The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 18, 1932, Page 7

DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, MONDAY, APRIL 18, 1932 Greatest Unemployment —Least Relief T= first to be f to be hired, is the bitter ery of | tens of thousands of hungry,*penni- | less. Negro workers today. Always segregation, abuse, lynch terror, merciless working hours—and now, for more Negro workers than at any time before, stark starvation. | Seven times as many unemployed | in proportion to their numbers as! relief A very conservative estimate for New York gives 50,000 unemployed Negro workers. There are 20,000 workers, in Memphis, Tenn. unemployed 7 | quarters of them are Negroes. Examples could be endlessly. Even according multiplied to the Europe’s Workers Protest Scottsboro Verdict A Scottsboro demonstration in e aroused over the Scotisboro frame- in the ranks of the white workers~— this is the lot of Negro wage earn- ers in 1932. In the large cities, the rate of Negro unemployment is admitted even by the city authorities to be twice, three times, and four or more times as high as the rate of white unemployment. Here are some dry figures. behind which is revealed a great depth of misery: Louisville, Ky., has a population of which only 15 per cent are Ne- groes. Yet of the total number of unemployed here, 50 per cent are colored. In the steel and metal center of Youngstown, O., Negroes form two- thirds of all the unemployed. Fifty thousand Negro workers walk the streets of Philadelphia, jobless. Although they form only 11 per cent of Philadelphia’s popu- lation, they are 45 per cent of those Herbert Newton, class leader, bosses are trying to send to the electric chair, Negro working whom the Georgia WORKERS! Berlin, The workers of Europe are up. conservative figures of the Urban League, based principally upon the statistics of “relief” bureaus which are anxious to understate the num- ber of unemployed, the percentage of Negro unemployed in proportion to their numbers, is given as four to six times that of whites, In trying to obtain a share of the meager relief doled out by the. city governments to the starving unem- ployed, Negro workers are subject, here as everywhere, to a vicious sys- tem of discrimination. In practically every city, by open means or more subtle ones, the Ne- gro workers applying to the relief stations are Jim Crowed. The Southern cities, of course, Jim Crow openly—and not a few of the Northern ones, Other cities, like New York, adopt more round-about methods to obtain the same ends. In~many cities, Negro workers were simply not notified of the dates of registration for relief jobs. A definite limit is often put on the total amount of relief the Negro comnfunity as a whole may receive. In New Orleans, the relief com- mittee has stipulated that Negroes may get only one-third of the total relief given, although a great many more Negroes than whites in that city have found it necessary to ap- ply for aid. é Jacksonville, Fla., has made it a rule that the poverty-stricken Ne- gro community must itself raise half of the funds it is to receive for “relief,” It is not uncommon, especially in the South, for Negro workers to be brazenly told that they can have only a certain per cent of the relief given to white workers. Unemploy- ed whites in Tampa, Fla., get $1.50 @ day; unemployed Negroes, only $1.25. In the past, certain jobs have been recognized as traditionally “work for Negroes.” These were, of course, Three } j } | | j | ired and the last ; who have been forced to apply for| the worst jobs, carrying with them | | the most able longest ho’ east pay. Negro workers were used on other disagre the 1 work, the | jobs, it was usually the aim of the | boss to cut the wages of the white workers. Today, the white workers are be- ing used by the bosses, in: many instances to lower still further the conditions of the Negroes and the workers in general. Many white workers have replaced Negroes as janitors, bootblacks, etc., at even lower wages than the badly paid Negroes had received. In Atlanta, Ga., 150 Negro bellboys were re- cently replaced by whites. Examples | could be multiplied endlessly, And Negro workers, finding them- Selves out of their old jobs, have in many cases been forced by star- vation to take them back, from white workers, at still lower wages. Thus is formed a vicious circle of discrimination, race division, and wage-cutting. There is usually no provision made by cities for the transient Negro worker or Negro family, other than to jail them or run them out of town, ren, O., and New Haven, Conn., have attempted to begin the sys- tematic deportation to the Southern plantations of Negro workers and families who apply for relief. In its desperate effort to turn the rising fury of the workers against their unemployment and starvation away from the path of solidarity and organization, and into channels helpful to the ruling class, the em- ployers have attempted to turn the anger of the white workers away from, themselves. and direct it against the Negroes. In a number of instances this vicious policy has been temporarily successful. Five Negro firemen of the Illinois Cen- tral Railroad have been murdered in ‘cold blood within the past few weeks. Others have been wounded, still others flogged. These events took place at Vicksburg, Miss. Lowering of wages to the point of starvation, and forced labor, are still other factors in the present drive of the employers against the standards of the employed and un- employed, Negro and white. The Negroes, of course, suffer worst, One Negro worker in .New York City, who continued to hold his job, had his wages reduced over a period of three months, from $28 a week to $6. City employment bureaus and odd job bureaus functon as wage-cutting agencies, forcing the workers to take jobs at any wages or else for- feit all claims to relief. In Rich- mond, Va. employers are offering | | Where | Certain cities, such as War- | New York City. through the city bureaus, $3 a week, or six cents an hour, for jobs that | used to pay $12 a week. The May- | or’s Unemployment Committee of Houston, Texas, announced that “all Negroes who refuse to work in the cotton patch this summer, when workers who migrate in search of } jobs is the specter of the chain gang the electric chair and the hang- man’s noose. “Vagrancy”—today the condition of all workers who wan- der in search of jobs—means the | jailhouse in most gang in the South. The nine Scottsboro boys, were framed up on false charges of raping two white prostitutes, seven of whom of death, and whose case is awakening who are under sentence were jobless workers looking work, ; j for | ecient Of ae nets | Every court in the United States, from the lowest to the highest, is part and parcel of the bosses’ lynch-law system. Only mass pressure, striking fear into the hearts of the work is offered, will not be entitled | |} to any aid this winter.” 1} Continually threatening the Negro | ; the toiling masses all over th®worid | } Page Three Free the Scottsboro Boys! One of the thousands of demonstrations of Negre and white workers against the Scottshbore lynch verdict, cities, the chain | ¢ : The little shack Eugene Williams’ family lives in, Conditions were so | bad that the 14-year-old boy was forced to leave home to hunt work to help his starving family. He was picked up and framed by the Alabama, bosses the very next day “Poverty Midst Riches—Why’— a pamphlet issued by the Nationat Unemployment Councils, will con- lynchers, can free the Scotis-| boro boys! mens terantniinnaseiionee | is struggle. THEY SHALL NOT DIE! vince any worker that his path Five cent pampbliet. ABOVE: The nine Negro boys whose arrest and sentence in Scottsboro, Ala., has been the signal for mass demonstrations of workers in every corner of the earth. RIGHT INSET: Geo. W. Chamlee of Chattano oga, attorney of the I. L. D., for the Seottsboro boys. CENTER: the main street of Scottsboro, a town of 2000, on the day of the trial, INSET LEFT: Mrs. Ada Wright, mother ‘SMASH JI M-CR —e of Roy and Andy, and her daughters, PRACTICES! -