The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 7, 1929, Page 6

Leas Baily Bas Worker Central Organ of the Communist Party of the U.S, A. Publighed by the Sunday, at Telephone Stu $8.00 a year three months $6.00 a y 0 three montns Adgress a New Trotskyism Aids Attacks Against Soviet Union Ne of the methods by which the imperialist powers try to conceal th assent attempt at intervention against the claim that the action of their Chinese hire- ship of the butcher, Chiang Kai-shek, hat is viewed with disfavor by Soviet Unior the leader: lings und of nationalism , every retainer of im- Union repeats with vari- esmen, Ex eneniy of ¢ band is in. Con- y and his pet 1 s syndicated oviet Union for bourgeois gold, the tin \ stantinople, whe dogs the life cf a press slanders agai that worthy explains the latest provocation against the work- ers’ and peasants’ government as an attempt of the Chinese nationalists to consolidate their power internally by waging a fight against all forms of concessions in China. He di- rectly aids Chiang Kai-shek, the butcher of the Chinese masses, by interpreting the Kuomintang government attack on the Soviet Union as an act antagonistic to the imperialist powers. In a more crude form, but nevertheless following the identical political line, the counter-revolutionary publication of James P. Cannon, expelled renegade from the Communist Party of the United States, aids the imperialist war-mongers by declaring: . “Up to the present time, there are few signs that the Chinese action is being supported by foreign imperialism. This is not because the imperialists love Russia more and Chiang Kai-shek less. It is because they fear the establishment of a precedent that the Chinese rulers would use against the concessions and extra-territoriality rights that England, France, Japan and others took from China by force.” The lone fact that the puppet government of Chiang Kai-shek, brought to power with the aid of the imperialists, has no adequate economic base in China that would enable it to act independently is evidence that its campaign against the Soviet Union is backed by other powers. In addition to that there is the positive evidence of aid from the imperialist powers in the form of military equipment. On July 26 the United States Daily. which reports happenings at official Washington, carries a long article about the shipment of air- planes from the United States to China, although it is careful to avoid mention of the actual number already sent. Re- writing its comment on China from the New York Times the Tribune and other imperialist papers, the Trotskyist organ in the United States aids those who slander the Soviet Union with charges of “red imperialism” by comparing the joint operation of the Chinese Eastern Railroad with capitalist concessions and extra-territoriality. The agreement reached in 1924 for joint operation of the Chinese Eastern had as its objective to prevent the imperialist powers utilizing it as a means of mobilizing forces against both the Bolshevik rev- olution and the Chinese revolution; of preventing it falling into the hands of Japanese imperialists. This anti-imperial- ist agreement for joint operation of the road in behalf of the workers and peasants of both China and the Soviet Union is now deliberately distorted by the imperialists and the Amer- ican Trotskyists as analogous to the concessions of imperialist powers. To refer to extra-territoriality in connection with the present imperialist attack against the Soviet Union is not only the worst sort of slander, but ignores the fact that the Soviet Union has always fought against extraterritorial- ity and has abjured czarist concessions. The aim of the Trotskyists is to weaken the campaign among the workers in the imperialist countries in defense of the Soviet Union. It is objective support to the imperialist powers. Those who talk of “red imperialism” are only trying to conceal their servility to the imperialist powers who are at this moment, through their agent Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese government striving for armed intervention against the Soviet Union, The working masses of the world by their action on August First reduced to absurdity the defeatist Trotskyist demand to abandon the demonstrations against imperialist war and in defense of the Soviet Union. Marching forward from August First the masses will continue the strugglé against imperialism and all its agents, whether they parade, like Chiang Kai-shek in nationalist guise, or like Trotsky mouth revolutionary phrases to conceal their treachery to the revolution and their service to imperialism. “Labor” Continues Baldwin Policy mp EaTCHES from Teheran state that several hundred “Soviet Russians” have been deported from Mash-Had by the Persian government on complaint from the British government, that feared an attempt to unite with followers of King Amanullah, in an effort to overthrow the puppet * government of Afghanistan. Amanullah was overthrown by a mercenary army, backed by the Baldwin government of Britain, as a part of the British drive against the Soviet Union, because the Afghanistan king would not utilize the territory over which he ruled as a base for concentration of military forces preparatory to iftterven- tion on Soviet soil. Now the MacDonald government is carrying further the imperialist policy by incitings deportations of all who are suspected of opposition to British imperialist policy in Persia, thus proving in action that the social democrats in this period are far better lackeys of imperialism than the avowed tories. When the masses are swinging to the left and a particul- arly dirty piece of imperialist trickery is to be performed the social democrats fill the bill to perfection. But such debased flunkeyism to imperialism becomes a force working toward the undoing of the social democrats and aids the revolution inasmuch as ever larger numbers of work- ers in the imperialist countries and masses in the colonies and semi-colonies come to realize the true role of the Mac- Donalds, and enlist in the revolutionary struggle against im- list war and for the defense of the Soviet Union. by oor THE ACT IS ON! | ; DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, WEDN By Fred Ellis ‘ By VERN SMITH On May 5, 1920, the Palmer “Red Raids” had been going on for a year. A gigantic open shop drive was com- ing, and the U. §. government and all the state governments, tven city and town governments, were clear- ing the wi | reckl hysteria, by arresting mili- | tant wi in droves, by deporta- tions and frame-ups, by enforcing every variety of criminal syndical- ism and criminal anarchy laws, and |other repressive statutes. They had begun to work on, lesser leaders, having done for the moment, what damage they could against | those better known, | So on that day, local police ar- | rested Nicola Sacco and Bartolemeo | Vanzetti, on a street car in Brockton, Mass. | Uncle Sam’s Stepchildren. Sacco and Vanzetti were in the bad books of the department of justice at Washington. Since their arrival from Italy, as boys, in the same year, 1908, Sacco had become an agi- tator among workers at his trade, in the shoe industry, and besides had been on the Lawrence Relief Com- mittee, the local Ettor-Giovanniti de- fense committees, had helped lead a strike in 1913 in the Draper Co, tex- tile machine shop, and had evaded the draft by a trip to Mexico, Un- |like Walson who was “too proud to fight” until he was elected, Sacco was always too proud to fight like |a slave for his masters’ interests. {He would fight all right for the working class. In Mexico Sacco first met Van- |zetti, whose chief labor struggle up |to that time had been his activity ~ The Debacle | Article 12 (Part 1)—The Sacco-Vanzetti Case; “Getting Rid of* Foreign Agitators” Bridgewater, wanted to distinguish himself; he was watching the Reds too, but went a step further, and evolved the idea that they could be convicted of a series of pay roll rob- berries at had been committed in the vi ity, mostly, as later evi- dence showed, by a_ professional gang led by on Joe Morelli, and hav- ing among its members Celestino Madeiros, . Handy Crimes, There were two convenient cfmes. In one, on April 15, 1920, five ban- \dits had killed Paymaster Parmenter and his guard, Berardilli, in South Braintree, and escaped by auto with | the cash. | Sacco was slated for conviction of this crime. But at first, apparently, the prosecution felt it had so little chance to convict Vanzetti’ of the Braintree murder that it picked an- other offense for him, This may have been far sighted trickery on the part of the state, as, if he were convicted once of a lesser crime, a respectable New England jury would more readily find Vanzetti guilty of murder in another. | They framed Vanzetti for an at- tempt by four bandits to rob a p roll truck of the L. Q. White Shoe Co., in Bridgewater, on Dec. 24, 1919. Neglected and Betrayed. Nobody paid much attention to Vanzetti’s trial in the Bridgewater | in the cordage factory strike at Ply- j case, He had little defense, except mouth, in 1916, but who was becom- | from a local “Sacco-Vanzetti defense ing knovn as a speaker. He had ed- | committee,” which could not break |ucated himself. He was an unskilled \through the crust of terror that lay \laborer, and not long before his ar- over all liberal papers, and all but rest was working as a fish peddler. the most militant of radical papers. Salsedo Tortyred. | The evidence against himsshould not have convicted anybody, being Both Sacco and Vanzetti returned | r merely several very shadowy “iden- jto Massachusetts, where they con- | tifications,” by witnesses who had jtinued to belong to the Galleani | hopelessly contradicted themselves, group of anarchists, Vanzetti’s lawyer, John Fabey, was a small town criminal attorney, who made a bargain with District Attor- |ney Katzmann of Norfolk county, |that Vanzetti would not take the stand, and in return his “radicalism” would not be made an issue by the | prosecution — when every juror, or |possible juror, had been told by the local press that the defendant was a “dangerous anarchist!” Just as in Gastonia, judge and press repeat | glibly, “no extraneous matter will influence the court,” when every ju- ror has been deluged with lies and prejudice against “Communists,” “free lovers,” “nigger lovers,” ete. A federal spy named Ravarini was set on Sacco, Vanzetti, and others. He failed to get them deeply enough ‘in his frame-up trap to make arrests before he was exposed, though at that time he was negotiating to start |an anarchist paper with Vanzetti as leditor. He did cause the arrest of |two friends of theirs, Salsedo and | Elia. Elia was deported hurriedly to Italy after Salsedo had been “third degreed” for days in the department of justice building in New York, and jha@ been either driven ‘ commit suicide by leaping from the sky- |seraper window, or, what is more probable, had been thrown out to conceal the fact that he died under torture. The U, S. government was trying to convict him of a bomb plot. Sacco and Vanzetti were active on |a committee to defend Salsedo and | Elia; every little police chief in New | England had instructions to watch them; everybody was in danger. Some of the friends of Salsedo and Elia had anarchist literature, legal literature, but useful to the “D, of J.” in framing deportation cases, On May 5, 1920, Sacco and Vanzetti, Ri- j\cardo Orciani and Mike Boda made (an appointment to use Boda’s car to convey books and leaflets to | safety, The wife of a garage owner named Simon Johnson tipped off the police when they came to the place for the car, in West Bridgewater. was to be both packed and openly prejudiced, a reasonable defense would have made them hesitate. Vanzetti had thirty witnesses to prove an alibi; his direct story of his actions on the day of the rob- bery, with five times as many sup- porters for this story as the state had for very unconvincing “identifi- cations” would have made a strong case. Ag it was, Vanzetti was con- victed, Vanzetti said of his own law- yer, Fahey, and the lawyer’s run- ner, Govoni, “They railroaded us to the electric chair, and this they did most consciously and intentionally.” Vanzetti was then tried with Sacco for the Braintree murder — he ap- peared in all legal and public pro- ceedings thereafter as “a man with a criminal record.” _ hes In spite of the fact that the jury | for it by creating a | Michael Stewart, chief of police in] The Bridgewater trial was in June, 1920, The Braintree trial began on | May 31, 1921, in Dedham. A little more interest had developed. Fred H, Moore, of California, was on hand to defend them. The Socialist Avanti in Italy supported them; two or jthree papers in America were sup- porting them. The Communist move- ment was still underground, but its legal press supported them. The world at large knew little of the case, | The Verdict Before the Trial. | The second jury venire was rounded up by the sheriff, mostly from the ultra-conservative Masonic lodges, and other business men’s club. peremptory challenges of the defense were soon exhausted. The foreman of the jury was Walter Rip- ley, former chief of police of Quincy, who was afterwards proved to have said before any evidence was in, “Sacco and Vanzetti should be hung.” Katzmann was prosecutor again. | Judge Webster Thayer sat on the bench, He was an old, venomous man, connected with all the big man- ufacturing famil&®s of the vicinity, determined to kill these two agita- tors. His every ruling, his every wofd, though always just within the | bounds of legality when in open court, were prejudicial to the defend- ‘ants, | The prosecution’s evidence was of | two sorts: direct (“identifications”) and circumstantial, | As in the Mooney case the most important witnesses “identifying” \the defendants were underworld | characters, afraid of the police. The | best of them, from the prosecution’s |point of view, “Fainting” Lola An- | drews, confessed perjury afterwards, | then retracted her confession on pressure from the prosecutor, An- ‘other, Louis Pelzer, did the same. | Another, Carlos Goodrich, it was |proved by four witnesses, could not have seen what he said he saw, ad- | mitted to them he didn’t see it, and jhad been released by Katzmann \from a larceny charge just before | Sacco’s trial. Thayer refused to al- low this point to come before the jury, There were a few more, sim- ilarly unreliable “identifications.” | Judge Thayer himself thought them so weak, that later, when denying a motion for retrial, he gaid: “These verdicts did not rest, in my judg- ment, upon the testimony of the eye- witnesses, for the defendants, as it was, called more witnesses than the Commonwealth to testify that neither of the defendants was in the bandit car. The evidence that con- victed these defendants was circum- stantial and was evidence that is known in law as ‘consciousness of guilt.’ ” Foreigner Witnesses Hated, Sacco and Vanzetti had many wit- nesses to show a perfect alibi, but these’ were mostly foreigners like themselves, and the jury had been carefully prejudiced against “foreign radicals.” So what was this circumstantial evidence, and “consciousness of guilt”? It consisted in the episode of the car at the garage, that both were armed when arrested, and that they tried v. xen first arrested to con- ceal their recent movements and of Liberalism |sociates. With the Salsedo case and the carload of literature in mind they had good reason for all these acts! | | | Neither of them had shown any| | consciousness of guilt until arrested | jand questioned, not about pay roll |robberies, but about their attitude toward capitzlists, anarchism, Com- | munism, etc, | Conflicting expert evidence was} |presented by the state and the de- | |fense on two other bits of circum- | stantial evidence, the question of whether the mortal bullet could have been fired from Sacco’s gun and | whether Vanzetti’s gun had belonged to the victim of the hold up. There {was conflicting testimony on whether the cap found at the scene| jof the crime was Sacco’s. It had a| |tear in it which Sacco’s boss said | |might have been made by a nail on | which Sacco used to hang it. Later, \the police admitted they made the tear after they got it, but by that time the verdict was in. | Vanzetti’s alibi, supported by the | “damned foreigners” in considerable | number, was that he was peddling fish on April 15. Sacco’s was that he was visiting the Italian counsel, conversing with numerous persons | in Boston, to get a passport to Italy, | |his mother having died. The con- |sulate clerk and the others testified | for him — but they were foreigners | too, and it was Palmer raid time, Convicted. Thayer and Katzmann got their |conviction, and then labor began to take a real interest. The agitation that fgllowed, surged, and ebbed, saved these two for seven years, but never overcame the death grip of Massachusetts law, which rules that the trial judge decides on his own acts, that Thayer always could rule whether or not the trial was fair, and that once a conviction was se- cured, mere innocence had nothing to do with the matter. Remember the Mooney case, Many other Amer- lican states have similar procedure. The first mass action was that of the New York needle trades. Various central labor bodies passed resolu- tins, The miners’ union demanded a new trial. A great demonstration of workers marched on the Ameri- can embassy in Rome, But labor was soon on the defen- sive in America against the ‘open | shop drive, and in Italy against fas- cism,. With Mussolini .gaining in Italy, there was no such interna- tional situation as compelled federal intervention in the Mooney-Billings case. The fight that was waged was too legalistic, until the last moments, too much in the hands of liberals and individualists who couldn’t get it through their heads that this was not a case where one could rely on the legal machinery for justice. This was a frame-up case, the frame-up system prevailed; the laws, courts and governor were part of the frame-up system, and its sole func- tion, in the present stage of class war in America was to kill these two undesirables. To appeal to it was like the sheep appealing for justice to the wolf. Thayer and Governor Fuller, and the judges of the state supreme court and the U. S. supreme court had no conscientious scruples about this electrocution. They were defending the interests of/their em- ployers, and “there is no better word in the English language han ‘loy- alty,’ ” said Judge Thayer‘in his in- structions to the jury, | all the good things of life, and get fat by robbery? By FEODOR CEMENT ¢riproy Translated by A. S. Arthur and C. Ashleigh All Rights Reserved—International Publishers, N. Y. OICES sounded behind the door like rattles; the cells of his bret were singing like rattles. As soon as he opened the door he, was blinded by red flags and banners; the walls were blazing with them and white inscriptions flew across their red surfaces like white birds. and the corners, like clots of fire, were mountain flowers. And the lads and girls were as numerous as the flowers. They were all in shorts, and their arms and legs were bare. You could only Everywhere in the windows distinguish the girls from the boys by their red head-bands and full breasts. They were In rows, rhythmic movement. . . « “One—two—three—four!” The lines twined and looped, knotting and linking. . . « “One—two—three—four!” s Serge watched this music of movement from the door; he felt the | blood welling up into his heart. “One—two—three—four!”” Then the moving figures clashed and intermingled, other and bursting out into laughter and happy cries. GERGE stopped by the door, leaning against the post. He could go no further. The little table beyond the mass of heads and shoulders, with the three heads above it, seemed inaccessibly distant; and the re- flections of the crowd in the mirrors and the lustres was unbearably bright. Polia stood before the table, looking very small, like a young girl, She did not wear the accustomed headscarf round her yellow curls, | and she was breathlessly’ and painfully crying: “T can’t endure it, because I can neither understand nor justify, - We have destroyed and we have suffered—. A sea of blood— famine. And suddenly—the past arises again with joyful sound. . . . And I don’t know where the nightmare is: in those years of blood, misery, sacrifice, or in this bacchanalia of rich shop windows and drunken cafes! What was the good of mountains of corpses? Were they to make the workers’ dens, their poverty and their death, more dreadful? Was it that blackguards and vampires should again enjoy I cannot recog- nize this, and I cannot live with it! We have fought, suffered and died—was it in order that we should be so shamefully crucified? What for?” “Don’t you think, Comrade, that this lyricism of yours is like that | infantile sickness of the left wing, about which Comrade Lenin spoke recently?” The even voice of the tall man was calm and severe, and in com- parison the cries of Mekhova sounded like sobs. The dusty, forward- | leaning crowd stirred, and leant still further forward, troubled, “You are a leader of the Women’s Section and women’s organiza- tions, and yet you speak so thoughtlessly in front of working men and women, That won’t do, Comrade.” * 8 pous’s lipS’ were trembling and her dark eyes sank under a flood of tears. And as she passed down along the aisle, with drunken aimless steps, rows of people stared at her sadly. Some leaned towards her, whispering wheezily. “Just so, Comrade. . . . The essential. . . . Without rhyme or reason... . . Yes, for the working man. . . . We always get the same, nothing. .- . The bastards must be smashed. . . smashed... .” “Who has anything to say regarding Comrade Mekhova?” A unanimous sigh arose from the crowd; they shouted discordantly, waving their arms. “What the devil—! What’s the reason—? She’s right!” “Comrades of the Commission, Comrades of that sort must be thrown out! If it must be, it must be. That is the New Economic Policy. Onl¥ the workers must be treated equally. . . . That should be obligatory, it should be written down.” “Silence! Is this a barnyard, Comrades?” “Comrades! It’s right—. The little woman spoke well about all this inequality.” : “TI should like to emphasize, Comrades of the Commission, that this little golden-haired Comrade was born too early. As we are not yet at the stage of full Communism—. Such little women should be shown the door. . . . Young ladies. . . .” WHEN the flood of yelling had ceased, and the heads and backs were still, Serge saw Gleb standing up at the’ table looking at the lanky man with the dull gaze of a stunned beast. He was bending over him, trying to say something—you could see his lips and jaws moving—but the member of the Commission did not raise his head, was motionless as a corpse. Dasha stood in front of the table, her gaze following Mekhova, full of sorrow and fear. Serge followed Polia into the corridor. Quickly and unsteadily she walRed to the exit. Her head was thrown back and lolling from side to side. He called to her shyly and his voice echoed in the empty corridor, But she did noteturn round and ran with all her force out of the door, He returned to the door of the hall, and then he heard for the first time the loud youthful tones of the lanky man’s voice: “Yes, I understand! Here is a real member of the Party! is a real worker and militant for our Party! proud of such Comrades. success!” And Serge saw the bony man get up from his chair and shake Dasha’s hand. This Our Party can only be Go, Comrade Chumalova. I wish you every . ae 3. A AN INSIGNIFICANT ATOM. ips his little room in the House of the Soviets, Serge sat till dawn by his little lamp, reading Lenin’s Materialism and Empiro-Criticism. Carefully he underlined certain paragraphs in pencil and: made illegible notes on the margin. He would get up once in a while to pace diagonally across his room, from the table to the wash-stand, over a dusty, threadbare carpet. Thoughtfully he would smooth his bald patch with the palm of his hand. He was thinking without being able to formulate his thought. In his heart was a confused color. And loudly and distinctly he kept on repeating in the silence: “The principle of energy in no way contradicts dialectical ma- terialism, because matter and energy are only two different forms of one and the same cosmic process. Everything lies in methods and not in words. Dialectics are energy. The relations of the elements of universal matter are infinite in form and are subject to laws, In the formula, ‘matter and energy,’ the word ‘and’ is the only one about which one can argue. It is static and demands dialectical interpretation. One must think. - . . One must analyse... .” He re-seated himself and took up his book; again he began to underline sentences amd scribble annotations on the margin. * * * No door, in Polia’s room, was quiet. She was at home. As he came down the corridor he had noticed the electric light inside in her room through the ground glass panel. For a moment he noted an indistinct shadow of a curly head upon the glass. Inclined to enter he had placed his hand upon the door-knob. Then the shadow disap peared. He decided then that he had better not go in to her. If she wanted him, she would knock at the communicating door between their rooms, or would come in as she usually did. With hf book in his hand he went on tiptoe to the door and lis- tened. Polia’s room was quite quiet. Not a step nor a living sound, Without doubt she was lying on her bed—lying there with the same look in her eyes as she had had when she walked from the meeting, Perhaps she was asleep, worn out with the excitement of the past few days. It was a good thing if she was sleeping; she would be stronger in the morning. She was only a little bit tired. So many people are tired nowadays. She only needs rest. She had been happy during the wars; she had learned to laugh heartily there. She worked stren- uously at the Women’s Section, and she laughed quite a bit there too. But now came a new stage, and she had sunk under the blow. All she needed was to have rest and to realise things a little. He himself must not sleep; perhaps she would call him if she needed him, or come to him as she usually did. 4 (To Be Continued) jostling each 1 { {|