The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 23, 1929, Page 1

| THE DAILY WORKER FIGHTS fins: ic chair the original sixteen Gastonia union leaders, nad the {| Stand By for Struggle! | Maaeherasscs 2. WORKERS! PROTEST For a Workers-Farmers Government To Organize the Unorganized ‘Against Imperialist War For the 40-Hour Week Entered as second-class matter at the Posy Office at New York, N. ¥., ander the act of March 3, 1879. FINAL CITY. EDITION —— = Vol. VI., No. 196 . New York City. |. ¥, SB ar in New York, by mail, $8.00 per yenr. York, by mall. $6.00 per sear SUBSCR Price NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1929 MASS DEMONSTRATIONS PROTEST GASTONIA VERDICT Veto the | Already from as far away as London, England, the answer of the working class of the world to the fiendish crime of the capitalist class against the mill workers of Gastonia begins to pour in. The working | class under the leadership of the (ommunist Party is, in course of mobilizing for demonstrations in New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Seattle, and many other American towns and in Europe as well. The workers’ answer will and must roll up into a thunderous pro- test that wil show the capitalist class that the lives and liberties of | workers and organizers of genuine class-conscious unions are not to be taken with impunity. The answer must be bigger than any that ever | went before—bigger than the world-wide wave of anger that swept through the working class of all the countries in protest against the murder of the strike-leaders, our brothers Sacco and Vanzetti, bigger |Move Comes as Miners Turn, to Militant Union; Hold 250 Workers in Armed Train CHICAGO, Oct. .—The latest move of the open shop in- Gastonia Verdict! ‘Smash Communist Party’ U.M.W.A, LOCALS Scheme of Illinois State; Arrest and Deport Scores INTO NEW UNION ASK ADMISSION National Miners’ Union | Outlines Work for | Great Convention than those which have not yet saved Tom Mooney and Warren Billings | dustrial magnates in their attempt to stem the rapidly rising Plan Mass Meetings from life imprisonment, bigger than that which saved the courageous proletarian leader William D. Haywood from death on the gallows. In many ways the issues involved in the struggle of which the Gastonia “murder” conviction is part, are more momentous than any which have gone before in this country. The long terms of imprison- ment attotted to the textile workers’ leaders are an assault of the whole | capitalist class upon the working class, calculated to break up. they movement of organization among the slaves of the cotton mill barons of | the South—and in this way the Gastonia case resembles the earlier famous labor trials in capitalist class courts. But the times are vastly | different. Today the fiendish drive of the capitalist class against the workers as expressed in this cold-blooded crime of Barnhill and the | State of North Carolina is connected with the whole series of imperial- | ist aims of the capitalist class in this period of the shaking of the stabilization of the capitalist system—the “third period” of the post- war crisis of capitalism. The murder of Ella May Wiggins, the murder of the six textile workers at Marion, N. C., the fascist violence of the mill-owners armed bands, the attempt to lynch, then to send to the final “strategic retreat” of the mill barons and their state officials to make the best of the murder of Ella May Wiggins and the virtual life imprisonment of the seven other leaders—all of this is a part of the plan (of which Hoover himself is the head) of capitalist rationalization which means the most extreme increase in the intensity of exploitation of the working class, the smashing up of all worknig class organiza- tion and the beating down of standards of living below the enduranc point, the preparation of front and rear for the coming imperialist war. It is a part of the political plan that goes with the economic plan—the abolition of the miserable shreds of “democracy” with the introduction of outright fascist methods of direct violence against such {| of the working class as dares even to mutter a protest. (The open terrorism by “unofficial” but police-protected bodies of hundreds of the mill-owners’ agents heavily armed, who are free to murder, flog and‘torture workers, while workers who try to defend their lives are railroaded to the penitentiaries for life—this is a part of the political system which is rapidly becoming the typical regime in American in- dustrial communities. The actions of the capitalist judicial rat, Barnhill, the sneaking religious hypocricy, the lying, the manoeuvering against the defendants | behind a temporary mask of “impartiality” and “fairhess,” is what | the working class is learning rapidly to expect of all capitalist courts | and judges. Barnhill, with the crassest dishonesty after the mask was discarded, deliberately framed up the jury against the defendants, whom he deprived arbitrarily of.the right to any but a jury composed of farmers of the property owning class, steened in race-hatred against | the Negro laborers they exploit, as well as in the hideous superstitions | that survive among their class. Barnhill, as obedient a funkey of the mill millionaires as their own superintendents, purposely admitted into evidence the religious superstitions that date with the belief in witches. He aided the introduction of the savage rules of the pre-civil war slave oligarchy, while formally ruling against the “race issue” (after the jury had got the hint), and permitted the prosecutor Carpenter (openly bribed by the mill owners) to stage in the court-room medaeval religi- ous orgies, rolling on the floor and shouting to “god,” until even the prostitute reporters of the capitalist press of the Nortern states were | unable to conceal their amazement, and hardly any but the contempt-. | ible little “socialist” preacher, Norman Thomas, had the heartless in- | decency to utilize that particular moment to speak publicly in such a | way as t ocondone the filthy performance. The seven heroic workers who dared to fight the mill barons for the organization of the Southern textile workers are consigned to the prison hells of the South for terms up to twenty years. se The mill-owners flunkey, Barnhill, has pronounced the sentence. | The working class of the world wil veto this sentence! Comrades, workers—men, women and youth of the cass that is | destined to conquer the world for freedom—throw yourselves into the | fight! Build up such a movement as will shake the foundations of the system of slavery. Organize your workers’ conferences in every city and town! Sweep the whole South with a wave of organization that will make the mill barons tremble. | Build your defense committees in every textile mill of the South. | Build up the International Labor Defense into a powerful organization of hundreds of thousands of our class! * And build the Communist Party—the leader of the workers—the only Party that could or would lead this fight—the Party of the revo- lution whcih alone will free our class by overthrowing the rule of the exploiters! No revolutionary worker can fail to see the onrush of reaction signalized by the arrests in Chicago of eighteen Communist Party leaders by the Illinois state government, on charges of sedition. An additional charge, wholly a frame-up, of “robbery with a gun,” must not, by its ridiculous aspect, lead any worker to consider the matter lightly. The sedition charges are the meat of the question, and are de- | liberately designed to outlaw the Communist Party in Illinois as a part | of the developing plan of the American capitalist class to crush the — Communist Party throughout the country, so as. to defeat the whole | working class in the fast-accumulating struggles. For this reason every worker who sees the Communist Party in action as the leader of strug- gle for his class, must be alive to the danger and rally all shopmates | to a fighting mass organization of defense. t “Why does this happen in Illinois?” some may ask. But we reply | that it is not only in Illinois that the capitalist government is attack- | ing the legality of our Party—also in Pennsylvania, and again in Cali- | fornia—and most clearly in North Carolina—the state power of the boss class is moving to outlaw the Communist Party. In Illinois, how- ever, the attack is brazen and direct, boasting of its aims before they are attained. ‘ This attack on the leadership of the working class in Illinois comes about precisely because we, the Communists, have taken and are taking in rapidly growing measure the leadership, the directiongof the rising struggles of the workers in that section. i The magnificent way the Chicago workers responded to the Com- munist call to fight the war danger on August 1, the battles lasting hours with the police on that day, the physical protection from arrest of Communist speakers by the factory workers at noon-day meetings, the swing to the leftward in the basic industries of the Illinois district as shown by the splendid delegation from mines and shops sent to the Trade Union Unity League Convention: at Cleveland September 1, and last but not least, among a score of such symptoms of the radicalization of the Illinois workers, the break of tens of thousands of Illinois miners | from the reactionary control of the United Mine Workers and its rotten | foe Hop bai leadership to the final acceptance of the revolutionary | + ‘ the National Miners’ Union—ali these are the signs read in tha | |charged with “robbery at the point tide of militancy of the American workers was today stated by the Communist Party in Illinois.” Hutehins today announced \tha twarrants charging violation of the Illinois sedition law have been obtained against 18 members of the Communist Party of the United States of America. All workers arreste dare being charged with “sedition and hold-up at the point of a gun,” the same charges on which District. Organizer Clarence®—|-—_. | Hathaway, Nels Kjar, Zinich, in control of the countries from Murphy, Herman and 22 other | which the workers come. members of the Party are being held. Five of those arrested are also (Continued on Page Three) of a gun.” Warrants charging both sedition nad “robbery at the point of a gun” were obtained against C. A. Hathaway, district organizer of the Communist Party, Frank Borich, editor of Radnik, Croatian language Communist paper recently barred entry into Canada, S. M. Milgrom, Nels Kjar, and Carl Sklar. The robbery warrants were ogtained on the strength of statements made by Irving Billing, said by Chicago Com- munists to have been a paid spy for | either or both the state and federal governments. ’ y A ‘A wave of deportation of militant Detroit, possibly making other stops workers is taking place. An armed |en route to refuel. The Friends of train, with 250 foreign-born work-|the Soviet Union have arranged ers of Chicago imprisoned in it, left | mass receptions in all of these cities, here Sunday for Ellis Island. From |the larges of which will be held at here the workers will be handed over (Continued on Page Five) CHEYENNE, WYO, OAKLAND, C: Oct. 22 (UP). —The Soviet airplane, Land of the Soviets, left from the local airport early toda yfor Cheyenne, Wyo. It was sighted over Reno, Nev., at 8.35 this morning. * . From Cheyenne the Soviet-built amphibian’ monoplane will come to Workers Endorse Communist Witness in Gastonia Trial Edith Saunders Miller Tells of Struggle With Mill Bosses’ Prosecution and Its Results “Prosecution attorney Newell,” | bosses, and that we want a workers’ said Edith Saunders Miller, recent | Sovernment. witness for the defense in the Gas- | toni. case, in an interview given the | poice—agents of the government in Daily Worker yesterday, “tries to @Gastonia, of the mill owners’ state. make much in his argument to the I was choked myself, on the picket | jury of the fact that I ‘admitted’ line, the night of June 7, by Officer on the witness stand that Commun-| Bill Whitlow. I saw old Mrs. Mc- ists want a different type of govern- | Ginnis dragged on the ground, and ment than that in America today. | heard them threaten to shoot her. The Charlotte News, ithe Gastonia | She said, ‘Damn you, shoot; I'll die Gazette, and the rest of the mill | any day for the union.’ I just pulled owners’ press, furiously denounces | Sophie Melvin out of the way in| my testimony, saying that it shows | we ‘came down from the North to overthrow the state of North Caro- lina, and arouse the workers, and | Other workers saw these. things and they particularly play up to the fact | similar events in the weeks preced- that I read on the witness stand | ing, and they know what the govern- time to save her from being gun in the hands of a policeman. |from the Young Pioneer an article | ment is for. I told them so on the | pointing out that the government witness stand, and they don’t like it. was on the side of the bosses and| “But the workers are not scared. against the workers. |The workers have such confidence “t is certainly true, and I did not|in those who“have been with them concea it in my testimony,that the | through the struggle that they are government is on the side of the (Continued on Page Five) heavens by the Illinois employers (signs which, by the way, a number ef renegades from Communist movement have not yet seen), The Illinois bosses and their instrument for class oppression—the government, are undoubtedly alive to the possibility that the Commu- nist movement is entering, in this period of struggle, the field of battle for leadership of the majority, of the decisive sections, of the working class. Hence the capitalist state tries to strike down the decisive ele- ment of leadership. Nor does it confine its efforts to that, but ex- pands them, arresting and deporting hundreds of foreign-born. workers who, in the factories, show themselves as elements leading class re- sistance to the speed-up (rationalization), wage cuts, long hours and worsening conditions. Only the blind can fail to see, only the stupid can misinterpret, this wave of reaction and the cause of it—the wave of labor struggles growing everywhere, not alone in Illinois, but throughout the country and in the world situation. The sharpening—let us repeat, the sharpening of the general crisis of world imperialism leading to war, just as the sharpening of the class struggle against rationalization, etc., noted above, leads the capitalists to resort to measures of suppression that in themselves clearly prove that “normal” measures of “normal” capitalist rule are insufficient— that capitalist stabilization is ever more precarious and ‘decaying. : This understood, and the serious nature of the Chicago attack on the Communist Party understood as the measure hoped to crush the isi es, depriving them of leadership in the fight against imper- ind ratonalization, let every worker further understand that every resistant force to the attack must be mobilized to meet the assault. Let all understand that the Communist Party cannot be destroyed! The Communists will gather round them the new forces of this new period, and while preparing to carry on the function of the Communist Party as the leader of class struggle regardless of legality, will all the while fight stubbornly and vigorously to maintain its leadership openly before the masses. A great measure of this fight is the defense of the Communists. arrested at Chicago, therefore every effort must be made to rally the workers from the shops in a mass movement to take the counter-offensive $gainst this reactionary attack on the Communist sovement, 4 The latest move against the Com- | FLYERS HEAD FOR ‘tion and explaining the objectives | | “I saw women and children choked | | and beaten on the picket lines by | smashed over the head by-a cubbed | ‘assistant stafe’s attorney Evert O. Hutchins to be “to smash | Defense Groups to Stop Bosses’ Gangsters WEST FRANKFORT, Iil., Oct. 22. —Reports continue to flood the Illi- nois district office of the National | | Miners’ Union here of former United |Mine Workers of America locals severing connections with the Fish- wick and Lewi: regimes, and declar- |ing for entrance into the N. M. U. The N. M., U, district office is noti- fying all of them to be sure to send | delegates. to the great convention in Liederkranz Hal, Belleville, Ill., Oct. 26 (Sunday) to Oct. 28. Thou- sands of leaflets calling the conven- land plan of representatition are be- ing sent out through the Illinois coal | fields. N. M. U. Leads Struggle. 3 Cents WORKERS EVERYWHERE DENOUNCE MILL BOSSES’ TERROR THROWGH COURTS AND BY GUNMEN AGAINST TEXTILE UNION |Communist Party Calls Mass Meetings; Labor Defense Organizes | United Front Conferences in All Industrial Centers Labor Jury Verdict Declaring Workers Innocent and Branding Bosses vers Upheld by Sentiment of Labor in TS Vbroad : BULLETIN. . C., Oct. 22.—Preparations are being made fer zainst the mill terror and the class verdict in the Gastonia case in seven textile They will be in conjunction with the November 7 celebrations of the Twelfth Anniversary e Bolshevik Revolu- tion. There will be a protest meeting Wednesday night in Bessemer City, and one in Charlotte within a week. © et; a8 : The working class of the whole world is indignant at the monstrous closs verdict in |the Gastonia case, by which seven Loray mill strikers and orgar s were “found guilty” in defiance of the evidence, in a trial reeking with attacks on them as Communists, believers in equality of the races, and militant labor leaders. The facts of the case are permeating the working class which learns that these seven defendants were tried before a packed jury, by |a judge appointed by a governor who is one of the mill owners in the state, that the prosecu- tion staff was mainly composed of mill owners’ attorne. that vital defense testimony could be disregarded by the jury in god, and that the witnes | The official call states: “In view of the completé collapse | Continued on Page Three) cqonmiy gowns etl ome JUDGE TRIES TO BRIBE VICTIMS: Offers 3 Shorter Terms for Evidence BULLETIN. GASTONIA, N. C., Oct. 21.—The _ Gastonia Gazette welcomed the | verdicts which jail union organiz- ers for defending themselves and | releasing the mill gangsters who | tried to lynch organizers with a threat of more lynching and mur- der of unionists. “It will not be | safe for any of the so-called labor agitators to be caught nosing around any time soon,” says the | mill owners’ paper. “Folks here are simply not going to put up with it any longer.” Pies soc CHARLOTTE, N. C., Oct. 22.— | The “impartial” capitalist court that sent the seven Gastonia defendants to jail practically for life adjourned | this morning. Solicitor Carpenter ‘of Gastonia demanded that the bail be increased. He is anxious to make it so high that there will be diffi- | (Continued on Page Two) { | | ‘MARION WOUNDED HELD FORRANSOM 'Hospital Prisons Them; UTW Refuses to Pay MARION, N. C., Oct. 21—Whne ‘strikers wounded and dying began | to pour into the Marion general hos- | pital like war victims, the first ques- | |cion Dr. Miller asked was, “Who is | going to pay for this?” The county | said it was up to the union. } United Textile Workers Union} leader Ross,/refused to pay for these | | wounded members of his union on} the grounds that “We didn’t shoot | | them.” | Forced Workers to Aid |. During the campaign for the | \building of this hospital workers | |were pressed for centributions by ‘the mill managements. It was said | the Duke Power Co. was giving $25,- | |000 and that the rest of the $60,000 | | must be donated by the public. “It | | will be wonderful to have this.com- | | munity hospital,” speakers promised. “Any time you or your family are | sick, it will take care of you. If you haven’t got money to pay for it, you can just speak to the presi- dent of the board of trustees, and | | | | way.” | The workers bit, and gave, in| \fifty cents weekly payments; most | |of them a dollar, some two or five | dollars. A larger proportion of their gross weekly receipts then $25,000 was of the Duke Power Co.’s huge resources. Clinchfield workers oy <Contiaued on Page Five) | clares: he will see you get attention any- |. called to their attention. ys, that the judge officially ruled because the witness disbelieved es for the prosecution were professional gunmen and stool pigeons |in the employ of the Manville-Jenckes textile company. The verdict of the labor jury is being That verdict is that the defendants are not guilty of anything but jof the U. M. W. of A., due to the | organizing the workers against the vicious exploitation of the southern textile bosses, and \Lewis and Fishwick policies of be-| that on the other hand the capitalist class itself, and the southern mill bosses in particular, are guilty not only of using their court in Charlotte to railroad union leaders to sentences Fight Capitalist Parties! Vote the Workers Ticket! Platform and Program of the Communist Party for the New York Municipal Elections Workingmen and Women of New York City! In the municipal elections, in which you are being asked to cast your votes, the real issues involved in the question of control of gov- ernmental power are being hidden from you. Control of government determines which class shall use power in order to improve its economic position. You members of the working class have for long been de- ceived into supporting the parties of the bourgeoisie, your class enemies, those who monopolize all wealth and exploit your labor, and whom you assist in this tobbery when you vote for them. These parties of the bourgeoisie, the capitalists and their hangers-on, are the republican, democratic and socialist parties, The only Party representing the interests of the working class in this election is the Communist Party. In this election campaign the bourgeoisie, those who get rich by exploiting your labor, hope to accomplish one principal object. That is, to fix the attention of us workers (who are a great majority) upon the “issues” which they, the exploiters, fraise in order to keep us from raising our own class issues. They wish again to have us whether we shall be whipped by a democratic lash, a republican lash, or a socialist lash. Our answer must be: Strike all these whips from the hands of our class enemies. We have no choice between them. We recognize them all, democratic, republican and socialist parties, as instruments of the class which exploits us, to continue that exploitaton. Both democratic and republican parties are openly and frankly parties of the rich, of the exploiters, They stand for the maintenance of the capitalist system, by means of which we are robbed; they both crush with court injunctions and police terror even the smallest strikes to obtain a little increase in wages. They are the open organs of the class rule of the bourgeoisie. The socialist party says that it wants to abolish capitalism—some- time in the sweet bye and bye. How does it happen, then, that this party is receiving so much prominence and support in this campaign from such bourgeois organs as the “Citizen’s Union,” the “New York Times,” etc., etc.? The answer is, that the exploiting class needs a reserve, to come to its rescue When the masses begin to turn away from its open parties, republican and democratic. For the same reason that one of “our” most prominent capitalist exploiters, Mr. Owen D. Young (author of the Young Plan for robbing the German workers) Continued on Page Four choose ‘Shows Socialists Are Bloo Brothers of Gaston Hangmen The Voice of Thomas is the Voice of Barnhill, Says Weinstone, Communist Candidate Sharply denouncing an attack | Thomas, ‘socialist’ candidate for made by Norman Thomas, socialist) mayor, joins the mill owners, their party candidate for mayor, on the courts, their press and their organ- activities of the Communist Party |ized terror machinery in attacks on in the South, William W. Weinstone, the Communists who are playing Communis candidate for mayor, in| the leading role in the mighty class a statement issued yesterday, ex- battles that are now taking place poses the true role of. Norman in the South. Thomas and the socialist party as| “‘Communist philosophy is pe- blood-brothers of the Gastonia hang- culiarly allied to the spirit of the men and stiflers of militant work-| South,’ says the Rey. Thomas, but ing class action. The statement de-|it is not the Rev. Thomas speaking; \it is merely to the echo of his mas- “On the very day that the jury in ter’s voice, the Charlotte court, carrying out|the Gastonia Gazette, of Judge the instructions of the mill-owners’| Barnhill, who ruled that Commu- judge, brought in a verdict of ‘guil-|nists had no right to expect to be ty’ against seven of the most active |tried as ‘loyal citizens,’ of Solicitor fighters against mill baron oppres-,Carpenter, who declared that Gas- sion in the South, the New York!tonia where men, women and little 4 varying from five to twenty years in the unspeakably hor- rible North Carolina peniten- tiary, but of hiring gunmen and thugs to assault, beat, }choke and shoot down in cold blood (as in the case of Ella May) striking workers. r Jury points out that is but one phase ’ reign of terror ainst organization. Organization proceeding, nevertheless, with These are the words of | rs coming in ever greater num- into the National Textile Work- ers Union. Ss. Ue Workers Protest. From Seattle comes news that a mass protest meeting was held last night on the “skid road” (the street of the employment offices and work- ers’ lodging houses) at which the crowd pledged layalty to the end for the Gastonia defendants, and raised $50 from among the largely in the audience. t conference of work- ing ¢ organizations for defense and relief of the Gastonia trial vie- tims will be held Sunday, and anoth- er 1 protest meeting Saturday evening, in Seattle, under th aus- pices of the Communist Party. The Communist Party has called a mass protest demonstration in the square, Cleveland, for Sun- Oct. 27, at 2 p. m., and this 1 be followed by a wide united front conference for defense and re- ed by the International La- efense. x New York Meeting. In New York City, Thursday, at 5 p. m., the militant workers will mass in Union Square to hear na- tionally known speakers explain the significance of the Gastonia , and to protest the verdict and sentence to practical life imprison- ment of four of the workers. Chicago Conference. The Chicago defense and relief united front conference on the Gas- tonia situation will be held Sunday, Oct. 27, at 10 a. m., in Room 412 of the Capitol Building. Hundreds of organizations, including unions, shop committees, and labor fraternal or- ganizaions are sending delegates, Philadelphia Meeting. The workers of Philadelphia will meet at City Hall Plaza, Friday, where J. Louis Engdahl, national secretary of the I, L. D., will be the main speaker. London Demonstrations. From London comes news that the workers of Britain are planning a mass demonstration against the class verdict in the Gastonia case jand the textile bosses’ reign of ter- ror against workers in U. S. Are ‘rangements for a mass demonstra- |tion October 27 are made. Already demonstrations have marched to the (Continued on Page Five) unempl A ur PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Oct. -The Canadian national freight- Chomedy, which left here Mon- day, en route to Halifax, was jaground today off the island of Times, daily organ of Wall Street children had been working 60 to 70|Tohago, in the Windward group 22 finance-capital and of the socialist hours a week for $9 or less, was miles northeast of Trinidad The * party, prints a speech by Normgn| _. (Continued on Page Two) _, crew was reported safes Sit, sum —