The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 20, 1929, Page 4

‘Page Four ATL v w ORKER, IW YORK, TU: SD/ 25 AU GUST 20, 1929 “Long Live the Revolution,” Cry Porto Rican Peasants; Carry Red Flag in Parade 7 “POOR FARMERS ARE REDUCED TOSTARVATION how n With th Imperialist| Land Robbers’ The Porto Rican peasants are determined to stand the misery they have been reduced to by Wall Street not much longer. The let- ter from our Porto Rican worker | correspondent tells of some stir- | ring happenings in Porto Rico co- incident with the awakening of the oppressed workers and peasants. Peasants who are still lucky to! hold-a piece of land, share croppers and tenant farmers also on the Their toh brink of starva erop was either destroyed by thi twister, or they have been forced to sell it at a price gainful only to the huge American tobaceo trust wh has now completely and decis' forged and fettered a steel ring around the island. This means that the Porto Rican and loaded with mortgages and ac- and loade dwith mortgages and ac- cumulated interests on their land, must sell their crop at a price pre-| viously fixed by Wall Street. The whole of our Porto Rican) working class is suffering from the pangs of hunger. The inhuman con- ditions forced upon these workers cannot continue much longer. The Porto Rican working class will not tolerate it. The workers of Borinquen have militant traditions. More than once have they closed their fist and defied the imperialist ruling power of America. Rationalization is the order of the | day throughout the island, and this| means for the workers longer hours, | speed-up and less wages. But the! Porto Rican masses are not docile; they are meeting this aggressiveness | on the part of the imperialist plunderers inch by inch. \ Radicalization, the result of inten-| sified rationalization, is now rampant | and ingrained in the masses, who are showing more militancy and restive- | ness every day. Hundreds of jobless workers and) poor farmers are daily massing} around the municipal building at} Moca, an agricultural village on the} outskirts of Mayaguez, damanding| work, food and immediate relief from | the local authorities—who are so far | unable to meet the demands. Among the floaters carried by the workers, some read: “We want food; we want work.” Fiery cries emanat-| ing from the vast and menacing} crowds were heard to say, “Down| with the imperialist gringoes; out with the imperialist land robbers; viva Russia; onward toward the social revolution.” Immense crowds ion. k é of unemployed "workers and famished poor peasants are daily presenting themselves in omumberless scores at the municipal “houses of Hatillo, Utuado, Camuy in “the district of Arecibo, also an agri- cultural region, and in the munici- pality of Lares, Aguadilla. In the latter municipality and in { Particular in Utuado, the were “armed with bludgeons, | sticks and hatchets, In some instances, reports say, the workers carried the red flag of the $ social revolution. workers i} (To Be Continued) British Dirigibles io Rival Graf Speed Mark; _Prepare for Slaughter LONDON, Aug. 18.—The dirigi- ble R-100, with which imperial Brit- ain will attempt to better the speed mark set by the Graf Zeppelin on & ‘ = ry Week of “Delight” in knives, | During the dtandena Oil tines of “Delight” of the Standard Oil workers went through this sum- r Wm. Rockefeller, which blew up at Bayonne, the Lives of Standard Oil Slaves (By a Worker Correspondent) BAYONNE, N. J, (By Mail).—Last winter,when the workers of the Standard Oil of New Jersey refineries in Constable Hook were freez- ing while they were working (tanks and stills are located outdoors) didn’t the thoughts of the “great times” the Standard Oil was going to give them in the coming summer make them cheer up? Not much; on wages of $20 to $26 a week you don't feel cheerful. e tank When you work outdoors in chilly Constable Hook, you are not | allowed to leave the job for a minute of the nine hours a day you slave, eyen to warm yourself in the boiler rooms. “Ah,” said the foremen and our representatives on the Workers Council (company union), wait till the summer time. Then you'll see what a fine company the Standard Oil is to work for. And now I will show you how the Standard Oil works its schemes to keep the workers from being dissatisfied with their slavery, and repeating what they did in 1915, when every oil plant in Bayonne was tied up while the men went on strike for better conditions and wages. THE COMPANY UNION. First, there is the Works Coun-’ cil. Every year, in April, the elec- tions are held to chose representa- tives from each department, on be- half of the men, and an equal num- ber of representatives composed of company officials. The votes are supposed to be counted by represendatives of the workers as well as the company superintendents. But the counting is done by the bosses, in a locked room, and the men whom the company supers know are “reliable” for.the company are elected. STOCKHOLDERS AND SLAVES. Some of our “representatives” on the Works Council have been on the council for so many terms you can’t count them. The representative of each department on the Works Council from each department is sup- posed to take the complaints from the workers about conditions in that department to the superintendent, and get them adjusted “to the satis- faction of all,” as the company says. But, no. If you complain, either you are given harder work to do, or else the Workers Council delegate comes back and says to the men, “well, men, its like this. The Standard Oil Company has such heavy ex- penses, and is such a big company, that things will have to stay like they are in this department a while. You men own stock in this com- pany, and so you know, any extra expense to the company hurts the value of your stock.” OH, THE GLORIOUS SUMMER! JOHN D.— OLD, USELESS Slave Driver Now, about the glorious times in the summer over here, in Constable Hook. I will give you as an exam- ple one week in the life of the Standard Oil workers in the sum- mer, partly as depicted in the columns of the capitalist press of this city, controlled by Rockefeller. SERVICE BUTTONS. Let us take last week: First, we see this little item in the local papers, the house organs of Stand- ard Oil: WALTER C. TEAGLE Head of Standard Oil of N. J. its recent transatlantic flight, has now sufficient gas installed to raise herself in the hangar at Howden and will be ready to proceed to Bed- ford shortly. A strike of fitters | held up work on the war bag last | June. built at Cardington, will be “air! borne” this week, it is expected, and | will probably be“aunched in Sep- tember. A sister craft, the R-101, being! SERVICE BUTTONS FOR S. 0. WORKERS. ' “With a total of 490 years as employes, 32 men at the Bayonne plant of the Standard Oil Company received service buttons this week. George Hass as 40 years to his credit, while Owen Gallagher and John J. Pollack each completed 30 years. “Twenty year men are: Louis F. Leidy, David A. Donovan, Zig- mond A. Maczkiewicz, Wladyslaw Kopacz, Edward Washiliske, Bole- slaw Skibinewski, Russel Norris, August Teschke, Boleslaw Krysiewicz and Paul Lashitz. “Those who finished ten years as employes are: George W. Katko, Stany Zolkiewski, Anthony Kupinski, Richard C. Walsh, Andrew Bro- | dowski, John Keating, Edward Foran, Benibno S. Perez, Earl V. Freer, SLAVE ON L. Rotten Condi Conditions (By « Worker Correspondent) Here are somé facts about the slavery on the Long Island Rail-! road. The Jacobson Commissary, at 331 Bowery, was sending some men to the camp Jacobson runs for the | Long Island Railroad labor gang at Bayside, Long Island. My “financial status” as I might call it, was then pretty low. I felt it necessary to “accept” any sort of opportunity that would insure three meals and a flop a day, and some money, even though I knew Long Island Railroad. Well, first, about the Jacboson camp. The charge for board is $1.11 a day, or $7.77 a week for ‘meals that are sure nothing to brag it. The meals served the gandy rs on Long Island is about’ the served the track workers in what a rotten job it was on the! I. RAILWAY STRAW BOSSES for Gandy Dancers AUCTION JOBS (By a Worker Correspondent) DETROIT (By Mail), — Workers at Dodge Brothers are suffering from wage cuts and speeding up. There are still a few jobs that are comparatively well paid. These well paid jobs are auctioned off by the straw bosses. est sort of food — margarine for) butter. The coffee has neither taste nor color. The food is stale and | overcooked, the milk well watered, |the nourishing part of the food is completely drained off before it has ;a chance to reach the gandy danc- jer’s stomach. Is it any wonder that the gandy dancers readily take to booze? And |there is always a wide open booze joint aear at hand at these camps. | The railroad bosses know that booze keeps the workers in a daze so they can’t think about the way to better |their conditions. | Now about the slavery itself on | the Long Island Railroad. The hours jof work are eight, at 41 cents an hour. The men work six days a week. The work is hard, the men are speeded up to the limit and there is always the ever-present danger of the live wire. —RED PANTHER, Negroes have practically no chance of getting any of the bet- ter paid jobs, They are only em- ployed on the janitor, car loading, chip trucking, and trash hauling jobs. After working from 10 to 11 hours, the janitors are forced to serub the floors several nights a week, For this two or three hours extra straight time is paid, Re- cently two young men died from tu- berculosis contract’ ' while working at Dodge’ 's. Another young fellow is in the sanitarium now from the same cause, © * GLENDALE MILL’ National Textile Ww. édtake Union to Organize Petninsitenta Workers HEAT AND FUMES KNOCK GIRLS OUT Hard Slavery in the United Elastic (By « Worker Correspondent) EASTHAMPTON, M Mail). — Here are conditio few In the Gle mill a week ago one woman in the starch room fainted, ‘The terr heat and the fumes from the starch are enough to kill the workers | the hot weather. The floors of this room are always so wet that our feet are only dry in the evening at home. We often get sore fingers by pin- ning the web with a common pi Front girls only get $ girls $16 for this labor. Starch room girls should or; ize and put up demands for better sanitation. | (By { mills here, in Braiding Room. When the girls have gone home jin the evening, the belt fixers and the inspectors got busy on the braid- ing machines. They speeded them up and the next morning the girls had to start on the run at thei work to keep up. Running 21 braid- ers for $13-$16 is no fun, Let us join the union and put up| |our demands. Conditions in the United Elastic Corporation are also getting worse daily. In Colton division weavers are constantly being charged, though it be not their fault, for damagéd weaving 15 cents to $2. Badly equipped lights for night wo Compulsory overtime with str: pay. At the Glendale division we are YELLOW DOG CONTRACT CAMBRIA { Pe SILWHOSIERY-MILIS & Ree Sp fined as above for damages in weav- ing. Learners on weaving must work 4 to 5 weeks free. Style change, with new pay, which is smaller, is says. the order of the dey. Workers of these : ills must also | join their fellow workers from other mills in the union. NON-STOP FLIGHT OVER U. S MILLS FIELD, San Francisco, | Calif., Aug. 18.—Lieut. Nick Mamer, attempting a round-trip, non-stop flight between Spoke and New York arrived over Mills Field in his airplane “Sun God” today at 5:22 a.m. He is an army flyer and the flight is a stunt to boost the air service of Wall Street. “Her Way of Love,” the iaiaet ees latest of | he Sovkino fi to be shown in the United Sta is the best of all the Soviet pictures dealing with the lives of individuals. Those who go to the Film Guild this week will have the pleasure of George B. Chandley, Vincent D. J. McHugh, Chester J. Jackinowitz, Peter Dulka, Joseph F. Kubek, Thomas M. Reilly, Andrew Lukas, John Zietek, Charles T. Bigbie and John J, Vida. ‘ What are these service buttons? Another scheme to keep the Stand- ard Oil workers from being dissatisfied with conditions. Well, you can’t keep them from being dissatisfied, but the comany thinks it can keep them from expresing their dissatisfaction by action. Slave ten years, without a single raise in wages (none for 12 years now), and you get a gold button; slave 20, d you get a gold uuion and little diamond, twenty-five, two diamonds, etc. but no increase in wages, “OUR OLD SERVANTS. Now here’s the second big event in our lives—announced last week: PLAN OUTING FOR RETIRED S. 0. FOLK. “Carroll E. French, president of the Social, Athletic and Benevolent Association at the Bayonne plant of the Standard Oil Company, has named a committee to arrange for an outing and get-together for an- nuitants at the Constable Hook works. “It is proposed to take these old servants of ‘Standard’ some place where they can have an afternoon together, renew old acquaintances and talk over the many years they spent in the ‘Hook.’ “Refreshments will be served. Smokes passed around. Everything will be done to give the veterans an enjoyable afternoon.” The Standard Oil has a pension scheme, which we pay for ourselves in dues. After you are 65 years old, you are retired ona pension which you have paid for. Very few old men can stand the pace in the re- fineries, so the Standard Oil isn’t made bankrupt by this scheme. The idea is to keep the workers willing slayes, the company figuring that with an eye on a life pension, the men won't be trouble makers. These little outings are to get the old men into believing the company is so good that they will advise the younger men (mostly their sons) against bucking the “kind-hearted” Standard Oil of New Jersey. The article calls the men “these old servants of ‘Standard.’” Ser- vants is right. ° COMPANY SPORTS CLUB. You will notice another thing: “Carroll E. French, president of the Social, Athletic and Benevolent As- sociation.” This is a company sports association; Frengh is a company official, and the company controls this association. They pertmit the Works Council men to run all the events, like picnics, manage the ball teams, etc. All the big oil refineries here, most of them belonging to the Stand- ard Oil, have baseball teams. They form an industrial league, and fight for the Teagle Cup, which is donated by Walter C. Teagle, the president of the Standard Oil of New Jersey. That’s another “big event” in our lives, the “fight” for the Teagle Cup. Now for the big event of the year for the $20-$25 a week slaves of Rockefeller. What about all the slavery we undergo, all the mean- ness of the company officials and straw bosses? Forget them. The big annual excursion to Asbury Park! How wonderful the company is to its slaves, especially inviting the wives and children along, and the girl friends of the men, too. Well, the Standard Oil can keep the excursion. What would suit the men better is decent wages and condi- tions. Th ecompany saves millions a year by holding the excursion and running baseball teams and letting the men in on a little (a very little) stock. It saves it in increased wages that it would have to pay if the men fought for it. The annual picnic was held last Sunday, climaxing a “big week” for the Standard slaves. Now we can look forward to a winter of freezing again, knowing how wonderful the company has been to us last week, The “Lamp,” the company paper, will be talking about it for issues and Issues, cracking jokes about the girl friends, etc, That's one way the Standard Oil has of fooling the workers. The workers here must throw over all these schemes, which many of us realize are aimed at keeping our wages low. We must form a fighting union for all the refinery workers and the Standard Oil dock workers of Bayonne, Jersey City ee Bayway, ROCKEFELLER, Jr. JOHN PD. Wields the Whip. “Her Way of Love” at Film Cinema Guild, Top-Notcher seeing one of the most remarkable | . and certainly the prettiest actresses ler the Soviet Union boasts, Don’t let the title seare you. That! is just a dodge to get the customers) \in. The picture is not the kind the! title suggests. The label Sovkino ought to tell you that. \ The action of the picture takes} | Place thru the periods of the world! | war and the March and October re-| volutions. Praskovia, a peasant girl, is forced against her will to marry| Fedor, a vicious landowner of the village, a combination of weakling and bully who has already driven} one wife to the grave. she’s done for” whisper the peasant women when the wedding ceremony jis completed. | The direction of Alexander Striz- hak and Dimitri Poznanski is in-| spired the photography by Vladimir) |Semenor is matchless. The beauti- ful, peaceful pasrtoal scenes; the shots of waving, wind-blown wheat-| fields, grazing-cattle, plow-drawing| horses must be seen to be appre- | ciated. Fedor is a thing of repulsion to Praskovia from the beginning. All} the loutishness and repulsiveness of the kulak is superbly brought out | by the Soviet actor, A. Zhukov. News of tHe war comes to the vil- lage, all the young men are taken |away as common fodder “or czar and and country,” and Fedor as a \formy army officer, goes too. The departure of all the able men of the village is stark in its sim- plicity. They march out, a ragged bunch, wives and children by their sides, The wheatfields wave, the last link between the peaceful lives these peasants have hitherto lived, and the noisy hell of war they are going in to. The village is now a village de- nuded of youth—a barrenness of old, worn out peasants and women is left —the latter must do the farm work. Soon, to alleviate the inability of the women to carry on the work, a detachment of Austrian soldiers, prisoners of war, are brought to the village, to be distributed for work in the fields. (Karl Gurnyak), is one of these. He is selected by Praskovia as her aid in the harvest- ing. He proves to be the best field- hand in the village. In time they fall in love, and Ian is no vicious Fedor, Hatred towards Praskovia on the part of tna other peasant women of the village, caused by jealousy, takes a malignant form. In showing the women at the river bank, doing their laundering, getting in sly digs at Praskovia, and sur- prised by her while maligning her. The film gives us a faithful picture of village life. The war was a crushing burden to the peasants. The Austrian pris- oners and the returned, maimed soldiers, help to spread the virus of discontent. It is the Spring of 1917, and Ker- ensky, is in the saddle. To revive the patriotism of the village, an old demogogue is sent to urge the pea- sants to continue to support the war “to a victorious end.” an is one of those in the assemblage who call on the peasants to oppose the use- less slaughter. “Poor soul,| | Soldiers Ian learns from returned of the great sweeping thru the country—the Bolshevik revolution. He becomes a member of the Red Guard. In the civil war, two years later, | the village is occupied by the white | Fedor leads the latter. It jis Praskovia who summons the Red |troops. They attack, and in the} fighting, Ian is killed, and so is/ Fedor. When the Red Army leaves j)the village, Praskoiya goes with them—a Red soldier. business, The direction by Aleander Striz. | |hak and Dimitri Poznanski is in- spired; the photography by Vladimir |. Semenov is matchless. The beauti- | ful, peaceful pastoral scenes; the} shots of waving, wind-blown wheat- fields, grazing cattle, plow-drawing |horses must be seen to be appre- ciated. No footage is wasted in this ex- ample of marvellous effiicency in the art of the camera. No unnecessary sentiment, no heroies. With the aid of Zassarkaya’s skill, expressing her disgust with the kulak, we know immediately that she has been forced to marry Fedor. A riderless horse, and we know that Ian has been killed in the attack by the Reds on the whites. A grewsome short—Poe’s Tale Heart,” is also on the pro- gram. It cost Charles F. Klein only $312.50 to produce this Poe fan- tastic, in which a madman kills an} aged miser, buries him under the floor planking, and is tormented by the beating of the old man’s l.eart into confessing the murder. o % 54 Years Mill Slave Would Aid the Organization (By a Worker Correspondent) GRAHAM, N. C. (By Mail).—I am writing you a few lines. You do not know me, never saw mein your life. But I would like to see you and talk to you face to face. I can tell you things I cannot write. I am a textile man, been one ever since I was 13 years old, und I am now 54. I worked my way all the way from doffer boy to superintendent. I have been boss weaver now for some time till last week I was laid off, not because I could not run the job but because they wanted a younger man on this job. It is a Northern firm making plush. I am a poor man, haye not had the chance to lay up anything for a rainy day on account of sickness in my family. I am ob- liged to work at something. I would not mind going with a good’ :rowd and help organize the South for I think it needs to be done. B. R. CAMEO:2:N0l American Premiere “Wrath of the Seas,” or “BATTLE of JUTLAND” HEAR AND SEL Geo. Le Malre—ALL-TALIC On a visit to the town on farm| ) Comedy, “BEACH BABIES” movement | “Tell- | NATION MILL ° UNION DRIVE IS ON IN PENNA, Workers Betrayed by U. T. W. Fakers (By « Worker Correspondent) ALLENTOWN, Pa, Aug. 18.— With the sending of Martin Russak, former Paterson organizer, into |Pennsylvania as District Organizer of the Lehigh Valley district, the | National Textile Workers Union has begun a campaign to organize the textile workers of the entire region lrunning from Phillipsburg and Laton \to Allentown, and to launch a strug- gle for better conditions for the bit- terly exploited textile workers of Pennsylvania. In the Lehigh Valley are located the largest silk weaving mills in the country, many throw- ing plants, and a number of big yayon mills, employing a majority of women and girl workers, running on two and three shifts and produc- ling over 60 per cent of the total |silk production in the country. With conditions considerably lower than in New Jersey mills, the prosperous Pennsylvania silk capi- talists have been lengthening the work day, increasing the speed-up, and forcing wages still further down. The result has been a wave of spontaneous strikes, Within the last six months there have been | dozens of sporadic strikes in the Le- high Valley mills. But without or- ganization, betrayed by the As- sociated and the U. T. W., the work- ers have had no method of combin- ing these struggles so as to make them really effective. The latest mill that struck in Allentown, the SMS, resulted in a defeat when the officials of the Associated, Quinlan and Matthews, abandoned the work- ers in the midst of their struggle. |This strike also ended in a smash- ing defeat of the Associated fakers |when Organizer Russak of the NT | WU captured the strike meeting and Jexposed the role of thé Associated to the crowd of workers who were |present. Many workers left the As- sociated and joined the NIWU. The NTWU has already organized functioning mill committees in over |20 mills throughout the Valley. In | Easton, a UTW stronghold, the NT Wises has set up mill committees in {six mills, including the great Stan- dard mill which has over 2,500 |looms. In Allentown, the NTWU is | gaining new members every day and {has organized mill groups in many big mils, such as the Adelaide, a |mill of 2,000 looms, In the Arcadia, a large rayon mill jin Allentown jswhere hundreds of young boys and girls slave 10 to 12 |hours a day for an average weekly | wage of $15, the NTWU has an ac- tive mill local with members from every department. Two successful mass meetings have been held by the NTWU in Allentown within the last 8 weeks. On Aug. 15, a spirited protest meeting against the Gas- tonia frame-up, was held with Amy Shechter and Martin Russak as the speakers, and the workers contrib- | uted $17.10 to the Defense Fund and pledged themselves to fight until |the Gastonia strikers are freed. Thousands of copies of the call to the first National Conference of Silk Workers, which will be held in |Paterson on August 25, have been distributed at mill gates up and down the Valley. The Pennsylvania workers are looking forward with the greatest interest to the confer- ence and are taking steps to send large delegations to Paterson. Dele- |gates will come from the anthracite region as well as the Lehigh Valley to participate in the preparatory work for a great national movement of the silk workers. The silk work- ers are also mobilizing, together with the Bethlehem steel workers of Bethlehem and the auto workers of Allentown, for the TUEL Conven- tion at Cleveland. We Throw Communists Out of the Window, Czech Police Admit PRAGUE (By Mail).—In Bratis- lava there is a special “Communist department” at police headquarters, One of the detectives on duty here, when questioning a comrade, a young woman, who would not tell where she had got the leaflets, she had been distributing and said “I don’t know, I can’t tell you, even if you beat me to death,” answered “We need not beat you to death. We have a much better way. We simply throw you out the window and say you committed suicide and nobody is the wiser.” After every revolution markt Progressive phase in the e! gle, the pu WALL ST. BOMBER TOURS. BOSTON, Aug. 18.—The huge navy dirigible Los Angeles, nosing lazily through a cloud-spotied sky, appeared over Boston at 11:20 a, m. today, 20 minutes ahead of schedule, on a one-day cruise of New England,