The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 19, 1931, Page 4

Page Four Algonquin 7956-7, Cable: lepho , Ree : : <aWorkeF ! DAIWORK. al i i the Daily Worker, 50 Kast 13th Street, New York, N. ¥. Contra Bory usa} wa Pal RR STION BT @ By mall everywhere: One year, $6; six months, $3; two months, $1; excepting Boroushé *). & of Manhattan and Bronx, New York Ctly, Foreign: one y ne a 38+ siz months. $4.50, Hold City Conventions Against Unemployment and Starvation By ALFRED WAGENKNECHT Secretary Trade Union Unity League Committee on Work Among the Unemployed m we could carry © imme we are expe: ities in employ mpermis: arvation relief and charity i a cut down, in some cities as much as 40 t. Bread lines and flop houses are being inued, In Boston, New York, New ark and other citie: deep-going exposures of graft in the charity « ganizations and welfare boards of the city are for t In New Y collected we s collection comm pitalist: 01 specialized 1 In New York, 24,000 ployed worke ho ad been given ee d k a we : by the er charity committee, have been laid off Seven thousand were laid off in Pl delphi jonal thousands lost emy in other cities. governments everywhere funds have been exhausted and that know where to turn to meet the e demands for food and relief for the un- th report loyed. bless thousands stormed the ion board ployment bureaus in New York, where re- rations were conducted for only those who had voted for two years in the city. Five thousand unemployed men and women, 1,500 poverty-stricken and starving in Henryetta, pounce that s 50 per be increased n how little the unemployed alive are a ing Prof. sity announces that able to afford butter should eat leaf food. should consume in large quantities dried alfalfa (hay) leaves and clover.” The Bureau of diet of the Hoover administration ‘issued a chart which demands that a family of five should live on $5 worth of food a week. Hoover's national committee on employment is engaging in a national advertising campaign jobs ur r the slogan “There are plenty of they'll all pull (the prosperity wagon) Paint, paper, plumb your home and the 1 in the roof, sweep your sidewalk and clean your back yard, is, according to the program, going to give jobs to the ten million unemployed! Doak, Green, and other megaphone artists of he vuling class are telling the country that mployment is decreasing, prosperity is stag~ ing a comeback, wait and have faith. A new flood of capitalist demagogy is sweeping thru the capitalist press In New Jersey, city constables entered the home of a starving family of six, put chains for togethe of the head of the family, and held the starving worker ile they threw his furniture on W Meyer cartel head, demanded lover standards of living the meeting of the Inter- of Commerce at Washing- Industrial leaders at the meeting of the United States Chamber of Commerce i to launch wage cuts in the basic indus- steel Increasing starvation among the unemployed, sickness and death. This is the employers and their govern- brutality, terror, lessening relief, and graft. Here is a field for work, for ation for immense struggles, an oppor nity to win large masses of unemployed and for our movement, unparallelled of our organizations. And yet, ruar excepting in two or three d excepting the May First demonstra- no mass struggles against lessening re- r sed starvation have occurred. This pond to the needs of the unem- counter-offensives against les- starvation, wage cuts and pros- fakery, has already brought about dis- ion in our ranks. In the Boston dis- iy one branch of unemployed workers ctioning; in northern New Jersey only one ch is barely existing; and investigations may uncover similar dwindling of our forces in other of the country. We are much too slow in applying the addi- al activity indicated in the resolution of the je Union Unity League, that of fighting r food for starving families. This activity, investigation of the conditions of families in the neighborhoods, ascertaining their demands, mobi! them for struggle, was intended to root our movement deeply in workers’ neighbor- hoods and thereby supply a mass base for strug- gles for immediate relief for all the unem- ed and for unemployment insurance. s this activity has not even been while our leading district com- | e discussing and delaying, the big issues ense interest to the unemployed, occur- ing in the city and nationally, have been en- y lost sight of, have found no response in our ranks. When lessening of relief by 40 per cent in some cities, and entire discontinuation of the little relief given in others, does not even result in resolutions of protest by our branches of unemployed workers, our TUUL organizations and other workers’ organizations, then it be- comes plain that our movement among the un- loyed remains crippled and wharped, to say least To bring about a sharp correction of this situ- ation the Trade Union Unity League now calls upon all workers’ organizations, together with our branches of unemployed workers and dele- gates from all agencies and points where un- employed workers gather, to hold City Conven- tions to Fight Unemployment and Starvation. These con¥entions should be held within six weeks.. The call for these conventions, together with the agenda and its elaboration, will be sent to any comrade interested and active in the un- | employed movement. Address the Trade Union Unity League, 2 West 15 Street, New York City, | Renin witht fakery xyed worker istory > lead The Story ot Mrs. Wright, Mother ot Two Scottsboro Children As Told To Sadie Van Veen MC home is in’Chattarfooga. I have five chil- dren, Roy, 14, Andy, 17, Lucile, 10, and two grown martied daughters. Lucile is with me in New York. My two boys are in the Scotts- boro jail. “I been having the hardest time in the world making an honest living for my children. I worked the skin clear off my hands scrubbing and washing so as my children could have something to eat. I been making five and some- times six dollars a week and you know that you can't feed’a family on that. Why we paid pretty near a dollar alone on car fare every week. My little girl is underweight becanse we couldn’t get only one or two quarts of milk a week. You know we couldn't buy any more than that. And I always worked no matter how sick or tired I was. “My boys are good boys. I never brought them up to have them hung. They was always Re to me and good to sister here. But they couldn't find work no-how in Chattanooga, so they asks me-if I would let them go to Mem- phis to seek work. Well, you know, I didn't want them to leave uy but I saw as how they couldn't get work and I says ‘Well, boys, if you must go, alright, but don’t get in any trouble.’ Andy was going first, but his little brother Roy, the fourteen year old, he said, if Andy goes he goes too, cause them two boys they always been crazy about each other and just pals all the time. So Roy, who was always my baby boy for all he is fourteen years, he said, “Mama, you: let me go too, ‘cause we can’t get anything to do here and you don’t earn enough and just as soon as we get any work we'll send you some money. “So they starts off and I went to work the same morning and I sent Lucile to school with ten cents for her lunch; that is all I could ever give hac and you just know she couldn't get very much for that. “The next morning when I starts off to work, my sister she came running over with the news- paper in her hand. She says “Aida, ‘where are your boys?’ And I said ‘Why my boys, they gone to seek work in Memphis. And she says ‘Aida, read this’, and she hands me the paper. I just looked long enough to see the names of my children Roy and Andy and I dropped the paper. I felt so sick I just couldn't read any more. You just know how I felt. Here they started off the day before, to seek work and now I see this in the paper and it just made me clear sick; but I just went off to work just the same and the lady that I works for she said ‘Why Aida are you sick or something? You look like something terrible is the matter!'” “Well, I said ‘there sure is something terrible the matter. Just look at this’ and I gives her the paper to read. She says ‘Aida I sure am sorry that your in such trouble and I know here in New band come in (he is from the north) he says ‘Aida you better hire a lawyer’ and he gives me five dollars. Well you know I didn’t know anything about lawyers but I began collecting money from everybody I could. That night the minister comes over to us and he says they hired Roddy to go and defend the boys. Roddy said he wanted one hundred and ten dollars. So we collected that much and gave it to him but he never did defend those boys. He just told them to plead guilty and to get life. He just plain railroaded them to the electric chair. There are two other boys besides mine only fourteen years but with Roy they declared it a mistrial because he is only fourteen. They was afraid to send him to burn in the chair. “The newspapers never did tell the whole story and they just lied about everything. They didn’t want any one to know that three boys are only fourteen. The Patterson boy and By F. G. BIEDENKAPP. OT more than 20 minutes as the crow flies, lie two shoe manufacturing towns known as Johnson and Endicott cities where some 17,000 shoe workers are employed at wages ranging from $6 to $25 per week. The cities are named after the two shoe magnates by that name, also called the Square-Deal-City. The shoe companies own the entire property— workers live in company houses and have—com- pany privileges—such as a library, a bathing pool, a ball ground, a dance hall, a merry-go-round, a hospital and medical service and Hunger Wages. ‘The medical service and hospital are no longer free. Workers may buy the houses they live in by paying double rent, but they cannot buy the ground. They have the privilege of living in the houses and paying interest on the company’s invested cayital, but cannot sell the property no matter how much they may have paid in. If they want to quit, they can bargain with the company, who might pay them back the original purchase price, though the property might have been contracted for 20 years ago. Profits Are Only for the Company. May First the workers celebrated by holding @ mass meeting, which was attended by many shoe workers. Being National Organizational Secretary of the Shoe and Leather Workers’ In- dustrial Union, it was natural that I go to Binghamton not only to speak on May First, but also to meet with the shoe workers and discuss organization and T. U. U. L. work. ‘Though we held our organization meeting quietly and privately, the bosses, nevertheless smelled the presence of an organizer and issued the following article, no doubt prompted by the big boss, Geo. F, Johnson, himself and signed by a stool-pigeon and bosses’ agent by name of A. Very. This article appeared in the Labor column of the Binghamton Daily Sun (owned by the shoe boss, Geo. F. Johnson) who writes whole page labor articles every week for his wage slaves. “Handbills and Cuts,” is the title of one ar- ticle from which we take the following: ‘We seemed to have been showered with hand- bills the past two weeks—all along’ the same line: “Strike! Down with the Bosses!” Just why are these union agitators so sym- pathetic because we got a 5 per cent cut? Surely Eugene Williams and my boys was friends and they started off together to Memphis but they never did see the other five boys till they saw them in jail. You see the police just went through the train and picked up all the poor Negro boys on the train. That's how come there was nine boys picked off the train and all of them framed up to burn on July ten. “Well we all told Roddy that he just took our money and never did nothing to defend our boys but just sent them to the chair. The man I worked for, he said to me, ‘Aida that Roddy won't do no good. He is low and he drinks so that the court had to wait two hours for him to get sober and come to the trial.’ I says ‘I know he ain't no good but I am just a poor woman and I am just near crazy with worry. What do I know about lawyers?’ “Then the International Defense came to us. They sent a committee to see us. And they explained the kind of organization they are and now they defend strikers Negro or white and the foreign born and like that. And they said ‘Mrs. Wright are you willing te have us defend your boys?’ And I says I sure am. And they said ‘Would you be willing to come up North and go around and help us to get support for your boys?’ Well you just know that I said I would do anything in the world to save our boys. And I don’t want only to save my two boys. I want to save all those boys not only mine. ‘They are all innocent and all framed up and we just got to save them. “Well we all told Roddy that he was just working together with the Ku Klux and we didn’t want ever to see him again and that we had handed over the case to the International Labor Defense. Some of our people said to me, “Aida you just stick to the International Labor Defense. They are your friends. They mean well. They will sure move heaven and earth so as to save your boys.’ “So that's how come, Lueile T are up, they don’t expect to organize us free gratis— just out of kindness of heart. Why should they care whether we make 5 cents or $50? “Down with the Bosses!” Huh!! All they want us to do is SWAP bosses—trade the ones we have now for their own bosses. Soft pickin’s! A couple of Huh’s! We don’t know what business competition or stockholder “howls” forced the company to give us our five per cent cut. But we know that in the past they have been generous beyond mea- sure, have apparently had our interests at heart and given us more than most companies give their workers. We can at least be grateful for what favors we have had, Truth is most of us in this community have been spoiled with too much “free” stuff, until we all more or less have developed the “give-me'’s.” But it will take more than a 5 per cent cut or the curtailment of the many other privileges I've enjoyed in the past to ever make me trade “Geo, F. Johnson” rule for union rule. We have been having work when shops dominated by unions haven't. Stick to the “Old Man,” he is @ grand guy to tie to—he’ll see us through—and I for one am for him “‘hook, line and sinker,” even if I don't enjoy the 5 per cent cut for medical relief. Don’t let these agitators “kid” you. They can’t bring you “better times” or any more pros- tad or half as quick, as “Geo. F.” could or would. Pity the “agitators” with their “frothing” friends. It just makes me feel so good I just don’t want ever to see the South again. If T kin get all our boys free that’s all I want and then I want to stay here and stick by the In- ternational Labor Defense. I ain't never: going to leave them, No matter what happens I want to help this organization and I just maan to do everything in my power to help to build it ep top : THE WORKERS “CHAMPION” youLe CUT WAGES! eee hd aeegt wie YOU 7— WELL Shoe Bosses and May Day in Binghamton, New York handbills—their “pickings” will be lean. And They Want the Workers to Swallow That Bunk, Only bosses and bosses’ agents who repeat “as a parrot” all the boss says, could or would print such capitalist dope intended to chloroform and throw sand into the eyes of the workers, that they may not see or understand the truth. Swap bosses—why not—it’s time the workers had a chance to go to Florida to roll in the sand and let the bosses and bosses’ suckers sweat their skin off their bones at starvation wages in the “Square Deal” city—square for the bosses and coupon clippers and a “deal” for the workers with the cards stacked against them. Yes, we do know what competition and who the stock “‘howlers” are and why they are de- manding wage cuts and we know that for every nickel the workers received in the past either in cash or by virtue of the grace of the mighty Geo. F., known as “privileges,” the bosses and stock gamblers got dollars. Who the Sam Hill wants privileges? Who the Sam Hill produces the wealth these parasites live on? Who the Sam Hill has a better right to enjoy the fruit of toil, if not the workers who do the toiling? Privileges! Two times a couple Huh’s. To the Sam Hill with privileges—the workers want their rights and—over a million Huh’s—the workers are going to get their rights. It will take more than a 5 per cent cut to drive a skunk out of his hole. The fact is that skunks don’t suffer from wage cuts—they live on Judas’ pay, which they get for betraying and selling out the workers. Every bosses’ agent sticks to the “old man,” the “grand guy” so long.as the easy money, the graft is to be gotten. These hypocrites and labor fakers get all they can get while the getting is good. But the time is coming when they will need more than a hook, line and sinker to keep them in easy pickings. ‘This clever stunt of trying to make the 5 per cent wage cut look like paying for medical treat- ment needs a little explanation. First. Give the workers enough of life’s wholesome needs—food, clothing, shelter, vacation, education, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of press, no exploitation, no speed-up, shorter hours of Jabor, more time for leisure, no unemployment, and we won't need so many doctors and medi~- cines. Secondly. Don’t tell us that it takes $1,000,000 —which is 5 per cent of a payroll amounting to more than $20,000,0000 a year—for medical re- lief for 17,000 workers—none of whom on the average spend more than $20 a year for medical service (according to U. S. A. statistical records) or a total sum of $340,000. (17,000 x $25.) But, of course, we forget the graft. And also we toilers must remember that when a worker's wife has a baby that costs $50, but when the bosses’ wife has a baby it costs $5,000 (the bosses’ wife and baby must go to Florida with doctor and all). Well—ten more Huh’s. The bosses say it is wasting money to spend 15 cents to hear an agitator on Industrial Revo- lutionary Unionism, but—it’s worth while and a privilege to give 5 per cent of your wages to see the boss go to Florida—just to have him come back and to hear him say “Hello.” Well, let’s hhave—15,000 Huh’s and 15,000 workers organized under the banner of the S. & L. W. I. U., af- filiated with the Trade Union Unity League, and we will make it ten Huh’s for every worker every day of the year. Who the Sam Hill wants a wage cut? Workers! Join the Party of Your r Class! Communist Party U. S. A. P. O. Box 87 Station D. New York City. Please send me more information on the Cum- _munist Party. Name Address | | | Conducted by the Organization Department of the Central Committee, Communist Party, U.S.A. Unit Functionaries Must Part- icipate in Routine Daily Act-. ivities of the Units D. FLAIANI (New York) “TEVELOP new leadership” slogan, in our Par- ty, has been to a large extent put into prac- tice in the New York District. In all Sections and Units we have some 800 functionaries. Hence | @ new problem arises which must be solved in | the shortest period of time. Elements of buro- craticism have been creeping in here and there among the Unit functionaries in an impermis- sible form. With the establishment of the Unit | Buros as the authority of ‘the Units, practic- ally every member gets his assignments for the week, also of D. W., leaflet distributions, visiting of contacts, etc. Each Unit has at least 10 fumc- tionaries, each having one specific task to per- form, which is that of involving the entire mem- bership in the Party campaigns, thru the Unit Buros. However, in some Units while the func- tionaries have a very good way of planning work for the membership, they forget the fact that they also plan work for themselves as mem- bers of the Unit. In many cases the Unit Organizer, Trade Union Organizer, Negro Director, etc., feel that in view of their “high” position in the Units their function is that of “giving instructions to others.” This situation prevails (with some ex- ceptions) in every Section, especially in Sections having Units with a large membership, where the activities of every comrade remain un- checked. In one Unit we find a situation which is characteristic of other Units’ functionaries. In this Unit, the Organizer, considering himself the “highest,” in some cases failed to attend Unit meetings and gave instructions to another “high” functionary to conduct the meeting. The Unit Organizer Secretary felt that every com- rade was to give out leaflets at the shops, and house to house in the Unit territory; however, when the assignment comes down from the Unit Buro you never hear that the Organizer Sec- retary is in the list of those to give out leaflets, or Daily Worker sale or canvassing of workers for Party, TUUL, etc. The TUUL organizer, an- other “high” functionary could not “spoil” his “dignity”by going near a shop of the Unit con- centration and therefore assigned the other com- rades. The Literature-agent at the Unit meeting gave hell to every one for non-co-operation in the sale of the new pamphlets, and instructed every member to get five copies of “Race Hatred on Trial,” and while practically every one took five pamphlets and paid cash (with the exception of the Organizer and organizer secretary) the literature agent forgot that she was also to sell the same amount as the others. ‘The same situation holds true for the rest of the functionaries. This of course happens with functionaries, who even tho they cannot be called burocrats in the real sense of the word, have acquired an air of “superiority” in their Units in view of their “high” position. This kind of functionaries should not exist in our Party. These tendencies lead toward the development of the worst form of burocraticism, which does not serve as an example to the membership and does not encourage the rank and file to work. The Sections must analyze this situation at once and guard against the development of such a kind of leadership in the Units. The Unit Buros, must participate in the every-day routine work of the Unit, and must also guard against such functionaries whose ten- dencies are that of only giving instructions to others. The participation of our Unit functionaries in the every day routine activities of the Units will help tremendously to improve the work of the Units. Our functionaries can be of best aid to the rest of the members of the Units by working together, teaching the other less expe- rienced comrades how to carry out some tasks, It will help the functionaries to better plan the work for the whole Unit thru the experi- ences and contact of the functionaries with the worleers outside the ranks of our Party ‘ PARTY LIFE | | By JORGE es s Oi, Oi! the New Messes! ‘The New Masses, which is something close to the heart of the John Reed Club, tells us that it has “completed its five-year plan” and is cele- brating its fifth birthday this Wednesday night, May 20, at Webster Hall. We won't attempt to give the bill of fare; it is too overwhelming. There's a lot more than just dancing, anyhow; and we feel more kindly toward the New Masses now that it seems to represent something, or at least promises to be more intelligible in the future than in the past. But that dollar admission sort of strangles our enthusiasm. No doubt but it’s worth more, but there it is rae nae an Not a Bad Idea The N. ¥, Times is getting smart these days. It is editorially suggesting that landlords print or paste on their rent bills to apartment ten- ants, little notices saying something like this: “If your rent is $50 a month, $90 a year of that goes to pay exorbitant real estate taxes.” That, says the Times, would rally all the tenants to help the poor and downtrodden land- lords to get a tax reduction, Yeah, our heart just bleeds for landlords! Suppose they call a mass meeting of their ten- ants and call us in to explain what we think should be done about it. While it don’t go far enough, Jet us take even the suggestion of the brilliant editor of the Times. The landlord puts a note on the rent bill: “Your rent bill is high because I pay high taxes. Out of every $50 I get from you for rent, T, alas, must pay $7.50 taxes, That's $90 a year. Don’t you feel sorry for me? So? Then protest about it! Your loving landlord.” To which the astonished and sympathetic tenant might reply: “My dearly beloved landlord: Your heartrend- ing message is received. I am deeply touched. In fact I have been touched regularly every month. How you can afford to pay $90 a year taxes out of $600 rent I pay you is beyond my imagination. That leaves you only $510 a year— and the house I live in when I move out. “Your tragic situation affected me so that I went from flat to flat in your whole apartment house to see if something can be done about it. And we organized a Tenants’ League, connected with the Unemployed Council, and have decided: “Whereas: The landlord complains that 15 per cent of every dollar he collects from us in Tent goes to taxes; “Resolved, that, to stop this outrage, we will pay only 85 per cent of the present rent. And be it further ‘ “Resolved; that the House Committee exam- ine the landlord on his other expenses with a view to our,taking similar action, even if it reduces our Pent to zero. We refuse to be ace complices to the robbery of our loving land- lord.” Mr. Pooh-Bah of Binghamton ‘The son-in-law of the head of the Endicott Johnson Shoe Corporation owns the Bingham- ton, N. Y., “Sun,” which editorializes about the Hunger Marches of the unemployed, in a way that reminds me of the character Pooh-Bah in Gilbert and Sullivan's “Mikado.” Pooh-Bah boasted, readers may recall, that he was “born with a snter on his face.” So was the editor of the Binghamton “Sun.” He sneers at the hunger marchers because they are fed by sympathetic workers along the lines of march. Instead of séeing the significant so- clal fact of hungry men and women leaving their homes (and what homes!) to march hun- dreds of miles to dramatize the demand of mil+ lions of workers for Unemployment Insarance, this pin-head reactionary sneers: “The marchers seem to have a good time. so well fed, by the time they reach their destination, they may have forgotten what they came for. Some red propagandists. Some plain bums.” And the editorial opens up with a cheap sneer at the “bunion derbies.” Concerning which an unemployed worker of Binghamton says: “They make a joke out of the misery of the hungry workers, but the time will come when the work- ers will make bunion racers out of the editors of the yellow press and their masters.” a To All Correspondents Those who write in wanting Red Sparks to answer this or that point, should include their name and address—and, even better, a postage stamp—as we are unable to reply to gverything | asked of us in the column itself. What you ask, you see, may be of importance to you, but not to others. And there is such a multitude of things to discuss in the column that we cannot perhaps give space to your special point. Some points require a long an- swer, or a reference to sources where the corre- spondent can find what he or she wants 1 know. For example, Bertha J. of Boston recent wrote us—without giving any address—asking question about the capitalist crisis which 1 quires a lengthy article to explain adequate. She will find such an article in the magazir “The Communist International,” Vol. VIII, No 8, price 10 cents, Workers’ Library Publishers, 50 East 13th St., New York. In fact, there are two articles on the question in it, Sf ah he Jim Thompson, Bond Salesman James P. Thompson, I. W. W, tremulo orator of the Pacific Northwest, whose knowledge of social forces became petrified about 1908, with the revision of the I. W. W. Preamble, is still explaining how it happened that the police and immigration officers raided the Communist Party hall and left the Wobbly hall untouched op May 10. ‘Well, why should the police raid the Wobbly hall? They might just as well have raided the local headquarters of the republican party. In- deed, according to a correspondent, James P. himself has become so comforting to the capi- talists that our correspondent writes: “J.P. Thempson hasn't the workers at heart. If he had, he wouldn't have asked the workers, as he did at one of his mectings on the skid- road, to buy industrial stocks, such as Sears Roebuck, Montgomery Ward, Milwaukee and other stocks, because they were so low and couldn’t go lower, so there wag a good ct \ Pe ae