The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 6, 1931, Page 4

it ll Page Four 18th N. Y. Telephone Algonquin 7956-7. Cable ae Published by the Comprodaily Publishing Co., Inc. daily except Sunday, at 50 East et, New York City. N, Address and mail all checks to the Daily Worker, 60 Hast 15th Street, New York, N. Y. “DAIWORK.” Party USA ed wey ‘ 1 By: mail every where: One year, *, ef Manhatiqn SUBSCRIPTION RATES! $6; six months, $3; two months, $1; excepting Boroughs and Bronx, New York Ctiy. Foreign; one year, $8: six months, $4.50. ¢ io a\8 ONE YEAR OF STRUGGLE OF WE WON'T STOP THE UNEMPLOYED By EARL BROWDER world was registered in the tremendous demon- strations of 1,250,000 workers in the cities and towns of the United States coming into the streets in response to the call of the Commu- nist Party and revolutionary trade unions. these organizational plans and put them into | , life. NE year ago, on March 6, 1930, unemploy- | ment as the main issue before the capitalist | That date marked the beginning of mass | struggle against unemployment. Now a year has passed, a year full of struggles, of achieve- ments and mistakes, from which is emerging a well-defined mass movement, which knows what it wants and is learning rapidly how to | fight for {t. Organized mass activity becomes more and more the characteristic activity of the unemployed movement. perficial examination can easily make a 6 of last year. Never before nor ‘e been such masses on the streets ide demonstration. Unemploy- this year, February 25, brought out c 400,000 workers, one-third the number of a year ago. But we must look beneath the surface, examine the realities, and judge the y, the fighting power of the movement examination must, with all allowance for serious weaknesses in the movement, reg- ister a decisive advance in the year. Program of the Unemployed Movement Progress is shown, first of all, in the devel- opment of the program. The first stage was the closing months of 1929, and the first tks of 1930 until March 6, when our mass r ds for unemployment insurance, 4 the expense of the bosses and administered by the yw that the movement has declined | n of “Work or Wages” and the basic de- | workers, with unity of employed and unem- | ployed through the establishment of Unem- ployed Couhcils, was broadcast through millions of leaflets and the sale of 40,000 pamphlets con- taining an analysis of the causes of unemploy- ment and how to fight. As the Councils grew and developed in fights, | the general slogan was concretized in the Work- ers Unemployment Insurance Bill, which pro- posed a definite legislative act embodying, the principles of our program, This was broadcast in millions of copies. With the approach of winter, our program took'on more and more practical and immedi- ate character. Concrete demands upon the city governments, demanding the appropriation of certain revenues for immediate relief. This yras most sharply brought forward on October 16, by the delegation to the New York City budget commission, which resulted in an im- mediate appropriation of a million dollars. ‘The fight against war was closely linked up with the unemployment movement, with the slogan, “Not one cent for war, all funds for the unemployed.” ° Struggle against the eviction of unemployed workers from their homes devéloped on a mass scale, with organized resistance to evictions. This was so effective that in many cities, eviction of the unemployed was largely checked. And now, as we enter the second year of struggle against unemployment, the Councils, faced with the deepening of the crisis and the absolute refusal of the capitalist governmental prgans to do anything effective for relief of the starving, are beginning to take up the direct supply of food through their own activity, for the most desperate cases. The exposure of the hideous atrocities of bourgeois charity is being developed more and more, and millions of work- ers are disillusioned’ with the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and the various “‘citizens’ com- mittees.” Today our program is sharp and clear, and millions of workers know it and fight for it. ‘This is substantial progress. The weaknesses lay in the length of time necessary to develop the latest concrete measures. Organization of the Struggle Weakest of all phases of the movement has been its organization. General uniform meth- ods were worked out, first in the National Con- ference in New York in March, 1930, with three hundred delegates from all over the country, and later, in Chicago, on July 4, when 1,300 delegates came together in a National Conven- tion of the Unemployed Councils. The plans worked out were generally correct, and have had to be modified very little, but it took a long time to learn how to get the tens and hundreds of thousands of active workers to really take up | of the In the last few months there has been a de- cided advance in organization. This has been especially the case since the beginning of the Hunger Marches throughout the country during the winter. This form of organization of the struggle put new life into the Councils. To- gether with the struggle against evictions, it proved the most effective means of starting that process of mass organization whereby the diffuse and scattered masses begin to crystal- ize into powerful bodies. One of the most effective weapons has been the signature campaign, but its use is still only in a primitive stage. Although we gathered more than a half million individual signatures, | and more than that of collective endorsements for our Insurance Bill, this was not sufficiently used to build up neighborhood Councils, building committees, signature-collection committees, ete. Gradually, out of the many forms of activity and struggle, the Unemployment Councils are emerging as real, solid, organized bodies, Still entirely inadequate, still in their first stages, still comparatively weak — yet, compared with those of a year ago, they show a decisive ad- vance. The movement is on a higher level of organization. Our job is now to carry it much higher still. Into the Legislative Halls From its first actions, which were formless, almost spontaneous gatherings at street corners | and in squares, at the mercy of the vicious at- tacks of the police, the Unemployment Councils more and more have learned how to register their demands with the ruling class and before the masses. Into the legislative halls have gone, in the last months, the elected committees | masses who marched in the streets. Marching masses poss greater striking power than those who aimlessly gather around a few | speakers! In the first entrances gained to city halls, by local demonstrations of the unemployed, the committees were often confused by the brazen demagogy of the capitalist politicians, who find a harmonious blending of clubs and tear gas | with honeyed words their most effective weap- on against the unemployed. Here in these visits to city hall and state | legislature, the workers have been getting Ies- sons in revolutionary parliamentary action which are of the most profound importance. In scores of city halls, in-a half-dozen: state legislatures, and in the National Capitol. itself, the unem- ployment council delegations haye had their | skulls assaulted with police clubs and theif minds ,assaulted. with the déemagogy of the “progréssive” politicians. And they have learned to resist both of these capitalist Weapons ef- fectively. A -histori¢ lesson! Now to the Next Phase of Struggle Starvation is gruwing. Unemployment insur- ance is denied by the capitalists. Eyen tle miserable charity is steadily dwindling. More and more desperate grow the conditions of mil- lions of workers and their families. What next? ‘The next stage of the fight is arrived at when the masses, through their own organized ac- tivity, begin to feed themselves. ‘There is no sharp dividing line between this and our former slogans and methods of strug- gle, which retain their validity. But-the old measures must be supplemented by the direct organization, through the Unemployment Coun- | cils, of the collection and: distribution of food for the most desperate cases of starvation; par- ticularly where it involved families with chil- dren. Such activities, already spontaneously begun in dozens of cities, must be brought un- der the control of conscious planning and di- rection. ‘Two most serious dangers must now be guard- ed against in these new phases of work. First of all, the danger of the Unemployment Coun~- cils being allowed to degenerate from organs of struggle into opportunist appendages to capi- talist charity, cringing before the “Ladies Boun- tiful” and humbly thanking them for their mercy. The slightest step in such a direction means death to the Unemployment Movement. Second, is the danger of adventurist tactics, of hot-blooded groups of youngsters running too | far ahead of the mass movement, and engaging in isolated actions of food seizures which are not approved by the masses, Both these dan~ gers must be consciously guarded against. We will discuss in more detail the ways and means whereby this is to be done in another article. Coal Miners Hard Hit in 1930 By ANNA ROCHESTER (Author of Labor and Coal) NE worker out of seven employed in American coal mines in 1929 was thrown out of the industry during 1930. Another 95,000 jobless mine workers were added to the 200,000 who had been displaced from 1923 to 1929. ‘Faced with a drop in coal consumption that yulled the total output of bituminous 14 per cent and the output of anthracite 5 per cent below the 1929 figures, the coal operators sharp- ened their competitive weapons and passed the chief cost of the struggle on to the workers in unemployment and increased speed-up and hazard for those who are still in the mines. World crisis in industry has merely intensi- fied the chronic crisis of coal. The.end is not yet in sight. Production was declining through- out 1930 and has been lower week by week in 1931 than in the later months of 1930. Bitu- minous producers expect increased competition from the newly extended pipe lines for natural gas. Anthracite is feverishly cutting costs in its battle with fuel oil. ‘Just how the burden of the struggle is thrown on to the working class appears in recent summaries of the coal indus- try, for. 1930. New types of mechanical loaders were launched and additional machines were installed, according to Coal Age. But also “operators have learned the lesson that successful mechaniza- tion does not stop with the installation of equip- ment for loading coal. but it means other neces- sery improvements below and above ground.” In other words, the speed-up of mechanical loaders driving the miners at the working face is spreading more and more to include haulage mechanical cleaning plants. Scores of such sur- face plants were opened or contracted for during 1930. Competitioh as to quality of coal prepara- tion going along with the drastic reduction in total market has made more furious the battle among th? operators. It increases the desperate irregularity of employment at the weaker mines. It means many permanent shut-downs. Along with the speed-up for some and unem- ployment for others has gone a fresh attack on wages. Payroll figures compiled in the Monthly Labor Review for some 1,300 selected bituminous mines showed average earnings of $21.65 dur- ing a week in November, 1930, as against. $26.15 @ year earlier. Earnings in these mines are above the average for the industry as a whole. Wage cutting has met with strong resistance in local ‘strikes at many bituminous mines. Now Coal Age reports that more companies have been added to the list of those driving to break the solidarity of the workers—and to speed them up on the job—by some system of bonus or “incentive” wages. In the anthracite, the new giant breaker at Locust Summit (Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Co.) is only the largest of several new scattered breakers—and their workers. At least 10 “high cost” mines have been closed in the northern anthracite field. At one mine—and possibly more—this has meant abandonment of @ company ‘village, closing down the company store and leaving workers and their, families not only jobless but isolated and stranded. Anthracite miners demand division. of work among the various collieries but the whole pres- sure of capitalism is against them. The year | The first of these is fear of the masses. FIGHTING! et) et E VACATIO Witt BE BACK NEXT DECEMBER Sd # WoRKER oS PARTY LIFE Conducted by the Organization Department of the Central Commitice, Communist Party, U.S.A. The Basic Contradictions in Our Work By N. SPARKS. | ou can safély say that three-quarters of our organizational difficulties at the present time come from two basic contradictions in our work. How can a Communist Party, whose sole strength and reservoir of power lies in the masses, whose sole reason for existence lies in the struggle of the masses—how can such a Party progress if it suffers from fear of the masses in its mass organizational work? The whole political line of our Party is directed toward drawing in wider and wider strata of the masses into the struggle. “Buf if, as we draw them in, we are afraid to let them develop their own initiative, afraid to advance them to positions of leader- ship, then it is clear that we are depriving our- selves of the organizational benefits of our mass work. We shall not mention here the political errors that flow from fear of the masses, but shall stick only to the organizational side. Fear of the masses is also the greatest hindrance to our overcoming such pressing problems as the short- age of functionaries, and the elimination of bureaucracy. Where can new cadres be obtained except from the most militant. elements of the working class? And how can they be made into leaders unless we take a chance on them, and give them rsponsibility and training? So too with bureaucracy. A bureaucrat is one who re- fuses to allow collective work and collective lead- | ership, who refuses to develop workers to take part in the leadership. In this way he helps to strangle the work that he is supposed to be de- veloping, and largely because he is afraid of the masses. ‘The second contradiction is that we are a Communist Party, but trying to work through non-Communist organizational forms. The na- tural form of organization for a Communist Party is the shop nucleus. A Communist Party's greatest aim is to secure the leadership of the workers in the shops, the greatest part of its agitation and propaganda is directed towards the workers in the shops, the entire success of its work depends upon the extent to which it is rooted in. the shops. And yet the great ma- jority of our Party membership are still in street nuclei. A large part of our difficulties in our work at the present *time are due to our weak connection with the shops. It is clear that our Communist political line would have infinitely greater results if it were carried out through Communist organizational forms—shop nuclei. How are these two contradictions to be solved? Fear of the masses can be overcome only by the experience and example of a determined and patient policy of promoting the initiative and leadership of the workers themselves in our or- ganizations. In several districts, we can already point to the new life and vitality of the organ- ization, resulting from the carrying out of such @ policy. What we must do is to apply this policy much more widely and generally, to make it the only possible policy. The problem of establishing our Party on a 152,000 in 1929 and 165,000 in 1926-27. In bitu- minous’ mining they estimate that the number of workers dropped from 503,000 in 1929 to about 431,000 in 1930. Hazards, meantime, have increased. The to- tal number of fatal accidents in coal mining dropped from 2,187 in 1929 to 2,014 in 1930. But 8 per cent fewer men were killed only because 14 per cent fewer were at work. When exact employment figures are available they will show a clear increase in fatality rate. To meet this situation in the industry, the The Coming Section Conventions By I. AMTER (New York) pe coming section cohventions must be an event in the life 6f évery unit of the Party. The conventions ate not merely for electing new section committees. ‘They will be the occasion for reviewing the work not Only, of the sections, hut of every unit. Thes¢ conventions, however, . must make notian ordinary review because the time of convention has tomé. On the contrary, a new turn in the methods of Patty work has been made. The section membérship knowing what this turn means in thé abstract must. judge whether they themsélves under the section and unit leadership have made this turn, and if, not, what the reasons are. i In most cases the turn has not been made, partly from inability, partly from inertia —in- ability because the leadership does not yet un- derstand, partly because it ideologically and or- ganizationally is unable to make the turn. To overcome this and to help the section commit- tees, the District Committees have assigned Dis- trict representatives, but even this does'nof’ suf~ fice and new steps ‘must be taken. In the light of our new tasks and new methods of work, the work of the section committee and unit buto' must be analyzed and passed upon. Many problems must be raised and answered. and the answers will indicate whether the Party units and sections are meeting these problems ‘or approaching them in the spirit of the new turn, Among the problems which must be discusses by the units and sections are: 1, Have you a plan of work? 2. Have you periodically and regularly checked. up on the plan, registered the successes, studied. the reasons, analyzed the shortcomings and cor-., rected them? 3.° Is the unit meeting a continuation of old practices— payments, collections, etc., disputes over assignments? Or is it a meeting intelligent- ly and firmly led by the unit buro, with a pre- pared order of business, with a laying out, of the work for the week, with assignments proper- _ ly made, so that the remainder of the meeting ating, leaflets distributed, Daily aVorker, Labor Unity,’ and other literature sold, contacts made and followed up, etc.? 6. Are the comrades assigned to unemployed . work checked up? Are those assigned to the trade unions and leagues and other mass organizations checked up? ‘ 7. Is the work of the comradés assigned to building house committees and tenants leagues controlled and checked up? " 8. Has your unit succeeded in building a shop committee, drawing the workers into the Trade —_—— basis of shop nucle!'s much harder to solve, or-: -nuclei, it is more important than ever that our street nuclei should function as efficiently as ' possible. “It is the task of the street nuclei them- : i ‘the workers ganizationally. First, we must always keep this. Union Unity League? 9. Have you brought into the unit workers from the shops in which the members of the unit are working? 10. Have you kept in the Party and activized the new members? 11. How many Negroes have you brought into the Party? ’ 12. Does the unit buro really lead thé unit? 13. Is the unit a political factor in the life of its territory. carrying on work on local issués? 14. Has the section committee connection with your unit only by means of communications or does a section representative attend the meeting of the unit buro or unit to help in its work— to help it make the turn? These and other important questions must be discused. The leadership of the unit buro must be discussed and the best proletarian elements be elected to the new buro. Delegates will be elected to the section con- ventions. ‘The unit members who are active in the work of the Party and especially the real proletarian members upon whom rests the devel- opment of the Party, must be the delegates to the section conventions. ‘The section conyentions must review the work not alone from’ the standpoint of progress and shortcomings, but especially from the viewpoint of whether under the leadership of the section committee the ‘Party has established itself as the political’ leader of the workers in the sec- tion—ideologically.and organizationally. How is this to be judged? This is to be judged: 1. :4y va? functioning unemployed councils in the sections and the guidance given them by ‘the section committee through funtioning Party fractions. 2. By penetration’ of the shops on which the section is concentrating—by check-up of the work, ‘by securing contacts, building grievance or shop committees. 3. By the establishment of functioning tenants “leagues. 4. By raising local issues and mobilizing and organizing the workers around these issues. 5. By determining what leadership the Party has in your section and the leadership of mem- bers of the section committee among the work- ers of the section. 6. By the number of new members, espe- cially Negroes, who have been brought’ into and kept in the Party. ‘The degree to which the new turn has been made will be apparent in the answer to those questions. ‘Thus the unit discussions and elections and the section conventions will indicate in how far the turn to new methods of work has been made —whether the section and unit are Bolshevizing themselves, whether theory and practice are be- ing combined. ‘The conventions occur at a time when objec- tive conditions make possible the rapid growth of the Party. Bolshevik self-criticism, correc- tion of shortcomings, election of new proletarian leadership, laying out! of work on a planned basis, systematic check-up—these are a few of the factors that will make the section conven- tions, preceded by thorough unit discussions, an important event in the life of the Party. Workers! Join the Party of >. + Your t Class! Comnfunist Party 0. 8. A. P.O; Box 87 Station D, Please send me more information on the Cum- NMG, 1. .seesossesenedesccsseccssesasessoesees Address . State ... oo By JORGE A Demand We Support While the eapitalist press always calls all jobless workers in the Unemployed Councils “Communists,” we were enlightened some time” ago by a couple of workers from a certain Coun cil in New York, coming in to ask us if we would please do something to see~that the Co:amunists give scme real attention to the Councils and the way they are run. When workers who are not members of the Party come around kicking because the Comes munists are not controlling their organization, it looks like a sick thing for us, and we can't get out of it by saying that the capitalist press calss the Councils “Communist organizations.” Furthermore, these non-Party workers were most sore about their complaint that the Party. did not seem to care a hoot about what kind of education the unemployed ‘were getting. They said that some misplaced Salvation Army spoute er who peddles the panhandling philosophy of. social degeneracy of the I. B. W. A. was spout~ ing full blast in the Unemployed Councils and the few Communists in sight not only did not stop it, but one supposed Communist was speak-, ing I. B. W. A. ideas to workers from an I. B. W. A. soap-box. Before we got to write up the above charges, the workers came in again with the sorrowful tale that the I. B. W. A. spouter had gotten away with $40 — and all because the Party members were not on the job doing their duty; or <oing it only in a superficial and merely formal way. Why should these things happen? The Wurst Comes To Worst While there are more than 5,000,000 jobless in Germany, ready to eat anything edible, the following tale greeted our eye in the New. York Post cable news from Berlin. It seems that in 1770 a law was decreed. that preachers be sypplied with boloney by the-citi~ zens of Mecklenburg. And they were for a century or so, until somebody forgot it. But in 1928 a preacher demanded his sausages: The citizens demurred,-but the preacher. in- sisted that the law be obeyed and the courts so ordered. So 529 pounds were delivered, but the preacher was very finicky and sdid it was not up to the quality required by the deity. A second delivery met the same pecksniffian rejection. The preacher went to cour again and the government is settling it with a trial by ‘sum- moning all the boloney experts of Germany to satisfy the holy one’s taste in sausage. ‘ Who could be a better expert on boloney than a preacher we don’t know. But we think that on an even swap, boloney for boloney, the church membe-s were getting the “wurst” of it. They thdught s6 tod, it seems, because they are quit- ting the church, disillusioned by the materialist demands of the holy father. Forced Labor a La France” A reader gives us the following gentle reminder that sailors are about as nearly slaves on \all ships sailing under any flag but the Red. Flag; as any worker can be. as In order to get their boats out to sea, the French Line steamship company has called in the state (marine) militia and forced the sea* men, under machine guns and rifles, back their posts and the boat is shoved off, finally, forcing the sedmen back to work. The sailors toil under inconceivable conditions, catering to loitering parasites. “The incident of the ‘Paris,’ one of the French Line’s boats, is in point: A strike occurred be- fore the boat sailed from France, and the boat got away only after delay, and then caught fire, the company claiming it was sabotage. The point is that the seamen were forced to man the ship under military compulsion against their will—L. K.” All Right, Let’s Go! We regret that revolutionary emulation, rin alry, competition, or what you will, has had-tit= tle expression in this country. mite While the Soviet workers by. millions are in- spired to accomplish concrete tasks by emulatién in socialist construction, our equally important tasks of struggling against capitalism too much lack the pep of rank and file initiative, and revolutionary rivalry is to be found-only inthe cracks and corners. Therefore, we are cheered by the following letter which in its small way is an important concrete example of worker initiative in* setting things in motion: * “That article you published on the front page on the 23rd of February, about the letters bee tween two newspapers in Arkansas and Idalto, in reference to the Red Cross and its beastly hypocrisy of cash and carry, impressed me as a solar plexus blow. i “I do not see how it can fail to move any réad: er, especially farmers in the area in questi It landed with a thud in my case.. Now, I pro- pose to be the first contributor to a fund te publish this article in leaflet form for distri- bution in the drouth district and elsewhere. ~ “In the name of my three kiddies, I send yout} two dollars, which according to the ‘Red’ Cross, will feed almost two hundred children for one| week. Now, then, all you fathers and mothers} of children, help smash the slimy tool of capt- talism and show it up for what it really is. Fol: low me up with your contributions. — Yot b 7h This New Yorker wants to start something. He 7-2ls an urge to enlighten and aid the starv- ing toilers of the farms. The millions of lit farmer kiddies, whose lives are being. b! and whose bodies and minds are stunted by capi: talism, are here met by the city wake € with revolutionary fraternity practically express: ed in showing their parents how to fight capi: tallsm, and why. aida: abou' ‘We asked the proper Party committee it, and met the response: e “Pine! The two dollars will be used to begir setting the type for the leaflet, which will cos about $1.59 per thousand. It must be distri | uted free to the farmer yictoms of capitalisn since they cannot pay for them. And let’s'se how many workers will match the first contrib utor in the spirit of emulation.” © © velit it to the Daily Worker, with aime {f this):Ner