The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 30, 1929, Page 2

3 mee, mm Page Two DA'LY WORKER. via EW YORK, TUESDAY, JU MILITANTS. IN Innocence Is Not En NATIONAL SILK MEET AUGUST 25th .. Nat'l. Textile Union Backs Conference PATERSON, N. J., July National Sil f ganized Workers Union August 25 in 205 Paterson —— Mooney, especially, and also Bill- By VERN SMITH. ings, Weinberg, Nolan and Rena ARTIC 9. Mooney were interfering consider- = oy ably with the war program. the famous frame-up They Organized. ory have ever collapsed) Tom and Rena Mooney were or- thoroughly, with/ganizing labor. They were particu- those who built| larly active among the street car the Mooney and|men. They had built a card cata- ngs case. In no case has the/log of all street car workers, and ute and overwhelming proof|were conducting systematic, person- at a frame-up was committed had!al agitation. They led a street car on the results to the vic-| strike just before the preparedness pt, of course, the Sacco! parade in San Francisco, July 22, case, 1916. Labor opposition, fighting the used against employers’ orders to their workers » Mooney and Billings has been dis-'to parade or be fired, had cut the ted. Most of them have con-| numbers predicted for the parade to will be hi he N. T. W. Delega fessed their perjury, and told who! one-fifth. The employers were wild differen suborned them to perjury. The about it. Pennsylvan adge (still on the bench) has! ‘This was only the culmination of ticut, New Y ‘ d the conviction to three! long period of strikes, many of New Jersey. ors of California, them resulting in clashes of more In ¥ a pardon or @ new | or Jess violence, in which the united Textite ‘Work 2 urviving jurors bosses, the chamber of commerce, gamizing, and in e stated formally that they are had raised. a fund of a million dol- there have been y were tricked at the trial, lars to bring about the open shop. and Billings did) the c. of’ C pears The C. of C.:had made several attempts to “get” Mooney. They had indicted both Mooney and Bill- unites a has not saved Mooney ings for blowing up an electric pow- ones¢: All of th ngs from going right on|er transmission tower-10 miles from of the eenter heir life sentences, Billings |San Francisco. At that time, Mar- 2 eee prison and Mooney in/tin Swanson, ex-Pinkerton man, and mands x chief detective for the United Rail- The reason is that labor has not roads of San Francisco, offered et made that determined, and mas-/ Billings immunity and $5,000 to help ive protest that crashes the prison|frame Mooney in this case. He gates d releases class war pris-|made an offer of $5,000 to Israel oners. Proof that it can be done Weinberg to testify that he had is to be seen in the saving of Moon-| driven Mooney to the scene of the : ife. He was originally sen- explosion in his taxi cab. ced to the gallows, but the work-| The refusal of these two insured of Leningrad (then Petrograd) that they would be included in the i in so menacing a manner he next frame-up against Mooney. should not be hanged that his sen- Fickert a Company Man. “tence was commuted. elect a n tees whos definite pre made im the Un the ‘anthracite where most of th Into all have now to are located. ‘Ss, organizers been sent by the N. T. W. U,, push the campaign. It was also a period of war prepara-|ty more. tions, like the present. The “Pre-| The district attorney, Charles M. paredness Movement” was being in- Fickert, himself a United Railroad’s spired <hruout the country by big man, elected to dismiss graft indict- b ess, already determined on en-| ments against Pat Calhoun and tering the world war on the Allies’) other heads of the company, turned side. WORKERS FACE FIR OURAY, OCol., July result of cloudbursts on three suc- cessive d: which contributed to the demolition of the waterworks system, Ouray is confronted with a serious fire hazard. Drinking water see Hoover’s law enforcement man-|chief of the city detectives and his euver, his concentration of power|whole department at Swanson’s dis- policies, the proposed anti-strike | posal. Mikes ators ae eee Ste | bill, the scheme to apply.a Watson| \No attempt was made to find out|for +he said eomething about «. car Commerce and the United Railroads. erie aa riheitash Hares Feerisen damaged Parker bill to the coal fields, and| who committed the crime; all clues|and reported the two ‘victims as| Chief of Police Peterson of Oak-| Workers face electrocution | 2 the use of all governmental ma- at the scene were destroyed by the walking up the street with the suit-|land (then a captain in the army)| prison terms! Rally all forces to ‘The lower middle class, the amal) °"imery, especially the post office,| police, and Tom and Rena Mooney, | case. testified after the trial of Mooney| save them. Defense and Relief | manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative—Karl Marx tims. Federal injunctions are being and Edward Nolan were arrested and used to crush real labor organiza-|charged with murder, tions—in this pre-war period, as in| The trial of Billings came first. | 1916. |The only valuable evidence against Duriug the preparedness parade,|first said they did. The facts of the case are these. an explosion at Stuart and Market | An open shop drive was going on/ streets, probably by a provocateur, | honest cattleman” Oxman from Ore-| in the Pacific coast cities in 1916.| killed ten persons and wounded for-| gon appeared on the scene and be- |came the star witness against Moo-|phone in Fickert’s office, and be-|who had been on an extended “sick | |ney. He testified he saw Weinberg |sides a considerable amount of juicy |drive Mooney, Billings and Nolan to| graft evidence and humorous scan- away, the suitcase of course being prosecution witnesses in the cases to A preliminary stage was to|the whole case over to Swanson,|the deadly bomb. crush militant labor, just as now we | placing Captain Duncan Matheson, | dove-tailed with the Edeaus, after | touch needed | Mooney and Billings, but contradict- | body, operating at the orders of and {ed McDonald’s in the Billings case,|in the interests of the Chamber of |against the Gastonia frame-up vic-| Israel Weinberg, Warren K. Billings | ough -- The Case ainst Nolan, held) and Billings and failed to recognize | dropped,| them. That was before they were} |him was that of Jack McDonald, ajand indictments a dope fiend; Estelle Smith, another|nine months in morphine maniac and a former pros-|»ver two years atter hi est. The| properly coached. Peterson swore titute whom the police had told they | evidence against Mooney and Bill-|that when he accused Mrs. Edeau of would send to prison if she did not|ings was evidence against all of|making conflicting statements, she identify Mooney and Billings; Mol- these or none; if one was guilty all|said’ that while she was at Stuart lie and Sadie Edeau, against whom | were guilty; if one was innocent all|and Market streets, her astral body | the police had records, The Edeaus’ | w But logic means little in alhad been present at 721 Market] evidence was that Billings stood on |frame-up: the United Railroads| stregt. | a roof above a dentist’s office at 721 wanted to hang Tom Mooney. Suborning To Perjury. Market street, a mile from the scene Perjury Exposed. of the explosion, preparing to throw! exposures of the perjury commit- the bomb fromvit at the parade, with tog by the witnesses began before |Ill., were turned over to the defense | the two Mooneys standing on the the Mooney trial and caused some|by Rigall after he got scared, They | sidewalk below, in the area of ex-| of the Billings case witnesses: to, were a proposition that Rigall come | plosion to direct the act. They then groy out. out to San Francisco, be coached. by | said the Mooneys and Billings went) “On February 7, McDonald volun-|the police and Oxman, and testify | jdown towards Stuart and Market /tarily made affidavit his entire tes-|against the rest of the defendants. streets where the explosion really timony was false and that he com: took place. a ae. mitted perjury out of fear of the Billings got life imprisonment. | rotice, Evidence wouldn't have mattered; | the jury was made up of police stool the war, W pigeons, selected, by tamepring with the wheel of chance by which j were drawn from the venire. Tampered With Evidence. to him that the latter was not in| ilson and the state de-|the other defendants. | partment were very anxious to have} Oxman’s history, probed into, was Urers | Russia keep up the fight: A giant] one of crime. jdemonstration of workers in Petro-| fostelle Smith, the principal wit- |grad (now Leningrad) besieged the| nose apaimet Billinng, pan thn wate Before Mooney’s trial, which was/ American ambassador in his palace,| (1990) made affidect thet she faler | next, it was discovered that the|demanding the release of Mooney, ly identified the defendants out of | original negatives of a picture taken /and the provisional government rul-| fear of the police who had her rec-| during the parade, showing Tom and |ing in the spring of 1917 also an®| oq as a woman of the underworld. | | Rena Mooney on the roof above|ious to make Russian workers fight| Th Be 5 ted | Rena’s music studio, could be forced | the Germans, appealed to Wilson to] ,,, 117, case against the five arrested | away from the prosecution files. remove this irritation. Labor all|*®¥s compictely collapses. The case against Mooney was ab- These originals showed a street clock | over the world was beginning to do solutely smashed the year he was jwith the time 1:58 to 2:04. In the/the same.. Wilson sent a commis- | unconditional release. convicted. But preparations for Mooney’s execution went right on, until the revolutionary workers of Russia took a hand. Since then the history of the Mooney-Billings case has been one of sporadic attempts to release him. Judge Griffin's appeal for freedom or a new trial for these two workers has beer. ignored by three Letters written from Oxman to a| Successive governors of California. | friend of his, Ed Rigall, of Grayville, The present governor is reading a several hundred page book giving all details. He will order the release if he thinks enough workers are deter- mined enough to have it. The mere fact that Mooney and Billings are the crime with which they were |San Francisco at the time ‘of the | Charged, has had and will have lit-) When the United States’ entered|parade. He was not useful against|tle to do with it. There’s a convic-| |tion, and the law does not. have to release its victims merely because the conviction was the result of a frame-up, a proven frame-up, blast- ed with the indignation of all who have investigated it. In the Gastonia case, we must not have a conviction, or if one is brought about, there must be no slackening in the increasing drive against the death penalty, and for These 23 tex- tile workers are as innocent 2s Moo- ney—but look where Mooney is! |Billings case McDonald had placed | sion to investigate, which reported |Mooney at the scene of the explo-|that Mooney, Billings and the others| Jersey City Mayor to |sion from 1:42 to 2:04. No matter|were undoubtedly innocent. ‘The ex-|qqy.: bane mocea Menai |\Shield Fellow Grafters | testified |ecution was postponed until August| |against Mooney in the Mooney trial 23, then to December 13, and even-| JmRSMY CITY, NJ, July 29. —| |and put the time of Mooney’s pres-| tually commuted to life imprison- May. tna yl ‘ heel jence at Stuart and Market streets/ment. The Ghamber of Commerce|™°¥0" *"anK Hague, —notorio jat much earlier — earlier than he couldn’t bring. itself to actually set|gTafter, today instructed corporation | jcould have arrived if the Edeaus saw |free these strike leaders, no mat-|counsel T. J. Brogan to institute | |him at 721 Market street when they ter what international or war poli-|court action against the New Jersey | Ge apt |civil service commission to test its The department of labor inyesti-|POWer to remove from the city pay- gator, Densmore, planted a dicta-|roll the names of 50 political hacks | But a new witness appeared—“the | leave.” The commission recently “discov- ered” that the payroll is padded with hundreds of jobholders who have | been on “leave” for five to ten years | It was the final) and drawing juicy salaries all the | o smear the whole! while. they changed the time of seeing prosecution as a mere frame-up the scene of the explosion, and saw dal surrounding Fickert and his them place a suitcase there and drive | aides, it recorded him fixing the This testimony /follow Moone; The Gastonia Textile Workers’ Mooney was convicted February 9,|that the Edeaus’ first story to him 1917, and sentenced to be hanged|was that they were at Stuart and May 17, | Market streets instead of 721 Mar- Rena Mooney was acquitted July} ket street and saw men with the 26, Israel Weinberg on October 27,| bomb, that they were shown Mooney Week July 27—August 3! Sign the Protest Roll! Rush funds to | International Labor Defense, 80 East 11th Street, New York, ! | Middle-class phi | that j;Army Heads Go Thru | Service to Improve It WASHINGTON, July 2 retary of War Good today orders to start the general staff investigation into obsolete services in the army. The army itself is thus to consider, as gently as it wishes, the Hoover announcement that it will be curtailed. Army officers are smiling in their sleeves over the joke on the | country at large, a jest which, it is alleged, Hoover was privy to when} he made his grand stand play about cfrtailing military expendi- tures. As far as I am concerned, I can't claim to have discovered the ex- istence of classes in modern society or their strife against one another. historians long ago described the evolution of the class struggles, and political economists | showed the economic physiology of the classes, I have ndded as a new cottribution the following proposi- tlons: 1) that the existence of classes is bound up with certain es of material production; 2) the class struggle lends neces. sarily to the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3) that this dictatorship is but the transition to the ab tion of all classes and to the er> ation of a society of free and equal —Marx. of Mooney and Billings SECOND INT'L IN DEFENSE OF | IMPERIAL RULE “Annoyed” by Reports | of Cruelty in Africa CAPE TOWN, South Africa, July | 29.—The treacherous, reformist role | of the international socialists is giv- jen further emphasis by a statement | recently issued by the Amsterdam |Bureau of the Federation of Trade Unions, an organization under the Rigall swore that Oxman. confessed | @ thousand times proved innocent Of | domination ofithe ‘eocialiate’ The statement is an attempt to defend the imperialist oppressors of Africa against the accusation, well authenticated and given publicity by |the International League Against Imperialism, of the revolting brutal- ity to which the black miners of southwest Africa are being subject- ed to by the British and Boer im- perialists of the Union of South Af- rica, which has a mandate over this former German territory. The state- ment says that “The Labor Union of Southwest Africa is much annoy- ed by these reports” and that on the | whole “the blacks are humanely treated in Southwest Africa.” Native leaders here are not sur- prised at this attitude of the Am- sterdam erew of labor fakers, but point to the fact that socialists are following a consistent role of treach- ery to the working class and opposi- tion to the first workers republic, Soviet Russia, and that in all coun- | tries the working class is faced with the necessity of advancing to the final goal of proletariat dictator- ship over the dead bodies of the so- cialist traitors. RAILROAD ON BLOCK ST. ALBANS, Vt., July 29.—The Central Vermont Railroad, which was swept into receivership when | floods two years ago destroyed 250 miles of its lines, was gobbled up at public auction today by the Cana- dian National. The purchase price was $22,000,000. The Gastonia Textile Workers’ trial began July 29! Twenty-three workers face electrocution or prison terms! Rally all forces to | save them. Defense and Relief Week Ju'y 27—August 3! Sign | the Protest Roll! Rush funds to | International Labor Defense, 80 i East 11th Street, New York. One month ago, June 21, The Daily Worker did not appear for lack of funds. This was the first time that this suspension occurred since the founding of The Daily Worker five and one-half years ago. We resumed publication the next day. A fewcom- rades and friends in New York pooled their resources to save the Daily, and give it a chance to appeal to the *-readers and loyal supporters. The campaign for funds is now five weeks old, and yet the Daily is in the same precarious condition it has been in at the beginning. The money coming in is too sail to cover the deficit, and give the Daily a breathing _spell. Ten thousand dollars has been collected, when at i. least $1,000 per day is needed to pull the Daily out of |. its present crisis. i= _ Will the Daily get this money? The next few weeks =. Will decide the fate of the Daily. 1.—Read the Daily. 2.—Buy a copy for a friend or shopmate. 3.—Get a bundle for distribution. 4.—Insist that your standkeeper carries the Daily. 5.—Insist that he displays it. 6.—Buy a copy to start off the standkeeper’s sales, _7.—Keep this up for a few weeks. It is a story of white The Daily Worker is present this story to its fices on the part of all members and sympathizers of the Party and Daily. the Party and substantial contribution at least equiva- lent to a day’s wage must be forwarded immediately. tion that is full of harrowing details. The readers will have to decide—— Shall the Daily live—or shall it suspend? will settle the Shall the Daily suspend—with the danger of war looming in the immediate present?, Shall the Daily suspend—in the face of the at- tempt to railroad 15 workers in Gastonia to the elec- tric chair? ‘ Shall the Daily suspend—at a time when the workers are facing ever increasing attacks by the bosses, their police and gunmen, and ‘their Right Wing Allies? UPON YOU DEVOLVES THE ANSWER. Publication of the paper means increasing sacri- duce the huge We havea The minimum of one day’s wage for members of READ THE SERIAL “I SAW IT MYSELF” By HENRY BARBUSBE.— Author of ‘Under Fire,’ ‘Chains,’ and Other Great Novels. This brilliant novel has been tabooed by the ruling In America it is hardly terror and workers persecu- 1 th I i fortunate in being able to Crear toe, we readers for the first time. known... WILL THE DAILY SURVIVE? SEND ALL YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS TO DAILY WORKER, 26-28 UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK CITY. & WILL YOU ANSWER? lation, which are enumera The Sustaining Fund must be established imme- diately. Our readers and friends should not only send their immediate contribution, but pledge themselves to give a definite sum monthly or weekly. This will help the Daily avoid such crises as now exist. fate of the Daily. Do not wait for another suspension. check pr money order immediately. Wire it or rush by air mail to THE DAILY WORKER, 26 Union Square, New York,.N. Y. : ate The Daily must increase its circulation to reach ever wider circles of workers. A large circulation will re- deficit. number of aye for increasing the circu- ed below. What You Must Do to Save the The next few days are crucial. The next few days Enclose your % SUSTAINING FUND 1.—Pledge yourself to send in contributions weekly or monthly. 2.—Send it the first of the month regularly, . 3.—Get your union or organiza- tion to contribute regularly. 4.—Get a same. co-worker to do the HO Oe og, wife are ¥ able ovel pre’ ime cap to eve doy wor han thr is v com fra: wo cre: the ing doit wo the mo tab Ho ase - to | ba Sie se oe ee oe