The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 21, 1929, Page 1

| THE DAILY WORKER FIGHTS For a Workers-Farmers Government To Organize the Unorganized Against Imperialist War For the 40-Hour Week Baily Eatered as second-class matter at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., under the act of March Vol. VI., No. 169 26-28 Us! Company, inc. Square, Publishe? dally except Sunday by The Comprodally Pab! New York City, N. x, Sas: NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1929 FINAL CITY EDITION Price 3 Cents NEW YORK MASSES RALLY FOR SOUTHERN WORKERS All Capitalist Press Mobilizes Behind the Mill Barons to Cover Political Defeat The sharpest and broadest struggle against capitalist rationaliza- tion, directly connected with the imperialist war danger, is going on in and around Gastonia, N. C.,—the center of the cotton spinning section of the textile industry in the South. The National Textile Workers Union through its correct program and militant struggle has won the support of thousands of textile workers who are actually living below the subsistence level as the prevalance of pellagra—that foul disease of malnutrition—shows. The Bessemer City conference of the National Textile Workers Union held on July 28, the sweeping support aroused for the coming Charlotte conference to be held Oct. 12, 13, the increasing determina- tion of. the masses of mill workers to fight the oppression of the mill bosses and their government, the growing popularity of the demands for the abolition of the stretch-out, for the 8-hour day, 100 per cent organization of the textile industry—all were definite political defeats for the mill owners. Then came the trial of Fred Beal, Louis McLaughlin, Russell Knight, Robert Allen, Clarence Miller and eight other organizers and members of the N. T. W. U. on a charge of first degree murder as a result of the battle at the union headquarters on the night of June 7, in which Chief of Police Aderholt lost his life in leading an armed raid of police and mill thugs against which the workers defended themselves. The result of the trial up to the time that one of the jurors was driven insane by the strain was another political defeat for the mill owners and their government. * Millions of workers learned that the trial was a deliberate effort by the mill owners and their government to electrocute thirteen ‘workers for defending themselves and their union, and their right to organize and strike, against the armed mer- cenaries of the mill owners. It is now quite well established that the jury—most of them workers—would have returned a verdict of not guilty. The legal offensive of the bosses and their state failed. Meanwhile the National Textile Workers Union was organizing. The influence of the Communist Party was extending. Our Party was making clear to thousands of Southern workers the role of the government as the “executive committee of the capitalist class.” Fascist terror was substituted for the “legal” murder processes A price was put on the head of organizers and active members of the National Textile Workers Union. Communist leaders were singled out as special targets of the terror. The city, county and state government, backed and encouraged by the national government, did two things: First, it tried to throw a veil of impartiality over the bloody ac- tivities of the black hundreds of the mill owners. Second, it gave its , zid freely to the thugs of the mill owners. To carry out the fi plan it staged fake investigations ostensibly to establish the identity of the leading terrorists, but actaally to give them a chance to cover up and whitewash themselves. To carry out the second purpose, it lends to the Manyille-Tenckes armed bands the organizational ability of Major Dolley of the state militia. He furnishes the military ability and is the commander-in-chief in the field. Carpenter, the district attorney, recognized by some of the kid- napped workers and others as one of the leaders of the black hundred band, is given a clean bill of health by Governor Gardner and allowed to conduct the investigation of the murderous activities of himself, of Major Bulwinkle, chief counsel of the Manville-Jenckes Company, and of Major Dolley of the state troops. Governor Gardner expresses full confidence in Carpenter’s im- partiality. While the “investigation” is in progress bands of armed thugs are roaming the textile centers of both North and South Caro- lina, more workers are kidnapped and tortured and Ella May, mill worker and mother of five children, is shot down in cold blood. Murderous threats against the Communists and all organizers and active members of the union. Then a woman worker is murdered in the name of “impartiality.” Once more Governor Gardner is right- eously indignant and orders another investigation. While it proceeds another mill worker, a member of the National Textile Workers Union is dragged from his bed, carried into South Carolina and beaten almost to death by mill thugs. The union of the state and the mill capitalist is complete and clear. The capitalist press rushes to the rescue of the murder campaign. The New York World, the one-time exposer of the Ku Klux Klan, and unofficial organ of the Roman catholic church, liquidates all religious differences under the pressure of the necessity of protecting capitalist democracy and leaps out in the lead of the campaign to exterminate militant unionism and the Communist Party in the South by armed force. The World, and the other captialist sheets, would like to create the impression that the bloody outrages inflicted by armed bands upon Communist and other workers are the expression of popular resent- ment against and hatred of the Communists. Let this be branded as the foulest lie ever mouthed by the war-mongering press of the United States. No single worker has taken part in the bestial work of the black hundreds in North and South Carolina. The names of the members of these cowardly bands—who have retreated wherever the workers have been able to offer armed resistance—are known, The names of their leaders are known. There is not a single mill worker in the long list. From Moorehead, superintendent of the Loray mill of the Man- ville-Jenckes Co., past District Attorney Carpenter, Johnson, Loray mil! “physician,” and Chief Counsel Bulwinkle to the acknowledged stool pigeon Holoway, the members of this armed band are high- salaried mill officials, lawyers, superintendents, doctors, businessmen, ete. Their organizational base is the Patriotic Sons of America—a secret order—their military director is Major Dolley, their masters are the mill barons and Andrew Mellon’s power trust, their protectors are the city, county, state and national governments. / There is not a wage-earning mill worker in the whole sadistic crew. The mill workers are the ones who are being murdered, kidnapped and beaten. They support the National Textile Workers Union. They will not take part in the murderous attacks on the members of our Party. In ever larger numbers they are defending the Communist program and our Party. The mill workers know who their enemies are. They know their enemies are not the Communists but those who persecute the Com- munists. The rapid sharpening of the struggle in and around Gastonia is a sign of the sharpening of the class struggle in the whole country and internationally. It is one more indisputable proof of the correctness of the estimate of the “third period” by the Communist International and of the ex- tremely rapid transition, from struggles centering around daily de- mands of workers in industry, to struggles in which we face the whole suppressive machinery of the capitalist state. The struggle against jof America will go into the streets While the storm of international | today and tomorrow and raise funds protest mounts against the terror;to help smash the fascist terrorism at Castonia, with millions of work-|and free the 23 strikers. ers in Germany, Latin America, The Manville-Jenckés has utilized Mexico, England and Russia sending |every means for their fascist cause cablerrams of solidarity to the Gas- fendants, whose trial begins ment of the trial which was sud- | | camp of the class enemy. during the three weeks postpone- | | WORKERS! OUT INTO THE STREETS TODAY AND TOMORROW! C cantalies rationalization in the South has AES become a political struggle of the sharpest kind. Hundreds of thousands of workers for the first time see the government of capitalist “democracy” in its actual brutal class role as the enemy of the masses and the pro- tector of all interests of the capitalist class at all costs—costs assessed to the working class in terms of terror and organized murder—in order to prevent a raise in living standards of the masses, to pre- vent the formation of militant industrial unions, and, openly in this case, to prevent the rise of the Communist Party as the conscious political expression of the masses in basic industry. Our chief task is to raise to a still higher level the whole strug- gle which even now, without having as yet reached its highest point, puts forward as necessary demands such sharp class issues as the right of workers to self defense, the organization of Workers Defense Committees, the disarming of the mercenaries of the mill barons. But by no means must we allow the bosses, their black hundreds and their government to submerge the economic demands out of which the whole struggle arises and whcih are its basis. We must be able to show clearly, so clearly as to cut like a searchlight thru the poisonous fog of capitalist propaganda (which the whole boss press has been mobilized to produce), that precisely because the N. T. W. U. demands for the abolition of the stretch-out, for the 8-hour day, 100 per cent union organization, strike straight at the most intensive robbery of the masses, and because rationalization is both a cause of and preparation for a new imperialist war, the work- ing class can advance, can increase and consolidate its power only by bitter struggle. Gastonia gives the lie to the social reformists of the Muste group. It gives the lie to the whole leadership of the American Federation of Labor. Gastonia shows the capitalist class and its government in their true relationship—a relationship that can be destroyed only by the overthrow of both and the establishment of the dictatorship of the working class led by its revolutionary section—the Commu- nist Party. Our Party meets now a counter-offensive organized by a capitalist class that has suffered a defeat before the eyes of millions of workers here and throughout the world. We must and will answer the counter-offensive with a new of- fensive. We must popularize the strike struggle as a weapon for use in fighting for the political demands of the masses as well as for the economic demands. Coming strike struggles must raise po- litical demands in direct connection with the issues in the mills and factories. The coming Charlotte Conference must put forward a broad political program of demands as well as those dealing with the textile industry. The Trade Union Unity League Convention to be held in Charlotte will likewise serve as an effective instrument in raising the political level of the whole struggle in the South. The demands of the masses made necessary by the speed-up and’ stretch-out, by the union-smashing drive of the bosses and their gov- ernment, by the daily betrayals of the A. F. of L. leadership and their “socialist” allies, must be more surely connected with the strug- gle against the war danger, and with the political slogans already deeply rooted in, in fact growing out of, the new terrorist counter- offensive of the capitalists. These demands and slogans must be widely popularized. Already the Negro masses have seen our Party in action in sharp struggle in the South for the first time. They have seen our Party challenge openly the whole system of racial and class op- pression. The white workers see our Party, as a result of its program and. courage, as the section of the workers most bitterly hated by the bosses. The working class and our Party have sustained losses. Ella May, mill worker, N. T. W. U. member, songstress of working class revolt in the South, has been murdered. Other workers have been tortured, Still more have been jailed. Twenty-three face the electric chair and long prison sentences. But the process by which the bosses and their government have been able to inflict this damage has disillusioned hundreds of thou- sands of workers. The screen of capitalist “democracy,” the fiction of government impartiality, has been rent and torn. Through the gaps many workers for the first time see capitalism in its repulsive nak- edness. The political victory is ours. Not all the black hundreds of the mill owners, not all the hundreds of columns of lies in the press of imperialism will ever be able to mend these rents or to dislodge our Party from the place it has gained in the ranks of the Southern work- ing class. Build our Party in the South. Build our press in the South. . Build mill committees in every mill. Build the National Textile Workers Union shop committees throughout basic industry. Build Workers Defense Committees. Disarm the Black Hundreds. Fight. for the right to workers’ strike, to organize, Maintain the rights of free speech and free Smash the murder campaign against militant workers. struggles as political weapons. self-defense—for the right to assemblage. Prepare strike BOLSHEVIK CONDUCT TOWARD RENEGADES A Bolshevik can under no circumstances permit personal friend- ships to interfere with his revolutionary tasks in behalf of the working class. The struggle of the working class is not based upon individual friendships but upon the irreconcilable fight of class against class. This question of the persistence of personal friendships and asso- ciations is of particular importance for our Party today when, in the sharpened class conflicts, unstable elements develop an opportunist line against the Communist, Party line and go over to the camp of the enemy as outright renegades. Only a few days ago the Party had a lesson on this question of personal friendships, when a Party member signed a document that was afterwards used for a most vicious cam- paign of slander against the Party. This experience should serve as a salutary lesson to all comrades | and teach them that under no conditions can a Party member fraternize | with renegades. No comrade should for one moment politically or per- sonally associate in any way with those who have gone over to the It is typical of the petty bourgeois poli- ticiandom of the Lovestone renegades, typical of their adventurism, which was so categorically denounced by the Communist. International, that they should endeavor to utilize past friendships for the purpose of carrying on their nefarious work against the Party. Loyal Party members should reject with scorn any attempt of a renegade to enter into any sort of political relations with him. Such an attempt is an insult because it shows that the renegades question | i in their own minds the Party loyalty of those whom they approach. When one becomes a renegade, and hence an enemy of the working class, he becomes at the same time the personal enemy of eyery Com- munist. No fraternization with the Lovestoneites or any other renegades! Only a relentless, unyielding struggle against the right wing rene- gades and enemies of the working class. BiG RALLY HELD NATIONAL TEXTILE UNION ORGANIZER WHO WAS KIDNAPPED STATES BOSSES FACE BIG DEFEAT; CHARLOTTE CONFERENCE SOON Wells, Dunne, Melvin Denounce Capitalist Press Slanders That There Are Workers in Murder Lynch Gangs; Bosses and Thugs AT CHARLOTTE, N.C. LAST NIGHT Mill Fascists Brea Into Union a izer’s Home He pes Unhurt Eseapes — Street Hunting Unionists ‘1 CHARLOTTE, N. C. ept. 20. — ‘Despite the reign of terror, the Na- tional Textile Workers Union held a highly successful meeting in| North Charlotte last night. Altho| it was inadvisable to distribute | leaflets advertising the meeting, there were hundreds of mill work- ers present, held during this period are semi- secret. Fascist gangs of the mill barons continue their nightly ram- pages, hunting for organizers and active union members who might ibe unprotected. Itley Hitch was} marked as last night’s victim, but | jeluded the mill gang. At the meeting last night, Hugo {Oehler, southern organ of the { (Continued on ny Ears Pwo) VIENNA EXPECTS FASCIST ATTACK Socialists Betraying; Communists Fight | English press correspondents in |Vienna report that the population of the city is rapidly realizing that |the danger of a Heinwehr (fascist) seizure of power is very great. The demand published by Heinwehr |“the time is short” during which | they can be mobilized by changes in |the Austrian national constitution they have suggested. They refer in threatening terms to four march- es upon Vienna, from four different | strategic points about the city; this attack to take place Sept. 29. There is no doubt that the Heim- wehr means business, that Monsig- {nor Seipel, for long the . clerical premier, theoretically opposed to lfascism, is now that he is out of office and is a leader of Heimwehr, showing his true colors, and means as his proclamation says: “To make a clean sweep and hand the rudder |of state into new hands.” the Weinstone, Poyntz, Hall, Wagenknecht, oy Municipal Election, Score Boss “The organized, disciplined fascist army in North Car Communist Candidates in ’ and Goverriment Terror olina, led against the National Textile Workers’ Union by state and county officials as well as the mill bosses, led particularly by Major Dolley of the state militia, Solicitor Carpenter of Gastonia and Major Bulwinkle, | Manville-Jenckes attorney—leaders in the attempt to electrocute the 16 workers going on trial again in Charlotte— the National Many of the nections | running into a political defeat,” Textile Workers’ Union. Wells was one of the principal speakers at the great stated Ben Wells, organizer of protest and mass meeting at ‘Central Opera House last night, one of a series of ten throughout the Greater New York section, to organize mass movements against the mill boss Wells, spoke the Communist candidates in New York Cit te) al rror in North Carolina. With so Bill Dunne and Sophie Melvin, young worker held for trial for murder with the other 15 arrested June 7. tile workers of the two Carolinas,” terror is to frighten the workers that the. newspapers, this is not a movement against us of workers or of farmers. WORKERS UNDERSTOOD. “The recent increased terror beginning Sept. 7, with well and myself, and the flogging that I got, ” Wells continued, and added: away from the union and t will go out of the locality. “The mill bosses’ the attempt to lynch Saylors, “opened the eyes of the tex- object in this campaign of o intimidate the organizers sc Contrary to statements in Southern and New York It is an outright fascist movement of local business men, and mill bosses, hired gunmen, and with the officers of the law in eo) cases a in the gangs. T.U, UL. MEET To Take Up Problems leaders yesterday states * Union Unity Conference will be held at 1 p. Irvi Unity, who arrived yesterday from Gastonia, N. struggle ers International Relief. and the In- ternational Labor cee to be held in larly of the Gastonia Gazette, th paper, which stated that “all the have to meet the consequences.” THIS AFTERNOON of Local Movement The thugs, mill owner. Metropolitan Area Trade 100.” The “Patriotic Sons” is® a nation-wide black hundred and labor-hating group, ay ee service of employers. were armed with ie shoot down any worker or or- ganizer that might present! {himself at the meeting place. m. today at Irving Plaza, ng Place and 15th St. William F. Dunne, editor of Labor C., will report on the of the Southern textile | rs, also the tasks of the Work- Defense. H. Saver, shairman of the New), : eee York Delegation to the Cleveland|_, “One truck load of workers from Trade Union Unity Conference will | ied ha es ms aun o baptirt cn tie wodk ofthe conference ue: ane Wes: Shote St with inten ill, and Ella May Wiggins was and its application to, activities in the metropolitan area, John Schmies Communists Call Action. The attitude of the Communis Party is clear. It calls on the work- ¢ ers to tru no one but themselves to follow the lead of their Com- munist Party, and fight. The nee is not only to smash the fe movement, but to put a workers’ government in the place of the pr ent national council, which is ol ously playing into the hands of the Heimwehr by officially considering the transformation of the constitu- tion into a fascist form, and by proposing through its press to move the council sessions to Graz, a fas- cist stronghold. Full Freiheit Chorus of 350 Voices at Celebration Friday /10th Anniversary Rally Will Demonstrate N.Y. Workers Support of Party, Says Grecht Central Opera House will resound with revolutionary songs of struggle jand achievement on Friday night, | September 27, when the full chorus lof the Freiheit Singing Society, 350 voices, will join in the celebration of the Tenth Anniversary of the Com- -munist Party arranged by the New | York District. The participation of | this workers’ chorus, known thru- lout the country wherever militants ‘gather, will contribute towards mak- ling the anniversary rally a memor- able event in the life of New York | Workers. Already news of the celebration, actually killed; and a young worker, White, was wounded. will ee : “This terror did sistant secretary, T. U. U. I not stop with tenon on the program ae ae the arrest of the seven thugs who Rig on sencbed aay ty re ae re out on only $1,000 bail each. the Negro workers ‘P The > investigation that is being ‘ conducted into the kidnapping and Report on Women torture of Wells, Saylors and Lell, reports will be by Rose is showing its true class character on the womens’ work and by the di ion of Wells as on the problems of the a witness in his own behalf when he stated he did not believe in God.’ The conference will act on the Nobody arrested for this outrage) question. of the organization of Will be punished for the textile mills local industrial groups of the T. U. control state and courts, and the U. L.; organization of the Wor same is true of the flogging of Tess- Defense Corps and plans for the Pe" and the whole series of other reception of the Soviet Fliers. ning attempts. The reports will ve followed by a “The main objective of this or. | general discussion by the delegates. | ganized terror which has been ex tended to South Carolina is to tr and prevent the Charlotte confe ence of the National Textile Wo ers’ Union, scheduled for October 12 and 13. Workers Ready. “During the last few days letters have been coming into the office of the National Textile Workers Union, from different parts of the South commending the N. T. W. U. and | thei rmilitant stand and ‘so asking which is also the first central elec-, for tion campaign rally of the Commu-) ‘“" nist Party in this city, has spread to organized and unorganized shops, | where workers are preparing to at- tend the meeting in factory groups. "-Tundred delegates have been elected from mill locals for the Charlotte Conference which prom- ises at least 500 and probably more when the other locals elect. The Large numbers of women and Ne-/ number of ° cals is rapidly increas- gro workers are also expected to be ing. present. Jim Reid, president of the Na- “The rally,” declares a statement) tional Textile Workers Union was issued by Rebecca Grecht, Commu- | chairman at the main meeting at nist Campaign Manager, “will be an) | Central Opera House last night. answer to the campaign of terror the center against the Communist Party which least has been carried on by the city gov-| floor space and in the galleries, In 3,000 workers crowding all (Continued on Page Two) (Continued on Page Two) of the stage, before at| “It emphatically has not succeeded. The meeting that South Gastonia last Saturday, rallied hun- dreds of workers to the meeting place in defiance of all the editorial threats of the souther n reactionary papers, particu- he Manville-Jenckes home town ose present at this meeting will NATION-WIDE FASCIST CLIQUE. Sheriff Limeberger swore in as deputies the worst kind of superintendents, Scns of America,’ members of the enlarged “Committee of along with the “Patriotic ANSWER BARRY’S °LIES WITH AID Mass Collections Held Tomorrow and Sunday Gastonia County is a Garden of Eden. The death of Ella May Wig- gins is whitewashed; the nightly lynch-rides of the black hundreds and their union victims are “pat- riotic aats against Moscow;” the stretch-out system is O. K.; the workers in Loray Mill are “happy, healthy and contented.” So Robert Barry, correspondent for the New York Evening World writes, with a lying, blind pen, pre- senting all the hypocricy, the bloody, false attitude of the mill- owners in prety phrases. He is deceiving nobody, The work- ers in the textile mills know their jot is not the industrial heaven that the capitalist press writes of. They know what twelve hours of stretch-out means, they know what it means to be terrorized, with gang- sters ri by in their boss’ automobiles to murder workers in order to smash the National Textile Workers Union. Robert Barry writes of Major Bulwinkle with respect, Major Bul- winkle, bloody instigator of mobs to kill men—Major Bulwinkle, rec- ognized by Ben Wells, who was almost flogged to death, as leader of the mill owners’ posse. How can Barry reconcile the fact that North Carolina had an increase of 50 per cent in pellagra the past year, with the statement he makes that the workers appear well-fed and happ,. Not a word of her struggle to gain better wages so that her chil- dren would be educated and live in a better house than the hovel where she resided. Double your efforts and double |the funds to meet the tremendous in ses in expenses caused by the mistrial! Support the mass collection days, ‘Sept. 21 and 22! jurors went mad. ‘The postpone | ers stand in danger of death, either ment meaus added expense to the | by the electric chair or by lynching. defense of tens of thousands of dol-| The Food Clerks Industrial Union, lars to pay lawyers, house defense | local 17, of the Amalgamated Food witnesses, legal expenses, publicity,| workers has issued the following ete. ‘statement to its members: “We Unless thousands of dollars are|must recall our own struggle raised for greater and more inten- against our boss chain store owners that we too wei cubject to brutal] police violence, the iolence of the gangsters employed by the “social- ist” trade union bureaucracy and the United Hebrew Trades to express our complete solidarity with the Gastonia strikers fighting against J. brutal fascist terror, the murder of | known working class attempt of the mill barons to pre-!collection day stations throughout! vent the organization of these mis- the city today and tomorrow. erably exploited textile slaves. must give our wholehearted sup- | the working class leaders who will port in the mass collection days.” We| A partial list of the stations and bes them are: W. Z, Foster, W. W. Weinstone,! Central Station, WIR Office, 799 Stachel, R. Minor, and other well | Broadway, Room 221, W. Z. Foster; leaders Central Station, ILD Office, 799 OLLECT FOR THE GASTONIA DEFENSE 143 East 103rd St., Sectior 4, J. Stachel; 27 East 4th St., Sec tion 1, R. Minor; 1179 Broadway, Section 2 and 3, F. Biedenkapp, B Gold; 1330 Wilkins Ave., Section 5. M. Bedacht; 56 Manhattan Ave. Williamsburg, Section 6, H. Wicks and 2901 Mermaid Ave., Coney Is: stone; in Chal lotte, September 30, workers | denly halted because one of the|sive defense work, the sixteen work- | for the organization of our union |strike leaders, kidnapping and the,|man the New York mass Gasigg 4 Broadway, Room 422, W. W. Wein- | land, Section 7, R. Grecht, i