The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 30, 1930, Page 4

iY Page Four Square, New Yo: Published by the Com prodatty Publishing Co., Inc., daily, except Sunday, at 26-28 Union rk City, N. Y. ‘able: “D. Telephone Stuyvesant 1696-7-8, Ci AIWORK.” Addrees and mail all checks to the Daily Worker, 26-28 Union Square, New York, N. Y. THERE IS NEW LIFE WITHIN OUR PARTY 'HE forword to the Resolution of the Polcom on the Illinois miners’ strike is a promoter for discussion. And in this spirit the follow- ing is contributed. My observations will be general. First of all the Party leadership should know, that we, rank and file members are conscious of the sincere effort being stressed for by them—the real and actual Bolshevization of our Party! Our press, the Daily Worker reflects this endeavor. The Daily Worker is on the road to becoming one of our most powerful, indispens- able weapons—our Party Organ. At last, in our American Party, we rank and filers have become full pledged Party members. Informa- tion no longer is a matter of personal property, monopolized by the leadership. On the con- trary, the virulent energies of the rank and file are released. Party democracy is a living factor—theory and practice is being. deeply rooted. The rank and filer must no longer suffer insulting snickerings when he takes the floor from the who “belong.” No longer must suffer patronage; is not punished nor reward- ed. He always owed his allegiance but to one leadership—The Communist International. And so we find the stifled energies that come to and are brought forward now both in the field of struggle and organization still weak, undeveloped. Why? Because the rank and file Party member finds himself all of a sudden thrust into a pitched battle. He does not know that theses, resolutions, conferences, conventions, slogans and mass expressions of militancy are to be used as weapons, tools. A Party member is expected to know how to use hese weapons and tools skillfully. But until now we did not use them—we were incom- petent. We were satisfied to fight only when we absolutely had to. Today we have learned that we must get out and pick an organized fight whenever and wherever we are. And so learn to picket right, fight back right, organize right. For Collective Work. Our most integral organism, the nucleus within the Party, and the fraction within the mass organizations does not yet yield its power. If our Party organizations were earnestly led by capable functionaries, half of our battle to- day would be won. (Both Party and League). The leading functionary is the section and dis- srict organizer. He must see to it that every Party member fully understands the line of the Party, T.U.U.L., N.M.U., etc. He must ex- plain what were the causes necessitating the idoption of such a line, by what means and how to carry them successfully thru. The unit sub-section, section and district or- ganizer must never lose sight of the fact that nformation plus simple explanation is vital to the rank and filer. He must not lose sight of the fact that the worker is more than willing to fight because it is in his interest, but the worker must be taught the skillful use of his weapons in the class struggle. Building from the bottom up; from the smallest problem; atilizing mass militancy by skilful organiza- tion of our conferences; reaching out for lead- wship in strikes, mass movements—to the big- yest problem—revolution. Remembering that “insurrection is an art.” Learning to think and act—combining theory and practice—is a task that every Party mem- ber must learn thoroly. I, for one, know how I sweated, wrestled and fumbled until I was able to learn a simple lesson. That a resolution is not merely a piece of paper we hear, read and then prompt- ly forget. It is a weapon by which we carry thru all our work that is set forth therein. A resolution is a plan by which struggles are waged—and our Party is built by the help of such correct plans. The leading functionary must not lose sight of the fact that we work- ers, rank and filers know how to do. But there must be a combination between learning to think, formulating decisions and action it- self. The moment the rank and filer under- stands the issues clearly at hand—witness the decisive, clear cut blow it strikes. It’s a hard job, it requires persistency, untiring effort. But our Party membership is learning to think and to do. And slowly such expression as one encounters among rank and filers—“Oh, I wish the Party would leave a dance be a dance, a mass meeting, a meeting! Speeches, nothing but speeches. Wherever we go its always agitating, always recruiting! Don't you be- lieve in any fun?” Spread Party’s Influence. We rank and filers must learn that the Party participates in demonstrations, holds mass meetings, lectures, creates activities and dances for the sole purpose to vecruit, agitate and spread our Party’s influence. These are one of the many ways in which Communists utilize means for building our Party’s membership and influence. Workers who followed the lead- ership of our Party in their strike struggles are drawn closer thru these contacts that the Party creates. Become part of us. The Bolshevik principle of constructive crit- icism is our most powerful corrective agent. To do plus criticism, equals correction. (The farmer has the best of planting seed, good soil and good weather conditions; but if he | fails to weed and neglects to use his cultivator, his crop will not be the best). The same holds good in our Party work. No matter how fine the instructions, if it is not carried thru in practice,, we will not achieve the results that we so earnestly aim for. It is but recently only that our section of the Communist International ‘turned a sharp corner’ and today we find: 1. Our Daily worker bringing the political analysis-of all phases of our Party’s problems, its policies, tactics and the correct line. The agitprop is on the job—no longer adulterated. 2, The new dues paying system—it’s more welcome—for it is the death knell to oppor- tunistic handling of our Party’s funds. * 3. a) Membership participating in a strike picketing actively. b) Coordination of unit, section and district activities. c) The elimina- tion of “orders” issued from above without any understanding on the part of “order givers” how to carry it thru in practice. d) Leading functionaries learning that the period of am- biguous statements belong to the past. (Refer- ence to statement that the Daily will be a 48- page issue on its anniversary). e) The striv- ing towards more studying and less dancing. ‘And 80 of With our bantiers flying on-high! A RANK AND FILER. Among Workers in the South By CLARA HOLDEN. aoe no use reading these newspapers 4+ here,” the textile workers of the South “say. “It’s all lies they tell you.” They used to believe what they saw in the Charlotte spapers, the “Gassy” Gazette and the other bosses’ papers, but since the National, Textile Workers’ Union ‘went into the South they throw out as lies the statements they see. The capitalist papers in the South in almost every issue denounce the organizers of the N.T.W.U. “They aren’t interested in organizing the workers but just come here to make trouble and take the workers’ money,” they say. “The workers here are satisfied.” They rave about the crimes of the Communists. “Communists are atheists, nigger lovers, thieves and crooks. The workers here live in peaceful villages; everyone is happy. Those | reds are all foreigners and should be run out of town.” One textile worker said to me, “I hear those gangsters up North aren’t any good, that they aren’t on the side of us workers. You know, I was beginning to think they must be with us because the capitalist papers are al- ways printing stuff against them.” A year ago, the textile workers might have believed what they saw in the papers about “those reds” but now they know differently. When Fred Beal and the other N.T.W.U. or- ganizers came down and “smashed the Mason- Dixon line” as they say, they saw them at work. They saw them with only a few dollars a week live on—not like the A. F. of L. fat boys’ who in 1921 were there, lived well, did a little fishing, got plenty of money from the workers-and beat it out of town. They saw them night after night going from house to house telling of organization, telling of one big industrial union, showing the workers ways to fight against their slavery. They saw them, when the strike came, on the picket lines, get- ting beaten up with the other pickets. They saw them in jail, studying so as to become bet~ ter organizers for the union. Now. the work- Workers! Join the Party of Your Class! Communist Party U. S. A. 43 East 125th Street, New York City. I, the undersigned, want to join the Commu- nist Party. Send me more information. Name ....scceccccvecsswecccccssscsvumeses Address ... messes Uity.. Occupation . Cdecveseveccces i AB@boeess Mail this to the Central Office, Communist Party, 43 East 125th St., New York, N. Y. home-breakers, | ers say, “I guess we were Bolsheviks all our lives, but didn’t know the name for it.” Many of the southern workers undoubtedly used to think workers got as fair trial as capi- talists—that “justice” could be expected from the courts. But now they know different. They saw the union organizers and strike lead- ers sentenced to 20 years—a living death in jail. There is not a worker in the South who does not think the union’s policy of self de- fense was right when Police Chief Aderholt and the other cops came to the union headquar- ters the night of June 7th. But they know it was not for Aderholt’s death that the seven were sentenced to long prison terms, but for the crime of organizing the southern textile workers into a militant union. In every case, in Charlotte, Bessemer City, Marion, they see when workers are killed, no attempt is made to sentence the capitalist murderers. They see clearly the “justice” workers get and the “jus- tice” capitalists get. The workers of the South, most of whom are very religious, have seen the churches in action. In Marion, N. C., after the six strikers were murdered, «nd the sheriff and other bosses’ agents f:ced, many of the strike lead- ers were told by their preachers, at the com- mand of the mill bosses, that they were ousted from their churches. This was another attempt to break their union. The preachers, owned body and soul, their wages and houses paid for by the mill bosses, tell the workers they are well-off and should be grateful for their jobs. And the workers know their bosses well— the bosses and Chambers of Commerce, who for years advertised in northern papers “the cheap docile labor of the South.” The workers are determined to fight against the stretch- out, long hours, bad wages and unemployment that affect the 300,000 textile workers of the South, The workers of the Socth have gotten edu- cated fast in the last year. There has prob- ably never been a situation where the line-up of class has been so obvious, so crude and so unblurred—the bosses, the courts, the papers, the cops, and the churches, well-organized, on one side, and the workers on the other. The textile workers see clearly who their class ene- mies are and the Negro and white workers are fast mobilizing their forces and preparing for struggle, under the banner of the National Textile Workers’ Union, and the broad masses of southern workers will march to victory to- gether with the workers in the North under the leadership of the Communist Party. Fight the Right Danger. A Hundred Proletarians for Every Petty Bourgeois Rene- Central Organ of the Communist Party of the U. S. A. CAPITALISM’S SCRAP HEAP! By Mall (in New York City only); $8.08 a year; = § By Mail (outside of New York Rityss 96.00 a year; SUBSCRIPTION RATES: 4.50 six months $3.50 six months; $2.50 three months $2.00 three months as The millions of unemployed throughout the world thrown on the industrial scrap heap by capitalism, will arise and join hands with the employed workers in a mighty demonstration on February 26. Santiago Iglesias Wall Street Tool in Porto Rico By LIBERTAD NARVAEZ. ORTO RICO’S outstanding political charla- tan and labor faker, Santiago Iglesias, bet- ter known by the militant cigar makers thru- n after a three months’ stay at Was where, as secretary of the bankrupt Pan Amer- ican Federation of Labor he helped “convince” Mr. Green that it was a lot better and more profitable to betray workers in the southern textile mills than trying to drug Latin-Amer- ican workers with the imperialist ideology of Pan-Americanism. Pan-Americanism is a poison medicine of the American imperialists that the class con- scious workers south of Rio Bravo can no longer gulp, hence the calling off of the pro- posed and much-advertised conference at Hav- ana of the above mentioned “labor” organiza- tion, which in reality is nothing more nor less than an instrument of the Yankee exploiters in their social, economic and political conquest of Latin America, and the subjugation and ex- ploitation of the laboring masses of those semi- colonized countries. Hereafter, the workers of Latin America are going to fight under a real and genuine labor organization, just recently organized by themselves at Montevideo, La Confederacion Sindical Latino Americano. Contrary to what some workers believe, San- tiago Iglesias is not a Porto Rican, but a Span- jard, born in Galicia, Spain, said to spring from the same family tree as Pablo Iglesias, founder and erstwhile leader of the Primo-de- Rivera-controlled “socialist” party of Spain. Went the Way of Anarchists. Like the bloody Italian dictator, Santiago Inglesias, at one time was an anarchist, but soon degenerated like his fascist brother into the abyss of opportunism and labor betrayal, ex- ploiting the cause of labor for the sake of his own material well-being, until today he is the most accredited agent of Wall St. in Porto Rico. With the moral and pecuniary aid of the de- funct labor misleader, Samuel Gompers, who foresaw the wonderful possibilities in building a strike-breaking apparatus in the island, to serve the interests of the American bosses, Santiago set out to organize what is now known as the Free Workingmen’s Federation of Labor, otherwise, La Federacion Libre de Los Trabajadores de Puerto Rico, a Porto Rican link of the craft-ridden, reactionary and corrupt American Federation of Labor, Santiago Iglesias has one of the blackest records in labor history. Porto Rico is an agri- cultural country, small and densely populated, where st is easy to organize scores of thou- sands of agricultural workers; yet Santiago Iglesias contented himself with organizing the cigar makers, bakers, carpenters etc., leaving the bulk of our working class population, namely, the plantation peon and the jibaro from the sierra, at the mercy of Yankee ex- ploiters. The Galician was true to his masters, the labor bureaucrats of the American Federation of Labor, for instead of organizing a fighting and mflitant industrial union for all the Porto | Rican workers, regardless of whether they | were skilled, semi-skilled or unskilled, he fol- lowed the explicit orders of Samuel Gompers, nd set up an organization that was to be a | living picture of the A. F. of L. And so the | Free Workingmen’s Federation grew, and with it flourished all the evils of the American trade union movement, with its ultra-reaction- ary officialdom, capitalist political alliances, strike betrayals, class collaborationism and its | many-phased corruption. This strike-breaking apparatus reached the apex of it istence about the end of 1918, when it registered a membership of 15,000. (Its influence extended to many thousands more.) Due to the war, comparatively high wages were paid the Porto Rican workers, and things were going rosy all along until—the end of the war. And Then—War on the Workers. The signing of the Armistice was the clarion call for the American bosses on the island to start a concerted drive against the standard of living of the Porto Rican workers and farm- ers. Strikes flared all over the island. Strikes, of course, had to be legalized not only by Iglesias but they also had to have the O. K. stamp from labor bureaucrats of the American Federation of Labor, who never hesitated in declaring them “unlawful.” But this did not keep the revolutionary work- ers from fighting, even under restraint and against great odds. They were forced to con- tend not only against the bosses, their paid thugs and the brutal insular police, but also against the strike-breaking tactics and sell- out policies of Santiago Iglesias and his lieu- tenants, who controjled the Federation, who, like their American allies, also believed in the “constitutional” and lawful right of the bosses to cut wages. . Strike relief for the striking Porto Rican workers, especially the cigar makers who al- ways took the brunt of the fight, never came from the treasury of the A. F. of L., (although the latter paid salaries to the officials of the Porto Rican Federation) but frcgn the Porto Rican class conscious population who always sympathized with the strikers. But strike re- lief money collected among the cigar makers of Tampa, Philadelphia and New York, by the organizers of the International Cigar Makers’ Union, never reached the striking cigar makers of Porto Rico. A few years ago Pedro San Miguel, the $60 a week organizer of that union and Santiago Iglesias’ right-hand man in New York, with the aid of the Porto Rican-Spanish League and the now deceased Porto Rican Labor Alliance, thru collections, dance affairs, etc., collected about two thousand dollars; money that was remitted immediately to the Free Working- men’s Federation at San Juan. ~ The striking cigar makers, who at that time were fighting a life and death battle with the American Tobacco Trust, saw nothing of this money. Upon its arrival, it had been By Fred Ellis " THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN THE SOUTH ‘extfle Manufacturing—World Pioneer. By JACK HARDY. . if examining the struggles now being waged by the textile workers of this country, under the leadership of the National Textile Work- ers Union, it is important that the working class understand the role played by the textile industry in the evolution of industrial civiliza- tion. In most sections of the world the tex- tile industry was the advance guard of the Industrial Revolution. When the transforma- tion was made from agriculture to industry, from handicraft production to power ma- chinery and the factory system, it was through the manufacture of textile fabrics that the ground was broken. This held true when the Industrial Revolution took place for the first time in England; it was also true when the basis of New England’s prosperity was being transformed from agriculture to manwfactur- ing. It is similarly so in the South today, as well as in India and China. In whichever di- rection we turn we find industrialism being ushered in by textile manufacturing. The reasons for this are riot far to seek. The basic requirements of man are food, cloth- ing and shelter. The production of food did not, of course, lend itself so easily to factory methods nor did the provision for shelter. Cloth, on the other hand, could be adapted to factory methods with comparative ease. It is small wonder, therefore, that as one author has put it, “The industrialization of cotton in English factories was the first move in our present Mechanical Age.” Textiles have been the world’s industrial pioneers. Industrial Revolution in England. Modern industry, of course, began with the Industrial Revolution in England. It is a mat- ter of importance to note that practically all of the inventions of that remarkable period were associated with the production of textiles. As early as 1738 John Kay invented a simple device, the “fly shuttle,” which enabled a hand weaver to make cloth as wide as desired and to work twice as fast as formerly. This neces- sitated the production of considerably greater quantities of thread, which was forthcoming when a Lancashire weaver, James Hargraves, patented his so-called “spinning jenny” in 1770. This enabled the spinner to turn eight spin- ning wheels simultaneously. About the same time Richard Arkwright, ‘father of the fac- tory,” patented a “water frame,” which enabled water power to be applied to spinning. In 1779 Samuel Crompton perfected the “mule” and in 1785 Edmund Cartwright patented the ‘power loom.” If wé add to these names those of Eli Whitney, an American, who patented the cot- ton gin in 1794, and James Whatt, who in- vented the steam engine in 1784, we have prac- tically exhausted the names of those who are associated with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. With the possible exception of Whatt, these names are exclusively those of inventors of textile machinery. Marked similarities are to be noted in the manner of recruiting the early labor forces. In England, when the ordinary recruiting methods did not produce workers in sufficient numbers paupers were brought into the mills. Likewise, in early America, when sufficient labor force could not be collected through other means, almost similar methods were resorted to. We have the record, for example, of one Colonel Humphreys, who “sought apprentices, just as the English cotton manufacturers had done before him. At one time he got 73 boys from the New York Almhouse, and others from nearby villages, all being duly bound under the form of indenture.” (Cole, A. H., The Ameri- can Manufacture, p. 235.) Virtual peonage is far from an uncommon practice in the textile mills of China and India today. The use of labor recruiting agents has al- ways been one common way of getting labor in the early stages of textile development. To- day the hills of the South are filled with the agents of the mill bosses who tell false tales to the workers of the paradise which awaits them if they will abandon farm life and come to the mill villages to live. The practice is not new. It is as old as the industry. A worker in the mills of Lowell, Mass., in 1882 tells us of how labor was secured for the mills in those days. “Men were employed to collect them at so much a head, and deliver them at the fac- tories,” she writes. “Help wads in great de- mand and stories were told all over the coun- try of the new factory place, and the high wages that were offered to all classes of work people.” (Robinson, H. H., Early Factory La- bor in New England, p. 4.) Then, as in the ————— divided between the corrupt officials of the Federation, who, after being caught, claimed they were hard up for money and that they were forced to take it to supply their own in- dividual needs. Dead—For Lack of Checks. This has been the history of the Free Work- ingmen’s Federation, since its organization, and it thrived as long as Gompers lived. When Gompers kicked the bucket, it was the death knell for the F. W. F. Samuel Gompers, as head of the American Federation, had paid the salaries of every “worthy” official of the Fed- eration, as well as the cost of printing, pub- lishing and editing of Justicia, the official or- gan of that organization. When Sam croaked, the Free Workingmen’s Federation also passed away. After a long history of labor betrayals, and the death of its financial backer, there is nothing left in Porto Rico but the printed namé of an organization that only counts with about 500 members, and I doubt whether half of them pay their dues. The Porto Rican workers and farmers are in crying need of an organization that will or- ganize them and place them in a position to fight the greedy American bosses, and it’s up to the American revolutionary workers to help fill up that need. American workers and Porto Rican workers in the United States should join and help build the Trade Union Unity League, so that this or- ganization will be able to send representatives to the island, where it can help the revolution- ary workers there organize a nucleus of the T.U.U.L. and of the International Labor De- ense, also very needful there. In following communications, I will further deal with condi- tions there and further unmask the Wall St. lickspittle, Santiago Iglesias, the deadliest enemy of the Porto Rican workers, 1. piu a E a South of today, premium was placed upon whole families. Compare the picture painted by Frank Tannenbaum in his very graphic book, Darker Phases of the South, of how “All the workers in the family work in the same mill . . . in fact they have to do so to keep the house. The mill man estimates a certain av- erage number of workers per room,” with ad- vertisements which appeared in the early American newspapers. One of these, in 1814, read “Wanted: Several families who have a number of children who can be employed in a factory. Such families will be furnished with convenient accommodation on application to the Madison factory.” In the New England mills of that day, as in the South now, the hands were expected to vote as the agent directed. The only difference in old England was that the hands were not permitted to vote at all. Terrific Toil For Workers. Throughout the world the working class has always paid a uniformly terrific toll in wages, hours and conditions when brought into the textile mi: Recent events in the South have focused attention upon the 60-hour, and more,» work week in that section as well as the six to $12 weekly wage. In Chinese mills the work day is 12 to 16 hours—somegimes 18. Children as young as six years of age are found in these mills. Men’s wages average 18% cents a day; women’s 13 cents; children’s 3 to 12 cents, In the Indian cotton mills unskilled wages are 18 to 38 cents a day; skilled $11 to $21 a month; children 16 to 24 cents a day. In his pamphlet, Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, Frederick Engels vividly describes the condition of children six, seven and eight years of age who were re- quired to toil from ten to twelve hours daily in the small, close rooms of the textile mills of that period (p. 126). He reproduces a letter (p. 127) from a stocking weaver who wrote, “Last Monday I got up at two in the morning and worked to near midnight, the other days from six in the morning to between eleven and twelve at night.” Engels further testifies (p. 130) that, “In the neighborhood of my house near Manchester. . I have heard that the children were obliged to work so long there that they would try to catch a moment’s rest on the stone steps and in the corners of the lobby.” Textile manufacturing being, as we have seen, a pioneer industry, the problem of hous- ing for the operatives has usually been solved by the bosses through the erection of com: pany barracks of one kind or another. The mill villages of the present industrial South, the cottage system of early England, and the company dormitories of early New Eng: land all were part and: parcel of the same process—the creation of privately-owned vil- lages around the mills. Engels thus describes one of these villages in England: “Every. where heaps of debris, refuse and offal; standing pools for gutters, and a stench... Small one-story, one-roomed huts, in most of which there is no artificial floor. Kitchen, living and sleeping room all in one... (p. 85).” “If anyone wishes to see in how little space a human being can move, how little air —and such air—he can breathe, how little civilization he may share and yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither (p. 37).” An- other observer testifies to the same effect con- cerning the corporation boarding houses of early New England where “bedrooms were crowded and uncomfortable and little, if any, better ventilated than the mills . . . The sleep- ing apartments would not be endured so pas- sively if the occupants had not first become habituated to such unwholesome air in the mills. Often six or eight girls occupied a sin- gle bed-chamber . .. One finds it difficult to stir even to breathe freely.” (Journal of Poli- tical: Economy, vol. XVII, pp. 20-21). Analogies are always dangerous. The one which we have just drawn is no exception un- less its limitations are kept clearly in mind. The first is the difference between world poli- tical and economic conditions when textile manufacturing was introduced in old and New England and conditions of today. Then cap- italism was in its infant stage. Today textile manufacturing is being introduced in the South of this country and among the colonial and semi-colonial peoples after the are of capital- ism has already swung aside. It follows, per- force, that under the later conditions the his- tory of the industry must take a radically dif- ferent course than formerly, not only because of world economic changes but also because of the changing temper of the working masses in this third period of post-war capitalism of , the last stage of finance capitalism—imperial- ism—imminent world imperialist war. Trying to Divide Negro and Whit® This is well illustrated in the South today, When, in England, large numbers of workers became militant or moved to the opportunities that n&scent capitalism made possible, the Eng- lish mill barons brought in large numbers of Irish to take their places at lower wages. In New England, when similar -conditions arose, first the Irish were brought in (to supplant the “100% Americans”), later the French Can- adians and finally the Southern European races. In the South today, the employers are striving to create antagonisms between the Negro and white workers in the hope of keep- ing the Negroes as a labor surplus to be called in when the rising militancy of the white work- ers makes itself felt. Here, however, the em- ployers are counting without the Negro work- ers, who have shown a high degree of class solidarity with the white workers in recent years, refusing flatly to serve as strikebreak- ers in many instances. The American Federation of Labor is, as usual, helping to do the dirty work of the southern bosses. In a recent issue of the Tex- tile Worker Thomas MacMahon, president of the United Textile Workers wrote: “When Mr. Clark (editor of the employers’ Southern Tex- tile Bulletin) states that the United Textile Workers of America proclaim social equality with the Negroes ... he is stating what he actually knows to be an untruth.” Our revolu- tionary union, however, the National Textile Workers Union, will see to it that the black as well as white workers of the South are or- ganized—side by side and in the same locals.