The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 17, 1931, Page 13

| eer ‘under the whip of the Czar, the HINK, workers! Back in Teddy} Roosevelt’s first. administration, to. be exact in the year of 1906, American capitalism “began” to. build the Hoover Dam. €zar Nich- olas “the Bloody” had just crushed ‘the 2905 Revolution, Lenin was.a ‘hunted refugee'in exile. The Bol- shevik Revolution of 1917 was yet eleven years distant. That, work- ers, was the time president Roos- | evelt “took the first steps” to build | ‘the Boulder Dam, now re-named| the “Hoover Dam.” It is now 1931, | and, says the “Outlook and In-} dependent” magazine, “within! seven or eight years it will be| completed.” | At that time, in 1906, the Dnie- per River was flowing past the) tiny Ukrainian village of Kichkas, | where peasants slaved and starved | é " | eross fo the priest, steeped in en- forced ignorance and Christian} drunkeness, never even dreaming | that on May 1, 1932, socialist con- | struction, under a -Workers’ and! Peasants’ government, would de-| liver to the socialized industries of | the Soviet Union a giant hydro- | electric plant, provided by Lenin’s|} ‘Electrificatior Plan of December | 1920, fully completed, magically | built on the site of the vanished | peasant village. That. workers, is| what is actually being done at} Dnieperstroy! } The Hoover Dam and Dnieper- | stroy are construction projects easy to compare. Both are huge. But if anything the Soviet project is the larger and certainly the most difficult. Hugh Cooper, the consultant engineer, says that Dnieperstroy Dam—‘“will be the largest dam in the wrold. There will be nine main generating units of 84,000 horse-power each. The dam and auxiliary plants that will eventually be built around it will! furnish all the electric power ne- eessary for 16,000,000 people.” He continues: “Dnieperstroy is one of the most difficult, if not the. most difficult engineering work of its kind that the world has ever attempted.” He refers to the d@fths necessary to go to get firm foundation; then: “The fact that when the dam is finished the quantity of water going over the top of the dam in times of flood will be greater than has ever gone over a similar dam in any part fo the world, made the question of foundation important. In times of flood a greater quantity of water by about 50 per cent, will have to go over the top of the dam than over the St. Lawrence River.” Dnieperstrop will furnish more power than Muscle Shoals. It will cost some $110,000,000. While the American capitalist press makes much of the fact that American engineers are employed, yet the fact is that Dnieperstroy is being built according to the designs made by and under the supervision 6f Soviet engineers. Cooper and — Dear Comrades; In reply to your letters congra- tulating us on the Thirteenth An- niversary of the October Revolution, I am glad to send you and the whole of. the working class of your country my fraternal greetings. I congratulate you on the heroic fight against the ramshackle capitalism, for your bitter fight against all enemies of the USSR, for your The workers of the USSR already during 13 years have been success- fully constructing socialism. With every new year we see progressing and increasing the achievements in the workers’ state. Unemployment is completely eliminated. 1,600,- 000 workers got their work in the newly constructed factories and shops. The wages increased about 40 per cent. The industry,. the rage +> Ea ke ee ae ee) tii eaoi ' ‘ ' arr. oka it Pry Hush. F-- § THE HOOVER | 1932, 5 Has ob eteteovareno’) te (ft + ae awn nm eeney DAM suas RN Rweny seas JAINUARY AT, LYSL (A Comparison of Socialist and Capitalist Construction) the other American engineers, also some Germans—are only present as consultants, the Chief Engineer is a Russian named Winter, and the engineer staff is almost ail Russian or Ukrainian — which is the same to capitalists, as they are both Soviet. But’ if there are difficulties en- countered strey, they are as nothing com- —$————— ee . A contrast in projects: ‘The large pho- to shows the rapid rise of the giant Dni- e per strey, which will be completed in years after the first shevel of dirt was turned. pared to those surrounding the building of the Hoover Dam. Not that there are so many physical difficulties in the aetual work of damming the Colorado River, at the town of Las Vegas, Nevada. The “Hoover” Dam, socalled — though by the time it is built it will doubtless be named over again as Hoover will-have passed, scorn- ed and detested, into oblivion—will be - higher but narrower than Dnieperstroy, and. will have no trouble in finding solid rock found- ation. Where the Hoover Dam has trouble is in the fact that capital- ism is the economie and political system under whch technical ad- vance is obstructed at every turn. It was not always so, but is so Greetings from the Soviet Union By HARRISON GEORGE now, when ¢apitalism is in his- toric decline. The capitalist gov- ernment has droves of expert agri- eulturists. teaching new methods of growing more farm products, and a Secretary of Agriculture telling the farmers not to grow | more, but less. | The two main questions whose in building Dnieper-| solution under capitalism’s rules is | even yet blocking the Hoover Dam re project, is: Who will get the water for irrigation? And, Which, among the private capitalist power com- panies, will:get to steal the power: But on these two questions alone, the building of the dam, at first called the Boulder Dam, has been dragging along for a generation. The first question was water; and by 1921, just talking about the dam had produced a first class row, since the states drained bp the Colorado River’s upper tribut- aries, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico, were opposed to the states of Arizona, Nevada and California getting more water than they did. Herb Hoover, the White House prophet of “Prosperity in Sixty Days,” then Secretary of Com- merce, presided at a conference in 1921°to fix up the quarrel between the seven states. At the time, the Soviet was still. wrecked by inva- sion, famine™ and. blockade. Of course the Commerce Department really had no jurisdiction. Building the dam is the job of the Depart- ment of Interior, and more preci- sely of its Reclamation Bureau. But then, of course, the govern- The = small shows of | photo the site Hoover dam, which was | first planned 25 years ago, and which will probably not | } be finished be- | fore the end of the presen‘ decade. | - ment could not really do anything. So any work that is done, is by private contractors — who know how easy graft goes with the De- partment of the Interior from rich experience. Although Hoover “presided” at} the Santa Fe Conference in 1921, he didn’t settle much—“untangled problems have been left over from the conference,” says the magazine “Outlook and Independent.” Ari- zona refused and still refuses to ratify the conference agreement, and has a bitter fight with Cali- fornia_over the water—is prepar- ing a petition to the U. S. Supreme Court for an injunction to stop construction until Arizona “rights” are determined. Acres of legal opinions have been written on the itil economy and the trade are develop- ing in the socialist way. Private capitalism possesses only about 1.8 pez cent of the whole national rev- enue. After two years the USSR will be in possession of 45 power- ful electro-stations with the cap- acity of 25 billion kilowat-hours in- stead of 5 billion kilowat-hours that we have now. The achievements in the agriculture are also great, for example, 25 per cent of the individual economies are already collectivized, in some districts even up to 50 per cent. The result of this is the increase of the crop in 1930 from 4,200 million puds to 5,500 million puds. These are the essential successes in the economic domain. But also PVPS Sawa IE Oe te we a aden ee Cr coun in the cultural revolution there are remarkable achievements: the illit- eracy is rapidly disappearing, the working m: s and their young generations studying and acquir- ing all knowledge and sciences to be able to replace the old hostile and counter-revolutionary technical specialists. Comrades, perhaps you have read in your workers’ newspapers about the constant efforts of the capitalist world to provoke a war against the USSR. The recently discovered counter-revolutionary parties and groups of the damagers shows very clearly to the workers that the in- tensive battle between labor and capitalism is not yet finished in the USSR, inspite of the asser- yew nyt [nate tC tions of the right opportunists and the left ones. The capitalist ser- vants in USSR, representatives of the world capitalism, are organiz- ing insurrections against the USSR, and the foreign bourgeoisie helps them, provides them with money. Still more, the foreign bourgeoisie is organizing a provocation of war egainst the USSR t invade the Jand with the aim of «vertnrowin2 the Soviet Government by militury force, for reestablishing the power of blood-thirsty capitalism. The Soviet proletariat is proud and strong in realization of the support of the organized world pro- letariat. With your help and sup- port, with your heroic fight against your own capitalist class, with your Songz the t PaQe any AND DNIEPERSTROY subject. Such things never hap pened or could have happened it the Soviet Union with Dnicper stroy. But that was only a start. Powe is now the main question, and th« “Outlook” puts it this way: “Shal the electricity drawn from a pub- lic dam be farmed to a privat agency for profit, or shall it be given to the public at cost?” S cleverly have the capitalist politi cians handled this problem, tha‘ the “Outlook” says that, “the an swer to both questions is ‘Yes’ “Let the “Outlook” tlel-how many agencies had to “decide”: “The question of disposal was passed upon by the four agencies which necessity compelled: first, Congress; second, the Whit House, both under Coolidge and Hoover; third, Secretary of th Interior, Wilbur; fourth, the City of Los Angeles.” Here is “organization” for you! With a flock of capitalist politi- cians all itching for graft from the power interests, and a bevy of power interests trying to stab each other in the back. Mr. Borah, the bushy-haire: hero of the liberals, strode forward with an “amendment” that no power go to corporations. Then, | he withdrew his amendment! A | slick servant of corporations who, jas Secretary Wilbur’s “department solicitor” speaks as an oracle, de- cided that Wilbur would uphold |‘‘publie interest” by turning the | power over to private companies. Los Angeles has a municipal power graft apparatus and wants most of the power. The Southern California Edison Co., after using | its Ynfluence for years and years to block construction, when con- struction was decided on finally, | was the first to demand a con- cession — and claims Wilbur! So, says the “Outlook”—Within seven or cight years the dam will be completed, and within ten years the river will begin to bestow its full beneficence.” That, workers, that is capitalist construction! “Begun” in 1906, and possibly finished in 1937 or 1938! That is the “wonderful” Hoover Dam! But—by* December 4, 1930, the workers of the Soviet Union, breaking all world records at plac- ing concrete at Dnieperstroy, had laid foundation enough to insure the completion of the great Dnie- perstroy project by May 1, 1982, five years after the first shovel turned the first dirt in the now vanished village of Kichkas: Such is the story, enlightening, but the coldest of cold facts, of the superiority, technically and-so- cially, of socialist_construction un- der a Workers and Farmers gov- ernment. It is the story of how much more effective, in bringing construction projects into living reality, was Lenin, the great rev- olutionist, than Hoover, the great engineer.” among the first recognized by Secretary active cooperation, the Soviet work- ers will continue and successfully achieve the socialist construction. We will push aWay all opportunists and renegades who intend to stop or to weaken the victorious march o the Proletarian’ World Revolu- tion. ' ASOCIO DIL AMIKI DI INTERNACION LINGUA “IDO” A number of Russian workers from the factories and mills will correspond with American workers You can write your letters in al national languages. Address: Internaciona Proletariat . Ido-Korespondo Kiev, USSR, per. Nesteroysky, No. 9, room 6 Moscow 9, Postbox No. 321.