The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 11, 1932, Page 4

al : & Fediished by tee Compoedetty Sebitehtng CR, See, det 23th bt. A SHORT SUMMARY OF THE RECRUITING New York City. N. Y. Party Recruiting Drive January 11 - March 18, 1932 DRIVE UP TO FEBRUARY 20th DISTRICTS Pittsburgh Minneapolis Distriet . 400 120 Minneapolis .... Kansas WHICH FULFILLED THEIR QUOTAS: Chicago Denver Number | Reernited | Distriet Quota | Dakotas Pen) {Connecticut . nus... 210 JN. Carolina ..... 100 Birmingham .. Montana ..cee DONVer iejreeceves 115 Total cwaedaicseaie T1G0 Number Recruited 26 114 194 55 86 12 The Districts, which carried through their quotas have increased their quotas 40 per cent Chicago ...... Pittsburgh ...cccccwes coms es @ueacty, et bo Dest Telepkoze Atqonquiz {1956 Cable “DATWORK” Adéress end mail all checks to the Dally Werker, 5 Bast 18th Street, New York, N. Minneapolis 2.2.2.0... Denver increased the quota from 115 Districts below the Dakotas Connecticut 50 per cent mark: Present Previews Quota Quota Recruited ae cae ebwamns LOOU 1000 1191 900 600 633 600 400 392 to 200, and recruited so far—143. California 5 ia ga <i Ee £8 22 98 of Boston 62. B WW N. Dakota 5 New York 216 109 186 180 Seattle 19 S18 :. 18-18 Phila 147 107 55 58 California 45 6 2 13 24 Buffalo 38 17 «14 | Connecticut 23 & R 7 5 Pittsburgh 214 Sie 18 N. Carolina Cleveland 37 B36 ° 14. me | Birmingham (Detroit 84 47 7 28 | Montana Chicago 197 39 Denver 35 <2t- 8 4 2 ¢Minneap. 90 5 66 56 ae, Se a) See aE eects Roa 4 |rotal «1247652. 644. 425 198 ii ti eer nee j ea z ef H sft 323 ads pie .3% i3i Ese E rhe 322 225 BES 2B S S27 zd BEG ZES Boston 5 2 9 5,000 N. Dakota 2 ' New York 15 14 101 24,000 | Seattle 3 i 3 Philadelphia 8 2 10 300 | California Bo at 7G: A800 Buffalo 5 a 40 4,000 | Connecticut 5 ! 5 2,000 Pittsburgh 15 9 48 18,000 |N. Carolina 2 i 700 Cleveland 6 2.11 . 21,700 | Birmingham Detroit 6 2 17 12000 Montana 10 9 45 18,000 | Denver a ohn 12000 5 2S. S0 2000 sect* gaat Nein Ase Si Oe alotal 100 55 S21 145,400 Districts which are about to fulfill the Shop Nuclei Quota: © - New York Minneapolis Pittsburgh Denver Chicago Districts below the 50 per cent mark Boston -Detrott. Philadelphia Seattle Buffalo California Cleveland Connecticut, Becruited by | Becrutied by District O14 Shop Nur District O14 Shop Nur, Boston 5 Kansas Not reported New York Not reported H N. Dakota Not reported Philadelp! 68 Seattle Not reported Buffalo 6 California § Not reported Pittsburgh BO Connecticut Not reported Cleveland 16 N. Carolina Not reported 20 Birmingham Not reported 5 Montana Not reported 19 Denver 18 | Total 137 4 The weakest District in thé Recruiting Drive is CONNECTICUT eee Teac taay composi il be published soon. 4 = STATEME NT OF ion of the new members will be published in a the status of the Revolutionary competition between the competing Dis few ORG. DEPARTMENT, C. C. DISTRICT 9 ON THE PARTY RECRUITING DRIVE TO ALL. PARTY MEMBERS OF DISTRICT 9: } upon all sections, units and Party members to ‘The Recruiting Drive is more than half over; three more weeks to go. Party in District 9 has forged ahead and ‘uited 392 members on our quota of four hundred (400) But numbers are not the most important in this drive. Our main task is to root the Party ip the mines and factories. The District, Buro finds that in these fields lie our greatest short- comings. While we have already filled the total number of new members, we have built only thres mine and shop units out of our quota of 7; recrutted only 41 miners out of our quota of 100 and only 10 railroad workers. ‘This is a reflection of lack of activity large shops and mines, lack of activity in build ing the revolutionary unions, in lack of concen tration by the nuclei on specific factories as- signed. These shortcomings, while serious under afl conditions, become. criminal at this time when imperialist war on the Soviet Union Is so close at hand, The District Buro ,therefore, calls in fhe increase all efforts in the next coming three | weeks of the recruiting drive on the following lines 1. Accept the challenge of the Chicago Dis- and increase our previous quota by 50 per ‘Two hundred more members by March 18. Four more mine and shop nuclei. Sixty more miners by March 18—fulfill our quote of 100. 4 More railroad, peckingkouss and employed workers from the large factories. 5. Bring op the dues peyments to the actual membership in every anit and in the district as a whole. 6 The units must discuss shop and trade union work, not generally, but in relation to yor | Specifically assigned tasks. Only by increasing our shop activity and re- cruiting from the mines and large factories can Wwe make our recruiting drive a success. DPbtrict Bare, Communist Party, District 9. Masnbattez and Bronx, New York City. SOBECRIFTION RATBR Nene The Kentucky Mass Agitation Necessary It is, of course, impossible to politicalize and raise the level of the strike without a continual barrage of agitational material, placing the posi- tion of the Union on every issue squarely before the strikers, answering in bold and sharp manner every attack, every slander circulated by our enemies. ‘This is particularly necessary in the present athuation, working as we are with workers who have not seén before our revolutiohary unions and our Party in action, and whose only knowl- edge of their programs and tactics are gained from the lying columns of the capitalist press. Our enemies have been quick to seize on this ahd leaflet after leaflet of the crudest most stupid Hes have been issued by local buginess men’s associations, American Legion posts, the UMWA, preachers’ associations of various deno- minations, as well as by the coal operators di- rectly. This agitation of our enemies has had a cer- tain effect—precisely because we failed to answer it.The amount of agitational material issued in the strike area has been entirely too small. Our reaction to these attacks has come entirely too late. It is necessary, in the future, that every attack, no matter what its source, be made + only for a defen aggresive counter attack on our Recent developments make clear that more and more these attacks will come from the UMWA Nor will they be restricted to agitational attacks alone. The recent announcement of the UMWA that it is raising an “organizational” fund of $50,000 to invade the Kéntucky strike field in- dicates that the coa! operators have decided to use this strikebreaking instrument much more than hithertofore. We e been somewhat slow in reacting to this situation. This must be cor- rected at once and agitational and organizational measures taken to smash any attempts of the UMWA to secure a foothold in the strike area Building the Party As for bringing forward the independent role of the Party and building the Party in the course of the struggle, it would seem that we have fallen heir to, rather than corrected, the mis- takes of the Pittsburgh strike. Despite the sup- posed “preparations” for the strike, there was not a single Party unit in the state of Kentucky when the strike was called January 1 to the best.of my knowledge there are today, 6 weeks later, only three functioning Party units in the strike area. There are no functioning Party fractions in the leading strike committees. ‘The sum tote! of Party building in the strike are two units in the Tennesee strike area, a couple more in Kentucky and a nebulous group of per- haps 60 leading strikers who have been directly approached by the Party and signified their willingness to join, but have notsyet been or- ganized into Party units. Our primary mistake here was the failure to bring forward the independent political and or- tole of the Party from the begin T ¢ had been on for almost a solid month before the Party issued its first statement to the strikers in leaflet form. There was also concealed resistance by some comrades to bringing the Party forard at the meetings of the Central Strike Committee and at strikers There has been practically no distribution or Sale of popularly written Party pamphlets in the strike area. While, as stated above, we have largely neglected answering the attacks of our enemies on the union and the strike, we have failed even more completely to answer the even more vicious attacks on the Party, Yes, the Party has been brought forward in the strike, but it has been brought forward not by us but by their enemies. One of the greatest weapons in the hands of the coal operators hes been the misrepresenta- tion of our Party’s position on the Negro ques- tion, on religion, and on the question of “over- throw of the government.” ‘This then is perhaps our most urgent task to flood the fields with a barr: of Communirt agitation, to ccnsolidate the exteting Party units and to build new ones with all ro; szecd We must set ourselves the goal of not less than 150 functioning Party members in the sirike area in ome month's time. The units must be or- ganiged as mine nuclei and not as territorial nucl with the pious idea of later reorganizing Kentucky i" Strike—Our Mistakes and Their Correction them into mine units. ‘They must begin to lead @ political life of their own immediately on formation. They must bring the Party before the masses on a local scale as their leader in the struggle on every front. The face of the Party must be seen in the strike, and at the same time its hand must be felt in the stiffening and tightening up of the entire apparatus through the proper functioning of Party fractions in leading committees. The basic importance of immediately intensifying our work along these lines can not be overestimated. Organizational Weakness As has been said, many of our difficulties may be traced to & basic shortcoming of the strike— our extreme organizational weaknéss, and the weakness of our leading forces in the strike area itself. In my opinion altogether too few forces have been sent in from the centre. Whether this be true or not the fact remains that we eyidently must solve this problem without further help from the center. ‘This means primarily the speedy training of the best of our local comrades, even though this interferes somewhat with their activity. his is the only guarantee we can have for a speedy development of forces capable of handling the present situation. Tf the strike apparatus is weak it may be said that the union apparatus in the Kentucky field is non-existant. The District Board of the union | met Feb. 8th, for the first time since the incep~ | tion of the strike. We do not have to this day a full and complete registration of al! local unions together with their officers, to say nothing of a registration of the membership. Existing local unions function poorly or not at all. There is no systematic day to day recruitment of new members for the union. Build the Union in the Mines Now that there has developed a considerable, although slow, drift back to work, a very real danger arises that our union may become isolated from the men in the mines, and that we shall become a union of blacklisted and unemployed miners. The task of building and consolidating the locals and of rooting them in the mines is therefore of the utmost importance today. We have recently taken steps to secure a complete registration in all locals. We have started this week the issuance of a weekly org letter to all locals. The District Board has selected acting section organizers of the union (distinct from the section strike organizers) whose task it will be to insure the proper functioning of the locals in each section ‘To sum up, the present struggle ig by no means over. It is necessary now to bring sharply home to every comrade our weaknesses-and our past mistakes in order that they may be cor- rected here and now and not reserved solely for discussion at the next Plenum of the Central Committee. New Tortures for the Workers Intlation, Taxes, “Anti-Hoarding” By HARRY GANNES. PART OF As we already pointed out, the Federal Re- serve System, which acts as the government agent for the issuance of paper money, had al- ready issued over a billion in new paper money to meet the demands of hoarding and the credit- tary crisis. The withdrawal of gold by France and other countries made it difficult to continue issuing more money, without endangering the value of the entire currency. Commercial paper was being restricted. The Federal Reserve Act requires that the paper money issued haye a backing of 60 per cent in commercial paper and 40 per cent in gold. With the drop in the amount of commercia! paper, more gold was needed to back up the issuance of the new money, until the gold coverage reached about 68 per cent. But meanwhile, in reality, the Mederal Reserve banks were buying hundreds of millions in govern- ment bonds, which they were actually using as a basis for the issuance of paper money. ‘This is | contrary to the provisions of the Federal Reserve Act. The main provision of the Glass-Steagall Bill legalizes this process and permits the issuance of more paper money, with government bonds as backing (with the prospect of a new flood of these bonds coming to make up the budgetary deficit. Though technically the 40 per cent gold backing is maintained, in practice this process amounts to a real drop in the gold backing of the paper money, actually dropping its value and leading to inflation. Financial World Conflict ‘The results which the Hoover government pre- dicts for the Glass-Steagal Bill is that it will “ease” the financial strain, by lessening the amount of gold needed for the issuance of new money, and permit the transference of this re- leased gold (around $700,000,000) into a free gold reserve fund to take care of the demand for withdrawals by other capitalist nations, partic- ularly France which has heavy gold holdings in the United States. This is preparation for the struggle for world financial supremacy, While the Glass-Steagall Bill received the sup-~ port of the leading bankers, there are a group of capitalist financiers who feel very nervous about thé whole process, those particularly back- ing the New York Rvening Post, Benjamin Baker, editor of the “Annalist” and the Financial and Commercial Checnicle, The Commercial and Financ’al Chron in an editorial on Feb, 20 tointed cut some of the real factors in the bill @uite contrary to the usual lying state- meri bf Hoover and the popular capitalist press.) @xin poihts of their editorial follows: PM of the changes made ts that United States obligations are made part security for Federal Reserve note issues. These note issees require a gold backing of 40 per cent, and the amendments make no change in that respect, but the other 60 per cent may under the change now made consist of United States Government obligations .where, before, only commercial paper could be so used . . . During the war the utmost care was taken not to endow any of the different Liberty Loan issues with the circulation privileges. Now they stand forth forth full-fledged as collateral for note issues . Mr. Steagall entirely overlooks the fact that in its original form the Reserve Act not only made commercial paper the sole collateral behind the Reserve note, but required full 100 per cent of such collateral The 40 per cent gold reserve was in addition. The 40 per cent gold was meant as a further margin of safety. . “The truth is the Federal Reserve banks have been adding enormously to their holdings of United States Government obligations during the last two years and are now carrying close to $750,000,000 of them, the exact total of the present week being $741,342,000. At the same time they have put inte circulation 1 1-4 bil- Hon dollars more of Federal Reserve notes during hte‘ last 12 months, the total of these Reserve notes in actual circulation being re~ ported at $2,656,941,000 Feb. 17, as compared with only $1,449,756,000 on Feb. 18 last year. ‘The volume of Reserve notes having been so greatly expanded they have now reached the limit, or virtually the Umit, and, accordingly, find themselves under the necessity of having the Hmit extended.” Drastic War Time Step: ‘Thus, quite in line with Hoover's declaration that this is a national defense move of the cap- italists, the Federal Reserve banks take a step far more drastic than any taken during the last world war. Furthermore, as the above points out, 1% billion in new money has already been issued with the “iliegal” government bonds as a basis and. the Glass-Steagall bill merely makes this process “legal,” stimulating the increased issuance/of more of this inflated money. Besides, the Glass-Steagall bill provides a fur- ther measure of inflation by permitting actually bankrupt banks to continue to pay out paper money without any backing. ‘The process by which this is done 4s rescribed by Dr. Edward S. Mead, professor of finance of the Wharton School, as follows: “A group of five or more member (Federal Reserve) banks, joining together for pur~ pose, may apply to the Federal Reserve Bank of thetr district Yor loans from the Federal spat aot ee eel pes stan ~ mail everywhere: One year, $6; six months, $8; two months, $1; excepting Boroushs Foreige: ene year, $8; siz months, $4.50. By JORGE Bright Lights of Law’n Order “After a talk with President Hoover,” says the United Press dispatch from Washington, dated March 2, “Frank J. Loesch of Chicago, who was a member of the (Hoover appointed) Wickersham crime commission, proposed the formation of a nationwide secret organization of private citizens to combat kidnaping rings.” The dispatch goes on to say that Loesch wes asked if this secret band of “private citizens” would turn over kidnapers to the legal euth= orities, his reply being: “Well, I don’t want te \dvocate lynching (!!), but I imagine thet there would be very little work for the police if they caught 2 kidnaper.” } So “after 2 talk with President Hoover «! | guy who “doesn’t want to advocate lynching | advocates it! i Of coutse it is quite 2 different matter whim workers are kidnaped in Kentucky and Tenesses! In such cases, not only are the workers sup- posed to turn over the kidnapers to the local authorities, that is to say to the capitalist auth- orities who are bosom pals of the kidnapers if, not actually the same persons, but the legal authorities are supposed to pooh-pooh the charges, let the kidnapers got scot free and indict the workers who are kidnaped for “criminal syn- dicalism.” Somebody’s Lying! Patriot's hearts were all aflutter on Washing- ton’s Birthday, and not the least of these were Senator Hale of Maine, chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee, and Reed of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Military Affairs Committes. Both these gents seconded the whole chorus of U, 8S. generals, tired and retired, who hrve bee® howling about the Pacific Coast being “defense- Jess” and the whole nation “in danger” for lack of guns, ships, planes, etc. Well, we happened to be reading the Osaka (Japan) “Mainichi”. of Feb. 2, in which Lieut. General Shinji Hata, of the Japanese Army complains that Japan is also “defenseless” and “in danger.” Just hear what he says: “Japan possesses about 600 military planes, the United States has 1,660. Japan’ possesses 40 anti-aircraft guns; the United States 309 as well as 4,813 anti-aircraft machine guns: Japan owns about 40 tanks; the United States about 1,000 tanks and 34 armored cars. A single glance reveals that Japan is shockingly behind the powers in medern armament. Is it not time that Japan awoke to the dire need of up-to-date weapons? True, the cost is tre- mendous, but the nation must bear the bur- den, in view of the pressing need.” Now, workers, one of these two gangs are lying—and in fact we think both of them are lying. Anyhow, you can see that what is told us by the generals is a lot of hokum. Isn't % Funny? The Japanese anthassador to the organized state of China says that China is “not an organized state and should not be treated as one.” Ps cits Maybe, It’s the Heat \ railway workers who work on the raflroad in The U. S. government has cut the wages of its the Panama Canal Zone, although a dispatch from there says that no “official decision” to that effect was sent from Washington. But what puzzles us is the action of theses Panama rail workers in “requesting the Railway Brotherhoods in the United States to protest the reduction.” These “brotherhoods” crooked of+ ficials just got through helping the companies put over a wage cut here, and while they might “protest,” they'll do it with an accompanying note saying “Pay no attention to us.” As we say we don’t see why the Panama workers are so foolish. Maybe it’s the heat! serve Bank, secured by municipal bonds, rafl- toad bonds, real estate mortgages or any other collateral which may be approved by five mem~ bers of the Federal Reserve Board (all of which are more or less worthless and less); and se- cured also by the joint liability of the members of the group. ... “After these loans are made (on the frozen securities) the borrowing banks have a credit with the Federal Reserve Bank for the amount of the loan. They can now turn this credit into Federal Reserve notes, to be used to strengthen their cash position... .” In short, they pool their securities which ars the cause of their bankruptcy and the Federal Reserve Bank issues new paper money on the basis of this security which is handed out to the workers and petty-bourgeoisie as new “money.” “Like A Rolling Snowball.” So far as government bonds are concerned, another bourgeois economist, Lewis Haney, direc- tor of the New York University Bureau of Busi- ness Research, pointed out the vicious circle of this inflation policy. He said: “The government, trades its bonds for bank notes and bank notes are issued on government bonds, without any relation to business activity or requirements” “Once started, it becomes cumulative, Uke a rolling snowball. Two immediate effects are the recall of gold by foreign countries and gold hoarding in this country. Both are already in evidence. ‘ As the crisis deepens and the budget deficit grows greater, more bonds are issued, and then more money on the bonds; more banks near bankruptcy and put in demands for loans an their “frozen” assets, and still more money is issued. In this manner the process of inflation grows from a slow pace to a trot, then to a fast race. One effect already evident is that hoard- ing, which formerly was in the form of hoard- ing of bank notes (paper money), !s now becom= ing the hoarding of gold. So far as the workers are concerned the te- sults to their standard of living from this pro cess will be drastic. Wage-cuts continue. Now with the drop in the value of money, with 2 flood of inflated money, prices will rise. Along with the general drive to lower the standard of living of the American workers, the inflationary Movement will be used as 2 powerful lever still eee a « mf 2