The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 23, 1929, Page 6

Page Six DATLY WORKER, NEW YORK, FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 1929 Baily Sa Worker Central Organ of the Communist Party of the U. S, A. Something to Worry About HE so-called beautification of Union Sq. Park has evoked widespread comment in the press. Most of this has been directed toward ridiculing the proposal to place a shaft in the center of the Park commemorating the late grafter and corruptionist, Charles Francis Murphy of Tamamny Hall. But the Evening World, which politically supports the crea- tures of Tammany Hall, Mayor Jimmy Walker, the cabaret bufoon, and is an enthusiastic booster for the man in the brown derby, Al Smith, is not worried about the Murphy shaft. It finds something to worry about in the fact that the statue of LaFayette was removed from the south side of the square to the east side, where it faces the Workers’ Center. Says the Evening World: “It faces the Communist Center on the east side of the square, and thus shows the celebrated Frenchman offering heart and sword to a group which, to say the least, are not likely to appre- ciate them much.” We frankly admit that we had not thought of the shift- ing of Union Park statuary in that light. But now that the World has mentioned it we quite agree that for a number of reasons we do not regard the effigy of LaFayette with any appreciation. LaFayette came to this country ostensibly to aid the revolutionary forces, not because he was in sympathy with the revolution movement, but because the degenerate king and his r list hangers-on in France hoped to strike a blow British royaity. That LaFayette was a malig- nant enemy of the masses was proved by his murderous per- formance during the great French revolution when he shot down in the streets of Paris thousands of workers. In the victory of the masses over Paris, a year ana a half later, this same LaFayette tried to rally his troops to smash the insur- rection, but was driven across the border, where he surren- dered to the Austrians and tried to induce the kings of Europe to intervene and carry on a campaign of butchery against the French masses that hac defeated him. But the inexorable march of the revolution swept from the face of the earth those whom LaFayette defended. When the royal houses of Europe finally did unite against the revolution Danton dramatized the end of Louis XVI as he thundered the memorable words: “The kings of Europe unite against us and as we take up their challenge we hurl at their feet—the head of a king.” When referring to LaFayette and his class the capitalist press may have something more important to worry about than the shifting of effigies of counter-revolutionists when they recall that today also we live in a period of social revolu- tions—against the class they serve. The Impartiality of the Liberals ENS the identical week that the class-conscious work- ers of the whole world are commemorating the anniver- sary of the murder of Sacco and Vanzetti, the snivelling lib- erals in the United States are doing their damndest to aid the capitalists stage a legal lynching in the South against the victims of the Gastonia conspiracy. Under the guise of liberal impartiality one Paul Porter, writing in the current issue of The Nation, deals with press comment upon the case and says: “The two Charlotte dailies have been little more retrained than the Gastonia Gazette, which has been equalled in calumny only by the Daily Worker denouncing the Gazette, the judge and the American Civil Liberties Union.” Just as the liberals pretend to be utterly impartial in the imperialist drive against the Soviet Union and deal alike with all countries, so in the Gastonia case they deal alike with all classes. In the eyes of the Nation there is no dif- ference between the Gastonia Gazette and the prostitute press of Charlotte inciting a lynching hysteria against work- ing-class defendants and the Daily Worker defending the prisoners against the capitalist jackal pack. A further reading of the article reveals the underlying motive for the attitude of the Nation. It is furious because the defense is conducted along class lines, because we have no illusions regarding the impartiality of cap.taiist class justice and because we proclaim to the workers of the world that only mass action of the international working class will save these Gastonia victims from the dreadful fate that was meted out to Sacco and Vanzetti two years ago. That the Nation is more concerned about spreading illu- sions about capitalist justice, so that workers will not come to hold it as universal contempt, is revealed by its fawning attitude toward Judge Barnhill and its praise of what they call his “iategrity.” They quote with approval his words that t is only one issue to try and that no extraneous matics will be permitted to becloud the issue. "hus does the Nation try to obscure completely the class content of the conspiracy and aid the prosecution with its lynching campaign by trying to make it appear an ordinary criminal case. Just as the same outfit fulminated against the revolutionary workers who branded Fuller and Grant and Lowell and Stratton murderers when they were preparing to legally murder Sacco and Vanzetti, so they now rail against us for refusing to succumb to their illusions and leave the fate of the Gastonia victims in the hands of their class ene- mies. With the trial only three days away it is imperative that not a day pass without the most widespread agitation to arouse the masses in defense of the Gastonia victims so that the American capitalist class will not dare repeat its bloody deeds of two years ago. Vandervelde Succeeds Henderson A’ the recent meeting in Zurich, Switzerland, of the execu- tive committee of the social democratic second interna- tional, Arthur Henderson’s resignation from the post of chairman was accepted and Emil Vandervelde, of Belgium, succeeded him. Henderson resigned because his duties as foreign min- ister to the king of England prevented him fulfilling the duties of chairman of the executive. Mr. Vandervelde, who during the world war was minister to the king of the Bel- gians, but who is not now holding a portfolio in a capitalist cabinet, is eminently fit to function as chairman of the inter- national organization of capitalist lackeys that is now busily engaged in aiding the imperialist drive against the Soviet Union and which proclaims that not the imperialist govern- ment, but the workers’ and peasants’ government of the Soviet Union is the greatest menace to world peace. It seems that only those who have proved their complete subserviency to capitalism by serving in a king’s cabinet are fit, to function as head of the second international. ‘pie & “SACCO, VANZETTI, WE HAVE LEARNED OUR LESSON!” By Fred Ellis | Don't Bargain with Persecution By VERN SMITH. ee readiness with which judges |* disregard in labor cases all recommendations for mercy which |juries often send in (Centralia, | Wheatlands, Pittston, for example) should be warning enough to any- Article 17—The McNamaras, Caplan and Schmidt, Mesaba Range his wife, and miner boarders, named Geogorovitch and Orlanditch, lived Jin the country near Bwabik. The| | gangsters appeared as the men were | playing cards, and Mrs. Masono- vitch sat with her youngest child. They pretended to arrest Masono- | body that when employers are using |the union, and hid them away in a tity of the family” angle, as the|Vitch (they had no warrant) for |frame-up methods to kill labor | leaders, they mean to get their man, jand are incapable of keeping any gentleman’s agreement to give light sentences, or anything else. private house in Chicago, while he wired for the Merchants and Manu- |facturers Association to indict them, | saying: “We don’t let arrest be {known here until officers arrive prepared by an unscrupulous prose-| sorts of trouble” the defendants plead guilty and let | We need not be afraid in the Gas-| with papers or they would spend tonia case that the defense will be | hundreds of thousands of dollars in caught in any of the traps always habeas corpus proceedings, and all (p. 147, “The cution, any scheme that part of|Masked War,” by Burns himself). By a process of threats and bribes, the others off, or get light senten-| brazenly admitted by Burns in his ces, or anything of that sort. The |own book, McManigal was moved to International Labor Defense cer-| swear to the prosecution story. It tainly knows that when the em-|was the same trick that failed with |ployers and their state start out to do murder under guise of law, when they resort to every variety of faked evidence and false testimony to accomplish that end, they will not hesitate to break any and all promises they feel like making. But just as a matter of record, there are two outstanding eases in American labor history in which the |defense attorneys did go into such bargains, with disastrous results not only to the defendants in those cases but to others, innocent as well, against guilty served as evidence. Those two outstanding instances are the |McNamara case and the Mesaba Range case, | Militant Iron Workers. | J. J. McNamara was elected secre- tary of the Iron Workers Interna- tional Union in 1905. It was a fight- \ing union; he and his brother J. B. | (Jim) were fighters. The open shop erectors’ association fought with |gangsters and detectives and bul- lets. All the strikes were violent. The iron workers did, in the course of the battle, blow up some scab jobs, though just who, among the | officials and members did it, has | never been proved. Taking down a ‘steel frame built by scab labor was |illegal, of course, but it was not |murder. And the union thrived; |membership doubled and wages rose \from $2.30 per nine hour day to $4.30 per eight hour day. ‘ | The powerful erectors association, and the Merchants and Manufac- turers association of California de- | liberately set to work to get the officials for murder. In 1906 they ‘hired the Burns detective agency to |do the job. i | In the midst of the great open |shop drive in 1910 in southern Cali- fornia which involved strikes in all ‘building trades, Matt Schmidt, a | member of the carpenters’ union be- ‘came known to the bosses as a mili- | tant. Was it a Bomb? On October 1, 1910, during the | strike, the Los Angeles Times build- ing burned, with loss of life. Harri- son Grey Otis, proprietor of the Times, who made his start as a |general murdering Filipinos, and 'terly, immediately accused the iron |workers’ union of starting the fire \with a bomb. He claimed to have found another bomb in his house. |Neither of these accusations was | ever proved, | Burns thereupon kidnapped J. J. '‘McNamara, Jim McNamara, and Ortie McManigal, a petty official of which the first plea of | jhated labor organizations most bit- | |Buzzi in the Grecco-Carillo case. | Clarence Darrow headed defense jcounsel. He was harrassed by con- |tinued attempts to frame him for | tampering with the jury, or prospec- |tive jury. Burns was taking care lof this too. Active preparations were on foot to indict dozens of la- bor leaders. The strike was going badly. In this situation, the prosecution made its offer. If the MeNamaras would plead guilty, J. B. to the Times “explosion” and J. J. to an- |other, they would get a light sen- tence, the ’ight-hour-day would be | granted, and there would be no more prosecutions. Violation of the Pledge. At this point Lincoln Steffins |cdme in. Steffins might be called a professional liberal. He was al- | ways actively snooping around, and |being shocked at the depravity of |mankind, the vindictiveness of em- |ployers, and the untrustworthiness j of grafters. But he always, in each |new case, bobbed up with a brand \new theory of christian charity, to \fit just this case. He saw the Mc- |Namaras. Steffins said: “J. B., the |judge understands, He will not | speak harshly and in passing judge- [ment on you, the Christian spirit | will temper his language with love and mercy.” Steffins, relating this ‘incident in speech and print after- | wards, always wondered, audibly or |legibly, why “J. B.” smiled sardonic- ally at it. Steffins was also-almost tearfully shocked when “J. B.” got from Judge Bordell a sentence of life imprisonment, and “J. J.” got | five years more than was bargained |for, and why within a month after | passing sentence, 54 more unionists |were indicted in Indianapolis for complicity in the dynamitings, four more indicted in Los Angeles, and | why, three years later, a vicious at- tempt was made, on the same charges, to railroad Matt Schmidt and Dave Caplan to the gallows with the McNamara plea of “guilty” as the prosecution’s main argument. But so it was, There were all convicted, too. The Indianapolis defendants got fairly heavy sentences for “transporting dynamite” and have served them and are out. | Caplan and Schmidt, however, Schmidt arrested in New York, and Caplan, a barber, arrested in Seattle) were tried in September 1915, and Burns made every effort to hang them. He not only brought all the faked evidence his far flung detective company could furnish, but he even overworked the “sanc- prosecution tried to do in the Gas- |tonia case. Hearing that Caplan j had lived at Home Colony, Washing- ton, Burns wrote into his lurid, melo- |dramatie book, “The Masked War,” which he published in 1913, just be- |fore he was ready to arrest Caplan and Schmidt, this gem: “Home Colony is the nest of anarchy in the United States. There jare about 1,200 of them living there without any regard for a single de- |cent thing in life. They exist in a |state of free love, are notoriously unfaithful to the mates thus chosen, | and are so crooked that even in this class or rogues there does not seem to be any hint of honor.” | Home Colony, of cours was just another of those attempts at co-| joperative farming conducted by idealistic libertarians, all of whom by this time had given up hope, and were just settling down, each on his jown little farm, to be the best | poultry raisers in the state of Wash- | ington. The only person lacking honor Burns found there was a fel- low named Voss whom he hired as a perjurer for the Caplan-Schmidt case, Packing the Jury. Earl Rogers, the attorney for the |Merchants & Manufacturers Asso- | ciation was the special prosecutor. {A letter to him from F. J. Zee- \handler, its secretary, is on record, in which Zeehandler goes over the whole grand jury list, indicating those who are sure to indict, and caution Rogers to be sure to get those. Consider again the packed grand jury in the Gastonia case, and |the ‘attempts being made to pack | the trial jury. Well, Caplan got ten years, and Schmidt got life imprisonment. Cap- {lan served his term, and Schmidt lies patiently in San Quentin serving his, with all too little effort being made to get him out, and he went there through mistaken defense tac- jtics in the McNamara case. Mesaba Range. You will remember that one of the reasons Sacco and Vanzetti were selected for the electric chair was because they served on defense com- mittees in-the Mesaba Range case. Sixteen thousand iron miners, struck on the Mesaba Range, in Minnesota, in June, 1916. The steel trust was making millions out of war orders, but the miners were working under unbearable condi- tions. They asked for the 8 hour day, and a $3 a day wage for under- ground work, The steel trust recruited gangs of gunmen, called them guards, and sent them tokill miners, John Alar, a miner, was shot dead as he sat on his own porch with his baby in his arms. At his funeral, the workers -wore to exact “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Shootings and violence became less prominent from that moment, and eventually the demands were all granted, but meanwhile there was one more raid. Raiding Masonovitch. A gang of steel trust gunmen hired in Duluth came to the house of Philip Masonovitch, who, with taking drinking water from com- | pany property. As he was putting jon his shoes to go with them, one| jhit him with a blackjack. Mrs. | | Masonovitch got up to protest, and/ !another slugged her. A _ miner} knocked the deputy down with his | | fist (nobody but the deputies were armed). Deputy Myron drew his| gun on this man, and the others| |seized Myron so he could not shoot. |The deputy on the floor shot at one} \of the miners, missed him, and killed Myron The deputies then fled the house, and on their way out, saw the driver |of a soda pop wagon, who had left it on the road and was coming to |investigate the shooting. His name | |was Latvala. The deputies killed | him. j Masonovitch, Mrs. Masonovitch, | |Geogorovitch and Orlanditch were | charged with murder. The I. W. W.| | organizers, leading the strike: Carlo | Joe Schmidt and Sam Scar- lett were also arrested, on the old |principle of Haymarket and Law- rence though this time it was called, | “accessory before the fact. Defense funds were raised, and a |fairly good publicity ‘campaign started, when the attorneys, mostly local, and the I. W. W. organizers | jin the field, were tricked by the prosecution into an agreement that the three organizers should be re- leased, the miners should plead guilty and be sentenced to one year. The judge deliberately broke his promise, as might have been ex- | pected, and sentenced them for five to twenty years. Moreover, as a re- |sult of this fiasco, the usefulness | of the organizers was considerably | diminished for years to come. The whole thing was bad business, and the lesson is plain: Don’t try to! bargain with judge or prosecutor. They won't keep their promises, | they never have kept their promises, | jit is inconsistent of men bent on. murder to stop at a little thing like | a broken contract. And you may do irreparable damage to those workers like Caplan and Schmidt, not involved with you at the time. To Appeal Barring From the Mails of Mooney Pamphlets | Appeal will be taken from Federal Judge Coleman’s ruling that the postmaster of New York was right | in refusing to allow 500 pamphlets |on the Mooney case to pass through jthe mails because of certain state- ments on the envelopes containing them, the American Civil Liberties Union announced yesterday. Judge Coleman ruled that the statements, “California’s Shame,” “Justice California Style’ and “A Terrible Indictment” defame the |people of California. Hays contends lit is impossible to defame an ab- \straction, and that the meaning of jthe statute is confined to the de- famation of an individual. On this basis an appeal will be taken to the Federal Circuit Court of Ap- peals, SAW IT 1: sree Translated by Brian Rhys MY § & L E | Reprinted, by permission, from “I Saw It Myself” by Henri Barby published and copyrighted by E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc. New ¥ LAUGHING JACK AND WHEEPING JACK 4 Martin, the stamp-seller, and Joel, the lamp-lighter, live im te same town. Martin is always jolly, with a jest for every occasion, while Joel is sullen, an eternal grumbler. Both go off to war together where their characteristics become generally known and Martin be comes very popular. Not even a wound in the head can dim We spirits. eae UT now it had changed in tone a little: They had had to trepan him, with the result that holes and gaps, and a certain dis- proportion had appeared in his mind. And now his puns would be mixed up at times, with long quotations from the Catechism and French history, which came bubbling up out of the subconscious. In hospital, he became a regular buffoon, and launched out into gambols and grimaces and apish evolutions which astounded and delighted the patients chained in horizontal attitudes to their beds. And sometimes, they’sent for the P. M. O. to watch the entertainment, “Dotty,” was the P. M. 0.’s diagnosis. And he explained that this joyful and comic exultation was simply a disturbance in his nervous system, which created a kind of rapid short circuit inside the victim’s carcass. They must have been devilish short of cannonfodder just then, for they packed him off back to the front. Lene gee Wien he arrived with the little round lid on top (he had nearly caused an uproar on the road by playing the acrobat on a station platform) the chaps observed, “He’s cracked,” and voiced the opinion that it would have been wiser to send him to Bicetre where they “patch ’em up.” But they weren’t sorry that this hadn’t been done, for Martin’s whimsical outbursts provided even better entertainment now for his audiences in trench and rear. He laughed and fairly drove others to laughter. Felled though he had been—and thanks to the felling, too— he exuded diversion at every pore, More than ever now, he counter- acted faint-heartedness and was valued by his chiefs as a mascot. Whereas Joel, more than ever fed up with war, looked for all the world like a horrid scare-crow. And besides, Martin, thanks to his new- found reserves of strength, made quite a respectable soldier. Well, an attack was made; one night, Martin found himself going over the top; friend Joel was at his side, rifle in hand, swearing black and blue as he went forward at the double. But when the whole battalion had gone over, and our crack-pated Johnny saw the walls of exploding shell closing in, heard the terrible whistlings that were heading as like as not for him, the remnants of his brain refused duty. He took fright, dived into a shell-hole where nothing could be seen, and heard somewhat less of the show. (ee 'HE attack was a dead failure. It had been carried out in defiance of common sense, without preliminaries, without proper information, thanks to a fit of spleen on the part of the brigadier-general. At last, the third of the battalion that was left came pouring headiong back into tie attacking trenches. Martin did not answer his name. He was reported missing. But next night, a patrol found him in his shell-hole; he was making faces at the stars. The patrol sergeant led him in by the ear. On his way back to quarters, he hopped and skipped and played Tom Fool, But the failure of this attack had led to unpleasant consequencess, misfortune would have it that the Head Office had got wind of the affair. The corps commander gave the brigadier a regular trouncing, and he, of course, threw the blame on the bad morale of his men. And as the two leaders got worked up over it all, it was decided to take the steps to punish defaulters. Martin was put under confinement because he had shirked his duty as a citizen and run to earth like a coward, three yards from his trench; Joel was put there too, though he had gone forward and only, come back with the rest, because he was held responsible in connection with the bad morale of troops in that sector. oe Ae OTH came up for court-martial. What with Joel’s stiff hostility and acid replies—he even dared to mutter something about “the blame” —and Martin’s incoherent remarks and indecent laughter, the military presidents were not favorably inclined. “But does this man Martin know what he’s doing?” queried the youngest among them. “Yes!” the others cried, to a man. But for equity’s sake, they called on the P. M, O., a five-striper, to give evidence. But he lunched at the gen- eral’s table every day of his life and said, “He is certainly shamming.” ‘They were both condemned to death. For the matter of that, the court had definite orders to do so, because the Higher Command held it desirable to clear the brigadier-general of any shadow of suspicion in connection with this lamentable attack, so conspicuously lacking in forethought and care. Besides, an example always makes an excellent impression. And it is also well known that for four good years this was the way with courts-martial; they always put orders before facts, and questions of policy before the paltry details of life. Martin didn’t know what to make of it all. He played Jack-a- napes quite hard in the converted dance-hall where the court was sitting, and when they were leading the men back to the cells after their sentence, he did the same. Yet while this was happening, the expression on Martin’s face underwent a change not seen before. For the first time in life, he seemed to be looking beyond the thing about him, and asking why. A strange gleam shone in those eyes that never wept, save with laugh- ing; for the first time, a film passed accross them, of anguish and distress. + os * NLY one was present to witness this; the two condemned men had been left alone together. They had always been on bad terms with each other, as you have already heard. Joel raised his rebel’s eyes and saw that Martin’s crazy gaiety was changing into a craze of terror. Martin.spoke to him. “What's the game? Damned if I see it.” A flash’ of genius darted through the anarchist’s soul and he an- swered, “Why, can’t you se@ it’s all a blooming joke?” Martin believed him; without more ado, his mouth gaped wide; his tongue felt for a jest—and the danger of disaster was over. But no! A little later, obstinate as madmen will be, he was asking, “Why are we shut in?” eee ‘ “Well, it’s true it looks like prison,” said Joel, in a bantering tone (and he had the courage to punctuate the words with a little laugh). “But surely’ you know it’s to keep us out of trouble?” And that was quite enough to restore confidence for the time being to the heart of the prince of jesters, now little more than a child, oe . ND so it was that Joel, guided by that first impulse, devoted hi slast hours of life to the task of playing mother, of succoring the human wreck driven in there by man’s justice to founder at his side. To this end, he desperately bent his will, watched his every word; guiltless and seeing, he only lived to save the man that was guiltless and blind. Feeble as Martin’s powers of reasoning were, he was quite capable of understanding that he had done nothing wrong, and this made it easier to play out the comedy, at once so small and so sublime, enacted in this little corner of the War of Filth and Slime. Next morning they brought them out in state. with the two men in the centre. “What are all these chaps doing in full turnout?” asked Martin, feeling suspicious and ready to,plunge headlong into nightmares. “There’s a beano on today. Can’t you see? Are you blind?” Martin stared all the harder. “It’s a proper swagger show, my boy,” Joel assured him, speaking in a natural voice (but not without clenching his fists) to convince him thoroughly. In a field, the whole regiment was drawn up facing two posts, and there stood the colonel and Eckenfelder, the butcher major, very smart and sprack, for the great day’s work. “What’s that they’re reading?” “It’s a speech, my lad.” “They're talking about us, can’t you hear?” “That’s because we've been through danger.” (To be Continued) They marched off,