The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 22, 1930, Page 3

ks 15, 000 Jobless in |; DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MARCH 22, 1930 Page ‘Three WORKER CORRESPONDENTS TELL OF GROWING UNEMPLOYMENT | ROCK ISLAND RR, SWELLS RANKS OF JOBLESS IN OKLA. Oklahoma City (By a Worker GorveaBondent) OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla.—More of the Hoover “prosperity.” The masters. In the Soviet Union, there is no unemployment.. The workers are They are striving with all their might to speed socialist construction. Scenes in the 5-year plan. Center, building a factory for agricultural machinery, for the 5-year plan. homes built for the oil workers of Baku, who are exceeding the quota Left, model workers’ Rock. Island Railroad shops shut down in Shawnee, Okla., which is 30 miles east of here, and over 300 workers were thrown out on the streets. Operation of the coach and mach- ine - departments of the Shawnee werg “temporarily suspended,” ac- cording to the Rock Island. Officials of the Rock Island said that road| was “one of the last roads in the nation to be affected by the slowing up of. business.” | Ina population of 20,000 in Shaw- (By a Worker Correspondent.) | tion against the Negro workers. Just DETROIT, Mich—A thing which | lately they are working two 12 hour! ting $5.40 for 12 hours where they I consider inhuman at the U. S./ shifts where before they had 3 shifts|had before Rubber Co. plant is the discrimina-|on 8 hour basis. Where the Workers Rule; Building the Five-Year Plan nm U, S. S. R. 3 : j je ee on oe FOR 85 HOUR WEEK FOR YOUNG WORKERS AT U.S. RUBBER Discrimination Against } Negroes by Rubber Barons; 12 Hour Shitts Now Instead of 8 damn shame but its true. The rate $5.40 for 12 hours is 20, that is straight being paid to all workers. Young | time, 60 cents an hour. It seems a,workers are being exploited the worst} | As for the wages they are get- Inee, over 2,000 workers are unem- ployed. I have quit looking for work. There is none here nor in any of the big cities of the west. Some of the dailies here puts the jobless | at 10,000, but 15,000 or 20,000 would | be ‘more exact. The T.U.U.L. must organize Oklahoma jobless workers, and those working too. Oklahoma Jobless Worker. HORN, HARDART | DRIVES TOILERS; \Must Pay for Uniform, Badge, This and That (By « Worker Correspondent) SEAMAN OUT PHILADELPHIA. —It happened jfor me to be out of work, as its} a | nothing new for any worker. Walk- | Wi orker Rebels on S. S. jing from factory to factory from one | 1a | employment agency to another look- | : per dy jing for work, And everywhere you | (By a Worker Correspondent) | look you can see workers looking | As a seaman I will picture what |DY the hundreds wherever there is | went on on our ship when we were |# Sign, help wanted. homebound from Frisco on the last}, Well, I found work at Horn & trip. Hardart’s, the big chain of restau- Ship’s name is §, S. Virginia, and |T@Mts. But it didn’t last long, as it belongs to th® Panama Pacifir | they laid me off. Line, New York to the west coast. | Slavery at H. and H. When the ship docked at Baboa in the Canal Zone, the shipping Horn & Hardart. Working ten to twelve hours a day at a rate of 25 cents an hour. They’re very strict. They always keep you busy, every minute of the day. What's Left Out of Slave Wage? | Even for the uniforms that you must wear they charge. for badge uniform; for badge 25 cents, for caps $1, for fine in losing a badge 50 cents fine, for not wear- ing a badge every day. Now you can see and figure up what’s left from a poor working girl’s wages. To better our conditions we must or- ganize in the Food Workers Indus- trial Union against such conditions. commissioner brought along with him a seaman that missed his boat. This seaman signed on as a baker’s helper at $60 a month. He started to work the same day. F “Not on Payroll’ We sailed next morning. This fallow worker went down to slop chest to draw some cigarettes and the storekeeper told him, “you are not on the payroll, so I can’t give you anything.” Then the sailor told him that he had signed on yesterday and he had the right to draw anything he} wanted. After a bitter argument, | storekeeper didn’t give him any-| thing. Then the seaman said, “if you ion't give me what I want I don’t} Work.” So report went up to the ptain, and skipper called him to ithe bridge, told him that “unless you work I will send you to the H. conditions. They had a sign put up, they are giving a dance at a certain date, and it says, for whites only. Well, what about the colored work- ers, they are workers too. But the bosses want to keep the two races cell.” {separate so they won’t fight side by | ‘ No pay, No Werk side against the bosses. This militant seaman answered} —Food Worker. him, no pay, no work. Then the} 5-2 captain got angered and ordered him to be locked up right away. Two masters at arms and a junior officer took him down to the cell and locked him up. This seaman did not have a cent} ao he had to:sleep in an iron bunk | in: that cold weather and without, having anything to eat. Fellow workers, as long as we aye not organized we’ will be com- Hed “to stand every kind of brut- y from the bosses. Join the militant Marine Workers League. —SEAMAN. ENUM ciety Building Trades | Jobless Grow in | N.Y.,50P.C.Out (By « Worker Correspondent) | The reactionary officials of the building trades union of the A. F. of L. admit there is between 40 and 50 per cent unemployed in the trades in New York. ° As their figures for the trades are 115,000, then 40 to 50 per cent unemployed means that there is 60,000 unemployed. -They don’t mention the unor- GMC CRIPPLES, SCRAPS SLAVES \Cheats Them After It Maims Them DETROIT, Mich.—I want to tell the workers of the treatment I re- |ceived at the hands of the General 4 Motors and Fisher Auto Body Co, in Detroit. I have been a workman there un-{ til a year and a half ago when I) had a foot crushed off between the floor of an elevator and the top of the door. The accident was due to faulty adjustment of the elevator mechanism. When I was still in the hospital | and in great pain a representative of the Fisher Co. came to make a my foot. Cheated by Bosses. I was told that I would have to accept $3,000 or nothing or else sue them for damages. Attorneys whom I consulted demanded half of what- PAYS LOW WAGE | Risks Like These, Then Lay-Offs City is the conservative estimate fakers, Photo shows « collapse of a buildin in which 11 workers were buried. undergo risks like the above, and th | Dts ta: the butidengs siORioree tte un The conditions are as follows in| Fifty cents |: | As I was saying, about H. and} ever judgment might have been awarded to me, if I took the matter to court. I was compelled to accept what was offered me. On my recovery I went to the welfare dept. of Fisher Co, and asked them to give me some sort of work. I was told that sinve I am now a cripple they had no work for me. They said I should go back to General Motors where I had been working previously. General Motors rehired me after a great deal of coaxing only to be laid ‘off again last August because of slowing down of auto production and I have not been able to find any work-since. Since I became crippled and know the actual treatment crippled work- ers receive at the hands of the bos- ses at starvation wages I realize that some definite action must be taken by the workers. Auto Workers! Orga:..ze into the eae Workers Union! —Crippled Auto Worker. ganized painters, carpenters, vembire and helpers, where un- employment is just as great as in the organized trade. The statement by R, Tompkins of the N. Y. Building Trades Council that the painters and el- | ectricians are worst hit with 75 per cent unemployed needs to be verified. Tf the zlumbers of Local 1 with a membership of 2,500 has 10 per cent working or about 200, what then does the carpenters and elec-} tricians, the worst hit, have work- ing? The plumbers’ helpers are in the same boat as the plumbers. But the officials’ figures are un- derestimated, high as they are. |. Join the Building Trades Work- ers Industrial League, that takes in all the building workers and don’t believe in one trade scab- bing on another. —Building Worker. “Join the Building Trades. Workers Industrial Union!” says the worker correspondent. From a Cossack Poor Peasant --They Aid the’ Five Year Plan Here's a letter from a cossack of the Soviet Union. applied to the brutal capitalist police, workers must not allow them- selves to-be confused into thinking the poor peasants of certain regions of the Soviet Unions are bad. as you'll soon? Quite the contrary, see when you read this letter from a cossack poor peasant, who teils what the revolution has done for the cossack poor peasants, and who tells how the revolution brought them to realize that their side was beside the workers and poor peas- ants, American workers and far He wants to hear from you. Write him through the Worker Corres- pondent Department of the Daily Worker. Dear Comrades, Workers and Far- mers of the U. S. A.: I want to write you what I was before the revolution and what 1 | became now. Before the revolution | we were terribly uncultured, though Leconomically we lived (that means —most of us) rather well. We were | trained_in the spirit of militarism which was directed against the | workers and peasants. Revolution Rescued Them. I myself am a cossack and I write about the cossacks, The Revolution of 1917 has rescued the cossacks from the nets in which the czarist government had entangled them. Under the revolutionary rule of the workers and peasants the cossacks had the possibility. of cultural and political development and life. The Class Struggle. In our-ranks began a class strug- settlement with me for the Ioss of | gle between the kulaks and the poor peasants. At first our middle-class peasants took no part in this strug- gle. As a result of the constant attacks on the capitalist elements (the ‘kulaks and Nepmen) the mid- dle peasants abandoned their neutral positjon and joined us poor peas- ants. Collectivization Work Grows. ‘We have now in the North Cau- casus great activity in connection with collectivization. In our stanitza (village) which consists of 3,660 farms, all the population, 20,000 jinhabitants, entered a gigantic col- lective “Kluch.” Only the kulaks were not admitted. Our peasant masses have left their past behind them when they entered the collec- tives to build Socialism. We are doing good work. Build Huge Mills. Gigantic mills are, being built. “Selmashstroy” in Rostov, a huge tractor plant in Stalingrad, while the swiftness of building is greater than in other parts of the world. For example American engineers at. the Traktorstroy made a plan to finish the walls in 92 days, the work- ers did,the work in 28 days. ‘We Over 50 per cent of building trades workers unemployed in N. Much more, says a building trade worker m work- |<. es, answer this Soviet poor peasant. | ” “SLAVE MARKET” FOR MEANNESS (By « Worker Correspondent.) PHILADELPHIA, — Conditions here in Philadelphia are terrible. a job; it is on the fifth floor. The slaves have to use the freight el- evator on a side street as the of- ficials don’t want the public to see all the men that are out of work. Bosses Don’t Want Jobless To Talk To Each Other. took all the chairs out of the “slave market” use too many slaves were getting together and talking about unemployment. | The slaves are getting militant, but many still have their mind pois- oned with religion, that is because they don’t see the connection be- tween religion and the bosses. The slave agent for the master don’t like to see too many jobless around. It is terribly crowded in the bull pen. Tf he calls out a job one is liable to get killed in the rush. The Seamen’s Institute Racket. nf of the A. F. of L. building trades correspondent. ng under construction in New York Speeded up to the limit, forced to en laid off by the tens of thousands, nder the A. F. of L. misleadership. |, 1h°Y enough to keep the racket going. All the phony “charity” drives, the Institute makes their employes kick into out of their small pay. that the genuine cossacks—that is | dreamed. These are the conditions in which our land deyelops and all that was given*to" ts by’ the October “Revolu- tion. We send you our greetings and hope that you will as resolutely help long hours for miserable pay. must organ- Union Unity of unemployed. wol ize’ under the> Trade lead the struggle against your im- League. perialism and achieve the same con- | ‘ -A damn fool who fought | quests as the workers of Soviet Rus- | ; in- France. Write to us, we beg you! vur A comrade greets you, D. KOMLATSKY, North Caucasus, Kooban Region, Sanitzaa Umanskaia. has si | More'aad morc. society ix splitting ap into two great hustile camps, Into two £! posed clas: | letariat— Hebloved ae Unemployed oil Workers Came Out March 6. One reason why thousantls of employed oil workers joined in the unemployed demonstrations March 6. Photo shows @ blaze in « Standard Oil Refinery, the Pratt Works, Brooklyn, which took many lives. Speedup, no protection, caused this blaze and the terrible disaster that killed 14 in the Standard Oil Klizubeth, N. J. vefinery have also a great many mills of which old imperial Russia never recently, The A. F. of L. never caved to even try to organize the oil refinery workers; the Trade Union Unity League must and will do it. CANT BEAT PHILA, The State has a “slave market” here | where the slaves come to look for| The Institute restaurant works the| In Philadelphia tens of thousands | the Komintern coal Right, they themselves set in the 5- -year plan. mines, where a 6-hour day is in vogue. Take the conditions of the oil and mine workers under capitalism as described by workers in these industries in the U. S. and contrast them with the lot of the Soviet oil and mine worke Moore | McC | ships. THE WORKAWAY-- JOBLESS SEAMAN IS READY TO FIGHT and McCormack Is Slave Line (By « Worker Correspondent) MOBILE, Ala.—I’'m bound for New York on board the S.S. Com- |mercial Bostonian of the Moor and rmack Line as a workaway. This is a new rating on American It means working for noth- of all, getting wages a little better) workers? than $25 a week for about 85 hours} Only one answer to the bosses. a week; just think, What the devil|That is workers should and must join| are they trying to make out of us| the T.U.U.L. —U. S, Rubber Slave.| Peete Oil Scared Stiff on March 6 < | a Standard Oil Co. A worker correspondent from Whiting, Ind., domain, tells how the oil bosses were scared stiff on March 6, calling | hosts of police to their aid. Oil refinery workers, like the above, stand much terrible slavery, but they'll rebel under the Trade Union Unity League leadership. (The T.U.U.L. Whiting Standard Oil workers.) WITH THE SHOP PAPERS SIZZLING HOT! “47 HE ROEBLING HOT WIRE?” is a sizzling young shop paper. The second number has been recently issued in the Roebling Wire plants in Trenton and Roebling, N. J. That it has its work cut out for itself can be seen by reading one of the letters on the worker correspondence page: Dear Editor: is at work among the I wonder why we have to work 14 hours a night in the steel works department and then only have two and three days work a week. We can hardly earn enough money after working in the terrible heat near the furnace where we are always liable to catch a cold. Will you tell me in the next issue of your bulletin the real reason? The U.S. Shipping Board and | poor peasant in the Kooban region the Seamen's Institute are the same} Because the term “cossack” has come to be way, at 2nd and. Walnut. The In-} stitute only helps out a few, just By the way, your bulletin is real stuff. I never read anything like it before. —FURNACE WORKER. * * * Editor’s Note:—The reason is simple. The workers are not organ- ized and the bosses are squeezing as much profit out of us as they can making us work long hours for as little wages as possible. Organize into a real fighting union, under the leadership of the Trade Union Unity League and put up a militant fight against speed-up, wage cuts and long hours! * * * The best feature of the Roebling Hot Wire is the page of letters from the shop. The general contents fall short of being well-balanced because they do not sufficiently reflect. the shop struggles concretely. We are contracting a violent prejudice against mimeographed shop papers. Mainly hecause it’s impossible to even struggle to read several pages. The comrades should make efforts to insure getting out a printed four-page paper regularly. * * * Pay Day in the Edison Cable Yards. (From the “Edison Cable Worker”) s pay day at the Edison Company Cable Yards. Paying on Thursday instead of Saturday is resented by the men for a number Many of the men just about get along on their pay. When 's buying is over, the few cents left can’t last till Saturday. This means not being able to go ‘anywhere. Paying Thursdays leaves nearly a whole week’s pay from each worker, in the pockets of the company. Then when the men do get paid they don’t get money—they get*checks instead. The workers used to be able to cash the checks at stores near the cable warehouses. Now they are not allowed to leave work for this purpose. One bank refused to cash the checks because it took the clark’s attention away from the depositors. Now there are only three or four places which will cash the checks. This makes the men hit a line where they must sometimes stand twenty minutes of their own time waiting for their money. And when the workers have taken their pay on Thursday in- stead of on Saturday, and when they cashed their checks on their own time, what do they get? Wages running from $24 to $36 a week for 48 hours, with no extra\for overtime, No one can bring up a family decently on such pay in New York City. No wonder the men are talking about three big demands: Increase in wages; payment on Saturdays and wages in cash, * * * : A Magazine in Miniature. Lying before us is a titleless seven-page shop paper. A few vague outlines of a face is where the masthead should be, the name is beneath it. Two slogans decorate the masthead space. The one on the left says: “Our Men Know Their Job—How to Get Rid of Labor Fakers.” The slogan on the right calls for “A Workers and Peas- ants Government.” Not to keep it ret any ljonger, we can inform all that it is ued by “The Communist Group of Subway Construction Workers, Bronx.” We took pains to describe the mastheadless feature of this bulletin to point out how a shop paper should NOT be gotten up. s a contrast to this is the “U. S. Metals Smelting Worker” issued in Cartert, N. J. t they have a good masthead. Then on the first page the shop paper lists the demands of the nucleus as follows: * * | FIGHT FOR! | FIGHT A seven-hour day, five-day week;| Speed-up; Higher wages; Wage cuts; Sick, accident, old age and unem-| Bad working conditions; ployment insurance; | The bosses attacks against the liv- Six-hour day for young workers un-| ing standards of the workers; der 18 years of age; | Child labor; | A union for the workers; | Misleaders of labor; A workers’ government! | The bosses government! * AGAINST! | | the jef having better luck in findin ing. According to what members of crew told me she took eight | workaw ys up north from the Gulf |for the last trip and brought two down to the gulf is trip she is |taking six up to “New York. Who the Workaways Are. These workaways are seamen who have been unemployed (on the beach) so long that in their despera- tion they ave willing to work for nothing. Gulf ports are overcrowded with unemployed seamen who no way out but to work their way on any ship to any port with the hope see a | job, and as they have first pre: jence on the ship on which they are ing for nothing (that is if they the master). | sat | Bosses Take Advantage of Unem- | ployment. Many of them jump into the first vacancy on that very ship. he jmate’s first assistant and chief stewards, who are responsible to | their bosses, the ship owners for tlie | amount of work done by the seamen in, their departments, are taking le inal advantage of this state of a rs. | An interesting feature about this that as many men offer them- elves the officers have become véry | particular and demand papers show- jing the amount of experience, On | the S.S. Comme: 1 Bostonian there lare two boatswain working their jway. One of them has been with fee mate before on ‘some other ship. | Drive Hell Out of Crew. This is what forced the present | boatswain on this ship to drive heil jout of the crew. He is in constarit | fear of this workaway boatswain | getting job. All of the work- | aways on this ship have been to sex for 10 years and over. It is their only means of making a living, as jnone of them are~bootleggers~ or | crooks. | —SEAMAN.« e The conditions under which I ¥ did ‘ote this during working hours not permit me to tell all. I left out the conditions of work and liy- ing of the workaways. They sleep (se deck with one blanket, There ’t any bunks for them in the foe’s'le. They eat what is left over by the crew and do the dirtiest and hardest jobs on board. This does not mean that the crew sits and watches ‘them work, for the crew |has got to work even harder than ever in order to keep their jobs |which is threatened by growing u employment and the workaway tem, The seamen, led by the Marine | Workers’ League, wiil battle such conditions. Unemployed ana em- ployed seamen must together, “Keep Up the Fight; a Miner, Worker on Subway Says to C.P. | (Bu a Worker Correspondent) NEW YORK, N. Y.—I have read the Daily Worker the past month and have heard some speeches made |by Communists. I say keep up your fight against the capitalist system. | I'm a coal miner of many years experience in the southern coal mines (Big Stone Gap, Virginia, ete.) and have been a worker for the past 5 jyears in the subway construction of New York City. We workers sure need the help of people like the Com- munist Party. Especially the work- ers in the subway All our unions have sold out to the bosses. I have walked the streets | for several months looking for work. |T am a blasting worker, | friend to the Communists. ‘Police Swing ;, Clubs Against Young Tobless: (By a Worker Correspondent) The police reserves were called | Wednesday at the Market, 165! | | West Street, opposite Pier 18, to j disperse a large mass of young | workers, where only one tad beon, wanted. Two well dressed young: | sters were given the job and) | when the young workers learned; the fact they rushed inside the} | place. The small fat boss told! | | | | the workers to be nice and at the same moment the police came and started to swing their clubs. The) | place had been advertised as &@ | factory job by the same Morning | World which has carried an ad for strike breaking chauffeurs in