The Daily Worker Newspaper, November 15, 1929, Page 4

Published by the €, New Y Sau Page Four “The Continuous Working Year and Five-Day Week By SCHLAUER. PART IIL. HE effect of the transfer to the uninterrupted working y on the raising of the general cultural level in the Soviet Union of the people at large is so great that it can be justifiably ascertained that this new system of working is of even much greater political importance as a cultural factor than as a factor promoting economic development. Two fundamental qualities of the unbroken working year are re- sponsible for these cultural results: (1) the fact that rest days will follow each other in more rapid cession; and (2) that the workers who are resting are distributed evenly over every day of the week This is most strikingly seen, for instance, in the fact that whereas under the old system the cinemas, theatres, and amusement grounds, holiday-makers’ resorts, and so on were always filled to over- flowing on Sundays and other holidays and were unable to serve for “ee needs of the greater part of the pop’ ion, besides standing empty to-a certain extent on week days. They can now, quite mechanically, serve for five times as many people as before, while no one needs to break his neck in order to get a cinema ticket, nay, or the chance to enjoy some reasonable recreation or opportunity to get a real rest. EVERYTHING MORE PI SANT. Again, all sport equipment in the way of motor boats. euipment, ete., which can be used by the worker on his of rest can now be used five times as often as before. The workers’ clubs, which exist in practically every factory and which were, in the main, only completely used on holidays and Sund. increasing their activities five-fold and are now rea le to draw the workérs, all the workers, into active cultural activities. As never before, the activities of the various literary, dramatic, popular science and sport circles organized under the auspices of these clubs will take a development, and become more active, that will be all to the good. As another striking example, we might cite the manner in which the five-day week has promoted the more extensive use of the motor car. In spite of the fact that today there are less than 20,000 auto- mobiles in the whole of the USSR, it will now be possible because of the five-day week to train not less than one million amateur chauffeurs in the course of the next two years. The fact will certainly be known to our readers that the gigantic automobile works now being built will, in two to three years time, be turning out 120,000 automobiles every year. The transfer to the five-day week immediately raises the ques- tion of increasing this production many times over. With the aid of the five-day week it is planned to carry out an “automobilization” pro- gram along the following lines. “Avtodor” (the Society to Promote the Development of Trunk Roads and Automobiles), is to organize a nucleus of the Society in every industrial plant which shall bring together all workers in the plant for the purpose of teaching them how to drive. Ten-rouble. shares are to be issued which every worker may buy and by this means every 200 workers will be provided with one motor-car. (The initial demand will be covered in the present and coming year mainly by the imported Ford car.) of these two hundred persons, 40 will be resting on each day of the five-day week, and four to five persons can go in for motor at one time, learning to drive as they do so, it will be possible for all forty en- joying their off-day to undertake to learn motor driving on a practical basis for the space of one to one and a half hours. By this means all the part-owners (i. e., all the workers owning the car) will be able to carry on their drivers’ courses once in every five days. ‘As nearly 2 million workers are employed in the state-owned in- dustrial plants of the country, it will be possible with the use of 15,000 cars to teach all these workers how to drive and give them a taste of the pleasures of motoring as a sport. At the end of twelve months it will be possible to distribute one hundred rouble shares (on the install- ment plan, of course), among all the workers and so realize the slogan of “one car for every twenty workers!” CATCHING UP ON AMERICA—OR BETTER! At this year’s stage in the “automobilization of the country— under the five-day week—each car will be at the disposal of four work- ers every day of the week. In 1932-33 it will be perfectly feasible to broadcast the slogan of “one car for every five persons!” (by issuing shares to the value of 200 to 250 roubles each). This will enable each worker to have the full use of the car on his off-day, that is, once every five days. In this respect the living standard of our workers is catching up very rapidly with the living standards of the American workers, while our automobile industry will very soon be able to reach American standards of production—all the perfectly real result of the transfer to the continuous five-day week. AVIATION AS SPORT. In like manner, flying faces a rapid evolution that almost baffles the imagination. On much the same principle efforts are being made te organize the whole mass of.the workers to give their support to, and take a direct part in, aviation as a sport. Much the same thing applies in regard to amateur wireless; thanks to the five-day week, the Wire- less Amateurs Association will be able to organize the broad masses of the workers in production for the purpose of extending the field of amateur wireless. It is true, of course, that all these and many other cultural and sport associations have existed up to now, but it has hitherto been im- possible to get the broadest masses of the workers to take an active part in their work, since the only day they had free for that purpose was Sunday, coming once in every seven days. Of still greater importance is the five-day week as regards the general education and trade training of the worker: With his regular rest-day coming round so frequently, the worker will be able to put in one to two hours on every off-day on systematic study. Big efforts are being made to provide the opportunities for such study: the Sunday universities—a regular feature in Soviet life—are now to transfer to the continuous five-day week. Again, a number of schools are to be founded to provide training in all manner of trades. Self-education will also develop with enormous strides, the necessary guidance being pro- vided by correspondence or by direct instruction. : ¢ ‘All-these measures will enable us to reach two aims: one, to raise the general cultural level of the people, and two, to, destroy the old Sunday as an off-day with its traditional drinking {one of the worst heritages left us from the old regime), and its consequent “Monday-ish’ feeling the day after. Only now will it be found possible entirely to ports gymnasium , are now uproot these traditions—upon the complete transfer to the five-day | Mec THREE DAY WEEK POSSIBLE! 4 In conclusion, it is necessary to state that the five-day week is by no means the last word in the rationalization of the system of labor at the point of production: and, for instance, a plan is being discussed whereby it will be possible to transfer to the three-day working week according to which every worker will have a full day off after every two days’ work, a twenty-four hour interval occurring between the two working days. Nor will there be any change whatever in the annual wages earned by the worker. ; i If, by way of example, a plant works in three shifts, the correspond- ingly increased number of workers are divided into three shifts of which two shifts work every day, the third shift taking its day off. And as each worker will work in the morning shift on the first day and in the evening shift of hte second, there will be an interval of 24 hours be- tween his two working days. pi - This system of working will render it possible to transform all in- dustrial plants into what will be virtually middle or high technical schools where in the course of a few years the entire industrial prole- tariat will be able to be trained into skilled technicians and qualified mechanics. It must be added that due account should be taken of the fact that the system of training in the technical schools of Soviet Russia is closely bound up with practical training, ier In the majority of the narrower and more specialized engineering schools, point of production, theoretical instruction. Under the three day week each worker will be the students have to work three to four days a week at the | only two days-in the week being devoted to able to study in these schools, while a sufficient number of rest-days | will remain at his own disposal, since only the free hours of the work- | er’s working days, when he is working on the second shift, will be used for theoretical study. ‘ a? It will be readily un'erstood that this general raising of the ecul- tural level and skill of the whole proletariat, au immediate consequence of introducing the five-day week (and one which will be still more ef- fective under the three-day week system) is bound to have an immense i for production. aggro be acs pulsst, with every right, that this cultural factor will intensify the rate at which the country is being industrialized probably to a still greater extent than the mere mechanical lengthening of the time during which the machinery, factories and other basic capital can be exploited as a result of this change—and in hammering out and | introducing this revolutionary reform this mechanical factor is the _ only one that has been taken into consideration at all, at least for ihe Imitial stages of the reform. pie {To beepntinued) sails ia. Baily tentral Organ of the Communist Party of the 0. ‘BA Worker St SUBSCRIPTION RATES: By Mail (in New York only): $8.00 a year: By Mail (outside of New York): $6.00 a year; $2.50 thrée months $2.00 three months $4.50 six months: $3.50 six months; AFTER ONE YEAR OF Cleveland-- A Mass Story > THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN | By MYRA PAGE. (Continued) After a needle trades delegate from Baltimore has related the tre- mendous growth in the left wing movement there, among both organ- ized and unorganized in various industries, and the common struggles being made by colored and white, a young chap with a southern drawl who hailed from the port of New Orleans, took the floor. With all the tang and swagger of the sea, he desczibed in the sailor’s lingo, the con- ditions along the southern gulf coast for men who go down to the sea in ships, and likewise for those who load these vessels with cargo. Rottening food, bunks unfit for animals, quarters below water level and lacking any ventilation. Tyranny of ship and dock officials. White rker played against black, and black against white. Since the Inter- national Scame! Union had lost all fighting character, the men had been helpless before the shipowners’ onslaughts. But now the Marine Workers League was reorganizing them, on a sounder basis, and we could expect to see the big battles in many ports within the next few months. “You all know how important marine transport is in modern times. We marine workers know that we’ve got an important part to play in labor's struggle to victory and we’re in to the finish. You'll all live to see the American ships in every port flying the red flag!” For that statement we gave him a good send-off. A red-faced, broad-shouldered lumber-jack from Seattle spoke of bad conditions in the North West and the revolutionary traditions of labor there, ending with the statement that Seattle labor would call other general strikes like the one of some years ago, but this time with more telling effect. “And any time Soviet Russia needs help, Seattle labor is ready!” A girl silk worker strode back and Yorth on the platform, and described for us in a ringing voice the Pennsylvania textile workers’ battles against terrific conditions, state police and reactionary union machine, the birth and growth of the new revolutionary union there, and instances of solidarity between miners and textile workers. The exploitation of Japanese, Mexican and Chinese workers on the California fruit farms and in the canneries was the story which a bright- faced young delegate from the food workers’ organization on the coast had to tell us. He made a strong plea for interracial and international solidarity of workers both within the country and all over the world. A slim, soft-tongued mill hand from Dixie told more about mill conditions in the South and the rapid growth ‘of the National Textile Workers Union throughout the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia and Ten- nessee. Many‘ mill hands were serving as volunteer organizers, work- ing their way from mill village to village, organizing mill committees, and preparing the waysfor widespread revolt. ‘We mill workers down South have got no use for the UTW. That organization has sold us out, time and again. It works with the bosses. But we want a real union, and we're going to build the National Textile Workers Union into a powerful organization. At first, many mill hands thought Bolshevik was somethin’ to eat them up, but we've learned different. That's bosses talk. We found out Bolsheviks were fine folks, who helped the workin’ people. We used to hate’n despise the colored people but we're learning different on this, too. All workers got to stick together for their interests. Bolshevik means a worker who woan mind th’ boss. We ain't ashamed to be called Bolshevik, we're proud of it. We used to be jes’ Poor Whites, who let th’ mill owners bleed our lives out, but now we're Bolsheviks who'll fight back!” When noon-time came, nobody wanted to quit; or leave the hall. So we stayed inside and ate sandwiches and drank pop, and about a hundred gathered around the piano and sang, every working class song we knew. Two or three hundred mére sat in the benches and joined in. “It’s the old capitalist system— It ain’t good enuf for me. It’s good for the money makers— For Wall Street speculators— For all the labor fakers— But t’aint.good enough for me.” Also the Hurry Hymn of the Ford Worker: “Mine eyes have seen the ‘glory’ of the coming Ford, “t's made under conditions that offend even the lord, With most ungodly driving and amid a mad uprcar, PRODUCTION rushes on! Hurry, hurry, hurry up, John! Hurry, hurry, hurry up, John! Hurry, hurry, hurry up, John! We've got a rush job on.” Not many knew che words at first. Maybe a third of us knew the International. But everybody threw themselves into learning the songs just as earnestly as they were setting themselves the task of mastering the theory and tactics of proletarian revolutionary struggle. | toilers, and their determination for relentless battle against American We had such a good time singing that when Jack Johnstone, with | his cox comb hair, appeared on the platform to open the afternoon | session, nobody wanted to stop. He had to wait until we had one or two more. Just as had happened in the morning, two of the best speeches in the afternoon session were given by Negro delegates. This was no accident, for weren’t colored workers in a position to feel the struggle the most? Who could know better than they the need for workers’ solidarity against capitalism? And when they feel a thing to be true, | colored people surely know how to express it, in musi¢ or by word of mouth. What ninnies the “progressives” are, to try and patronize colored labor! A Negro miner who wore a red flower in his buttonhole and came from Logan County, West Virginia, where the civil war betweef# opera- tors and coal diggers raged a few years ago, began his talk by saying: | new story of the renegade Bessedovs! 8. if ‘ Port. ae ie “T’ve heard a lot about colored workers here today and that’s all right; but I want to tell you that I’ve come to this convention and entered | this movement not as a member of a race but as a member of the | working class. What difference does it make what's the color of your skin? It’s all the same to the boss. What he asks, when you go for a job is not ‘what race do you belong to?’ but ‘how much coal can you load?’ Down in West Virginia, we miners, white and black, have learned our lesson. We stick together. We've learned to depend on ourselves, | and our National Miners Union. We've got rid of the Lewis gang, | and we've quit praying to that fellow up in the sky who some still believe in. That’s what all of us workers has got to learn to do, depend on ourselves and the men we choose to lead us.” A mulato woman, with a chesty voice and sweeping gestures, drove home point after point, urging us, also, to depend on our organized power alone, and break away from the religious bonds which hold many of the working class back. “I used to be religious, myself,” she went on, “but what’s been happening among us miners in Illinois for the last ten years, and all over the country has changed all that. What good does religion do a worker, anyways?” she challenged. “Only deceives him and holds him back. Keeps him from fighting the bosses. That’s why the bosses are for it. Down in Texas the other day a black man got down on his knees and prayed for deliverance from the white mob which had him, but they soaked him in oil and burned him just the same—on his knees. I tell you we workers got to git off our knees and fight. “Will religion feed us and our kids? No sir, workers can’t live on earth 'n board in heaven ... This is the greatest movement in existence, and,”—with arms stretched out in a hallelujah gesture—“I’m only sorry I've got but one life to spend in this great cause.” “I am sent here as, representative from the Superior Cooperative Exchange which has a membership of forty thousand,” a blond, ‘squarely built Finn told us, and then he described the tremendous accomplish- ments of this organization in the North West (I had seen many of the exchange community buildings, young people’s clubs and other co- operative activities of this organization. There is no better mass organ- ization in the country today. The Finns don’t waste words, but how they can organize!) He went on to tell of the discontent among ,the iron and copper miners in this section, and the Exchange ability and readi- ness to work with the National Miners Union in organizing those open shop’ hell holes. “T’ve been asked by many delegates to this convention,” said the young representative from the Chinese Workers Alliance of the Coast, “why the Chinese toilers stand for the nationalists:taking the railroad from Soviet Russia, and my answer is this: we here are a long way from China and with the censorship and terrorism that exists there, it takes some time for reliable information to reach us in this country. But I know as sure as I stand here, that the Chinese peasants and workers will never let the war lords make war on Soviet Russia. They are fighting, and will fight to the death to defend the workers’ father- land, and are making ready to seize power in China. Let us, -here, organize and prepare to do likewise!” Delegate after delegate took the floor. Workers from metal, shoe, electrical and steel plants, off the railroads, and from the printing, building, automobile, and many other industries. It was like a great moving picture which hour after hour took us into every industry and part of the country, showing us the lives of America’s millions of imperialism, with its speedup, wage cuts, unemployment and threaten- ing war. Many times the movie was turned‘on toilers’ lives in Russia, and the contrast was sharp and clear. “Just let the capitalists dare to attack Soviet Russia, we will show them!” Many declared, “There is no doubt of what we workers in this country must do. We must follow the Russian workers’ and peasants’. example.” Solidarity ran like an. electric current from worker to worker, stretching out from the hall where we sat to all parts of the world. We saw millions of lives pouring into a common stream, generating a dynamo of invincible power, creating a machine which would @rash through all the hells that capitalism can invent. This, fellow-workers, was what Cleveland was: a genuitie expres- sion of the laboring masses of this country. It was no mere demonstra- | tion, either, but a declaration of battle, a call to the colors for organized, | persistent action. And in this drive’ forward, the Communist Party was organized as leader. ; | Cleveland was American labor’s three days, in preparation for the ten days which will shake this powerful stronghold of capitalist im- perialism to the earth—and on its ruins we, workers, will build up the new. (TO BE CONTINUED.) BESSEDOVSKI’S SLANDERS. The newspaper “Paris Midi” has published a statement of Besse- dovski who was dismissed from the service of the Soviet Embassy for defaication and who has entered the service of the reaction: “When | Trotsky requested permission to enter France and visited the French | authorities in order to secure a visum, Marcel Cachin and Boutonnier came to the Embassy (this was in the middle of May). For two hours | they did their best to convince Dovgalevski of the necessity of protect- ing the French Communist Party from Trotsky with the assistance of the French authorities.” Ley Referring to this statement, Marcel Cachin declares in “l’Human- | ite”: “I have not been in the Soviet Embassy for about three years and I have only seen Dovgalevski once in my life. I never did anything at all either directly or indirectly in connection with Trotsky’s attempt to secure permission to enter France. There is not one true word in this ” ; THE CITY." OF BREAD Reprinted, by permission, from “The City of Bread” by Alexander Neweroff, published and copyrighted by Doubleday—Doran, New York. TRANSLATED FROW THE RUSSIAN , (Continued.) An immense cloud approached’ and blotted out the sun, falling like a black curtain over the train. The train with its burden of people plunged right into the cloud, pierced it with its whistle, screamed and shrieked and yelled, but could not escape. Perhaps it was the cloud that weighed it down, or it may have been because they were going uphill. The wheels ceased their dancing, the cars ceased their swaying: dragging its tail painfully behind it, the train fell into a crawling gait,’ ready to come to a halt at any moment. Suddenly out of a giant pitcher, a heavy shower of rain poured down. The huge drops drummed on the muddy, dilapidated roofs. The mujiks huddled close together. Mishka and Trofim sat motionless under Trofim’s piece of sacking. Only the dead woman still lay, face upward, and her dead. staring eyes filled with rain water. And then, when the big cloud broke up into little tufts and the tufts floated away over the steppe, scattering the last raindrops, a raw cold wind sat in, ‘A station came into view far ahead, a tiny smudge on the horizon. Near by in a valley camels took their way. Above a hillock curled a threat of smoke. Trofim said to Mishka, his whole body shaking with cold: “Chilly?” “Are you?” CINE aioe “T too.” : “I’m hungry!” said Trofim. “I too,” admitted Mishka. “Think you can hold out?” “What about you?” “I've held out two days alrea Mishka did not wish to be behind his comrade—he nodded his head confidently. “We'll hold out.” At the station the mujiks jumped down hastily. Only Mishka and Trofim were left on the roof. And the dead woman with the yellow, grinning teeth. . The full moon, rising high over the station, poured its soft light over the dead body, peered into the gaping mouth. It freightened Mishka, but Trofim said tranquilly: “We won’t get down. If we do, we won't get a place so quickly on another roof. And if we're left here at the station, it will be still worse. Are you afraid of dead people?” “Are you?” “What's there to be afraid of? They can’t get up...” The train made only a short stop. Near the engine a lantern swung through the darkness, the buffers clanged and, in the night, in the raw cold, the train moved heavily on, its wheels revolving lazily. The last building went by. The last lantern gazed after them with its dim eye. Over the cars hung the chilly moon with its bald yellow head. “It’s cold!” said Trofim. “Let’s put our arms around each other.” Mishka unbottoned his wet jacket, and Trofim clasped him in his shaking arms beneath his sacking, belly pressed to belly, breast to breast. : Mishka clasped the other just as tight, drawing together the flaps of his coat over Trofim’s back; and thus, through the cold misty night, breathing into each other's faces, holding each other from death, they rode on the roof of the train, a tiny, two-headed mass, fused together through a common, inflexible desire—the will to live, come what might. “T’m warmer now!” said Trofim. z “I too,” agreed Mishka. “Breathe a little on my cheek, will you?” “And you breathe on mine...” CURT 6? In that moment, the hearts of both children were enkindled by the warm joy of friendship. They did not put it into words, they rode along silently. But both felt how good it was to be together, how much less dreadful. And the dead woman, who no longer terrified them, seemed to say: ” “So, children, so. . - ‘ The next morning they took Mishka’s jacket to sell at a big Kirghim station. For the hundredth time Trofim instructed Mishka, speaking as a man of experience: “Ask four thousand.” “Will they give that much?” “If they don’t you can come down. I'll begin bargaining with you. You keep saying what a fine jacket you have for sale, and start cursing me when I offer too little. Understand? Now go over there where the crowd is .. .” P Mishka entered the jostling, many-colored throng, carrying his jacket over his arm, Trofim slipped to his side and prompteds “Yell louder!” Mishka swung his jacket. “Buy, buy, I’m selling cheap!” Trofim let him go ahead for a time, then went up to him and demanded loudly: “Hey there! What do you want for it?” “You won't buy!” answered Mishka. “And how do you know I won't?” “You have no money.” “Did you count it?” “I can tell by looking at you.” Trofim grew indignant: “Say, you piece of trash, tell what you want for it!” “Four thousand.” “Will you take less?” “That's cheap enough already—it’s almost new. . - Mishka and Trofim stood facing each other in the midst of the jostling, many-colored throng, and wrangled in loud voices, to call attention to the jacket they had for sale, but no one, not a single soul, would stop. One or another would throw a glance in their direction, then pass one. Trofim shook his head: : “They’re too smart, damn them! We can’t fool them!” Their high spirits were already beginning to fall and the jacket to seem a miserable, hopeless thing, and the two were thinking despair- ingly: you won’t get rid of it for a thousand, when a young Kirghiz lad, just a little bigger than Trofim, paused and regarded the boys with black, flashing eyes. ‘ Mishka swung the jacket: “Buy, buy!” Then a Kirghiz with a little beard and protruding lips stopped inspected the jacket inside and out, and inquired in Russian: “How much?” “I’m selling it cheap: four thousand.” “One thousand!” From behind the back of the Kirghiz Trofim shouted: “Who does this jacket belong to?” “Me,” returned Mishka. “How much do you want for it?” “Four thousand.” “Do you want to sell it or are you just passing the time?” de- manded Trofim roughly. “If you really want to sell it, give it to me for three thousand, and done! All right?” The Kirghiz looked at the new purchased, spat, began to get ex- cited, fingered the material. “There’s nothing to feel here, comrade. It’s good material, you can wear it two years,” said Mishka, like a regular merchant. Other Kirghiz joined them, chattered together, made offers: “Two thousand!” i “It’s no use comrades. I won’t give it any cheaper.” “Three thousand! Eh?” Trofim whispered to him cautiously: “Come down a thousand.” Mishl:a struck the palm of the Kirghiz like a regular grown up ae" "1 loudly: Uy “seket! A fine piece of goods!” d bread, and fear and pain vanished. (To Be Continued.) too,