The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 9, 1931, Page 6

— Published by the Comprodaity Publishing Co., Inc., Gally x 1sth Street, New York City. N. ¥. Telephone A@dress and mail all checks to the Daily ree the cl t mass cal prisoners’ re they Communist In jail? Yes! But le to look, you would nd this is that thi ly corporation-owned mention these cases, let selves deeply enough to let wa whit of the new greatest life—capitalism are! mic s the Communists, and today heed this issue d they alone, assert , not economic indepen- e growth of our enormous the American Fed- tion, is, on and on the other, a men- ons, its various unions Where in Amer. t of labor in eve s of labor grafters in for formulating and for- mean and do not care. and without fear of s the Communists, who realize that ly non-unionized—is ion aspiratiofs and S, his or that, know, ‘hat the cotton pickers in the South i the Jones and Laughlin Steel Cor- on of Penns: drives its workers twelve hours a day seven days a week at a wage of forty or fifty cents an hour. To this one Jone, such things as graft, peonage, ar- of employment when and where are serious matters. to them only this constitutes . They protest and fight the se corporations hold their employees elling them maybe one-half of cent investments in the companies that take for themselves the other ninety- one-half per cent and build lunatic bubbles which finally end in such 1907 and 1929. What a dub, what a numbskull must be the average worker to be so fooled and abused without riot and civil war! COMMUNISTS ALONE FIGHT BOSSES. and Communists alone these ow and publish accounts of nd the abuses traceable to ce that by rea h, for instance, that field vest, their backs loaded and 1 many die of sunstroke, ceiving a wage of only 3 cents an hour, haven't ike, because the Southern Pa- tr m herds carloads of scabs into areas of Southern California, Ari- ‘eat w Me: they ma; make. nunists) have seen—and not en but shown—how corporations not do circumvent the proper organiza- by encouraging total segregation of races in separate living quarters and then playing one race against the other; as for in- ng the Mexicans of Imperial Val- the melon fields for less money g to lies they spread, the Fili- eady accepted a cut, and thereby a race hatred which had no reason t but strengthened the position of the cor- H too, corporations, great land- nd hence. contractors, hold back twenty- of the wages until the end of the to work owners ¢ five pe: season, and often escape with the money or give | as an excuse for no pay a poor crop or drought. In this whole crop. ‘Wouldn't it be as fair for the laborers to demand a bond or twenty-five per’ cent advance of their prospective pay in order | to guarantee them against discharge before the crop was in? But labor, penniless and ignorant, must take what is handed it! But if our American newspapers know these things, they prefer to ignore them and print in- stead inane details of fake relief for the unem- ployed. And yet collectively, labor is America, and without it, where would all the newspapers, corporations, bankers, financiers and their leeches, the heirs to unearned fortune and in- @omes, be? I wish to ask! Wet, in the face of these known abuses, and when and where capital profits so inordinately today, when labor leaders call strikes, merely to gain a living wage, an eight hour day, and clean living conditions, they are thrown into jail, and there they stay for from three to forty-two years or from two to twenty-eight years—and there they may be kept for the entire length of the longest end. And all you have to do to bring that about is to cry Communist or Communism, and to declare that a land that was originally dedicated to liberty and equality of opportunity is being undermined. But by whom? Certainly not by the Communists, who are seeking to bring about that proper equation between strength and weakness, ignorance and wisdom, which has been the dream of philosophers, thinkers and humanitarians generally throughout the ages! CAPITALIST PRESS FIGHTS AGAINST RELEASE OF CLASS WAR PRISONERS And our great newspapers, like the Los An- geles Times (controlled by western corporations) now aim violent attacks against the release of these long term political prisoners, whose only offense is their desire to better labor conditions. In order to railroad leaders to jail in this way, though, evidence is always framed up by private detectives who spy on them, and after that, our American courts almost the land over knowingly accept such testimony. Worse, stool pigeons, such as those from the Bolling De- tective Agency, who were called into this Im- perial Valiey case by the corporations there in- terested, sent the Communist labor leaders to prison, Private police, hired and paid by coropra- tions, helped to send the three Communist work- ers of Woodlawn, Pennsylvania, to jail. And there are innumerable additional instances. But Communists declare and justly, that this whole corporation private police and spy system should be outlawed, and what is more they are fight- ing to that end. Yet in none of the hundreds of issues of the co and Texas, to help break any | Rep. Bachmann, the Raving Anti- way they guarantee the picking of the | in our | ic social principles, they | a dollar a day for twelve hours | | Algonquin = Sutday, at 50 Bast Cable: “DAIWORK” Weiker, 50 Bast 13th Street, New York. N. ¥. @ By & of SUBSCRIPTION RATEO: mail everywhere: Ons year, $6; six months, $8; two months, $1; exvepting Boroughs Manhattan and Bronx, New York Ctiy. Foreign: one year, $8+ six months, $4.50. ass War Pr The American Press and Political Prisoners which I a ave read for me, do I meet th an editorial king the private police system now in force, or indeed any of these | nameful ills, Rather it is always the corporations and their “rights” and pla to further debase the or- dinary American clerk and laborer that gre glossed over and themselves made to appear the patrons of a better life, rather than the sappers and underminers to destruction that they really are. And like the corporations, these papers and their editors and subsidizers are traitors to the original intention of this government and as such, should be tried and punished. But to return to these Communist political | | } | they done? Organized labor unions! But what , of that? Is it a crime to anyone other than a grafting corporation for laborers to attempt to organize? I hold not! For that, though, men are imprisoned today in California, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. A CRIME TO ORGANIZE FOR BETTER| CONDITIONS In the South, labor leaders are facing the elec- tric chair for this supposed crime, ‘Belonging to a labor ‘union and attending its meetings is suf- | ficient, in the Imperial Valley, according to the | capitalists who rule America to warrant: the t and brutal chaining together of 108 la- And in this, a country where American | Federation labor unions and strikes are held to be in no way illegal. 5 But the corporations, beating up unorganized strikers and stopping their food supply, do not fear any laws. They are the law! And the newspapers that today know this well enough are silent. If they do anything at all, it is to soft-pedal the bitter abuses of which they know so much. And always, always they are busy publishing fictitious accounts of the plots of workers for the blowing up of plants and bridges, in order to stir up public opinion against the laborer and give the corporations excuses, in the eyes of the public, to hire more police and act more viciously, f3 But lastly, just: how does the government de- cide that these labor leaders are criminal. Well, MATTHEW WOLL By BURCK Party Life Soviet Racketeer By LEO THOMPSON «(UR own most honorable representative” from Wheeling, W. Va., Mr. Carl G. Bach- mann, member of the infamous Fish Commis- sion, has almost over-night achieved a sensa- tional notoriety as a professional anti-Soviet racketeer through his bombastic slanders and barrage of lies about so-called “forced labor” supposedly existing in the Soviet Union. Every- where throughout the nation in_most of the leading industrial centers, over nation-wide tadio broadcasts, Mr. Bachmann has delivered a vicious tirade of calumnies against the first Workers’ and Farmers’ Government in the world. Together with his comrade-in-arms, Mr. Ham Fish, our Mr. Bachmann has become a worthy “hero” of the Daughters of the Amer- ican (counter) Revolution, which consider him as “the holiest of holy apostles” of “free Amer- ican labor.” Professional pey-triots throughout the United States hail Bachmann as one ofthe best representatives of Americanism,” etc. Undoubtedly there are still many misled and uniformed American workers who believe what Mr. Bachmann and Mr. Fish say about “forced labor” in the U. S. 8. R. In the columns of our Daily Worker there have appeared numerous ex- posures of lies about “forced labor” which are peddled around by Messrs. Bachmann, Fish & Co. But in this article I want to bring to the attention of the readers of the Daily Worker and the Communist press in general a few very interesting facts about Mr. Bachmann and forced labor in Mr. Bachmann’s own congres- sional (first) district of West Virginia. ‘To most of the workers of Wheeling, this gen- tleman has been long ago exposed and discred- ited in all his nakedness as one of the leading figures in the notorious bootlegging~-prostitution- gambling-racketeering underworld of this city. For example, on Dec. 27, 1925, a building lo- cated on 1312 Main St., Wheeling, was destroved by fire. The firemen uncovered a huge 150- gallon triple-still apparatus, one of the largest whisky distilleries ever discovered in this state. ‘There is nothing particularly unusual in this fact alone, but the remarkable thing about it is that the building and the property was owned. ‘by Wone other than Mr. Charles F. Bachmann and his son, the anti-Soviet congressman. The Bachmanns tryed to hide their direct connec- tions with this bootlegging racket by a fake alias, “Bill Varisco,” which was even too raw for the capitalist “Wheeling Register” to swallow. But because of the dominating influence of the Bachmanns in local politics, nobody was ever prosecuted and the whole case was hushed up, because any further exposures may have proven disastrous to Carl G. Bachmann's high political ambitions. So, don’t you see, workers?—“our 100 per cent American red-baiter” turns out to be a cheap, 2 by 4 shyster lawyer, a crooked politician and professional red-baiting anti-Soviet racketeer. But this is not all. Mr. Bachmann, “the stormy petrel” of the (poor) Fish Commission, in chorus with Mr. Ham Fish, continuously bellyaches about so- called “forced servitude” and “involuntary con- successful and widely distributed E lateehiiacs | vict labor’” in the lumber camps of the Soviet Union. . But it is very enlightening to know that in Moundsville, W. Va., in Bachmann's own congressional district, only 12 miles away from Wheeling, there is located the notorious Mounds- ville State Penitentiary, where forced servitude and involuntary convict labor are conducted along truly American business-like methods. I myself have gone through visiting the Mounds- ville Pen.. I have seen and talked to convicts who are forced to slave in the chair, broom and tailoring shops and coal mines of the prison for exactly nothing in wages anywhere from 8 to 11 hours daily, The prison is a real fire- trap, containing over 2,800 inmates when it is originally intended to accommodate only 800, and about 1,000 at the maximum. Incidentally, members of the National Miners’ Union are ser- ving ten years of agonizing tortures in this hell- hole on a “frame-up” charge. Messrs. Bach- mann, Fish & Co., you do not have to go 3,000 miles to the Soviet lumber camps in Siberia to “investigate forced labor’—why not investigate some real, genuine 100 per cent American forced labor in the Moundsville. Penitentiary in Mr. Bachmann's first congressional district? When Comrade William Z. Foster appeared before the Fish Commission some time in De- cember, 1930, he ruthlessly exposed the vicious Jim Crowism practiced in the United States. Mr. Bachmann became hypocritically insulted and demanded Foster to be more “specific,” whereupon Foster correctly referred him to his own state of West Virginia. Yes, right in Bach- mann’s home town, Negro workers are hounded down like dogs, bulldozed and tortured by drunken. dicks, thrown into jail (many times without. trial), and even run out-of town in a true Southern lynch-fashion.. Negro members of the Unemployed Councils of the Trade Union Unity League were arrested and held incommu- nicado, and: actual attempts made to throw then bodily into the Ohio River from the Wheei- ing and Belmont Co, Bridge. In Mr. Bach- mann's “own city, the Wheeling Steel Corpora- tion-controlled city council had the crust to pass the “chain gang law” — a 100 per cent American institution of forced labor: Negro children in Wheeling are segregated into fire- trap, dilapidated old shacks that are misnamed “schools.” Under the above “chain gang law,” the bosses’ courts are eriabled to railroad unem- ployed workers to the chain-gang, where they are forced to slave for nothing on bread and water for 10 days, if they are found “guilty” of refusing to take jobs. for 20 and. 25 cents per hour. Js this what you call “free American la- bor,” Mr. Bachmann, or isn’t it pure and simple dim.-Crowism and forced labor of the worst kind? | P But it should be remembered that Mr. Bach- mann js supposed to represent “the best tradi- tions of American citizenship and patriotism.” ‘There is another racket in which Mr. Bachmann is a dominating associate of his father, Mr. Charles F. Bachmann, outstanding business man in the Ohio Valley, ‘The Bachmanns are known also to own a whole string of buildings in the notorious Main St. red-light district and head- quarters of the local underworld. In this red- Ught district, part of which is owned by the Conducted by the Organization Department of the Central Committee, Communist Party, U.S.A. Neglect of Negro Workers Marion, Ohio. Dear Sir: In regards to the Daily Worker paper we have been receiving through the White. Council here and we have not received for three days, we would like to order the paper direct from head- quarters, so that we will get your paper every day, so that we will hear the news from the Daily Worker. We are going to get up a Colored Council now as we have twelve or fifteen who are in favor of the paper. We would like to have some in- formation of organizing a council. Well, I must close. Hope to hear from you soon. —A, RB. Comment: Something is radically wrong here! ‘The Ohio District shohid get on the job imme- diately and investigate the situation in Marion and find out how it is that Negro workers get the idea that we organize separate Unemployed Councils for white and Negro workers. We must state emphatically that we do no such thing. Everything organized by the Communist Party and the Tradé Union Unity League is organized by and for ALL workers, white and Negro to- gether. To organize separate white councils would mean to Jim Crow the Negro workers. How is it that this Negro comrade could get the idea of separate councils? This can only be due to neglect of the Negro workers by the whites. The Negro workers must have been made to feel either that they were not wanted, or else as a result of the failure of the council to do work among the Negroes, they must have come to the conclusion that it is necessary for them to organize a separate Negro Council. In reply to Comrade A. R., we suggest that he take his twelve or fifteen Negro comrades to the present Council where they will be enrolled as members, instead of organizing a separate council. At the same time, we have written to the Ohio Dis- trict, Office and the National Office of the Trade Union Unity League, and have informed the busi- ness office of the Daily Worker, to make sure that both the matters of the Council and of the supply of the Daily Worker, get the necessary attention, © Bachmann interests, young 17 and 18-year-old girls are FORCED (get this emphasis) to PROS- TITUTE themselves to make a living, coining a lot of graft and “extra revenue” for Bachmann, Sheriff Habig & Co. This red-light district, sup- posedly illegal, runs at full blast 24 hours every day in the week under the full protection of the police department and Mr. Bachmann's fellow- politicians. Mr. Bachmann, people who live in glass houses should not throw stones! And Mr. Fish, how about taking a few days off to investigate some real forced labor in the prostitution houses of your dear old friend and 100 per cent, American raving anti-Soviet racketeer—Mr. Carl G, Bach- mann of Wheeling, W, Va.? -Dreiser a number of the states have alien and sedition laws. But just what is “sedition”? Legally, it is incitement to discontent against the govern- ment. But mere discontent is certainly not a crime. The whole idea of democracy is supposed to be based on the right of the people to man- age their government, and when their servants or officials misbehave, to protest and punish the misbehavior. But let. a Communist say that today! Yet actually sedition, under its strictest definition, is no more than a commotion amount- ing not even to insurrection, And what a negligible thing that should be! How really creditable and justifiable! But sedi- tion as our corporation-controlled government. sees it, does not even require an overt act. One can be arrested for nothing. Yet actually, if Sedition is to be charged as a crime, it should tend to treason. But “tending” is something too vague, and is therefore not 4 just basis for | criminal law. | Yet these criminal laws remain, constantly | creating political prisoners, like Ray Peltz, sen- | | tenced in Pennsylvania for distributing pamph- lets to a term of from one to twenty years im- prisonment. Probably twenty years imprison- ment for merely distributing pamphlets! And these sedition cases, like those of the three Communists of Woodlawn, the Supreme Court of the United States refuses even to review. Yet would or do any of our great American chain newspaper corporations permit a single one of their hundreds of dailies in various cities to print a sincere attack on the basis and absolute unfairness of our sedition laws? You know not. Financially that paper would become taboo. CRIMINAL SYNDICALIST LAWS AN INSTRUMENT OF THE BOSSES As I sce it, the vicious criminal syndicalism laws now in force are also as bad as those against sedition, Criminal syndicalism laws take in Communists. Why? Because these statutes apply in cases of merely advocating. No act, mind you! But advocating what? A change in government control through unlawful force? But what nonsense! No force that is unlawful is being used in America today. Addressing meet- ings, advocating~a change in government or ar- ranging such meetings, or protesting against such evils as have already undermined and subverted our government are not illegal. They are merely called so by savage, unlawful officials who take their orders from our dominant corporations. And none other. And though Communists with labor behind them, may hope to rule America, that is not, as I see it, unlawful but entirely lawful—the will (if it is the will) of those who constitute a ma- jority. And I also believe that Communistic laws, adapted to American needs, would certainly ef- fect the desired purpose of the Communists—a government helpful not only to farmers and to workers but. to all. And should that be looked upon as unreasonable or criminal? And should it not be arrived at peaceably. I think so. But will this program be permitted in Amer- ica? I doubt it. The corporation or capitalist everywhere today is sold to the idea that its or his reward—the reward for getting and keep- ing money, by whatever means or crimes—can- not be too great, whereas that of the individual without money—laborer or thinker—cannot be too little. But this is the real outrage and the great crime, ‘The rewards of the individual, where he is cunning and anti-social, as well as his corpora- tion and his bank are already too great. He_has come to set himself up as a ruler, not only of the lesser individual but of the government it- self—the machinery and the voice of all the people—and should here and now be put in his proper place. He does not deserve to, and can- not wisely or kindly, use all of his wealth and power, and will not. And therefore it is time, since he has been endowed enough by nature with health and skill (all of which he did not and could not create) that he be compelled to share more equally the fruits of his ability with those who make the world and the condition in and by which alone he is able to function and become what he is. And if he cannot be made to see that, none-the-less—he can be forced to do that. And that is what the Communists of the world today desire, and it is exactly that that eventually they will achieve, But supposing now, in order to be rid of this ill, the Communists do combine and by reason of superior numbers and their voting or man power decide to take over and change this government. But sure that all capitalists will call it sedition, treason, revolution, the evil and criminal over-, throw of the United States. But is the United States principally composed of these laborers or of its corporations? As the capitalists see it to- day, the right to revolt—apparently—depends on who is doing it—not on any wrongs that may be holding or the suppression of the many in favor of the few, but rather the elevation of the few as against the misery of the many. So it comes about that it is quite all right for banks and corporations to effect a revolution in Panama, but not for the laborer and Communist here. Not on your life! SMASH THE NEW SIBERIAN EXILE SYSTEM! Straws show how the wind blows. The San Diego Sun recently printed an article stating that the way to kill the Communist plague is to dynamite it out. In other words, kill those who advocate reasonable changes under that name. And corporations are violently fighting Commu- nists and their labor leaders because they find them practical men who organize, fight and print instead of talking. Yet the scholar and theoriest—still bolstered by a few safeguards—a job with some college, money, family, and the like, may talk and think, have his ideas printed in leading dailies and discussed by intellectuals. Let a Communist or ordinary laborer talk or strike or distribute a pamphlet, explaining in some rough and perhaps uncouth way identically the same political ideas orate now distributed & by many intellectuals—scholars and college pro- fessors included—and to prison he goes, and for twenty years, But why? Because capitalism resents any thought or stirring on the part of labor; since that indicates the day is not far distant when the strong and the ambitious will have to take less—a fair reward, and he laborer will get near- er what is his due—food, clothing, fairly certain employment, a reasonable opportunity along with ethers to educate himself and to rest when he needs to, Is that too much? I do not see it. Yet it is from the discussion of these issues by» laborers and their leaders that flow the thou- sands of arrests today and the scores of political prisoners. Hence our present-day American ter- yor—our new ‘ exile system bere! § by a poar-house.” Ke EZ “Precedent” Some time ago we expressed the wish that someone write a real drama about the Mooney~ f Billings frame-up. But we added that it had f to be done in a real class spirit, and we were suspicious of all highbrow playwrights who would not submit to having their work revised by workers. We said so out of the sad experience with “Gods of the Lightening.” Shortly afterward, Sydney Harmon, producer of “Precedent,” wrote us about his productics of “Precedent,” and we suggested that he get in touch with the John Reed Club, which we thought should organize a group of worker- reviewers that could give critical suggestions for improvement in advance of the play's presenta- tion. But Mr. Harmon made no such move, The play as presented was written by some Jawyer of liberal ideas, but aside from revealing the technique of frame-up falls flat. ‘There are no masses, and the main hero is not even Tom Mooney, but the embattled editor who takes up his case, representing Fremont Older. There is not a word about the mass protest of the Russian workers, whose demands saved Mooney and Billings from death and caused President Wilson to “investigate.” ‘There is a nothing of the shameful treachery of the A. F. of L, In other words, where we wished for a play that would dramatically reveal the whole class character of the frame-up and stir every / auditor to feel the necessity of doing something to free Mooney and Billings, “Precedent” does exactly the opposite. It hides the class struggle nature of the case, and gives the auditors a feeling of passive helplessness—at the best. Our judgment is confirmed by other workers, one of whom writes as follows: . “I have just seen the play written around the Tom Mooney case, ‘Precedent’. I have come away feeling ten times more strongly how utterly ineffectual this kind of-thing is, and that the Parlor-liberals who go to a play like this just } spend a pleasant evening and get a little emo- | tional excitemenj that makes their consciences feel good—and. that’s the end of it, “It makes clear to me that the parlor-pinks are more dangerous that the out-and-out @ge- mies of the working-class; they provide such plays as these which merely act as shock-ab- sorbers, and give others. like them a chance to dissipate their reluctant and formless awareness that something is wrong with the capitalist world. “A parlor-liberal goes to a play like this, gets @ kick out of it, and goes home feeling satisfied that he has done something for Tom Mooney! So if hé was feeling a bit stirred up about social | injustice, he feels he can now give his conscience @ nice long rest.” ' Let anyone who aspires to write a real drama ' around Tom Mooney.and Billings take note that the field is yet to be touched. And real drama | will do much to aid the fight for their freedom, | which is what we. are after. of ae We Still Want to Know On page seven, under a headline no larger than the type you are looking at as you read this, the N. Y. Times on Thursday, May 7, gavs 15 lines to the case of the murdered woman Viv- ian Gordon. ‘The two characters who were “held as mater- ial witnesses” against someone called Harry Stein, have had their bail reduced and are freed. ‘The whole case stinks to the stars. Everybody in New York knows that Vivian Gordon was kil- led for “sguealing”. on the police. i We still want to know what connection this murder had with Gaston B. Means, U. S. secret service man, Fish Committee detective and “close friend” of Vivian Gordon. We again call at- tention to the fact that Vivian Gordon was strangled to death, and that Gaston B. Means was once charged with strangling a woman to death. ‘The New Yorw State republican party is all hot to “investigate” Tammany, but when things begin to get close to connecting a trusted agent of Mr. Fish with the murder of a @emi-monde, there is a lot of talk about graft in school-sites to occupy attention. ~~~ Vivian Gordon was strangled with a piece of clothes-line. Now the truth about her case is being strangled with the capitalist press. 1b, genres a op ae Some Capitalist “Mothers” Sunday being “Mothers’ Day”, let’s take a peek at the National Federation of Women’s Clubs, whose convention was held at Phoenix, Arizona, April 28 to May 2. One outstanding dame coming as a delegate: was the wife of the Governor of Alabama, the Lord High Executioner of the nine Negro children at Scottsboro, This set the tone of the convention of cap- italist women, It passed a resolution urging the government which needs no urging, to deport alf Communists and Communist sympathizers who are aliens and jail the native Americans. Nice people, these powdered old Plymouth Rocks! Not to be beaten by the male capitalists in hypocrisy, the old girls resolved, “to advocate” unemployment insurance. But you'll notice that they will be so busy advocating persecution of the only ones who fight for unemployment in- surance, that they'll “have no time” to keep their husbands awake nights demanding that they really establish unemployment insurance, ‘These ladies, together with the Daughters of the American Revolution, nearly persuade us that the amusing custom of the “founding fath- ers” of this country, of ducking the “founding mothers” in the horse-pond as a cure for gen- eral cussedness, might well be revived by an ine dignant working class; after they take over the horse-pond, of course, . -Oh, We're All Right! - Sir Arthur Salter Blames ight’ Depression,” said the headline of the N. Y. Times the other day, discussing the Washington convention of the International Chamber of Commerce. But the Times knows how to defend American im~= perialism’s tariff, which if has to favor in prace tice in spite of occasional editorial Ismentations. So its sub-headline on the story of the attack on tariffs in general, was given—‘ But OUR Tariff is Defended by Dean Donham”. Other people's tariff may be bad; but “ours” ts fine stuff! ‘Theirs “cause depression,” ours “bring about, prosperity,” A Reversible Joke Hoover's announcement that the U. 8. Govern= ment is running at a deficit this year of $1,000, 000,000, ought to cheer up the Virsin who might say that they were "taken