The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 15, 1931, Page 4

Puritstied by ete Comprodaily Publishing Co. Ine, 4afly, esept Sunday, at 60 East i . os 4 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Page Four 18th Street. New York City. N. ¥. Telephone Algonquin 7956-7, Cable: “DATWORK.” al or os mat everywhere: One year, $6: six months, $3; two months, $1: Address and mai} all ehecks to the Daily Worker, 80 Kast 13th Street, New York. N. ¥. Se Mahdcine! kak. Weed Maw Zack Code oielash ‘Oak Sex Contre Dery USA — He — a ee = a excepting. Boroughs six months, $4.60. FORWARD TO THE LENIN RECRUITING DRIVE! By F. BROWN. (Continued.) uiting Plan of each district ly the quotas, but the drive ong the line of building new hening the old ones, dening the units be especially concentrated ries. The approach to place of work shall be par- , information about the in order that special leaf- ued which will help the all deal with the Lenin to the workers of the shop papers s is matter and help with the organizational work of pecial attention shall be paid especially in dis- constitute a large per- ry workers and in the southern here the Negroes constitute the ma- he population. of the population, the district ecial attention to this category of door of the party is also open to the poor ners. One of the most important tasks in this drive is the recruitment of working women. With the exception of New York and Chicago, all districts have a y small number of women in the Party, and a big percentage of these are house- wives. In the whole Party there are only 1600 women and of these 1,000 are in New York. 50 s where agtarian workers constitute | that the importance of this problem is clear. | Today the women do not only work in the needle trades and the textile industry, but also in al- most all the heavy industries. It is of great im- | portance that our activity ting new mem- | | tri¢t committee, shall be turned over to the re- in Drive shall be linked in the direction of bring- ing hundreds of working women from the fac- tories into our ranks. In this connection, the work of approach to working women shall not be assigned as the special task of our women comrades alone, but special tasks shall be assigned to the units for | concentrating in the textile mills and other fac- tories in which the working women constivute a large percentage of the workers. The recruitment drive shall be the basic task of the units. For this reason application cards shall not be distributed as be given only to those workers who show a real willingness to join the Party. The application cards shall not lie around in the district offices for weeks and weeks, but should go immediately to the section committee. The Section Commit- tee shall take the necessary information as quickly as possible (within not more than one or two weeks) and assign the new members to units. Every section shall appoint a_ special committee for the duration of the drive, for quick action on assigning the applicants to the respective units, taking @ll necessary precau- tions in order to avoid the entering into the Party of doubtful elements. Applications that are sent directly to the dis- | spective sections without delay. The new members must be in possession of their membership books when they are assigned to the units. Admitted into our ranks, the new | members shall be drawn into work. The work- ers that join the Party come to us in order to be active, to fight with us, to learn. Here it is necessary that our comrades be careful not to repeat the previous mistakes of looking down on the new comrades from above, or assigning them immediately all sorts of work, in order that the older comrades be released from their own tasks. | (To Be Continued.) bige The “Left” Socialists and the | Five-Year Plan This is the last of two articles, dealing with the | attitude of the Socialist Party towards he ve iet Union, as expr d in tivo resolutions con- sidered at its cc. vention in New York City last December. The resolution of the National Executive Com- | mittee dealt with in the previous article en- @orses the call for war against the Soviet Union. By HARRY GANNES. The counter-resolution Shows more estuteness in blindfolding the workers, Its framers know that the vast majority of the workers through- out the world have their eyes glued on the Five- Year Plan and what is going on in the Soviet Union. Th know that the capitalist press is rife with discussions on Communism ys. Capital- ism—based on the visible decay of capitalism and the advance of socialist construction in the So- viet Union. The question for them is how to utilize the inescapable facts for the advance of socialist poison in the United States. The “opposing” resolution starts off with some unusual admissions that will never get by the fine-sieved minds of the ruling powers in the so- “Is Cialist part; It admits that the USSR. @ workers’ government,” that “its economy based on the elimination of private ownership and private profits of the means of production end distribution; its economic system is found- ed vpon planned production for use.” But why these adinissions? The resolution answers very clearly on this point—“for furthering the spread of socialism in the United States.” re are many questions the back- jon overlook, for which Hill- quit and others, during the course of the dis- cussion, sharply called them to task. “Don't forget,” said Hillquit, his shrewd lawyer's coun- tenance screwed up for emphasis, his finger ex- citedly agitating the air, “Don’t forget, the Five- Year Plan is advancing under Communist lead- ership. It is the success of the Communist philosophy and not the socialist.” Of course, th ers of this resol Hanging in the Air. ‘The dilemma was not solved. Both resolutions hang in the air, since no vote was taken on them. Meanwhile the New Leader bubbles with excite- ment over a solution of the question: How shall the socialists recognize and acknowledge the ad- vantage to the workers in the Soviet Union and throughout the world of the advance of the Five- Year Plan and use it to the advantage of the socialist party betrayals? The main resolution says it can’t be done. Its sponsors’ reasoning is: “Keep your mouth shut about the five-year plan, and aid the preparation for intervention against the Soviet Union by screeching for free speech and against terror.” The “Mail Bag.” ‘The discussion in the socialist press can be summed up by a few quotations. It all falls into two patterns, along the lines of the two resolu- tions. The fact that the greater portion of it is for a “revision” of the socialist attitude shows their need of new weapons with which to bam- boozle the workers. For instance, McAllister Coleman, who is not exactly a rank and filer but is closer to O'Neal, Hillquit, Norman Thomas and their ilk than William Green's belly is to the floor when he greets Hoover, sums up the former position of the socialists as follows: “I now find myself cheek by jowl with Ham Fish, Matt Woll, Ralph Easley, Archie Steven- son and other persons highly obnoxious to me and with whom I have had as little to do as possible. I do not like my new bed-fellows, I resent being forced to occupy the same room with them and I have the sneaking suspicion that my resentment is shared by a large ma- Jority of the socialist party who like myself have preserved a decent silence up to now.” It is not McAllister’s modesty that makes him ery out when he is caught in bed with Easley, Fish and Woll, but he ts afraid when the cover is thrown off completely his shame will be too widely known among the workers. So he pleads: “The sooner we dig out of this mess into _ Hagractod and ierdited propel, so, be | a “reply” twice as Jong as the original letter. the Recruiting | “leaflets,” but shall | | cause things are not going exactly aceording | to their calculations, who have imported their personal and political feuds to this country and who have a Moscow phobia which blinds them to the facts, the quicker we will recover - our socialist integrity.” O'Neal, the editor of the New Leader, writes He figuratively puts his arm around “Mac’s” shoulder and tells him: “If Mac is correct we have been in a ‘mess’ since the end of the (Rus- sian) civil war and not for a few weeks,” He becomes. blunt: “We either approve it (Soviet regime and Five-Year Plan) or we do not. We cannot dodge the issue. We have not dodged it since it became an issue in the international movement.” But O'Neal will have to dodge facts in order to fool the workers, and since the primary object is to mislead the workers where- | ever possible, even the unflinching O'Neal will learn to dodge just as agilely as the blushing Mac. A Chicago correspondent, Paul Porter, writes the New Leader, showing quite a grasp of what is happening in the Soviet Union. He insists: “These facts remain: “In Russia as in no other country planned production for use is being practiced on a vast scale and in a manner that assuredly makes it one of the most audacious and idealistic ventures in the history of mankind. The par- asitism of some men living by the labors of others has been abolished, and following that has come a progressive increase in workers’ security, a decrease in their hours of work, and a long step toward their enjoyment of the fruits of the civilization they build. All facts carefully weighed, the Russian experiment probably stands as the greatest contribution | fo man’s welfare yet made in the Twentieth | Century.” | ‘A Red Tint to a Yellow Torch. | Porter is afraid that the socialists will too | openly, in view of these facts, show up their | “alignment with those who would overthrow the | Soviet,” and they would thus incur “a grave | responsibility.” This is the central theme of “both sides.” The socialist party seeks to get around the embarass- | ing facts of the advance of the Soviet Union and | | not expose too clearly the nexus that ties the | socialists to the counter-revolutionary and Czar- ist forces which seek to overthrow the ‘Soviet | government. The Hillquits want it done by a | discreet silence, while the younger set, who dub themselves “militants,” think they can borrow fire from the Five-Year Plan to give a red tint | to their yellow torch of betrayal. CALIFORNIA CLASS-WAR PRISONERS By UPTON SINCLAIR. We have here in California a number of class- war prisoners, and a still larger number whose cases are on appeal but who are almost cer- tain to go to the state penitentiary in the end. | I have known some of these men and women, and can testify that they are devoted idealists. Our treatment of poltical prisoners in Cal- ifornia is entirely callous, and the general pub- lic is completely indifferent to the issues in- volved. Our masses read the capitalist news- papers and believe what they read. We shall go on protesting in California, of course, but our great hope is in outside demonstrations, ‘What saved the lives of Mooney and Billings in 1917 was the newspaper reports that there had been street demonstrations in Petrograd (Leningrad) on behalf of @ California political prisoner named “Tom Muni.” People in Cal- ifornia might hear for the first time of Frank Spector and Yetta Stromberg, if the newspapers should report that there were street demonstra- __ tae vcs ot Calera just saree SOLIDARITY—NORTH AND SOUTH By JIM ALLEN, (Editor, Southern Worker.) THE Southern Worker, published by the Com- munist Party at Birmingham, Ala., has ap- | peared regularly every week for the past six | months. | mote sections of the South. While the main | body of its readers consist of workers at Birm- It has found its way into the most re- ingham, Chattanooga, Charlotte, Atlanta, Eliza- bethton, and the Gulf ports, it has also followed the migrating southern worker into many iso- lated country towns, into the most brutal and reactionary plantation sections. Slowly, but surely, it is being taken to the heart of the southern proletariat and farm ten- antry. Like nowhere else in the country has the crisis ravaged the southern workers and poor farmers. In the South, more than anywhere else in the country, haye spontaneous hunger marches, demonstrations and struggles of work- ers and farmers taken place. Altho it is only a six-months infant, the Southern Worker has been a factor in these struggles. It has found its way to mill towns where workers are on the point of raiding company commissaries, to the country towns where the farmers are taking food practically at the point of their guns. The trouble is that the Southern Worker has not yet played an important enough role in the organization _and development of these struggles. It is not bringing the Communist program of or- ganization and struggle fast enough and widely | enough to the seething workers and farmers of the South. One of the chief reasons is that our paper has been handicapped for lack of funds. | We have been forced to print a very restricted number of copies every week because we could | not pay for more. For the same reason our paper is restricted to only four pages in which must be crowded all the news and articles so important to the southern workers. And even this restricted paper is now being threatened | with temporary suspension. ‘The southern workers are extremely poor, The crisis found them at a much lower standard of living than the workers in the North. Today, ' even 25 cents for a 3 months’ subscription to the paper is beyond many workers’ reach. To many the price of a single copy is a problem. They cannot dig into empty pockets, which are | not backed by a single penny of bank savings, to keep the Southern Worker going. Just as it was the northern workers who raised the money to start the Southern Worker it must now also be their task, together with the southern workers, to keep the paper going. It will be an expression of working class solidarity, that the southern workers will never forget. Workers! Join the Party of Your Class! Communist Party U 8 A. 43 East 125th Street, : New York City. Please send me more information on the Cum- munist Party. Name . Address OMY sicessessersesserercsore, Btate ! conven ogee +. Age ‘Saati, this to, the Cubksal Ofice, ‘Communion ‘1 Be 126th Bt, New Xork, N. ¥. bie Ya in Class Struggle Flares Up in Countryside By H. PURO. 0X January 3rd, capitalist newspapers carried alarming stories from Arkansas, stating that about 500 farmers and their wives in the drought stricken area of the State of Arkansas, stormed the business section of the town of England, Arkansas, demanding food for their starving fam- ilies and threatening to take it if denied. A very significant feature in these news stories is the fact, that when a certain lawyer, who is also | a big landowner, began to speak to these farm- ers, trying to pacify them, these farmers an- swered him: “Our children are crying for food and we are | going to get it! children starve! now!” Another significant thing is, about 200 of these demonstrating farmers were Negroes, and both white and Negro farmers were acting together in fighting against starvation and demanding immediate relief. The militant mass action of these farmers We are not going to let our We want food and want it | frightened the local merchants to Such an ex- | tent that they were compelled immediately to distribute food to these farmers and their fam- ilies. This proves that only by organizing mass struggles against starvation, by themselves, the poor farmers can expect some relief. Too long have poor farmers been fooled by Hoover, Hyde and Legge and have waited that the Congress might take some action on the relief question. The action of these Arkansas farmers shows, that impoverished farmers begin to take the situation into their own hands. The Arkansas situation has frightened the Politicians in Washington. In order to kill this | direct mass action of the starving farmers, sen- ators Robinson and Caraway proposed that Con- *| gress should appropriate money for relief in the drought affected areas. And speaking for his proposal, Senator Robinson was compelled to expose the fact that the riot in England, Ark. was not the first one, but that the news of other similar happenings have been suppressed. But President Hoover and Secretary of Agri- culture Hyde, are opposing even these meager proposals of the Arkansas senators for relief, and have brought the president of the Red Cross, Judge John Barton Payne, to testify before the senate appropriation committee that the Red Cross with its remaining fund of $4,500,000 is able to take care of the situation. Senator Robinson in his speech, however, says that the Red Cross fund is wholly inadequate, because in the State of Arkansas alone there are 250,000 families that are in need of relief. But Senators Robinson and Caraway do not | really want to help the starving farmers, be- cause they propose that “needy areas do not want charity, but loans.” As it is scen, the worthy senators, who are supposedly coming out as champions of these starving families against Hoover, Hyde and the Red Cross, are proposing to give “loans” for these starving families whose cause of misery is that they have already been iven too heavy loans. Then comes Representative Fish, chairman‘ of the “Fish Committee,” arch enemy of the revo- lutionary workers, who wants to deport all revo- lutionary workers out of the country and sup- press the entire movement of the revolutionary workers ‘and he puts all the blame for the starva- tion of farmers and their mass action upon the Communists, stating that information had come to him that Communists had incited the food riots in England, Ark. So, if shere were no Communists, these farm- ers would starve , without raising their volces or hands against those ‘who are causing their starvation, Now, this raises very seriously the question, in what respect are we responsible for the mars action of thes? starving farmers. Are we en- couraging them? Aré we orting them in their demands for immediate;Pelief? ‘We answer to Hamilton Fish, who is the most outspoken agent of the Hoover administration fi nat pon a LA i aaah By BURCK “Let peasants know, that the red flag that has been hoisted up in the cities, is the flag | of struggles not only representing the sirug- | which T-had-collected after hours of talk, wasn' | who observe such uncomradely treatment will | gles of the industrial and land workers, but it | is also the flag of struggle for the immediate demands of millions and tens of millions of small landowners.” This is our answer to you, Mr. Fish. Our | Communist Party is backing this fight of the | Arkansas farmers against starvation, with all our | Power. But not only that, we ask the whole | | poor farming population—share croppers, tenant | farmers and poor owners on the land, to organ- | ize into the one powerful organization, into the United Famers League (which is not, as you say, » Communist organization, but which is the -sghting organization of the oppressed farmers), and to demand immediate relief, to fight against landlords and big farmers, fight against bankers, against implement companies, against the rail- road trusts, against marketing companies and against all their robbers and oppressors and first of all, against the protectors of these robbers, the Hoover administration and the rotten capi- talist system, that is represented jointly by the republican and democratic parties and supported by the socialist (social fascist) party and Amer- ican Federation of Labor and all kinds of rene- gades from the revolutionary labor movement. There is even some concreteness in the Fish accusation against us, because incidentally we -have heard that there is a unit of our Party nearby, where these farmers were mobilizing | themselves for action. /This unit of our Party | distributed the Daily Worker among these starv- | ing farmers and by reading the Daily Worker, they learn that the best way out of starvation is organized mass action. And in order to show | their gratitude to the Daily Worker these starv- ing farmers send contributions for the Daily Worker from their last pennies. The poor starving farmers in’ Arkansas have taken up the class struggle in the countryside. It is the duty of our Communist Party to help to spread this struggle throughout the farming regions of this country. We must help the poor farmers to organize themselves into Farmers’ Relief Councils and use these as mediums to put forth the struggle for immediate relief. We must. help the United Farmers League to utilize this “movement for building its organization, as the organization of struggle for the poor farming masses. We must take steps everywhere to develop soli- darity between the industrial workers in the towns and the oppressed farmers in the country- | side, and develop joint action of their organiza- tions. And this solidarity must be developed \ into the solid alliance of revolutionary industrial | workers and the revolutionary farmers, against | the capitalist class and the capitalist system, Through allied struggle of workers and poor | farmers, we will be able to overthrow the capi- | talist system and establish the workers and farmers government in the United States, just as the Russian workers and peasants have done. REGARDING THE DRAFT PROGRAM OF ACTION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA .. The Daily Worker has received a letter from the Communist Party of India, which should have been published with the draft Program of Action (D.W. Jan. 8 and 9), but arrived after the Program had already gone to press. The letter is as follows: “We are sending you the draft program of eetion of our Party, which we ask you to pub- ‘ish in all working class papers. We ask you to print in your papers all corrections and sug- gestions which members of your Party may propose. It will help us to work out a final }.draft of our platform.” \ COMMUNISE PARTY OF INDIA | are none in his neck of the woods, writes in part: ' ed me (in his speech in Congress) with the name | name of American labor, against the awful Bol- ' sheviks and-all their doings. We don’t grant that By JORGE Expose Apparatus Snobbery! “Dear Comrade:—Having the biggest interest: in our movement, I want to bring to your atten- tion certain’ conditions, which I certainly don’t think are favorable to our aim in winning 2a members, “Although I’m not a member of the Commi Party, but from the IL.D., I do try my best in winning new members ,subseribers and to coll money for the Daily Worker Emergency and it wasn’t my intention to be through with by now. “But I’m sorry to say that the way I got ceivedalthough’ I brought only someé mi aspiring. “Well, .I wouldn’t even mind it but some later, I sent my wife with some hew sul tions I had won, and she complained about un- friendly treatment. “The same she complained about in the LL.D. where she went for some application blanks fc some new members I hope to win. In the ‘ature cil of Working Class Women, where she LY about the I.L.D. office, she got the same snappy” answers, although my wife inquired in a‘decent manner and she herself has a pleasant dispost, tion. ba “Some of them girls you got there, they in one moment, what, after hard work, one up in weeks. “So, for instance, a friend of my wife was wit her, whom I had already won to sympathy wit our cause, but she is now disgusted and I con; sider her as lost with all her friends. “You can’t expect every Communist to. be real comrade, but the comrades who are on th desks, who treat the people who go in and the new-comers and sympathizers, should ‘ha at least u friendly disposition and be a real com: rade. “What we have now keeps lots of sympat 1 away. I already have heard other complaints I would like to hear from you in the Dally Work¥ er.—A Sympathizer.” Pa Well, the comrade don’t leave very much for, us to add. There should be comrades who will, from now on; be vigilant to guard themselves— if on the desks themselves—against “snappy an- swers” to workers who enter and want to know things. If they do not, we trust that other comrades speak up right on the spot, and—if necessary we will assist in exposing this all too comomn “ap- paratus snob,” who, doubtless not by intenti but by thoughtlessness, make workers feel un-| welcome and affronted. * Much Obliged, Mr. Fish! An Arkansas farmer who never heard much about the Communists, and who tells us there “Thanks to Mr. Fish, however, he has furnishe and address of your paper, which I have been wanting for_some time. Mr. Fish, in reality, is doing the Communist movement more good than harm. Please send me a sample copy of the “Worker” and accept my best wishes in the meantime.—J.H.M.” . The Anti-Communist Program It was a nice program, a glittering program, that was pulled off last Friday at Carnegie Hall in New York City. We were~favored by seeing the prdeiatic as print, in fact, printed on the begt of paper, ut- terly unsuited for other purposes. It began by listing the Stars and Stripes Forever (whichiis a long time) by the 16th Infantry Band. ‘Pfiis made ita bit“unusual, of course, to note that'the band, which without consent of the U. 8, Army could not have served as decoration to this fascist festival, But ‘he main dish was listed as an “Address by Mathew Woll, Vice-President of the American Federation “of Labor.” Now, Mattie was there to raise a protest in the he speaks for American workers, but he prétends to. Mattie is.a member of the Lithographers Union, used to be an official, indeed, of this union, which is part of the Printing Trades of the A. F. of L, (Incidentally, Justus Ebert, on of the Ex-I,W.W.’s who has gone social ff with the Muste group is now editing that mae, ographers’ Union official paper). But though Mattie Woll was the headliner along with Fish at the anti-Communist meet- ing, somehow, he didn’t raise his voice in if at the fact that the program of the meeting bore no label. Horrors, maybe it was made of Soviet pulpwood, too! Ryan Walker Not Guilty A reader. writes to us, asking in a puzzled sort of a way, how it happens that Comrade. Ryan Walker “also’ draws for the ‘Revolutionary Age Such deviationg to the ‘right’ seem odd for Worker.” oS Well, it would rather be odd if true. But is one thing’ that has escaped our reader's that is, the pleasant habit of stealing’ by simply elipping them, pasting ’em on of paper and getting the engraver to make “cut” exactly like the original, artist's name and all, i When Comrade Walker came to or te Daily, the Lovestone sheet rufled up its “denounced” him and the Daily, and week promptly ‘stole one of his cartoons Daily, the Lovestone sheet shuffled up its deviation to the Right on our part, but tion to the Left on the part of the thieves 1 try to cover up their counter-revoll cies wih stoleri revolutionary pictures, ~~ by the Way, dear reader, answering questions, we might kind of a deviation is it that you in receiving, reading or even; loo -Larestons.