The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 5, 1931, Page 4

r Sunday, at 50 East ace SUBSCRIPTION RATES: ~ RG tes Sad f Cable ALWORK.” By mat! everywhere: One year, $6; six months, $3; two months, $1; excepting Bordughs Page Four 15th Street, New York, N. Y. of Manhattan and Bronx, New York City. Foreign: one year, $8; six months, $4.59. en Ao ee i a Mine Women’s Conference Lays Plans tor Carrying On the Strike By FRIEDA TRUHAR, Women’s Organizer N. M. U., District 6. HE ict nce of the Women’s m Ohio and Northern of new ng of the auxil- laid pl ries and the st i Ss already existence, Mary Smith, of the | Western Pen: ania District of the National Miners’ Union, brought greetings from the women there and gave a report on the condi- tions ge: trike field. She stressed the r ticipate in the picket in the | strike work. Frieda Truhar reported on the | local and showed the weaknesses in | | their experie: ation to W. Va., said, in nd Iam sure | and saw what | would nt even | something down there to | And I | told that would go out and take the | place of my husband, and I did.” Karel of still goi: if you wom black holes harder so y Mary nd we haye a good soup farmers to collect, and now this is their fight » for th et line. But we know this is our tq win it.” Tokar r betrayals of the des, r, of May United Mi this is our chance to id us many times But ‘he will never do it again told of the ne Workers. 1. John L. and sold us cheap. We are wise to him now. Only the National Miners’ Union | leads us in our struggle.” | “Comrades, we must know what tl | means. We are fighting against starvation. If | we lose this strike we might as well all jump in the river, for we will have nothing left to live anything out of have a good gov- nt us to fight against speech of Rosie Lenoff ant part in the struggle against Mrs. Stefanic of Maynard, Ohio, mentioned the fact that the government and its tools are ses and against the workers. When e threatened a worker's wife with a buteher he sheriff refused to do anything about it. But every morning women are picked off the picket line, beaten up and held on high bond, a@ scab’s wi Comrade Mitchell, a Negro woman from Dil- lonvale, Ohio, asked that the women all stick together and fight. “We got to do a little more fighting than we’ve done up till now,” she said. Other comrades also took part in the dis- cussion. They told of company stores where prices were ty and where gua ce as |b as in ordinary stores were placed at the entrance timg the miners almost as they of the tow would sl m Provident section came the report o ls who had been taken to jail and beaten u pby the deputies for daring to go on the picket lines. The conference fulfilled its purpose well. It laid down plans for the work of the women, in- structed them to build new auxiliaries them- selves, and, by the discussion and exchange of experiences, taught them new ways of work. The nt back to their tows with more enthus: spirit and more willingness to carry on the fight sm Already the results of the conference are be- ing felt. Today, the day after’ the conference, one of the most militant women in the Dillon- vale section, a delegate to the conference, was picked up by the state deputies for mobilizing the women on the picket line and for activity in relief work. She was taken first to Dillon- vale and m removed to Smithfield. From there she w ken to Steubenville, the county seat of Jefferson County, Ohio, from where she sent us a note telling us of the threat to send her to Columbus state prison of Ohio. In her note she called for more activity on the part of the women in carrying on the fight. Furthe: results of the conference could be seen by to day’s demonstrations against captialist wars, where women made up a large part of the crowd and took an active part in the demon- strations. Why 12 Ofticers | German ead YORK—German fascism. a tool of the ~ Bruening government and international capi- talism in attempting to keep back the revolu- tion of the German workingclass is rapidly be- ing exposed on the inside of its own ranks as well as by The Daily Worker has just received a remarkable statement of eleven high officers of the National Socialist (Fascist) Party of Germany who quit the Fascists and asked admission into the ranks of the Commu- nist Party. This movement on top is indicative of a mass movement away from fascism to Communism on the bottom, that is, among thé ranks of the workers who were misled into the fascist ranks by promises of a fight against the Young Plan. its actions. Recent action of the Fascists again exposed them in the eyes of the masses. When the Communist Party demanded a referendum for dissolution of the Prussian Diet, the Nationalists and National Socialists (both fascists) took part in the referendum. Since this endangered the Bruening government, the fascists quickly with- drew. Commenting on this public exposure of the fake program of the fascists the New York Times remarked that the Fascists “welcomed the opportunity to back out by declaring they are unwilling to stand on the same front with the Communists.” The first break in the top ranks of the Fas- cists towards the Communists came with the dramatic case of Lieut. Scheringer. Lieut. Scheringer was the leader of a group of Reichswehr (Republican Army) officers who were arrested and condemned in September, 1930, to serve eighteen months in a fortress for spreading national socialist propaganda and forming Fascist groups within the Reichswehr. Hitler played this case up all over Germany and Scheringer became known throughout the Fascist movement as some one whose example should be copied. On the 19th of March of this year, Comrade Kippenberger of the German Communist Party, | read a statement on the floor of the Reichstag in which Lieut. Scheringer announced his resig- nation from the Nazi and his desire to join the Communist Party. In this statement Scheringer stated: “He who today compares the real policies of the National Socialist leaders with their radical phrases recognizes that their actions Are the direct opposite of that which they speak and write of and that which we expect from them.” Lieut. Scheringer’s statement gave a nwnber of concrete instances of fakery of the fascists and concluded with his asking to be received into the ranks of the Communist Party. Sche- ringer said: “There is no longer any doubt! Freedom only stands alongside of the revolutionary workers, Peasants and soldiers. Here is the place for all honest fighters, not in the garden of reaction!” The recent statement of the 11 fascist officers which shows the wide drift of the disillusioned ranks of the petty-bourgeois to the revolution- ary proletariat as the only solution of the crisis in Germany is as follows: “Fellow Germans! In this historical hour we. former officers of the German Army and leaders of nationalist organizations, address ourselves to you. The misery of the people is steadily in- creasing. New masses are being plunged into need and impoverishment by the capitalist sys- tem. 100,000 peasants licve “been driven from their land and wander from-farm to farm in Broke with the Fascists search of work than a bare while millions have little more subsistence. Millions of workers and clerical employees are without work and without food. Hundreds of thousands of intel- lectuals have no longer any ‘possibility of earn- ing a livelihood. The capitalist rulers are try- ing to keep the state machinery going by new, brutal cuts in wages and salaries, new cuts in the invalid and health insurance schemes, in ex- soldiers’ pensions, in the unemployment insur- ance rates, new taxation and other new com- pulsory measures. This burden of tribute is being forced entirely on the shquiders of the working people. The ftee expression of opinion is being crushed by ruthless terror. Every movement of the people is answered with new terror. International fi- nance capital is preparing for a war of inter- vention against the Soviet Union in order to bring the socialist areas back into the capitalist world economic system. The exploiters at home are doing everything possible to place the re- sources of the German people at the disposal of world finance capital against the socialist Soviet Union. In this way they hope to strug- gle out of their own difficulties and to give the anger of the masses of the people a safety valve. Should this attempt be successful then the hope of the German people for national and' social freedom will be destroyed for an indefinite pe- riod. The freedom of the German people can only be won together with the first free work- ers and peasants state in the world, the Soviet Union. Any other path leads to slavery and to an indefinite perpetuation of the capitalist slave system. “The rapid intensification of the situation demands quick and determined action on the part of all those who are honestly in favor of the cause of the people. Hitler, Goebbels, Stras- ser, Stennes and Seldte do not belong to those. They are traitors to the cause of national and social freedom. They are accomplices of Bru- ening and his social democratic henchmen. In- stead of being leaders of the people against the capitalist system, they are misusing valuable ele- ments of the German people in the interests of the counter-revolution. Large sections of the German youth, workers and intellectuals, who formerly followed the flags of these demagogues, have now seen through them. The toiling peas- ant is also beginning to realize, under the pres- sure of intolerable impoverishment, that his place is side by side with the revolutionary work- ing class in the struggle for freedom. “All bourgeois prejudices must now be shaken off! We must take the revolutionary path of Lenin. Scheringer has given us an example. On the 18th of March he placed himself uncondi- tionally under the fighting banner of the revo- lutionary proletariat, “National Socialists! Hundreds of you are already with us! Tomorrow it will be thou- sands! Take courage, be worthy of the his- torical situation and break your way through to us, and then the victory will be ours. For- ward to the socialist revolution! “Signed: Von Botticher (Lieutenant, Danzig), Giesecke (Lieutenant-Colonel, Berlin), Hacke (Lieutenant, Freiburg), Puelle (Captain, Gera), Tartsch (Lieutenant, Berlin), Herder (Lieuten- ant-Colonel, former Stahthelm leader, Frank- fort), Konrad (former National-Socialist leader), Korn (Lieutenant, “Berlin), Lenk (former Na- tional-Socialist leader), Rehm, Schmid-Wild- bach, Count Stenbock-Fermor (Berlin), Grubitz (Lieutenant-Colonel, Berlin),” | against the Jews. ON. By BURCK Free Our Negro Comrades ! By ALEX TOLSTOY. (Famous Russian Author) (Translated by E. B. Miller.) 'EN thousand armed men rushed into the little town of Scottsboro to make certain that a death sentence would be passed against eight Negro workers. If to secure this verdict it had been necessary to prove that the Negroes had stolen the moon from the heavens, the ten thousand whites would have shouted: Guilty! In its days, the Czarist Government, in order to give an outlet to the revolutionary ferment which threatened it, incited the Christians The British Government, from the same considerations, kindle in India enmity between the Moslems and the Hindus. The American bourgeoisie, hard hit by the growing crisis at home and by the developing power of the proletarian U. S. S. R., seeks means of saving itself-and resorts to old remedies: bigotry, hypocrisy, national and race prejudices, and so on. It must split apart the ever more compact and homogeneous ranks of the prole- tariat. So now it is galvanizing the old enmity between the white and colored races, between the white colonizers and the imported black slaves, The color and odor of skin is sufficient grounds for having a man hung. “You fifteen million unemployed—come now, divide according to color: whites to the right, colored to the left. . . . Go to it, beat, hang, tear to pieces, annihilate the black, yellow, red, colored! America for Americans! No more un- employment!” The American bourgeoisie is fighting for its life. Every living thing fights for its life. Mi- crobes devour microbes. The lion devours the hyena. The fourth and last class—the rebel- lous proletariat—is fighting for its life. This life it calls Socialism. This word is understood by the proletariat everywhere. The concept of Socialism has called forth the wrath of the op- pressed and enslaved and the greatest gift of the human spirit, the feeling of justice and un- selfishness. This word is not understood by microbes; the bourgeois part of humanity tries not to understand it. The bourgeoisie is fighting for its life. This life is based upon those conditions whereby individuals can push their way forward and grab as much wealth for themselves as possible. Let the weak drop by the wayside. And the future? This question is for us, comrades. The proletariat lives for the future. The eyes of the bour- geoisie are cast backward. The bourgeoisie -are dreamers, pessimists; they sigh for the misty, past, their Golden Age—somewhere thousands of. years ago—in ancient Rome, in marvelous Carthaginia: luxuriant gardens, white marble castles, transparent pools, where fish are fed on the bodies of slaves. Thus lived the godly mer- chants, moneylenders, and plantation owners, anointed with oil and with their beards per- fumed. And the millions of slaves—in chains on the plantations, in chains in the bowels of the earth, in chains on the galleys and mer- chant boats. This was paradise. You honorable bourgeois would all like to set forth on a magic carpet for this glorious land... . The methods of fighting for life for us and for them are quite clear. And we Soviet writers— participating according to our strength and ability in the building of Socialism—with a feel- ing of utmost repugnance and wrath direct our- selves to you— To you, Alabama hangmen! To you, tens of thousands of men on horseback, farmers on horseback, sons of frightened bourgeoisie; to you, members of the Association of Christian Endeavorers; to you, bankers and manufactur- ers and speculators, who waxed fat on the bloody billions of the World War; to you, mor- alists and ideologists of the Carthaginian para- dise, shielding yourselves behind the Bible; to you, misleaders of the workers— . We demand of you: Stop the execution of the eight black proletarians! You are not even putting up a fight. Like bandits, you creep in and cut the throat of a sleeping man with a knife. Really, one is ashamed to call oneself a white man after this... Shame and ignominy—these, perhaps, will not stay your hand? Your faces are covered with the white masks of the Ku Klux Klan’... Preparing the Hoover Coal Conference By BILL DUNNE. (Concluded from yesterday's issue) Ba IN Ohio, the third arrest of District N.M.U. Sec- retary Sivert and Rompa, and the placing of the second charge of criminal syndicalism against them, with bail set at $10,000 shows this continual persecution of strike leaders as a de- liberate tactic to keep them out of the struggle while the attack on the mass of the miners grows more vicious. In Wellsburg, West Virginia, 19 members of the strike committee with a num- ber of district leaders, are held in high bail on trumped-up. charges, Sheriff. Charnock of Brooke County has issued an edict prohibiting picketing because, he says, “the National Miners Union is not recognized by the federal government.” Sheriff Habig of Ohio County (Wheeling), following \a conference of coal operators, the head of the state police, rep- resentatives of the chamber of commerce, the city police chief, county prosecutor and law- yers of the Paisley and Coustanzo mines,Easten, president of the West Virginia A.F.L., Norring- ton of the Wheeling Central Labor Council, has decreed that no more than five persons can be on the picket line at any one time, “that three of these must be able to read and write English and be held responsible for anything that hap- pens.” The presence of the two AFL labor traitors at such a conference shows that the AFL machin- ery, in addition to that of the UMWA itself, is being mobilized for intensive strike-breaking in preparation for the Washington conference. This has not been done so openly up to this time. Furthermore, for the first time threats of at- tacks upon and destruction of relief stations and food kitchens are being made by the gun thugs in various parts of the strike area, as in Piney Fork and Adena, O. Organizers are being stopped on the highways, held at the point of machine guns, arfd threatened with death if they do not get out of the strike. More UMW thugs, former officials, holding commissions from the various city, county and state political machines —game wardens, probation officers, prohibition agents, special deputy sheriffs, ete—are being sent into the strike areas. In Western Pennsylvania, Fagan, district presi- dent of the UMWA, is swearing out warrants for the arrests of organizers and members of the NMU on various charges. ‘The capitalist press is assiduously creating a background of brutality and assassinateon in the coal fields—for which the miners and the Na- tional Miners Union, “A Communistic organiza- tion,” is responsible, of course. A typical ex- ample of this kind is found in the first page story of an alleged attack upon Fagan, published by the Cleveland Press, July 27, This Scripps- McRae sheet states that the attacker, who was shot and killed by Fagan (the whole story has a phony sound) came from District 19 of the UMWA. The Press then says, in parenthesis: “This is the Tennessee (?) coal district which has been the scene of miners’ feuds for three years. It was the birthplace cf the so-called Communistic union, the National Miners Union, which has spread its activities into Eastern Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky fields.” ‘That the birthplace of the NMU was Western Pennsylvania, that it was really born in the old “Save-the-Union” strike of 1927-28, that Dis- trict 19 is Kentucky, that the NMU spread from Pennsylvania into the other sections mentioned, are details that do not bother the strikebreak- ing propagandists of the capitalist press. That miers who have been sold out, not once but ey- ery time they went on strike, by the UMWA of- ficials, may make up their minds to hold them “Moral principles, humanity, you apply to pulp- wood and staves imported from the U. S. 5. R. But fear should stop you. Make no mistake— history has a long memory. Bourgeois economy is shaken to its very foundations. The crisis has dragged it into an abyss. The world prole- tariat has no desire to drag out this devil on his shoulders. The eight black workers—they are your enemies, But these enemies tomorrow will be stronger tham you. Consider well and yield to fear. History has a Jong memory. We demand of you: Free our black comrades! + Personally ‘responsible, would never enter the slave minds of the Scripps-McRae eunuchs. The strike continues. Support from other workers'in the form of relief has doubled and trebled in the last three weeks. Nevertheless it is clear that a much sharper smashing attack on the strike is under way and the whole front must be strengthened to meet and defeat it. ‘The operators are trying to revive the UMWA —as a strikebreaking instrument conveniently at hand in the present emergency. But anyone who thinks that the hardboiled lords of coal and steel are now, without @ still stronger strike, going to give miners, through the UMWA, bet- ter wages and working conditions than pre- vailed before the present strike, are laboring under great a delusion, The big coal operators are not at all interested in saving the fortunes of the smaller fry. Their program is to smash the strike, freeze out the small fry, restore and deepen slavery and strengthen their suppressive machinery. They are willing fhat the Washing- ton Conference be called to further spreading of the illusion of a beneficient federal govern- ment acting as an impartial mediator between slave and master, they are willing that the Hoo- ver administration and all the “Friends of the Miners” who are willing to help the miners in every way except the strike, shall put forward the Washington conference as an alternative to militant organization and strike struggle as a maneuver to weaken the strike and check its Spread. But the big operators are going to agree to better wages and working conditions only when they have been convinced by_ an unbeatable front of miners and other workers tHat miners will no longer accept starvation and slavery as the basis for employment in the industry. It is therefore necessary to defeat the UMWA now and thus deprive the operators and their gov- ernment of a principal weapon. The operators are going to fight it out—with- out very many gestures toward the worried “lib- erals”, either. Some inkling of this is begin- ning to seep into the so-called brains of the edi- torial tribe as is to be seen in the following quo- tation from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette of July 27. (The Pittsburgh Press, after a fervid denunciation of Communists and the NMU, the day previous, wrote in a similar strain on July 26): “It is commonly understood that the Mel- Jons own much of the stock of the Pittsburgh Coal Company, and it was emphasized that the most powerful interests of the industry, the Rockefellers, Steel representatives and others along with the Mellons, naturally’ should be invited to the (Washington) confer- ence... . Under the circumstances, the Pitts burgh operators should have been the first of the 150 or more invited. ...to send accep- tances. A dispatch from Washington saying that none of them had yet responded—replies by telegram having been requested—is cause for regret, but it is difficult to believe that any of them would deliberately seek to thwart the efforts of the President to do something for the distressed industry, In such a course they would not only retard efforts to improve con- ditions for the country, but would be acting against their best interests; they would cast aside a great opportunity to cultivate good will... If the Pittsburgh operators do not do their part to bring about and make a suc- cess of the proposed conference, they will cause grave disappointment.” All of which reminds us of the attempt of the canary to seduce the elephant. In the meantime, the central task is to strengthen and broaden the base of the strike, extend the front, bring more miners into strug- gle for the program of the National Miners Committee of Unity and Action, expand the net- work of elected rank and file strike committees, build the National“Miners Union, exposing and defeating the UMWA by winning the thousands of miners now in revolt in the anthracite and Illinois for the national program of unity and action. This is the fighting program of the mine workers against the open warfare of the big operators, and the slightly masked warfare pro- gram of the proposed Washington conference, LZ By JORGE cies It Comes Natural to Mattie Professor John Dewey is expressing annoyance at the publication in the. well-known capitalist press, that he is one of Mattie Woll’s anti-Red “Committee of One Hundred.” Lying comes natural to Mattie. But perhaps he was hard put to find 99 other bozos who would voluntarily disgrace themselves by being named alongside him. Not that there is any lack of fascists, but even Mussolini might well hold his nose at Mattie Woll, Sometimes we wonder how much, if any, Woll and Ralph Easley get out of Sir Henri Deterd- ing, the anti-Soviet intriguer of British imper- jalism, for keeping American businessmen so Scared of trade with the Soviet that British businessmen can get the orders. ° . * O, Charity! You Ugly Wench! Did you notice that Hoover suddenly came out » of a doze to make a little fuss in the papers about what somebody is supposed to do for the unemployed this winter—just in time to cover up with this barrage of boloney his approval of wage cuts? Out in Humblodt, Nebraska, Otto Kotouc, 2 merchant, also staged a blow-out for charity. He ran a popularity contest, the contestants get~ ting votes only by bringing in old shoes, He got 32,000 piar of shoes, gave 300 pairs of what were reported to be “the best” to the poor, and is hav- ing the rest repaired for selling—also to the poor. Incidentally, where is Nebraska on our Party map? If it evet does anything there we've sort of missed it. Maybe there is no Party there, al- though we have heard some faint noise from Omaha. We've shucked too much corn in Ne- braska to see the state despised, neglected, ig- nored. Somebody's got to paint Nebraska red! A Peach of a System, This! The Federated Press of July 29 sends us this one: “Los Angeles—Thousands of trees will be uprooted in erder to save the California peach market from over-production. A control board of canners and growers has decided to limit the 1931 crop to 9,000,000 cases, using 190,000 tons of fresh. peaches. The ordinary surplus is about 83,000 tons of first-class fruit. The price can- ners have offered this season is $13.50 a ton for the peaches packed, a figure allowing no profit to growers. Enough orchards will be destroyed by agreement to bring production nearer the de- mand.” Now, isn't that perfectly lovely! With peaches that are fit to eat selling on New York fruit stands at 5 cents each! Please note that what little the capitalists can do, to “organize capitalism” is a shameless rob- bery of the workers, ‘Then remember that the fascist Mattie Woll and the social-fascist Norman Thomas and his “socialist” party are great advocates of “organ- ized economy”—but without any revolutionary’ overthrowal of capitalism by the workers, { Poy Wages Does it Surprise You? = ° The Chicago Tribune regularly has speMs of horror at its periodical. discovery that in the Soviet Union there exists a proletarian dictator- ship, Just recently it had another attack of shivers, over “poor Mme. Krynin,” whose husband is SUCH a respectable old skinflint that, after deceiving the Soviet Government by going abroad on its business entrusted to him, with the un- derstanding that he return, refused to return on the thin excuse that he “feels better in this climate” and plays melodramitcs by wiring Ber- nard Shaw and Lady Astor to please rescue his wife from the Red Terror. There is liberty in the Soviet Union, but only for workers who areconcerned for their class interests—not any abstract liberty. There is liberty in the United States—but only for cap- pitalists and those who support capitalism, It is a question of dictatorships—capitalist or proletarian. And please don’t get some nonsen- sical notion about “liberty in general” mixed up in either case. If you do, you will be iorgetting there is no liberty for workers in the~United States and likewise falling in the bourgeois press trap and becoming surprised because there is not any liberty in the Soviet Union for enemies » of the workers. { A dictatroship is a dictatorship—and don’t forget it! The Second International Prepares for War “—James Keir Hardie, the well known So- cielist and Independent Labor member of the House of Commons on behalf of the English Social Democracy and 2,000,000 trade unionists, said that the English laboring classes were: try~ ing to create a united Socialist Party to fight militarism by all the means at its command. If the statesmen did not obtain peace for Europe, he declared, then the International Social Democracy would do so.”—Sopt. 15 1913, Preparing for the Attack on the Soviet Union, “Socialists, Vandervelde said, must renew the|, demands they made at the last congress in Hatmburg—first, the restriction of reparations to the direct damage done to civilian popula- tions; second, the cancellation of all other war debts: third, the quickest possible termination of military occupations, and fourth, disarma- ment... . The International, he said, was firmly resolved to put an end to armaments, military alliances and hostile groups of pow- ers."—N. Y. Times, July 26, 1931, | As the prepzrations of the capitalists for i war become quite open the socialists try to fool the masses with phrases against war, The! Present phrases of the Second International, are to cover up their active participation in the capitalist war front. Smash the united} front of the socialists and imperialists against the Soviet %