The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 23, 1931, Page 4

chem age Fou P ™ ns lath Street, Fe Published by the Comprodaily Publishing Co., New York City, N. ¥. ‘Telephone A Inc Address and mail all checks to the Daily Worker, oh get SUBSCRIPTION RATES: = t By mail everywhere: One year, $6; six months, $3; two months, $1; eStepting Boroughs of Manhattan and. Bronx. New York Ctly. Foreign: one year, $8- six months, $4.50. 1 ogee a peace policy and peace proposals of the S. R. have always been an eyesore to their ‘The niversal disarmament, fe the governments. capitals s and Soviet proposal: which were made by the Soviet delegation in at the preparatory com about "ee years ago, the underhand play of the imperial- about peace and dis- Geneva, ent ists, for whom the talks armament serve only as a cover for new and furious armaments and the preparation of new wars. This proposal was recognized by Messrs, Briand, MacDonald and Zalesky as too radical. In reply to this the Soviet delegation introduced ct of partial disarmament which entailed war stocks and rejected by the a pro i a real reduction in the arm armaments. This proposal imperialist nbers of tis onference. The necessity for the her expenditure of milliards on cruiser: w poison gases, the d to defend in the eyes of the masses by the ce in the East of a huge prolet: tate, which recognizes neither the bourgeois nor private property, nor even god, and represents 4 tremendous danger for the world. At the Gen- eva Conferences fascist Poland and Rumania supported by their master, England and France, cynically declared that for them t no question of armament since they tréatened by the danger of an attack on the part of the Bolsheviks. Fascist Finland suc- ceeded in obtaining the adoption by the League of Nations of its proposal which guarantees any ubjected” to an attack the financial of the League. The League of Nations, the blind weapon of the French and British im- perialists, will be the one to decide as to who was the agerestor. In accepting the proposal of Finland the League of Nations knew quite well that what was in question was an open anti- Soviet said tion. The Soviet delegation us that you cannot disarm and that we stand in the rmament. We are pre- ultaneously with you under half manif You assure on account of ay of universal pared to disarm sim public control. Already now our army the size of the army of the former Tza sia.. Already now the land of the victorious proletariat, surrounded on all sides by enemies, is spending on its defense many times less than you are spending, as it devotes all its attention to peaceful labor and the raising of the ma- terial and cultural level of the toiling masses. With all their hostility to the Soviet Repub- lics the imperialists were compelled outwardly to take account of the proposals of the Soviets. They tried to discredit these proposals by chat- about the Soviet projects not being rious,” t they were too “exreme” and that their only object was “propaganda.” It was just this which made clear cir refusal of any kind of disarmament and assisted in their own éx- posure in the eyes of millions of toilers. And now, when under the shacks of the econ- omic crisis, the danger of new imperialist wars, and intervention and an armed attack on the U.S.S.R. has enormously intensified, the Soviet Union has again come forward with peace pro- posals as a reply to the wicked and criminal policy of the imperialists and their agents, the Second and Amsterdam Internationals. Of what are they accusing the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union? Under the cover of which arguments are they now conducting unceasing preparations for an armed attack on the Soviet Union? The bourgeois governments, the capi- talist and social-fascist press say to the work- ers and peasants of their countries whom the bourgeois are subjecting to the biggest priva- tions which are continuously increasing as a re- sult of the crisis: Do you not see that it is the Soviet Union which must be blamed for the fact that we are reducing your wages, that we are depriving you of work and that we are decreas- ing unemployment relief? It is Soviet dumping which is to be blamed for all this. The Soviet Government. with the assistance of forced la- bor, produces cheap commodities which it ex- ports abroad and sells at dumping prices with the insidious object of exploding the economics of capitalist countries. The full falsity of these arguments becomes clear at once when it is re- called that the Soviet exports form but an in- significant part of the world export trade, that the orders fof machinery and equipment to thé value of millions, are now in a period of crisis feeding the industries of such countries 2s Eng- land, Germany and the United States, and are providing work for tens of thousands of work- ‘rs. The export of Soviet grain, in regard to which so much noise was raised; is at the pres- ent time no more than 30 per cent of the pre-war export of former Tzarist Russia, It is obvious that the Soviet Government in selling its raw materials in foreign markets is not at all in¢ terested to sell at a loss, since in that case it would be unable to cover its obligations on the purchase of the machinery which the country requires for the speediest completion of the Five Year n. On the contrary, all the capitalist countries make unlimited use of dumping, sell- ing the commodities at triple price within their own countries and at half the price in foreign markets, so as to supplant and defend their competitors. In Geneva, at the conference called on the initwtive of the French imperialists, with the osenfatious object of studying the economic con- dition of Europe and with the view of discovering a way out of the most difficult economic crisis, the chairman of the Soviet delegation Comrade with ctness and con- sistency which have characterized all the pre- vious peaceful proposals of USSR, put before the bourgeois diplomats the Sov’ point of view. The USSR does not intend to propose to the cap- the sa: italist ccuntries any panaceas for the economic | crises. Humanity can only cure itself of this ill- ness after abolition of the capitalist system. The accusations of dumping against USSR are quite false and baseless, although there is no doubt that the crisis is being intensified thanks to dumping practised by capitalist countries and the system of tariff walls with which one cap- italist country fences itself off from another. In view of this, Comrade Litvinov in the protocol read by him proposed to all capitalist govern- ments to conclude an agreement on the basis of the principle of the peaceful co-existence of all countries irrespective of their social-political and economic systems, and an undertaking not to apply in their mutual relations any open or veiled forms of economic aggression against each other. The meaning of the Soviet protocol amounted to this, that side by side with the re- nounciation of war a method of the solution of international conflicts, the imperialist gov- ernments should also abstain from open or veiled economic warfare which had become more intense in the period of the crisis. Briand, Henderson and Zalesky, the ministers of foreign affairs of France, England and Poland, made the best of a bad job and welcomed the de- clarationg of Litvinov assuring him that. all talk of intervention is not true and at the same time manifested great joy when Litvinov did not insist on the immediate consideration of the proposals introduced by him. Everyone who followed the peace policy of the Soviet Union must recognize that the basis of all its efforts lies not only in the all-round ex- posure of the imperialist plans of bourgeois governments which is undoubtedly also of vast importance for the avoidance of new wars, but also in the sincere asperation to support every undertaking which places moral duties on the bourgeois governments in front of the masses, and makes it more difficult to take up war as a means for the solution of disputes on account of world conquest. The Soviet Union adopted also the so-called Kellogg pact not because it believes in the “sacredness of agreements” for the bourgeoisie for whom every “peaceful” agree- ment serves but as a step for the preparation of new wars. It placed its signature under this document because the imperialist even though only formally and with a number of all sorts of reservations have taken upon themselves the duty to renounce war in future. More than this, side by side with the Kellogg pact, the Soviet government signed the so-called Litvindv pact } with its immediate neighbors—Poland, Rumainia and others, where it again confirmed its refusal to adopt war as a method of the solution of any conflic which may arise. We know from the trial of the engineer wreckers and the menshevist interventionists how imperialist France and its vassal countries after the signatures by the interventionists of pacts, reonuncing aggression and war, have criminally prepared and are preparing interven- tion against USSR. And yet nevertheless, the Soviet Union in the full consciousness of its responsibility before the toiling masses of the whole world, continues with the same persis- tency and consistency its struggle for peace. In this struggle it relies on the support of the strong will of tens of millions of workers and collective farmers of the Soviet country which is standing as the watchguard of the October gains and relies also upon the friendly aid of the whole international proletariat which is ready to rise in defense of its Socialist father- land. By BURCK PARTY Cig Conducted by the Org. Dept. Central Com- mittee, Communist Party, U. S. A. |\How to Collect Relief for the Striking Miners By H. STRONG (Cleveland). HE question of miners’ relief has been late in getting a serious start in Cleveland. A committee was formed with delegates coming | from our mass organizations and the Party units. From these delegates we obtained the name of fraternal, sick and death benefit and other workers’ organizations, in order to visit them for donations and delegates, and in this way enlarged our committee. We had some miners come in from, the strike field and used them in approaching A. F. of L, locals. We succeeded in getting into quite a numiber of these in spite of the officials. The best means to break into the locals where we have no contacts is to arrive about a half hour- before the meeting time and mingle with the members, talking of the strike and of its in portance to the entire working class, and of the necessity for solidarity. We got into at least four locals through this means, and out of one got a very good contact who came to the office and took several collection lists with him for other members of the local. We were also late in approaching the liberals. We got on the job, however, and visited a num- ber of liberals who were quite sympathetic to the strike and responded with checks. Another thing we took advantage of was the letters-to-the-editor column in the capitalist press. We had followed the strike news in the local papers, and came across Muste’s appeal for the miners in W. Va. We then wrote to the paper, calling attention to the Pennsylvania- Ohio-W. Va. relief committee right here in Cleveland, and had the letter published. On the strength of this,‘a reporter from the paper came.and asked about our work, asked for more stories and gaye our tag days some publicity. An ex-miner saw the story and came to the office saying he wanted to help. We took two of the miners to another of the local papers for an in- terview, with the result that they also gave, us some publicity, even printing the addresses of our stations for the tag days. At present three of the largest capitalist papers in the city take all our releases. We wrote up an interview with the miners and sent it to all the local papers, both English and foreign language. As the result of our story in a Ger- man paper, a Germen worker came to the of- fice with a donation of money and clothes. We got in touch with a well-known liberal writer in-the city.” He came to the office and we took up the question of establishing a com- mittee of writers and artists who would work with us on spreading the appeal for relief for the miners, getting contributions from liberals, going down to the strike area with a truckload By CYRIL BRIGGS. GAIN the Alabama landlords and capitalists have unleashed their bloody terror against the Negro masses. Negro croppers around Camp Hill, Alabama, who dared to organize to resist the robbery of the landowners and storekeepers and who in the meetings of their union dared to raise the demand for the release of the nine innocent Scottsboro boys, have been ruthlessly shot down and murdered by the police agents of the Alabama white ruling class, And again, in the face of this latest horror, this new outrage against the Negro people and the working class, the leaders of the N. A. A. C. P. are to be found giving objective support to the buss murderers of the Negro workers. As in the Scottsboro case, it is not the boss lynchers of Alabama who draw the fire of the toadies of imperialism at the héad of the ‘N. A. A. C. P., but the white and Negro Communists who are organizing and leading the struggles of the persecuted Negro people for better condi- tions against the most outrageous racial and economic oppression. In a statement in the N. Y. Herald Tribune on Sunday, July 19, William Pickens, field secre- tary of the N. A. A. C. P., dpéiily supports the Alabama bosses in their challenge of the right of Negro workers to organize to protect their interests and their right to protest the hideous Scottsboro legal lynching. Pickens is quoted by the Tribune as saying that “planters of thé re- gion were only too glad to have the Scottsboro case injected, as it gave them an excuse to proceed against the share croppers’ union.” So because the share croppers dared to pro- test against the Scottsboro outrage in their union meetings, Mr. Pickens condones and jus- tifies the bloody attack on the croppers by the landowners and their police agents. He naively speaks of the “injection” of the Scottsboro case as giving the landowners an “excuse.” He in- Sinuates that the attack would not have oc- curred had not the croppers denounced the Scottsboro mass murder. He ignores the sim- ilar case of the Arkansas peons. Ignores, in fact, hundreds of similar attacks ‘by the south- ern landowners on the attempts of the Negro peons and share croppers to resist the robbery of the landicrds and storekeepers. In his statement to the boss press Pickens peddles the boss lie of the “servile psychology” of the Negro masses. He says, “They (the Com- munists) misuxderstand the situation and the psychology cf the American Negro and of the South.” He openly jeers at the leadership of the Negro proletariat which is steadily wrest- ing the hegemony over the Negro masses away from the cowardly, traitorous, Uncle Tom re- formist leadership of which Pickens is part and parcel. He refers to the Negro industrial and agricultural workers as the “so-called Negro proletariat” and upholds the lie of the bosses of food, writing first-hand stories on the con- ditions of the miners, etc. Similar work can easily be done in any large town. N. A. A. C. P. Treachery Again that the massacre at Camp Hill, Alabama, was an “outbreak” on the part of the Negro work- ers, which, as an “outbreak,” he describes as “a desperate and vain effort to win the so-called ‘Negro proletariat” to the Communist Party.” In the same way, Walter White, secretary of the N. A. A. C. P., rushes to the defense of his imperialist masters, the bloody murderers of the Negro, masses. Supporting the boss position that the militant demands of the colored and white workers for the release of the innocent nine Scottsboro boys are “threats” against the officials of Alabama, White declares in a state- ment in Sunday's capitalist papers: “We have feared trouble because of the man- ner in which the Communists have made bom- bastic and empty threats in the Scottsboro cases.” This is not the first time that Walter White and other officials of the N. A. A. C. P. have sought to incite the Alabama boss lynchers against the radical Negro and white workers and to justify in advance any brutal terror the hosses may prepare against the Negro people. Mr. Pickens, speaking in Chattanooga, Tenn., on June 7th, publicly advised, “Let the white peo- ple of Alabama and the South sit up and take notice.” In the same way Rev. J. R. Bowen of Chattanooga, acting for the N. A. A. C. P., called upon the police of Chattanooga and Birmingham to raid and arrest Negro workers protesting against the Scottsboro frame-up. Mrs. Janie Patterson; mother of one of the Scottsboro. victims, was forcibly ejected from the Pittsburgh Conference of the N. A. A. C. P. following a demand by workers that she be permitted to speak, In its May 16 issue, the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the few Negro papers supporting the N. A. A. C. P. leaders, deliberately sought to justify any terror that the bosses might un- leash, preparing this justification in advance on the grounds that colored and white workers daring to raise their voices in protest against the horrible frame-up of the Scottsboro boys would “finally drive the citizens of Alabama to the point of desperation.” It is in times of struggle like these that the Negro masses can learn the real character of the wavering, treacherous leadership which, with the help of the white imperialists, has been im- posed upon them for the past several decades. It is in times of . struggle that the Negro masses will learn who are their real friends and true comrades. Negro workers! Rally in tenfold strength to the mass fight to free the Scottsboro boys! De- fend the Negro workers of Alabama! Demon- Strate on August First against the capitalist ,| system with its race hatred, its white “supre- macy,” its savage persecution of Negroes, its unemployment, its wage cuts, starvation and evictions and its preparation for war against the Soviet Union. A WAR VETERAN’S CALL AGAINST WAR August First is approaching. This will be the 17th anniversary of the day when the declarations of war were exchanged which opened the great world slaugh- ter. This will be the 17th anniversary when the armies began to march which for four years killed one another to defend their respective so-called fatherlands, which fertilized the fields of Europe with the blood of the sons of the working class, which destroyed villages and Cities, homes and factories, On this 17th anniversary of the beginning of the world war we have good reason to recall to our memory the scenes and experiences which we witnessed as par- ticipants in this great slaughter. The atmosphere pre- ceding that memorable first of August, 1914, is the atracsphere of today. War is again in the air. Arma- ments are being produced wholesale; poison gases are being developed; warships are being constructed; bomb- ing planes and tanks are being built. In this hour, and with the memory of August, 1914, haunting us, we appeal to you to fight against the repetition of that slaughter. You millions of working women, the mothers, the wives, and the sisters of the soldiers in the last war remember the days when you accompanied your son, your husband, your brother, to the station. Remember your tear-drenched handkerchiefs. Remember the wav- ing hands and hats signaling good-bye as the train left carrying your beloved one to the training camp or to the front. Remember the tears shed during the long months und years of war. Remember the fearful ap- Prehensions with which you received the official letter that told you that your son, your husband or your brother had died the “death of honor on the battle fields, To remember those days means again to live through the anxieties of these months and years. It mea again to remember the pains of hunger, again to feel the threat of epidemics. It means again to remember the nausea caused by all the artificial food — This is the first of three articles written by a worker who spent five years on dif- ferent battle fronts in the last war. The articles narrate some of the personal exper- iences of the writer. The next two articles will appear in subsequent issues of the Daily Worker. and dried vegetables so aptly.dubbed by popular voice as “barbed wire.” It means to recall the: memories ‘of people dying from starvation and of children pitifully crying for bread. And you veterans of that war, the soldiers that marched in the German, in the French, in the Aus- trian, in the Italian, in the British, in the American armies, remember the marches to the martial tunes of the military bands. Remember the flowers handed to you by nice bourgeois ladies—in anticipation of the flowers that may soon grow out of your graves. You veterans of all countries, remember the pray- ers which the ministers of all churches sent to heaven amidst the thunder of the cannons; the German, the Austrian, the Russian, the Italian, the American min- isters of all religions fervently praying to the same god urging victory for their respective fatherlands. Today again, 17 years after that memorable first of August, 1914, the atmosphere is charged with war. ‘The diplomats of all governments are busy hurrying back and forth between the capitals of the different countries. They keep the wires hot with their tele- grams and their telephone conversations. They are busily engaged in misusing language to conceal their aims. They talk of peace and cook up war. They talk of disarmament and throw into jail the poor illusionary who takes them seriously and develops anti-war ideas; Public opinion is again being prepared for war. The press, the radio, the pulpit, the political platforms, in short every avenue of expression of governmental poli- cies are preparing for war. The armies are being strengthened and enlarged. The war machines are being tuned up and oiled up. New arms are being tested. Air fleet’ maneuvers, army maneuvers, ocean fleet maneuvers, are keeping the public eye of all capi- talist countries. The chemical industry is working over-time. The spectre of a new world war is haunt- ing us. You veterans of the last world war, you mothers and wives and sisters of the veterans of the last World War, don’t you feel the air charged with the same war electricity as in 1914? Remember the years of torture that followed the first of August, 1914. Remember, and beware! Remember, and fight against a repetition! ° You war yeterans of the Austrian army recall the first. days of August, 1914; recall the days at Lemberg and on the Serbian front;: remember how you were marched into battle in parade formation with the re- sult that thousands upon thousands fell in the first “battles, died, drowned in swamps of Podolia and of White Russia. Remember the first bayonet attacks; remember the tooks of terror and fright in the eyes of your fellow soldiers; these looks were-merely a reflec- tion of the looks in your own eyes; remember how the masses of workers and farmers of all countries, merely. distinguished by different uniforms slaughtered each other in the name of their respective fatherlands, in the name of democracy, in the name of the Kaiser, in the name of the Czar. Remember the retreat from Lemberg; remember the long lines of dead in: deploy formation; remember the a aeeye. to receive and to take care of the é many wounded. Remember the Ukrainian villages on fire: Recall to your memory, illuminated by the burn- ing human dwellings, the sight of bodies of peasants, teachers, ete: hanging from the trees in the village square, hung there on the pretense that they were spies without even the semblance of a trial. Remember the population flying from the war zone, long lines of old men and old women and the children marching alongside and among their pigs and cattle. Remember the terrible sound of the cries of agonized children “mixed with the urgings of the fleeing sittin: a to move on faster and ever faster. Remember your own first battle. And then remem- ber also the holes dug after. the battle, filled with the ~ bodies of. your comrades and with quick lime. Who of you veterans of the Serbian front can ever forget the bestialities that were committed there; the villages burned down and destroyed; the women raped; thousands upon thousands of the non-combatants, the women and the children lined up, packed into cattle cars and sent to the concentration camps. _ And you who acted as guards in: imese camps re- member the terrible scenes at the arrtval of these pris- oners’ trains, Remember the lines of drawn bayonets through which these prisoners had to march. Remem- ber the unbearable stench emerging from the cars into which these prisoners had been packed one on top of the other and locked up for many a day. Remember the corpses that were taken out of these cars. Remem- ber the prisoners that emerged from them with frozen feet, yet forcéd to march. Remember the starved chil- dren emerging from these trains, living skeletons, car- ried by their elders who could only remain erect by sheer power of desperation. To remember this, means to realize the need for the most determined struggle against the present. at- tempts to reproduce the last ee butchery on an even larger scale Lome | Not on the Main Line A comrade with good intentions and a sense of humor tells us as follows: “The Watch-Tower Publishing Company, hw published a long series of articles telling the Bible Students International that Andy Mel- lon’s aluminum cooking utensils cause cancer, diabetes, constipation and impotency, by food poisoning.” Then he suggests that we reprint the articles, and so on. ‘Well, all they say may be quite true. But does it get us anywhere? Of course, it is well known that Bible students may be vastly interested in retaining their potency, not to speak of their digestion. But workers’ digestions are ruined principally, not by cooking in aluminum pots, but by not having anything to cook in any pot. So for all the evidence that aluminum uten- sils are injurious, and the evidence appears good, let us stick to the main line of strikes against wage cuts and fighting for unemployment in- surance so the workers can eat something be- sides Hoover promises. They are poisonous in any old pot. Cama dye) “Acts of God” Concerning the refusal of the Red Cross to feed the starving coal miners—they are starving even where they are working!—on the grounds that the Red Cross allows assistance only in cases called “acts of God,” we observe that the Red Cross was chartered by Act of Congress, not of God, and its charter was signed by President Roosevelt in 1905. Moreover, that charter, in addition to specl- fying that the Red Cross is supposed to aid the armies in time of war, declares: “And to continue and ‘carry on a system of national and international relief in time of Peace and to apply the same in mitigating the . sufferings caued by pestilence, FAMINE, fire, floods, AND other national calamities, and to devise and carry on measures for preventing the same.” Of course .to expect the Red Cross to feed workers or poor toiling farmers is a dippy idea; it is a part of capitalism’s war machine. But even though it crawls out of a tight corner by mentioning “acts of God,” we tecall very tlearly the statement made by a Pennsylvania coal mine owner many years ago, who said that “God in his infinite wisdom has given us owners thé coal mines.” That being the case, one might well charge the mine-owners’ starvation wages up to God and send a bill to the Red Cross on the basis of its own declaration that it can only save from death those people whom God is trying to kill. It looks like a rather sacriligious activity for the Red Cross to confess, but there it is. Take it or leave it. However, where God: overlooks the chance to massacre somebody, the Red Gross tries to even things up. Thus, we are informed from reliable quarters that whole shiploads of munitions are being shipped from the Navy Yard in San Francisco by Army Transports to the Philip- Pines, labelled “RED CROSS SUPPLIES.” In the Philippines they are transferred te British and Swedish tramp stéamers at Cavite Naval Station, and sent to China to- help Chiang Kai-Shek shoot down the workers and peasants who revolt against the terrible suf- ferings inflicted on them by imperialism and native. parasites. Thus the Red Cross is ‘the despicable mask for capitalist starvation and murder ‘of ed workers at home and abroad. Capitalist Morality When we see the Committee of Fourteen fools locate New York City’s “vice” in the slums of Brooklyn we are torn between the desire te snicker and to break something, When Police. Commissioner Mulrooney calls all dance hall proprietors to headquarters and Speaks harshly to them against “allowing vice,” we know that there is to be a consolidation of capital in. that industry, with the graft rake-off multiplied for the dens remaining after the “cleanup,” and that the’ Police Captains will soon buy their wives some more real estate— from “legacies left by their aunts.” When the N. Y. World-Telegram (July 21) begins a series of articles “exposing”. vice— among the starvation driven poor victims of the capitalism it supports—and bewails the existence of “the most sordid type of commercialized vice” and the “low, drab type of vice,” while it cuddles up to Texas Guinan and cannot Possibly get outraged at the silken sins of the rich, we know that it only wants to sell papers ‘| by putting a talcum powder pretense on: tabloid pornography. As George Eliot once wrote: “When a man whose business hours, the solid part of every day, are spent in an un- scrupulous course of public or private action which has every calculable chance of causing widespread injury and misery, can be called MORAL because he comes home to dine with his wife and children and cherishes the hap- Piness of his own hearth, the augury is not good for the use of high ethical and theological disputation.” F To translate the above rather highbrow but classical paragraph: When. capitalists spend their time producing and defending capitalist conditions which create prostitution, they have a lot of gall to pretend to be ‘shocked | at dis- covering prostitutes. . Do those conditions exist? What a question! » On page 3 of the same edition of the World- Telegram (July 21) we find the following about a girl of 25: “Miss Vivian Dow. 25, of 522 159th Sts Bronx, jobless and broke, was in the psych- opathic ward at Bellevue hospital after a policeman had found her eating grass in the southwestern part of Central Park.” ~~~ The morality of the poor is really phenomenal. Here is a girl that went to the park and ate grass rather than be “vicious” in the capitalist “morality” sense. And they put her in thé crazy house! But the snooty Committee of Fourteen, the Police pirates, and the. capitalist editors don’t have to eat grass—they ate titutes for capitalism and get well fed! Isn’t capitailsm just too lovely for anything!