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

Page Four THE MO AN INTERVIEW WIT! THE VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE MOSCOW SOVIET “7 MYRA PAGE Foreign Correspondent of the Daily Worker way We make our ast the Lenin Instit d across the ere now Chil of base. he small stands a Iding of red t the Moscow Gvex oot ner palace run not lass, workers izations, re Cate eye : nsideration Rebuilding a City nce examines our the way We go through a room up broad marble In the next room we notice a group of workmen seated around a table, evidently in serious con- versation. We learn that they are members of the Soviet’s co: on transportation, and are preparing a report and recommendation to the broader commission that meets in the eve- ring. The Moscow Soviet is composed of 3,000 members elected from the factories and all places of work. The general body meets once in three months, while the bulk of the work is done thru its various commissions, such as housing, educa- tion, labor protection and health Comrade Khvesin, a quiet man dressed in workers’ clothes, greets us warmly. “Yes, com- rades, I follow events in England and America closely. So I am very glad to give you any vmation you wish for the workers of your countries—about our Red Moscow.” For more than two hours we put questions and talked of the problems, plan of development, and achievements of the workers’ capitol, with a worker selected by his fellows to fill this post. “Transforming the old backward Moscow which we took from the czar into a city worthy of be~ ing the capitol of a workers’ republic is a tre- mendous task. Formerly Moscow was known as Europe's biggest village, w nitary, with narrow, winding streets, and working and living condi- tions for the masses of the very worst. The splendor of the Kremlin, the glistening domes of the city’s ‘forty times fcrty’ churches, the palaces of the nobles looked down on block after block of one and two-story houses filled with indes- cribable misery and filth. “During the approximately fourteen years tnce we raised the Red Flag over the city we have had to give our main attention, as you know, first to holding our country against our enemies, and since then to repairing the damage done by years of war and civil war, to remodel- ing and reequipping the old factories, and in general to transforming our backward agrarian Jand.into a modern industrial one. However, while we have not been able to give other as- pects as much attention as we would like, from the moment that the working class took power it has been busy transforming its general social life as well.” “Let us take housing, for example. Before the revolution laboring families lived seven, eight and nine in a room; with only curtains between families to give even a bare semblance of pri- vacy. Under these crowded conditions women gave birth to their children. This was the con- dition in Moscow; in the provinces thing: much worse. By taking o houses forme: cupied by the rich, and by dn extensive pr of building we have now arranged that every working family have at least ome room, with a minimum of five cubic metres to a person. In the old days the average space per person was one and a fifth cubic metres. Of course many families have more than one room. You have seen perhaps some of our new workers’ apart- ments and two-family houses?” checks to the IORKERS REBUILD SCOW ve—gray d along white or red brick dwell n nal restaurants and In the last five years 5,000 ides. 1eW ar t houses have been built, housing 450,000 peo In addition, in this past year alone, over sixty-one per cent of the old houses have been repaired. In the next three years another nillion workers’ families will move nto new homes However,’ Comrade Khvesin tells us, “we real- ze that what has been done is far from enough Moscow's population has tripled in the last ten from one to over three million. This has s of heating, transport: The last plenum of the Central Committee nist Party placed as one of the thr f except Sunda New York, N odern lines with kinder- | ing problem | s before us now the improv general living conditions of our Soviet cities. We must hasten their transformation | into socialist c é time that completely new ‘inging up | around each new giant plant of the Five-Year Plan Besides our housing program, 32 bi indus r be completed 1 as the great Pelace of Sovie' being constructed along the Moscow the gigantic task of joining the Volga Rivers will be carried thru.” This year, we learn 340,000 square meters of new asphalt pavement were added, hundreds of new trees planted, and plumbing and sewage systems greatly extended. Ten central heating plants are being installed, which will supply free heat for the entire city. Two of these public plants are already installed, and two more will be added within a short time. No city in Europe or England has central heating plants, while New York City has only two, both operated, of course, on a basis of private property. Transportation presents a serious problem. In spite of the extra miles of track laid, the increase in numbers of street cars, buses and taxis, all methods of transport are continually crowded with people. In 1930 the Moscow cars carried 965,000,000 passengers, more than four times as many as in 1917. However, the car ser- vice is being rapidly extended and fifty bus lines added, so that the next few months will see a big improvement, while by 1933 it is ex- pected that the new subway being constructed will be ready for use. All together 420,000,000, or a quarter of a billion dollars have been spent this year by the Moscow Sov:et on city improvement. And what is taking place in the capitol is more or less typical of what is happening throughout the country. ‘The health of the working masses has always been one of the main concerns of the Soviet Government. What has been accomplished in Moscow in this respect is vividly brought out by the fall in the death rates. In 1913 27 babies which River. died out of every 1,000 born; by 1930 the num- | ber had dropped to 12. The total mortality rate in 1913 was 25 a 1,000; in 1930 it was only 8. We learned much more about the new Moscow emerging out of the old—about the 200 recrea- tion clubs maintained by the unions and city for its members, the system of free clinics estab- | lished, and many other things which space does not allow me to describe here. Next year will see the end of Moscow's growth, as far as size and numbers go; for it has been decided that, from. the standpoint of socialist planning, the city will have reached the maxi- mum. No new industries will be brought here, but all efforts concentrated on completing the socialist transformation of the city; meanwhile new giant factories, with their adjoining model towns, will be built in other parts of the coun- try, forming a network of thriving socialist com- munities (all of medium size, with no problems of congestion, of sharp, breaks between couptry and city, of unequal cultural advantages, etc.). As we talked we sat near a window looking out on the square, where the children were playing around the memorial to the workers and peas- ants who had lain down their lives that this new world might come to be. Comrade Khvesin’s face lit up in a way that told, better than any words could, of the motive power that drives him on, “Moscow must become a city worthy of being the capitol of this workers’ republic,” he repeats, “worthy of being the center, the homeland ot | the world proletariat,” Women’s Role in the National Hunger March By ANNA DAMON The misery of the unemployed working women and girls thruout the country in the third year of the capitalist crisis has now reached new depth with the official federal and municipal government still refusing to give unemployment rélief to the 12 million starving workers and their Jamilies. Stow gnawing hunger saps the vitality and lite of the women workers, reducing them to physical and nervous wrecks. The fear ot having no root over their heads leaves its tell-tale marks on the unemployed women. Furtive, silent hiding in dark insanitary places, ashamed to reveal their misery—capitalism has taught them they must hide their misery, for they are women. Mothers of children have no milk or food tor their babies. The children of the unemployed working women, are dying by the thousands. Sickness and misery among the families ot the working class is on the increase. More that one-tenth of the working class un- employed consists of unemployed working wo- men. In New York City alone, out of a total of 1,000,000 unemployed workers, at least 135,000 are working women and girls. Many of these Jobless women are the sole supporters of families of themselves and three years of unemployment crisis has placed upon them such cruel miseries as have never before been seen. Forced ruthlessly into ever lower standards of living, thousands of working women are bewild- ered and crazed by the daily grind of @ slow hunger, despair and the fear of eviction or per- sonal degradation. So strong is the misery of the unemployed working women that they seek & way out of self-destruction or abandonment to degradation. In this situation working class wemen em ployed and unemployed must join in the great struggle of the Unemployed Councils, and the ‘Trade Union Unity League and the Communist Party for unemployed insurance, against evic- tions, and for immediate cash relief of jobless women and girls, colored and white, married and unmarried. More than ever before working women of all races must plunge into the election campaign of the Communist Party to strengthen the fight for Unemployment Insurance, against wage-cuts, part time work and speed-up, against discrimin- ation and lower wages for colored women, against dismissals of married women. The Communist Party is the only political Party in the United States that fights in the interest of the working class. It is the only Party that has taken steps to organize the Am- erican workers to force the U, S. federal and municipal government to give some relief to the millions of starving workers and their families. The relief given to the workers so far has been very meager charity relief—but even that would not have been granted if not for the determina- tion and militance of the workers under the Jeadership of the Communist Party, the Trade Union Unity League and the Councils of the Unemployed. Recognizing tlils fact the workers and especi- ally the women of the workingclass must throw their full support and energy in mobilizing for the National Hunger March to Washington on December 7, ‘The National Hunger March which will be preceded by local hunger marches must have among its ranks hundreds of women’s or- ganizations, must go hand in hand with the mobilization of the masses of women for the public hearings conducted by the TUUL. Ta enmmesiion with the drawing of women in at fo t By mat! everywhere: One year, § of Manhattan and Bronx, SURSCRIPTION RATES: New York City. Foreign: ; six months, $3; two months, $1; excepting Borou one year, $8; six months, $4.50. By HARRISON GEORGE. son EY were all there—the people who go to make up New York society—from the Vanderbilts and the Mc- Canns in the Diamond Horseshoe, to the Kermit Roosevelts and Otto Kahn, seated democratically in the erchestra circle.” there. figure by 90. crisis? N. Y. World-Telegram write-up of the opening of the 1931 season of the Metropolitan Grand Opera. Yes, workers, the “people” who make up “society,” were In fact, there were 4,300 there, breaking last year’s What to these, the “people” who count as pecple, is the misery and hell of worry of the economic much important! Ten Cent Store.” for work today, a 21-year-old mother, worried over the lack of money and food, shot and killed her three small children and then committed suicide.” Four lines of type for four working class lives! Nothing Hoover says the rich “can bear no more,” and the fake “socialist” party: declares “the rich suffer equally with the poor”! ere But in the opera box of the McCanns, was one of those “Million Dollar Babies,” Helena McCann, one of the season’s debutantes. No, workers, she wasn’t “found in a Five and No, indeed, but her mother is a heiress of the Woolworth millions! - ——By BARD | | i She never WORKED in a Five and The only workers there were the ushers, and one of them struck with the DIFFERENCE and said: “It’s a very solid opening, I should say, and as good as any we’ve had. But it’s the contrast that strikes me. You know, the depression outside, and all this inside.” What did he mean by “all this’? Why, the splendor of the gowns and jewels of the rich, the silk hatted multi- millionaires and their ermine cloaked ladies! NO DEPRES- SION HERE! Wait a minute—one reporter says that “on the whole, the family jewgls reposed in the bank vaults”; a magnificent “concession” to the “depression outside’! Nevertheless... “Mrs. Mackay (wife of the president of the Postal Tele- graph Company, which is owned by the same people as the All America Cables Co., that gave its telegraphers a wage cut last week) with her glittering jeweled pendant and ear- rings, Mrs. Frank Vance Storrs’ wrists presented a dazzling array of bracelets and Mrs. George Washington Kavanaugh wore enough diamonds to rival her chinchilla wrap in value.” However, another reporter be-littled the show of jewels: “Probably not one woman wore more than $50,000 worth oof baubles, and $50,000 never would set the Metropolitan ablaze. Still, it was enough for the sidewalk crowds. They stood in the chill, as doggedly as men in a breadline, to see wraps of ermine and sable.” Maybe you think that these rich people came out of ap- was Ten! Dear, no! But what about the baby of Mrs. Luette Kruse out in Los Angeles? Mrs. Kruse, 37 years old and n-other of nine children, had a month-old babe at her withered breast when She died last week. Why did she die? husband: ; She “lacked food.” That’s simple, but there were com- plications. She had been ill from lack of food since the babe was born. Her husband was unemployed for a long time and not a penny in the house. On the night of Oct. 31, Kruse, in desperation at his wife's illness, went to a drug store and demanded medicine for her. Refused, he went to another. By this time, the LAW, which protects diamond-decked heiresses but NOT sick mothers of the poor, had become suspicious: A cop hailed Kruse and threatened to arrest him. Kruse told the LAW, the capitalist‘ LAW, his story. But the cop wasn’t satisfied and called a squad car, and dragging Kruse into it, with three more cops, went to Kruse’s house. In spite of all protests, the four cops plunged into the sick room, knocking over furniture, snarling at the sick mother and frightened children, flashing their flashlights over her terrorized form. Don’t get hard,” said the cops to Kruse’s plea to leave her in peace, “or we'll throw you in jail.” , Mrs. Kruse, the working class mother of nine children, Well, hare’s the story, told by her preciation of music. Nothing is more ridiculous, as the ac- count tells us: “They arrived (the Big Bugs) in the middle of the first act and left in time to get the best tables at the supper clubs.” Remember, workers, that President Hoover says that They are so hard up that they eycn ask the employed workers—no, they LOCK THE PAY- ROLLS of the employed!—to gather the funds for grafting “charity” to “relieve” the joble... million-* In the same issue of the World-Telegram (Noy. 3) is the “the rich can bear no more”! story: “Philadelphia, Nov. 3.—While her husband was looking DIED! will NOT! babes! became hysterical and then unconscious, and 'then—SHE But the heiress of the Woolworth millions, Mrs. McCann, mother of Helena, the Million Dollar Baby, SHE didn’t die! The “depression” hasn’t touched HER! nor her poodle-dog! Workers, will you stand for THIS! You will throw the damned lie of Hoover back into his hypocritical face! LIE that tite “depression is passing”! You know it is NOT! And you will resent this MURDER of your wives and You will resent it in ORGANIZED form! demands of the great National Hunger March to Washington! Nor her daughter, NO, of course you You will refuse to believe the In. the the struggle for unemployment relief and par- ticipation in the public hearings, State and Na- tional hunger marches the district women’s de- partments of the Party must be strengthened and the methods of work among women em- ployed and unemployed placed on the basis of | mobilization for day to day demands. Masses of working women and housewives, es- pecially wives of unemployed workers, can be organied around issues that immediately af- | fects them as well as general demands as ex~- emplified in the Pittsburgh and Cleveland school demands activities, this task has been neglected and overlooked by the Unemployed Councils. At the same time individual working women have proved militant fighters in the front ranks of the unemployed, in local demonstrations for immediate relief, in the fight on evictions. Un- fortunately, however, our women comrades them- selves did not raise and develop women’s issues to mobilize women jobless and housewives around specific concrete issues, The district women’s departments should with- out delay draw up a plan of work among the unemployed women and wives of unemployed workers. Especially in connection with the public hearings and the National Hunger March, The program of immediate work to be realistic. The tasks to be those that can be accomplished rather than what the department would like to ac- complish. TASKS TO BE CONSIDERED. 1) How to mobilize the working class women (non-party) for participation in the public hearings. 2) How best to activize the trade unions and other mass organizations of women for partici- pation and support in the local and National Hunger Marches, 3) To develop and extend the struggles for immediate demands for school children of the unemployed, part-time employed workers. 4) Initiating and developing protest move- ments, boycotts, rent strikes, against high cest of living, gas, electric and rents. 5)" Drawing women into the councils of un- employed and into direct leadership of the councils. Toward the building of house and block committees, paying special attention to Negro women, 6) Formulating and embodying into the un- employed and social insurance demands, special local women’s demands. 2) Recruiting Negro and industrial women inte the Communist Party, 8) Building the “Working Women” into a mass paper. ‘The great response and readiness of the work- ing women ao follow the lead of the Communist Party and the revolutionary unions has already been proven through their militant participa- tion in the recent strikes in the textile, Law- rence, Paterson, in the mining areas in Pitts- burgh and the South, in the needle trades strikes and so forth. We have also seen in recent months the active participation of the working class women for the struggle of Negro rights in the Scottsboro cam- paign. In Chicago, Cleveland struggles against. evictions, and the South, ‘The masses of women are eager and ready to follow the Party and the revolutionary unions. It is due to our organizational shortcomings and general underestimation of importance of work among women that we have today so small a number of industrial and Negro women in the Party and in the industrial unions. ‘The correct carrying through of mass work among women in the struggle for Unemploy- ment Insurance and the -mobilization of the masses of women for the National Hunger March and above all the organizational results for the Party and the councils of the unemployed, will be successful with the proper political and or- ganizational guidance by the District Committees. SPECIAL WOMEN’S AND CHILDREN’S DEMANDS. 1) Equal Unemployment Insurance for men and women workers, 2) Equal Unemployment Insurance for all single and married, Negro and white women workers. 3) Unemployment winter relief for wives of workers (non-industrial) equal to that of adult dependents, 4) No dismissals of married women. 5) Special medical care for unemployed preg- nant women at the expense of the state. 6) Special free municipal lodging houses for unemployed women, ) tC 2) Free hospital care, curing, confinement and two weeks after confinement for mother’ | and child—for Negro and white unemployed women, | 8) Free food, clothing and shoes for children of unemployed and part time employed work- ers. 9) Free car fare, school supplies and trans- portation for the children of the unemployed. | 10) Tee medical care and dental work for the children of the unemployed. [ ccf | By JORGE 4 Out-Fording Ford Rather a joke on Ford to have to acknowledge that Soviet factories aré turning out excellent tractors, particularly when they are turning them out by the hundreds every day while Henry’s can’t find any reason to make tractors for American farms. The reason for that condition in America is that every dey, according to the Bureau of Farm Economics of the U. S. Department of Agricul- ture, 401 farmers lose thetr farms by mortgage foreclosuré—while four or five times that num- ber “sell out,” supposedly “voluntarily,” but in reality because they are bankrupt. Figures show that 22,000 farmers committed suicide in the last ten years. An army of 3,200 county sheriffs are busy taking ferms away from farmers and. have been busy at that for some time. Then. Secretary Hyde wonders why he can’t get farmers exdited about the terrible tales of what the Soviet does to rich farmers (kulaks). As a matter of fact the American Eulek and the big bankers are the ones who profit by this expropriation (@ polite term for robbery) of the small farmers. They lay “land to land until there is no place’—as the Scripture says. But in spite of the fact that there is 2 stagnation of mechanical advance. Meanwhile, not by robbing the small farmer but by showing him the advantage to himself of collective work on land nationalized by the revolution—his own revolution—the Soviet fac- tories work day and night turning out tractors for mechanical advance—and also for social ad. vancé in the form of added comforts for the farmers and more and cheaper bread for the cities. Please remember that what makes thé dif- ference is REVOLUTION. * The Crop Rotation Plan Up in St. Paul, Minnesota, we told you re- cently that a movie show under auspices of the city “charity” board, was gathering 8,000 spuds, four each from 2,000 kids. All the 8,000 potatoes went to feed 16,000 unemployed familles, But that was just a starter. This week, an- other show and each kid is to bring four car- rots. The next week, a head of cabbage. If they keep this up, we presume the unemployed might have a bow! of vegetable soup by Christmas. But they're not doing that. Next month will be “old clothes” month; sox the first week, old shoes next, old coats and then old pants. The poor devils will have to eat their soup in their shirt-tails till they get as far as the “pants” week. This Is the Life of Reilly! E eer ea | They Are Patriots An outfit with a formidable number of rich pedplé: a8 officers and executives, called “Senti- nels of the Republic”, have offices in Washing- ton, Atnong thé names we note are those of General’ Harbord. A little folder given out by them to the proper people, says on the front, that one of theif pur- poses is: “To stop the spread of Communism.” Now you may think that this is a commendable purpose, but see how they go about it. They boast that, as soon as the organization was formed, it “attacked the Sheppard Towner Ma- ternity Act, which had been passed by Congress in 1921.” It was Communism, you see, to take care of the mothers of the poor who are faced with the trial of giving birth to children. Only the awful Bolsheviks do that (and they do it splendidly). ‘The “Sentinels of the Republic” perceived that the republic was ¥s danger and as for the law: “Largely through the influence of the Senti- nels it was subsef sently repealed,” they boast. ‘Then the repwi fic was menaced again by Com- munism. Let them tell you: “The Sentinels of the Republic were chiefly responsible for the defeat of the Child Labor Amendment in 1924. Bearing a title which ap- pealed strongly to sentiment, this proposed Amendment had received overwhelming majori- ties In both branches of Congress, and prompt ratification by the States was generally antici-~ pated.” Ah, but the Sentinels saved the republi¢ again. They created in Massachusetts, where the refer- endum was invokd, another alias for their own organization, also with a title which “appealed strongly to sentiment”, in fact it was called “The Citizens’ Committee to Protect Our Homes and Children.” And upon an appeal to “‘protect chil- dren” they beat the Child Labor Law! Another score against the vile Communists! Such are the great deeds of the Sentinels of tle Republic. If they were only well organized in the desert states, where there is a law that you dare not refuse water to thirsty men, these Sentinels would again find the republic in dan- ger and get it repealed “to stop the spread of Communism.” . Inez Is a Bright Girl Inez Haynes Irwin, author, and—if we recall correctly—wife of Will Irwin, used to in the old days play around with a sort of “radical” set. If our memory serves aright, she used to con- tribute years ago to the old Masses, as Inez Haynes Gilmore. Was “a sort of” a socialist. Be that as it may, she wants the workers to do the contributing now. Not to the Masses, O, dear, no! But to the other workers who are un- employed. It will save Saturday Evening Post authors (the Irwins included) and quité a few capitalists from giving up a small chunk of their fat living. Over WJZ station, Inez the other day “ex- plained” that “anybody with a weekly salary of $20, can provide for a family of five for eight days by sharing 80 cents of that salary each week for twenty weeks.” : And blessed be the name of Hoover! What Inez leaves out is the explanation of how anybody can support a family of five on $20 a week. The U. S, Government statistics of living costs says !t can’t be done, and done right, It | can only be done by starving. Yet Inez advocates more starving, in the name of sympathy, while the rich miss no pork chops! Compare this kind of a bootlicking intellectual with the figure of John Reed! But you can’t compare them, you can only contrast them! ' Over 11 million unemployed in capitalist America, Unemployment liquidated in the So- viet Union. Attend the November 7th Celebra- | ton mass meetings,