The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 14, 1931, Page 4

DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1931 > S Seventeen Days Spent in Jail JAMES VAN HORN me all id searched not have any ed me. I 1 over night ng on a a $15 fine ut prison got them The food is some- enough can be-| age You might t about the size | run on the Jim on one side You are hours. There to see that mean work, ading coal, or S, paupers graves. Luck- ened to be placed in the} i bunch. I dug graves one S and one bady Gee, I though while rave, that this of a man or n the truck as tk in the same hole e little hole about I was the two “He just laughe ” not that he knew it. I said, “What do n in the same grave ere every time a grave? Hell, up all my time, le and put | m in, | he could not move. |floor. ‘The man got up after a while | super that he approved of his actions. | | this farm. Some with no legs, some | with one Jeg, some with broken backs, | some seventy or eighty years old, but ts | |I was not working on the farm I we are g0-| een or twenty | I had a chance to work on the rock crusher. Well | at was some swell place to work,| ag everywhere with | uns, and I mean that you had} better. work too, for it would be too | bad if you did not work to suit them } for they are the worst bunch of brutes | that I have ever seen. I have seen| them slap and pick on old men that} could hardly walk and make them | work, They are the biggest: bunch } of cowards that I have ever seen,| outside the American Legion. There were two men that got into a fight down at the rock crusher and one of them was reported to the super. Now we are going to hear something about a brave man who weights close | to three hundred pounds. While we | were carrying our garbage in at noon | he: called this man out and said, “come here you big sunabitch.” The | r got up and walked to the front. “So you want to fight, you big sun-/| of-a-bitch, do you,” so he grabbed by his hair and beat him with | right hand till he sank to the| loor. Then he backed him up and threw him down on the floor again and tramped him with his feet till| He then turned | | and walked away leaving him on the | and as he got up on his feet one of | the brave guards stepped up and took | another punch at him to show the} Now we have all kinds of men at some blind, some young men, and they all work, out in the cold, break- rock without gloves to keep their warm, There is a rohse doc- tor that tells the old men and crip- ples that he knows that they are not to work but the farm is not a ital but a workhouse and they got to work just the same as any one else. As to the graft. Of course, there has got to be some graft. Now, while was working for private people dig- | ging cellars. I was told the county | got a dollar a day for our work that | we did not the outside for other peo- | pde. All I got was a few turnips te eat. I could tell you much more | but space forbits. | Now, if anyone doubts this story ict them go out there and find out for | ’ the: 1863 “You.see, Cap, this proclamation is unfortunately necessary, in order to break those slave holders, get 130,000 | Negro recruits for the Army, and guarantee your AMERICA | Slaves That Lincoln “Freed” By ROBERT BROWN America: This land of freedom markets.” 1931 Chain The Southern chain gang, some ot whose aspects are described in this article by an eye-witness, is one of the methods labor, ‘and especially the Negro masses who live in the Blac Belt.—Editor. ELLIOTT. ing among the Ne- whites of the The Pat- By A ‘HERE is a sa; groes and poor South. “Run, nigger, run. terroll’'ll git you.” | ‘The Patterroll means the Black Maria, or the sheriff, or any part of | the law that may come afte: Ne- gro or poor white. And and certain step towa end—the chain gang. Henry was a Negro boy on a pian- | tation in one of the Southern States. | Henry liked to sit in sup. . Once | there was an epidemic of influenza | among the Negroes on the plantation | and Henry of his own volitic | the chief nurse. | he went from cabin to cabin | night, caring for the sick | Five months later, Henry went into | | town one Saturday night and “too! a waist from a store counter for hi girl. Like many poor people, pove: | had forced him into petty thieve’ a drea ded By CYRIL BRIGGS. HE slaves Lincoln “freed” are to- day still enslaved on the large Where a worker is free to| | plantations of the South and South- starve and die America: This Jand of equality Where one worker and farmer is exploited and cheated like the next America: This land of free speech | west as share croppers, tenant farm- ers, farm laborers, who are kept per- petually in debt by a system of dis- | honest book-keeping, such as over- charge for supplies, denial of the right to market their crops, and are prevented by capitalist law from leav- ing their employers while in debt. Where starving workers are Capitalist law also gives the planta- ordered into silence tion owner the right to sell or trans- for saying they desire to live | fet his claim on the Negro worker. America: | This land of democracy In the North hundreds of thou- sands of Negroes are walking thi Where sixty one parasites rule | Streets “free” to starve and freeze as the government America: | far as the bosses are concerned. ‘The Emancipation Proclamation is Where the workers are sleep- * Paper emancipation. It was intend- ing no longer but see; jed as such. The tradition of Abra- Where workers will starve no {ham Lincoln as the emancipator of | Jonger but will fight and win | (As they saw their Russian | the Negro masses of America is nothing but a myth—a vicious lie finally he was driven into making | war on the Southern slave system | | because of the conflicting interests of | | the northern industrialists whose sys- | | tem of wage-slavery was menaced by | the chattel slave labor of the South, Lincoln clearly declared that he was | | concerned not with the emanciptation | | of the slaves but with the saving of | | the union for northern capitalism. “If I could save the union without freeing any slave, I would do it; if I could save it by freeing*all slaves, I | would do it; if I could save it by| | freeing come and leaving others alone, I would also do that.” | In 1861 Lincoln reprimanded Gen. | Fremont for issuing a proclamation of emancipation in Missouri, in an effort to incite revolts among the} Negro slaves. Negro workers! Smash the myth} | of Lincoln, the Emancipator! Repu- | | diate the misleaders who utilize this | | myth to betray your struggles for| | We want work! | We want bread! | Millions of you | Later, I saw him on the chain gang. | | He was dressed in the* usual barred | | suit, with his number painted on.| | Heavy chains were riveted on his| ankles. ‘They were about fifteen | inches long, so that Henry, while he | used his pick on the road could, like | { the nineteen other men on the gang, | | take a step one foot and three inches | | long. A center chain, fastened to the | other between his legs, was hooked to | his belt and kept the leg chain from | | dragging. For a year Henry worked, | sweating under the sun's hottest rays. | At night, on Sunda; nd on rainy | days, his center c as fast stened | | to. the heavy chain of another mem-| |ber of the, gang. In this way all} |of the twenty men were chained to- | |gether and kept from “mischief” MARCHING By GEORGE PASCAL. Imagine thousands of you | Millions of you Marching, marching Shouting A sea of hands A sea of shadows | A mighty voice | That will make the bosses tremble | Like the fading autumn leaves. Enough patience! Show your cynical masters that Those who create wealth cannot die of hunger, | While not working. You are not asking for charity but | Henry had been put on the gang A part of what you own | for taking something. Most of the} Of what you made with your hands; ™en, black and white, are on the | With the sweat of your brow | gang on the technical charge of va- That your bosses now posess. | rancy, Either they have no jobs, Just imagine thousands of you |or they have been framed and rail-| | roaded. The local papers take pleas- Marching, shouting We want work! We want bread! magistrate has provided some more | “free” road help for the county. | In another part of the same county | | ure in announcing the fact that aja On the Southern Gang « ft the community the people, witt © prospect of economic betterment tled back again into their old lives, They are illiterates again. One of the pupils is sentenced in the-chain: for twenty ‘years. But he prob- won't last, for a few years of gang life does a man up. ‘The main duty of a chain gang is go about the county and, repair. or make new ones. There are those where.the menlive. in cages set on wheels, and those. where they live in tents set on* the ground. ‘The tents are usually leaky ches, and when it rains the prisoners have a hard time dodging the streams of water that come in. The cages are much like those un- to two. der a circus tent where the tiger or lion paces up and down. But. the tiger has more room than the con vict. For inside the convi¢t “cage there are from eighteen to twenty s, to which the are chained at night and on In the spring and summer and Tate into the fall the convict camps aré infested with flies that breed’ in the ** open sewage pits. The vegetables~ are full of weevils and long worms; ’ The meat is never fresh, sg There is much illness, with diseases like tuberculosis and sypbillis. Ghe : ame tiib of ‘wafer is used ‘for‘several’ * men when the infrequent baths oc- ur. A doctor is 4 last resort. Often. the men are made to work when" they are sick, and I heard directly of one convict who had.been whipped with a leather strap because -he was. ill and could not work. Another fainted because of illness and was” whipped and left on the'road for fie’ flies to crawl over so’ that he might be an example to the other men work= ing on the gang. In a certain gang 4 trusty.escaped~ one day. In this group the- guard kept a couple of blood hounds, ..Be- yond the road the gang- was ;re- pairing was a field and then. a steep hill. The further side of the-hill. was eevered with thick woods: ‘The trusty, who was not chained,. ran across the field. He was down: the hill before the guard could. unlogse the hounds. ‘Though the dogs. would | undoubtedly have caught the .run- before he reached the woods, he guard followed them and shot the man dead with his gun. The lives of the prisoners are | where Henry lives there is a com- | | counted as very unimportant both: by Watch for Next | munity of poor whites. “brothers fight and. win across | utilized by the republican party and | rea} emanciptation! Negro and white the sea.) | their Negro lackeys to betray the Ne- | workers! Support the struggle for They live in | the guards and by those who. make- ae gro masses into one of the camps of | national liberation of the Negro Saturd tumble-down houses and cabins. None | the laws that put the prisoners-where a ag their enemies. ay of the grown people can read andj tiiey are. The guards are paid small {A Story for Children) By HELEN KAY. father’s not old, and so Johnie wer h a-black eye and a blood; didn’t cry, no indeed 2 a boy for that. An get home as soon as He sure hoped | and his whole gang| What terrible people scabs. they were. Imagine, when a strike is called and all the workers go out of the mines hated in protest, to fight for Better condi-.| tions, these people go into the mines | to work for the bosses. They go in| to break the workers’ strike! <« his father if he was | wouldn’t stand for anyone, not even , his own father, see him cry. ans ep the down amid some old ast The shame of it—his own fathe scab.’ How could he ever face | By WALKER. | Sang again? How could he ever look into any honest strikers’ eyes when | he knew that his father was a rat— Where the word SOVIET will) soon be added. | ad of China, Russia, Poland, Italy, apan, Germany and Mexico. Maxim Gorky Writes to the Red Army |to the Abolition movement. OMING SOON | held and Abraham Lincoln gave no support He up- supported the Fugitive | ing abolitionist sentiment among the workers of the North, And when, masses, for the right of the Negro | majorities of the South to determine | and control their own form of gov- ernment! Smash the system of land } the Negro and white workers .and small farmers who work it! A letter will appear from a stu- | dent of Electrical Institute, de- | scribing the life of a students’ com- from Esperanto by the New York Esperanto group. ' Dear ,Comrades? | I thank you for your letter, which is extremely valuable, and not onl: ‘or me. I am naturally proud that the warriors’ of’ the Red Army look on me, a literary man, as “one of ours as @ comrade, but your letter has in a: cultural revolutionary sense. How do I'arrive at this? Because never before was there an army which’ would say to a revolu- tionist “you are our friend;” because the fighters in the Soviet Red Army, | while learning to use a gun, at the same time recognize the power of revolutionary words, and hence, wish to learn’ to: use words just as they use their ‘own weapons. Comrades, in, this howl we can sense the despair created by the complete haustion of that energy which made | it possible for the bourgeoisie to en- ‘ave and plunder the workers of the whole world. They see that among their leaders there are many bold adventurers, but not a single big or- | another significance more important ganizer, that the numerous dictators are nevertheless not Napoleons, that in their middle class world, there are no organizing ideas, and could not be. But the organizing idea which en- velopes you, comrades, is growing, developing, enflaming the working people of the whole world with revo- lutionary feeling, impressing the workers and peasants of ali lands with the necessity of travelling along ual perversity is spreading, the fam- ily, the “basis of the State,” is de- clining, the swindlers are becoming ever more bold. Banks are crash- ing. A newspaper in Paris recently stated that 181 bankers have been ar- rested and 35 would be tried. In the U.S.A. banks are crashing nearly every day, holdups are discovered, and the city of Chicago, with its millions of inhabitants is in the power of bandits. And with every passing month our Five-Year Plan is growing more and more threatening for the bourgeois world, and the inevitability of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat of all the world is growing more and more fearsome for the middle class sub- urbanites. The head of the church, Hungary, Count Bethlen, has pre- pared a Five-Year Plan for the econ- | omic recovery of Hungary The Buda- pest papers state that the Plan in- cludes the industrialization of agri- culture and the mechanical prepara- tion of soda.” This minister imagines that in or- der to carry out a five-year plan, it will be sufficient merely to wish it. but the free creative energy of the workers is not necessary. Thus the bourgeous leaders are producing an- ecdotes while the workers of the Soviet Union are creating new his- tory. What shall I wish for you, com- rades, in the 14th year of creative work. for the construction of a new world and the third year of the Five | men and one woman from this com- write. During a period of about three | wages and must work from twelve.to years the chain gang drafted four | thirteen hours a day. In some places | their duties have been lightened,, Yet, | they are still paid a miserable wage, munity. The woman had two chil- a scab! My fath E 8 | Slave Laws by which escaped slaves| monopoly with its share crop- ‘ ‘ a4 oe 4 Joh Ee "ie i He ran and tan, until he betes bee More revolutionary stories, each | were returned to their “owners.” He | per and tenant farmer: slavery! De- mune and thelr methods of study | dren, both of tiene crippled trom tn jand most of them apparently came eee a deserted part of town, and thes — .. ijtustrated, of the United States resisted as long as he could the grow-| mand that the land be secured to| 294 work, received and translated | fantile paralysis. ree te Sete cee a ee ee One winter when night school was | themselves. started in this community a group} Many prisoners try to escape. ‘They of sad, bent adults came from their | know the attempt may mean death... cabins every night for six weeks to) But they prefer to make an abortive learn how to write théir names and | attempt at life.than to exist under to “figure.” The night school was'the conditions that are prevalent ix the effort of one person and when hethe prisons and chain gangs. z THE MILLS ond all te ther boss in) filthy hat? Beeanse you the fighters of the|Lenin nts OM PY Viadlmit| petieving in the “merciful god—|Year Plan? First of all T wish for ng, had decide at they would; Johnie decided that he wouldn’t go 4 Christ” repeats his fanatical call for | good spirits. ‘Ther it all the scabs and their children. | neine at all, ever. He'd run away. page hat wt: Aopeemepongterae The middle class suburbanites are | an attack on the Soviet Union. But| which pina be ea Je ae YETTA RETURNS TO would try to convince them | Finally, he fell asleep amid the quiet . i iespondent and despairing, they are} the Five-Year Plan, at which the 7 > quiet | by people like yourselves, workers and | © Rene ane Senet aes fe ergy of the working class, organized IN. i of how wrong they were to work with | of the ashcans. : opposed by the conviction of helpless-| bourgeois economists laughed, the| by the Party of Lenin. This was un- By BROWN. my boy is sick in bed, please let mr the boss and break the workers’ strike. Now what could be worse than to have his own father a scab! His own father, why it was impossible! He came into his house and called at the top of his voice, “Where’s pa, where's pa?” “Why, Johnie,” exclaimed his moth- er, “look at your face, you're all bloody!” Johnie’s mother immediately pulled him over to the sink to scrub his face with some good clean soap and water. Johnie, however, struggles and pulled and tugged. “Ma, where’s pa? I ‘wanna see pa, where is he?” Just then Johnie’s father came into the little house. He was & tall, husky man, with haggard features and large circles under his eyes, “Pa,” began Johnie, standing before his father on his two little sturdy legs with an accusing look in his eyes, “did you go into the mines to work today?” “Yes,” replied his father. Jonnie’s little fists clenched, to think of it, his father went into the mines. His own father who had taught him to hate a scab as the rot- tenest kind of person was a—was a scab himself. ‘Tears came to his eyes. Johnie could stand a beating without a whisper. He could stand a bloody nose and a black eye, but to have his own father whom he loved so much be a scab, that was the last straw. “Pop, are you really a SCAB?” he @sked irpa small, unbelieving voice, In the meantime, Johnie’s father was out looking for him, and brought. him home still sleeping. Johnie was undressed and put to bed. The next morning Johnie awoke, and thought it perfectly natural to be in bed, but he reminded himself that he had run away last night. Then with a shock he remembered that his father was a scab—. He jumped out of bed hurriedly and started to dress. He looked up and there beside him was his father. His father whispered to him, “Johnie, you can keep @ eehrans can’t you?” Johnie answered, “Yes.” “Well, boy, I go to work and it does look as though I’m a scab, ‘but I'm not, son. I was sent into the mines by the new union to get the other fellows out. To ‘make them join our new union. You. see? No one must know about this—You must peasants, deceived by the master class, blinded by false ideas, and that, against people who are going to their deaths in order to fasten the power ness, and in their midst there is an ever growing number of people who live according to the slogan of taking no thought for the morrow. Crime is of the masters more fimly on them; you—fighting comrades, will have to use also the ‘weapons ‘of words, and convert your unwilling enemies into . “Théir’s not to reason why,” say the capitalist generals. Probably they still think so. But we have plenty of reason to think that the soldiers in capitalist armies are even now be- ginning to “reason why,” and that the time is not far distant when these soldiers will also talk in the language of the Red Army men. The soldiers of European ‘armies are frequently sent against the unemployed, and ‘they are beginning to understand that, by serving in an army which defends the bourgeoisie from being crushed by the unemployed—from the “internal enemy”—they are increasing the num- increasing, suicides are growing, sex- keep {t very quiet. It must remain a Secret between you an’ me only.” Johnie promised this and he kept his promise, He shook hands with his father and they both looked each other squarely in the eye. It was awfully hard for Johnie to keep his promise, especially when he was called a scab's boy by the gang. They had kicked him out, because | they had thought that he really was a scab's child. But Johnie would hold his head high! He knew that his father wasn’t a scab. He knew that his father was working for the miners’ new union, and for this reason, he walked with his head high in the air. ~ould 2 ky himself no] ‘A few days later, the shift his father | who told—it was Johnie's father. He| out of the house! worked in came out on strike. They | told tt ‘ather could reply. et un ae Seen ber of unemployed. ‘The business depression is increas- ing, unemployment is growing. ‘The New Year message of the politcial “leaders” of the bourgeoisie sounded thoughts flowed together into one unanimous howl: depression, depres- sion, and no way out to be seen. the other workers for better condi- tions, * Five-Year Plan is beginning to allure even the bourgeoisie. Here is a cut- ting from the Italian newspaper “Cor- riera dela Siera” on January 6, 1931: “The President of the Cabinet of questionably proved by thirteen years of work, the courage and the success IESDAY, Yetta Sacker was evicted from her rooms at 74 Suffolk Street. After fighting with stay.” The landlérd’s agent "told" thie court how thé unemployed council defied the marshall. and ‘phe “Mrs. of which were stupendous, the police the unemployed council To the young Red Army literateurs I wish that they should not tire of learning. To, learn all the time, to know everything! The more you know, the stronger. you’ become. And you must Johnie knew that it was his father’s work, and he walked with a lofty stride—but’ he’ kept his secret. No one ever’knew until after the strike was over—and then it wasn’t Johnie ‘to the gang so'that they would,’ - lmsrene an? | coming the. masters of their- own | remember very firmly that in future | battles, the Red warriors must not ‘only act with bullets, bayonets and swords, but with their revolutionary proletarian. words,—the words of the workers who have succeeded in be- ecuntry and from day to day em- bellish it with the labor of free peo- ple. Forward comrades, to the great work of building the first fortress of Socialism in the world. Long live the working class, its Party, its Red Army —long live the Young Communist In- ternational! Long live the Five-Year Plan, the audacious plan which is possible only for the forces of collective heroes! January 9, 1931,, - Maxim Gorky. WEEW “Believe It Or Not,” a flop. house story by an unemployed worker in Pontiac, Michigan; “The Shock Brigade,” a story from Russia; “Closing Exercises,” a story from Mexico by Albert Morales, illus- trated by Paul; “Literature for of downtown New York put her back in again. But the landlord wasn’t through. It made no difference.to him that Yetta Sacker is 53 years old and has'| one boy too sick to work and the others unable to find a job. It made no difference to him or to the court that her husband died 12 years ago and ever since then she has been slaving in restaurants, shops, washing floors for bosses’ wives. It doesn't count with the bosses and their courts that she is exhausted and worn out with the hard life she has had. ‘A summons was served on her shy- way to appear in the Essex Market Court. There she pleaded with tne magistrate. “I have no place to go, Sacker back in her rooms.°“*This must stop,” shouted the: magistrate, “you're going out of there, you “Hear.” Mrs. Sacker stood thereat *the magistrate’s bench a small, worn, ‘old woman, buffeted and beaten by life under the bosses’ civilization, crying and pleading for herself and her chtl- dren. But such things don’t cqunt with the magistrate. What counts is: if you're a landlord you get what, you want, if you’re a worker. onset ehegan out. “TM give you until the neventh and if you're not out by, then 1’) send you to jail.” “But judge, but judge,” Yetta Sacker tried to plead “Next case” said the magistrate; and he motioned to the ettendante to pw her out, ‘INCE January, a new literary monthly, “le Nouvel Age” is ap- pearing in France, published by the famous Georges Valois, edited by Henri Boudeille. Among the workers on this journal, there is published the name of Comrade Bela Illech, the general secretary of the Interna- tional Association of Revolutionary Writers, The secretariat of the TARW an- nounces definitely that Comrade Bela Children,” by Harry Alan Potam- kin; ‘book review, by N. Sparks; cartoons and other features in next week's * Saturday Feature | Section. Ilech had never any connection with the journal “Nouvel Age,” never had any intention to’¢ollaborate with this Journal arid never gave his permission for his name ‘to be used in connec- td with it, Comrade a ‘has cent ANOTHER FORGERY IS BLASTED: a telegram to the Communist news paper of France, “Humanite” protest ing against this insinuation, ‘The Secretariat fo the IARW: look on the inclusion of his-name {n-th list of collaborators of the journal’ a a new forgery of the bourgeois pres (see the recent case of a forgedcin terview with Upton Sinclear); havin the purpose of confusing the radical ly minded petty bourgeois intel gentsia of the West regarding-the ret ideological tendencies of this journa Secretariat of the Intérnatidnaf. Asse clation of Revolutionary Writers. vite r, Gostadat ante |namdetate rs nee “ps