The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 20, 1930, Page 4

if P| | i * ‘ \ fA Page } 18th Street, New York City, } =~ ‘\ Address and mail all ¢hecks to th Y. Telephone Algonquin 79: Cable: . “DAIWORK. he Daily Worker, 50 East 13th Street, New York, N. Y. Daily Central Onge y. <Worker ‘the-CdRunist Party U.S.A SUBSCRIPTION RATES: By mail everywhere: One year, $6; six months, $3; two months, $1; excepting Boroughs of Manhattan and Bronx, New York City. Foreign: One year, $8; six months, $4.50 EUGENE DEBS. SOCINLig! PAK & Editor's. Not Eugene ctor Debs died October 20, 1926. The soc arty, true to its role of the misleader of the w ng cl is attempting to use Debs to cover its constant betrayals. We reprint below a chapter from Comrade Trachtenber e Heri- tage of Gene Debs”, just lished by Inter- national Pamphlets. By ALEXANDER TRACHTENBERG Communist Candidate in the 14th Congressional District, New York. On many occasions Debs was in open con- flict with the S. P. leadership. Although con- sidered as such, Debs really was never the political leader of the pa He represented perhaps the greatest pecul ican socialist mavement. i iy rank and file as the personification of the fighting spirit of soi m and looked upon by the outside world as the outstanding per- sonality in the American socialist movement, Debs never sat on the executive committee of the party, except for the last two or three years of his life, when he was brought in chief- ly for window dressing, never was s as a delegate to a national convention or an inter- national congress, never participated in the councils of the party to formulate policies and work out tactics. The leadership of the S. P. studiously avoided bringing Debs into the organization. He was kept on the platform where his eloquence was capitalized, or he was allowed to write mair in fugitive and privately owned socialist journals, rather than in the official organs of the party. The S. P. leadership feared Debs’ revolu- tionary attitude on the burning qu ions which agitated the membership of the party. They knew his uncompromising stand on many questions and they preferred not to have any quarrels with him. He spoke his mind from time to time, but being organizationally re- moved from the membership he could not ex- ercise the influence over them which otherwise would have been his. Debs should have never permitted himself | to be placed in such a position by the S. P. leaders. His place was among the proletarian members, guarding the party against the re- formist leaders and guiding the membership in his own spirit of militancy. He should have been the political leader of the party instead of letting that leadership fall into the hands of lawyers and preachers. During the years 1910-12 the S. P. grew in membership, reaching the highest number in its history (over 120,000). Debs saw the en- trance of elements into the party who were joining it not as a revolutionary socialist party but 2s a third bourgeois party. While in other countries there were liberal parties which pet- ty-bourgeois elements, disillusioned with con- servative parties, could join, America had two equally reactionary parties from which these elements sought to escape. The S. P. was the only available political home for all those who favored reforms which the two main parties opposed. Advocates of woman’s suffrage, di- rect election of senators, abolition of child la- bor, protective labor legislation, municipal ownership and agrarian reforms, joined the socialist party through which they hoped to promote these reforms, without bothering about the ultimate aims which were written into the program of the party. In this man- ner the proletarian and revolutionary sections in the party were permeated by altogether alien elements. With his revolutionary instinct Debs felt the danger to the socialist party lurking in the admission of such elements. These were the years of “trust busting” campaigns, of muck- raking and the offering of all sorts of panaceas against the encroachment of corporate wealth. The petty bourgeoisie was beginning to feel the solidification of American capital and it ‘was looking to reforms to help it out of the difficulty. These elements were finding their way into the socialist party, and the well- known among them, particularly the writers and journalists, were immediately acclaimed as leaders. Charles Edward Russell, Allen Ben- son, and their like became overnight, spokes- men of the party. These were the forerun- ners of the Heywood Brouns of today. They were elected to executive committees and des- ignated as standard bearers in elections. Writing in 1911 under the title “Danger Ahead,” Debs warned the party against the degeneration which was sure to set in as a result of the admixture of elements entirely foreign to its program and its aims. He wrcte: “It (the S. P.) may become permeated and corrupted with the spirit af bourgeois reform to an extent that will practically dectroy its virility and efficiency as a revolutionary or ganization... The working class character and the revolutionary character of the S. P. are of first importance. All the votes of the people would do us no good if we cease to be @ revolutionary party.” (Italics mine—A.T.) Lincoln Steffins, the eminent journalist, once interviewed Debs during his presidential campaign in 1908 in the presence of Vivtor Berger, one of the real bosses of the S. P. He was asking many questions and Debs was replying to them much to the discomfort of Berger, who claimed to have been the ideologi- eal father of Debs. Steffins wanted to know how Debs proposed to deal with the trusts. “Would you pay for or just take them,” asked Steffens. “Take them,” came the quick and sure reply of the revolutionist Debs. “No, you wouldn’t,” cried the reformist Berger, “not if I was there, and I answer that we would offer to pay.” Debs would confiscate the cap- italist trusts, he would fight his way to so- cialism. Berger would negotiate he would pay his way. What chasm between the two attitudes! One is that of a militant fighter, the other, that of a petty-bourgeois reformer! _ To many in the socialist party the essence of socialist was public ownership of public utilities. Today it is one of the central re- _ forms advocated by the S. P. To these advo- Debs addressed himself in his charac- manner: “Government ownership of utilities means nothing (read; is of no efit—A.T.) for labor under capitalist own- ership of government.” Debs knew of the breaking of strikes in government-owned in- by the use of the military forces and ition of unionization of these indus- dustrie: d swords with the S, P. leaders advocated the A. F. of L. policy In a letter to a delegate of the 1910 convention, which adopted a resolution dealing with immigration, he wrote: “I have just read the majority report when they of excluding immigrants. | of the committee on immigration. It is utterly unsocialistic, reactionary and in truth out- rageous, and I hope you will oppose it with all your power. The idea that certain races are to be excluded because of tactical expedi- ency would be entirely consistent in a bour- geois convention of self-seekers, but should have no place in a proletarian gathering under the auspices of an international movement that is calling on the oppressed and exploited work- ers of all the world to unite for their eman- cipation.” To Debs such a stand favoring the exclusion of workers from other countries meant forsak- ing the principle of international solidarity and he called upon the members “to stand squarely on our revolutionary working class principles and make our fight openly and un- compromisin; against all our enemies, adopt- ing no cowardly tactics and holding out no false hopes.” At the time of the Left-Wing split from the S. P., Debs was in prison. Only partial information could political controversy in the party which pre- ceeded this split. While Debs was bound by many ties to the socialist party, he did not fully agree with its leadership. 1919 convention the remaining Left-Wing ele- ments succeeded under pressure of the split in forcing a resolution which would insure Debs the nomination for the presidency at the 1920 convention, where the question of candidates was to be dealt with. The leaders did not wish to have Debs, who was then in prison, nominated as candidate. They feared that the size of the vote might be affected and: did not want to flaunt before the country a presidential candidate who was in prison. When he was finally nominated in 1920 and a committee consisting of Steadman, Oneal and others was sent to visit him in prison to notify him officially of the nomination, he surprised the committee with a devastating criticism of the party. Regarding the platform adopted at the con- vention. which nominated him, he said: “I wish I might say that it had my unqualified approval,” modifying it by saying that plat- forms are not so important, as “we can breathe the breath of revolution into any platform.” He emphasized, however, that “socialist plat- forms are not made to catch votes” and that “we are in politics not to get votes but to de- velop power to emancipate the working class. (Italics mine—A.T.) It was also significant that on that occasion he expressed regret “that the convention did not see its way clear to affiliate with the Third International without qualifications.” Debs, therefore, allied him- self with the third of the delegates of the 1920 convention which favored the accepance of the twenty-one points of admission to the, Communist International and ‘was opposed to Hilquit’s fake proposal for affiliation with reservations. To the S.P. leaders who were present he addressed himself point blank with the following rebuke: “There is a tendency in the party to become a party of politicians, instead of a party of the workers.” (Italics mine.—A.T.) Removed from the outside world by his in- carceration, Debs, perhaps, could not see suf- ficiently that this was no longer a tendency, but a fact. The process of degeneration, be- ginning with the struggle against the left wing, was fast being completed and Debs, hav- ing recognized that the S. P. was becoming “a party of politicians instead of a party of work- ers,” should have definitely broken with the politicians and joined with the revolutionary workers who left or were leaving the S. P. in large numbers. Although in prison, Debs should have put himself at the head of the militant elements who were deserting the re- formist party and were being organized under the leadership of the Communist International, instead of allowing the importunities of his friends to convince him to reserve final judg- ment until he was released. Debs knew enough about the party to realize that it no longer was the party he had visioned in 1908: a “class-conscious, revolutionary, socialist party which is pledged to abolish the capitalist sys- tem, class rule and wage slavery, a party which does not compromise or fuse, but, pre- serving inviolate the principles which quick- ened it into life and now give it vitality and force, moves forward with dauntless determin- ation to the goal of economic freedom.” Debs Fails to Draw Proper Conclusions Debs made the mistake which many others have made. At the beginning of the Third In- ternational some revolutionary leaders em- phasized the principle of unity more than the unity of principle. “About the time we get in shape to do something,” Debs wrote then, “we have to split up and waste our energy in fac- tional strife. We preach unity everlastingly, but we ourselves keep splitting apart.” Debs failed to understand that what was then taking place was the separation of the wheat from the chaff, the freeing of the rev- olutionary elements of the party from the very politicians which he himself saw in the party leadership. The “factional strife” which he de- precated was nothing but the hammering out of a clear-cut policy based on revolutionary Marxism which the party had polluted with all sorts of reformist nostrums. The class struggle was carried from the. shops right into the party and the diviison which followed was based on class lines. Later history proved that to the hilt. Unlike Lenin on an international scale, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, and Ruthenberg in this country, who not only criticized the reformist leaders but fought them and organized against them, Debs remained only the critic. When he was released from prison he allowed the same leaders whom he held responsible for ruining the party, to use him as a shield to cover their alliances with AND THE INCITED TO RIOT reach him regarding the | During the | A. F. of L. Convention Side- Lights By A. B. MAGIL. One of the most pathetic sights your cor- respondent has ever witnessed was the meet- ing called by the Muste. outfit (the Trade Union Unity League meeting two nights later offered a stirring contrast). After thousands of handbills had been distributed unmolested in the Hotel Statler and other places, seventy “Ypsls,” school teachers and antique liberal ladies trickled into the hall. And not a real proletarian among them. The voices of the fake progressives resounded dismally through the hall. They tried to blame the Legion par- ade for the flop, but it was like whistling in the dark to keep up their courage. Their speeches consisted of a mixture of the vilest belly-crawling before the A. F. of L. betray- ers and the striking of pseudo-militant atti- tudes. And at the bottom of it all a note of futility and despair. It was a scene to make stones weep. ae oa ae The gentlemen of the press were in charge of John Leary, the “labor” reporter of the New York World. This somewhat elderly bird of prey is one of the most diligent lickers of the boots of the Greens and Wolls in the country and of course a sworn enemy of everything Red. It is an open secret that Leary is on the A. F. of L. payroll. And what he gets from Tammany is of course nobody’s business but his own. Also present at the press table was Louis Stark of the New York Times, whose hatred of the Communists is more “re- fined” than Leary’s. Of course Stark is a former “socialist.” What else would you ex- pect? Anxious To Get Daily. “IT am looking forward to this newspaper which I am more than anxious to receive.” D. Milan, Northville, Michigan. PUSH THE 60,000 CIRCULATION DRIVE! “I was 3 weeks in the hospital and could not send money on time. FE am sending $6 Worker.” John Wild, Gloversville, N. Y- for another 12 months for the Daily. READERS! BUILD HOUSE TO HOUSE ROUTES! the trade union bureaucracy and capitalist politicians. Beginning under his “chairman- ship,” the leaders have completed the trans- formation of the socialist party into a party of social fascism, so that now it fits snugly into the capitalist state machine. In 1905 Debs wrote on the place of the class struggle in the program of the labor movement, to say nothing, of a socialist party: “We insist that there is a class struggle; that the working class must recognize it; that they must organize economically and politically upon the basis of that struggle; and that when they do so organize they will then have the power to free themselves and put. an end to that struggle forever.” ‘ Having really lost every other vestige of Socialism or semblance to a workingclass par- ty, the S. P. decided at a recent. convention also to delete from its membership application blank the clause dealing with adherence to the prin- ciple of the class struggle. The class-conscious workers know that the S. P. has not thereby removed itself from participation in the class struggle. It is simply fighting on the other side, the side of the bosses. Since the workers are learning more and more of its true charac- ter, the S, P. now offers itself as a political haven to all and sundry liberals, trade union bureaucrats, small and big business men and deserters from the class struggle of all hues, including renegades from Communism. Debs saw this degeneration coming. It was, therefore, his historic mistake not to break with the moribund otganization and join the varty of the proletarian class struggle—the Communist Party. AGITATE IN TH E SHOPS! 4,318 Lynch Murders in America (Release of the International Labor Defense.) ess the 35 years from 1885 to 1930 (first nine months) there have been 4,318 lynch murders by ruling class mobs in the United States. Lynching is a bloody weapon of the capi- talist class against the working class, shown by the fact that 1052 of those lynched were whites, 3,256 Negroes. It is exactly in the state of Georgia, where six young workers (two Negroes and four whites) are now facing judicial lynching through burning in the electric chair, that most blood has been shed. Georgia heads the list of lynching states with lynch murders of 441 Negroes and 24 whites during the 1889- 1930. = An Atmosphere of Lynching. These figures give the startling facts ex- posing the savage ruling class lust for work- ers’ blood in the state of Georgia. Here are the frank statistics of the “lynching” atmos- phere, last year in Gastonia, North Carolina, this year in Atlanta, Georgia, in which it is proposed to amplify mob murder with judicial murder. Rope and faggot, revolver and shot gun, are the weapons of Georgia’s ruling class against discontented labor, against underpaid and jobless workers, Negro and white, now transferred to the court room of capitalist class justice. The Boston Back Bay, coupon clipping para- sites of Massachusetts proclaiming themselves direct descendants of the slave-trading leaders of the bourgeois revolution against British im- perialism in 1776, attacked the two ‘Italian workers, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Van- zetti as “foreigners” and burned them alive in the electric chair because they sought to or- ganize the workers in the textile mills and shoe factories. The Boston Back Bay aristo- crats have their duplicates in the South in the lynch leaders of the Ku Klux Klan, the white band of Caucasian Crusaders and the Amer- ican Fascist Association and Black Shirts League, all boss class organizations to main- tain so-called “white supremacy,” which means murderous dictatorship of vicious exploiters over workers, both Negro and white. In the week that the Atlanta bosses planned to bring the two Negro workers, Herbert New- ton and Henry Story, to trial as the first vic- tims of judicial murder, three lynchings took place in rapid succession in Georgia, while in the neighborhood state of’ Florida, a white worker was kidnapped, tarred and feathered and badly beaten at Miami because he dis- tributed literature proclaiming the unity of struggle of Negro and white workers and poor farmers. It is in this situation that the whole ques- tion of resistance to the Atlanta persecution, which seeks to burn workers alive because they attempted to hold indoor mass meetings to protest against unemployment and lynching, becomes. of paramount importance for the whole working class, nationally and interna- tionally. Defense of Negro workers in the Soviet Union, shown in the quick punishment of an American engineer who attacked a Negro worker at the tractor factory at Stalingrad, is sharply contrasted with the wholesale murder of Negro workers and poor farmers in the United States. In all sections of the United States the month of October is a month of struggle against the lynching horrors, : against lynch- ing, against the capitalist social system that breeds lynching. The struggle for the lives of the six Atlanta workers, that must startle millions of workers the nation’ over into acfion, remains the cen- ter of the mass protest of the International Labor Defense. In the face of night riding lyneh mobs, in memory of the fact that on the Third Anni- : 4 BY BURCK versary of the death of Sacco and Vanzetti, August 22nd, 20,000 members of the newly or- ganized American Fascist Association and Blackshirts’ League mobilized in the streets of Atlanta to prevent the Sacco-Vanzetti Mem- orial, the Atlanta campaign, must be developed immediately into really mass proportions. It must arouse the workers of the whole world. It is today’s Sacco-Vanzetti case, today’s Gastonia case. Mobilizing Labor’s Protest. This does not mean the ignoring or blurring of other tremendously important defense ac- tions in other sections of the country (Im- perial Valley, California; New York and Mil- waukee Unemployed Delegations, Mooney and Billings; Centralia; numerous sedition perse- cutions, deportations). By carefully co-ordi- nating these defense activities with the Atlan- ta case as the axis, and linking them all up with struggle against persecutions in other countries (Fascist countries in Europe, India, China, Latin America), the greatest mass campaign can be developed in resistance to the whole wave of capitalist class persecution against the working class. The trial of Newton and Story has been de- layed for but a few days. The International Labor Defense fights for complete dismissal of all charges, Failing in this it demands a mass trial. It fights against a Jim Crow trial under lynch law justice. No railroading of the two Negro workers to the electric chair. Against this attack the mass mobilization of workers everywhere on Tuesday, October 21, the day that three members of the New York Unemployed Delegation, William Z. Foster, Robert Minor and Israel Amter, will be re- leased from prison after serving six months for leading the March Sixth Unemployed Dem- onstration in New York City. For Immediate Release . Tammany Hall, with its dancing mayor, “Jimmie” Walker, and its peddler of forged Russian documents, the ex-police commissioner, Whalen, hoped to send the Unemployed Dele- gation to prison for long terms, at least three years, on the “unlawful assembly” charge; eight years on the felonious assault charge. But Lesten was freed after 30 days in prison. Foster, Minor and Amter will be released after having served the minimum time on the “un- lawful assembly” charge while the Tammany courts have been forced to drop the felonious assault charge. The United States Supreme Court did not dare touch the appeal that the International Labor Defense demanded that it hear. October 21st will therefore be a day of working class rejoicing. Foster, Minor and Amter will be torn from the grip of capitalist class justice. Raymond has been sentenced to a full year. We demand that Raymon be released with the others on October 21st. While October 21st will therefore be a day of rejoicing it will also be. a day for greater mobilizations in resistance to all persecutions of the unemployed; in resistance to the planned Atlanta judicial lynching; for strug- gle against all lynchings; an effective con- tribution to the United Front Election Cam- paign of the Communist Party that fights for the release of all class war prisoners; for the protection of foreign-born workers; for most energetic attack against the infamous Fish Committee of the United States Congress, de- manding its immediate dissolution. Labor must give its answer now to the 4,319 lynch murders that have been perpetrated against Negro and white workers in America since the days when the Chicago police clashed with striking, demonstrating workers in “The Haymarket” struggling for the eight-hour day. More than four regiments slain! But the struggle goes on and grows! on the USSR! By JORGE eee Wynne Wins The so-called “Health Commissioner” of New York is but one more of those Tam- many grafters who strut around under & veneer of dignity. Back in July, this animal, Dr. Shirley W. Wynne, was forced by the protest of the masses of the poor, to make a pretense at “investigating” the reason why the Milk Trust thieves, who pay the farmers 5 cents and 6 cents a quart for milk delivered right here at New York City, charged from 16 cents to 20 cents for it. , There was a terrible roar of “investigation” and Dr. Wynne “made a trip around the milk shed.” (No, dear reader, the “milk shed” is not a building full of cows, but the area from whence Dr. Wynne permits milk to come for sale in New York.) And Wynne came back from the milk shed without committing himself on whether the raise in price then made was “justified” or not. But one thing he was sure on, he would not under any circumstances, allow the Milk Trust that holds New York in its grip, be broken by allowing the milk shed to be en- larged, so as to let milk, just as good or bad, come in from Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. Undoubtedly the Doe is “interested in public health,” but we'll bet that he got a fat “fonorarium” from the Trust for saying that he bars “outside” milk “for reasons of health.” Its his own health he’s thinking about. But now, while the “milk investigation” has fallen into utter oblivion, old Doc Wynne tried another graft and got caught at it. A certain brand of tooth paste put up ads in the sub- way trains, with Doc Wynne’s picture and recommendation attached. This got the goat of the other tooth paste companies, and through the N. Y. County Medical Society he was put on the pan. But he comes back with the defense that all that he said in the recommendation was that “Clean teeth are essential to health.” Which is a dodge, of course, but which he uses as a defiance to his fellow crooks: “How can they stop a Health Commissioner from saying what is essential to health?” Then he resigns in high moral indignation —from the Medical Association, not from the City Graft. Somebody looked up the ethical rules of physicians as established in the fifth century by Hippocrates, which has served hypocrites ever since. It says: “With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my art.” But that was said a long time before Tammany. ek It Gets Four Out of Five We are obliged. to a Red Sparks fan for calling our attention to the journal of the American Dental Association, “Oral Hygiene.” One would never suspect that these modern Torquemadas who draw molars could also draw a laugh, and we assure you that they never intended it. It’s this way. The Association held a con- vention recently in Denver, and elected as president a ranting, roaring “red-baiter,” Col- onel Robert Todd Oliver, veteran of four im- perialist wars beginning with grabbing the Philippines, then the massacre of Chinese in the Boxer rebellion, then invading Mexico with Pershing and finally the World War. He is still an army colonel. This bird, “Oral Hygiene” tells us in his speeches at the dentists’ convention, “told about the increasing amount of Red propa- ganda disseminated throughout the country to undermine the structure of our government.” Then “Oral Hygiene” goes on to say: “The dentist, due to his intimate associa- tion with his patients, is in a particularly advantageous position to counteract much of this harmful propaganda and Colonel Oliver called upon the entire profession to aid in this work.” Now we'll know, when a dentist gets us down in a chair, with our jaws propped open with a bootjack, a pair of pliers pinched down on our tongue and a rubber thingumbob shoved down our throat with a foot of barbed wire, that he’s taking what the colonel called “a particularly advantageous position” to hand out argument against Communism with not the slightest chance in the world of us saying anything back but grunts like “Ahyawah,” “Oohah” and other such vowels. But we give ’em fair warning! The first moment he lets us come up for air, we'll re~ vert to mayhem and take off a couple of joints of his nearest finger. + A Good Student But— A Bad Example We didn’t know what to make of it at first, when we got the following document, enclosed with a letter which didn’t make the matter any clearer: © “Eureka, Mont., Oct. 9th, 1930; Bank of England, London, England; Please pay to the Order of the Daily Worker, New York, N. Y., or bearer, One Thousand Dollars ($1,000.00) out of any money due the United States Gov- ernment,’and deduct it from my bill against the United States Government that was placed in your hands for collection.—Signed, Ben- jamin Stewart.” We were, as we repeat, puzzled. ‘Then we got it. This man Stewart has been taking up courses in the Workers School of Detroit, where the Agit-Proper has the custom of sending the Daily Worker rubber checks. That explains it. WS ON Culture and Canaries The “Nation,” which endorses Mayor Murs phy’s plan of building a wall around Detroit to keep out “the rabble” from entering the heavenly gates of General Motors and Henry Ford, is the only paper where one could find such an ad as the following: i: “Professional girl, student, can have board and share homely apartment near City College with cultured woman and two canaries, mod- erate price.” ‘ We could stand the canaries, but lord de- liver us from the “Nation” brand of culture and the budding metropolitan Babbits of City College. } For the Communist Ticket! For Bread and Work! Against Mass Layoffs and Wage Cuts! inst - &