The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 10, 1931, Page 5

Page DAILY WORKER, NEW YO! RK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 1931 RSARY OF THE D AILY WO WORKERS, HAIL SEVENTH ANNIVE The Red Specialist A Story from Soviet Russia OSDNYSKOV’S father was a con- sumptive and good-natured poor- Peasant from the Volgodsky District In his youth he had worked with the timber rafters. Having over- exerted himself, he had grown sick | and took to spitting blood each spring. All the riches which the old man Possessed was a great woolen scarf and which he valued so much that he was never separated from it, even in death, for it was buried with him. Posdnyskov was fifteen years old, his father went with him to the neighboring station, where they vis- ited a countryman of his who was 4 fireman The boy was given a job in the railway depot. From time tc time he got thrashed by the masters. He lived in berracks that were painted the color of raw meat, among workers who were always tired anc covered with grease. After four years the engine driver Kovissin, took Posdnyakov with him | to the engine. Once a tall engineer with a face as red as a poppy called the boy a blockhead, because in pol- ishing the piston rods he had left little pieces of worsted on the shining steel. Posdnyakov was deadly of- fended. He ground his teeth anc swore under his breath. Then came the year 1905. Posdyna- kov was already the engine-driver of a freight train. During the genera strike he stopped the train at the station of Mitshchy, near Moscow and put out the fires. He went tc the first meeting in the Mitishchs Depot, where he heard them talking of liberty. His fists clenched. The new words were a’ revelation to him. AM his life he has remembered the red-flags unfurled over the smoxe- stacks of his engines, when they got ready to go to Moscow, where, ac- cording to rumors, the revolt had al- ready started. Posdnyakov drove the first trair carrying in armed workers. Tht night was rark and all fires were pu! out. They stopped in the suburbs and entered the town on foot. The city was lit by the fire of many burn: ing houses. They crossed empty building sites, vegetable gardens and 2 complicated network of rails. Posdnyakov fought on the barri- cades, He was with them along the whole heroic and bloody road from the “Chisty Prudi” to the “Presnia.’ He was wounded on the “Gorbaty Most.” The socialist revolutionaries kep’ him in hiding for six whole months. He joined their party, but later or left them and joined the Bolsheviks He thought that the orientation of the socialist revolutionaries on the peasants was entirely wrong anc good for nothing. He knew country life too well and had himself tastes of the idiocy of the greedy, egotist and stagnant life the peasants. were leading. Then came the years of Fevolution- ary activities and study. Many books |had to be read. They brought witk them a refreshing breeze that con- demned the old order of things anc brought with it hard revolutionary ideas. Posdnyakov by his study de- veloped a capability of immediately seizing up the revolutionary essence of even the most trifling occurrences of common life. A bundle of proclamations was found on Posdynakov’s engine in 1913 He was exiled to Eastern Siberia, tc Verholensk. The town is called the “Bleak Pole.” Here he spent four {years among the natives, far away from men and suffering from bitter cold and gnawing hunger. Posdnya- | kov got the scurvy and lost his teeth Only the February revolution set him free. rs I met Posdnyakov in 1923. Ther he was the director of one of the big railways in the south, a “Red Special- ist.” We inspected the line together. He would rise at five in the morning | and work till twelve at night. He in- | spected the stations, looked about ir all corners, glanced into every hole and even unscrewed the switches tc see if the mechanism was in order. He asked the engineers to make short and concise reports. He woulc climb the locomotive and verify re- pairs. He was always on the water to notice the most trifling disorder and would severely cut short any at- tempt of the directors of various sec- tions who endeavored, in the inter- ests of their own district, to violate the strictly verified plans for the res- toration of the road. He demanded, insisted and woulc get what he was out for. He founc} the time to speak in the railwa’ men’s meetings, to inspect clubs, t give advice and to carry out cultura | work. When he was through with the inspection the engineers~were often almost on the verge of a collapse anc | could hardly stand on their feet. “He | TO THE CITY HALLS AND ON TO WASHINGTON Life At the Flophouse Inside Story of a Municipal Lodging By BILL COOPER. E get to the Bowery tired, wet and hungry. We want food, warmth shelter from the cold, rainy ht in the eddying jobles. and night struggle the Bowery’s homeless, ving thousands. We plod on down from St. Mark's Place, looking for a breadline. We are too late, it is already 7 o'clock. Well, we'll have to st: it, and maybe we can get in somewhere to keep warm. We go by block on block of doorways, each with its huddle of dreary, men. There are young men and old, workers of all sorts. Some have the rough clothes and big We are caugl of gnarled hands of farm and construc- | tion laborers; others have the now | bookkeeper asks an Italian laborer “What can we do?” and is answered by a Jewish needle worker. | We come to the Salvation Army chapel. The door is open and we can see the rows of filled-up pews. It looks dry and maybe warm, so we go in, It is stifling inside. Although the place looks new they didn’t seem -—>B; PREVAL ‘The Boss Makes (ihe BOSS Wakes Another By ROBERT BROWN 'VERYDAY when the unemployed } council leaves-Leonard and Lafay- ette street and returns to its head- quarters at 27 East 4th Street, many of the unemployed workers who had been in the crowd listening, return with them. is not a worker, but the devil him-| self,” they would say in admiration | Sometimes Posdynakov would take off his coat and show the locksmiths | in the depot how to do things, anc the switchmen how to clean the} switches. With it all, he was very polite, attentively listening to the | complaints of all and any. And how) jhe loved a good joke! | For awhile I lost track of Posdyna- | doubled. \ But i Gave You ALL THAT MONLY rea ae So Ti cut Your Wages By RYAN WALKER. >» A Victim of ) 4 By DOROTHY ROSS. Down on the East Side, on Orchard Street, where the most miserable con- Gitloss of workers are to be found, a certsin Mrs. Prown lives in two rooms. ‘The place is dark, without a breath of air, and with just one win- dow in the entire place. There was practically no furniture in this house just a broken table, a couple of eld chairs and an old bed. Mrs. Brown is not more than 40 years old, ghe should be in the prime of her life.\but’ when you look at her” she. gives the impression of being,‘ Her hair is completely is about sixty. ray, her once good-looking face i: slaving day and night in order to save a few dollars for her old age. Ps". IN GESTURE OF FAKE SUPPORT FOR YOUNG WORKER CLEVELAND, Ohio, Jan. 8—The ‘Young People’s Socialist League here adopted a resolution last night in a liberal gesture of fake support for the Young Worker, organ of the Young) bank. Communist League, in its fight for restoration of its mailing rights. Such a gesture of liberal support. for “fresdom of the press” is abso- y meaningless. If there are stil young workers in the YPSL, place is not in the YPSL and the socialist party, but in the class stengele organizations of the prole- taria elk lired, vot from years, but trom) U.S. Bank Crash. , Her hands are callous from scrubbing ‘floors all her life. When I came into her house she |was finishing her lunch. Herring, sour pickles, plack bread and coffee | was all she had. This poor worker lost close ,o $4,000 in the United States Bank crash. For her entire life in the United States, she has beens serupbing floors at Schraffs at a miserable wage. In ad- ‘dition to that, she takes in outside | work, |, All her life she worked very hard save some money for her old age ‘and now the capitalist fakers have ‘taken it away from her. With bitter tears) she told me her story. When s'‘e came to the branch | where her mon -y was deposited and stood in line for several hours and when she got tiréd standing there | | and became restless, the cops told her’ to keep her mouth shut or else she'd | have to leave the line. She also said | that the reason she depositedher money in the U. S. Bank was because she thought it was a government I explained to her that the workers’ | savings are always in danger under a capitalist government, that .he only place where the workers are sure of their savings is in the Soviet Union, where the workers control the gov- ernment. Yes, she sald, she had) heard about it. And then she started | telling me her story again, and weep- ing bitterly all the while— koy, Recently I found out he now) © ‘39 ; e occupies a very high position ‘in one | able conditions in the textile mills of the Far Eastern Railways, anc| there. and the terrific unemploy- that since he has taken his post the | ment. i value of the road has been practically |‘ ““So, I came to New York,” Mc-/ | thought Is could live on that until | itor wanted.” | did now, I was down to my last | American At council headquarters, an open) forum is held, where workers tell their experience with the bosses and how they can organize to fight for} un loyment relief and better con- ditions. Today one of the workers who spoke was William McGern, a new Enc*-~der. © told of miser- Gern went on to say, “I borrowed | a few dollars from my brother... I I found a job. But I couldn’t find a job. Four months ago I put in| my application with the Municipal| Employment Burea.. I used to come| up there everyday.” “Then the day before yesterday I came up there and the fellow with the megaphone calls out “Jan- I didn't care what I penny. I ran over with the rest. I must have run dam well be- cause I got there first. The guy at the desk says to me “Do you want to do janitor’s work?” “Sure,” I said, “I'll do anything as long as I can make-enough to live on. “Alright,” he says. “I've got a job for you as janitor in a five floor apartment-hot in Williamsburg.” “Alright)” T sa’ ‘I'm ready. Yhen he tells me I get four rooms free and gives me a slip of paper witn “You didn’t say any~} salary?” I say to him.| “And do you know what that guy} tells me?” He s : “There’s no sal- ary with this job. You're getting your rent free, aren't you, you'll have a place to stay, anyway ‘ow am I going to“eat?” I asked him. “That's up to you,” he tells me, you're married, aren't you, maybe pvoun wife can find a job. | Men, that got me sore. I threw | the goddam slip in his face. I didn’v | get married so’s my wife would work and have my kids stuck in some lousy day nursery! Men, I wartt to | tell you I'm sick and tired of being treated like a dog. T used to think that the govern- ment was for the people, for me and | you as well as the rich. T used to ‘think that anybody that said dif- ferent was a foreigner or a red., ¥ want to tell you I'm one of those guys now myself. I'm ready to fight with them, I'm ready to march down to the capitol, 'm“through being a good American. When you're a good and you believe in the government you're just like they want you to be: An American Fool. When IT heard the speakers from this organization say, down there In front of that employment bureau “Organize, Don’t Starve, Fight,” 1 came right down here with> them. I know if we organize we can do something. I’m taking out my mem- bership card here today and I'm go- ing to do my bit. You can bet up won't starve without a fight! 1931 CALENDAR FREE! Quotations from Marx, Lenin, etc, in the first annual Daily Worker Caicndar for 1931. Free with six The March on Hunger By DAVID HOROWIT Ten million slaves are unwilling to dic While pulpit and press promise pic in the sky— The workers are learning through hunger and tears All the lies—ALL the LIES of a thousand years. Come fellow-workers from mine and from mill Join in the march to Capitol Hill— Into the ranks all ye slaves from the shops We're marching on HUNGE) and never will stop While our women and children wait to be fed And the bosses deny us our hard-earned bread— The word now is FORWARD the starving, oppressed, The Army OF LABOR, no more the suppressed. . . . We march on the masters who hold us in thrall Who've taken our labors, our freedom, our all— Who've left us to die on charity’s beds— But forward we march—and high our heads. . . . We come not to plead for the worst and the least Like hungry beggars to the masters’ feast We march to demand the workers’ just claims And forward we strain at our weary chains, Hold high the Banner our blood has made RED Wave in defiance this EMBLEM of dread That brings fear to the boss—our worst enemy When we muster our might in full UNITY. We're marching—we're marching—the driven, the low— Ten millions surge forward like ocean’s mad flow. .. - Surge forward—spring upward—strike hard at the foes The masters must perish and with them our woes! Unemployed Queer a ie Shark’s Game “And that guy takes my ten dol- A committee of five elected, and lars for a job, and I go to work, and| went down to the agency with tne three days later the boss fires me.| gyped worker, to get the money back. He said he didn’t need me any more,| The whole council went along, to be and gave me three lousy dollars. 1) prepared, in case the committee went back to the agency to get my | could not get the fee back, “to go money back, but nothing doing. So| ahead and do their work.” The agent I came here to the Unemployed | said nothing doing, but when he saw Council. What are you going to do| the Council trooping into his office, about it?” c he changed his mind, and gave back “Will we let ourselves be gyped like | the ten dollars, and also a five dol- this?” the chairman called out. “No | lar bill be gyped off another worker no!” came from all over the hall. on the pretenseof a job. — f ’ months subscription or renewal. Atv 4 ““wa and Latin America, under the Shadow of Yankee Imperialism, Women are Sold Openly for $5 A Piece. ~By BURCK. 1 ee to know anything about ventilation when they built it. Or perhaps God | don’t need airing. Hell, if we in the pews only had the dollars these fix- tures cost. A fat evangelist is speaking on the glories of the land beyond the pearly gates. Some of the men are asleep. Most of the others are engrossed in the problem of staying on this side of those gates! The preacher starts to rant about sinners. He tells we are being punished for our sir 66 Experienced Salesladies Wanted” By RAY ROSENFELD 125th Street! Stores upon stores! timers. The discussion is economic | and takes on a‘national, and then an international aspect. Systems are weighed, methods are thrashed out, } but concrete conclusions are few. Bé- | hind it all, however, there is a heart- undercurrent of growing mili< tancy. | We hear of a mission in China- |town where we can get a place on the floor to sleep on if we get there in time. We hurry down and find the flop on Doyers St. There is a long line waiting to get in. A bull | walks along the line and orders the Negroes to get out. After a while jthe line starts moving and abot hundred get in. The doar is closed before we get to it an& == are told to beat it, the place is full. We get bedraggled tailored suits and more + delicate fingers of white collar work- |%, Slimpse of the inside through a ers. Every barrier and wall dividing | “dow. The men are lying about, the working classes against them- | Practically upon each ot There selves is breaking down. ‘They stand | '§ # Sickening stench coming out together, facing and fightin the ° ea struggle. A Nordic American |GOMEBONE in line“ told us about a municipal lodging house on East 25th St. We set out for it through the slush and slime. It takes almost any hour to walk there. We get on line for questioning. If we can prove we are residents of New York City we can come there all of five nights a month. The city is good to its homeless. We get tickets and are sent to the “annex.” We are pleasantly surprised to find that we get a bowl of stew and beds to sleep in. We get more, coffee and bread, too. What luck! We sit down to eat and the joy quickly fades, The stew is rotten slop and after the first spoonful our weak, empty stomachs rebel. We fish out a stray bit of vegetable or two and give up. Our guts are upset and ach- | ing We head for the beds. The great Experienced Salesladies Wanted sign in on window. TI applied. “Experienced?”, he asked me. “Yes, worked in Gimbels, Bloom- ingdales, R. H. Macys, Orbachs and others.” “Awright, $2.50 a day” I felt myself gettung angry. “Ex- perienced Saleslady,” $2.50 a day! “What are the hours?” I asked. “Come back at 12 noon until 10:30 at night.” Well, what the hell! Bad times! Unemployment! I said I'd come back. Tae see | know our only sin is that we are | barracks is cold and the blankets, one | workers in a land where workers suf- | to each bed, are thin and small. What \fer. The preacher continues his bom- | With the cold, the continual coughing lbast and we leave. The air is too|of the sleepers, the smells and our | hot. jcrazy acting insides, there is little | It has stopped raining, but the mist | sleep. lis colder, more biting. A little fur-| At 5 they start turning us out group | ther on some men have started a fire|by group. We dress and go to the on an empty lot. There are a dozen | Messroom unw ished. There are no or so gathered around it: Some are | Wwashbowls or sinks in the place. We | sitting on an old beam, and, having | get a bowl of white, sticky mess which \taken their shoes off, are holding | is generally judged to be mostly laun- ltheir feet close to the fire to dry.|dry starch. It had to be washed off |'Their wet stockings give off lively the teeth with the coffee. It was | vapors and a heavy odor. A discus- | still well before dawn and freezing sion is going on. Two of the gath-| cold. We walk as quickly as our un- ering are hoboes and have been steady bowels will permit and head \ starved off the road recently. They | for a subway station. We can spend exchange news, stories of hard times | 12 noon. As soon as I enter the |in Frisco, Chicago, New Orleans; the| store, “Get busy, miss,” this big fat | hardest times in the memory of old- | boss of mine with a cigar in his| a more or lpss warm hour or two there until it’s time to go to the meet- ing of our Unemployed Council Youth Club Progress By PORIS LANDIN. mouth at my side. I begin to wait on customers. He watches me, stares | at me, I talk my guts out. If you) don’t sell a customer a dress, yon) get a bawling out. He keeps re-| minding me constantly to talk people | into buying. Poor Negresses come} in. $10 for a rag! And you have| to talk it into them. | “Hang the dresses up! stock!” he kept on telling. as JOUR years ago a group of Harlem The dressing room. .A small, hot workers organized a proletarian and stuffy room, crowded with many organization, under the name of women in their dirty underclothes. Harlem Progressive Youth Club. Our Enough to make anybody swoon. The | purpose was to establish a cultural salesgirls stand and pull dresses on!) 16 for the workers of this neigh- and off, trying to convince the wo-| na men that they look wonderful in this |borhood, where they could find a comradely atmosphere and recreation, or that dress. Finally supper time comes round. through which they would be drawn into the working class movement I'm just about ready to faint. “One half hour for supper, twenty-five | Lake ail workers’ Organisations, ours ‘has had many difficulties to face. minutes, if you can,” that big louse f a boss tells me. I gulj some his Meiree pees Also, we have made many mistakes, s taking a stand of “impar- mush which they sell in the 5 & 10 | each ‘ cents store, as fodd, and hurry back |?" seit again to hell incorporated, he | tality” in our cultural activities, and stomach ache as well as a headache. | Slowing petty-bourgeois intellectuals Again the same monotonous routine. | !® spread from our platform re Picking up dresses. Waiting on cus-| false ideas as there is one culture for y citi all classes. However, these mistakes have now been corrected, and now tomers, poor workers who are skin- | ne it. The bo: | Ree ere nS “| that our club has taken a more clear- Jeut class position, we are making keeps on watching me. |more progress among the working 10:30 comes around. At last, 1| youth of Harlem. sigh and think that the end of al In order to carry on our various perfect day is here. But the boss | activties in the best way possible, we doesn't say a word about leaving to| have divided our work into various | the girls and business goes on just sections, and a comrade is elected by | the same. At 10:45, I approach him | the membership every six months to| and ask him for my pay. I finally | head each division. There is a dra- get my two and half measly dollars | matics section, and an educational and start to agitate the girls, telling | them that we should fight again: such intolerable conditions, The boss | using his sneaky-spy methods, over- heard me and did not ask me to come in again. section, and a sports section. | The many indoor and outdoor ac- tivities of our sports section, which | was organized three years ago, has attracted into our club many new ele- | ments, whom we otherwise would |not have been able to reach. We |have two soccer teams, basket ball teams, and many hikes and camping in the spring and summer months. A girls basket ball team is now being | organized | So far we have failed in one of our, | biggest tasks—that of drawing in any | considerable number ‘of Negro work-| lers. This is*a serious shortcoming, | which must be remedied. | Our educational department keeps | a close watch on current events, and | arranges lectures and discussions) regularly on important labor ques- | tions, both in this country and) abroad, One of the most popular | series was on Soviet Russia and the | IN JAIL Lousy jails, gark grim cells, Made of capitalists’ strongest or Rotten jond plenty of smeijs! Petty thieves and many whores! Living death to militant men, Monuments of bosses’ strength! Grafting riches the countries length | Justice! Truth! Names for them! | Workers wake, hear the cry Imprisoned toilers the world wide | over Call on you—Will you let then: al|Y? Ye*r eee die? Our club takes part in all the ac- tivities and affairs of the revolution- ary movement, such as mass demon-| strations, aiding the workers’ press, | jand the past election campaign. | Organize and break those bars! —wWritten by a Young Worker while in Cleveland Jail. PE ec ne a Ali young workers of Harlem, re-| | gardless of color, race or nationality, Get a 1931 Daily Worker \are Invited to join the Harlem Pro- Timber Miner. —By Quirt, “THE APPLE MAN” By MILTON SCHWARTZBERG Apples, apples, five-a-da cent, You buya da apple me paya da rent, You tinka da apple she gotta no I stay in da cold, da rain, da sleet bits, graft? Go ‘way young feller, you maka me laff. ‘ First, dey sell for buck and twe Now she go high, the sky she hits, The price she bave more luck you know, So I gotta sell two box or so. An’ den I go home; I no gotta da heat, Just two litle room, for my wife and da keeds, We no needa da kitchen, we no gotta da eats. I go tell da landlord no gotta da mon’ He say get out you lazy bum. He never sell apples for five-a- cent each, ‘ He staya home and gett queecka rich, . . An’ soon come da day we must pay de rent, An’ we have no ‘mon’, from the house we get sent, So apples 1 sell in da street night eatendar free with a six | gressive Youth Club. ‘The club hall,| and day, months’ subscription or re- at, 1492 Madison Avenue, near 102nd| We musta have mon’ for da rent newal, St., is open every evening pay. \