The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 26, 1929, Page 6

’ Page Six ~ DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, M S45 Worker Daily? Central Organ of the Communist Party of the U.S. A. Published by the Comprodaily Publishing Co., Inc... Daily, except Sunday, at 28 Union Square, New York City, N.Y. Telephone Stuyvesant 1696-7-8. Cable: “DAIWORK.” SUBSCRIPTION RATES: By Mail (in New York only): 34.50 six months $2.50 three montha By Mail (outside of New York): id $3.50 six months 32.0 three months $8.00 a year $6.00 a year Address and mail all checks to the Daily Worker, 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. ¥s Mobilizing the Traveling Salesmen to Aid a Legal Lynching V 7HAT a traveling salesman says in general is of little consequence. Most of the horde of individuals that travel over given territories throughout the United States peddling goods of one sort or another would have to strain their brains in a long school course to become low grade morons. We will not speculate at this time on the problem of whether they are salesmen because they are ignoramuses, or ignoramuses because they are traveling salesmen. It is too much like the question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? But this well-known characteristic is on divers occasions put to good use by the capitalist c At more or less regu- lar intervals these worthies are called into the “home office” fora sales lecture by some wind-bag who tells them what to Say when they are on the road. If a state or local political campaign is on they are given arguments in favor of certain capitalist candidates who are under obligations to the boss or to his clique. In‘the most pompous, arrogant, black-slapping manner these megaphones carry out their instructions and repeat with variations what they have béen told to say by the office spokesman. One of these specimen, commenting upon the trial of the Gastonia prisoners, boa$ted: “If I were on that jury I would pay no attention to the evi- dence or the law and vote on the first ballot to electrocute every damn one of them.” The utterances of this miserable whelp must not be re- garded as the mere fulminations of an individual. In a thou- sand different forms these same sentiments are being pub- liely expressed throughout the newly industrialized South. It is-a part of the general lynching campaign against the Gas- tonia prisoners that is being carried on under the direction of the chambers of commerce, the bankers, the industrialists and the whole ruling clas The exploiters of labor are mob- ilizing every force at their command to stop the wave of strikes that has swept the South and to arrest the move- ment of the working class for abolition of long hours of toil, low wages and the terrific speed-up (stretch-out). They want to make an example of the strikers and strike leaders who are on trial in Charlotte in order to instill terror into the hearts of the workers in that part of the country. The Charlotte trials are calculated to complete the job that Chief of Police Aderholt and his drunken and depraved subordinates did not achieve on the night of June 7th, when they attacked the tent colony with murderous intent and were defeated by the heroic resistance of the strikers. The very fact that these men and women of the work- ing class are held for trial for daring to defend themselves is sufficient proof that the murder conspiracy that failed on the night of June 7th in Gastonia is being carried out in other forms in Charlotte. Every person that can be bought, bribed or intimidated is aligned on the side of the bosses and their conspiracy to wreak vengeance upon the Gastonia victims. Against this infamous conspiracy the working class of the nation and of the world must fight with every means at hand. Not for one second must any worker succumb to the illusion, so carefully broadcast by the liberals who are aiding the executioners, that capitalist justice is anything but an instrument of oppression and terror against the working class. Only the might of the working class will defeat the conspiracy to legally lynch the workers now on trial in Char- lotte. The trial itself must be followed step by step in order to expose to the whole world the methods by which capital- ism maintains its rule against the working class. Let every working man, woman and child during the ten days’ collec- tion for the Gastonia victims contribute all that is possible so that the fight can be carried out to the end—which must be the return of these workers to the fighting ranks of labor. MacDonald Helps Bosses Cut Wages 'WO news items appeared in Friday morning’s news about the British “labor” government’s domestic policies. One ‘of them was to the effect that the MacDonald, Henderson, Snowden, Bondfield outfit was swinging further to the right and that it would henceforth find some of its strongest sup- porters among the former tories and liberals. The other was that the committee selected by the government to arbitrate the attempt of the textile bosses of Lancashire to impose a wage cut upon 500,000 workers had decided that the work- ers must take a 614 per cent wage cut below the starvation wages they were already receiving. “* No avowedly capitalist government ever engaged in a more despicable and cynical piece of strikebreaking than the MacDonald heroes of the social democratic second interna- tional in this case. When a 121% per cent wage cut was an- nounced the 500,000 workers affected went on strike. After a@ few weeks of maneuvering the MacDonald government finally persuaded them to return to work pending arbitra- tion,. The 614 per cent wage cut is the result of this treach- ery and betrayal. It is quite evident that the employers got everything they wanted. It is not at all improbable, in fact it is more than likely, thatan agreement on strategy had been reached between the mill owners and the government before the wage cut was an- nounced and that the original demand of the employers was purposely high in order that, through the trickery of arbitra- tion, they could impose the cut they wanted. There is one obvious political conclusion that can be drawn from this sell-out. That is the fact that many of the 500,000 workers who were so shamelessly treated will now fully understand the infamy of the MacDonald government, will recognize that it is a government of the ruling class against the working class and will repudiate it, along with its assistant scoundrels and agents of capitalism at the head of their trade unions, and will swing toward the Communist Party and the Minority movement. The longer the MacDonald government remains in office the more clearly will the workers of England come to under- Q stand its real role as the enemy of the working class. And ‘not all the support the labor party of MacDonald and com- can receive from the ranks of the liberals and tories offset the mass desertiong of disillusioned workers. 4, “HER | By Fred Ellis Legal Lynching Still in By VERN SMITH. Ix the course of these articles, there have been described 22 cases in which the employers of America| used the courts in an attempt to) legally lynch militant labor leaders. In three of these trials, Haymarket, | Joe Hill and Sacco and Vanzetti, they actually succeeded. “ In six Article 18—Cheswick and Gastonia that basis. In each case, it must bey remembered, labor leaders and out-| standing. militants who could have had nothing to do even with the act, of self defense, were also selected for the executioner. Cheswick. The Cheswick case is one of a \either shot by this man, who was not arrested, or was hit by one of cases, Homestead, Haywood, Law- rence, Everett, Herrin, and Grecco | brutal assault by Pennsylvania state tory. In most of the cases, the con-| troopers on a Sacco-Vanzetti pro- trials, the defense won a clean vic- i} viction was secured on a reduced|test meeting of several thousand | charge, or the death penalty was) not inflicted, and the victims were| given long prison terms. | In these articles, there has been no attempts to deal with the literally | thousands of cases of frame-up on} lesser charges than murder. Dozens | results from every strike. A whole | book could also be written about the | criminal syndicalism, criminal an- \archy, sedition law, espionage law | anti-picketing law, injunction cases, all of which involve elements of frame-up, as such statutes and rul- ings do not usually prohibit the ac- tual deeds of those convicted, but as in the criminal syndicalism laws, speak vaguely about “incitement to| destruction of property,” etc., and |are then made to outlaw members | in certain working class organiza-| tions by false testimony about the ends and aims of these organiza- | tions, | | Two cases not counted above, are | in process now. In these two cases |the working class, if it has learned | the lesson of the long history of the | use of courts by the employers as jone of their weapons in the class struggle, will see that they must \rally for energetic defense. In both |of them appear all the characteris- \tic features of the frame-up: the juse of mass terror to influence the | ‘neighborhood, the systematic corrup- ‘tion of juror material by propagan- da and direct visitation, the attempt to pack juries, the use of police, | stool-pigeon and professional labor | spy evidence by the prosecution, the supplying of legal advice to the | prosecution by the employers, the press barrage against the defense, the “damn foreigner” argument, the “Bolshevik” argument, the “sanctity {of the home” argument, the “pro- tection of American ‘institutions” argument. Both of'them involve the attempt to convict leaders who could not have been dircctly involved in | the incident for which they are in- dicted. Self Defense. Both of them though, are not frame-ups “pure and simple.” They are cases, primarily of self defense on the part of the workers; in the Gastonia case the workers even or- ganized to defend themselves against jattacks that were threatened, though they had no special prepara- tion for the particula ault that |caused the fight used as an excuse |for their arrest. In these two cases, the frame-up |consists essentially, as in the Hay- | market, Homestead, Everett, Lud- low, Centralia, Mesaba Range, |Herrin, Rangel and Cline, Logan , County, Cliftonville, and Pittston teases, in the use of typical frame- |up tactics to make the workers’ act of legitimate self defense appear as murder, and to get a conviction on striking miners on a farm, near Cheswick, August 22, 1927. The police charged in on horseback, club- bing, shooting, and hurling gas bombs. Many miners’ women and children were injured. One miner had his neck and arm broken by police clubs, and is a cripple for life. One man lost his hearing as the re- sult of a blow on the head, Mrs. Mary Gates an old grandmother, was knocked down and_ horribly beaten by troopers, one of whom proposed to shoot her, and probably would have done so, had not Mrs. Wm. Mitchell bent over her and protected her. Mrs. Mitchell was then clubbed in the small of the back by troopers standing around and suf- fered fatal internal injuries. The Role of th By LEONARD PATTERSON. , The most important task of the) YCL is to win the Negro young} workers for the revolutionary youth movement. This work has been| badly neglected by the League and this must be remedied at present. | The Negro Youth has been drawn into the basic industries of this! country, such as coal mining, steel, | textile, railroad, chemical, etc. In| these indus'vies the Negro Youth is subjected to the most ruthless ex- ploitation. As a result of rationali- zation, the Negro young workers are taking the place of adults and work longer hours at less wages. The Negro young workers receive} the filthiest jobs and because of \their color are subjected to various forms of discrimination. In most cases the Negro Youth is last to be hired and first to be fired. The dis- crimination also exists in schools, | sports and in all fields of social life. | The Jim-Crow system is a good means in the J ands of the bosses to divide the young workers along racial lines, so as to make more profits. Down in the south the Negro young workers suffer the most bit- ter from the age of 7, such as the cotton industries, tobacco, textile, lumber, ete. This gives a very little time for schooling. The youth in the south works 14 to 16 hours per day, 6 days a week and a led away from the struggle of the revolu- tionary youth. This is due to the poison in their minds by the agency of the capitalist churches. They suffer the most bitter forms of dis- crimination and are denied. the rights of social life. In many sides they are not allowed to walk on the same side of the street as the whites. Today when the bosses are pre- Paring, a new imperialist war they Progress Jaccuse of the killing of Holt. They | | picked a miner who had gone, as| | many have gone to the cities to look for work after the collapse of the | strike through Lewis’ treachery. | Early in June, 1929, they arrested Salvatore Accorisi, at his home, 731 | Elbe Ave., Concord, New York, and} he is slated for execution in Pennsyl- vania. The International Labor De- | fense resisted extradition for him, | jand extradition proceedings is still | pending. the police bullets, and killed. | Whoever shot Holt has a clear ‘A large number of arrests were |CaSe. of self defense, but there is Trooper Holt, walking down a lane, swing his club and shooting as all his fellows were shooting, | recklessly, came upon a man who had stumbled. Holt clubbed the man, and lifted his gun. Holt was then made among the crowd, as it was | Nt even any evidence that Accorisi | leaving the field. Twenty-one were | W8 the one who shot Holt. If he is | first charged with murder. The |€Xtradited, taken back to the coal number was reduced to ten: Mike |0Perators’ courts in Andy Mellon’s Marakowich, Dominic Mangini, Pete | State, his life is indeed in grave | Mangini, Frank Maskaluskas, Dom- | @nger. inic Larefice, Joe Bracco, Tony de! | Bernardini, Joe Lorie, Raymond] About the time this article is pub- Sienna and Peter Moretti. lished, the Gastonia case will be The charge was reduced to “riot- Probably on the front pages of every ing, inciting to riot, and resisting | Paper in the country, again. Solici- an officer,” and some minor accusa- | tor Carpenter of Gastonia has re- tions. It was reduced because it was Cently declared that he will demand too evident these ten had nothing to the death penalty for each of the ido with the @hoseing of Hole 13 charged with first degree murder, Their case has been several times 274 expects them to burn in the Gastonia. | electric chair. Remember Judge pearenety snd tas not COMP TD | 4 ous boust inthe Saeoo-Vanwerll ee 7 case, and the district attorney's Ae Scrat slogan, “in the death house by But then the coal company detec- tives looked around for a victim to mas" in the Grecoo case, There is the same campaign of | | Villification of the defense by the jemployers’ press, as in all previous | e Negro Youth cases, There is the religious issue, brought out by the prosecution’s questions in habeas corpus hearings. are making special efforts to mili- | There is the “defense of homes, and tarize the Negro youth. But even|American institutions” argument. in these attempts to prepare the Burns remarks about “free love” are Negro workers for another war, the ,echoed by the prosecution and the bosses also discriminate against the employers at Gastonia. There is young Negroes. For instance, in the anti-foreigner issue, complicated Philadelphia, young Negroes were by injection of an appeal to race denied admittance to same Boy | prejudices. Scout camp as the white. Asare-| There are the -stoolpigeons, and sult the young Negroes broke away | the attempt to corrupt the trial jury from the Boy Scouts and joined the | before it is selected, also the pack- Young Pioneers which fights |ing of the grand jury, as in many | against all forms of race dissent preceding cases. | Nite Masked Mob Raid. Negro young workers can emanci- | There was a preliminary raid on pate themselves only by joining the |the union headquarters, as in Cen- revolutionary movement and fight- | tralia, no arrests for it, utter lack of ing side by side with all the young | police protection for the new head- |workers for better conditions and | quarters, and the strikers’ declara- jfor a workers and farmers govern- | tion to the governor and the public ment. On September all over the |that they would defend themselves world the militant young workers if attacked again, as in Centralia. will mobilize for a struggle against | There was the plot to eliminate wars to cel-brate IYD. The Negro the strikers’ tent colony by sheer young workers must rally to the massacre, as in Ludlow. There was call of the YCL and celebrate to-|the strikers’ resistance, as at Lud- | gether this day. The YCL must| low, Centralia, and other such cases. on this day bring the Negro young | Then there were the mass arres' workers under its banners for a|Which include men who were not struggle against capitalism, jon _the scene of combat, but es- Up until now, the Young Cornu |pecially include the leaders of the nist League has paid very little at- ROR NGIS 22h A tention to the working youth of the tralia, Lawrence, Mesaba Range, bs A and many other cases. The em- south. This must be remedied and i immediately turn to the working ployers pay for the prosecution, and YOu Gf) the “auth acd congnetae assign their best legal talent to the youth in the ranks of the revolu- cupaee hy “4 ret ra re ous tionary working youth of the world it |miners’ cases, and others. There and United States of America under th ; thé banner of’ the YOL" the vane was the attempt at lynching, which b succeeded at Centralia, and the tor- guard of the working youth. |ture of prisoners, as at Wheatlands Fight for the interests of the| and Centralia and other cases, workingclass! It would in fact, be difficult to Defend the Soviet Union! pick out any single outstanding fea- Long Live the Solidarity of the ture of the Gastonia case, that has Working Class! not an exact parallel in the legal lynchings, and attempts at legal Fight Against Race Discrimina- | lynching 7 * 6 \tion! | kiss, like. by | SAW | i HENRI BARBUSSE Translated by Brian Rhys MY g i L F Reprinted, by permission, from “I Saw It Myself” by Henri Barbusse, published and copyrighted by E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc, New York. BUTOIRE i The French soldier, Butoire, stationed in a trench with other comrades somewhere in No Man’s Land, volunteers for patrol duty under Sergeant Metreur. Unfortunately Butoire drinks too liberally of wine before going on duty and so he is quite groggy. i for lentils, filled up his canister and sat down beside it. lay there, stopper out, imploring him with one round eye; and Butoire consented. Just a little drop to begin with, just a touch, a 4 ; Butoire, whe | . HE ration party had brought up lentils. Wine too. had had some wine brought on his account, and didn’t feet hungry,, The canister - The canister was a beauty. It held two litres and in those days cans like that were rare on the front. It had belonged to a Moroccan; struck by a brain-wave, he had let off a blank cartridge in the neck-head and disvended it until it could take two litres and a half. The other chaps knew all about it, but the shop hands didn’t so that when wine was served out from the canteen tap in rest billets, Butoirg { was always robbed of a bit less than the rest. When Sergeant Metreur inspected the four men he was taking | off on patrol in the dark, Butoire, with his back to the trench wall, held himself up stiffly, and made a good show of it. But when the little band hoisted themselves up out of the trench and, crawled, kneeled, © then marched out over the plain, Butoire, last in the file, felt rather uncertain inside, and floundered through the dark air as if it had been water. A grim effor’ of will, like an iron band, held him up straight. No wobbling, hey! HE concentrated on making no sound as he trod over the blackened felt of the fields, holding his rifle—that dangerous object—in his right hand, well away from tke body, and gripping his bayonet sheath firmly with the left to keep him quiet. He tried not to lose sight of the shadowy, shapeless back of the man before him; weird how it went clean out, came back, and sometimes became two or three! But the fumes, quickened by the night air, made his brain as woolly as the clouds hanging ominously overhead and at the same time dragged his feet strongly downwards towards earth. Hardly had they been skirting the lower edge of the embankment which itself skirts and overlords the river for ten minutes, when Butoire slowed down in spite of himself, dropped behind, fell farther and farther to the rear, and began to realize with trepidation that as he walked, he was dropping off to sleep. Sense of duty, vague fears of well-merited punishment, goaded him forward. He swore at himself, took a few more steps, was on the point of calling to his companions, out of the depths of his misery, but— gods above!—he stopped the cry in his throat, with a sudden effort; utter a cry in this place, where silence and gloom were all there was to hold a thin shield between them and death! . HE held his peace, but stopped. Nothing, now, could stop him sinking down, down to earth and sleep, He stumbled on the top of. the embankment, crouched down. In maudlin mood, he spoke softly to his rifle, thought of his wife Adele, as he always did in a crisis. He saw the outskirts of his village under a sunny sky: the warm deliciousness of the fruit-trees in the sun; he saw it, too, as it appeared on a winter's morning; the plateau behind the farm stripped bare, the pond with its sheet of glass, where men and women passing by the clumpy bushes appear as though tricked out in newspapers. Sleep at last laid firm hands on his limbs, numbed the brain in which the last stubborn traces of will were still whirling round, forcibly closed his eyes, and Butoire slept. He woke in the middle of a stormy nightmare; a band pressed on his temples, an ache sledge-hammered in his brain; his stomach was a He scarcely knew where he was, or even who he was. And yet, in the same moment, a noise made him prick up his ears in the terror of the night. The alert instincts of the night watcher were at work in him, for all the hurly-burly of his thoughts. And perhaps—so strong in him was this habit of living on the alert—it was this every noisethat had roused him. He felt that some danger was near. Stifling his hiccups, sick at heart, painfully and clumsily fumbling his way, he dragged himself over the grass. High up on this bank above the Aisne, as over the top of a mighty treneh, he thrust out a burning head, with eyelids throbbing, an unearthly singing in his brain. Reon him, the embankment dropped almost vertically. Thick dark- ness made it impossible to see down to the bottom, but far below the « faint glint of water was discernible, and away on the far side, a pale and indistinct ribbon—the towing path. On this long pale curve, stretching out into the background of night, a group of shadows was unmistakably moving. It was a German patrol. The patrol was lost to sight in the dark recesses of a large, con- fused mass stepping across the inky black of the river. Pasly Bridge. Butoire knew it so well in its night disguise that he muttered its name, even though struggling then with a kind of nightmare. But suddenly his wildly throbbing senses were called back to a point much nearer, by the sound he had already heard, He fumbled with his eyes through the darkness. And then, scarcely twenty paces below, close, ever so close, he saw a German climbing up the slope, gradually, on hands and knees. The enemy soldier was making straight for Butoire’s staring eyes, down among the murky upheavals of the dyke. His rifle happened to be lying in front of him; he took rough aim at the climbing shape, fired. The German, who was on all fours, fell on his face and lay still. The shot had sent out a resounding noise into the night. Butoire, feeling himself suddenly calm, freed at last from alcoholic fumes, waited. a little, holding his breath. One or two detonations, calling one ta the other, burst forth here and there round the horizon, flashing out their momentary red haloes. Then nothing. { GOOD quarter of an hour passed. Under the stress of this violent emotion, Butoire had largely regained clearheadedness. The moon was spreading forth a filmy wrap, through muslin hangings in black and grey. Sharp cold was drying the mud on his face and sobered him completely. He was only a little numb now. He decided to make for his victim and search him. That done, he would return to the outpost: mere child’s play! He rejoiced to think that this homecoming would be quite enough to silerice any blame for deserting his patrol! He began to move then, with all desirable care, on hands and knees, planting his rifle down a little further ahead each tinfe. He got over the ridge, flattening himself out to make it hump up as little as possible, and moved down the slope, his rifle with him. He reached the dead German. Sure enough, he was dead: his skull was just like a broken red egg and the brain lying among these shell-like fragments was soft to the touch. Butoire felt over his clothes and weapons in the professional manner, Then he started back, with a stifled ery: “What!” Then up he got, waving a tin hat in the air like a madman, and, in the heart of that awful abyss of sleep, caring not for the death that he invoked in this wise on his head, caring not at all, he ‘bellowed aloud. The man he had killed was a French soldier! (To be Continued) * * * ravening fire. * . 7 * * * taken a hand to help the prosecution. In the Sacco-Vanzetti case, it ai isted in the selection of the vic- tims; in the present case, it cripples the defense by denying mailing privileges to envelopes used by the LL.D. i The police of every city try to break up Gastonia defense meetings, they did the Sacco-Vanzetti meet- ings. A host of cases parallel to Cheswick are already on court cal- end except that so far no murder There is the situation, Workers the World, and whether these mei go to the chair with the three wome1 organizers accused of second de gree murder, and the seven mej charged with “secret assault wit! a deadly weapon, etc.,” given prison terms, is entirely up to Only strenuous activities on part will save them. The history such cases shows that such is effective, if it is enough and comes * s lynching of labor leaders, in the re- Fight Against Imporialist Wars! Even the federal government, has : i cent past, were made in apy of them,