The Daily Worker Newspaper, December 21, 1929, Page 4

stIRSC City only): $8.4 ity): § IPTION RATES: a year; $4.50 six months; 5.00 a year; $3.30 six months; Baily Central Organ of the Communist HERE COMES KENTUCKY! mesa yY RECRUITING DRIVEO ST 325 Worker of, the UL Ss. £2.50 three months $2.00 three months Ey Mail (in New ¥ y Mail (outside of New York ¢ A. SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS I] By Fred Ellis functioning Party apparatus. ‘sult Thallenge Fre rom Coast to Coast Today, when we the masses everywhere young worke the Young ¢ factorie been very see especially amon Califorr sm To date quiet ab Worker Drive. ariat meeting, Membersh We ch double its At Secre took up the Worker Sub Drive. nia District to members triple the number of Young Worker by the two-month period, ending F Let’s go with action, and let the central office decile who succeeds bes Forward under the slogan of Revolutionary Competition to a Young Communist League. SECRETARIAT DISTRICT 15. Chester, W sea Get Busy Recruiting GILBERT. By RAY of District Three Pa., Wilmington, Del. is Section dere one can fin factories employing thousands of wor in each. Some of the most important industries are located in this section, Dupont Powder, Her les Powder, Bethlehem Ship Building, rrison Chemica Works, Ford’s Plant, Vis- toes and Irving Textile Mills, which could be turned into war industry over night; in short, many large factories of the marine workers, textile, etc. BIG STRUGGLES LOOM. The characte ics of the third period can be seen here ful! Rationalization of the Industries is being r sven larger degree here. The speed up is get- ting more unbearable almost daily. The work- ers are foreed to produce almost twice previous amount, with even a lowering wages, instead of raising them. y-off: employment is prevalent in most of the mills. At the Aborfoil textile mill, despite the intro- duction of the stretch-out system, only Instead of pretious 1,500 looms are running. At the Ford plant, which is now almost at a Standstill, the bosses called in the foremen and told them this: “As we are going to raise the wages, you must make the workers make it up by producing more. Keep the fast ones, fire the slow ones.” The contemptible scheme is to fire and then rehire the workers at lower Wages, at the same time speeding them up to make more profits for the “Humanitarian Henry.” The trick is accomplished by making the workers believe, that they really mean to raise the wages. Because of these terrible conlitions prevalent within the factories, discontent and readiness for an offensive fight, can be seen among the working population in the towns of this sec- tion. A large percentage of the workers hefe are Negroes, the most exploited section of the working class. At many of the plants the workers are speaking of calling strikes. The great major- ity of the workers in this sections are unor- ganized. The conditions for the building of the TUUL and the Communist Party, here are good. y introduced to an Shortcomings of Party. The Communist Party here, however,’ has many shortcomings, standing in the way of its entrenchment in these highly important war industries. Pessimism, defeatism; e. g., (“We are too weak to do anything”) right social democratic—orientation—: (“We are too busy with our fraternal clubs”); white thauvinism is not entirely, as yet eradicated; tome stopped coming to the meetings and told their children from the YCL and YP not to go also, since we made headway with Negro tions tty squabbles among the and passivity. All this, here Inact nm several large plants working; ny good con- been irregular not s we have mr members have and been gs have or months, held Su n, Del., di Jed to and obstacles that the building of the mov between the Contmunist out. It already took defi- - Build the Communist Party Build shop nuclei and 3. Build the TUUL, 4, ¥ Tenants League. 5. League. meetii De- subjec work ns for the commit id the A. N meeting a resolu- . drive Dec. 10 to his section, is going to are a little late, but we to entrench the the shortest n ever rere, within 53 New Members in eae During First Week of Drive At the best Chicago ci held y membership meet- year, the results of the recruiting campaign were rs was hte total taken lows: ing in over a first 6 days of the announced. in and dis Section 2- —11 members 8 members 9 members 16 members 4 members 1 member 4 members Yards ii Section 3 Section 4... 53 members Of these 53 workers, 11 are Americans and were recruited directly into existng shop nuclei. Th ults were illustrated on a huge chart, m the front of the mem- bership meeti nd were received with great enthusiasm the membership when an- competition in the recruiting 1 swing in Chicago with eve) mass the Party member- the district quota is in f drive nucleus and the ship determined to sur of 600. Recruiting Yeung Workers Dear We ccmrades of the Upper Bronx, No. 1, agree to challenge you comrades of Harlem on the following base: qd) new (2) (3) to the Comrades: To ague make goo: member: our quota of ({proletarians). twenty L get three new Negro young workers. T» fulfil our quota for sixty subscribers. “Young Worker.” All this to be carried out by the end of the drive. We comrades of Upper Bronx No. 1, under- ding our revolutionary competition with your unit, in order to fulfil car quota plece ourselves at the complete disposal of the Lea- gue. We pledge ourselves to become soldiers in the ranks of our League and to do what- eve. work is assigned to us. To attend meet- ing regularly, to pay dues, and in that way strengthen our League. Speed up the membership driv Cleanse you ments! League of all undesirable ele- Forward to a mass Young Communist Lea- ! gue! a successful membership drive, UPPER BRONX, NO. 1. THE COMMUNIST ELECTION CAMPAIGN By S. A. Darcy Article II. HE lack of initiative from below brought with it many organizational shortcomings in the New York election campaign of our Party. Thus the assignment of speakers and Publicity for every local meeting was the task of the District Committee, while the procuring of committees for these meetings were the tasks of the section committee or unit. Thus there was a big gap between the speakers and the committees for the meetipgs, making for endless difficulties. Sometimes the speaker did not come on time and so the committee which came felt justly outraged, and other times the exact reverse would take place. This lack of contact between speakers and commit- tees can be overcome through the encourage- ment of initiative from below; the establish- ment of section campaign headquarters which shall have attached to itself a certain number of speakers so that the entire work of organ: izing the local meetings shall be in the hands of a single committee thereby avoiding con- fusion. Another example of this same ten- dency to deprive lowereParty- organs of their initiative was the choosing of all local candi- dates by the District Committee. the section committee in the position of Party organizations which lack political authori And this also considerably weakened the cam- paign. But even in District Committee there were _considerable shortcomings in the very way that the work was organized. There was too much tendency to centralize the whole campaign in the hands of a special campaign committee, ing the campaign away from the regularly The worst re- as that the Party did not carry the campaign into the shops. It was inevitable that all these shortcom- ings in the organization of the work should found reflection in the results obtained. out of approximately 500 street corner meetings arranged during the campaign, about ‘per cent never took place and a consider- # | This put | | able number of the balance were carried thru poor fashion. C about 130 fac- tory gate nfeetings were arranged and even out of ‘this startlingly small number about 25 per cent took place. These failures were large- due to the lack of coordination between the various sections of the Party in its work. No small shortcoming in this campaign was the character of our candidates. Most of them did not participate in the campaign. Many of them were not even in town during the time the campaign took place, but were in other parts of the country. Out of our 36 candidates we were able to a certain the records of 34 as to their participation in campaign activity. If we take the number of times they spoke at election meetings as a barometer we find the following: Candidates who never spoke, 9; candidates who spoke one to three times during the entire campaign, 19; Those who spoke about six times, 12; those who spoke regularly (twice a week), 3. rom these figures it can be seen that the cadre of comrades who should have made the best leaders in the campaign were useless and even a hinderance. Do Shortcomings Show Left or Right Danger? Our shortcomings in regard to the lack of response from the language organizations were so manifest as to hardly neea citation. Thus practically every meeting arranged by ovr language propaganda bureaus were failures. Many bureaus did not even attemnt to or- ganize meetings. Similarly those organizations which are friendly to the Communist Party such as the various relief and defense organ- izations, and the left wing trade unions were either not at all or hardly mobilized for the drive. In some unions the agitation for the Communist platform and ticket was so weak that where in other matters as for example participation in anti-war demonstrations under United Front auspices it was possible to get the entire organization to respond, in this case The Haitian Masses in Motion By HARRISON GEORGE. (The First of Two Articles.) ‘HE Haitian newspaper, the “La Presse” of Port-au-Pfince, in its issue of November 25, publishes a letter (which space forbids be here reprinted in full) from the officials of the newly formed National Workers Party of: Haiti, addressed to Antoine Pierre Paul, re- vealing the formation of this party and ap- pointing him too act as its spokesman before .the American imperialist government. Paul was one of those first arrested in the strike and martial law which took place after the publication of the letter, which reveals, in the formation gf. this new party, one of the most and ticket was achieved by only a very small margin. In practically no case was the drive for our platform and ticket taken to the mem- bership and the workers in the shops by the union leaders but only to the top committees. The Lovestoneites in citing the reasons for the failure of many of our comrades to re- spond actively in the organization of the cam- paign through fighting in the factories and mass organizations, out of a “leftist” attitude towards the election campaign, namely the attitude that the elec- tion campaign is not a revolutionary method of struggle. 4n answer to the Lovestoneites’ it must be pointed out that the source of the failure of man} of our comrades in’ this period to participate actively in support of the Com- munist platform and ticket+ts not due to a leftist appreciation of election campaigns but is rather due,to an opportunist resistance to raising the Party banner in mass organizations and before the workers generally. It is in this way that one can understand the failure of our language bureaus and our fractions in other mass organizations to build up the necessary support for the Communist ticket -ande can- didates. Our Own Agnateurishness. The last important shortcoming which it is necessary to cite here is the amateurishness of our Partyin the campaign methods that we "employ. I refer especially to ¢he entirely i adequate and monotonous leaflets that we i: sue; to the failure to circulate voters list espe- cially in proletarian sections of thé city, to use the newer methods of propaganda which are available to us such as moving pictures or at least Stereoptican views; of carrying on our open air meetings in more modern fashion with loud, sPeakers attached to trucks, ete. It should be interesting in this connection to study not only the methods of the Communist Parties in other countries but also, wane methods of the,bourbeois parties Pi the U. Positive. Sides of the Campaign. The sharp criticism jntroduced in this article may lead some comrades to think that there were no positive sides to the campaign. of coursé, would be entirely untrue. We have ony to cite the, fact that this year our Party comrades collected more signatures during the election campaign in one month’s less time than last year. And that this signature collection was carried- through in accompaniment. with serious political agitation such as did got mark previous c@mpaigns, We can also point to the fact that several hundred new ‘members joined the Party during this period. Tke campaign open air meetings which were carried through received in the main splendid response from the workers who showed tremendous interest in the issues raised by our Communist, Party. The election campaign of the Fall of 1930 will be a more ,important one in certain re- spects than Wa this last election campaign. Through correcting our errors, through elim- inating the ghortcomings and strengtheninf of our Party both ideologically and organiza- tionally will-be able to. achieve that measure of support for our Communist ticket and plat- form whick the workers in growing numbers the endorsement of the Communist platform are ready to give. , say that this failure arises | ¢ tinct from other classes. This | e | significant turning points in the history of the | Haitian people. worker conscious of his class and its sion to destroy capitalist imperial- , every worker who is an internationalist, will give deep and responsive welcome to the first steps, however faltering and errant, of the oppressed workers and peasants of Haiti on the path of cla: truggle. Every worker | who sees mirrored in the miseries of the Hai- | tian. workers, his own class sufferings and his own complaints, will feel a tug at his heart- strings as he re@ds such simple tragedy as the following paragraph on the sufferings of the Negro toilers of Haiti: “Since 1915, each year is worse than the preceding one. Today, we are reduced to such a state of suffering and privation that laughter and joy have deserted our work- shops where, even during our most sanguin- ary revolutions, a worker’s song stimulated our arjor and rendered agreeable the labor begun. Today our places are occupied by foreigners. , Tricked, despised, without work and bread, the working cl: which consti- tutes the life force of the nation, languishes in the darkest misery, having before it no perspective of amelioration.” Every American worker must, moreover, feel a sense of responsiblity for tearing away the hand of American imperialism which is | choking the life out of the Haitian, worker. American imperialism, which under the hypo- critical pretense of bringing “progress, culture and peace” to the Haitian people, is robbing, | cheating and murdering them. | . The revolutionary workers of America fully acknowledge this responsibility and, led by the Communist Party, only a few days ago turned out by thousands in the streets of New York to protest the crimes of the American government, proving, when they met the same sort of brutal aftacks as are visited upon the Haitian workers, that they stand ready to sac- rifice their blood and freedom for the opp®essed | toilers of Haiti, for the fighting solidarity of the international proletariat of which they are @ part. - Every revolutionary worker of the United" States, therefore, will be glad to know that the oilers of Haiti, isolated from international contact by the watchdogs of imperialism and its vile native lackeys led by Borno, have been touched by the tremendous tide of history and have awakened to their interests as a class of “political importance in society, as a class dis- True, the realization of distinct class inter- ests, in the case of the signers of the letter (the officials of the National Workers Party), | is grievously inadequate to carry through the ideas which it sets forth. Because a class distinct from other classes must also have a program distinet from other classes, and from this basic division must foreswear organic de- | pendence upon other classes, must forge from | its owe blood and sinew the only leadership | upon which it can and must depend to direct | its struggles. Hence it is a serious error for the Haitian Workers Party to have limited its program perspective to the same demand as that the | hourgegis opposition, a mere “restoration” of imperialist capitalist government by native capitalist government. Thus the letter speaks for “the restoration of our instituti®s,” the mere turning over “little by little as the Amer- ican, element leaves the place, in the different branches of public administration, to the Hai- f tian elements which will have been trained to assume the functions now occupiel by Amer- ican officials.” The function of American officials is to rob and oppress the Haitian workers and peasants, whose integests cannot be advanced by “resto- | ration of” present governmental institutions, but by their destruction and replacement by a government of workers and peasants only. The formation of a Workers’ Party is the symbol of an historic advance, hence by a program of AND LABOR ® MYRA PAGE. ' By (Continued) There are but few mill hands on a mill hill. The companies see to this. Also, only those whose work at the mill makes it necessary to live in the village would do so. Occupational experience of villagers is -limitel, with rare exceptions, to farming and mill life. Ap- proximately one-half of villagers are second or third generation mill workers, while the others are fresh recruits from the lowland and moun- tain farms. A child born on a mill hill has little choice of a career before hime The chances are nine to one that he will go into a cotton mill. He may become a dirt farmer or agricultural laborer, but Poor Whites and Negroes both know this to be a poor alternative. If the child is a gir] the chances are 99 to 1 that she will work in the mill or marry a mill hand, or | | | both. In talking with approximately 385 mill families living in five Carolina mill villages, these are the facts which came to light: BOE a aes AND ABOV VILLAGES OCCUPATIONS OF FOU YEARS, OF Al CAROLINA MILL Perce ——-Men——. - aged in ‘Women——— SB. IN VI ¥ CAROLINA x ‘itt ih | Length of Average of | Residence Five Villages | (years) 0-4 Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 form 58 3 St 96 88 \ 100 100 Percentages giyen in culminative Ot 0-9 8 100 100 While mill hands find it hard-to leave the trade altogether, they can move from village to village, looking for a better break. South- ern mill owners have ne’ been able to curb labor turnover to their satisfaction. A moving a common sight in a mill village. These ile workers, like rural forebears, take their issatisfaction out in restless roaming dbout. This is a common but unfruitful method which unorganized and underpaid workmen use everywhere, until they learn that the real way to accomplish improvements for themselves is through their organized efforts. Nearly one-half of the mill families with whom we came in contact -had been: staying in the village where they now lived, twé years or le: Almost two-thirds of them had been in town less than five-years, and, only one- eighth had been there as long as fifteen years. A recent study on “Lost. Time and Labor. Turnover in /Cotton Mills” by the U..S, Bur- eau of Women in Industry, revealed that. the time lost by workers trying for, jobs-for short periods in other mills comprises nearly three times great a per cent of absencé in the South as in the North. The rate for the South was 10.2 per cent, and for the Noith, 8.9 per cent. Southern mill operatives. ate eyen more dissatisfied thanetheir xforthern fellow work- ers, because of lower wage rates, lack of upion rights, company ownership of villages,.and’the greater stigma on mill work. in the,-South. With increased earnings a marked. tendency develops to remain in one place longer. Wages earned by southern mill workers are” low and their hours long. South Carolina law allows mills to work an eleven hour day anda fifty-five hour week, while North Carolina permits a sixty hour week. Most mills run the maximum number of hours, while over- time in busy periods is widely practiced. In some villages men told me of working seventy-. twe hours a week. Many mills work May and , night shifts. The lower wages and longer hours prevailing in southern mills, as com- pared with the forty-eight hours week and Wage rates current in northern mills, accounts for te shift of the textile industry southward. The average yearly wage for all textile work- ers in South Carolina for 1919 was. $756.73, for North Carolina $730.12, and for Massachu- setts $897.17 (U. S. Fourteenth Census, Vol- ume VIII). The 1925 Biennial Census of Manufacigirers showed the average wage of cotton goods workers in South Carolina to be $631.38; for North, $640.1; for Massachusetts, $954.00, and for the United States as a whole, $806.39. The sohthern mill owners have ob- jectel to this comparison of money wages of northern and southern textile workers, on the basis that it does not take into account the differences in cost of living of the two mill groups, but their objections have been proven invalid. A study by the National «Industrial Conference Board, a manufacturers” organiza- tion, of the camparative cost of living in northern and southern textile towns, revealed. that the cost of living in the southern districts is actually higher than that in the North, lower rents in the South being more than’ offset by higher food prices. Studies show that: $1,510 is the minimum amount on which a family of five ean live in the Carolinas—about two-and- one-half times the actual amount earned. by a ‘mill worker there. Differences in wages and hours cannot be explained away in terms. of cost of living, but are due to the pressure of union demands and social legislation in the northern region, and the relative Jack of this pressure in southern territory. (To Be Continued) * Down with Pennsylvania Terror! By PAT DEVINE. | EENNSYLVANIA terrorism has temporary setback in the verdict of not guilty handed out in the Accorsi frameup. The well laid plans of the State went astray. The sickeningly grotesque summary of the prosecu- tion attorney was too raw. When he alluded to “ofr glorious institution of state troopers carefully selected from the best manhood of the country who did everything possible to peaceably disperse the Sacco-Van- zetti demonstration” the prosecutor overstepped himself. All Pennsylvania knows the morbid brutality of these hounds of “justice.” Too often have they smashed in the heads of militant workers. Too often have they ridden down women and children. The jury which returned the favorable ver- dict was evidently swayed by the undoubted general desire of all but the most corrupt sec- tions of the working class—the American Legionaires and the bosses—for the abolition of the state troopers. The obvious bankruptcy of the state’s case had much to do wtih the verdict: It was a clear effort to take the life of an innocent worker as revenge for the justified killing of a brutal colleague. It did not succeed. . Don’t Be Fooled. While the working class has good reason for exultation for having snatched one of its mem- bers from the: bloody hands of Prussianized Pennsylvania, we must not be fooled. The legal machinery of the state, supported *by all the power of the bosses was all set to murder Accorsi. Their failure does not mean that workers may expect “justice” in the fu- ture. Only the bosses get justice in the capi- talist courts. Accorsi was freed because of the splendid fight made by the International Labor Defense received a historic retrogression it does not answer the demands placed upon it. Again, the letter speaks in a way which shows this party of workers distrustful of their own abilities and power. Though they are “the life force of the nation” they turn to “good Haitians,” people evidently outside their own ranks, from which “to’ choose a leader,” and confusing tbe ability to lead a struggle with the ability to write petitions and orate in scholarly language, they invite intellectuals not only to share leadership with them, which is natural and correct so long as such intellec- tuals subordinate themselves to the common cause, but to “be our leaders,” apparently with- out even the slightest direction or control by workers, since they address Pierre Paul as one “in whom to confide the elaboration of our program,” to—“make such declarations as you will find necessary.” One might well wonder why workers form an organization at all, if they turn over, carte. «blanche, the entire function of their organiza- tion, which should consider and decide collec- tively, to one man, however loyal to their in- terests he might be. But there are other and deeper weaknesses in the policies of the National Workers Party of Haiti, which we will mention in a following } article. and the Communist Party. ‘The. innumerable | meetings and protests held “throughout .the country undoubtedly saved Accorsi. One might well ask why Aceorsi was’ not murdered as Sacco and Vanzetti, were: Con- ditions in the country haye changed icensider- ably since the two militant Italian workers were murdered. | Today capitalism is in crisis. class is on the move. example of this. Illinois, where the National Minegs Union is leading thousands of militant miners in strug- gle against the bosses is another example. There, the miners on the picket line are being met by the full force of the bosses backed up. by’ the bayonets, machine guns and bombs of the militia. Every fight of the working class today is.a political fight which smashes at the very foundations of capitalist society. The recent Wall Stregt crash, which Presi- dent Hoover is endeavoring to minimize was another sure sign of the instability of ¢this supposedly all powerful structure of American. and world capitalism. In such a situation the bosses have to be very careful not to be too clean cut in their disregard for the lives of workers—and also to be very careful to try and preserve the faith of many workers in capitalist justice: . Hence, the very weakness of the state’s case against Accorsi, which ordinarily would have been suf: ficient to convict, will be used everywhere as a signiof the “justice of the capitalist,courts!” Already, the simon pure liberals are_beaming. Justice has been vindicated they say. We may expect an exuberant statement from.the Civil Liberties Union telling the world that:at last brutal Pennsylvania has ‘seen the error,of its ways and is appyoa ‘coaching a more: humang standpoint. Workers” must, reject ec view- point. Remember that as Accorsi left * fe. court house a free man, our.three militant’ ‘Wopd- lawn comrades, M. Reseter, T. Zima ‘and P. Muselin were incarcerated in: the Allegheny county workhouse for five years, Our Wood- lawn comrades committed no crime. ° They. were, convicted for being memb@s of the Communist Party. ei It is well also to remember. ‘that aft is. very: moment the state cogsacks are on their way to frame up another worker. . The Cheswick “riots” from which the Accors! case déveloped are not yet dead. Ten workers are under indictment for sedition. _ Undoubtedly the Jong arms of the law will stretch out for @ victim who must pay for the death: of trooper. Instead of losing our. fighting spirit and sensitivity to struggle because Accorsi was freed, we must sharpen our weapons and pre- pare to defend whomsoever the next victim will be. The working Gastonia is a glorious Build the Communist Party... . The bosses feel they can release ordinary workers of whom they are not afraid, in ae to continue the illusions aboug capitalist justice. However, they take no chances with militant class conscious Communists. It is well that. the Communist Party” has started a membership. drive, indreds | of workers will join our Party on wave this movement, of revolt. We. must ‘prepare ourselves to take advantage of it, )