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WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! Dail Central Orda : __YOL. VIII, No. 311 es at New York, N. Y. Entered as ercond-class watter at the Post Office der the set of March 3, 187° a Section of the Communist International ) GATHER WITH YOUR SHOPMATES IN “FRIENDS OF THE DAILY WORK- ER” GROUPS. READ, DISCUSS, GET SUBS FOR THE “DAILY WORKER.” ENTER SOCIALIST COMPETITION IN DRVE FOR 5,000 “DAILY WORKER” SUBS. NEW YORK, MONDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1931 cry. i EDITION <= _Price 3 Cents, ADMIT ANTI- SOVIET WAR PLOT BY CZECH RECALL Coal Operators’ Murder Plots. Will Not Stop the Strike in Kentucky ta Kentucky the coal operators and their hired gunmen, deputized by the county authorities, are desperate because of the rapid extension of strike preparations. On Friday, January 1, under the leadership of the National Miners Union, the Kentucky m*ners will come out on strike. Terrorism is no longer sufficient to keep the 18,000 Kentucky miners in-the grip of starvation. The District Convention of thgjNational Miners Union broke through the terror and showed the miners the way out through struggle. This convention was the turning point in the organi- zation of the Kentucky miners. The N.M.U. has been sweeping through the-coal fields, rallying the miners for a gigantic walk-out on January 1 to be the first step to break down the hunger-program of the Kentucky coal operators. ‘This was not to the liking of the coal operators. They saw their army of gunmen failing to cow the miners. They saw thousands of miners joining the N.M.U. The strike date was fast drawing near. Common- wealth Attorney W. A. Brock, faithful to his masters the coal operators, sought to smash the announced mass meeting of miners in Wallins Creek set for Sunday. He declared the meeting would not be permitted. He _threatened the use of the gun thugs against the miners. : To carry through his program of renewed terror, W. A. Brock’s “brother-in-law, Owen Sizemore, also in the pay of the Harlan coal oper- ators as a deputy gun thug, along with another gun thug, James Dixon, ‘waylaid two miners at Chevrolet, near the Blue Diamond Coal Company's mining camp. Sizemore knew that the two miners, Hutton, and Hall, 82 years old, were distributing leaflets for the Wallins Creek mass meet- ing: They knew Hutton was active in raising relief for the coming mine strike. Sizemore, paid killer of the coal operators, “veteran” mur- derer, began to beat Hutton with the butt of his revolver. In self-defense Hutton fired, killing Sizemore. The operators and their gunmen had threatened to get Hutton. They wanted to teach the miners a lesson ‘on the eve of the strike. Hutton, Hall and Leonard Farmer, another miner who was somewhere near the scene, now face electrocution. The coal operators are determined tosmash the sirike-by all means. ‘These tactics will not hinder the strike! The miners are coming out for a decsiive struggle against hunger and starvation. The strike ap-~ ‘paratus, formed by the rank and file of the miners, is being built solidly. The miners will not stand by and permit themselves to be murdered in cold blood at the hands of the 400 company-paid deputized gun thugs. Ort Friday, throughout the Kentucky coal mountains, the cry will ring: “Strike! All out! Down tools and fight against hunger and terror!” ‘The miners will come out in a disciplined mass, forming their commit- tees, their strike bodies, building their union, forging atead to victory. » The day of the strike is near and food, clothing—all sorts of relief —are needed immediately. The workers everywhere must rally imme- diately to the support of the Kentucky mine strike. The Workers In- ternational Relief is raising strike funds. The deputy gun thugs failed this time in their efforts to kill a relief worker, though on a previous - eceasion Lee Fleenor, deputy sheriff, murdered two miners at a relief kitehen. ‘The new attacks have put additional responsibility on the Interna- -tional Labor Defense. The defense of the miners against murderous plots, frame-ups, criminal syndicalist charges is now greater than ever =with,the strike coming on full force. Support the Kentucky mine strike! Defend the miners against the attack of the gun thugs and murder frame-ups! Rush relief now to strengthen the ranks of the strikers! GET BEHIND KENTUCKY | MINERS WITH RECORD WERK IN SUB CAMPAIGN! TS is the third week of the campaign for 5,000 12- month subscriptions to the Daily Worker, and about 500 12- month subs have been received so far, only 10 per cent of the goal. ~The big Kentucky strike of 18,000 miners led by the Na- tional Miners Union will burst forth in less than a week. The mine bosses’ gunmen have already launched a new reign of terror in the Harlan district. Only the solid ranks of work- _ers behind the Kentucky miners will smash the terror and cwin the strike! Keep the workers’ ranks solid with subscriptions to the Daily Worker! . Last Saturday $360 came in in subscriptions. The drive has great spurts now and then. We must never slide back. Once we have set a fast pace we must maintain it. What are the districts doing about plans for the Daily Worker Eighth Anniversary Jubilee? The Jubilee should be held by January 10th. Get the mass organizations active. Form more Friends of the Daily Worker groups. Turn this week, the week of preparation for the big Kentucky strike into the biggest week of the Daily Worker subscription campaign. seen , considered 48 hours a week, then 85.6 s| even one per cent, and employment 85 PER CENT WORK ONLY | PART TIME Capitalist Industrial Conference Board Gives Out Figure Living Cost Still Up) Only 14.4 per “cent of the workers | who do have jobs are working on} full time, according to the report of | the National Industrial Conference | Board, a capitalist statistical insti- | tution, The board's ‘statement ap-| plies to August, 1931, which was a| time of greater employment than | now. It admits that if full time be | per cent of the workers who are at work are on ‘part time, stagger sys- tems, etc. ‘The board tries to make a big point | of the alleged fact that the Gost of | living in October was eight tenths of | one per cent lower than in Septem- ber. It adds: “It is clear that if the cost of living declines 15 per cent and the hourly wage rate remains con- stant, the workers’ hours can decline in a like percentage before his real income for the week is impaired.” Which is an astonishing piece of optimism, coming after the admission that cost of living has not declined eos Lis Killed in Attack on Miner | Try to Prevent Distribution of Leaflets Calling | for Strike On January First | peaviseaaitiae NR a | WALLINS CREEK, Ky., Dec. 27.—Six hundred miners} | today defied the coal operators terror and attended the first} open mass meeting of the National Miners Union in Harlan County. The meeting was a big victory for the N.M.U. Hun- dreds of miners came from outside of Wallins Creek in trucks | and cars. The meeting was in® | ty. preparation for the mine strike on January 1, A week ago, Sheriff Blair declared there would be no meetings of miners in Harlan Coun- The spirit of the miners was so militant that there was no in- | terference from, the thugs of the coal operators. The day before, Vergin Hutton, a member of the District Board of the N.M.U., was attacked by gunmen in Chevrolet, Ky., while distributing leaflets for today’s meeting. The thugs, one of whom is Owen Size- more, brother-in-law of Prosecuting Attorney W. A. Brock, pounced upon Hutton and pounded him on the and twisted his arm. In the scuffle, there was shooting and Sizemore was killed. In the scuffle, no one could see who did the shooting. No details are known. Hutton is held for court on Tues- day. His father-in-law has also been arrested, but was later released on has fallen terrifically. Pierce through stone walls of cap- italist press with 5,000 Daily Worker subscriptions. $5,000 bond. Kyla Hall, who was with Hutton at the time of the st- tack was thrown into jail. At today’s meeting, a ‘resolution (CONTINUED ON PAGE THREE) Hunger March to Organizat Gives Impetus ion of Jobless C. H. Mayer, delegate on the Na- tional Hunger March, writes from his home Bloomington, Ill, to which he has returned, that solidarity of Ntgro and white jobless and workers is de- veloping rapidly, and that the League of Struggle for Negro Rights branches and Daily Worker Clubs are being organized there and in Decauter and Springfield, Ill The Unemployed Councils are growing in this section and are beginning the fight against evictions, He orders bundles of Daily Workers and Liberators. National Hunger March delegate, C. Lewis, writes from Indianapolis: “Before the march the unemployed council was small and hard to build. When we came back and called a meeting to give our reports on the march there was a big attendance. A hundred and fifty attended the next regular meeting of the unem- ployed council. Workers took the floor and condemned the rotten char- ity system here. Committees were elected to go to the charities and get relief for those who stated at the meeting that they got nothing. Pre- viously such committees were barred by police from entering the charities, but now they got in, and got some rt- sults. Evictions are slowing down, in the face of the energetic opposition workers now put up whenever the landlord tries to dispossess a tenant. Block meetings and block organization ere developing. Similar reports come sfrom Terre Haute, Anderson and Evansville.” |\Big Affair Jan. Ist on head wiht the butt of their pistols | HAIL BIRTH DATE OF N. T.W. 1 U: Third Anniversary NEW YORK.—January First the| militant workers of New York will) celebrate at Central Opera House, the | third anniversary of the founding of | the Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union. Three years is a short period in the life. ofanorganization. Nevertheless, the Needle Trades Union, despite all obstacles, can already show consider- able achievements. The needle trades } workers today, both those who are members of the A. F. of L. union and the unorganized workers, as well as those in the Industrial Union recog- nize the Industrial Union as the only champion of the interests of the| needle trades workers. | In the course of the past six months especially, the union has conducted successful struggles, winning improve- ments in the conditions of the work- ers.in the fu’ trade, leading the struggle against wege cuts in all the other branches of the trade. At the 3rd anniversary in Central Opera House, leaders and rank and file members of the union will re- view the achievements and shortcom- jings of the past three years and lay jdown plans for greater mass strug- gles. An interesting program, which will include a concert and Gropper, the Proletbuehne, Fieiheit Gesangs-Ver- ein, Mandolin Orchestra, Artef artists, | Gandel, Edith Siegel, who will give appropriate songs and recitations. Daniel Willard—A member of the Gifford Unemployment Relief Com- mittee is president of the Balti- more and Ohio Railroad, director of the American Telephone and Telegranb, and several large banks. Willard was the sponsor of the B. &. 0. “union-management coop- eration” plan which was supposed to raise wages and improve the rail workers’ conditions. Now Wil- lard is the leader of the movement for wage cuts. IMPERIALISTS ADMIT | JAPAN’S AIM IS TO ATTACK SOVIET UNION Fear Expressed Commaniian Will Sweep China By Spring; Japanese Call for Immediate Partition Carl Wanek, secretary of the sion to Moscow. ism is playing a leading role Wanek, whose recall was forced | by the Soviet Union, is a specialist in military. affairs. He numbers attaches countries, A Tokyo dispatch reports that the plot to assassinate the Japanese Am- bassador, has been confirmed by the Japanese government, The Japanese Foreign Office is quoted in the sig- nificant statement that “too much fuss is being made about a plot which of several imperialist with at least a quart a day for each child and at least a pint for adults— but it doesn’t tell the workers where the money for this milk is to come from. has failed.” Had the plot succeeded, however, the Japanese imperialists would have seized on the opportunity (CONTINUED ON PAGE THREE) Call Mooney Conference in San Francisco Jan. 10 SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 27, — The International Labor Defense with of- fice at 1179 Market Street, has issued a call for a “Mooney-Scotisboro-Har- lan Convention” in San Francisco on January 10th, 1932. Frank Spector, district organizer of this organization announces that over 1,000 union, fraternal and Negro 150 Political Prisoners on Hunger Strike The 150 political prisoners in Grodno are on a hunger strike! This is the second large prison in Western White Russia in which the prisoners were compelled to initiate the strug- gle before the united strugg'e on a national scale of all the political prisoners. The “pacification,” being carried out by fascism by the special force in Western White Russia, was car- Hunger Strike Declared Prisoners in Polish by Political Bastiles ried on to the prisons. The cries and groans of the tortured comrades in Grodno are being drowned out by a special orchestra, brought into the prison for that purpose by the ban- dit prison administration. The living conditions of the political prisoners in Grodno are terrible; they are completely deprived of their food and newspaper communications, the li- brary has been confiscated, beatings and torture are the order of the day. The system of continuous punish- ment by. isolation is being applied; the number of systematically isolated ecmrades sometimes reaching forty. ‘The punished comrades are thrown into damp bull-pens, their hair is clipped like that of criminal pris- oners, The fascist prison regulations have been put into force aimost completely. The last prison adminis- tration wanted to place the political prisoners in criminals’ rags. The (CONTINUED ON PAGE THREE) organizations in California have re- ceived the call. He states: “The fight for the release of Moo- ney and Billings is linked up with the fight to save the lives of the nine Negro boys of Scottsboro, Alabama, who were sentenced trumped-up charges of “rape”, and for the release of the Harlan, Ky., miners facing the electric chair for taking part in the recent strike. It will be a convention to rally the California workers to protest against the arrests and persecution. of active workers, Simultaneously with this is the an- nouncement by the Anti-Criminal Syndicalism Law Committee that fol- lowed the Mooney-Scottsboro-Harlan Convention, a delegation be elected at this convention to call upon Gov- ernor Rolph and present petitions containing thousands of signatures of registered voters demanding the repeal of the criminal syndicalism law. The same committee will also request the release of Mooney and Billings and the six Imperial Valley prisoners, convicted under the crim- inal syndicalism law in 1930 strike of the land workers in the Imperial Val- ley. Cosschisiceakin of French imperialism in Eastern Europe. to die on! Identity of the imperialist diplomat who directed the plot to assassinate Ambassador to Moscow in Japan a pretext to make war on the Soviet Union was revealed in a Prague d the Japanese order to afford patch as hoslovakian Diplomatic Mis- s one of the puppet states French imperiale beside American imperialism in the drive for war against the Soviet Union. SHOWS UP BOSS among his associates the diplomatic | | WARS; PA. COURT UPHOLDS JATLING PHILADELPHIA, Pa., Dec. 27. | Opening the way for a wider attack | against the workers to enforce the Hoover hunger program, the State Superior Court here upheld the con+ vietion against Israel Lazaar, speaker for the Communist Party, on criminal syndicalist charges. Lazar was ar« rested in 1928 during an election cams paign while he was speaking on bee half of Foster, Communist presi< dential candidate. Under the Penne sylvania sedition act Lazar was con victed and given a term of from two to four years. His “crime” was say ing the following: “This government murdered Sac- co and Vamzetti. This is a strike- breaking government. Let us teach our young workers in time of war to shoot down people who ordered us to shoot other people.” Judge Thomas J. Baldridge, who wrote the opinion, though he could not say anything about the speech being “designed to overthrow the gov- entment” now, stated that at some future date it may “undermine the stability” of the government, and for that reason Lazar should be jailed, The judge declared: “The language was a clear abuse of the inestimable privilege of free speech and was inimical to public welfare. The effect of such language may not be immediately manifested, but his ranting utterances had for their ultimate purpose the undere mining of the stability and the up- rising of the power, by force, of the constituted authority. This is suf+ ficient to warrant conviction.” Every worker should protest against this fascist move of the Pinchot govs ernment in the state owned by Ane drew Mellon, Unite to Free 9 Innocent Scottsboro Boys! Smash Murder Terror in the South! Siew ED and determined mass protest and turned ferociously against the toiling Negro masses desperate e' fforts by bankers, landlords and their is at its worst—just there arises the age-old cry and in the North. orgénization are necessary now to save the lives of and FREE the nine innocent Scottsboro boys. On January 18 at Montgomery, Alabama, the Supreme Court of that state will go through the form of hearing the appeal of the nine Negro “boys who were framed up and condemned last Sspring, ‘The Supreme Court which represents the ruling class 6f landlords and capitalists of Alabama direétly, and American capitalism and its Hoo- ver-Wall Street. government, will have only one purpose—the purpose to justify the ghastly crime ¢f- the ruling class in legally murdering these innocent Negro children. What can be expected trom the Alabama Su- ‘Peeni¢ Court has already been indicated in a ‘rodent utterance of the Governor of another southern state Governor Sterling of Texas, who said in reference to a somewhat similar outrage. --“It may be that this Negro is innocent, but ‘somctimes it is necessary to burn a house to save a village.” » The meaning of this is quite clear—that Ne- -groes must be lynched and the terror against them maintained in order to keep the Negro masses from fighting against the growing op- pression and starvation. The attempt to murder the Scottsoboro boys ‘a part of the class terror which is now being throughout the South. The terror is used with @ special fury in the South, against the Negro masses, but it also has affected and is being extended to white workers in the South, as in Kentucky, and in the North, frame-ups, lynching and murders of strikers, organizers and revolu- tionary workers, Negro and white, is used more and more as a weapon against the rising struggles of the masses against the Hoover-hunger pro- gram. It is part of the general drive of the capitalists and their government against the living and social standards of the entire toiling section of the American population. As the time fast approaches wnea the Alabama Supreme Court will go through the pretense of hearing the appeal of these innocent Negro boys, the masses of the working population, black and white, have a bloody warning of the decision they are to expect from the Supreme Court of -lynchers. Barney Lee Ross, honest Negro laborer, has just been burned. to death in the electric chair in Texas, ‘ In this blood orgy of the southern white ruling class, we see the Clash of class interests and the effect of the present economic ruin in a backward agricultural region where slavery has never really been abolished. The fall of cotton and tobacco prices and the deeper misery of great masses already stricken with unbearable poverty, bring retinue of small town merchants, etc., to main~ tain their power to rob and rule against the masses of the toiling population, especiiully dis- franchised Negro agricultural laborers and share- croppers living under a form of serfdom. Num- berless armed aitacks by landords and their agents, small town capitalists and the rifi-raff and squm of southern capitalism, upon share- croppers and laborers are now the order of the day, They are organized usually to enforce some new glaring swindle concerning the price of crops or the refusal to pay wages. These attacks are proceeding in a wave all through the South, from the Atlantic to the Rio Grande. The Negro masses are fighting back as in Camp Hill, Alabama. It is. necessary to defend openly, by word and deed and without reserva- tion, the right of the Negro masses to organize and defend themselves against these attacks. Lynching and wholesale murder to eafcvce slavery and maintain the starvation conditions of Negroes must be met by an organized and deter- mined resistance which will make these on- slaughts something else than a pleasant pastime for those who take part in them. In the wake of the flood of bank failures, o:- actly where the economic crisis has become the sharpest, exactly where the forcible swindling of the Negro agricultural laborers and share-croppers | of “Rape”! Of course, this is the shameless lie of the slaveholder and his flunkies, The blood thirsty agitation by “rape” centers invariably. around centers of bank failures and mortgage foreclosures—and always in adjoining communi- ties near the point of greatest economic pressure. There is a deep growing movement of share- croppers to organize to resist the landlords’ rob- bery. And the small, well organized gangs of Jandicrds, small town merchants and their han~ gers on of other classes, ride over the country in automobiles, equipped with guns and ropes, to terrorize and crush the movement of the Negro share-croppers and laborers. Cooperatin gtully with the lynch gengs, the of- ficers of thc law systematically are disarming the Negroes to render them easy victims for the lynch cnd muvde- ban¢cs. A recent confidential report of the anti-Negro, anti-Communist or- ganization called the Fellowship of Reconcilia- tion, exposed by the Daily Worker, reporied a minimum of 75 murders of Negroes in one sec- tion of th eblack belt since last Augusi, The crisis in the agricultural Black Bolt which tur- nishes the ‘breeding ground of the hew wave of hel “vez acoizcs tho Negroes is part of the ‘general ‘deep and chronic agricultural crisis which has ruined hundreds of thousands of white farmers in other sections of the South, By wholesale secret and open murder, by or- ganized lynching, the capitalists, landlords, and their hangers-on, hope to smash the growing unity of the Negro and white masses shown in the National Hunger March, the heroic struggles of the Negro and white miners of Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. eto. The responsibility for defeating these attacks and defending the Negro masses rests first of all upon the Communists, the militant white workers, and the working-class as a whole. ‘The wave of open terror and legal lynching requires not only guns, rope and electric chairs, but also Negro and whete renegades to betray those who would organize resistance. The Na- tional Association for the Advancement of Col- ored People is performing this function in the ranks of the Negro masses; the leadership of the American Federation of Labor, and the Socialist Party, render the valuable service for the lynchers in the ranks of the white workers. These assistant lynchers are openly calling for police suppression of all eiforts of the Negro masses. to hold meetings or to organize in the South, and endorsing American institutions ot which, of course, lynching and frame-up of Ne- groes is the most characteristic and best: Walter White, Willlam Pickens, W. E. B. DuBois, with Shamelessness never before equalled, are now ) Proceeding with the open aid of the prosecutors and courts who conspired to lynch these boys, to attempt to step In and deprive the boys of any legal representation by pretending themselves to be the “representatives of the boys” against the vehement protest of the boys and their parents These capitalist avenis ore attempting to demorelize the inass movement which is based upon the solid demand for the release of these innocent boys, by broad that there is “doubt” about the innocence or guilt of the boys, and that this “doubt” must be settled ‘by a “fair trial” in an Alabama lynch court. The Alabama Supreme Court will meet upon this case, not to decide some fancy legal point that is supposed to concern their guilt or inno- cence—for everbody knows that these boys are innocent—but only to find the best means to give the legal murder of these children the ap- pearance of punishment of social crime, or at least that there is some doubt of their innocence (which in the case of Negroes is considered suf- ficient for their condemnation to death), and to enable the state to proceed with their legal mur- der without arousing further the anger of the masses. In short, the court will go through certaim sting the propaganda (CONTINUED ON PAGE THREES