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

“=~ Wablished dy the Gomprodeily Publishing Co., 18th Street, New York City, N. Y. Telephone Algonquin Address and mail all checks to tne Dally Worker, 50 East 15th Street, New York. N. ¥. tne, @alt: 1. Cable: except Sunday. at 8 Bast “DAIWORK.* Dail Yorker: Porty U.S.A. SUBSCRIPTION RATES: By mail everywhere: One year, $6; six months. $3; two menths, $1; ot Manhattan and Bronx. New York Ctly. Foreign: one year. $8 ycoepting Boroughs siz months, $4.50. Miners’ Wives and Daughters Help to Spread and Win the Strike | By MYRA PAGE, hére and the ‘The company’s taken every cent for rent little groceries it'd give us. He’s worked steady too, every day there was work. Risking life dren, his ing! We got three little chil- company store wouldn’t allow a week credit for groceries. an you feed five on that? Day after day all T could put in my man’s biicket was a dry piece of bread.” (Many min- ets have latked even that. All they carried was for not. but the ut one do water in their buckets.) “And all I had for the babies was ary bread. That's w we're striking—to stop this starva- tion and win our union.” Every morning sees this miner’s wife on the picket line, often with her three children along, the oldest nine years of age. She is active in relief work and was among the first to join the Women’s Auxiliary of the National Miners’ Union, Vesta 6 The compary has given this family #R evic- tion notice; it has sent its thugs at night to beat this miner up and threaten him with worse, imless he and his wife quit the union. But they are only the more determined. They say, as the other miners and their wives and chil- dren say, “It's better to die fighting than starve to death.” ‘The unbearable conditions which this family suffered, as well as the fight they are now put- ting up along with thelr fellow workers, is typ!- eal of the situation throughout the coal fields of southwestern Pennsylvania. ‘The wives and daughters of coal diggers are among the most militant in the picket lines, calling to those still going to work, “Don’t you know you're taking the food out of our chil- dren’s mouths by Working?" “Our dads are king, what about you?” More than one who has persisted in sacabbing has re- ceived a good Ucking at theff hands. The n are quick to talk and fight back when not’s state troopers and company police at- tack the picket-lnes. “Yellow dogs,” they call | them. One girl marcher carried = sign she | had made, “I'd not marry a Yellow Dog.” Dozens of women and girls have been arrested, clubbed and been knocked out by tear gas at- tacks. But they always come back. Because of their great militancy and success in keeping men out of the mines, the yellow dogs have issued orders in some places that no women shall be allowed to picket. “We're not going off this picket line,” the women answer. “We've a right to the highways. We know what | your game is—so you can club our men better. | ‘Well, we're starving and striking, the same as the men.” At Van Voorhis and Clyde No. 1 mines, where the troopers ordered women off the picket lines, | they organized themselves and came back so strong that the edict against their picketing has | been broken down. In the recent hunger march | of 15,000 striking and unemployed miners on Washington County Seat there were at least 5,000 women and girls who took part. Many of them had picketed and marched many hours | that day. One woman told me, in a matter- of-fact way, that she had gone to bed at nine o’clook, gotten up at twelve to do the family washing and ironing, and since three had been on the march. “We pulled out Vesta 4 this morning,” she said with satisfaction. Before the | end of the march many were carrying their | shoes in their hands—partly to save the last bit of leather, partly to ease their swollen and blistered feet. At the same time the women and girls are busy in every phase of strike activity they are also organizing, along with their men. Wher- ever @ local union of the National Miners’ Union is organized, a Woman's Auxiliary to that local is also being organized. In some places this has not yet been done, but the organized wo- men are working to see that every local has its auxiliary. In the Avella, Bentleywille, Clover- dale, Brownsville, Alleghany and Cannonsburg sections alone there are now more than 25 wo- men’s auxiHaries, and section and district con- ferences are being arranged. “DRINK SON, THE RELIEF WILL SOON BE HERE.” By BURCK | The Scottsboro Case and Nat’l Ass’n for Advancement of Colored People «tt { i] innocent Negro boys, que, Ee aa. £ rs old, two of them’ 14, "and g death at the hands of the white classes of secigaeas jocent, rges of rage: <4 bitte, tis bean been. ted against two white prostites who yelling, dressed in men's clothes and disguised as men, in a freight eay with seven whité men hoboes. Testimony of doctors shows there was no evidence of vi } on the women, and the women themselves to say that the boys had “raped” them until after being jailed and threatened. ‘The mock “trial” took place in a courthouse Surrounded by a crowd of 10;000 men, many of them armed, entertained by a brass band which greeted the death verdicts with bursts of music. Byen the lawyer who was palmed off as “de- fense” attorney, a drunkard and a member of the Ku Klux Klan, acted as thetr attorney only to cooperate in the frame-up and “courthouse lynching.” The day selected for the trial wa} April 6, “horse swapping” day, The four mock trials and eight death verdicts were rushed through in 72 hours, and the Bu Klux Klan lawyer, Steven R. Roddy, did not asl for post- ponement, to give a chance to prepare a de- fense, because as he promised, he wanted to co- operate with the prosecutors to keep the crowd of 10,000 white mountaineers in the town for the money they would spend in the stores with thé local merchants. This Ku Klux Klan law- yer, “pianted” on the boys without their con- sent, advised them to plead guilty although he has since admitted (in the Atlanta World, April 22) that he knows the boys are innocent In each of the four trials, when called upon to take his speech to the jury, this Ku Klux Klan lawyer publicly refused in the courtroom to ask the- jury for a verdict of not guilty. “The eight convicted boys were condemned to die in the electric chair on July 10. ‘The framing up and the intended legal mur- | der of these nine Negro boys is the regular “jus- tice” for Negroes at the hands of the white rul- ing. class. _ Nobody would have thought of accusing these boys if they were not Negroes. Ths seveh white men and boys who were consorting for hours with these white prostitutes in the same freight car have not been accused. But the innocent Negro boys are condemned to death without even 2 chance to defend themselves, without at- torneys of their choice, without even the parents of the 13 and 14-year-old children being noti- fied that their sons were being tried for their lives. ‘There is nothing unusual about the conviction of innocent Negroes in the United States. ‘The only thing “unusual” about the Scotts- boro case is that this time the masses of Negro people and of the white and colored working Class refuse to sit idly by while their innocent ‘sons are to be slaughtered by the parasitic ‘criminal ruling class of Alabama. "Because of a telegram sent from Chattanooga by the organizer of the Communist Party to the Daily Worker in New York, the League of Struggie for Negro Rights and the International Labor Defense learned of this hideous frame-up and started a mass campaign to save the nine innocent Negro boys. “Only this mass rhovement has given them the slightest chance for life and Uberty. The only thance of life and freedom that these innocent Negro boys now have is in the organized mass movement of millions of Negroes and of the white working class to save them. © * This murderous outrage is only a part of the ‘age-old persecution of the Negro people. It is + part of the regular practice of the white ruling class against Negroes. It is the “justice” regu- larly given by “white supremacy” to the Negro Bubject-people. It is the same “justice” the British imperialists give to the Indian people, the: same “justice” the imperialists give to the Chinese and to the African colonial peoples, the same “justice” given by American imperialism ‘= Nicaragua, Haiti, the Philippines—the same ruling elass justice that is found wherever a parasite class miles over an oppressed people or class. It is a part of the veonage, slavery, per- secution and violence which is a regular prac- tice of the white ruling class against the Negro masses. This cold-blooded legal murder of the innocent sons of the Negro people, like all of the other lynchings, Jim Crow persecution and terrorization, disfranchisement against Negroes in this country intended to keep the masses of Negro share croppers and tenants, and the masses of Negro wage-workers in a condition of helpless fear, so as to enable the wealthy land- lords and capitalists to exploit them as cheap labor, ‘The crime against the innocent Negro boys cannot be separated from the system of slavery of whith it is a part. The fight to save these boys cannot be won except as an open fight against their ctnvictions as @ frame-up, as a part of this system of op~ Pression. The Scottsboro boys cannot be saved without mobilizing a movement of millions, without stirring up the masses of black men and women and of those advanced white workers who are ready to fight together with the Negro masses against this beastly legal crime. Because of the nature of this case ,the lives of these innocent boys cannot be saved by law- yers alone. They cannot be saved by depending upon the “justice” of an Alabama court. The court has already spoken, and has condemned them to death although they were known by the judge and all concerned to be not guilty of any crime but the “crime” of being Negro boys. Those who reduce this to a mere “legal” case and try to make the masses trust to a so-called “fair trial” in an Alabema court, are surren- dering the lives of these boys and are betray- ing the whole cause of the Negro people to the system of slavery and lynching under which we are living. Only the organized mass movement of millions can save them. ‘The fight to save these nine innocent boys re- quires a united front of all of those who can be brought into the fight on the one issue of sav- ing their lives and liberties. Ws eke The officers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People claim that the N. A. A. ©. P. is “one of the organiza- tions” that is “defending” the nine Scottsboro boys. But the facts show otherwise. ‘The officers of the N. A. A. C. P. have from the first been most of all interested in what they call “good race relations” between them- selves and the white ruling class of the South and the North. They have openly declared against any mass movement stirring up what they call the “densely ignorant portion of the colored population” against the frame-up of the innocent boys at Scottsboro. For this rea- son they have necessarily betrayed these boys from the beginning. According to their own statements they arranged for the Ku Klux Klan lawyer, Roddy, to “defend” the boys by handling it purely as a “rape” case, a “legal” case, to avoid “offending” the court and the “influen- tial” white citizens, who framed up the boys, but to depend on a “fair trial” and to “let the law take its course’—the Ku Klux Klan lawyer who even refused to address the jury to ask for a verdict of not guilty, After the verdict of death and before the mass movement was started by others for their defense, the officers of the N. A. A. C. P. did not make a single ef- fort to appeal from the murderous verdict. From the arrest of the boys on March 26 until April 24, three weeks after the boys were con- demned to death, the N. A. A. ©. P. was silent. The officers of the N. A. A. C. P. had no in- tention to say one word or do one single thing in defense of the boys; and they did not say one word about the case until after the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, the International Labor Defense, the Communist Party and the revolutionary trade unions which organize Ne- groes and whites together (not in the A, F. of L, but in the TUUL) had stirred up a wide mass agitation against the crime of the Alabama rul- ing class. The officers of the N. A. A. C. P., bent on cultivating the favor of what they call the “influential whites” of the southern ruling class, did not want their “respectable” name associated with what white milllionaires who control the NAACP considered a “disgraceful” affair in which 13 and 14 year old Negro boys were supposed to have violated the “white womanhood” of two professional prostitutes. While the N. A. A. C. P. officially remained silent, the well-known newspaper which acts as the organ for the N. A. A. C. P., the Pittsburgh Courter, truly expressed the point of view of the NAAOCP leaders with the giant headline: “18,000 Heat Boy Rapists Sentenced.” Tt is well known that the Pittsburgh Courier is an organ of the National Office of the N. A. A. ©. P, and the editor, Mr. Robert L. Vann, who is responsible for denouncing the nine in- nocent Negro boys framed up at Scottsboro as “rapists,” is one of the guests of “honor” at its present Pittsburgh convention, eee After the mass movement was stirred up for the saving of the nine framed up Scottsboro boys, the officers of the N. A. A. C. P. at last were compelled by protests that “poured in” to their office, to make some pretense of engaging in defending the boys. But this pretense is a lie. The N. A. A. C. P. officers, after taking re- sponsibility for the Ku Klux Klan lawyer who helped to frame them up, have from the be- ginning not done one thing to defend the boys, but have done everything to attack and break up the mass movement which has given the boys their only chance for life and liberty. The officers of the N..A. A. C. P. on May 1 issued a statement declaring that they “would have nothing to do” with the organizations defend- ing the boys. Repeatedly since that time they have again refused. The NACP. officers now claim that they are “independently” doing something for the boys. They have repeatedly collected money on these pretenses, and have tried to prevent the collection of funds by the International Labor Defense which has been officially authorized by all of the boys and their parents to conduct their defense. But the point is, not whether the N. A. A. C. P. officers are doing anything for the boys. The Point is that the N. A. A. C. P. is conducting to- day the most vicious campaign in support of the lynchers and against the defense of the nine Scottsboro boys. On May 11 Walter White, Secretary of the N. A. A. C. P., wrote a letter to all of the news- papers, marked “not for publication,” in which he tried to undermine the whole campaign and prevent the participation of these newspapers in the mass movement. White said that the de- mand for the immediatz release of the boys is “an absurd and impossible demand,” and de- nounced those who are defending the boys. William Pickens for a few days under pres- sure of the mass protest gave his written sup- port to the mass movement. Controlling of- ficers of the N. A. A: C. P. frightened Pickens with the threat of loss of his job, and Pickens became thé most obsequient tool of the anti- Negro policy of the National Office of the N. A. A.C. P, On June 7 Pickens made a spegch in Chattanooga declaring that “the most serfous menace in the whole matter” is the mass mve- ment to save the boys, which he aie ee as “Communist sapping through the densely fgnor- ant portion of the colored population.” In other words, Pickens is interested only in winning for the N. A. A. C. P. @ position as a protection for the southern white ruling class against the “deadly ignorant” colored Population. Pickens said: “Let the white people of Alabama sit up and take notice: This Communist sapping through the densely ignorant portion of the colored Population, while not immediately menacing to government itself, is certainly menacing to good race relations.” The “good race relations” existing in Alabama consist : . enslavement, habitual lynching, burn- and framing up of Negroes by a white ruling | lice to ask that the Chattanooga Conference for class; and Mr. Pickens {s afraid the Comntu- ; nists will “sap” and “menace” the white rul- | ing class in these “good race relations.” He is less interested in saving the Negro boys than | in saving the white ruling class from any agi- tation among the Negro masses. Pickens in his Chattanooga speech (Chat- tanooga Times) declared that there is “some doubt” about the “guilt or imnocence” of the nine Negro boys. This is his contribution to the southern ruling class, an effort to shake the confidence of the masses in the justice of the cause and to sabotage the growth of the mass movement. Walter White, Secretary of the NAACP, calls upon the Negro people to rely upon “a fair trial” in the Alabama courts where Negroes are framed yp before jim crow juries, and to expect “exact justice regardless of race.” This is the policy that put the innocent Negro boys in the electric chair. It is in accord with thie What the NAACP Tetains the Ku Klux Klan lawyer Roddy whom they still pretend is a lawyer to defend the wine Scottsboro boys. At the same time the NAACP leaders are openly calling for suppression of agitation and organization among the Negro masses. This is the same policy as that of the Ku Klux Klan. William Pickens’ cowardly denunciation of Negro workers to the police of Tennessee and Alabama is the only course consistent with the whole position of the NAACP. It is quite logical that the Rev. J. R. Bowen, chief representative of the NAACP and president of the Ministers Alliance in Chattanooga, openly went to the po- the Defense of the Scottsboro boys:be raided by the police and the delegates arrested. At the request of the agent of the NAACP eleven dele- gates to the Chattanooga Defense Conference were put in jail. The NAACP leaders pretend to think that the boys’ case would be “injured” by the fact that “radical” organizations, sympathetic to the Com- munist Party have come to their defense. But, in the first place,.there would have been no defense if the Communist Party had not started {t. The boys were already condemned to death with the connivance of a lawyer hired by the NAACP, before the Communist Party rallied a Mass movement for their defense. The NAACP argument amounts to the theory that the South- ern white ruling class court would give a ‘fair trial” to Negroes if nobody would “interfere.” The NAACP leaders complain that the Com- munist Party started the mass movement to de- fend the innocent Negro boys. Then why did not the Republican Party start the defense of the boys? Why didn’t the Democratic Party start it? Why didn’t the Socialist Party start it? Of course these are ridiculous questions. Every- body knows that the Republican, Democratic and Socialist parties would never start any movement of this kind, because those parties are capitalist parties—supporters of the ruling class and the institutions of ipa and white supremacy. The NAACP has always been allied with the Politicians of the Republican party, and some of the Democratic party. Now the NAACP is finding its closest ally in another party of white supremacy —the Socialist party. The NAACP recently boasted that in Vermont the Socialist party is giving the closest cooperation to the NAACP campaign which is a campaign to break up the movement for the defense of the Scotts- boro boys. At the convention of the NAACP of June 30 to July 4, 1931, at Pittsburgh, the NAACP con- solidates its alliance with the social-fascists (the so-called “Socialist” party) by having as two of its main speakers Norman Thomas, whose at- titude has always been one of reaction, who has never uttered one single word in favor of the liberation of the Negro masses,.and Heywood Brown, who not long ago wrote in the New York Telegram: “If I were a candidate for high executive office, or judicial office, I would say, even without being cornered, that I would not sanc- tion the efforts to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.” Heywood Broun correctly expresses the view of the Socialist party im opposing the enforcement. | of the 13th, 14th and 15th constitutional amend- ments which claim to give citizenship and vot- ing rights to Negroes. The so-called “Socialist” party has never stood for the liberation of the Negro people. The Socialist party, just as the NAACP leaders, is against any agitation and or- ganization of what is called the “ignorant” class of Negroes, which means the slaves of the white ruling class in the South. Being a supporter of the capitalist system, the Socialist party 1s not interested in the Negro in the South, where the Negro has no vote, and where the demand for the vote would “stir up the masses of Ne- groes” as is being done by the Communist Party and the League of Struggle for Negro Rights. Just as the “socialist” British Labor Party, in the government of Great Britain, orders the shooting down of the “inferior” Indian people in India, and slaughters every effort of the Ne- gtoes to organize in the British colonies of Africa, just so their brother party the Socialist party of America, is in favor of the arrest, the terrorization and suppression of the “ignorant” working class and farming Negro masses in the United States. And this explains why the NA ACP leaders find today their best friends in the Jim-crow Socialist party. eta fe We call upon the masses of Negro people and of the working class, black and white, to rally together into a tremendous mass movement for the purpose of saving the lives and liberty of the nine innocent Negro boys framed up at Scottsboro. We demand a united front of ail who are willing to fight for this purpose. We call upon the rank and file members of the NAACP to repudiate the treacherous mis- leaders, Spingarn, Walter White, Mary W.- Ovington, William Pickens and others, who have made themselves the conscious agents of the white ruling class of the South. We call upon the masses who have in the past followed these misleaders to throw off such leadership and rally in oné solid united ffént to fight for the im- mediate release of the innocent Negro boys framed up and condemned to. death. We do not think that the national organiza- tion of the NAACP can be brought into this united front. The function of their organization, as declared by Walter White and William Pick- ens, is to work in accord with the “influential whites” of the South who, as the ruling class, are directly resporisible for the framing up of the Scottsboro boys. This white ruling class is interested only in the enslavement and exploit- ation of the Negro masses. The function of the NAACP under these leaders is to help the white ruling class in the South to suppress all agita- tion and all organization of the enslaved Negro masses that Pickens calls “the ignorant” class of Negroes. The function of the NAACP is the same as that of the Ku Klux Klan to keep the masses of the Negro people under the terror- ization, exploitation and rule of the white ruling class, which Pickens describes as “good race re- lations.” But the mass movement to save the Scotts- boro boys is growing and will continue to grow. The nine innocent Negro boys can be saved! Demand immediate release of the nine inno- cent boys. Stop the legal lynching at Scotts- boro! Demand a new trial by a jury composed only of those standing for equal rights for Negroes, at least half to be Negroes! Only the mass power of the workers and op- pressed farmers, black and white, can free the victims of the Scottsboro frame-up! \ Down with peonage, Jim cro:ism, persecution, lynching and frame-up of the Negro people! Equal rights for Negroes! Right of self deter- mination for the Negro people in the black belt! Black and white workers—native and foreign born workers—fight side by side against wage guts and unemployment, against lynching, de- portations and anti-foreign born laws and mass arrests! Negro workers and oppressed farmers. Fight and defeat the sabotage and betrayal of the Scottsboro boys by the reactionary Negro leaders! By JORGE as Why Herbie Don’t Like Soviets “Dear Jorge:—In going over a book entitled ‘The Great Mistake, written by John Knox and published by the National Foundation Press of Washington, D. C., I came across an article on page 68, referring to Hoover's membership in the Board of Directors of the Russo-Asiatic Cor< poration of 1912, “The orticle further states that when the Bol- Sheviki seized power and revoked all concessions granted to foreigners by the Czar, Hoover be- came frantic over the safety of his investments there, and persuaded President Wilson (Hoover was then a democrat we are told—Jorge) to send parts of the American Expeditionary Force to Archangel and Murmansk.—J. C.” Well, that’s not surprising. And though it may account for some of the implacable cussedness of Hoover toward the Sovict Union, yet he, as the spokesman for American imperialism, would be just as counter-revolutionary as he is, even if he had no personal grouch. Post and Gatty Came Back But while they were flying across the Soviet Union, doing a. man’s size job on their trip round the world, there wasn’t any trouble. In fact they praise the Osoviakhim (the Soviet avia- tion and chemical society), the Soviet authori- ties and everything Soviet, for the help they gave and the hospitable reception extended ev- ery time-these world record flyers touched Soviet soil. a ‘The trouble came when they came back, And was caused absolutely because capitalism needs police to bulldoze and brutalize the masses and Police can’t keep their hands off a crowd. Give a crowd a chance to act just plain nat- ural, and it can do no more than crowd up close to the heroes of the day and get friendly. But no, a cop’s business is to make you stop doing what you want to do, and to force you to do what you don’t want to do. So when the N. Y, | coe went out to “prescrve order” when Post and Gatty landed, all hell broke ‘loose, A pérfectly respectable capitalist named Connerton, of some aviation company called the Air Services, Incorporated, busy with cameras and films at the press both where he had a right to be was told to “move on” and when he insisted on his rights, was beaten so severely as to be sent to the Nassau hospital, and was ar- rested there by cops who followed him up after beating him. He is a man of shrimp size, 5 feet 3, andthe cop what had him pinched for “assault” is 6 feet 3 inches! That isn’t all. John Ferris, 2 reporter for a capitalist paper got knocked unconscious by a cop’s club and went to the hospital, too. He'll be lucky if “he isn’t pinched for “resisting an officer.” Then another cop “bumped into” a camera~ man with a flashlight flare, and the flames set fire to a pool of oil beneatth the plane. So what happened? Field attendants tried to put the fire out by throwing sand on it, but they had to battle the cops to do it! In a crowd of only 10,000 people, nobody can explain the massacre that took place except by saying that the police were there “preserving order.” Twenty people were injured, two -ser- iously, where none would have been if the police had been’ sent after Czar Nicolas the Second, as the old Russian police were by the revolution. There are no police in the Soviet Union, des- pite all the yarns of such liars as Eva Garrett Grady. The. famous and expert. “Gaypayoo” tends to counter-ervolutionaries and does it well, but it never even thinks of “preserving order” in crowds. The crowds preserve their own order, the natural order of workers. And if here and there some citizens obstructs this natural discipline of the mass, a militiaman is disgracing workers’ discipline. And the crowd helps him along with roars of approval which nearly invariably cause the culprit to subside. The Soviet militta are a part of the mass and never make themselves “superior” and “bossy,” and don't-lurk about armed to the teeth trying to overawe the people. Police, trained to terrorize the masses in de+ fense of capicciict rule, are menace. But only a revolution will abolish them. Peace Pacts for War a Year Before August 1914! duly 18, 1913: “In Secretary Bryan’s opinion his peace plan has now gone forward far enough to justify assuring the world that it is destined to be a success. Twenty nations have aligned themselves in favor of it, either by assenting to it fully or by a tentative assurance that negotiations will be considered in the near future— “Tt proposes (the treaty) that when a con- dition arises where war is threatening the two countries involved shall waite until a commis- sion has.opportunity to inquire into the casus belli and report—” And 1930 “what is the outlook for world peace? In my judgment it is better than ever before in the history of the world. We are now pasing through one of the few periods when all the world is at peace. We have seen the appal- ling effect Of a World War. Since that time great strides have been made in the interest of peace. “The conscience of the world has been stirred. Men and women no longer look upon war as a necessity in national life. The ad- vocates of peace have every reason to be en- couraged, but should not relax their efforts— “No one or two nations are going to be able to dominate the world. The security of the world can only be obtained by mutual con- sideration, confidence and the advance of pacific settlement of disputes. The five powers represented in London were allies in the last war. They have a greater naval armament today than they had at the time of the Geneva Conference in 1927 and their fleets are more effective than at any time since the close of the war. During the Jast ten years of profound peace their armaments have been adequate for defense. (Kellogg, March 29, 1930). “T am a great believer in conferences, di- plomatic~ interventions, conciliation, arbitra- tion -and’’ judicial settlement of disputes.” (Kellogg, March 29, 1930),