The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 18, 1931, Page 4

DAILY WORKER, eSNG eres LABOR OFF ICLALDOM| IN THE NEXT WAR 2 RESEARCH ASSN. een the U eaders of the follows nd reads the 1 and others iden- one who S always looked friendly way a of our govern- ways demonstra! leaders” would ‘war for democ- S ae openly declared ion. This fact hear- Var Policies Com- on. War De- presented a very d pr n where- cbilized in tributed among loyal” labor to “procure it thi so ird like Woll that “Labor wi. important Go be represented in all nt agencies deal- ing with in al matters. There ‘yall “be 2 12 ee in the of- fice of the A: Secretary of War and in the co tor of Wer I ay Specifically, “labor will repre- sented in the organization of the director of war industry by the ap- pointment of its natural leaders to positions on the war-service commit- tees.” Woll, Green, Brady, Lewis, McMahon, Wilson— “natural leaders” of the wo! will of course War Depart- nt will be based upon their unswerving loyalty to ‘capitalism and the intensity of their hatred towards the Soviet Union. r 4 One of the chief jobs of these ap- pointees of the War Department will be, in the wi ‘the avoidance frial disputes e had lots Of practice in the art of sell-out. The plan is quite concrete and is Presénted in elaborate charts. Op- posite page 420 is a chart of the “Labor Administration” and its “Ad visory Council” with “five members Hominated by the National Industrial Conference Board’—the employers’ Joint research and propaganda bu- reeu—and “five members nominated by'the American Federation of La- hor,” who are to act as “liason of- ficers with labor.” _.Then the so-called Industrial Divi- j sion of the office of the Secretary of j it is specifically pointed be “a woman essentially nd not internationalistic; ative of the fact that women, must make sacrifices in the last imperialist war If is any guide we can safely predict that plenty of such women directors tants can be found among the National ion League. t associations of the A. F the preparations for war e seen in the fact that @ issue of the American Labor F. of L. sheet pub- ngton, carries an ar- ticle by a lieutenant-colonel taken 2 the magazine called Army Ordi- nance. The War Department offi- writes furiously against a war- draft of all labor in industry, fly on the ground that it would cent cial lead to revolution. The whole ef- fort. it is clear from this article, will be to keep labor under voluntary control while fighting vigorously what he describes as “un- tic agitators who will be ‘bor- m withi danger of w in? just not idle Every wor must be awake to the threat of a new slaughter Into the streets on August 1. Let: the bosses know that you will not} stand for intervention either against the German masses or against the Soviet Union. Turn out in masses on August 1. International Anti-War Bod Young who was shot by dep- uty Sheriff during the murderous onslaught against striking mine pickets in Wilwood, Pa., on June 22. ‘Labor and Textiles’ By WILLIAM Z. FOSTER. Textile workers at Central Falls, Rhode Island, on strike against a wage-cut, are facing tear gas bombs and police night-sticks, while fellow- workers in the mine fields are carry- ing on their great struggle against starvation. Back of these two fronts in the cless war is a story of capital- ist greed that is well told in books of the Labor and Industry series, prepared by the Labor Research As- sociation and published by Interna- tional Publishers, Labor and Textiles, by Bob Dunn and Jack Hardy, together with an earlier volume, Labor and Silk, by Grace Hutchins, give the facts that workers need and want to know about the textile industries. How capitalists are trying to squeeze profits out of a “sick” industry. how t hide these profits from the rs, how they move the mills South to buy cheaper labor power and leave behind them in New Eng- Jand dead towns and starving work- ers—the whole story is here, told in graphic, simple language. Workers who want to know, for instance, who owns the General Fabrics Silk Corp, involved in the present strike, will find the facts on page 46 in Labor and Silk and the story of Rhode Island employers’ tacties on page 158 in Labor and Textiles. Speed-up and its particular form Scenes from the textile strike unloosed against the strikers to keep them from picke' in Central Falls, Rhode Island, The most vicious terror has been What Is the Program of the Workers Cultural Federation? By HARRY ALAN POTAMKIN. ‘The organizations that sent dele- gates to the workers’ cultural con- ference on June 14 have a member- ship of 20,000. This does not in- clude the membership of the larger mass organizations. Of the 130 clubs and federations represented by the 265 delegates, 80 have no definite cultural program. To help define these clubs is a major purpose of the newly founded Workers’ Cultural Federation. Precise aims and defi-j nite character are the essentials of 2 | workers’ club. A Federation, not or- ganized to supersede any of the al- ready existing unions of clubs. serves | as a common center to direct the) aims and strengthen the form of| every worker’s club. Those clubs that have experience in the cultural fields can lend that experience to the newer clubs. The newer clubs, arriving in the cultural arena at this critical moment may be less con~- fused than the older, and may lend fresher interpretation and energy. The Federation is the clearing-house of experience, interpretation and en- ergy. | The central aim of the Federation may be declared threefold: to bring Workers Organize Revolutionary Culture cs the newer or more diffuse organiza- | tions crystallize their program; to| create the necessary organizations missing in important cultural fields. | In the first, we may say there is such @ problem as bringing the large foreign-language groups into the service of the American workers, and the creation of American music and songs for the music federation, the encouragement of theatrical groups to turn from the orthodox play-pres- entation to agitation-propaganda short-forms. In the second, for in- stance, there is the pre-eminently important propaganda group, the Film and Photo League. The Fear eration niust relate the work of this group to every workers’ club and to the erftire revolutionary presa The League must be encouraged and sup- ported in its showing of films, its agitational work against reactionary movies, the making of proletarian film-documents, and in the spread the older organizations into the ser- vice of the present period; to help | be given to the League toward the success of the Proletarian Photo week the last week in July, and the American exhibit at the Interna- tional Exposjtion in Berlin in Octo- ber. The third part of the Feder- ation’s central aim can be illustrated by the urgent need for a proletarian anti-religious or freethinkers’ union. To carry out the purposes of the Federation the executive board has created a bureau composed of the chairmen of the commissions for tle various forms. The commissions will be mass in character; 1. e., they will have worker representation to assure @ constant contact with the shops, the unemployed councils, the work- ers’ clubs. The commissions -in- clude: the educational, the commis- sion for literature—including press, worker-cortespondence and publish- ing, the art commission, the film and photo, the commission for mass organizations, the anti-religious, the commission for women, the Negro commission, the commission for youth, sports, the theatrical and music commissions. A Federation which has been ef- fected to clarify the struggle on the cultural front must state the nature of the function of the worker-photo- grapher. Immediate backing should of that sruggle. To that end a Special committee has been chosen ‘Carmors Cas! Company vill not be ranponettefr Py Sateen SS ne ers 7 ? Ne 3 wShe B Gabe % CARNEGIE COAL COMPANY i GRUVE MINE is showing the “kisses” (3 x’s but no Here a sample “pay” slip, money) company after slaving in the pits. This is the reason why the miners of Pennsylvania are on strike. to prepare a cultural manifesto to serve the Federation as a common Platform, and to present to the workers of America a clear picture of the antagonisms between bour- geois and proletarian culture and wherein lies the ultimate victory of the latter. The two authoritative principles of self-criticism and socialist competi- tion, principles in action, must con- sistently serve the development of the Federation. It is primarily for these that the Federation has been founded, for these are the working! ideas of the aims of the Federation. Self-criticism is the exchange of ex- perience, lessons learned from mis- takes and successes. Socialist com- petition, competition in behalf of the working class, strengthens our use of the cultural weapons and is an- other means of mutual experience. Therefore, this coming fall the Fed- eration will sponsor the first ex- tensive socialist competition in the drama. The Federation will serve also as the medium by which ex- hibits may travel from club to club. Already the artists’ groups of the John Reed Ciub has offered a col- lection of Soviet posters for such a traveling exhibit, and the Workers’ Film and Photo League offers a worker-photographers’ show. The Federation has not been slow to get busy. But, though busy with the national tasks, it has not overlooked the fact that it is a unit of a great interna- tional of culture. To express its solidarity with the oppressed revolu- tionary writers of China, the Fed- eration has begun its work to ex- cite the social conscience of Amer- ican writers, artists, scientists, in- tellectuals generally, against the hor- rible atrocities of the Nanking gov- ernmet serving the imperialist in- terests. No race hatred in worker's Rus- sia by Patterson, in July Labor Defender. By HELEN MARCY FTER travelling through hundreds of miles of the Alabama and Mis- is enslaved in dismel turpentine swamps and sun baked cotton plant- ations, is was quite 2 shock to smell the smoke and dirt of the cotton city, Mobile, Ala. Practically all Alabama's foreign due to the crisis and the intensified production of cotton in other coun- tries, cotton shipping has fallen to a War is also to contain a Labor Sec-! in textile mills, wages lower than any tion, presided over by one colonel other manufacturing industry ex- dnd one major. One of the functions - of this section will be to determine , lator requirements of the Army;' and “to accomplish this mission it must maintain close contact through loca] representatives with industry, with all agencies of the labor admin- istration, and with recognized or- ganizations of both employers and employees” ‘(our emphasis—L.R.A.). The. “recognized organizations” will, of course, be those affiliated with the. A. F, of L. - Others, if they are revolutionary in their principles or activities, will be outlawed, just as was the I. W. W. during the last im- perialist war, with the A. F. of L. Officials in their government. posts attempting to destroy it. It will be: the same with the revolutionary, unions Jed by the Trade Union Unity League in the next imperialist war. The function of the Industrial} Division will also be to keep down’ “migration of labor’—that is, work-! ers’ will be restricted in moving, ground in search of better jobs—and besides “it seeks to foresee and fore- ; 5 causes of friction between em- Fis oyers and employees.” ‘Women workers and young work- ers are not forgotten in the War ment plan. For @ special hy : ‘ ie cept tobacco, night-work and the 60- hour week are described in detail so clearly and vividly that other work- ers who have never been in a tex- tile plant may understand what cot~ ton, wool and silk workers are up against. Heroic strikes of textile workers through a hundged years of American labor history make the closing chapters of these books an inspiration to all workers in the present-day struggles. And the story of textile workers’ emancipation in the Soviet Union is also told. Workers who read these books can never again put any trust in offi- cials of the United Textile Workers of America, or of the American Fed- eration of Labor behind it. Thomas F. McMahon and William Green are exposed in detail for all their shame- less betrayal of the working class. The books thus provide ammunition for all who would help to build the National Textile Workers’ Union. Every worker in the struggle should be armed with a copy of each of these dollar books. Buy them today from locals of the National Textile Work- ers’ Union, from the Workers’ Book- shop, 60 E. 13th &t.. N. Y. City, or from International Publishers, 381 Fourth Ave, New York City. ' very low level. This slump in the prime industry of Mobille has resulted in two third of the working population joining the army of unemployed, or part employ- ed. Long lines of new private and government warehouses have been built along the port to house the ex- cess cotton which becomes larger each year. I found may way into the Warrant Warehouse Co., where cotton is com- pressed and stored. All the workers except the petty bosses are Negroes. The white foreman pointed with Pride at the huge cotton compress which 16 workers were operating. The machine puts about 400,000,000 Ibs. of weight on each bale, cutting its size in half. The machine is very dangerous since the workers must jump inside its maw while the compressing is going on and sew burlap around the cotton, The speed-up is so intense that the workers must compress 130 bales an hour or more than 2 bales a minute. Once a worker gets caught in the press he is crushed to death or his back is broken. : If the speed-up wese lessened, there would not be such a great loss of life. The foreman, however, had a very novel way of explaining it. “The workers take 2 special pride in speed- ing up,” he said. During the rush season in the fall the workers toil-as long as 24 hours at a stretch. and numerous lives are snuffed out for the sake of the great God Mammon. Forced Risk Lives For 35 cents An Hour The men at this machine make from 35 to 40 cents an hour.,/ 1i2cro women who smooth the tin hands sissippi Black Belt where the Negro commerce passes through Mobile, but for the cotton bales and cart huge, very interesting worker, who hace loads about the warehouse get only been a militant member of the In- 10 cents an hour. ternational Longshoremen’s Ass'n in I would like to pause here and show | New Orleans. When he first came to | with the union. Human labor ts cheaper than locomotives, so the Mobile bosses force Negro workers to move trains of freight cars from one track to another. re cane nee AC ESE Ve RED how according to the boss's own fig- ures, he makes at least $100 or (if he works two compresc:s $200 an hour, clear profit. The boss gets 96 cents a bale for compressing cotton, excluding extra payment for storing. The workers compress 130 bales an hour, so he gets approximately $130. Sixteen workers at the machine, making let us say the high rate of 40 cents an hour, is $6.40 for labor, The labor for 6 women for an Hour is 60 cents, making labor cost only $7. We will be exceedingly liberal and allow the the boss $23 an hour for the upkeep of machinery, rent etc. This leaves him a clear profit of $100 on one compress. The foreman confided to me that he knew that twice as much cotton as last year would be stored this Fall. was right about prosperity— n2 prosperous. Back on the docks again I met a * Frightful loads cre the rule for Negro long- shoremen on Mobile docks. eat speed-up and huge COMPRESSING COTTON and WAGES Mobile he and others tried to form a union, and at one time they suc-, ceeded in having as many as 1,500 at a mass meeting. Stool Pigeons Squeal on Workers But, “the bosses knew everything from squealers. They arrested me 2 or 3 times. Then one night a gang of Ku-Klux came to my house and threatened to lynch me if I continued The workers were weak and didn’t stick. They black- listed me. I was a crane operator before but now they will only hire me for laboring work, and most times not even that. They put my picture in the paper, and said that I was just a Northern nigger trying to start trouble.” The shipping bosses do not hire longshore labor directly. They en- gage a number of little King Jesus’ called gang foremen, who are good Slave drivers, to hire the men. This leads to a system of bribery, where workers must give a foreman a few dollars to get a job and then keep feeding him 50 cents a week or so, to keep a job. 90 percent of the longshoremen are Negroes, as are the foremen who are used as informers and scabs by the shipping men. For 5 cents an hour extra pay the foreman drives his men so that after a days toil on the docks, the workers can hardly drag themselves home. More speed-up and wage cuts are the order of the day. I asked one fore- man what his work was. “I am hired as a driver for the men,” he said. The government also has miles of warehouses along the docks, They buy cotton from the farmers co-oper- atives. The workers in the govern- ment warehouses, compressing and storing cotton, make even less than others, getting from 25 to 3314 cents an hour. Not only in Mobile, but all through the Peon Black Belt, I found a wel- come basis for our movement. The Scottsboro leaflets and the Southern Worker that I carried with me, open- ed wide the eyes of the workers and farmers, Unity, class brotherhood— a new world of hope unfolded itself before their startled eyes. “Send me more of them papers. That's what we been need’n all along” the miner gets from the } t i | | |A NEW VERSE FOR A WELL KNOWN SONG By BARBARA RAND dust off the Cedar Grove high’ a row of barracks, high on stilts, houses three hundred and thirty- three people—men, women and chil- | dren. Every few yards, a partition | marks where one “apartment” ends | and another begins. The “apart-! ments” in turn are divided into two rooms each. Rickety steps lead up to the en- | trances. The roof is covered with tar| paper that seems to absorb and ra- diate heat as nothing else can, Like most company houses, there is hei- ther gas nor electricity. Kerosene furnishes the light at night and coal cooks what there is to cook. And again like most company houses, it’s as hot as a turkish bath. The com- i low-cheeked youngster said. The same song—“the land. of promise”—but it had a new verse. The” myth about America that brought her parents here has blown up. In the “free” country, deputy sheriffs and state police club and gas and even shoot you if you walk on thé’ public highway to meet the mih- ets.before they go into the pit and tell them that it is starvation every- body is fighting against, and that if all the mines are shut down. the strike will surely be won. It doesn’t matter if you are a child or a Wo- man. And as to making a living—the evidence lay before us. Even the Youngster knew that all the com- pany gives are “kisses,” XXX ina row, to show that everything you pany houses had more room, but the strikers’ wives say that the barracks aren’t full of bugs like some of the old company houses are. The first cubby-hole apartment is the relief store. The focd and cloth- ing brought in by the Pennsylvania- Ohio Striking Miners Relief © mittee from the Pittsburgh headquar- ters in room 205, 611 Penn Ave., are ib Maybe a new president would stored there. !change things, somebody suggested. A few doors down, a family of co “My brother in England writes made the company took as. bei “owed” to them. OM The old folks shook their heads. ‘No; "it isn’t at all what the “land*of the free” sounded like before you got here. In the child’s mind the old.song had:a new verse—the old country has become the mythical paradise. Later the boys began to talk about en lives. In the first room is the coal | things is just as bad there, and they stove on which the cooking is done, athave~ Socialist feller at the head of few chairs. On the table is a smal! Pthfigs,” a miner in torn canvas shoes bottle with yellow dandelions in it.]put in. “So presidents don’t. count. The flowers come from the fields] It’s-the rich that runs everything.” nearby. On the shelf nailed to the-]: “Oh, I don’t know. When Coolidge wall is shelf paper in elaborate scal- was-president, we got better pay,” the lops cut from newspaper to i> first_miner put in. the kind the stores have in bright “Oh, yeah, how about the strike in colors and designs. No food is in lo ® Coolidge didn’t make things dif- 1M ACCOUNT WITH: PittssurcH TERMINAL COAL CORPORATION FOR LABOR FOR HALF MONTH ENDED. DEBIT 7s [Cts. i Cueck No CREDIT Assignments Cut. Picked Mine Coat [Smithing Se: os Cwt-Cut by Machine t. Loaded after Machine Yards, Doctor Explosives Brass Checks ated if Total C: a Total Debit, Z Miner's Lamps, Insurance Bath House Total Debit L Balance Due, — —— Received Paymént in Fult for Account as Stated Above Sign Hera, Pil at Witness = SEE NOTICE ON OTHER SIDB After slaving for the Pittsburgh Terminal bosses, with whom the UMW have conc:uded a scab strike-breaking agreement the miner gets a pay” slip entitling him to exactly. nothing. \ sight. The last of it is gone, and an- other truckload is expected today. In the next room, two beds are crowded. Here the family of seven] sleep. Cotton blankets cover the bed. Under the blankets are pillows and ferent!” came the quick retort from hadf..a dozen. : “G's awful bad in Germany, too,” the old man says. “But when you're out’ of work they give you some money to keep you from starving, mattresses so old that thé original colors cannot be guessed. It’s too, hard to was mattresses and pillows, especially when water has to be car- ried up in bucketfuls and soap is a4 rarity. Anyway, if the water seers | into the mattress stuffing, it cause: bugs. A surface cleaner must be used | and that costs more than a miner cap. afford. Sheets? Yes, the 12-year-old daughter says, she saw sheets onoa, and pillow slips too—in a hospifa when she visited a relative. Ever sleep on any? Oh, no. But the lad: next decor made sheets out of flour sacks. It's awfully hard getting them, though. “3 And then the little girl got to talk- ing about sheets and such things. Her mother came from the old coun- + try. She said everybody had sheets there, and pillow cases and real feather blankets that were as light as anythy3—but they could even keep you warm in a company house, She herself was born in Clairton, Pa., and hadn't seen all these things, but ! ‘jin. -“Ts it true they got a raise anyway. I got lots of folks there.” “Things are just the same, all over.” “Terrible bad times!” “What can’ poor folks expeet?” “You get what you fight for!” “Yes, that’s;the same every place! You get what you ight for and make them give you!” “I hear the miners got it ‘pretty good in Russia,” another fellow puts this year?” “}-Yes, I told him, it's true. Tn thé So- vist Union, the workers run their own government. The miners got a 25 Her cent raise in wages this year. And they work 6 hours a day and 5 days a week. } "And they say they get paid for time they don’t work—just for loaf- ing,” somebody else says. That’s the two. months’ vacation each year with full’ pay, I explain. Eyes are round with wonder. Loud ejaculations.. A kid puts in, “We get vacations from school!” Her mother snorts, “That don’t fill your belly none!” } “I reckon they must’ve put up they were true, she assured us, her °0™¢ tall. fight for that!” ad 2 mother said so, And the big farms Cldse enthusiast says, “and I had plenty of food there. “Ma sdiai| Teckon we got more than one fight she was just never hungry!” the sal- ¢ one of the ahead before we git there!” nial