The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 4, 1931, Page 1

a bins EE (Section of the Co mmunist Pon ae )) WORKERS THE WORLD, UNITE! OF ote Vill, Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office at New York, N, Y., under the act of March 3, 1879 <Gip>26 NEW ee TUESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1931 CITY EDITION =e ey ___ Paes 3 Cents a4 3 NEGROES RESISTING EVICTION KILLED BY CHI. COPS Make August 22 A Day of ‘TO SPRAY POISON [es Workers Wounded, Three Policemen Beaten by Enraged Workers Struggle LL over the United States the working class is in struggle against growing unemployment, wage cuts and starvation. These struggles are being met with the bloodiest terror by the bosses and their state machinery. In Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky, miners struggling for the right to exist are being brutally shot down by mine operator thugs, by state police and deputies. Hundreds have been jailed. Many are held without bail. its “Labor” Department, is raiding and arresting militant strike leaders in the coal fields, in the textile strike areas, etc. and throwing them into jail or holding them for deportation. ‘There has been a renewed wave of lynch terror aimed at crushing the growing militancy of the Negro workers. The courts are more and more being used to carry out the lynch verdicts of the capitalists against the Negro workers, In Alabama, eight innocent Negro children have been railroaded through a farcical trial and sentenced to burn in the electric chair. Only the quick action and militant mass protest of the colored and white workers led by the Communist Party prevented their legal lynching on July 10, the date set by the Alabama landowners and capitalists for their “execution.” These boys are still in danger. A ninth boy is being held on the same trumped up charge of raping two white professional pros- titutes, He is expected to be put on trial soon. In Tallapoosa County, Alabama, the efforts of Negro croppers to organize to resist landowner robbery was met by a bloody terror. Crop- pers were shot down by police, sheriff deputies and landowners. Ralph Gray, a Negro cropper, was murdered in his bed. Five croppers are missing and are believed to have been lynched by the landowners. Thirty-four are held in jail under framed-up charges of “conspiracy to murder” by which the landowners are seeking to justify their murder- our terror. In this attempt, the landowners are actively supported by the traitorous misleaders of the NAACP and the editor of the Pittsburgh Courier. The League of Struggle for Negro Rights and the International La- bor Defense are defending these victims of capitalist justice. These or- ganizations quite correctly refuse to base their defense solely on a legal fight. Such a policy would be a childish dependence on the “fairness” of the very boss courts which railroaded these victims in the first place. Four years ago, on August 22, 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian radicals were murdered in the electric chair by the bourgeois courts of America, On the anniversary of their martyrdom, the working class of the whole world will hold tremendous demonstrations against that, murder- ous American Jim Crow capitalism which murdered these workers, which railroaded Mooney and Billings to a living death, which has in its dungeons today scares .of militant.class war prisoners, and is.now bra- zenly seeking to frame-up the Camp Hill croppers and to legally lynch the nine innocent Scottsboro boys. Negro and white workers! Prepare militant demonstrations for Aug. 22. On with the struggle against Jim Crow capitalism and its murder of workers! Demonstrate August 22! For Daily Worker Clubs {m about one month’s time,there have been seventeen Daily Worker Clubs formed, and this is one step forward. But we must at once say that thig is far from enough, and ask the reason. ‘The business manager cf the Daily, touring the districts, reports that our Party district organizations “have a misconception” of what these Clubs are. Perhaps this accounts for the fact that, outside of New York City, where two or three section funtionaries have done good work, the existing seventeen clubs are due, not to the Party but to the initiative of the readers themselves. But why should there be “misconceptions”? The editorial “Daily Worker Clubs,” published on June 4, and concrete instructions sent to all cistricts and about 2,000 Daily Worker agents and Party functionaries about the same date, gave every information and direction necessary to act. Also, numerous special articles on the back page have stressed the importance of this task and given detailed guidance. Our editorial on June 4, speaking about general meetings of readers out.of which clubs should be formed, said: “These should not be tiresome affairs, but a social occasion, a little entertainment and much discussion of the Daily Worker, with all cri- ticism and suggestions of workers to be written down and sent in to the Deily Worker editorial staff. Here, also, plans may be laid for collections to support the Daily, means of getting and keeping subscriptions deter- mined, everything absolutely controlled by the workers themselves.” Apparently ignoring these plain instructions, a general meeting Was called in Chicago, a lecture was delivered and, we hope, appreciated by the audience. But—not a word of comment from the workers abont the Daily, no plans for activity, and no Daily Worker Club, nor any perspective of a club in any section of Chicago. A similar meeting was held in Detroit. Only here the district fails even to inform us what did occur at the meeting in place of forming Daily Worker Clubs, which was the business it should have transacted. In both places, it appears that the caution given in the editorial of June 4, about the need of “uniting from the bottom and even in molecular form, all who are or can be interested” was not heeded, although an im- pulse for forming such sections or neighborhood clubs and circles might have been given at these general meetings, since they were not formed prior to the general meeting. About this, our editorial of June 4, said: “Even these general meetings will by no means suffice. The Daily will urge each reader to gather in his shop or neighborhood, a little circle or group to read and discuss the Daily or some special articles interesting to them. They will determine their own activities, correspond directly with the Daily, and occasionally all these circles in the given city may unite for a mixed social and business affair in support of their favorite paper, their own Daily Worker.” ‘This should have been the basis for the general meetings held in Chicago and Detroit. But this was not done. The Daily is by these mistakes and similar misconceptions, being deprived of the initiative of the readers (three times the number of our Party membership!) in its support ! ‘This independent initiative of the workers was stressed not only in our June 4, editorial, but in many articles. Upon it the Daily can rely without requiring the Party functionaries to assume but very little if any added work, helping the clubs start and an occasional helping hand. But what comrade Stalin calls a “shameful disease—fear of the masses,” appears to interfere with this. Hence, in discussions in one leading district body, there have been such “shameful” statements as: “There are too many Daily Worker Clubs forming. We will get to limit them or they will get out of our control.” Against what class do such comrades think workers organize in ae Daily Worker Clubs or other such bodies? Let us repeat that we must avoid choking the initiative of the workers! That Daily Worker Clubs, can be formed with the least possible e‘fort from the Party apparatus! That they are by no means to be me- chanically “controlled”! That the more of them, based on small circles of workers around each enthusiastic reader, the better! And, that it is a Party task to see that they are formed! The United States Government, through {| GAS FROM PLANES, IN THE NEXT WAR 5. Army Develops New Methods of Killing To Destroy Thousands Expose Lies of Fake | No-Gas “Agreements” NEW YORK.—Poison ‘gas prepara- | tions for the coming war are being rushed by the Department of War, according to latest reports to the capitalist newspapers. A new method of spreading poison gas by airplane is being developed by the army air forces. Rodney Dutcher. special writer for the New York Telegram, commenting on this new system of spraying poison gas, says: “Now comes the news that the Army Chemical Warfare Service is | developing a system of spraying mus- tard gas from airplanes so that whole regiments may be wiped out all at once.” Spreading poison gas by airplane was unknown in the last world slaughter, but the imperialists are developing this new type of murder so that large numbers of workers can be wiped out in the trenches and behind the fighting lines. De- scribing this form of spraying poi- son gas, one writer says: “The mustard gas which the army hopes to be able to spray from planes will be released in liquid form, but will then vaporize and fall gently on the objects” oF attack, burning the flesh and pene- trating the lungs. Chemical ser- vice officers say cuch attacks wouldn’t be very effective against cities, but the chances are that no city will volunteer to be the sub- ject of an experiment.” Francis P. Garvan, president of the Chemical Foundation, painted a vivid picture of the next war, asserting that it would be short and decisive because: “Solid, liquid and gaseous poi- sons will assail belligerents from every front, and especially from the sky. Steel helmets and bosom plates will be of no avail to the fighting soldier. He must be pro- tected against laughing gases, blistering gases, coughing gases, itching gases, sneezing gases, chok- ing gases, vomiting gases, tear gases and clouds of suffocating smoke, The air will be charged with hazes, fog banks and explo- sions.” ‘The American Legion is agitating for an increased use of poison gas for the next war, because it is dead- lier than previous means of fighting. The imperialist. nations, just as they did before the last World War, enter into all sorts of agreements ‘to prevent the “brutalities” of war. They do the same now with regard to poison gas, but Dutcher readily admits that these agreements are not worth the paper they are written on. “The American Legion,” he says, “has taken the position that any nation would use every effec- tive weapon at its command in case its existence were threatened, re- gardless of agreements.” ‘The imperialists use the most deadly weapons they can find—the ones that kill quickest and are the most frightful. The “agreements” are used by the pacifists to befuddle the masses about the war prepara- tions and the “nature” of the com- ing war. ATTACK FOREIGN BORN WORKERS Foreign Born Meet Will Be Held on Aug. 9 On Sunday, August 9th at 10 a. m., a conference for the protection of the foreign born will take place at Manhattan Lyceum, 66 East 4th St. Secretary of Labor Doak’s state- ment made recently to the press in- dicatcs that the attacks on the for- eign born has become part and par- cel of the government strike Break- ing policy. These attacks must be met by intensified work for the protection of the foreign born. Every workers’ organization must take part. Send delegates to the August 9th confer- ence, Smash the attacks on the foreign born) IEW workers were shot to lice, several others we took part in the YORK.—According to a capitalist press dispatch from Chicago three Negro death by Chicago po- re wounded when po- | They Textile and Mine Strikers, Steel Workers Rally Against War Danger Scores of More Cities Repo itant Stru PROVIDENCE, R., I. hundred workers gathered here today in the anti-war demonstration on Memorial Square A resolution calling upon the workers to turn the imperialist war into a class struggle for the overthrow of the capitalist system; pledging their support and loyalty to the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union; giving their wholeheartéd Sapport to the textilé Strik- ers in Pawtucket, Central Falls. and Allentown, under the lead N.Y. Delegation to Visit Mine Region Selected from Clubs Who Aid Relief All workers’ clubs and women's councils and other mass organizat- ions which participated in the Min- ers’ Tage Days last week are urged to send in lists of the amount they collected and of the workers who collected the most, to the Penn.-Ohio Striking Miners Relief Committee, Room 330, 799 Broadway. ‘The Relief Committee is sending a delegation to the strike area of those workers who have collected most for miners’ relief. The dele- gation will leave New York by bus and will make an extended tour of the entire strike region. Since the delegation will not be selected until all the lists are sent in, the Penn.-Ohio Striking Miners Re- lief Committee calls upon the in- terested organizations to send these lists in immediately. WANTED— . : 2 STENOGRAPHERS AND 1 BOOKKEEPER Three comrades who can qualify for the above posts are needed in Pittsburgh to work in the strike relief office, Only capable comrades need apply. The work is exacting and strenuous, The wages paid are in the form of strike rations, that is: food and room rent. Apply: Helen Allison, 35 E. 12th St. Room 500, New York City. ~ Workers’ Union, and the 45,000 strik- in Thousands rt Pledges to Continue Mil- ggle I August 3.—Seven , Olneyville, Putnam, Patterson ership of the National Textile ing miners in Penn., Ohio and W. Va. under the leadership of the Na- tional Miners’ Union; demanding the unconditional release of the 9 Scottshoro boys and the Camp Hill croppers—was unanimously adopted. Many pamphlets on war were sold, over a hundred copies of the Daily Worker were sold, and 5 mem- bers joined the Communist Party. eae aay Over 1,000 in Pawtueket. PAWTUCKET, R. I., Aug. 1—Over a thousand workers came to Wood- bine and Fountain Sts., in Pawtucket to listen to the Communist speakers denounce the preparations for the imperialist war. In spite of all the efforts of the police to break up this demonstra- tion, by not leting us use the lot originally scheduled and advertised for this meeting, and in spite of all the threats by Commissioner Clark of the Immigra#‘on Dept. of the U 8S. Department of Labor to arrest all speakers who are not citizens, we changed the meeting place the last two days, anu over a thousand workers attended the meeting This is one of the most enthusiastic gath- erings ever held in Pawtucket. DULUTH, Minn., Aug. 3. — Twelve hundred miners and farmers demon- strated at Virginia, Minn., on August First. Nine hundred marched through the steel trust town. At Ely, Minne- sota, fifteen hundred miners and farmers demonstrated in a down pour of rain. This was the first anti-war demonstration ever held there. At Bemidgi, Minn., despite the héavy rain, three hundred demon- strated and one hundred and fifty marched through the rain which pre- vented hundreds of farmers from joining. At International Falls, Minn., on the Canadian border, the demon- stration was prohibited by scores of police and the American Legion mob- ‘SILK STRIKERS lice attacked a demonstration of workers ,C°PS protesting the eviction of an unemployed Negro worker. Colored and white workers | demonstration. fought back courageously, and three police- | men were severely beaten. } (CONTINUED ON PAGE THREE) TIE UP DOHERTY TEXTILE MILE N.T.W.U. Pickets Pull Shop After Fake AFL Picket 1 Line Attack Pickets | | Liss Jailed, Be Beaten Un-| conscious by Cops PATERSON, N. J., Aug. 3 — The _ HARLAN MINERS READY 10 SPREAD STRIKE; MUST GET RELIEF IMMEDIATELY | Mothers Too Starved to Feed Babies As Starvation Disease Spreads ‘Striking Miners Send Wire Saying No Food Has Been strike of the Paterson dye and silk | workers under the leadership of the | United Front General Strike Com- mittee and the National Textile Workers Union is gaining momen- tum and is spreading. In spite of the high powered publicity campaign | of the combined strike breakers of the U. T. W. and Associated Silk Workers which is now part of the American Federation of Labor. The strike is spreading regardless of picketing at the Doherty plant at Clifton this morning with fake pro- ; mises that they would have a real mass picket line in order to violate the anti-picketing injunction en- forced at Clifton, and that Norman Thomas, sky pilot leader of the so- cial fascist socialist party would get himself arrested at the Doherty Mills in order to create a Sensation. The National Textile Workers’ mil- itant pickets tied up the Doherty mills this morning. Three hundred to four hundred weavers and twisters laid down their tools and at a meet- ing decided to have nothing at all to do with the bosses’ union, the A F, of L, the Associated and the U. T. W. combination. The stage play of the A. F. of L_ strike-breakers proved a complete farce and showed the cowardly treacherous role of the A. F. of L. fakers and their ag- ents in Paterson, Gitlow & Co., the latest strike-breakers doing the dirty work for the silk and dye bos- ses. This cowardly outfit came to the Henry Doherty mills at about 7:30 this morning with about 50 pickets. There were several policemen at the plant. Upon noticing them the en- (CONTINUED ON PAGE TWO) LYNCH NEGRO WORKER IN LA. | solutely Bosses Given Free Access to Jail NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 3.—In con- tiation of the bosses lynch ter- ror against the Negro people, a Negro prisoner was taken from the Pointe- a-la-hache, La., jail yesterday by 2 band of masked men and lynched. The Negro, Oscar Livingston, was locked up on the usual frame-up of raping a white woman with which the Southern boss lynchers meet the demands of Negro workers for wages. It is believed that his employer was among the masked men who trayel- led in automobiles to the jail Livingston was shot to death by the mob on the highway about 35 miles from New Orleans. ‘As in the case when the bosses go after their victims, there seems to have been | no difficulty in taking the prisoner out of jail where he was supposedly under the protection of capitalist “law and order.” This latest lynching is another in- stance of the fine relations which, according to the Negro reformists, exist between the persecuted Negro masses and their persecutors, the white ruling class. Negro and white workers! Protest boss terrorism on August 22! Southern Paper Sees the Camp Hill Struggle As a “War for Bread” NEW YORK —While the eae ist leaders of the N. A. A. C. P. con- tinue their efforts to justify the landowners’ terror against the Negro| croppers at Camp Hill, Alabama, a large portion of the Negro press is forced increasingly to reflect the spirit of the Negro masses of mili- tant support for the croppers in their struggle to organize against starvation and landowner robbery. Under the caption of “The John Browns of 1931,” the New York News and Harlem Home Journal of July 25, declares editorially: New York Ps Paper Calls! Murdered Croppers the Soha Browns of 1931 ~ othe brave black men who were lynched by the sheriff's mob in Tallapoosa County, Alabama, last week were martyrs to the cause of their race and to that of human freedom just as John Brown was in 1859, John Brown went forth as a martyr cgainst the institution of slavery. He attacked that insti- ) tution in Virginia whose capitol was soon to become the capitol of the rebel states. Slavery was a recognized American institution, sanctioned by the. Constitution and a condition enforced by custom of more than two centuries in Amer- fea... . “Black martyrs in Tallapoosa met to protest th’ -rrible institu- tion of serfdom, _—peonage, of disfranchisement § jim-crowism in Dixie. America’ 1ctlons these infamous institutio! m Dixie un- _CRMERVER. ON. ago) Received In Ten Days BULLETIN. BRIDGEPORT, Pa., Aug. 3.—The Warwood U. M. W. A. meeting was smashed Sunday by striking miners who pulled ti> fakers from the platform. The state police prevented the National Miners’ Union rank and file speaker, Sivert, who is out on bond, from speaking. Steuart, Browning and others are still jailed. The Adena miners are being terrorized by Jefferson County depu- ties and eleven strikers have been arrested on frame-up charges in an attempt to send them to the state reformatory. The Red Bird Mine pickets prevented scabs from going in and few are working. Picketing continues all over the area. No food has been received from Ohio in ten days. . WALLENS CREEK, Ky.—With the state- wide conference opening Aug. 3, open threats against National Miners Union organizers and actual attempts on their lives are multip'ying. Harlan County is becoming the base for movement to spread the strike throughout Kentucky, and al- ready the miners are talking about spreading into Tennessee and Virginia. That is why the conference this week has great significance. “Kill all the men organizers of the National Miners Union,” sest | militant struggle to maintain and FLEER BROTHERS deputies and npan ae DRIVERS STRIKE Plan Spread Strike | Against Wage Cut | BROOKLYN, ‘The 25 chauffers and helpers of Fleer Bros. with offices and yards at 161 Flat- bush, 179-20 Jamaica Ave. 261) Tompkins and 541914th Avenue were} given a 20 per cent wage cut start- | ing Monday Saturday the boss refused to see the committee of the men but inter- viewed them one by one and ab- refused any compromise. Yhe men are a militant, fighting bunch and decided to strike and| elected a rank and file strike com- | mittee of five. This firm pays part | of the men on a tonnage basis and the rest on a straight salary of about | $33. This is the usual trick to di vide the workers. Now the boss cut the tonnage workers and latter he will co after the The workers were on pert time The strikers are planning to draw all the men who are paid straight | salary into the strike and pull out| the yardmen and make the strike 100 per cent effective. Some of the men realize that the American Fed- eration of Labor is a sell-out outfit Those who were in the Oilmen’s strike 2 years ago kow the betray- ing tactics of the A. F. of L, fakers and the strikers want to lead their | own strike. ‘The men are solid and will stand by their Strike Committee. They decided not to speak to the boss as individuals but to leave the ne-| gotiations to the Strike Committee | and to take final action only at the} general strike meeting. The Transportation League of the | Trade Union Unity League. 5 East 19th Street, New York City stands | ready to aid the strikers in their} improve their wages and conditions. Police Aid Socialist Meet; Break Up Red Builders Gathering NEW YORK.—Police came to the aid of a socialist open air meeting, and broke up a meeting held by the Daily Workers Red Builders Club, Group No. 1, at 161st Street and Prospect Avenue Wednesday night. The Red Builders meeting opened strong, with over 600 workers pres- ent. The socialists came right be- hind them and tried to get a crowd together, The few that listened boohed them, Very soon the police came up, leaving the socialists alone, attacked the Red Builders meeting Jas the results increase daily. | spreading any further. | its cause, and food is needed to cheek | deadly and broke it up. The socialists were “protected”, | ganizers. This terror only termination of the Kentucky miners to make their conference more effect- ive than ever, win their strike and increases the de- break through this terror. “Nobody ever called the Kentucky miners cow- ards, and they are fools if they think they can stop us.” But the “law” is making a frenzied attempt to halt the union’s growth Now with the disease “flux” spreading through their field, the Kentucky ntiners appeal to workers everywhere to stop the contagious disease from Starvation is t Four hundred women of Evarts gathered to organize a Woman’s Aux- iliary to the Nationa! Miners Union— the first in Kentucky. They also laid plans for opening a relief kitchen and elected a kitchen committee to handle this job. That at least two die ry day | in Evarts from the Flux, was reported here. The children, the women say, are especially affected by it. Milg is vitally necessary because the women are too starved to be able to nurse their babies. Klim milk and Eagle brand milk are especially in demand. More food must be sent into Ken- tucky! Funds to buy food are need- ed desperately. Make it possible to open a second, then a third and a fourth kitchen here, to fight the flux, by sending all you can scrape together to the Pennsylvania- Ohio-West Virvinia-Kentucky Strik- ing Miners Relief Committee, Room 330, 799 Broadway, New York City. . . Terror Grows In West Vir WHEELING, West Va., Aug. 1~ Terror is growing more savage iv | West Virginia, as new mines prepare | to strike. The workers in the Pitis- THREE) RIVER WORKERS DEFEAT PAY CUT STOCKTON, Calif, August 3.—The (CONTINUED ON PAGE | boatowners and the strike committee of the river workers, led by the Ma- rine Workers Industrial Union, met at the Trade Union Unity League headquarters here this morning. In the presence of the union mem~- bership, the proposals of the boat- owners was rejected by the strike committee. The proposals were sim- ilar to the conditions prevailing be- fore the strike against a 35 per cent wage cut was won, Following the rejection of the boat- owners’ proposals, the boatowners re- quested a week to consider the counter-proposals of the strike com~ mittee. In the meantime, the restored conditions won, remain intact. The membership took a vote for strike in the event the proposals were ree dected by the boatowners.; 4