The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 14, 1931, Page 3

wAlis Wow, loi Oni, SArUnvAL, MARCH 14, 1931 PHILADELPHIA UNEMPLOYED FOIL ORGANIZE NEIGHBORS TO BLOCK CONSTABLE; FORM A BLOCK GROUP Landlord Had Lien On Woman’s Furniture for| Back Rent, Wanted to Sell It Workers! Join the South Philadelphia Unem- ployed Council at 1208 Tasker Street Philadelphia, Pa. Last week nptice of an eviction was brought up at the meeting of the Unemployed Council by Mrs. Randolph, who had received it. It stated that 6i Monday, March 9, her furniture would be sold for back rent.. We immediately went to her) neighborhood, going door to door, rallying the workes to her} defense. The response was so good that we immediately called] them to her house, where we had a good meeting. | On Saturday, March 7,6 p.m., we held a meeting on the! corner of her block. In spite of the squad of police, the workers GIRLS SPEED UP. 2ie%."saes tes.” IN CHICAGO HAT STYLE FACTORY This morning, Monday, March 9, Girls Forced to -Lose @ good sized crew from the S. Phil- adelphia Unemployed Council came down to the house. Mrs, Randolph was very sick and worried. She in- formed us that the constable had been there twice in succession since our open air meeting and she was sure he would be there today. After reassuring her that we would stand Half of Their Pay---| by her and defend her, we went ene out to find a squad of cops parked Chicago, Til. at her door. We quickly bolted the Daily Worker:— door behind us, awaiting some ac- tion. There was no disturbance. The I would ike to tell you of the mis- te > neighbors of the block were watch- erable conditions at the “supposed” exclusive millinery wholesalers “Gages,” located at 18 South Michi- gan Avenue. So far this-season-I have not been able to reach the $15.00 mark altho I have put in as much as fifteen hours a day without.the least bit of exaggeration The speed-up is terrific, the discrimination is clearly shown, not by the bosses themselves but by those who are working for a living 4s we are, who have been given ® Uttle authority and try to use their ful and determined. The gathering swelled in numbers. Everybody was beginning to feel relieved and confident that the constable would not come. Perhaps, they said, the leaflets we had distributed had seared him, Organize Block Coyncil One of the neighbors invited us into her house and permitted us to call in the neighbors to a meeting where we promptly formed a block Council. Just before the meeting adjourned the committee at the door of the house saw an elegant machine stop at the house. It was the constable! The huge sign hanging on the wall “Fight Evictions! Join the Unem- ployed Council” infuriated him. He made a gesture as if to tear it off... looked around and saw the crowd of workers suddenly swell as the meet- ing let out. He changed his mind and the sign remained.~ He tried “| several times to get into the house, but the committee informed him that he couldn't get in, that he imew ‘damn well the woman was sick, and ‘that he'd hetter beat it. His appeal to the cops was immediately an- swered. But the cops were unable to disperse the crowd. The constable claimed he didn’t intend to put her out, but when the cops demanded that he take & H d é here te organize us, and I am sure themselves of this slavery by fight=- ing. —Millinery Worker.”~” action as he had intended to, or move on—because the crowd re- fused to budge—several members of the council clearly heard his an- swer. “I think I'd better not—too many People—too much excitement—and most of the girls are ready to rid. |~anyway I came too late.” ’ It’s clear that this dirty agent of rthe landlord would have taken her furniture in spite of the woman’s condition, if the Unemployed Coun- cil had not been on the job. ‘We must continue to be on the job TEACHER BEATS ~ and to gain the support of many more workers and neighborhoods. Join in the fight against evictions! It’s your fight! Come to the meetings of the Un- ployed Council, 1208 Tasker Street, every Tuesday and Thursday, 2 p.m. HUNGRY CHILD’ Jail Father When He Protests a (By a Worker Correspondent) ~ = METAL WORKERS \MEET IN CHICAGO bit in the mouth by the school princ- ‘pal and put in jail where he i awiits trial. The trouble began when og ee ee in tie eee! eon wit etree |> Pace On Opening \ . i hag ree yee en " Night, Mar. 21 EHICAGO, March 13—Metal work- piled “discipline”, “ices ers from towns and cities in and It later developed that the little| around Chicago coming as delegates boy had other” cloi to the Metal Workers’ Industrial League Conference, will be greeted with a dance on the first night of the Conference, Saturday, March 21, at Liberty Hall, 3420 W. Roosevelt Road. Metal workers from Chicago plants ‘are especially invited to come and “1 meet fellow-workers fromi out of town. Several surprise features, only, -{ Tumors of which have leaked out of -{ Committee sessions, will be on the ~ 4 program. “|. There has been definite progress .| of late in the growth of the Metal ~*| Workers Industrial League in the '| district, according to Joe Dallet, dis- trict secretary, who says that indi- .-Cations are that the Conference will | accomplish work of vital importance. A concrete program and a definite planned offensive against the wage- cuts which have hit the local steel {nd metal manufacturing plants: in rapid succession recently, the elec- tion of an authoritative leading com- mittee and organizational stiffening generally to put the program into effect, must result. Persons buying tickets for the dance in advance en- Joy @ savings of ten cents, reducing to me because I had a good” I was getting paid to recognize the hardships end-}) by most of the workers: 1 was the price to 25c. Tickets are avai)- able at district headquarters, 23 So. | Lincoln Street, | class-conscious. = j Page ihree EVICTION OF SICK WOMAN a , A section of the long line of unemployed war veterans waiting to sign to get a loan at interest from Uncle Shylock of Wall St. The mass de- mand of the vets for payment of their Tombstone bonus was met by the miserable sop of a loan, Vets swing into the fight of the Unemployed Councils to force through real cash relief from the boss government. Photo shows vets being given a handout on the line. Unemployed, and Working Suffer in lowa Tri-Cities; Wages Hit 15c Hour The Daily Worker: Davenport, Ia. Lack Even Price of A ao ‘WIDOW, HAS NO FOOD IN HOUSE FOR LITTLE SON The County and Banks ' . Refused to Give Her a Loan 5 Compton, Calif. Daily Worker: The Daily Worker is a wonderful paper for all laboring men and women, We should fight for it with | all our power. Labor people will win | if they stand one for all and all for one. Labor people will be able to take the bombs and clubs away from | these capitalists and their .govern-| | ment. The millions of dollars that | | are being used for war purposes will| be given to the unemployed to keep | them from starvation. I have an aged father, about 75 years old. He has paid taxes in two counties for 40 years. Now he is sick in bed after having had a para- lytic stroke. As a result he has ‘many hardships and the counties re- fuse to help him. I am disabled my- self, but I am willing to work. I am a widow with a little boy of 12. My taxes are not paid, my interest isn’t paid, I have a $3,000 mortgage interest due and the little bit of Conditions in the Tri-Cities are getting worse all the time. Lhe it Lots of unemployed and destitute families and those that are $ working are very little better off as there are wage cuts on le pas every hand, Men are working in the river har- bor for 15 cents per hour flop and a small dole of food to each man, One foundry gave a cut of 15 per cent. That is where you had two helpers and got one dollar for a mold you now get 85 cents minus two helpers. A married man got work on a farm. The agreement was for him to work 3 months for room and board and after the three months he was to get $50 per month. After working three months he twas told they wouldn't need him any more. A Committee collected money for relicf of the unemployed. The collection was taken from among the men that were still workihg. Then the fund was given to an assortment of charities to be doled out. Now the distributors sit like kings on their thrones and if you are very, very good and say please you stand a chance of getting a dole of $3 or $4 grocery order. But woe to the one that gets to think~ ing he would like conditions so he would not have to ask for a dole. They cut that fellow right off. Workers get together and organise in mass, —A Comrade, West Coast Refineries Cutting Down on Workers Los Angeles, Calif. While bosses spread a-rumor of spring prosperity, refineries cut average daily runs of 68,419 bar- rels as compared with December figures. This necessitates a lay-off of hundreds. of workers, Forty-eight - refineries operating during January with an aggregate daily capacity of 881,610 barrels of crude oil. Those 48 plants were operating only 53.04 per cent of their capacity. This is a decrease of 64,419 barrels per day. Twenty- three other refineries, with a daily capacity of 49,950 barrels, are shut down this month. One hundred and thirty-five natural gasoline plants decrease average production of 1,890 barrels in daily average. Gasoline production during the month of January amounted to a daily ayerage of 178,521 barrels. This month decreased 32,075 bar- rels in daily average production. Hundreds of workers were laid off during the month of February in California refineries as a result | of this curtailment. Many hun- dreds were put on part time work. Unemployment is growing. More starvation armies in the Golden state. Workers, organize into Un- employed Councils and the Com- munist Party and fight for better * conditions, —A, A, N. Y. Hotel Cuts Wages and Uses Stagger System On Workers New York. Daily Worker: While the army of the unemployed is increasing, the wages for the em- ployed are decreasing, as shown clear- ly in the case of the Firemen of sev- eral Knott Controlled Hotels. These firemen have had their wages reduced from 110 dollars a month to 100, and they work twelve hours per shift. The Knott organization has reduced the wages of the workers at least three times since May 1930. ‘On account of the present economic crisis which affects the hotel indus- tries as well, the same Knott outfit have inaugurated the “stagger sys- tem” among the chamber-maids. Every week three different maids are forced to take a week off, while the remainder are forced to double up, that is they must do the work of those maids who were laid off. Forced To Do 2 Men Job. It may be interested to note that the chamber maids are the lowest paid workers in the hotel business. The average pay for chamber-maids is 55 dollars per month, for a seven day week, with half day off on Satur- days, Sundays and holidays. In general, the hotel workers are the lowest paid and most exploited, because they are unorganized; it is necessary that they have organiza- tion, and they are ready for it, but will remain in this subdued state un- til then—A Worker. Cop Would Portland, Ore. Daily Worker: A fine example of how the bosses’ “relief” agency for unem- ployment works in Portland is fl- Justrated in the following account of an unemployed worker, “I was given a job distributing circulars by one of the stores, The guy who gave it to me said I could make a dollar and he was hiring me in order to contribute his share to unemployment relief. A cam- paign of ‘give a job’ has been go- ing on in all the petty business men’s organizations and radio broadcasts tell tHem to give us odd Jobs so that we will not rebel against our masters in their treat- Graft Jobless Worker’s Last Dollar ment of us.” I started out and felt sure that today, at least, the kids would get a@ meal, 1 didn’t know what was going to happen. Down near the market a bull collared me and told me that I would have to get a per- mit. He said {t would cost me a dollar. ¥ asked him what he ex- pected me to do, pay a dollar for getting a job and then not make anything. He took me to the sta- tion and told the captain I had been snotty, I asked the captain if he had been hungry, etc. He said take him to the Sunshine Division. He couldn’t very well raise hell after agreeing with my statements. M. Corral Jobless Workers to Clean Snow 30 Cents An Hour at Chi. Northwestern Daily Worker: Chicago, Il. Sunday morning, March 8th, after twenty-four hours of blizzard and snow-storm which had tied up traf- fic and rallroad transpoftation, the Police herded = thousand’ unem- Ployed workers into Madison Street before the Northwestern Station. They were addressed by a city of- ficial who introduced a man no other than Mayor Big Dill Thomp- son himself who told t! that since they were given free lodging they in turn should show their gratitude by cleaning up the snow. He said for this he would also give them 30 cents an hour, and together with the so-called free lodging would be a good wage. Some of the workers wanted to know {f the mayor himself would be elated at the fine bargain, if asked to do the work. ~—A JOBLESS. WORKER. Part of the time we have no food, t alone no money to pay these ex- penses, The banks and government banks refuse me a loan. They re- fuse all the farmers a loan. They | starve the city people, too. In Los | Angeles there are over a million peo- ple starving. We now see that these capitalists and their government are trying to starve us, those on the farms and in the cities. —B, McV. HALF CHESTER FACE HUNGER Negro Workers Are In Dire Straits Poor Relief Chester, Pa. | Daly Worker: | | Out of a working population of 30,000 that are gainfully employed | at normal times 15,000 are unem- ployed at present. Especially as this unemployment affected the Negro workers, they are practically at the point of starvae tion. The city administration is doing nothing to relieve the unemployed. Although they have established an emergency employment agency o ne can register his name and grow whiskers before he gets a job. They also hand out $2 a week for 2 weeks to the unemployed and then they stop. The unemployed workers in Chester are becoming militant: and they are putting up a stubborn fight against the ‘bosses and their Politicians, The unemployed workers are joining the Unemployed Councils and are determined to fight for immediate relief from the elty. Also against evictions, against the high prices of rent and food, Big Demonstration. On Feb. 25 the workers of Chester turned out Tor the hunger march, About 300 workers, white and Negro, have marched side by side. Then we had an open-air demonstration, at which we had about 5,000 work- ers. This was the biggest demon- stration Chester has ever witnessed. A committee of five wag elected | at the meeting. They went to see the mayor to present him the de- mands of the unemployed. The mayor took the demands and told the committee that atthe the demonstration we called rkers to come to the Unem- ployed Council headquarters at 120 W. Third St. About 150 workers came up and 60 joined the eouncil. The meetings of the Unemployed Council take place every Monday and Thursday at 11 a. m., at 120 W. Third St. The couneil is growing by leaps and bounds and now we are going to sub-divide it in two or three in the different parts of the town. —S. K. _ 35 CENTS AN HOUR FOR FIREMEN Chicago, Il. Daily Worker: The American Can Co. has hired three men, two firemen and an engi- neer, breaking them in, and hiring them at the rate of 35 cents an hour. It they are fast enough they raise this rate to 40 cents an hour and fire those men who were working there for more money sending them to the test of the army of unemployed. —A WORKER. _—— CUNARD LINE TO CUT WAGES TEN PERCENT H LIVERPOOL, Eng. — The Cunard Steamship Company announced today & reduction of 10 percent in wages of all its workers, amounting to more than 11,000 in England, the United States, Canada and afloat. The cut goes into effect on May Ist. ,..Bosses Degrade the Jobless | A ae | A jungle in the heart of capitalist civilization. No roof, existing on scraps, drinking “smoke” to drown their misery, thousands of jobless workers are going through the purgatory of the capitalist hell. Jobless workers, intensify the struggles for the Unemployed Councils for cash, bread and butter relief. Swing into the state hunger marches being prepared in your state. Fight this misery. $18 For 98 Hours of Hard Work Is | New York Fruit Market Low Wage New York |To the Editor Daily Worker: | I was working for the Ford Motor Co. at River Rouge plant | for seven years. Recently a worker in my department cut both] his arms in one of the machines. A minute later the foreman! came over to me and to force me to work on this same machine. I refused to do so, He said if oot acts oe NRE? TBE | . urday from 7 a.m. till mid- | Sa nine (eariniter ant Aries night, also Sunday from 9 a.m. till |8 p.m., after working the whole week | ‘want to leave my arms for Mr. Ford. ‘ ho d what did that |I punched my card and went home [ee liine: pe burs 30 | | job pay, $18 a week! | ind joined the army of the unem- Until now my mind was poisoned | ployed. by the dope that the capitalist papers peddle. Now I am beginning to real- | 98 Hours. As I could not get a job in Detroit, |I came to New York. After tramp- ing the streets for many days finally I got a job in a fruit market. When I got the job I did not ask how much they pay. After working every day from 9:30 a.m. until 11:30 p.m. \Southern Pacific Lays Sacramento, Calif. Daily Worker: With all the boss class yap about Prosperity returning there are more workers being thrown out of work onto the streets to starve here in Sacramento, while the parasite governor flies around in an aeroplane. The state bought Governor Rolph a new Lincoln car and now the state is going to buy him an air- Plane, but they have not got a eent (By a Worker Correspondent) SAN MATEO, Calif—For some time in this past season the stu- dents here at San Mateo Jynior Col- lege were protesting against rigid rules of the school and against ex- pulsions arising out of these protests. March 2 the protests developed to @ student strike. Petitions were cir- culated and protest meetings held, while classes were dispensed with; against threatened expulsion of one student, as well as against high stu- dent rates of college, bad drinking water and other minor dematids. Workers San Mateo Students Put Up Their Demands Albany Jobless Build Council Despite |"ze that the bosses don’t care for the | | workingmen and I decided to join | the Communist Party and fight like | hell for the workingclass and for the | Party that fights for the workers, the Communist Party. . —M. C. | | Off Another Hundred to feed the starving babies. The Community Chest say they will be out of money April 1 and will have to make another drive, The boss paper says the state will | lay off twelve in the state insur- ance office April 1. | The S. P. R. R. laid off about | 100 workers last week. | Workers, wake up, join the Com- munists and stop this boss class of | parasites from starving you. > =v. GM ‘The expulsion was not catried out by the school authorities, but. an‘ in- vestigation is being conducted by them, to find the reds, “who are spreading this rebellion against high rates and sanitation here.” ‘There is a bill in the state legisla- ture which is being proposed for adoption, that the pupils who are “tainted” with red propaganda do not get diplomas. Some of the au- thorities here are favoring it.’ There is no doubt but it will pass as an- other measure to persecute the class- conscious youth. —S. B. Victimization Daily Worker: @ feed. When threatened with the | Ever since the Unemployed Coun- | stoppage of charity “rations,” they immediately reported to the Un- employed Council, who vigorously demonstrated in front of the dif- ferent charity organizations, and won reinstatement of relief, AND ADDITIONAL RATIONS INTO THE BARGAIN! Now those Salvation Army and City Mission crum-hounds want to seare the rest of the workers away! To hell with their cockroach stews! Let them shove their greasy slops somewhere else! The Unemployed Couneil of Albany grows on. —™M. A. Red Cross Refuses Food From Texas Farmers Marlji could be gotten gratis. The secretary ‘The Lower Rio Grande Valley is|of the Chamber of Commerce wired one of the districts producing winter | the Red Cross at St. Louis, and after vegetables. In good years twenty |several days a reply was received stat- thousand cars of vegetables and fruits| ing that they could not use the veget~ are sent north from the valley. But|ables, as so much food had been of- this year the crops are herg but the|fered that they could not use it all. people of the north can't buy them. |It should be said that the Railroads A farmer near San Benito went to| haul Red Cross relief foods free. the Chamber of Commerte to offer} Let some St. Louis worker answer six tons of cabbage to the Red Créss| whether there is enough food in St, for the unemployed and other suf-| Louis, and what should be done to an terers. If a request were made, no| organization that refuses food for the doubt a hundred cars of vegetables hungry. —W.B.L. Canton Workers Find Conditions Get ceil has been on the job here the workers participating in its activi- ties have been victimized. Those on the job have been either fired or warned away; those on the breadlines have been thrown out because of participating in our | demonstraticns; those getting char- ity were refused further relief if they didn’t quit “that red outfit.” But the Albany workers are not yellow! Chucked off the bread- lines, they are selling Daily Work- ers im order to ralse the price of (By @ Worker Correspondent) continually speeded up and wages CANTON, 0. — The conditions cut. The Timken railrosd car bear- ing is said to be a flop, so Timkin workers need not expect any im- Provement there. The bearing was expected to be used on all railroad rolling stock, but has not * proved Worse Daily; Threat to Cut Off Food MORE WORKERS SEEK “DAILY” FOR STRUGGLE Workers Decide the “Worker” Is the Best Paper Elizabeth, N. J. | Daily Worker:— While I hate to take up your time and possibly valuable space, I feel I ought to remark again for the bene- fit of all Daily Worker readers to push on its circulation in every way pos- sible. A copy of the Daily Worker never outlives usefulness until it falls apart Leave It in Cars. its So never miss the opportunity to display it in busses, cars, restaurants, etc. and always be ready to leave a copy behind; but with the address of the local workers center written by hand on the paper, for guidance of the deserving information. Yes fel- low workers, just display a copy of our paper in public, and we become con- spicuous, but read it in public any- how. And listen, some of you comrades, even if you find some of those fel- lows next to you laughing. A year or two from now they'll come to you asking for the Daily Worker, Labor Unity or Labor Defender. Let me quote from a letter that a lad wrote from Conshohoken, Pa. with whom Thad gone through a little strike in @ paper mill in Massachusetts last summer. Ask For Daily Speaking for some others he wrote: “please send me some Daily Workers and Labor: Defenders. We are be- ginning to think there is something ta it after all.” Yes this is by @ 100% American worker who has not felt the bottom of the crisis by a long shot. Another lad Ed .L. writes from Mil- ford, N. J. about the same thing. I had worked with him in the paper mill there about four years ago. He Says: “the boys are asking about you now. They think you might explain why we have hard times. Why the bosses are driving us more than ever? Why they are cutting wages in spite of the doubling up efficiency schemes 4nd so on.” He winds up to say: “I think you ought to send me a. few |More Daily Workers to give out to them.” And you bet I did! —A Worker. MACKEY HAUNTED BY RED SPECTRE Urges Bourgeois to Cough Up Quick Philadelphia, Pa. Daily Worker Editor: Mayor Mackey said at a banquet given by the Women Clubs that Com- munism will be kept away from our city if we can raise sufficient money to feed the hungry. Communist dem- onstrations will no longer take place around city hall when hunger has been exiled from the city. There would not be these hunger marches upon city hall by the reds if it were not so hard to keep the hungry ra- tional. It is our duty to feed and take care of them, and then we will have no fear of Communism in this city the mayor said. : He sees that the unemployed are- getting wise and beginning to see how /’ they will get relief end that is by demonstrating by the thousands. 'The! {last few months proved that and so | Mackey thinks it wise to help the hungry. But he does not propose to tax the millionaires. No, that would be against the law, the law of the bosses, so he appeals to the gener- osity of the people to give. This is ® sure way of making the workers still working give most, or they lose their jobs. The bosses are determined to make the workers pay for this crisis—P. B, \ N.W. Lumber Workers Forced Into Souplines (By a Worker Correspondent) .PORTLAND, Ore.—The fake re- Nef of these so-called charitable in- stitutions here in the Northwest is just the same as in any other part of this land of prosperity. The workers wait in line for @ number of hours just for a lousy bowl of soup, and the clearance house, which is the seat of the black- mail system for the lumber workers, 4§ issuing ten 25-cent meal tickets to the workers at the rate of one book every three weeks, ‘The capitalist newspapers are feed- ling the usual line of prosperity | around the corner, which no one ever sees. Although there have been & few lumber camps opening up with an average wage-cut of 331-3 per cent of the scale of a year ago, the fallers and buckers, who work piece: work, are afraid to go to any of tht camps because they are unable make any money to get away fro these institutions of slavery. { ‘The speed-up system is as general in the Jumber as in any other indus- try. The amount of accidents and deaths in the lumber industry is the highest of any In the country. 5 So the only thing for the workers But the fact is that several small | successful. merchants have not been peid for At the Central Alloy (Republican months, having bills against the | Steel) the workers are kept on their elty charities as high as $100. In- toes by an imported gang of spies stead of the rich parasites begring | from Youngstown. These rats listen the burden, these smell business for radical remarks and then plant men are the gosts, and the result | something in the worker’s locker is that many of the latter are or ¢lothes, and fire him for forced to close. stealing. - In the shops, workers are being ~k, A. R,. - ee smash this system of starvas,, in, hunger and speed-up. \ LY