The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 22, 1932, Page 4

Seeieetete set deesioces r 13th Address and mai! all checks to the Daily Worker, 60 Kast 13th Street, New York, N. Yo age Four ublishea by the Comprodafly Publishing Co., Inc, daily except Sanday, at 60 Hast New York City. N. ¥ Telephone ALgonquin 4-7956. Cable “DAIWORK.” Dail Yorker’ Party US.A. BURSCRIPTION RATES: Foreign: one year, e By mall everywhere: One year, $6; six months, $3; two months, $1; excepting Boroughs of Manhattan and Bronx, New York City. $8; siz months, $4.50. MINERS WAGES GO UP IN THE! By LABOR RESEARCH ASSOCIATION. (The Kentucky-Tennessee miners’ strike brings out sharply the glaring contrast be- tween the conditions of American miners and those of the Soviet Union.—Ed. Note.) EB monthly wages for the coal miners Unior ) 73.40 rout is about 51 cents in U. 8. does not include so- medical aid, payment of or other disability, etc.) 7 per cent of the nom- increase es (free unior of coal 1 were further raised September 20, issued by the Su- Council of the U. S. S, R. and m Council of Trade Unions, provid- for an extended system of piece work and muses, nety per cent of the underground miners in the coal industry were to work on a peice work is and 53 per cent of all surface work For ne first 10 per cent produced above the norm, the rate is 25 per cent higher, for the second 10, 40 per cent higher, and for any further in- crease 80 per cent higher. Bonuses of from 10 to 25 per cent of the wage cale were granted to underground miners en- gaged on particularly dusty and dirty work, under a high temperature. Under the new scale e daily wage rates are from 4 to 7 roubles for skilled underground miners, who comprise the I t section. The total increase in the pay- ‘oll of the Donetz Basin has been set at 30 ing be Enforced delays through no fault of the work- ers are paid at half-rates, and in case of dis- charge on account of rationalization the worker receives two to three months’ salary. The em- ployment of minors under 18 is forbidden in rx ir ing descent below the mine surface. over 16 and women, who may be em- i in some surface job, receive the same men performing the same work. An- relating to young workers that m: interest, is that apprentice miners are ined free of charge and receive pay while 1 ig, Wages for U. 8. What are the parallel conditions in the United Here speed-up and wage cuts as a t result of the deepening crisis and the ef- of the coal companies to maintain profits are becoming increasingly widespread. Tens of ~ds of mine families have long had an income too small to buy even the most meager ecessaries Wages of coal miners in the United States have gone steadily down since 1929. For all miners and loaders combined, average daily earnings were pushed down by 12 per cent be- tween the first quarter of 1929 and the first quarter of 1931, according to official figures of the U. S, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Wage cuts plus the great decrease in mine operation cut average total earnings by about one-third Loaders in Pennsylvania mines average only $10 to $12 a week, it was found in a recent field study by the Labor Research Association. Nearly 200,000, or one-third of all the mine workers in 1920, were under 25 years of age and nearly 25,000 of these young workers were under 18. And 6000 boys at work in coal min- ing in 1920 were less than 16 years old. No American coal state has written on its statute books an 18 year age limit for under- ground workers. Several states have lists of dangerous occupations in which boys under 18 ; have only polluted water, potatoes and beans to | children were four to seven a week,” He is re- | ferring to Harlan and Bell Counties, Kentucky, may not legally be employed, but the mining in- terests have seen to it that their industry in spite of its terrific hazards is not included, High Standard of Living For Soviet Miners Formerly after 10 or 12 hours of hard, ex hausting, physical labor underground the Rus sian miner went home to a low-ceiled, damp, earthen hut, where he slept in a crowded stuffy room, often huddled on the dirt floor. “Dog ‘Town” was the name given to the miners’ liv- ing quarters in the Donetz Basin under capi- talism, consisting mostly of badly crowded bar- racks, huts, and subterranean dwellings, miser- ably neglected, dark dirty with no system for the disposal of sewage. No fewer than 700,000 persons (miners and their families) in 1931, are furnished with dwellings which efficiently meet the demands of health and hygiene and provide opportunity for material and cultural service. A great amount of work has been accomplished towards improving the workers’ settlements (road mak- ing, provision of sidewalks, tree planting, parks, electrification of the houses, and the laying of water). Incidentally in every plant design, en- gineers must incorporate the fullest possible provisions for the care and protection of the workers. Housing for workers in the Soviet coal fields is free or the charge for rent is so small as to be merely a nominal payment. Electric light, fuel and other municipal services are entirely free while working clothes, boots, tools and lights are supplied by the industry, New workers’ settlements, baths, dining rooms; clubs, hospitals, educational institutions are growing up at the mines of the Donetz Basin, where formerly there were only pitheads, hovels and churches. Huge palaces of labor, with auditoriums for a thousand or more persons, athletic fields, and numerous cultural and so- cial institutions, including centers for the pro- tection of motherhood and childhood are being rapidly introduced. Miserable Hovels for American Miners Company patches, as dreary as the “Dog ‘Towns” of Czarist Russia, are the only homes for thousands of coal mine workers in the U. S. Wooden houses with roofs of composition paper, usually without a cellar and often sup- ported only on posts, with the wind sweeping through under the floor are the prevailing type. Serious overcrowding in shacks, bad odors, pol- luted creeks and a contaminated water supply are common. Only two of the 713 villages studied by the U. S. Coal Commission were listed as meeting the modest standard set by the commission in both water supply and dis- posal of sewage and waste. The life of the worker who has no voice in the management of the company village, and | is not allowed to hold meetings of protest or organization, is completely dominated by the company. Before he gets @ house, the worker must sign a special form of lease forfeiting his legal rights as a tenant and before he can get a job he must sign a yellow dog contract, giving up his right to organize for struggle against the intolerable conditions to which he is subjected. As for the diet of some of the workers in the | United States, Theodore Dreiser states, “They dine on every night, and that the deaths from starvation in the summer of 1931, among the where conditions are notoriously bad, but thou- sands of miners in other states and counties, live under precisely the same conditions, and those who work in the so-called “prosperous | communities” also have # limited diet, the mar- | gin between themselves and hunger being wiped out as the crisis continues to deepen. Tammany’s “Unemployment In- surance” By HARRY GANNES. 'OVERNOR ROOSEVELT of New York took enough time out of his “tin box investiga- ion” of grafting Sheriff Farley, graduate of the ame Tammany Hall school in which the gov- rnor himself was trained, to fire the opening sun in the chief demagogic campaign in what he calls “a non-radical plan for unemployment insurance.” Unemployment insurance has now become a major political issue and Tammany Hall will attempt to ride its candidate into the presidency on @ slimy plank they will call “unemployment nsurance. They will start a campaign for their sham scheme to catch the votes of the mil- lions of unemployed workers and the millions now employed who know’ their jobs are no safer than a dollar within the reach of a Tammany grafter The Roosevelt “plan” is not purely a New York matter. It was drawn up with the ap- proval of the governors of six of the leading ndustrial states in the country—New York, Ohio, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut. It is being approved by the most reactionary capitalist newspapers. It is more than an “unemployment insurance” fake scheme, as it contains a direct attack against wages and is in full conformity with the bosses’ plans of lowering the standard of living of the American workers. One of the basic principles of the “plan” is that the unemployed “we will always have with us,” or, as the proposal of Governor Roosevelt’s commission states it: “At the best, there will for some time remain a residium of unemployed who must continue to look for assistance to the agencies of private and public charity.” So after all the “wmemployment insurance” scheme, about which Governor Roosevelt will bellow a good deal, is not intended to take care of the 12,000,000 unemployed “who must con- tinue to look for assistance to the agencies of private and public charity.” The scheme itself was cleverly worked out for several purposes, namely, to be put over in an attempt to fool the workers when the pressure of the struggle for a real unemployment insurance bill becomes too great, and to draw the workers away from the task of building an organized working class movement to force { rough the genuine unemployment insurance, The “experts” appointed by the governors studied every so-called unemployment insurance plan in European capitalist countries—and vicked the worst features of each, directed against the workers. undamental in the plan are the propositions, Scheme () “the burden of unemployment would still be borne by the workers,” and, (2) $20 should be considered the maximum wage paid to any worker. Instead of a national unemployment insur- ance bill, the recommendation is made that state-wide systems of “4 ” ‘be established, each exclusively controlled by the local state capitalists and particularly by the individual bosses. Each employer, so the recommendations read, would contribute 2 per cent of his payroll into his own “reserve fund.” When a sum of $50 for each worker has been gathered the boss is sup- posed to stop contributing. Now the question arises, where would the 2 per cent really come from? A boss faced with the prospect of creating this “reserve” would take it out of the hide of the worker. He would take not 2 but at least 5 per cent right out of the payroll, keeping 3 per cent for “adminis- | quired unit; if he has not enough cows the tration”; and the other 2 per cent would be juggled around. The provision about benefits reads as follows: “The maximum rate of benefit shall be 50 -per cent of an employee’s wage, or 310 a week, whichever is lower; and the maximum period of benefit shall be ten weeks within any twelve months.” Here is the crux of the whole plan so far as the workers are concerned. The boss is sup- ed to pay the unemployed worker half of his wages (and the maximum wage is put at 4 .ce, so that no worker would ever get more than $10 a week as “unemployment bene- fits”). What is more, the limit of payments is supposed to rum ten weeks. . In the first place, the “reserves” amount to @ wage cut, Then the manner of payment helps the boss further fix a starvation standard of living; and after all these blessings, an unem- ployed worker could see his family starve slowly for 10 weeks before they began the rapid road to death by hunger. There are a whole series of safeguards for the bosses, so that in the event htere ts @ ertsis like the present, and say half of his workers thrown out of work he does not have to any of them one cent, even after thetr have been robbed for the purpose. “The financial responsibility of an employer shall be strictly limited by the amount of his unemployment reserve,” says the plan which is an insurance of the boss and not of the worker. And this is the scheme which will be flaunted in the capitalist press as “unemployment insur- ance” in answer te the struggle for the Workers Unemployment Insurance Bill now being backed THE DANCE OF THE Developments of the Dairy Trust in the Agrarian ; Field By M.S. IN @ previous article I wrote of the vital impor- tance of the milk receiving station to the, dairy farmer. I also showed how the trust (Kuhn, Loeb & Co.) through Bordens and the National Dairy Products Co. are buying up all the market outlets that they can get hold of. At Plainsboro, N. J., is the largest dairy farm in the country owned by Walker Gordon Co., a Borden subsidiary. Here a revolutionary. ma- chine has just been developed called the Roto- lactor. It milks and washes cows at the rate of 4 cows a minute. It means the doom of the small producer of milk, that is certain, but how is this trust going to use this new weapon? The organiZational idea of the Walker-Gordon system is: 1, A farmer comes in as a producer. He brings his producing cows to the central farm. He. still owns the cows. The cows are placed in a separate barn for his cattle alone. He must have 100 producing sows to ‘make up the re- company arranges with a bank for a loan to buy the required amount. Very few farmers own 100 cows, so practically all farmers must go into debt at once. 2. The farmer must own or rent a farm with- in a 15-mile radius of the central farm, where he lives and cares for those cattle of his unit that are not in production (young stock and dry stock). 3. The farmer sells his milk te the company but the company does the milking (on the roto- lactro). In other words, where formerly the farmer sold his milk in a can he now sells it while still in the cow. 4 The company has complete veterinary and sanitary control. 5. The farmer or his hired man must come to the center several times daily to take care of his unit of cattle, mainly feeding. 6. On his own farm away from the center the farmer raises hay and corn for silage which he must sell to the company to be stored at the center. 7. ‘The farmer buys back his feed as he needs it for his cattle in the center. Some of the ef- fects of this system are: L. The farmer is put into debt and can be left perpetually in debt if the company so wills it. 2. ‘The great cost (disease) of large scale cor- poration agriculture, the national risk, is elim- inated by having the farmer “own” the cows. At present the trust is just working this sys- tem with 15 farmers as an experiment. These 15 farmers are well satisfied because they are being paid attractive rates. As this system de- velops, the trust will move into other dairy sec- tions and build similar centers. Farmers who will then refuse “invitations” to join this pro- ducing center will find the trust through-own- ership of the milk stations and market outlets able to force the farmer to give in or stop selling milk, When this system reaches a certain stage of growth the trust will be able to squeeze and ex- ploit the farmers like they never have in the past beause they will have an almost complete ranks of the A. F. of L. This is the offspring of the great promises of “endorsement” of unemployment insurance of Governor Roosevelt! The Republican opponents of Roosevelt in the New York legislature could find nothing to oppose in the proposal, except they thought it wasn’t “timely.” The bold Socialists, through their mouthpiece, about this “unemployment insurance” scheme. All class conscious workers should brand it for what it is—another instrument in the campaign to lower the standard .of living of the Amer- SEVEN VEILS By BURCK Bae oe << Stop the Shipment of Arms and | Ammunition to China! By CYRIL BRIGGS. ‘AR is already on in China. All the elements for another world slaughter are present today in the Far East. The imperialists are rushing forward their war preparations. In the United States, the war industries are secretly turning out huge amounts of war materials. The bosses are trying to popularize the approaching war in the minds of the working class. They are en- gaged in spreading the most dangerous illusions as to the meaning and consequences of the com- ing war. The illusion that war means a “return” of “prosperity” is being openly peddled by bour- geois economists and tie capitalist press. Stop- ping at no crime against the working class, the fascist leadership of the American Federation of Labor, and the yellow “socialists” are ably lending their aid to put across this lie. The working class is being told that war will end unemployment, that war will provide jobs for the 12,000,000 unemployed workers in this coun- try, The workers are being asked to believe that by permitting themselves to be sent forth to be maimed and slaughtered they will be able to es- cape the misery and starvation to which they are sentenced under capitalism. The grandest way dying capitalism can find out of the crisis in which it is engulfed is to throw millions of workers on the battlefields to slaughter each other, This is the “high wisdom” of the capitalist system. Its most enduring “solution” is to slaughter the surplus workers for whom it can no longer provide employment, to whom {t refuses the right to live. In sharp contrast, the workers see unemployment totally abolished in the country of advancing Socialism— in the Soviet Union. Mass butchery of the workers as the ONLY way out of the crisis for the capitalists was openly proposed by Otto T. Mallery, a leading bourgeois economist, if a speech before Wash- ington officials and economists on Dec. 29, 1931. The New York Times of Dec. 30, reported that: “Mr. Mallery asserted that no government had ever stopped a depression except by war, and while it was dangerous to try to halt a depression, it was also dangerous not to attempt to do so.” ‘The Whaley Eaton Service in a confidential letter sent out to its clients on Feb, 2, 1932, re- fers as follows to the use of this device by the Japanese imperialists in their present war on the Chinese masses: “It is an old device, in the face of such unsatisfactory domestic conditions, to divert the public attention to foreign fields, to give employment in the army to the idle, to depend on foreign exploitation to pay the cost and actually enrich the treasury.” This device is being resorted to not only by the Japanese imperialists but by the United States and other imperialist powers. Employment in the army! Sending the work- ers forth to slaughter to enrich the capitalists and their treasury, they are at present refused a single dollar for relief and unemployment insurance, This is how capitalism tries to solve unemployment. This is its way out of the crisis—at the expense of the lifeblood of the masses! ‘The capitalists are openly gloating over the slaughter of Chinese ‘kers by the Japanese. ‘They are openly gloat over the rapid develop- ment of the Japanese war moves against the Soviet Union. They are supporting those war moves. They are uniting, within their sharpen- ing antagonisms, for armed intervention against the Soviet Union, for the destruction of the vic- torious Five Year Plan, for the partition and looting of China. On Nov. 10, 1931, the N. ¥. Post gleefully declared: “Prosperity ....Stocks went up. So did bonds ‘at the mere rumor of war.” ‘The prostitute writers among the thtellectuals ‘are being mobilized to put across the vicious fusion that war means “prosperity” to the work- ing class, H. U. Mencken, writing in the Balti- more Sun of Feb, 8, 1932, undcr the caption “The Japanese Bugaboo,” declares: “As for me, 1 confe:s frankly thet it wou'd nol annoy me to hear that the Japanese Am- bassador had been given his passports. The | war would blow up the depression as nealy a6 @ Prohfbition agent explodes a still Every railroads would resume dividends. There would be good jobs at high wages for all the unemployed, and the busting of banks would cease. It would delight me, above all, to be- hold the pacifists, and especially the clergy among them, tearing up their pledges to object conscientiously, and howling for blood. I give public notice that, if war comes, I shall be a patriot myself, and that I shall do all my pro- fiteering at home, and try to make it pay. The last time I missed some good chances.” Mencken not only lies about war “blowing up the depression,” but cloaks his lies in the most brutal cynicism and disregard for the misery and bloodshed that imperialist war inflicts upon the masses, Workers! What are the facts? Will war mean “good jobs at high wages for all the un- employed”—twelve million workers? War pro- duction is already proceeding at a great rate. Passaic, N. J. is a veritable hot-bed of war production, The Botany Worsted Mills recent- ly completed a huge government order for army cloth. It was given another order at ence. And what did the Botany Mills do for its workers? It reduced their wages 30 per cent. War production “prosperity”! The Manhattan Raybeston Rubber Company, also in New Jersey, has just completed a gov- ernment order for 17,000 gas masks. And right away. it handed its workers a 20 per cent wage cut. More war production “prosperity”! ‘The Pickanniny Arsenal at Dover is working with fifty per cent more workers than during the World War. It is turning out huge quantities of 3-inch shells. A large shipment of these shells has been shipped already to the West Coas' for transhipment to the Far East. And, here again the wages of the workers have been re :ced, until now they get only an average of $4.50 a day. From all over the country, workers are send- ing in reports to the Daily Worker of the fran- tic production of war materials, And in each case, they report a cut in the wages of the workers, Wages in the war industry are being reduced to a minimum, because the capitalists are able to use the crisis in other branches of industry, and in agriculture, to bring pressure to bear on wages in the war industry. War means increased misery and starvation for the workers, By declaring the existence of “a state of emergency,” the bosses will proceed to usc every brutal method at their disposal to suppress the struggles of the hungry unem- Moyed workers, to beat down the revolutionary struggles ef the masses. Already, the bosses are pavirg the way for the coming war by an intensified attack on the Negro masses, on the unemployed fighting for relief and social in- surance, on the striking miners and other workers struggling against starvation wages. ‘The war is now being prepared at the expense of the hunger and misery among the toiling masses. Billions of dollars a re being poured into the war preparations while the bosses and their government deny relief to the destitute unemployed millions and their families and children. And for what, workers, will we be called upon to fight? YY For the protection of the $250,000,000 invest- ments of the Wall Street bandits in China! For the protection of the investments of the Stand- ard Oil Company and other American companies which are exploiting and oppressing the workers in this country, and shooting us down when we strike against starvation wages, against the wage slashing campaign in which they have been en- gaged for the past year or more, with the open co-operation of the A. F. of L, leaders and the “socialists.” Workers! Do not permit the bosses and their “socialist” and A. F. of L. lackeys to lead you into a world slaughter as they did in the last ‘Worl War! Do not be deceived by the vicious illusions they are attempting to inject into your minds that war means “prosperity.” Do not be deceived by the fake pacifist, gestures of the “socialists” ! plois of the imperialists! Defend your class brothers in China! Defend the Soviet Union, the fatherland of the proletariat! Build a uni- Join and Vight vigorously against the war | Imperialist ‘Humanitarianism’ After making a shambles of Ghapei, the thickly populated working class district of Shanghai, for fourteen days of continuous slaughter, in which unknown thousands of workers and their wives and babes were killed, the Japanese stopped fir- ing long enough to allow the removal of about. 3,000 who miraculously had escaped being killed, and thé American capitalist press calls this— “the most notable humanitarian act of the con- flict.” +) et oe Professor Christ When a bourgeois tries to get “justice” out of bourgeois society, he—being a devotee of “rug- ged individualism,” usually tries it all by hime self and with a gun. Even when his name ts Christ. ‘Thus the Hearst press tells us of an incident in Los Angeles, where Anton Christ, “once a Wealthy professor of mathematics” shot himself after vainly trying to get even with capitalism. It appears that Christ was not such a lowly person as his name might imply. He had had, So ‘tis said,"$200,000 in a Florida bank. But those “red rumors” knocked over the bank in 1930 and the bankers having gotten away with the $200,000 gave Christ the horse laugh. Christ, it.appears, was the “author of more than 100 books,” and being a mathematics pro- fessor, couldn’t forget the figures of that $200,000. Having gone with his wife and his memory to Los ‘Angeles, Christ had only two bits left the other day, wnen he thought up a way to get even. So he goes out gunning for a real estate man, nabs him, rigs up some kind of a dynamite jig- ger in the real estate man’s pocket, fixed to explode if Christ pulled a wire, and marches Mr. Real Estate man down to his bank, with the order to write out a check for whatever he can draw, However, a bahk guard notice Christ carried a gun, and interferes with the show, so Christ buinps ‘himself off, The moral of this is that workers should not follow Christ example. Plenty of workers have lost their savings in busted banks. But workers, don’t go around with a gun trying to get it back by the stick up method. They organize for mass struggle. Firstly, they get more that way, if anything can be gotten. Further, they learn that by mass struggle they can do away with capitalism, the of all robbery. Only such a stupid bourgeois as Christ uses individual violence. Christ is no example for a worker to follow. . Capitalism imperialism is lots more efficient than the ancient kind. The Romans had to corner Christ and then crucify him. American capitalist imperialism has it fixed so that Christ has to crucify himself. * ai Sit Tight! i Lenin, in refuting the “leftist” nonesense that. a declaration of war by a capitalist government can be “answered by a gencral strike,” points out that, at the moment of declaration’of war, the capitalist government has used every possible device to raise patriotic fever to its highest point. The Shanghai situation is loaded with dynam- ite, and the current capitalist. propaganda is obviously aimed at preparing the American mas- ses for war, by bringing up the “possibility” of war, until a great majority regard it as “inevit- able” and froin this go on to accepting it in reality when some special thing is pulled off to provoke a patriotic outburst on the part of the professional patriots. Jingo propaganda of the Hearst press is posi- tively nauseating, but it also has a certain inter- est We refer to Floyd Gibbons’ side-show way of handling the war situation in Shanghai, the situation which means not only. the tragedy of death to countless thousands of Chinese workers, but also the imperialist dismemberment of China and war on Soviet China and the Soviet Union. On Feb. 16, Gibbons gives us a “yarn of the danger to U. S. war vessels in Shanghai har- bor, through picturing what would happen if an explosive mine should blow up one of America’s warships there. And he mentions this because, says he, Chinese wants American to get into the war on its side, and Japan wants America in also, only on Japan's side. Of course, according to this jingo writer, American imperialism wants to stay out of it and is only an innocent by stander, But Gibbons goes on and, tells how such ® thing as a blown up ship of the U. S. Navy once before “forced” Ameria into a war, the Span- ish-American War. He refers to the explosion on the battleship Maine in Havana harbor, Feb. 15, ‘1898, when 268 men of the Maine's crew were killed. But Gibbons does not tell all the truth about that explosion, which was the excuse usetl by American impcrialism to declare war on Spain and grab the control of the whole Caribbean sea, including Cuba, Haiti, Porto Rico, and to take away the Philippine Islands from Spain, in what might be called the maiden effort of Yankee imperialism for world expansion. Gibbons “forgets” to add that the higher offi- cers of the Maine were conveniently “absent on shore” when the explosion took place! Nor that the ship's armor-plates were blown OUTWARD and not inward, which proves that the explosion was from the inside of the ship and not from the floating mine outside! Nor does Gibbons say that it was and it is the opinion of anyone who knew the circumstances then, that the U. S. im- perialists themselves had the Maine blown up in order to afford an excuse for war with Spain and the selzure of Spain’s colonies! : It is time that this provocation was again brought to light, as at any moment some such ” crime may be pulled off again, to give Amer- ican imperialism an excuse for headlong entry into the war in China. Again the capitalists press would whip up a spasm of war sentiment amone the wealthy, and again American workers and small farmers would be launched into what would be inevitably a new and more bloody world war than the last. So we say, sit tight and expect such an event whenever Wall Street thinks the time is opport- une. But, don’t sit so tight that you do nothing ebout it. No! A fierce protest of the American working class CAN stay the hands of the erls ne “pkers! Form Anti-War Committees in your shop and factories! Demand hands off revolutionary China and the Soviet Union! De- mand all war funds go to feed the unemployed! Act, and act at once! The masses ean defeat the war makers! .