The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 26, 1929, Page 8

Central Organ of the Communist Party of the U.S. A. The Smokescreen Over Gastonia Just at the moment when working class protest against the Gastonia employing class conspiracy for the wholesale electrocution and imprisonment of 28 North Carolina textile strikers is mounting highest, the mill barons seek to hide their ack under the smokescreen of promising “fair a I It is to the interests of the robber class to give workers the impression that they are getting a “fair trial” in the courts of the profit takers. It is intended to lull the resist- ance of labor into inactivity, to disarm it in the class strug- gle, to paralyze its protest. It was argued that Sacco and Vanzetti received a “fair t ’ that every “legal means was exhausted in their de- fer The same is claimed by the capitalists for every one of its other victims. But the working class knows different. They know that Sacco and Vanzetti, that Mooney and Bil- lings, the Centralia victims, and others were innocent of the ¢ arged against them, but that the very nature of the capitalist law made it an excellent instrument for mur- oning them, exactly because of their work- The same is true at Gastonia. nes C The smokescreen of a “fe all sections of the land to gr nal of al nister pur ceeds relent * should rouse labor in ater protest. It should be a It should not hide but rather expose the poses of the mill owners’ prosecution that pro- lessly with its assassin’s work. 29 The trial starts on Monday, July just three days off. fake prosecution of Roach and Gilbert, the drunken en, will be forgotten in dusty archives once textile mill strikers have been done away with, either ‘in the electric chair or in prison. The voli pol In the words of the Gastonia mill strikers themselves: “Only the working class of the nation, aroused to the real- ization of our danger and the importance and significance of the Gastonia case can save us from electrocution or the penitentiary. The militant workers throughout the nation must immediately voice their protest and redouble their determination that we members of the National Textile Workers Union shall be freed.” This should be sufficient to stir every worker to action. Support the International Labor Defense in the fight it is making to smash the Gastonia anti-labor conspiracy. Enroll on its Million Signature Protest Petition! participant in the Joint Week of the International Labor Defense and the Workers’ International Relief, July 27- DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, FRIDAY, JULY 26, 1929 F THE WORKERS’ F ATHERLAND By Fred Ellis || By LISTON OAK. Fred Beal, Vera Buch, Louis Mc- Laughlin, Amy Schechter, and eleven August 3.° Become one of the 100,000 members of the LL.D. jeune strikers and union organizers No death sentences! No prison sentences! Free our fel- low workers! class! Defend the rights of the workers to defend their lives and their union against the attacks of the armed forces of the bosses’ government. This is an important and major activity in labor’s mobilization, for the building of the Cleve- land Trade Union Unity Conference, August 31st; for the | With conspiracy in the above killing | defeat of the imperialist war, for the defense of the Soviet Union. The Imperialists’ Pacifist Offensive Against Mobilization of Workers for August First In the midst of their new offensive against the Soviet Union characterized by the attack of their Chinese mercenar- ies and the speeding of war preparations in the vassal states bordering the republic of workers and peasants, the imperial- ists have launched a double offensive against the working class in their home countries. First they have let loose a campaign of suppression, arrests, terror and jailings on a wholesale scale, especially in France and Czechoslovakia. In Berlin the social-democratie leaders are preparing their police to attempt on a larger scale the repetition of the May Day massacres. In the United States this phase of the offen- sive against the workers takes the form of prohibition of demonstrations, wholesale arrests as in the case of the dem- onstration before the Chinese consulate, and a continuation of the drive against the labor unions stri ¢ to organize the unorganized masses in the war industrie A second offensive, emanating from the statesmen and diplomats of the capitalist world is also going full blast. That is the pacifist offensive, a whole series of maneuvers, proclamations and hypocritical platitudes calculated to create the illusion that all danger of war is passed, that the procla- mation of the Kellogg pact, the Stimson and Briand maneu- ss vers are guarantees of peace. Hoover, the avowed representative of imperialism in the United States, and MacDonald, the social-democrat who car- ries out the imperialist policy of Britain, aid in the pacifist offensive by talking about the slowing up of their cruiser building programs. Such proclamations have been repeated at intervals and with variations ever since the Washington naval arms conference of 1921. During that entire period of eight years the imperialist powers have continued to build greater navies, pile up greater armaments and increase all the armed forces. Such talk is only camouflage behind which more intensive preparations are made for waging imperialist war. This imperialist pacifist offensive is nothing more than a smoke screen behind which the imperialist powers continue their drive against the Soviet Union and an attempt to coun- teract the world-wide preparations that are under way for mobilization of the working class on August First for strikes and demonstrations against imperialist war and for the de- fense of the Soviet Union. But the class conscious workers will not be deceived by such gestures on the part of the imperialist statesmen. The German workers that so heroically defended themselves against the social-fascists of the second international, in the uniforms of Berlin policemen, are preparing for mighty strikes and demonstrations in defense of the Soviet Union. The French masses, in spite of the frenzied raids and whole- sale arrests by the police, will fight for the streets o fParis and other cities on August First. In every other European country there will be outbursts of mass fury, while in China, behind the lines of the imperialist hirelings, the masses are organizing strikes and mass movements in defense of the Soviet Union. The mass pressure of the workers has forced the im- perialist statesmen to retreat from their open provocation against the Soviet Union and to try to carry out their con- spiracies under the cloak of pacifism. The answer of the workers to this new duplicity of the nperialist must be great concentration of forces for August st, a more determined drive against imperialist war and Wm oe wa jof the National Textile Workers | Union are held without bond in the Restore them to the ranks of the working | Gaston county jail charged with the murder of Chief of Police Aderholt on the night of June 7th. They are jalso charged with secret assault with |intent to kill and conspiracy. Eight “Carolina J Become an active | Boss Press Failed in Lynching Spirit Attempt to Whip U Against Strikers | | | | ustice” and the Southern Press Union who have dared to threaten} the open-shop with its starvation | wages, 12-hour day and stretch-out system, its ruthless exploitation of mill workers, hitherto “cheap, docile |and unorganized,” and who are now in revolt led by the N.T. W. U. | the best of the opportunity thus entrance and stand until he acknowl-| It is also significant that on the | given him to make King a little |more miserable, As the morbidly curious crowd edges the sign of respect. | “There is no overshadowing of |same editorial page of the Char- 'lotte News for July 11 on which are | others are out b rged | .. Fre ected (a SUE Bes Gila veut nates EAE a tele anne and with assaul; with intent to kill. |S@8¢ly: “Well, a North Carolina | The Carolina press, and in fact |iU"Y would never have cohvicted most of the southern press, havi him. ae newspaper editorial | given this’case wide publicity. They | Writers ad the opportunity next recognize, in a confused sort of way, day to chorus about the grandeur of the tremendous significance for the Justice, and to sermonize about the South involved in this case, the | Warning in this case to. the younger jstrike from which it arose, and the |feneration, and to point out» that emergence in the South of the class this was the first white man in more | coueclaus’ prolstatat than thirty years to be sentenced io bt -Altioat sith unanimity the Caro-|death in Chester county, and what lina press has loudly proclaimed |? good example this is, and that the that “these strikers, Bolsheviks de- |‘Time wave is aus tp the sae serving of drastic punishment though | miner svat ¥6 hae oer y ag they are, will get justice.” What is|Vere Punishment, and if there were “Carolina justice” that they are ris. |™0re sentenced to death there would ing to defend from defamation on | less,crime, etc., ete., ad r r the part of northern “foreign agi- |Never a word about the economic the court by a curiously idle public, Printed the above stirring appeals) which might jam in to see what is |£0F Tespect for the mplealy. ot the a d © limelight, |!aW, there appears a third editorial, going on and grab the limelight. é ih? a 4 The public knows its place ang cnfitled: "TTS WITHIN OUR OW) keeps it. | HOUSE, ; ‘ | “Attorneys give the court every | “We wonder sometimes if there lrespect. There is no wrangling }ate any people around here who are | baek and forth, and when the court | foolish and deluded enough to har-| rules, the court has ruled and the lawyers bow to its will. There is no whining, ‘Now, your Honor.’ When His Honor speaks, the last word is spoken and it is accepted. “Attorn rise whenever they have a word to say..,. As for ad- dressing the court without rising, that unheard of. tators”? What is the conception of a fair trial that the bourgeoisie of | the Tar Heel state holds? Judges Preach. There is an enormous amount of local patriotism here. Whether it is their weather or their courts the bourgeoisie are eloquently indignant at any criticism made by “foreign- ers.” They are immensely proud of their religion, their home brew, their climate, their chivalry,—even of their backwardness culturally, po- litically, and economically, it some- times seems. Any politician hoping for advancement must be a staunch | upholder of religion, of the status! quo, of the Jim-Crow system, of | |everything southern. Every editor and lawyer must be able to illus- trate his speech or story with Bib- lical references. Every judge must be able to preach a sermon extem- poraneously, | When a jury at Chester, S. C., found Rafe King guilty of the mur- der of his wife a few days ago, the judge, J. K. Henry, pronounced sen- |tence: “death by electrocution as | provided by law, and may God have mercy on your soul.” King nervous- ly licked his lips on which there was \a sickly smile, and started falter- ingly towards the table of the de- ‘fense counsel. But as though it |were not enough punishment for a tional torture. Cruel and Unusual. for you than as an example to deter jothers from a horrible life,” unctu- ously preached the venerable judge. “That's the only use the state can make of you. It has been verified and verified: ‘He that soweth to the ‘flesh, shall of the flesh reap corrup- ‘tion, And he that soweth to the wind, shall of the wind reap whirl- wind,’ I wish that it could be writ- ten across the heavens so that all ou ryoung men could see it.” “You have led a putrified life and you have reaped the whirlwind. The time that is given you before you go to the chair is for you to mediate and prepare yourself, And that is the only hope for you,—repentance before God.” With an expression as of a great duty well done, the jurist finished his sermon. Thereupon the Rev, E. B, Hunter, who had King arrested—the stool- pigeon of the Lord,” as it were— dropped into a chair beside the con- |demmed man and proceeded to make ca lat ia De ch “Courts are sacred institutions, seum.. one of the foundations of our form of government, and rig)::fully should causes of crime. be given e respect. We repeat, The editorial page of the Char- North C a could learn a lot lotte News of July 11, following the from her neighboring stat2 of South Carolina.” Why Just Now? Is it a coincidence that this im- |death sentence upon King, is typical. It would be hard to find: such a} |gem of editorial writing: 1 | “PREACHERS OUT OF THE passioned appeal for more respect | PULPIT. for the “dignity and sanctity of the | court” comes just after the habeas “Not all the fine and effective a: | cor} hearings of the fifteen Gas. | Preachers of the country are in’the |tonia s rs and union organizers |pulpits.... The remarks of Judge held for the murder of Chief of | Henry addressed to the condemned jman, Rafe King, . , . represent a case in point. Police Aderholt who lost his life on June 7th in a raid upon the strikers’ tent colony, in an attempt to get “One listening might have well|rid of the N. T. W..U.? At these thought that one was hearing the) hearings, the procedzre was such urgings of some evangelist with a/that the few exponents of liberalism |passionate yearning for the spirits to be found in the southern press, of men. Judge Henry had no tone| protested that “in a long time we of sternness in his voice; there was | have not heard of a more disgrace- | nothing but gentility, kindness and | ful scen> in a court of justice than| man to burn in the electric chair, | Judge Henry halted him for addi-| “The state can make no other use | | Persuasiveness. He was preaching ; the dooomed man a sermon in which he pointed to him the only source | of help and salvation. “The jurist is himself a man of God. Long an elder in the Church, he is famed for his practical reli- gion... . Quiet and dignified in his demeanor, bashful almost to the point. of boyish modesty, Judge Henry is not like a great many other churchmen who allow their re- ligious fervor to take the form of some vanishing form of efferves- jcence, On the other hand, he thinks soundly, feels deeply and keeps one of those consciences that are void of offense toward his fellowman, a Christian layman who can preach effectively the Gospel of the Naza- yene,” Another choice bit of “sound thinking and deep fecling”—in the same newspaper: “SOMETHING TO LEARN. “North Carolina could learn a bit , about the conduct of court from her | sister state, South Carolina, where this week the famous King case was ‘conducted and the death penalty im- | posed upon the dapper defendant. | “In South Carolina courts, judging from the proceedings at Chester, are institutions to be respected (!). They jare tribunals of justice, where men |come for the determination of the truth, and they are so regarded by the people. Those who enter ap- proach with due respect to the sanc- tity of the institution and accord it the dignity and respect due an insti- tution which determines the fates of men, “The jurist, clothed in a long flow- ing judicial robe, commands fespect of all those within, Al], arige at his osaeSIus se | that which was presented with Clyde Hoey as the chief: participant, at a habeas corpus hearing in Charlotte last week.” (From an editorial in the Chapel Hill Weekly.) The edi- tor goes on to give a digest of the cross-examination of Amy Schech- ter, one of the defendants, in which Clyde Hoey demanded to know her religious beliefs, Judge Harding overruled the objections of the de- fense tp these questions, and in- ‘sisted upon a monosyllabic answer to prevent Amy Schechter from ex- pounding her atheistic views, per- haps for fear that someone of the “younger generation” might hear and lose faith. The same sort of thing took place at the hearings of the other defendants, |Times was moved to editorialize: “The whole proceeding was cheap- ened and compromised by the man- ner in which the question was framed, by the monosyllabic answer demanded, and by the gross infer- (ence drawn from it by the attorney. ‘Tacties such as those pursued by Mr, Hoey in this case revolt fair in the liberty of hurly-burly at- tempts to influence the minds and excite the prejudice of ignorant jurors,” Mr. Hoey, brother-in-law of Gov- ‘ernor Gardner and aspirant to Con- gress, was the leader of the defeated defense in the Rafe King case and is leader of the prosecution of the Gastonia strikers, He is very close to the big mill owning interests in North Carolina and was cmployed by them, together with a huge bat- tery of mill company lawyers, to help the prosecution of the organiz- ers of the National Textile Workers nl nal Even the reactionary Raleigh | minds, even when they are indulged | ‘bor the thought that the Commun- ist debauchery that has been in progress in Gastonia is strictly and purely a Gastonia affair, that we have nothing here in Charlotte to worry about, that the trouble lies entirely aeross the river. . . . The entire south has this problem not at its door but right inside its own house, “That the Communist rebellion is definitely planned to show its Southern battlefields can not intel- ligently be questioned. It is only ac- cidental that Gastonia was chosen |as the first spot on which to stack |arms and has later been accepted as Southern headquarters by the Com- munist International. . . . There is no way for us to escape the bane- fulness of it, neither is there a way for us to hold ourselves immune to the evils and sinister subleties of the movement.” “If the bolt of blackness known as Bolshevism hits in Gastonia and! turns things topsy-turvy there, it | produces its like effects throughout ‘other communities . . .” On the same page this champion |of All that is Sacred in America gives &s its Bible Thought for the | day: | | “MAN’S EXTREMITY, GOD’S| OPPORTUNITY—‘When my _ soul} fainted within me I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.’” Keep Their Powder Dry. The mill owners are not quite re- duced to this extremity! They have many instruments much more effec- tive than “the Lord.” They may | have their meek and humble ser- vants, the clergymen, praying to God to rid them of these pests, the! Communists, even as in Biblical times the priests prayed to be rid of the plague of locusts, or, as Job prayed to be rid of his running sores. But the mill owners leave this sort of nonsense to their priests. They resort to other and |more material means to save their “sacred institutions’—meaning the stretch-out, wage-cuts, the open- shop, the profit system—they have | recourse to the police, the militia, |the courts, the government, and, if | necessary, to lynching. An interesting transformation has taken place in the editorial policies of the southern capitalist press. At first almost all papers joined with the Gastonia Gazette in howling for the blood of the leaders of the N. 'T. W. U. after the shooting, The edi- tors convicted the stfikers out of court of the crime of being union organizers, Communists, atheists, ete, ete. It was*taken for granted that if-they were all these terrible things, they were ipso facto murder- ers, or at least potentially criminals of the most degraded kind and ought to be lynched, electrocuted or jailed on general principles, Workers Not Fooled. Then a few outstanding exponents of liberalism came out with their criticism of this campaign to lynch Sg \ EN By FEODOR CEM GLADKOY Translated by A. S. Arthur and C. Ashleigh. All Rights Reserved—International Publishers, N. Y. Gleb Chumalv, Red Army Commissar, returns to his home 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. wife, Dasha, whom he has not seen He discovers a great change in for three years. She is no longer the conventional wife, dependent on him, but 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 Communist Party. Under the direction of Gleb the reconstruction of the factory is begun. He hts against the bureaucrat, Shramm, chairman of the Economic Council, who is opposed to getting production started, ete . HROUGH his half-cl his dark corner be ed eyes, Shibis was looking at Shramm from d the table; he seemed drowsy and bored. I also say that Shramm has made no objection. Shramm ect, and even if it appears that he does—do not believe your Shramm no longer exists: Shramm is an anachronism.” And Shibis relapsed into his boredom and blind fatigue. Gleb noticed how Shramm’s effeminate face quivered convulsively and became very old; and his eyes suddenly became filled with darkness and terror. The Food Commissar, Khapko, surveyed them all with the stern eye of a master, banging his hand upon the table. “Right . . .! Take care, you people! Now they’re going to take your last pair of breeches. And in another month we'll be going stick in hand to make the alliance between town and country. Come on with the Food Tax, we'll say! This isn’t the year 1918 for you! This is the alliance of town and village! Oh, hell!” No one listened to him; they were accustomed not to listen to his jokes, which he would utter sternly for the benefit of everyone. But he was the only person to listen to them or think about them, Baie oe | EEN nervously walked to the fable and made the following proposal: “That we send Comrade Chumalov to the Bureau of Industry in order to obtain the prompt fulfilment of the decisions of this Econ- cmie Council, and to secure the further supplies needed for the factory.” Again nervously and quickly he walked back to his place by, the wall. He sat with his feet back under his chair and his chin on his hands, Gleb went up to Engineer Kleist, took him by the arm and laughed, “Well, I’m going, as sure as twice two make four. Eh! I'll stir up a stink at the Bureau of Industry! What do you say, Comrade Technologist? And, you know,.Comrades, this man is not just a tech- nologist, but he’s pure gold—a famous specialist of the Socialist Soviet Republic. The real thing!” The next day Gleb left to go to the Bureau of Industry, promising to return in a week’s time. At the factory the work was proceeding: they were repairing the buildings, the railway lines, the engines and the machinery within various departments. From morning till four o’clock in the afternoon, without a stop, the burning air between the mountain and the factory, the air which quivered with dust and foliage, resounded with the clash of metal, the rattling of trucks—to all of which the power-house played a monotonous humming accompaniment, The ropeway for the delivery of wood was in continual operation; the trucks rumbled and the steel cables hummed. Trucks rattled along the, quays, cuckoos were calling, and the wood was falling thunder- ously into the empty wagons. In the blue and-glittering bay, lonely ships rode in ineémprehensible sad expectation. * * * peste was frequently away from the Women’s Section, at confer- ences and on official journeys. Every week Lizaveta assembled the women in the hall of the club; and, until midnight, through the open windows, came a wild uproar to disturb the pensive quietude of moun- tain, woods and valleys. And when they started for home in the darkness, they continued their shouting; and their shrieks reminded one of their former quarrels about hens, eggs, and other housewifery interests. But, listening at- tentively, you would notice that, with all their shouting, they weren’t quarrelling; it was only the excitement of the discussions at their club, which they had brought with them into the street, into the night silence, “Lizaveta is wrong. I tell you she is not right!” E “Don’t talk rot, Malashka. She’s right! We women are all a lot of fools!” “Well, if you are, I don’t want to be one. I’m going to cut my my Comrades, are a hangman’s noose for the women. re for a man to hang on to—a misfortune for the woman——!” Nothing of the kind! Damn it, I’m not going.to be led about hy a loose woman. *I shan’t take my ikon dowk and shall go to church ~ in spite of her. Lizaveta’s home is a strange bed and the Communist gang is her church.” ‘ ,» and look what's coming to the girls and boys. The Kom- There used to be the fear of sin and they used to respect but now—Komsomol!” you who are fools, you enough?” “You're a fool yourself! And you'll be a worse fool if you quit children, husband and home!” because they don’t take enough care of the working people. up all kinds of shops and cafes and have let the women go Starve, if you like... .” somols! people, other ones. Don’t your men beat your They put * * * to hell. cr was like this every week; whether Lizaveta and Domasha were in charge of the meeting or whether Dasha was there to help them. Through the help of the Communist Group and of the Club, they had organized two groups for the “liquidation of illiteracy”; and when they started their first lessons, there were only women at the desks. Dasha’s speech that night went straight to the hearts of the women: “You must realize, women, that tonight by attend here so well you have beaten the men, and have given good proof of your proletarian class-consciousness. . re, « And the women shouted and clapped their hands; and their fresh gaiety resembled that of festive birds. Eyery morning and evening Dasha called at the Children’s Home, called the Krupskaya Home, to kiss Nurka; and she saw that Nurka was flickering out from day to day like a candle. The child had be- come ail bones, and the skin on her face was yellow and rumpled like an old woman’s. Nurka would look at her mother with her dark, sad, sunken eyes, and Dasha felt that these eyes had witnessed something great and indefinable, and that therefore the sun and the sky had grown for her small and distant. Nurka was usually silent and pen- sive, these days; and seemed quite indifferent when Dasha parted from her. * * . AND. that year, for the first time, Dasha suffered intolerable ane guish, but she hid it deep within herself, No one seemed to notice this pain in her, only Comrade Mekhova glanced at her once from her place at the table and then, suddenly, in alarm, her gaze fixed itself uttentively, disquieted. “What's the matter with you, Dasha? trouble... .” “Oh, have 12. Where did you get this fancy, Comrade Mekhova?” Polia remained silent for a moment, examining Dasha attentively with her tired eyes. And something in her eyes reminded Dasha of Nurka’s sad gaze. “Dasha, I did not know that you could lie or deceive.” “Well, all right: I have some trouble, Comrade Mekhova. do you want to know what trouble it is? 1t doesn’t concern anyone.” “Yes, that’s just it, Dasha! We're ctrongly organized, strongly bound together: But we’re terribly apart, one from another, in our private lives; and none cares how the other lives and breathes, Yes, that’s just it—that’s the terrible part of it. By the way, you always seem to dislike it when people talk about this.” They both grew silent, apart and shut up in themselves, (To Be Continued.) I believe you have some Why the prisoners, Judge Carter and Dr, John Randolph Neal came into the case, as defense counsel. The hys- terical campaign of villification was held up'to scorn. But raost impor- tant of all, the masses of workers did not fall for this bunk, The pa- pers failed miserably in their effort PS to whip up a lynching spirit on the part of large numbers, and the workers showed fight. There wat a much stronger sentiment in Gas- tonia to march on the jail and free the class war prisoners than to take them out and lynch them. wee ” sopiinned.) ~ ty, —