,” ‘ini. | Le el le ae a aici |, elim cae e 25, 1929 By Fred Ellis Article 7—Gastonia Raid on Tent Colony Forms |?" illed in the tent colony, Tents and Murder~The Ludlow Massacre a Parallel with Colorado Slaughter They set up tent colonies, always , to take place at a distance from the | ging for the lives of the helpless | the workers answer to mass evic- tions, as in Gastonia. Tents As Pickets At Ludlow; where they struck against the Colorado Fuel and Iron Co., the colony stood on the plain just north of the junction of the branch line to the mines in the can- yon, and the main line of the Colo- rado & Southern R. R. The tents themselves acted as automatic pickets to strike breakers brought in on the railroad,without notice of tents, amidst the hail of soft nosed|gunmen with Linderfelt walked a strike situation. The armed scabs and mine guards | militia, someway escaping injury. |@ volley at Tika’s prostrate body. used to come up from the mines on | He helped many to flee. Some hid| “It was the first murder I had ever the hill slopes over the colony and jin a well. A women holding white | Seen,” wrote Irwin. take long range shots at it with | handkerchiefs in her hands and try-| their rifles. The -strikers were | ing to shield her little children with| Perfect raid on a tent colony, the armed, and answered in kind. There | were a series of skirmishes, then a pitched battle, on Oct. 28. Governor Ammons of Colorado sent in the militia to “disarm both sides.” They disarmed many of the strikers, then a new group of mine guards was imported, and armed with the strikers’ surrendered wea-| pons. Militia commander General John Chase instituted a secret mili- tary court, and began to arrest hun; dreds of the strikers for trial be- fore it. ed at. The militia objected as they withdrawn, two new militia com- panies being formed of mine guards, as in Gastonia deputy police tool the place of the regular militia. Sunday, April 19, was a big Greek holiday, and the Ludlow camp, with many Greeks in it, celebrated. A squad of eight armed soldiers tried to break up a ball game in which the women played the married men. One of the militiamen leaving said “All right, girlie, you have your fun today, we'll have ours tomorrow!” Try to Save Non Combatants The next day, the strike leader, Louis Tikas, was enveigled to a point half-way between the strikers’ camp and the militia camp in the hills. Seeing the militia advancing Tikas rushed back. All the armed men in the camp, about 40, marched out; with a battle coming they wished it Habeas corpus was laugh-| women and children in the tents. But the militiaized company gun- men had other plans. Their first act was to turn two machine guns |loose on the tents and released a |concentrated rifle fire upon them. Fire from the 40 miners kept the 200 militia from capturing the col- | ony and slaughtering its inhabitants while daylight lasted. Tikas Saves Many Louis Tikas dashed among the |and explosive bullets us@l by the her apron had her hands shot. A little girl fled into a board shack, and the machine gun was | turned cn the shack. | At night a raiding party of militia came down, under command of Lieu- tenant Linderfelt. This officer was a Baldwin Feltz detective who had organized his thugs into “Troop. A of the National Guard of Colorado.” | They carried cans of coal oil. Lin- jderfelt was yelling, “Shoot every son-of-a-bitchin’ thing you see mov- ing.” Twelve women and children were hiding in a hole beneath a tent, which had been cut to ribbons by ullets. Linderfelt’s men poured | kerosene over the ruins of the tent and its inmates and set it on fire. The coroner’s jury brought in the following verdict on these twelve burned bodies: “We find that they jcame to their death by asphyxiation \or fire, or both, caused by the burn- ing of the tents of the Ludlow Tent Colony, and that the fire on the itents was started by militia men, junder Major Hamrock and Lieuten- ant Linderfelt, or mine guards, or | both,” wv Pearl Jolly, a miner’s wife and the camp nurse, helped to lift the charred bodies out of the hole the next morning and the militia stood around, addressed unprintable re- marks to her, and one said: “Sorry ‘we didn’t have more in there fer Can Daily Survive? funds vital if our ptess is to live Respond immediately to the abbeal of the Daily Worker for aid in its present crisis! The Daily Worker, 26-28 Union Square, New York. After reading the appeal for aid in the Daily Worker I aim sending you the enclosed amount, $ Name Address . Names of contributors will delay, |you to take out.” Thirty-four men, women and children altogether had | Tikas Murdered. | Linderfelt’s men found Louis Ti- |kas running to them, empty handed | (he never carried a gun) and beg- women and children they were slaughtering. They took him pris- oner up the railroad track, and in the morning his body lay there, skull crushed, and three bullets in him. Godfrey Irwin, an electrical engi- | neer working for the Electric Trans- portation R.R. and Gas Co, of Trini- dad, was taking a walk and ran into the fight. He wrote in the New| | York World, of May 5, that he saw) | Lieutenant Linderfelt take a rifle | and smash Tika’s head, then the | away a few steps, turned, and fired Take it all around, it was a really ,ideal and model of every other raid. | The Gastonia police, raiding. the | strikers’ tent colony there on June 7 were not able to come up to the| mark, There were armed men in} the Gastonia colony, not just help- less women and children, as in Lud- | jlow, and the Gastonia raid did not jattain the success that was had in| Ludlow by the bosses. | To destroy the strikers’ tent col-} ony outright, and to kill strike lead- ers immediately’ without any fussy } and long-drawn trial, is the object of such raids. In Ludlow they got {Louis Tikas, But in Gastonia the frame-up will have to be resorted to. |'They did not manage to kill Fred |Beal with gunfire. They now rely jon the electric chair, | Even in Ludlow, however, some strike leaders were spared—for the | frame-up. | Framing Lawson. | John Lawson, miners’ leader, was ‘sentenced, June, 1915, to life im- prisonment for the death of one |Baldwin Feltz detective, who was |shot in one of the innumerable fights | \of the time, by whom, nobody knows. |Lawson and other miners’ leaders j Were indicted by a packed grand | jury—such a flagrant case that an outside judge quashed the indict- ments. Informations were sought by the \Rockefeller prosecutors and ob- tained. A special, retroactive law, introduced by Rockefeller’s state senator, Hayden was rushed through Rockefeller’s state legislature, es- tablishing a special court for these jcases and the governor appointed jone Granby Hillyer, a Rockefeller partisan, to try them. The attor- ney-general of the state acted as prosecutor. The jury was picked from an already hand-picked panel summoned by the Rockefeller sher- liff, simply selected by him from among men who were loyal to Rockefeller. One juryman was heard to boast, that he would “either hang the dogs or kang the jury.” A man named Zancanelli was framed through first, then Lawson. Lawson was tried in Los Animas County. He was given a life term. The evidence was absolutely negli- ble . With such a machine operat- ing, evidence was not needed, The Gastonia Textile Workers’ trial starts July 29! Twenty-three workers face electrocution or prison terms! Rally all forces to | save them, Defense and Relief Week July 27—August 3! Sign the Protest Roll! Rush funds to International Labor Defense, 80 'CEMEN East lth Street, New | Yorke | * By FEODOR GLADKOV. Translated by A. S. Arthur and C. Ashleigh All Rights Reserved—International Publishers, N. ¥. A Gleb Chumalov, Red Army Commissar, returns to his town on the Black Sea after the Civil Wars to find the great cement works, where he had formerly worked, 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 town. Under the direction of Gleb the reconstruction of the factory started. { Shidky, local secretary of the Party, learns that a number of higk | Soviet officials in the district, including Badin, chairman of the Dige | trict Executive of the Soviet, have been carrying on bureaucratic dige 5 sipations, é | * * | JSKHELADZE looked at him with staring eyes and strained attens 1 tion; his narrow brow was contracted in deep moist furrows be-*} neath his bristly hair. He was trying to understand and absorb Shidky’s words. But in despair he pulled at his damp hair and shook his head. “Can’t understand at all... . What rot are you talking? I’m a simple soul and my words are simple. Tell me why are you turning my head? What kind of an answer is this? Have I suffered? Yes! Was I a fighting Green partisan? Yes! Didn’t I fight the White Guards? Yes! Have I the word and the blood of a,worker? Yes! But where is my class now? The dogs are eating it—. You'll say: ‘No,’ won’t you? Into what villainy men have grown. . . . Do you understand? There’s nothing left—. It’s the finish!” ] He got up and walked rapidly from the room, and Shidky could jj hear the tears choking in his throat. Al * * . may! FoR some moments Shidky listened to the retreating footsteps of the 4 Georgian, then began to walk up and down the room again, without stopping, biting his nails, first on one hand and then on the other. He could not get over what had just happened. By all appearances this sort of thing had been going on before tonight. In the past, members of the Regional Bureau of the Central Committee of the Party used to descend suddenly and unexpectedly upon them, in order to see that discipline was maintained; and also in the past, there used to be the strictest kind of er ism through the Party Committee. This was natural and necessary. Just as before, the responsible workers maintained their tense silence and respectful vigilance with regard to the cold and official Comrade from the Regional Centre. And as al- | ways the ritual of the sitting began in the same soulless manner: “Dear Comrades. . . .” But what had quite recently happened, a short time ago, under * the conventional form of a business meeting, had been so unexpected , and painful. i The side-tracked affair of the expropriations. . . . It was hardly mentioned. . . . At every sitting held in the presence of the blond intellectual from the Regional Centre, there had been disputes be- tween him, Lukhava and Badin, There would be crushing criticism from the blond Comrade on the work of the Party Committee. . . He spoke of the Control Commission. . . . Hints about the transfer of certain militants to lower grade duties, Was this just intrigue and quarrelling between man and man, or a struggle between two different powers? The Comrade from the Re- gional Centre, like everyone else, referred to it as a mere quarrel. This was so simple. And each sat in his. corner watching the issue of this struggle. Stories and rumors were carried around. They were dividing up into hostile camps. * a Ls if leave this struggle, beaten, when one ‘knew one was in the right— that was too difficult. It couldn’t even be thought of because it would mean the end. Once one fell one would be crushed. It was a fight to a finish: constant, persevering, assiduous, where every weapon must be used, and all the mistakes and weaknesses of the enemy utilized. Badin fought skilfully. He knew to perfection how to profit by the bureaucratic apparatus, his administrative experience and his cwn instinct. He must be attacked from another side. One is not always a strong man when one seeks the support of the broad masses. The masses are like a stick with two ends: one can be their leader, but also one can be their victim, their slave and demagogue, Shidky stood near to the masses, while Badin stood above them, detached. But the Comrade from the Regional Bureau always cited Badin as an ex- |, ample to Shidky. Shidky would never forget his words: } “You are still a comparatively young member of the Party. You haven’t yet the necessary strong self-control, the right appreciation of the given moment; you do not thoroughly plan out your work-and there- , fore you fall into wild mistakes. Comrade Badin has been through a tremendous amount of training in Party work and Soviet work, and you can learn a great deal from him. Why didn’t you two co-ordinate your actions and together come to a correct analysis of the objective situation, thus forcing events to assume different courses and forms ?; T’m telling you this because the Bureau of the Central Committee ap preciates you nevertheless as a clever worker and realizes your devo- ' tion to the Party.” t * * QXE thing was clear: there was no more romance. Romanticism was dead. It belonged to the past. The triumphant heroism of revolu- jonary action had passed into history and the crashing hymns would be heard no more. No more heroic deeds—but action. One had to absorb new energies, to know how to transform the least facts into certain and obedient weapons in the everyday struggle. Shidky knew what was going on in Shramm’s room. He knew why it was so comfortably carpeted and furnished. He knew that Shramm had not noticed the defalcations in the Forestry Department. Shidky knew all this, but he did not sound the alarm, so as not to disorganize the Party work. He was waiting for a favorable situa- tion, to deal a quick well-aimed blow. There was no romance any. more—that belonged to yesterday. Today, cold calculation. { Why not stir up today the dirt of the daily routine of these petty ' existences hiding behind the door of Shramm’s room? Why shouldn’t | he unearth the written orders in the Department of Health from them for sausages, ham, preserves and alcohol? i He went out into the corridor, biting his nails, and went out into the darkness of the night to the place where a pale reflection upon the wall told him that this was the open door of Shibis’ quiet room, CG ee . A DIFFICULT TRANSITION. Ge obtained the inclusion in the agenda of the Economie Con- ference of a report on the necessity for the partial resumption of work in the factory. , The storehouses were empty, the report said. There were enough staves for making a hundred thousand barrels. One could commence at once to start the cement mill and burning cement in one of the furnaces. The chalk was all lying ready in thousands of cubic feet, at the quarries. It was only necessary to bring a second ropeway line into action in order to convey it; the first one would continue to serve | for the transportation of wood. | Gleb presented the report himself, with Engineer Kleist present in 34 his capacity as an expert. Shramm argued coldly and dully against the project; he again talked about ‘a sound productive plan, about ‘thoroughly co-ordinated organization,’ about the Bureau of Industry and the Cement Trust. Badin, dressed in black leather, was sitting in his usual attitude, leaning on the table; he was silent; looking from under his brows at Gleb, Shramm and Engineer Kleist. One could not gather what his attitude was on this question, whether he was on Gleb’s side or Shramm’s, Shidky and Lukhava spoke briefly and de- cisively in favor of the acceptance of the report and moved a resolu- eed “To begin without delay preparations for the restoration of pro. uction.’ ; iar ane, : ante leaned back in his chair and or the first time smiled at Gleb in a friendly manner. ri “There are no other motions. There is no need to take a vote on Comrade Lukhava’s motion as no one has spoken against it.” Shramm unnaturally constrained, like a wax figure, cried suddenly, : like a ventriloquist: “I object categorically and finally.” “The resolution has been accepted; Comrade Shramm has offered no objection from the point of view of principle.” “Yes, I have!” Badin did not look at Shramm, but his eyes smiled at Gleb. “Comrade Shramm has no objection. Under the conditions of the New Economic Policy the necessity of reviving the productive strength of our republic speaks fay itself. The question of starting the work of the factory is an immediate one. We are entering a phase of stren- uous economic reconstruction. Even at the present low rate of pro- ductivity of labor, it would be possible for the factory to Produce enough to satisfy the building needs of large towns and industrial districts. The question is decided. It requires now only detailed examination and treatment. But our Comrade Shibis has something to say.” As iis (20 Be Continued.) gai Fel e