The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 19, 1930, Page 6

Published by the New Yor! Comprouatty k City, N. ‘sand mail all checks to the Daily Worker, Publishing Go., Inc., VaNy, exeepe Y. Telephone Poli vereatl 1696-7-8, Porety, et MeN ote Cable: “DAIWORK.” Union Square, New York, N. Y. THE PRECONVENTION DISCUSSION Report on the Theses, Delivered to Plenum of Central Committee by Comrade Browder, April srd, 1980. IX. FIGHT AGAINST OPPORTUNISM. (Continued) The general character of the mass organiza- tions still reflects this fact. They are still too much limited, still not shot thru and thru with the conception of mass organizations dis- tinguished from the Par We have to estab- lish the idea of mass organization in our aux- jliaries and trade unions and not have dupli- cates of the Party. We m' have organiza tions. with their own characteristics and their own approach to the masses, which translate the Party line and theses and the whole Party message to the working class into mass lan- guage. The I.L.D., W.LR., F.S.U. and the revolutionary trade unions should in their sep- ataté fields, show themselves to the workers ations, different from the Par- y, with their own separate functions to per- form and with: their own place. We must come to a. realization of this problem in our Party. There is still too much of the old tradi- tions which we have had for years of the aux- iliaries as mere duplicates of the Party. This is one of the concrete manifestations of the “leftism’” tendencies, which means op- portunism: cloaked with “leftism” forms and phrases. Examples of these tendencies in trade union work were dealt with at some length yesterday and I do not want to repeat. I want to add another concrete manifesta- tion of “leftists” tendencies which showed it- self last Saturday in the Unemployment Con- ference. I was present when one comrade from Connecticut made a rousing speech and brought. the Unemployment Conference to its feet with most tremendous applause when he stated that this is no time to talk about Work- er Defense Corps but rather to talk of organ- izing a Red Army. This is a typical example of what “leftism” means, the avoidance of the real problem of the class struggle by an appeal to a Red Army as against Workers Defense Corps. It may seem very revolutionary to at- tempt to jump: over the Workers Defense and into the Red Army, that is, the struggle for power. The same comrade spoke of capturing the City Hall and holding it for a few hours, thus raising :s the immediate problem the ques- tion of armed insurrection. This is a kind of “leftism,” pure phrase-mongering, and has no relation to the immediate struggle. In spite of all its “leftist” appearance, it is opportunism in practice, avoidance of the real struggle and a mouthing of revolutionary phrases with no relation to reality at the present time. Our whole struggle against the right danger as the main danger means a struggle against “leftist” forms of the right danger, for the purpose of completing the turn of the Party towards mass work and organizationally con- solidate this turn. In this respect two great tasks now face the Part: rst, the recruiting drive for the revo- lutionary unions which is more than a mere recruiting drive. It is an organization cam- paign, and at the same time a great political campaign. We cannot recruit these 50,000 ex- cept if we win the masses and build the unions to recruit them. In many cases the unions are not yet created. This campaign is the main feature of our mass work for the next 3 months at least. It must be the first order of business of every unit and committee of the Party. Right along with that must go the campaign for the Daily Worker. We have grossly neglected the circulation of the Daily Worker; we have grossly neglected the improvement of the quality of the Daily Worker. We have not realized the importance of every line that goes into the Daily Worker. Eve word that is written for the Daily Worker must be given the organized, system- atic, concentrated attention of all the best forces of the Party—district, national, and local, to see that our Daily Worker really rep- resents the class struggle, really represents the whole development of the working class in the U. S. which has come to consciousness, which is engaging in struggle, and represents the Bolshevik, Communist leadership in this development. There is too much carelessness on our part towards the Daily Worker and too narrow a circle of collaboration in the production of the Daily Worker. The editorship and production of the Daily Worker must be broadened out so that it in- cludes hundreds of comrades in active daily production of the Daily Worker. This is the only possible way in which it can be made a mass organ. There are many editorial improve- ments that we must make in the office of the Daily—these we are conscious of and if we haven’t carried them through it is because we haven’t yet concentrated our atention on it enough. We cannot make the Daily Worker a national organ of the working class without carrying these improvements through and we will carry them through. We must distribute our paper in large amounts. This means build- ing our own machinery of circulation—we can- not continue to’ be dependent upon bourgeois distribution agencies for the Daily Workér— we must have our own Party distribution. Det- roit is giving a practical demonstration that it is possible to give mass distribution to the Daily Worker through our own machinery. We must emphasize this. We must not only en- courage Detroit to multiply its results many | times but must do the same in every district. | Detroit is only beginning, but they have shown us how to do it—this same method can be applied throughout the Party. It is not an | easy task but it is a very possible one to carry through the 60,000 drive that we have set ourselves with 25,000 or 30,000 within the next | couple of months. Food Workers March Forward By SAM WISEMAN. (Secretary. Hotel, Restaurant and Cafeteria | Workers Union). '(ORKERS in the food industry are facing a changing situation at the present time. In this industry there are over 200 crafts, ranging from the lowest paid unskilled to highest skilled workers, with over two million workers in the country. For years the great mass of workers in the food industry have been suffering under the pressure of the bosses’ intense exploitation, nviserably low wages, in- tense speed-up, mechanizing of the industry, and mass unemployment, of which a great part is a permanent army of unemployed. There is continuous consolidation of the capi- talists into some of the greatest monopolistic combinations, from the packing section of the industry (Armour, Swift, Morris, Wilson, etc.), the large bakers (General, Continental), sugar refineries (A and P’s factories) with ten thou- sand workers, milk and dairy products (Na- tional Dairy, Bordens), hotel eombinations down through the chain store cafeterias, etc. Facing this situation, the workers in the in- dustry have only 75,000. organized, mainly in the fascist, boss-controlled company unions of the American Federation of Labor with about 5,000 in the Amalgamated Food Workers, main- ly concentrated in New York. These organiza- tions, built on craft lines, mainly of the higher skilled workers in the industry controlled by these reactionary agents of the bosses, not only refuse to organize the unorganized or defend the interests of the workers, even of that small group under their control, but are actually the tools of the bosses in suppressing every at- tempt of the workers to develop a struggle. Of late, the terror within the American Fed- eration of Labor food locals, has become more intense. A War Industry. . In war, this is one of the basic industries. The, bosses realize that it is necessary for them to suppress and smash every expression of willingness to struggle on the part of the workers, and every form of organization of the. working class, not only for the purpose of war, but also to make possible a still sharper rationalization. The developing resistance on the part of the workers against this onslaught by the capi- talist class is evident throughout the country. Packing house workers who have wonderful traditions of struggle in the past, are express- ing great discontent and a demand for organ- ization. The workers in the organized section of the food industry of New York are in open revolt. In the A. F. of L. local 500 of the bakers, mess revolts are taking place. The Amalga- mated Food Workers leadership, Burkhardt and Gundt, connected with Lore the renegade, Muste the fake progressice mask of the A. F. of L., Hillman the fascist leader of the Amal- gamated Clothing Workers, the socialist party, and the Lovestone renegades from the Commu- nist Party, are attempting to stop the develop- ing militancy of, the workers in the food in- dustry. In thé Amalgamated the majority ‘of the , Workers "voted through a referendum to affil- jate to the Trade Union Unity League, with its militant program of class struggle } Why? Quite definitely—the leadership, the structure, fake progressive phrases, fail to | supply the needs of the workers even in the skilled part of the industry (bakeries). The workers in a big majority of the A.F.W. shops as well as the A. F. of L, shops work 12 to 14 hours and even as high as 18 hours a day. For years no attempt has been made either to organize the unorganized on a mass scale, although tens of thousands of dollars have been lying in the treasuries of some of the locals, or to stop the degeneration of union |; conditions in the shops. Suspension. The immediate reaction of these Musteites, socialist party, social reformists was to coun- teract the expression of militancy of the work- ers by suspending from this small organiza- tion locals led by militant rank and file ele- ments who have been continuously conducting | struggles in:the interests of the workers. These signs show, evidently, the needs and the willingness of the workers to struggle. The National Committee of the Food Work- ers Section, Trade Union Unity League, has laid plans through the country for the mobili- zation of the workers under its leadershi for the building of a national industrial union. In every important food center in the coun- try instructions have been sent for the con- vening of the masses of food workers through T.U.U.L. groups, shop committees, mass meet- ings, conferences and conventions in prepara- tion for a national convention to be held in July in the City of Chicago. The realization of the situation demands a sharpening of the tempo in order to make up for our lagging behind the masses of food workers. The re- sponsibilities for this important campaign and the success of the National Convention which will be the base of the new union, nationally, rests with those foodworkers who are the militant fighters in the class struggle, the mem- bers and followers of the T.U.U.L. In New York, April 20, the city convention of food workers will be held for the building of an industrial union of food workers in the City of New York. We must realize at this late hour before the convention that we have not done enough work in mobilizing the workers in the food industry for this struggle. But in spite of all the shortcomings, the base of the industrial union in the convention will be representative of great masses of workers. One important point has. to be realized. With the building of our industrial union there must be a sharp orientation towards the great mass- es of exploited workers in the food factories, large bakeries, etc. Tens of thousands of work- ers employed in these factories, thousands and thousands of women and young workers, Ne- gro workers, when approached with our pro- gram of struggle will surely respond. Let us go forward marching at the head of the food workers in the struggle for the build- ing of a National Food Workers Industria! Union, against unemployment, capitalist wars, for the defense of the Societ Union, for a solid mass political strike on May First, against the capitalist class with its vicious oppression of the workers and for international solidarity with the working class of all countries under the leadership of the Red International of La- » bor Unions. By BILL DUNNE. ‘ps May a year ago, the 9th to be precise, Communist workers and militant mem- bers of the National Textile Workers’ Union defended themselves and their union head- quarters in Gastonia, N, C. The indictment by an Atlanta, Ga. grand jury of Comrades Powers and Carr on a charge of “inciting armed insurrection” as a result of the protest meeting and demonstra- tion against unemployment on March 6 is a further step in the campaign of suppression by legal and extra-legal methods which the southern capitalists launched on April 18, 1929, by organizing the fascist attack on the Gas- tonia headquarters of the National Textile Workers’ Union and destroying the building. This was followed on May 9 by the armed attack of police and mill gunmen on the new headquarters and the battle there in which Chief of Police Aderholt was killed, three thugs and one union organizer wounded, when the workers defended themselves. Seven NTWU organizers received capitalist class justice—they were convicted of murder and given sentences of 17 to 20 years. As their appeal is about to be argued in the North Carolina supreme court, Powers and Carr, organizers for the Communist Par- ty and the Young Communist League, are charged with inciting to armed insurrection— which carries the death penalty. It is clear that in the South the ruling class is a step in advance of their northern brethren insofar as the use of the courts for the pur- pose of capitalism are concerned in its strug- gle to prevent working class organization— in preserving “civil peace,” which means war on the workers. In the North the capitalist class has not as yet openly demanded death for what are clearly political acts. In the North the de- mand for the death of militant leaders of the workers has been made under various guises—in connection with the killing of po- lice or other persons by bomb explosions (Hay- market martyrs, Haywood case, Mooney case, or fay alleged acts outside the realm of the class struggle, Sacco-Vanzetti case, etc.). But one year. of intense class struggle in the South, in which our Party has a leading role, has already produced two attempts to murder by legal means, by utilizing existing Jaws, workers whose sole guilt consists in or- ganizing and leading the working class in struggle against the terrible effects of ra- tionalization and the legal and extra-legal ter- ror by which it and the entire social system is bulwarked. The Gastonia workers were convicted for what was clearly class activity. The first degree murder charge (changed later to sec- ond degree murder after the first jury, failed to convict) was @ declaration by the rulers that workers are supposed to submit without resistance to the organized attacks of fascist and police bands, that they have no right whatever to defend themselves. The charges against Powers and Carr go a | step further. Made under laws passed in 1866 and 1871, these charges are another ultimatum to the effect that the death penalty is to be applied to any worker who urges resistance \ Daily SBE Worker’ Central Organ of the Communist Party of the U. S. A. WHILE THE FIGHT GOES ON as NON RESISTANCE —By Fred Ellis Solidarity of Northern; Southern Workers--A Slogan of Action! _ to capitalism, its government or any of its of- ficial agencies, who advises his class to hold meetings and make protests in spite of sup- pressive measures, In other words, capitalist government in-the South intends to allow no.joint meetings of Negroes .and whites, it intends to allow no mass protest against unemployment, or no mass protest against lynching; it intends to allow no meetings for union organization or for calling strikes; it intends to suppress such activities and classifies as “inciting to: armed insurrection” any attempts to resist suppres- sion. This is the political meaning of the charge of “inciting armed insurrection,” carrying the death penalty, made against Comrades Powers and Carr, and the denial of bail to them be- cause the “crime” with which they are charged is a capital offense. In addition to such cases as those in Gas- tonia and Atlanta, capitalist justice has evolved a whole series of lesser charges carrying with them chain gang sentences, jail and prison sentences and fines. Not a single organizer of the class struggle unions or the Commu- nist Party but has from one to a half-dozen of such charges against him. The whole legal fabric is utilized against the workers and those who dare to organize them. The entire working class in the South lives under the shadow of prison walls. This meth- od, the application of the legal code to the capitalist necessities in the class struggle, has been made into a fine art in the South. While in the North and the entire capitalist system, the legal code is framed for the advantage of the capitalist class as against the working class, in the South it is, more clearly than anywhere else in America, a weapon in the hands of the rulers for daily use. For the Negro masses the legal code has features little less horrible than lynching. But for the white working class the legal code also has its terrors. In Gaston County, some- thing like 50 per cent of the workers pass through the courts, jails and chain gangs in the course of a year. Following a meeting of the state prison commission on Feb, 28 of this year in Raleigh, N. C., A. D. McLean, a member of the com- mission, declared: . “I am just beginning to learn that the prison problem is one of the biggest prob- lems in the state. For the prison popula- tion has increased 300 per cent in nine years, 75 per cent of the white prisoners are under 21 years of age and two-thirds of the prison- ers are now white, rather than colored.” Nine years cover approximately the period of rapid expansion and intensive rationaliza- tion in the textile industry—which in North Carolina employs white workers almost exclu- sively and is the main industry. Other highly rationalized industries in other states have likewise developed a working class living under the constant pressure of the most vicious forms of capitalist justice, Southern industrial capitalism, built rapidly in the war and post-war years on the surviv- ing semi-feudal agricultural economy with the reactionary heritage of chattel slavery tradi- tions and poisonous hatred of the Negro pete hs $1 ting B ‘ hs of By mail everywhere: One year $6; six months $3; two months $1; excepting Boroughs o Manhattan and Bronx, New York City, and foreign, which are: One year $8; ak months $4.50 4 By HARRY GANNES. Gee BRITAIN digs up the mummies of King Tut and Ra Ouer in Egypt but Wall Street finds a live one in Emperor R ‘afari in Abyssinia, below the Soudan. This is not a fight over individual kings but over Cotton, which in the present sharpening ag- rarian crisis, becomes of utmost importance in the struggle between American and British ‘im perialism. Abyssinia is a little-known country, near the North East coast of Africa, situated between the jaws of the vice of British and Italian imperialism. Its chief importance in the strug- gle between British and American imperialism lies in the fact that Lake Tsana in Abyssinia controls the waters of the Blue Nile in ‘the Soudan, and British imperialism controls the Soudan. Struggle over Cotton. To break away from dependence on the United States for cotton, the British masters have been frantically increasing their cotton lands in the Soudan. In 1925 they had under cultivation 87,475 acres; in 1927, 218,546 acres. In 1926 the British opened the Sennar Dam on the Blue Nile in the Soudan, with great ceremony under Lord Lloyd’s supervision. The Sennar Dam canalizes 300,000 acres of some of the best cotton land in the world. But the control of a proposed dam in Lake Tsana, Abyssinia, is the key to the control of the Soudan and its vast cotton area. Here enters Ras Tafari, American imperial- ism, and the now armed struggle for the con- trol of the building of the Lake Tsana Dam. Ras Tafari has lined up with American im- perialism to combat the encroachment of Brit- ish and Italian imperialism. THE WALL STREET WAR IN ABYSSINIA | | fuel added to the fires of the war danger be- Italian imperialism. Coolidge sent Addison E. Southard as min- ister resident of the United States. Through Addison the J. G. White Engineering Company of 37 Wall Street, were given the contract for the construction of the Tsana Dam, to cost between $15,000,000 and $20,000,000. This was tween British and American imperialism. Here was Wall Street putting foot in the sacred ter- vitory of the Nile. Now Ras Tafari, who in order to clear all claims to the throne drowned the Empress Zauditu, is faced with a revolt led by the Cop- tie priests and the feudal lords, backed and in- stigated by British and Italian imperialism in the struggle against American imperialism for the control of the Lake Tsana dam. In this battle, from meager capitalist newspaper cables, it appears that French imperialism sides with Wall Street. Inspired “Revolt.” Latest reports from London to the New York Times indicate that British imperialism rests not at all content with the recent victory of Tafari over the feudal elements. A dis- patch from Cairo (via London) April 16, 1930 states that “Ras Tafari of Abyssinia, who succeeded to the imperial throne on the death of the Empress Zaudita recently, is facing a serious revolt in the provinces.” What will ensue will be a ferocious armed struggle—in reality a war between British and American imperialism for the control of Abys- sinia, fought by the armies of Ras Tafari, on the one hand, and the rebeling forces, on the other, armed, backed and led by British and International Solidarity in Defense | of Meerut Prisoners Statemeng of the International Labor De- fense, through its General Secretary, J. Louis Engdahl, urging American workers to protest the persecution of labor in India, and not to <2 misled by the “theatrical ac- tivities of Gandhi.” The statement follows: “American workers will not be misled by the theatrical activities of Mahatma Gandhi, in India, especially by his circus salt-making stunts, but will concern themselves with the growing persecution of Indian workers under British imperialist rule, especially exposing the leaders, including: three English workers. “Not only the large numbers of Hindu work- ers in the great industries (automobile, textiles, transportation, etc., etc.), in this country, but all American workers must join in denouncing pesoiat SS eS ee, masses carefully preserved, ( regarding the | “poor white” only as a buffer in between the | Negro masses and the white rulers, with the contempt- of ‘fevidal lords for serfs, has made | i ncessions to the masses it herds | “° B baerirae ys | mittee organized by the trade unions, into the factories, mines and mills. The south- ern capitalist class cares very little for demo- | cratic pretenses. ‘ : Writing in 1867 his preface to the first edi- tion of “Capital,” Marx, in speaking of the | difference between the development of English and German industry, said: “Where capitalist production is fully na- turalized among the Germans (for instance, in the factories proper) the condition of things is much worse than in England, be- cause the counterpoise of Factory Acts is wanting. In all other spheres, we, like all the rest of Continental Western Europe, suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but also from the in- completeness of that development. Along- side of modern evils, a whole series of in- herited evils oppress us, arising from the passive survival of antiquated modes of pro- duction, with their inevitable train of social ‘ and political anachronisms. We suffer not only from the living, but from the dead.” (My Emphasis.) Factory inspection laws, workmen compen- sation laws, sanitary legislation, minimum wage laws, child labor laws, etc., are either non-existent in the southern states or of the most formal character with little or no pre- tense of enforce. Their place is taken by legal methods of suppression. Many of the laws used against the workers date from the chattel slavery period, many others were passed after the “carpet-bag” days when the southern ruling class regained its hegemony and, first relegating the Negro masses to almost the same slave status as be- fore the civil war, also took measures to pre- vent the developing white working class and the poor farmers from reaping any advan- tages from the freeing of the Negro slaves, It is in this combination of a highly ration- alized industry, with a working class recruited directly from the countryside, and the survival of the semi-feudal legal code, that we find the explanation for the unparallelled persecution of militant leaders of the workers and the working class itself in the South. In this imperialist epoch the methods of the southern ruling class, far from placing them behind their brethren in the North, actually give them first place in the nation-wide drive of American imperialism against the working class. Just as in the colonies and semi- colonies, imperialism seizes upon all feudal survivals which can be of use in robbing and suppressing the working class and peasantry, so in the United States the whole ruling class greets with approval and admiration the abil- ity of the southern rulers to utilize the chat- tel slavery code to jail and murder Commu- nists and workers who accept and fight for our program, For this reason there must be the closest connection between the work of our Party and the revolutionray unions in all parts of the country with the struggle in the South. The methods in use in the South by the ruling class today will be the methods of the rulers throughout the country tomorrow. Solidarity of northern workers with their southern comrades must be a slogan of action! soe (To Be Continued) this long drawn out case against these work- ing class leaders as an open attempt of the imperialist MacDonald Government to crush the Indian revolutionary working class and trade union movements. The MacDonald gov- ernment utilizes the Gandhi movement to throw salt in the eyes of international labor, in the effort to blind w s the world over to Brit- ish imperialism’s crimes in the colonies. “In spite of the arrests of the leaders, their imprisonment for more than 12 ong months in the notorious Meerut jail, the long drawn out | trial without a jury before a isti farcical trial at Meerut of the 32 revolutionary | aid aft fled le is a shameless agent of MacDonald imperialism, the sending of a fake “labor” commission from Britain to India “to inquire into” conditions in the colony, the MacDonald Government has failed to gain control of the Indian labor move- ment in the interests of British imperialism. “The Indian nationalist leaders who at first expressed lip-sympathy with the Meerut pris- oners have dissolved the Defense Committee they had constituted, because of their fear of the workers’ movement. The defense of these workers has been taken over by a special com- “The National Meerut Defense Committee in Great Britain has organized a whole week of special campaigning, during which meetings are being held at factories, mass demonstra- tions organized and great quantities of litera- ture distributed and funds collected. The ag- itation is being developed on a broad scale in ; continental Europe. “The support of the imprisoned workers in India is being organized among American workers by the International Labor Defense. American labor, on an increasing scale, is be- ginning to realize that its own fate is intim- ately bound up with that of the colonial slaves, not only in India, but in China and the Phil, ippines, and especially in the Latin American countries, “Upon the fate of the 32 revolutionary leaders now on trial in Meerut depends the immediate future of th: Indian workers’ struggle. The future of the Indian masses is not made bright- er by the comical antics of the clown, Gandhi, who dances to the music furnished by British imperialism.” Soviet Industrial Output Doubled Industrial output in the Soviet Union, ps | as great as pre-war production in the same territory was shown in preliminary figures published for the first half of the year, Octo- ber 1 to March 31, according to United Press dispatches from Moscow today. Production far exceeds the goal origina! laid out for the period under the eras Plan. The figures show production at 28,8 per cent compared with 21.5 for the correspond- ing period a year age SO TT LR TRCN The Daily Werker is the Party's hest instrument to make contacts among (te masses of workers, to build a mass Communist. Party. SEE DES Pe A A Workers! Join the Party of Your-Class! } Communist Party U. S. A. 43 Wast 125th Street, New York City. I, the undersigned, want to join the Commu- Send me more information. nist Party. Name . Address ... Occupation . +. Age. Mail this to the Central Office, Communist Party, 48 East 125th St.. New York, N.'%. . 4 ae) / |