The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 10, 1930, Page 2

Hage Tye UNEMPLOYMENT HITS KANSAS MINERS HARD Tired of “Lewis and Fishwick; Want NMU; ni JALLY WORKER, NEW oy Ue SATURDAY, MAY 10, 1930 L OF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS STARVING; “FIGHT!” Soviet Workers, Building Socialism, Don’t Fear Starvation Howat with their unior mine wat go ut back claimed we will him pay to Jonny. make if the r Ale x will go back the salary, together and kiss t and the sky clear with both of our blath es. We want the Nationai 5 on here! —JI Wakefield ON PHONE GIRLS Never Get Over $20 Week (By a Worker Correspondent) ST. LOUIS, Mo.—A fertile and virgin field. for . organi S open to Communist unions, namely the telephone companie Why it has never “bee puzzle. However, these workers are underpaid, considering and nerve shattering of the work. The condi- » plea dreadfully nt rest rooms and passable, are must support he port a family on a sur only a bare subsi The stu is the nov ater a train Killing. The work ‘nece ates the con- stant use of the voice and ear for every minute of seven and a half hours, and in many cases cause of throat troubles and loss hearing. The nervous strain under which the operator is forced to work is no less than cruel. In the first place she is required to keep her voice at a certain tone, and her manner and personality at a certain point. When | they vary, her livelihood is at stake. | Her job consists not. only in doing the work needed by the patron, but in using. her..voice to.wheedle the | subscriber into. being overcharged | for more calls. While at her “posi- | tion” at the “board,” her head must | move neither to the right nor to the | | left, and her eyes must never waver | from the green-and red lights di- rectly before her,» No word must | pass her ‘lips (other than that which | | pertains to business. Many Tele- phone Co. employees develop lung and muscle troubles from sitting in | positions all.day. Most of the operatgrs realize the need for organization among them. ~ST. LOUIS WORKER. Kill Toilers to End Poverty, v5 Stev FARMER IN WHITE EARTH, N. D. George Bernard Shaw, clown and critic of capitalism in his younger days, is now writing his own satire in his old age. Shaw, who was one of the founders of the reformist Febian Society: has now altogether lost all sense of reality and is spending his’ days amusing the degenerate British bourgeoisie with| worthless nonsense. One of his| quirps is his cure for poverty which | consists in killing off every earning less than $3,000 a year | wanting more. ward to Mass Conference Against Unemployment, Chicago July 4th. jas an |they hunt, e|jobs to keep them going. | get old.and. not able to care for | ed his land as long as up to five ea Unemployed workers in | the United States are starv- ing under the capitalist sys- tem. The Soviet workers have a different story to tell. They are building up socialism, they are ruling, in the Soviet Union; they don’t suffer from unemployment. Photos show scenes from Soviet workers’ life. At left, Soviet workers ut a factory council meeting. They are making plans for the im- provement of their factory. Right, at top: workers in Ural regions of USSR at a meeting, discussing means of speeding the five year plan ! for socialist construction. Be- low, Soviet workers’ homes. Ford Maims Workers in Rouge, Must Slave On (By a Worker Correspondent) DETROIT, Mich—I am sending you these few lines to let you know | how things are getting along in the Ford Rouge plant. As we all hear that Ford pays his slaves a grand sum of $6 for 8 hours of work, yet we all do not know how the workers are being treated in his shops, bet- | ter slave shops. THOUSANDS OF == (ORKERS STARVE = IN VINELAND, NJ. ineland, Bridgeton Are Slave Centers so great that one | place without even for pe just hu the foreman you, you have 2 for personal speed-up i ot leave ¢ a foreman, t, which Even o stand near is t to stand on him to relieve comfort, scl conditions as I write about be done away with by an- Se into the Auto Workers’ Union and the Trade Union Unity League and other unions which fig for the workers of all color, nationality and creed. In Dept. 195, ona press, I noticed a fellow- worker had his index finger cut from the nail to the last knuckle and was bleeding very serious Tt} {so happened that a fellow-worker | {had a watch, and I asked him what oe time it was, and he said 9 a. m.| knew of one woman who made|That is the actual time when the between $3 and-S4-a week running |worker cut his finger’ and he had to a machine in and{work until 4 p.m. before he could it @ressed, because that is the time he quits to go home. Things like that happen by hun- dveds of cases in the slave-shop of Ford. Wait until the day comes. how I long to see it, and, bel me, how I long to use that good old gat a; ; the bosses. A FORD SLAVE WHO'S COMMUNISM, New Tariff Will Raise Workers’ Rent The-number of pedple in patched} arr cad and- raggy “clothes” Has increased a| Passage of the few thousand per cent. tariff bill will result The Kimball Gl Works, Vine- land, usually employing a few hun-| dred, has now a f dozen, and th manager says things look So does every thing else here. vA aii af (By a Corres, as T was w VIUIEVAND, N. J.—Working con- di Millville, V Bridgeton, New Jer ondent) ing ions in eland and yy are as bad in the co! uth sted, not e: even during the war. @ dress factory, wasn’t slov she the boss also ran post Bridgeton lt in a triangle, being x to twelve miles from each other. “Beaut sland” k large y ion of Gotgelts therefore, the workers are al to. share the high taxes of “better-clas: “Millville the name im S. is solely dependent on its mills... the--breadlines there were pretty long this winter, Oh, also } FOR their eighbors, { Smoot-Hawl italist e con- art of the ing a duty , which at p nt is im- the tenants will} r it, the real estate reported in the The tariff will r n costs in eve pad. The people of it, though, might call because they where they rai: who have the re the cl proletarian farmer have a small farm iis stad Roe oe) ae Ree ee tReet ILLINOIS SETS 45 AGE LIMIT. ‘ SPRINGFIELD, without license, and try to get odd fae OY the employment age limit at , inaugurated by big busi- the latest project of the| state government. Gov. Louis Em- merson has ed an order pr of | hibiting department heads from e , over | ploying attendants who have pass the $22,062,080 April, 1 ales isthe ripe old age of two score and reported by the F. W. Woolworth five. Co., indicating the increase of con- sumers of the cheap, shoddy 5 and 10-cent Figen worst 5 2e, and men admit. 6.— | —F. G. FORCE MORE TO BUY SHODDY. NEW YORK.—An_ increase 10.4 per cent for April, 19 Fight for the seven-hour day, five-day ayeee Kick OUT UTW FAKERS CALLS vA TEXTILE WORKER (By a Worker Correspondent) SCHOOLFIELD, Va.—In the Schoolfield mill slubber men run 3 frames for $18 per hour week. A Rowin hauler does three men's work for 22 cents per hour. A card grinder, known as fixer, does three men’s work for one man’s pay. Now, I want to know if we can let this continue. The U. T. W. leaders, Gorman and Miss Lindsay say that we must not strike, but if | we don’t do something the company is going to fire all our best mem- | bers. Seyeral have already been fired and added to the mass of people | out of work. | I say to the workers of Schoolfield that we must organize a rank | and file committee to take charge and kick out these leaders who say | beta a will settle all our troubles in a peaceful way. Join the N. T. | —A SCHOOLFIELD WORKER. | looks at the workers when they | lieve me, he knows how. |WITH THE SHOP PAPERS, R® PORTS are coming in of the results of the May Day shop papers. In the Sparrows Point, Md., Bethlehem Steel and ship- building plants May Day was the subject that spread to all cor- ners of the far reaches of the steel shops. It was only the lack of a definite crystallization of the good sentiment in the mills that prevented a May First strike. In the Baltimore and Ohio railroad shops, birthplace of the infamous B. & O. boss-efficiency plan, sentiment for May Day was good as a result of the May Day issue of the B. & O. Worker. Similarly wherever our shop papers were issued regularly and a May First issue gotten out, International Labor Day was discussed by the workers, mrany of whom waited for a definite leadership inside the shops to lead a May First strike. The Shop Paper of the Steel Workers. rhe arrows Point Worker is now a mature shop paper. workers at the Point look for it every month. Its grown. unfailing regularity, it must receive wide-spread and careful distribu- tion. Then as the organ of the Communist Party nuclei in the shops it will make steady progress in extending the influence of the Party over the steel workers, organizing them in the revolutionary unions, etc. The April issue is the best yet. Eight pages, a full page of work- ers correspondence, 2 pages for the young workers, plentiful cartoons and fair in make-up, it is an attractive shop paper. Here is a good write-up that gives a striking picture of hell-hole in Schwab's domain. The steel influence has And now it must settle down to the task of coming out with ie tee ie Overheard in the Plate Mills. Workers rushing twenty-four hours producing New furnaces being installed Charging crane operators | Speedy speed-up. enormous profits in the 60” and 110” mills. to do away with heaters and heater helpers. working in intense heat, pulling slabs 3 high to save money on fuel so| that the Schwabs and Rogers can have more profits. Working like hell | on the week’s set schedule of production and then getting laid off. Plate mill workers getting gypped on tonnage after working bad steel and plates that. are rejected. Accidents increasing daily. Negro workers. getting ruptured and ruined for the rest of their lives, besides getting burned out pushing hot plates around under a ruthless, inhuman speed-up system! Numerous workers fired because of failure to report of taking day off. the work Workers, awake! s off because of slack in the shop. Organize and demand better co: * * * Two Socks At Ford! Two cousins of the big Ford Worker of Detroit have reached us. The Ford Worker of Chester, Pa., and the Ford Worker of Kearney, N. J, It was in front of the Chester Ford plant that Peltz and Holmes were arrested for “sedition” and later sentenced to prison up to 20 years. Now the Ford Worker has taken up the fight of organizing the workers in this speed-up inferno. The Kearney Ford Worker also takes up the work of fighting the arch-exploiter Ford’s speed-up. While both shop papers are fair in content we must point out again that unless they are legible the workers cannot read them, * * . What about your shop papers, Cleveland and Detroit? And your Chicago district? Send them in to the Workers Correspondence de- partment for review. Milwaukee Machinists Hit by Unemployment confusion goes on from day to day. The floors are dirty, the bub- (By a Worker Correspondent) MILWAUKEE, Wis.—E ver since last November men have | been looking for work in our ma- | blers are dirty, the place is cold chine shop (or the bosses’ ma- x | and damp, workers are rushing chine shop). The boss stops and | hack and forth like mad, some are disgusted, some start quarreling with the boss, but the stream of unemployment keeps on coming. Workers are out looking for a job until the boss loses his tem- per and hires one or two and lets the hard eggs (as he calls them) go. This. gives the boss new ma- terial to work on and he shows | them his ability to torture them. There is no doubt in my mind that the workers will turn against their bosses in the end and will torture the bosses “double,” as they have done in the Soviet Union. —SHOP WORKER. ask for a job, then laughs at them, tells them gruffly he ‘has no job, or to get out as quick as possible. Then he goes on march- ing through the shop and starts trouble with the workers, and, be- Often I have wondered if he is a man, or if he could be the “devil” himself. The lathe hands have not turned out work fast enough; the tools are not ground right; the mills are not running speedy enough; the trucker has not put the cast- | ing on his truck right, If he is trucking a casting he should be sweeping the floor, and so the Bosses never report to the workers whether or not they should | Soviet Workers Want to (By a Worker Correspondent) KHARKOV, U.S.S.R.—I write in the name of the workers of the trousers department of the factory “Tinjakoff.” With this letter we shall inaugurate our future connection with you. Our factory is one of the biggest establishments in the sewing | industry of the Soviet Union. We have about 4,000 workers and em- ployees. Our factory turns out dif-® ferent kinds of clothing, from un- | derwear and coats to the wholesale | production of peasants ‘dresses, rain | ST. LOUIS ARE coats and so on. Our factory works with electrical motors arranged for Huge Lnw-08ts in All| Industries the new conveyor system. (By a Worker Correspondent) I shall tell you only about the trousers department, which occupies a large section of the factory. There work 300 men in two shifts day and night. Group competes against! ST. LOUIS, Mo.—Working condi- tions in St. Louis are no better than in any other city in this “prosper- ous” country, According to the most conservative estimates, there are group and department against de- | partment for greater speed up of production and turning out of a bet. ter quality. The most important |thing is the labor discipline. We have no drunkards at our factory and we are striving for a better attendance at work and more punc- tuality. Previously one shift of our department turned out 812 pairs of | trousers, but now, competing we/| |turn ‘out from 980 to 1,000 pairs. | 17 [he workers are interested in do- ing the work better. At our factory we have no bluff-| ing. The masters of our depart- | ment and the economic administra- tors are on an equal footing with us, they strive to regulate the pass- ing of the materials that there would be no interruption of the work| But those without families are no and that the cut is accurate. lexceptions. In every industry there By means of criticism and self-|8%¢ thousands and thousands of men criticism we are able to overcome | With families laid off. all defects in our conditions of life. We are striving for the aim to reach and to outrun all capitalist coun- |ployed here. Market Street, the regular hangout of the most unfor- tunate victims of this capitalist mis- rule and wholesale robbery, the un- lated now. Thousands Starve. Printing Trades. The print shop where I am em- ployed, just like hundreds and hun- \tries. The proletariat has taken up sip wfat | r t |dreds of others, is daily visited by the ask Yo fut the S-year an | rey bogging far work or for 8 fe pibche led med dant Anat hd And the boss, like nts for food. an active part in this work. In Feb- |ruary we fulfilled our monthly task more than 100 per cent. In our) |department a great deal of youth are members of the Communis: vantage of the cituation. At work, I) | average about ten hours a day on 7 xf j}a week, But the pressman, an old | Youth and many old Party mem-|man, is no better off. He makes ee |$20 a week, sometimes less. Of | The workers of our department | wait with great eagerness for your reply. Please, write us in particu- Jar about your everyday life and especially about the sewing meth- lods. Write us please about unem-|@d money. ployment, about your struggles and| And there is no way out of the the economic and political rights of |Situation., Under the present econ- your workers. {omie system, labor conditions will With fraternal revolutionary | grow worse all the time. The unions greetings, ) will not be able to give work to The workers of the trousers de- \their members, and the non-union partment of the factory. workers will “TINJAKOFF.” shamefully. (10 signatures). The present unemployment situa- Address: Kharkov, Kazarsky | tion and its consequences are mak- street factory of the name of “Tin-|ing the way clear to the full devel- jakoff,” the editorial board of the opment of the class struggle and its “Stalnaja Igla” (Steel Needle). ultimate end: the Communist United My address: Feurbach Square, | States. Sparen 18. Nehamkin. “MOST UNBEARABLE BOSS STRETCHOUT HERE". (By a Worker Correspondent) SCHOOLFIELD, Va.—I want to say just a few words siseagt the Daily Worker, as I can tell more workers that way about our union and the conditions that it lets go on. Not only a wage-cut, but the most unbearable stretch-out system is in effect here. We have to start work 15 minutes before seven, to get time to wash at night, and some of us have to work till 8 and 9 o’clock at night to hold our jobs, and we get orders from the boss to stay on our job till the whistle blows, and are not allowed to talk to other workers in the mill. I will mention just a few things to show you how we have td work. In the picking room, where three machines were, there is only one now, which cuts out two men. Card-hands run 36 and 38 cards for about $17 per week, full time 55 hours; drawing hands run 8 frames and get $1.57 per hundred hanks. —A SCHOOLFIELD WORKER. course we are not union members. but not from choice, It is not so easy to join the reactionary unions here if one does not have influence —ST. LOUIS PRINTER. * SAYS, “ORGANIZE UNDER RED BANNER” Don’t Believe in Begging Wall Street for Relief, But Urges Farmers to Overthrow Capitalist System (By a Farmer Correspondent) WHITH EARTH, N. DI want to mention one case, of how the farmers are.created when they 1 rented it out, and during the five 1 | or six years the.land did not pay | him enough to meet the taxes and | his living evpenses so he had to | | i take a loan on it. themselves.’ A ‘neighbor of ‘mine who took up a homestead here about twenty-five years ago, work And you can never. loan .any more than one third of the value of the land. Now this spring the loan company foreclosed ow the farm. The old man was destitute, so he had to be taken care of by the county and he was sent to siz years ago. He was then getting too old to handle the land by himself, so he i schemes that cver the capitalists invented. For the benefit of some of the city workers I will here relate some prices as we farmers get for our products. You can then coms pare the prices you have to pay when you get your big pay checks. Wheat ts now 80 cents a bushel and it takes about 2% to produce ove hundred pounds of flour, and it leaves 50 pounds of shorts. and tran. Eggs we sell for 17 cents a some old peoples home, where the ! rest of the poor taxpayers have to pay for him, and the loan com- pany gets the land for less than half the value of it, and will sell the same land at its full value to some other land hungry fool, and | and same story will be repeated in | a few years, This is just one case, and there are thousands like’ it everywhere. Little or nothing has been said about the free homestead act, but this is one of the slickest on and take our right, we don’t need to beg when we know our strength. May we be the first land to follow in the footsteps of our Russian comrades, Get the capitalist dope out of your brain and dump the parasites off your back. Forward to a Workers and Harmers Government, not in a hundred years from now, but to- morrow. dozen. Pork we get about 12 cents per pound, that is dressed, and beef the same price, also dressed butter fat and butter is around 35 cents a pound, So you just can sit down and figure out if we need any farm re- lief or not. But I do not believe ix begging Wall Street for it. We simply got to organize under our own banner, that is the Red Hear trom U. S. Toilers about sixty thousand people unem-; employed men without families or} homes, is about five times as popu-} is fellow exploiters, is taking ad-| the linotype, and my salary is $30) be exploited more! BIG LAY-OFFS * FOR WORKERS IN DAYTON, 0, Frigidaire Lays Off 1000 Workers (By «Worker Correspondent) DAYTON, Ohio.—Dayton is the home of the National Cash Regis- | ter, the Frigidaire, Deleo Products, the Wright Airplane and other im- portant factories. More than 30 per cent of the population is colored. All Soft For Bosses. There is a great deal of humbug |in Dayton, as in other cities. Here the bosses of the N. C. R. and Deleo have special golf courses—tennis jcourts, swimming pools for the | workers. The workers slave for miserable wages and at present work only two and three days @ |week. Only last week Frigidaire, |which is part of General Motors, laid off 1,000 workers. Our first attempt to call an open- air meeting was on Monday, April }21, in the heart of the colored sec- tion. Leaflets were distributed a day before. At 7 p. m., when the |speakers arrived, two machines of police awaited them. Scattered |workers stood here and there. The jpolice had already dispersed the \crowd and, swith their usual “get along, you,” accompanied by the | threat of their night-sticks, kept the |workers away. This action may |have prevented our first meeting, |but it showed the workers that Day- \ton bosses are very much afraid |that the Negro workers will re- spond to the program of the Com- munist Party and organize with the ks workers. A statement of the Communist este was immediately sent to the [Dayton papers and, as we expected, |not one line was printed. —DAYTON WORKER. HE FOUND THE REAL SHOE UNION Independent Fights for Workers (By a Workex Correspondent.) NEW YORK.—For the last 17 |years IT have been slaving in the shoe industry. I have been a mem- ber of all the different unions which formed in the city of New York, from the United Shoe Workers to the Protective Shoe Workers’ Union. Neither one meant anything for the workers, but one was worse than the other. Finally, after the general office expelled the joint council and all ‘the locals affiliated with the joint leouncil, we were at last organized into an organization which really fights for us, the Independent Shoe Workers’ Union, which fights for ithe workers and against the bosses. No Puzzle. After joining the Independent Shoe Union it was no puzzle to me why the bosses fight so much more against this union than against all of the other unions. The reason is that the Independent is a union which fights for us and cannot be bought off by the bosses, At the time I joined the Inde- |pendent Union I was working in \t the Progress Shoe Co., located at 430 E. 102nd St. ‘om that day the bosses were trying to break the | union more than ever. But know- ing that the rank and file were to- gether the bosses tried more and more to break us. Finally, they decided to starve the workers. For months and months we worked only two and ‘three days a week. When the work- ers asked the cause of the slack the ‘boss answered that if he had an pen shop he could compete with the other firms, and we should have more work. At the end of 1928 the shop moved \to Brooklyn and the boss told all \the workers who were foolish ‘enough to be stung that if they ‘went out of, the union he would have iplenty of work. He also said that jin the slack season he would have ‘plenty of work. He said he would “have plenty of work the year vound. Like a bunch of fools we istened and dropped from the union. Wake Up! The boss is already asking work- ers to allow a decrease in wages so that he will get some work for the future. I am more than sure that unless the workers wake up. ‘Let us wake up from those poisoned dreams and build a strong organization which will do away with all the rotten scab company unidns, such as the Boot and Shoe, the Protec- tive, ete, who never did anything for the workers and never, will. Let us do away with the wage reduc- tions, long hours and rotten condi- tions. Only this can we do by build- ing the union which will fight for us. UNWILLING SHOE SLAVE. Demand the release of Fos- ter, Minor, Amter and Ray mond, in prison for fighting one with the hammer and sickle DAKOTA FARMER. f for unemployment insurance, oy | the boss will get the cut in wages _