The Daily Worker Newspaper, December 16, 1930, Page 1

| Speed the Signature Collection Campaign for the Unemployment Insurance Bill. Unemployment Insurance Must Be Won Now! } =>" (Section of the Communist International) WORKERS ; OF THE WORLD, UNITE} —s NEW YORK, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1930 CITY EDITION Vol. VII. No. 300 It’s Struggle Or Starvation for Millions of Jobless! (HE unemployment crisis has rocked the complacency of the capitalist class in America only because the masses of jobless have begun, largely under the leadership of the Communist Party, and the militant Trade Union Unity League, to protest. in emphatic terms. But events of the last few weeks have shown that the business men, the employers, and their government, have worked out a strategy to meet this situation, The strategy has infinite minor detail, but its main outlines are plain. Our rulers observe that so far only a small percentage of the jobless have been mobilized for the protest demonstrations. They intend by the most ruthless terror to crush all organized resistance from this small fraction. They intend, by an enormously advertised but absolutely ineffective cam- paign of “charity,” of “emergency work” to soothe and fool along for weeks to come the remainder of the workers. The A. F. L., the Musteite and socialist organizations are as usual given a prominent role in this tricking of the workers. The cry is as before, “unemployment is slight and will soon get better, and the few out of work will be taken care of, will get jobs from city agencies, will get emergency work, will get jobs through the national building program, will be helped by the stagger system.” ‘The Daily Worker has time and again exposed the cruel trickery of this program of the bosses. The three to five thousand who besiege the Tam- many “employment agency” in New York in vain for jobs, are only a sample of what takes place in all cities. The breadlines grow longer and longer. The emergency work offices in New York, in Cleveland, in Detroit, where this plan is tried, are swamped. The old private charity organizations are bankrupt, unable to face the flood of applicants, and are trying desperately to avoid a task which wrecks their usual welfare program. t Day after day news arrives of more lay-offs: 1,200 in the Edgewater Ford plant, etc. Millions of the jobless have eked out a living, borrowing from their friends who still have work, letting debts pile up as long as they have credit, getting a free meal from the breadline now and then, slowly starv- ing but still alive. They are largely living on hope nourished by the floods of capitalist propaganda about “better times soon.” ry Now, and in the weeks to come, these reserves of the jobless are being exhausted. Wage cuts and part time work have cut off the chance to borrow; bank crashes wipe out the little of those who still had a few dollars; credit is exhausted, landlords demand eviction if even half a month’s rent is due. Starvation and freezing to death are immediate dangers for the millions of jobless. eee Se 4 age! hope is disappearing. ‘During the last few days, one government agency, one cabinet officer after another renders his annual or monthly report, and although every effort is made to put the best side forward, the fact nevertheless shows through, that the crisis deepens, that unemployment grows, that wage cuts multiply, and that misery and death stalk through the ranks of the jobless workers and their helpless families. That is the situation. Nothing will be done for the unemployed un- less the jobless themseives force action; they are not used to organized action; they are products of the labor movement of America, which is a “movement” if it can be called that, 80 per cent unorganized and most of that which is organized is in the grip of gangster controlled and misled unions. We can expect beead riots, a vast increase in cri Spontaneous . and hopeless acts of des} tion. The millions of dollars denied the jobless for relief by the city governments are being poured out*like water for additional police and tanks and machine guns to quell these unorganized - riots. Capitalis “is not stingy with means of killing@vorkers, it is only stingy. with tHe"bread that might keep them alive. 8 . s 5 ics tasks of our Party and of the militant unions in this situation are clear, in their main essentials, therefore. We must,,¢ lize and lead these workers, who will die like flies without an organized fight. The failure of Party members, of the masses of the Party rank and file and of its officials to take a more active part in this campaign is the harder to understand when it is realized that the Party membership itself is a workers’ membership, is on the breadlines and in the flop houses and suffering as miserably as the rest from wage cuts and speed-up in the factories. The organization and leadership of the unemployed in the fight for relief and insurance, against evictions and slavery through underpaid “emergency work” is the main task. Every member must collect signatures for the Workers Unemployment Insurance Bill. i) Be a Communist on the bread line! Form groups in the line to lead the disappointed, starving and disillusioned masses in demonstration against the system which starves them! Build them into unemployed councils through first’ forming groups in the flop houses and ‘city “ref- uges.” In every workers’ organization struggle for its acceptance of the program of the National Campaign Committee for Unemployment Insur- ance, See that delegates are elected from every workers’ organization, how- ever “reformist,” to the united ‘front city conferences on uxemploymnt. And the conferences must be conferences of action. Not just reports and speeches analysing the situation, but planned organization work must come out of them. They must result in formation of enormous councils of the unemployed. They must result in bringing the actual fighting de- mands of the unemployed to the front, and no matter if these are dif- ferent in different localities. The conferences must result in’ planned hunger marches, on the city halls, to enforce the granting of these demands, whatever they may be: free rent, immediate relief, full wages for “emergency work,” etc. Wide advertisement among the jobless masses must be given the mass meetings which will elect the delegations to take the lists of signatures for the demands of the Workers Unemployment Insurance Bill to Con- gress. The possibility of hunger marches on state capitals must be dis- cussed and thoroughly examined, Action, planned and powerful action, is needed. Action is possible, for never before in history has such widespread misery exposed the mis- rule of the capitalist system, never before has it been so clear that it is a system of horror and death for the workers. They will respond, but unless we lead, there is nothing for them to respond to. DUMMY CO. OF BANK OF Series to Expose Boss Corruption Read how Senator Edge pre- pared for his present job as Ppositors of the bank. 3 mass. Both of these companies ‘owe’ i i af $14,000,000. i Ey is i THE U. S. IS BANKRUPT NEW YORK.—The Bankus Gor- poration, one of the fake companies connected with the Bank of the United States, and to which it lent, CHINA RED ARMY TAKES 2 MORE CITIES Capitalist Press. Prints Many Lies About “Massacre” Gunboats to Hainan Chiang, Wall St. Tool, Is in Hankow From Hankow, where Chiang Kai Shek now has his headquarters, comes an Associated Press dispatch saying that the Communists have captured two more cities in Hunan province. The Red Army has taken Lichow and Tsingshih, two important Yangtze cities. They are now con- centrating. an attack on Shansi in Hupeh province, The same Associated Press dis- patch, which is inspired by the Wall Stret tool, Chiang Kai Shek, also tries to spread the lie that there was “a general slaughter of the inhabi- fants.” This is Chiang Kai Shek’s way of urging the imperialist. powers to rush more gunboats to help him do what his entire army is incapable of doing—wiping out the Red Army forces, A Hongkong cable says the Amer- ican, British and Chinese militarists are rushing gunboats to Hainan Island, in South China, where the workers and peasants, under Com- munist leadership, have taken over power. The pretext is the usual one of the existence of missionaries who are “endangered.” Cantonese troops are also being rushed to Hainan Island. ‘The Communist forces are ad- vancing not only along the Yangtze River, but_as the successful uprising in Hainan Island shows, they are be~ coming active throughout the south of China. At the same time, the im- perialist supporters of the Chinese militarists are increasing their mur- derous activity in an attempt to drown the growing, revolution in_a sea of blood. The American workers must demand the immediate with- drawal of the imperialist troops and gunboats. CALLS FOR DAILY WORKER TAG DAY Dist. Two Mobilizing For Dee. 20,21 — NEW YORK.—Thousands of work- ers are expected to respond to the call of the Communist’ Party, Dis- trict 2, to volunteer to collect funds for the Daily Worker through a tag day to be held this coming Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 20 and 21. The United Council of Working- class Women is mobilizing all its branches. The Young Communist League and the Young Pioneers are expected to be out full force to ac- quaint the workers with the need of supporting the Communist English Daily. Many workers’ clubs, Inter- national Workers Order branches and many Ukrainian, Hungarian and Lithuanian workers’ organizations are opening up their headquarters as stations for this tag day. to the call for Emer- being answered by The immediate financial Tammany Helped Wreck Bank; NEW YORK.—While the Tammany bank examiners who are knee-deep in the rottenness which led to the Bank of the United States crash are attempting to fool the 300,000 work- er and small depositors by making all sorts of fake promises, H. Parker Willis, editor of the Journal of Com- merce, an a special article on “The ures in the next 15 days, and at the Reserve System in the present eco- nomic crisis is responsible for the constantly worsening conditions of the financial structure of American capitalism, Recent information published about the crash of the Bank of the U. S. shows, not only that the entire bank- ing system of the United States is af- Small Depositors Must Organize to Fight for Rights fected, but that the Tammany graft- ers are guilty of helping to bring | about the crash involving over $265,- | 000,000, Financial. Situation,” declares there | will probably be 100 more bank fail-| Tammany Involved. B. C. Forbes, financial writer for a tiie ett: that’: the: Bedseal | the: New York American, in an ar- ticle on December 15th, in a veiled way, brings out the complicity of the | Tammany grafters in the Bank of the U. S. failure. In the form of ques- tions he brings out the following facts, which both his paper and the other capitalist newspapers try to be- .| little and coyer up with misleading headlines: (@) The Tammany bank superin- Predict the Failure ot 100 More tendent permitted the bank to take the name of “Bank of the United States” so it could fool workers into belieying it was connected with the United States government and that their money was therefore guaran- teed by it. 2) Many high Tammany politici- ans are financially interested in many ways in the Bank of the United States, and it was their rotten deal- ings that aided the bank to crash, in view of the sharpening economic crisis. 7 3) Fake statements were accepted by the state bank examiners. 4) Mayor Walker handed the Bank of the United States $2,500,000 of the city money and withdrew only $1,- 000,000 before the bank crashed. For- (Continued on Page 3) N.Y. WORKER GETS 300 NAMESFOR THE INSURANCE BILL Jobless at Fake Agency to Elect Delegates NEW YORK.—A worker in this city colected 300 signatures in one evening at a workers’ mass affair recently, signatures demanding that congress pass the Workers’ Unem- ployment Insurance Bill, to take the war funds and tax the huge incomes of the exploiters and establish a $5,000,000,000 fund out of which each jobless worker is to get $25 a week insurance, This single action shows what can be done. by real effort. The city united front conference, which will Jobless and Employed Prepare For Their City Conferences Thousands Sign Demand for Insurance Bill Passage; One Negro Worker in Chicago Gets 1,200 Signatures in 3 Days NEW, YORK.—The National Committee for .Unemploy- ment Insurance reports that there is considerable response from all parts of the country to its call for city united front conferences ONgunemployment, to set up local machinery for conducting the fight for-unemployment insurance at the ex- be held Friday, Dec. 19, at 7:30 p. m. in Irving Plaza Hall, is an organiza~- tion ‘center to continue this sort of work, to plan hunger marches and demonstrations against evictions. The conference is called by the New York Campaign Committee for Unem- ployed Insurance. Mass Meetings Elect. Delegates to the conference will be sent by unions and other workers’ erganizations and by mass meetings of the unemployed. Tomorow morn- ing the entire Oct. 16 delegation to the city hall will address the thou- sands of workers who gather outside of the Tammany agency on Lafayette St. This meeting will elect delegates to the’ Dec. 19 conference. Speakers are: Nesin, Engtiahl, Stone, Lealess, Allen and White. % Yesterday speakers of the Down- town Council of the Unemployed spoke to a great crowd which lis- tened, in spite of the extreme cold, at Lafayette St. Hundreds: signed the petition for the Workers’ Unemploy- ment Insurance Bill. Many followed to the indgor meeting at 27 E. Fourth St. and many joined. Those who joined the council yesterday were mostly world war vaterans, down to their last nickle. Friday's conference is being widely discussed in A. F. of L. locals, ac- cording to the response received to the call sent out by the committee. Local 2725 of the United Brother- hood cf Carpenters and Joiners of the Bronx, having 275 members, has elected two delegates to the confer- ence. Other. workers’ organizations are also responding to the call. Workers’ organizations are urged to act quickly and send in their cre- dentials to the Campaign Commit- tee for the Conference, Dec. 19, at Irving Plaza. pense of the government of the @ bosses, and administered by the workers and jobless. Thousands of names have veen obtained to the lists de- manding that the war funds and ex- cess profits he turned over to a $5,000,000,000 national unemployment insurance fund, from which $25 a week. will “be -given --each - jobless worker. The Workers’ Unemploy- ment Insurance Bill embodying these demands: will» be presented with the mass of signatures by a delegation from afi parts “of the United States to congress at Washington during February. Hunger’ marches will be organized from workers’ quarters upon the city halls to demand that relief be given, that fill wages be paid on emergency work, and with other local demands, as well as demands for unemploy- ment insurance nationally. There will probably also be hunger marches Parents, 5 Children Face Eviction as Walker Refuses: Aid NEW YORK, Dec. 15.—Although there are five small children in the Stuetzle family, the father has lost his two-day a week job at the glazer shop, food is all gone, and the land- Jord proposes to evict the family to- day from their flat at 113-65, Spring- field Boulevard, St. Albans. The Walker Committee, which “investi- gated” the father’s call for help, pro- nounced the family “not destitute,” and has refused aid. Mrs. Stuetzle said that when the family is evicted, they will have no- where to go. Their only relative is a brother-in-law in Rockaway who is as badly off as they. The children range from two to twelve years of age. A short while ago, one of the younger children died, (up until then, there were six young ones to care for), and there was no money with which to bury the dead child. on the state capitals later. There will be many mass meetings, Support From Lettish Workers. The Lettish Workers’ Alliance of America is furnishing signature lists to all its local branches and has written that it will help fight for unemployment insurance. The same action has been taken by the In- ternational Workers’ Order and the Hungarian Sick, Benevolent and Ed- ucational Federation, the former con- tributing $50 and the latter $25 to help finance the campaign. Negro Signs Up 1,200. That the demand for unemploy- ment insurance is spreading among all workers, proving that workers are becoming aware of the fakery of the city and national governments and (Continued on Page 3) Price 3 Cents STREET FIGHTING IN SPAIN; GOV’ T REPORTS REVOLT IS “CRUSHED” Fascist Outfit Clamps Down Censorship in Hiding News of Uprising Communists Lead Armed Revolt in Bilbao} Three Are Killed by Police NEW YORK, Dee. 15. Though capitalist press report from Madrid state the revolt against the fascis i the monarchy in Spain hag, been “crushed,” no details are give about the progress of the general strike which was called for { Monday morning. COPS BEAT UP JOBLESS IN FRONT OF JESUS AGENCY Slug Hungry Workers in Bread Line NEW YORK.—Cops stationed in front of the Holy Name Mission at 327 Third Ave. beat and slugged hun- dreds of unemployed workers when they attempted to get into the mis- sion on Sunday to get some stinking soup and bread. Over 4,000 men had lined up wait- ing to get a ticket for the bread line. The cops attempted to chase some of the men off the line, but they re- sisted. Then the police started to club those who stuck to the line and would not let themselves be driven away. Traffic was tied up on Third Ave. for an hour. The workers kept rush- ing back to the line in spite of the onslaught. of the cops. It took the riot .squad nearly an hour to “straighten” things out. One woman who was on the bread line fainted from hunger. Hot Dog Jainboree of Red Builders News Club, 27 East 4th St., Sunday, 3 p. m. Government Figures Admit Jobs Fell Ott in November Admit Also Wages Fell Twice as Fast, But the Cabinet Officer Still Puts Out Ancient Lie About “Searcely Any Wage Cuts” NEW YORK. — Cold figures from the U..S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reinforee what any one of she job- less freezing on the breadlines could tell—-the number of unemployed workers is growing. Yesterday the capitalist press printed, usually in inside pages, the monthly report of the bureau for November, which is that employment fell 2.5 per cent during that month, and that wages of those still at work fell much more. The reduction in payrolls was ‘5.1 per cent during November. Part of this is due to the discharge of employees, but that accounts only for 2.5 per cent. The rest is wage cuts, the em- ployers, hovering like vultures over the misery of the jobless, using them | and the generally difficult position | crisis of the Daily Worker has uswer the Attack On the Daily Worker! ush Contribution to the $30,000 YOU MUST SEE TO IT THAT THE DAILY WORKER APPEARS EVERY DAY Fund! millions of dollars, has gone bank- rupt, still further tying up the de- Another “company” connected with the bank, the Municipal Finance Corporation, is also involved in “the the Bank of the United States over The Bank of the U. 8. lent money wholesale to both of these “dummy” companies’. Now with the affairs of beensincreased due to the attack made by the President of the Pressmen’s Union in declaring our press “unsafe.” This adds to the expense necessary to get the Daily Worker out every day. \ The notes due to the banies and other pressing bills which make up our deficit are pressing much harder than before. All these make the situation more serious for the Daily Worker. The workers in New York City immediately came to the assistance of the Daily and made possible the issuing. of Saturday’s Daily Worker in spite of the interference of the President of the Pressmen’s Union. Many of them worked pe and all day folding the Daily and selling it on the fact more Daily Worker’s were sold than on any other. the District Daily Worker for Tag Days which will be held on December 20th and 21st. Every worker in New York should volunteer for this Tag Day. y Workers and workers’ organizations throughout the country must rush funds immediately. The attack against the Daily is not merely a technica] one but a serious political one. We were the only paper to expose the real causes of the crash of the 60 branch banks of the Bank of the United States. The Daily is the only paper that is exposing the false reports of prosperity and the fake schemes of meet- ing the unemployment crisis. Comrades, the Daily Worker must come out every day. In the last week we were late nearly every night due to our financial condition and more circumstances arising every day. Rush funds immediately to the Daily Worker, 50 East 13th of the working class, and the terror of being laid off by those still allowed to work, to cut their wages. Disregards Indirect Cut. The figures do not, of course, show the horrible increase in speed-up and worsening of conditions which make an indirect wage cut. They are op- timistic, in plain words, they lie as much as the government experts think they can lie and still be be- lieved. But they admit enough to show that the crisis is growing stead- ily worse, and that further unem- ployment and wage cutting still spread like a wave over the country. Ethelbert Stewart, commissioner of labor statistics, stated quite frankly yesterday that the wage cutting was due to the stagger system, the scheme jatinounced by Hoover and eagerly snapped up by the biggest employ~ ers, to make the workers stand more of the burden of the crisis by work- ing-one group part of the week and another the rest. At the time this scheme was announced, the Daily Worker pointed out that it was a lie to say as Hoover did, that it would not reduse wages. It reduces the weekly earnings, of course, but in ad- dition, the scheme is always so ar- tanged that the men, during their part week's work, do more work for less pay by the day. In the Cincin- nati version of the stagger system, the employers agree to pay half pay for two thirds of the work. Lamont Lies. In the face of these figures, which tell only that part of the story the government bureau thinks can not be any longer concealed, Secre- tary of Commerce Lamont stated yesterday in his annual report that “the number of workers:om. m6 pay- rolls was at the end of thé’ fiscal year about 13 per ¢ent less than in the previous year but the pay rolls were only 7 per cent less.” It is obvious that either Lamont is lying or the bureau of labor sta- tistics is lying, or both are lying. ‘The starving workers know that both are The United Press carries the news that there evere street fighting in Madrid. Twenty are reported killed in San Se«, yastian. In many sections of the city, this report states the fight= ing “was a matter of sporadic street fighting between Communists and Loyalists.” Many Communists are reported t6 be arrested and now face execution, The general strike was called for Monday morning following the exees ution of two officers who took part! in the uprising of soldiers in the North of Spain, Drop Leaflets from Air. On Monday morning army aviators, at the Cuatro Vientos, Airdrome,” just outside of Madrid, revolted. They dropped leaflets urging the soldiers to take part with them in an effort to overthrow the monarchy. They bombarded the airdrome, but latest reports state they were defeated. Seve eral were killed in the™fighting that followed. The republicans elected Alcala Zas mora as “president”, and are ur the masses to support this pour liberal. The Communists are calling’ , on the workers to put forward their own demands against the fascist dic-__ tatorship and to take indeperident action leading to the overthrow of the monarchy, Despite the repeaicd claims of th | fascist government that the revolu. tion is crushed, there is desperate fighting going on in many parts of the country. The workers are out on strike, and the entire country is in turmoil. Since a rigid censorship hag been clamped down, only such news as the Berenguer outfit want’ to go out is permitted to be sent ovar the wires. In Bilbao, where the Communist forces are strong, a United Press diss patch states that “strikers opened fire today on a train on the Bilbaos Portugalete line near the station of Baracaldo, a suburb.” Undoubtedly the train carried loyal monarchish troops. Three Communists were reported « killed by police, according to travel» lers arriving at the French-Spanish border. Only a few trains were oper= ating on the Norte Railway and strike ers crowded thé stations, FOSTER T0 SPEAK! AT PLAZA, DEC. 18! W.C. to Protest Plot Against U.S.S.R. Working women of New York i will turn out in large numbers to mass meeting called by the Women’g Dept. of the Trade Union Unity League on Thursday, December 18, af _ Irving Plaza at 7:45 p. m., according to the responses of the Food, Shoe, Needle and Textile Unions, Industrial — Leagues, and Women’s Councils, William Z. Foster will be the main speaker of the evening. As part of the nation-wide proe test of the workers against the plang of the imperialists to invade the So- viet Union and destroy the first workers’ republic, the mass meeting will mobilize the women workers in defense of the Soviet Union and against imperialist war. It will an: swer the efforts of the women of th: capitalist class who, with pacifists are now actively resorting to the or ganization of the millions of workin; women in behalf of the comin: bosses’ war. At the meeting workin women delegates who were sen across to attend the first Interna tional Working Women's conference in Moscow will report on the deci sions of this conference which, fo the first time brought workin; women from every country togethe | to discuss the tasks and problems be | fore them, The immediate urgent task befor the working women js to rally to th support of the coming dressmaker | strike which involves the C ment of the standard of the work! conditions of thousands of workers, Negro, white, foreign