The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 6, 1930, Page 3

YW. ORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1 930 \LAY-OFFS OF WORKERS; | CUT WAGES HEAVILY | | | cal Workers and Chemical Industrial League P | Zditor, dear Sir: ; mae, Wretched, is too mild a word to describe the employees condition in he United Israel Zion Hospital, 49 St. and 10th Ave., Brooklyn. I have been nursing in this institution since 1929. On August 28th, a sudden — = ~Y conference was called by the super- , W GANNERY visor of nurses and twenty nurses i 1 G h J )iccharge Nurses Without Warning; Speed Up Housekeepers, Porters, Ete. Brooklyn, N.Y. “4 were laid off without notice. Tne remaining nurses were carefully in- structed not te discuss their salaries with new help which will be hired at a wage. much below the standard, | namely $60 per month. The standard salary in this insti- |tution varies from $70 to $80 for | under-graduates and from $100 to POOR WAGES fours Work and Work Hard | | Bellingham, Wash. Daily Worker: | W. H. Pride and Company is the lame of a large fruit and vegetable lannery situated here. They em- jloy about 500 women during the jusy season, which is just at its jeight. | They are at present running two hifts, 11% hours or more, with othing short of ten hours. The omen and girls, married and single. phose ages range from 16 to 70 ears, work these long hours. Low Wages. A few do day work at 27% cents er hour, straight time for overtime, ut most of the work is piece work, hich averages less. Those who are peeling pears at 7 ’nts per box make very small wages Inless they are very fast. Few Men For Heavy Work. Only a few men are employed to o the lifting of heavy boxes, truck- ig car, loading, etc. Apples are the last thing to can nd will be coming in soon by the ar loads from Eastern Washington where they have the biggest crop f apples this year in many years). Need Union. | Apple canning lasts until about December Ist, although the night hift will be taken off when the eans and pears are canned. These cannery workers should ave a strong industrial union for 1eir protection, which we here in ellingham are attempting to point ut to them through shop gate meet- ags, leaflets and street meetings, hich are held several nights a eek at the corner of Railroad and olly Sts. L. J. ADY. Iedical Workers Must Organize for Fight All hospital workers, nurses, dental workers, optical workers and wholesale drug workers are urged to get in touch with J. L. Di Santes, secretary of the Med- ical and Chemical Workers’ In- dustrial League, to prepare the ground for an organization drive lamong medical workers. Address the secretary, care of the Trade Union Unity League, Room 414, 2 West 15th St., New York. | | | E Tammany grafters go free— he Unemployed Delegation is in rison—vote Communist! Shanghai, June, 15. dear Comrade:- | Yesterday I have sent you a copy f the newspaper “A Light on the ea” in which your article appeared. tevolutionary workers and peasants ertainly do need the utmost help nd support of American comrades. would like to thank you in their ame for your valuable comradely lorrespondence. Alas, they them- elves cannot correspond with you irectly, because in our country yorkers and peasants work every ay from 12 to 16 hours and not nly have no chance of learning ven the simpliest language--The chance to learn their own mother longue. Red Unions Lead. At present in this country there eigns a wave of terror—except the laces where the Soviets are estab- orkers is growing ever stronger. he majority of workers in Shang- ai are under the leadership of the ed Trade Unions, and they are 1 class conscious, They are always rsecuted and threatened by the low labor leaders. But their rev- utionary idea is so deeply rooted hat their revolutionary courage is ver down, ‘Tomorrow on June 16, great dem- {$105 for graduates. | who remain are forced to work at The nurses a break-neck speed from 7 a, m. to Tp. m This hospital, not unlike fact-ries, is a shining example of layoffs, speed-up and wage-cuts. These methods, however, are not only ap- plied to nurses but in a much more inhumane degree to porters, maids and housekeepers who are slaving from 7 to 7 for a starvation wage of $50 a month plus maintenance-- three uneataite meals ani «eplor- able living quarters where there is not the slightest bit of privacy. Each housekeeper is now forced to take care of two houses for the same amount as previously for one. For instance, the woman who took care of the nurses’ house in which I lived, was getting $50 a month for cleaning 11 rooms. Now she ig forced to care for the adjoining} house of which the housekeeper had Shanghai Worker Tells of '. Growing Power of Soviets {speranto,—-but do not even have | shed. But the counter-attack of the | been discharged—twelve additional | rooms for thr same miserable $50. The porters’ wages have been re- duced $10 to $40 a month. In the midst of these intolerable conditions, the superintendents and other overpaid officials are enjoy- ing unreduced high salaries, long va- cations and choice meals. —Discharged Nurse. ee Jewish Hospital, Brooklyn, N. Y- Dear Comrades: As a worker in the Jewish Hos- -pital, I want to expose the con- ditions under which we work. They are almost intolerable. Just recently our wages were cut 12 per cent. We have been working for $60 per month, eleven to twelve hours a night seven days a week all the year around with one week vacation. This week the superintendent an- nounced the new wage-cut. Formerly we had two workers to do the same work that one must do now. So that we are now going to receive a wage-cut while doing twice as much work as before. While attending the patients one of my co-workers took sick. She is the mother of seven small children, and her husband is an invalid out of work for four years. When she asked for help she was refused regardless of the fact that she has been employed here for the last ten years. Her health is shattered, so we com- rades_ collected some ~ money among ourselves to save her children from starvation while the mother was confined to bed. After taking up the matter with other workers in the hos- pital, we came to the conclusion that it is time to wake up and Plan Demonstration onstrations will take place through- out China against civil war. The workers are preparing to fight with the police and the soldiers, I shall report to you the results-—if I can. + I am very anxious to receive | some proletarion cultural magazines ; and newspapers. I shail report to | You every week on our serious | events. ! Yours Comradely, Hl J.C. HSU. | (Received and translated by the | Esperanto Correspondence Group). | PS ihe ean | FRENCH EXCLUDED FROM GERMAN WAR-DRILL BERLIN, Sept. 5.—The French Foreign Office is showing official resentment over the fact that the French military attache was not’ in- | vited to attend important maneuvers | of he German army which were re-} vertly held at Kissington. The | British military attache was the only foreign group present. Prep- arations for the coming imperialist | war are as frantic in Europe as \they are in the United States and, | on the eve of turning the world into} a slaughter house, the military aa- | chines of the bosses are jealousy watching each other. Fight For Social Insurance! Page Three Tn the Workers’ Republic Hundreds of modern building. | se oe ee oe oe oe s of the type shown above are being built under the Five-Year Plan for socialist construction of the Union of Socialist Soviet Rem Above building the House Industry. Frocksville Shi is ublics, of “Mosselprom”—Moscow Rural rt Girls Get Wage Cut; Must Form Shop Committee For Fight Bosses Fear Daily Wor ker and Drive Off the Workers Distributing It to Girls Daily Worker: Only yesterday the wages were in the shirt factory here. It was said This factory employs 250 girls and 50 young men. All these poor | girls working here are not working for the fun of it. It is because they | have no other place to find work. ¢ Many of the girls that work here are working as there is nobody in the family working. Here is what some girls were get- ting: Buttoners, 2 cents a dozer flannel and cambray, 4 cents a do: en; trimmers, 4 cents a doze: = per 4% cents a dozen; trimmers for flannel lumber jackets, 51% cents a dozen; putting pieces on button, 3 cents a dozen; putting zippers on lumber jacke' ton sewers, 4% cents a dozen; makers, 34 cents a dozen. It takes about half an hour, may- be more for a dozen to be made, how could a family live on this There are about 200 girls t work from $1 to $10 for two weeks, | of course. Some girls are afraid on account of stool pigeons. The boss- es know if they fire one girl there are plenty that will take her place. If everyone stuck together they couldn’t get fired and the bosses protest. We feel that if we don’t do something they will soon be demanding that we work with- out wages altogether. Would it be possible to get some propaganda across in the way of leaflets? These workers I feel sure would be glad to listen | to organization. —ROSE MARION. | | i SOVIET FISHERMEN ENJO American Fishermen! Write to Your Brother Fishermen of the Soviet Union /\ of the Astrahan | 108 Government Fish Trust, in sending you this letter wish to inform you the conditions were like prior to the October revolution. Being aware of the fact that the press in the capitalist coun- tries is doing its best to vilify the Soviet Union and spread all sorts of lies about the life of the workers, we wish to write you about the real conditions in which we live and work today. Below we give a comparison of the living conditions of the work- ers employed at the fisheries prior to the October revolution and at the present time. We, workers Fisheries, No. AS WE LIVED FORMERLY. Our conditions were much | worse. | The working day lasted | i2 hours and during the season | imuch longer. We had no ges whatever. There was no me to whom we could complain | tbout the poor treatment of the | bosses. answer to our urgent Jemands put up to the bosses, we were unceremoniously thrown out onto the street to the mercy of the winds, and it was absolutely hopeless for us to try and get | committees land o request made to the national Frocksville, Pa. reduced from 15 to 9 cents a dozen d that eleven girls walked out. The Tractor “On the boundless plains Joyfully begins new life. The plowing tractor aims At new collective life. Here you find a horge, Trembling as it fears Shining brightly and with force Whirl by the noisy gears. | And just a youngster leads it on, Turning back and turning forth, |couldn’t run the factory on a scapd Girls of the H. D. Bob factory de mand more wages and less hours and join the Needle Trades Workers Tndustrial Union and the Commu- nist Party Send in your name and address to the Daily Worker, 26-28 Union Sq., New York and join the union that will fight for your in- JINGLES. terests Lditoriat Note—Organization m the shirt factory in Frocksville should begin by the building of shop in every department office of the Needle Trades Indus- trial Union, 121 W. 28th St.. New York N Y., to send in an organizer, any help anywhere. For these same bosses had the power in their hands. The women were compelled to do work which was above their strength. They were roughly treated. When pregnant, they had no vacations, and there were no vacations for anybody. If a worker took sick he would get nothing at all. No workers’ clothes were handed out. NOW WORKERS RULE. Now our working day amounts to 8 hours, and in the near future we intend to work 7 hrs., overtime is paid for the first two hours at the rate of one-and-a-half times, and more than two hours—double. At the fishery we have differ- ent committees; Labor Protection, Industrial Conflict, ete., com- prised of workers elected by us. Should a worker take sick, he gets vacation which is paid for hy the insurance office. In case of unemployment, he gets relief. After we had worked for 54% months, we are entitled to get a two-week paid vacation. We also get a place in the rest- houses at the expense of the trade union organization, If a worker BANKERS CLEAN UPON VETERANS "gj COMPENSATION Vets Must Join All the; Workers in Fight | Dayton, Ohio. | Daily Worker: ! In 1924 the American Legion got up a compensation for world war veterans to be payable in 1945. This was a scheme to help the money- lending corporations. This compen- sation runs from $300 to $1585 and each veteran can borrow from $10 to $50 a year, He has to pay six per cent interest annually, and com-| pound interest.- Under this plan the| interest eats up the principal and | the veteran gets only one-half of his compensation and the bankers,| the so-called veterans’ bureau gets | the other half of 5,000,000 veterans’) compensations which average about} $500 each. This adds to the robbing | veterans’ bureau about $2,300,000,- | 000. | | Last winter Senator Barkley intro- A Soviet Crack Brigade| At Work A view of a crew of the crack brigade of 700 workers in the Riasnansky Street car barn, Mos- cow, dropping an anchor into place. | has Revolutionary competition stirred the masses of Soviet wi ers to new heights of socialist productivity in building an im- pregnable workers’ society. Ark. Farmer Starving; Fight Ss Bosses Incite Farmers Against Negro Workers —Real Enemies Are the Bankers United Farmers League, Bismarck, N. D., Is the Organization of Struggle oo North Little Rock, Ark. Daily Worker: Dear Comrades :—I am ser capitalist paper. The conditions among the farmers is below human endurance. They are now stealing potatoes and chick- ens from one another and i thi not done in the near future to relieve the situation it v > than the constable and sheriff to hold the . ZINI : DOPESTERS AID of a local ling you a clipping some ill require 1 n (Editorial Note:—The clipping en- closed contains the story of the in- citement of the farmers in Lonoke County, Arkansas, who are virtuall, ruined and are d | Secretary Mellon fought this | duced a bill to pay off the compen-| sation immediately at face value. = CUT WAGES OF debt, We should demand the face) value of this certificate and the vet- erans bureau to pay us the 6 per} cent interest they have stolen from us. Workers have given up their lives for the United States bosses. When it comes to providing for the fam- ilies of the soldiers who fought for them, the grafters squirm out of it thru every crooked means. hard. This adjusted compensation cer- MEN; BOSSES LIE | Bosses Hand Out ‘Pros- perity’ Slips Milwaukee, Wisc. | The Daily Worker: Thousands of ex-soldiers are in) the soldiers’ home at Dayton. No| Dear Sir: . jobs, no home, no place to go. The capitalist sheet, the Mil- It is up to us to explain to the| Waukee Journal, stated in the press | rest of the workers the Workers So.| that wages will not be reduced in cial Insurance Bill proposed by the! this city and capitalists even had} Communist Party and make the| their photos in the paper to back masters who are responsible for| UP their statement. unemployment; poverty, misery, Bosses Lie. dead and crippled soldiers, father-} Well, some one is a damn liar less families and starvation, to pro-| and I told the capitalist press what vide for us. ‘ |T thought of that statement. Well, Every ex-soldier should vote| they never printed my letter in the Communist! Demand that the vet-! paper, | erans and their families be provided | for! Fight for the Workers’ Social | Insurance Bill. EX-SOLDIER, Soldiers Home, Dayton, Ohio. I told that wages were being cut | on Cambridge Ave. in a plant but) mentioned no names. Now I will open a broadside and give the firm’s name. Cut Wages. Hummel and Downing, manufac- turers of box board, folding cartons, fibre and corrugated shipping con- tainers have cut wages five cents | on the hour. They have a two-ma- chine board mill here and one of the worst speed up mills I’ve seen from the East to the Middle West. New men, whether experienced or not, are hired on at 45 cents an hour : ; job and paid 40 cents an hour, and The insects too stop their chatter, |i its 40 cents an hour they pay| The hare is scared, it runs to steal | ¢,om, 95 em 35 cents an hour. Away from the clatter of the steel! ‘They operate on three eight-hour | shifts and the men in the beater |room are speeded up so much that they have no decent time to eat. The wheels burst forth the lumps of dirt, Upon the endless stretch of earth. The virgin soil is plowed deep, By the tractor’s metal cold, It also plows just as deep The virgin remnants of the old. Beneath the tractor’s clatter, The old man crosses himself with his fist ‘Here comes the Antichrist’ But the driver has no fear, z Prosperity, Hell! He sings a song and gives a cheer. Old hands who are still on the job did not get the cut but oh boy, let them quit and go back later and | they will get a cut, just as if they | never worked for the company of ever seen the damn plant. | Every man that hired out at the| mill is given a paper which “Greetings, we want your stay with us to be long and prosperous.” | Where in the hell do they get the word “prosperous” to fit in here at 40 cents an hour and work at speed limit and hardly have time to eat. Forty cents an hour, eight hours | a day is $3.20 and four and five days a week, $12.80 and $16 for your week end pay. Prosperity hell! PAPER MILL WORKER. New time, new deed, The science wins and does not heed. It shall liberate the humanity, From the chains of old. Let the pope go to extremity, Lying thousandfold. He shall be answered by the steel Of the sharp destructive metal reel. On the boundless plains Joyfully begins new life. The plowing tractor aims At new collective life.” E. MICHALSKY. Translated from Esperanto, By Michael Friedman. Y SOCIAL PRIVILEGES happens to be sick and in need of REVOLUTIONARY treatment at a health resort, he COMPETITION, is sent without any charge. The women workers have very many privileges: when pregnant they receive 2 months’ vacation before and a 2 months’ vacation after confinement. Besides, they receive from the insurance bodies compensation for the baby’s clothes, diapers, etc., and also some extra money during the 9 months she has to nurse the baby. We get workers’ clothes free of charge. At each one of the fish- eries special dining-rooms for the workers are established, where the food is very good and fresh. The children are placed in creches and kindergartens, thus, the mother-worker is sure of her baby whom she leaves in the care of a trained nurse. The women work- ers here have all the rights equal to the men and take part in the government of the country. And example of this can serve the fact Our workers are working and building up their country with great enthusiasm. We have to- day socialist competition carried | out, thanks to which the workers | are straining all efforts to de- | velop their work, for they know quite well that they are doing it all for themselves and not for the exploiters as was the case in the past. Please excuse the briefness of this letter. The workers hope to receive from you, fishery workers, a let- ter, from which we could learn in details how you work and in what conditions you live. With comradely greetings, On behalf of the workers, (Signed) (A. _D. EFIMOV) (K. A. KORNILOY). Editorial Note: American fish- ermen, especially those on the West Coast are urged to corre- that at our fishery the chairman | spond regularly with the Soviet of the Industrial Committee and | fishermen that sent the above the Manager’s Assistant of the | letter. Send letters for trans- fishery are women. The work- ers and their families have all the rights to study at the differ- mission to the Soviet workers, to the Worker Correspondence Dept., | Daily Worker, 26-28 Union bankers and their g |seek to divert it against the | formation about | Party. | “Lynching of Negroes in the South.” tute, Negro highway laborers. cist elements who incited the ers want to direct the great ¢ tent and fight of the poor farmers away from their real enemies—the vernment, and gro arm- mn workers. Now more than any other time the poor farmers, who faced starva- tion in all sections of the country, must fight for the Farmers’ Relief and Insurance Bill that will guar- antee real relief, as proposed by the United Farmers’ League. The fight of the poor farmers must be extended to the poll defeating the candidates of bankers, who ar even now closing on thousands of farm house holds, and driving thousands of im poverished farmers into the cities to starve with the unemployed workers. Build the United F ers’ League.) * Jamestown, N. D. Yorker :— in agriculture To the Daily As the cri worsens the capitalist “saviors’ Legge and Thatcher (the latter of the Farmers’ Union), telling the farmers that now, when the price of wheat is so low they should feed it to livestock, thus “inereasing th value” of the cat- tle (to make up for what the farmers lose on wheat, f suppose), and this scheme will also remove “supplies” of wheat, which will have a tendency to “raise” its price! MUST SELL WHEAT. The poor farmer, who is broke, is going to sell his wheat at price, in order to get the wher withall to exist. Very little wheat will be fed to livestock, certainly not enough to deplete its sunply to any appreciable extent... Fur- ther, despite Legge and Thatcher, the poor farmer will sell his cat- tle, also at any orice, if he must and has to. Speaking of feeding wheat to livestock, imagine this being done when millions of human beings in the United States are starving! Some system! HOOVER'S “FARM RELIEF.” The bankruptcy of these “farm relief plans” are on a par with the move to cut the acreage (reduce | production), so as to give the farmers “better” prices. We don’t need to cut production as ‘ony as millions of workers and poor farmers do not have enough to eat. Thatcher says in the “Herald” of August 25: “The storage of grain on farms prevents that grain from showing up in visible supply figures and further de- pressing prices.” This is new Washington, D. C. Daily Worker: One day as I was walking down | the streets of New Haven, Conn., 1 found a book which contained in the Communist It also contained articles on It stuck in my mind—the awful con- dition of the Negroes in the South. Students Read it. The next day I took it to school, and at recess time gathered a large bunch of fellow students and i this to them about tHe conditions of the Negroes in the south. | After 3 days the principal of the school sent for me. I slipped the book to my friend, named Edgar Simmons. The principal asked me | for the book and when I could not show it to him, he sent me to the disciplinary school for 8 weeks for reading that interesting book in school. Two weeks went by and Edgar was sent to this school by the same principal to serve 6 months on the same charge. Send Brothers Too. After I had served my time and | Edgar his, we returned to our pub- | ent schools and colleges, Square, New York. lie school to resume our work there. | Reform School For Daring Read Communist Pamphlet AGAINST JOBLESS Press Forward in Fight for Bill! ‘Too, il Red-Paiters, vit Ww stre t Reds glin 1 Y Detroit Com- zrowth ha larmed its capitalist Y s should consider an insult to their in- Worker: Unior and g one. Grain stored on the farm is not VISIBLE Another thing: the eat is not determin here and there, but by the world volume of production. JOIN UNITED FARMERS LEAGUE, it is about time .e got away from all this fakery, and did some real fighting ourselves, by refusing to pay mortgages, inter- est and taxes, and by demanding that a heavy tax be placed upon supply. of ed by its storae price Farmers, the rich to provide a fund of at 1 ast $1,000,000,000, to be aside for some real relief. must all join the militant Farmers’ League, spread cial organ, the United and fight for this program. —FARMER. set We nited of fi- rmer, | Edgar read the book again to the | students and this time he was sent hool for 3 months. Fred, to 6 weeks. to the reform Also his brother I got off prol afraid to start it again Want to be Active and Fred who would like to join Is there a unit in their Organize one if there is not. many workers in that who work in the Win- and the rgent on ation, but was Fighters. are two honest There are city, many chester ¢ hardwa f: Plenty of Ne- gr> workers r in that city. The most populated section around Dixwell Ave. After moving to Washington i found out there was a Communist Party at 1137 Seventh N.W. At an outdoor me ' at | Eighth and D Sts., ’. I applied for membership in the Young Com munist League. And am now an active member of this organization to help out the rro workers of this country to fig against lynch terror. To nelp solve the unemploy+ ment problem. From your comrade, JOSEPH OVERTON. ’