The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 26, 1932, Page 4

= DAILY WonkiiR, NUW YORK, FRIDAY, AUGUST 26, 1932 ¥ 'Contrel Published by the Comprodaily Publishing Co., Inc., daily excxept Sunda: Lath St., New York City, N. ¥. Telephone ALgonquin 4-7956. Address and mail checks to the Daily Worker, 50 E. 13th St, SUBSCRIPTION RATES: : Ome year, $6; six months, $3; two months, 81; excepting Foreign: one year, $8; By mail everywhe Borough of Manhattan and Bronx, New York City six_months, $4.50. Towards Labor Day HE American Federation of Labor bureaucrats are now busily engaged preparing their program for Labor Day. They are sending out invi- tations to big and small capitalists, Democrats, Republican and Socialist politicians to appear on the programs in the various cities at picnics and meetings Labor Day is a legal holiday. This is the day especially set aside by the bosses and their governmer and public officials to appear side by side with the high-salaried officers of the A. F. of L. and Railroad Brotherhoods and sing the praises to the capitalist system. They praise the class collaboration policy of the American Federation of Labor; they call upon the workers to carry out the policy of “reward your friends and punish your enemies” in the elections, for employer: This day was consciously set aside by the master class in order to divert the workers of this country from celebrating May Day, which is the day of the international working class, a day born in the militant struggles of the workers of the United States for the eight-hour day. In recent years the A. F. of L. misleaders have not had an easy job praising the capiatlist system, which is starving fifteen millions of un- employed and their families, which is placing the majorty of those still employed on a part time basis, and which is reducing the employed workers to the starvation level. It is not a simple matter to convince workers who are hungry that they ought to be thankful to the bosses and their government. The A. F. of L. has for that reason more and more adapted itself to the erisis. Not, of course, by fighting for the interests of the workers. This is not the task of the A. F. of L. officials. Their job is to make the fleecing of the workers by the master class more refined and more successful. They have therefore resorted to all sorts of lies and demagogic utterances. At the same time they have driven hundreds of thousands of the unemployed from the unions. They have continued their old policy of setting worker against worker in a new form. They are not only, as in the past, dividing the skilled and the unskilled, but are now especially trying to keep the employed and unemployed divided. As part of this attack they are especially singling out the Negro and the foreign- born workers. This year the A. F. of L, bureaucrcats will be especially deceitful because of the deepening of the crisis now ering it# fourth year. They will'do this all the more because of the gr ing and widespread radical- ization of the masses. This year the A. F. of L. leaders will come on the one hand with lyiag propaganda borrowed from Hoover and Roosevelt as to the improve- mient of the economic situation (which we expo: in a number of | editorials), only they will bring forward more subtle demagogy and more refined and experienced demagogues. They will put forward as speakers not those who openly break the strikes, but men of the Muste type who break strikes with seemingly tadical proposals. The politicians they will bring forward will be those who are most experienc: king empty attacks against Wall Street sO-that they can best kers to vote for the two old parties, both Of which stand solidly / rogram. They will even give mi of a “bi efforts to keep the masses from organizing themselves to carry through a mass fight against their intolerable conditions, t be the task of all class-conscious workers, of all workers who ht against wage cuts, for jobless relief and unemployment t difficult for the A. F. of L. bureaucrats to put over their program at these Labor Day gatherings. The workers must turn these meetings into militant gatherings to take up the ways and means of uniting all the oppressed and distressed against the capitalist attacks, fora program of struggle for bread and against imperialist war. Instead of listening to the politicians of the capitalist parties, the workers must discuss the platform of the Communist Party, which alone stands for the immediate needs of the masses and at the same time organizes the masses in a fight against the whole capitalist system of exploitation, which has brought the workers to the present situation. Workers, take up these matters in your local unions. Convert Labor Day from a day of the bosses and bureaucrats into a day of struggle a@ainst the exploiters. Gaps Disclosed in Literature Front of New York District: Just an un- political im- e. Just co- decline in the 7 of A steady ature sales in Section New York district has been re- portance o | sheriffs, Buide, += seem ses rn ie |. ae m/e eo BURCK nett nly “ , . . The Hoover acceptance speech has already taken its place—among the outstanding papers of the Republic.” ~Secretary of War Hurley. Upheaval in Steel Kingdom By PAUL PETERS. (The writer of this article, au- thor of “Mr. God Is Not In”, “Wharf Nigger,” etc., was form- erly a steel worker in the Pitts- burgh area and has frequently written on the steel workers. Wm. Z. Foster, Communist candidate for President, will shortly tour the steel regions.) * 01» 'TRETCHING dotfn the Ohio River from Pittsburgh and up the Allegheny is the Kingdom of | the Steel Trust. Each city in this region, known as the “Black Val- ley” because of its filth, dust, smoke, cinders, and poison gases, is centered around an enormous steel mill with a high concrete wall like a fortress. Each of these cities—Aliquippa, Ambridge, Mc- Keesport,' Duquesne, Braddock, Homestead, dozens of others—is a little absolute monarchy with the Steel Trust as the government. Enforcing the despotic rule of the Steel Trust — the U. S. Steel Corporation and its subsidiaries, known as “independents” — is an army of state troopers under the “liberal” Governor Pinchot, an- other army of privately paid thugs, uniformed and armed by the trust; and a third army of lickspittle mayors, aldermen, and | Stirrings in Pensylvania “Black Valley”; Steel Workers, Foster and Ford and tobacco fields of Virginia and Tennessee. I remember one old blast furnace laborer I worked with in the Edgar Thompson mills in Braddock who did not know for weeks that there was a strike. The men were kept within the high guarded walls of the mill; were fed, clothed, and furnished with tobac- co; and paid wages which were low enough, but seemed fabulous to a Negro just escaped from the peonage of a Southern plantation. ONE-THIRD NEGRO WORKERS Later, these men were fired at random. When they began to learn more of the mills, to pay enormous rents in jim-crow shanty districts; began to be put on the worst jobs —all the hot jobs and the danger- ous gas jobs—then they began to realize what the policy of the Steel ‘Trust was. About one*third of the workers in the mills of the “Black Valley” are Negroes. In the com-, ing struggles of the steel workers, these men will stand shoulder to shoulder with their white fellow workers. small number of fairly well-paying jobs in the mills: rollers, trim- mers, first-helpers and melters, shoarers, and foremen. These were called “white-man’s jobs”. No Ne- gro on an open-hearth furnace could ever rise higher than second- helper at about $7 a day. But even in prosperous times a furnace which people of Slavish origin — rarely attained, a first-helper’s job. In general, they were classed with the Negro workers as “unfit for white-men’s jobs.” In this way, the Steel Trust divided and ruled. I remember one job I worked on as a laborer in the blast furnace section. We were relining the mammoth steel cylinder. Although the Steel Trust announces that its workers do only an eight hour shift, we worked for months, eleven hours one week by day, and the next week by night. On one side of the furnace was placed a crew of Irish bricklayers. On the other side a crew of Italians. By stir- ring up national antagonisms, the company kept these men working at break-neck pace. I left the mill’'a year after the ning to stir. Meetings are being held in the “forbidden” towns of McKeesport, Duquesne, and Home- stead, key fortresses of the Steel Trust Kingdom, hunger, unemploy- ment, the total collapse of capi- talism, whose sinews are built of steel, is driving the workers to- gether. Thousands of them are joining the Steel and Metal Work- ers Industrial Union — an astound- ing fact in a territory where to whisper a word about unionism was to endanger your job and your neck. Thousands more are in the Unemployed Councils, fighting for relief. And still more will vote the Communist ticket in the November election. They have not forgotten William Z. Foster, their leader in the 1919 struggle against the Steel Trust now their presidential candidate— the candidate of the Communist Party, And black and white alike will ste in the nomination of James W. Ford, Negro worker of Alabama, Communist vice-presidential can- didate, and in his early youth a steel worker in Alabama, the sym- bol of unity between workers of all races and all nations against the Steel Trust czars. terrorized, the workers are begine CAN YOU = HEAR THEIR (COURTESY OF INTERNATIONAL PAMPHLETS) By WHITTAKER CHAMBERS ‘That morning the Mexicans left Wardell. He heard them talking all night, Carrillo urging, his wife opposing, but at last her opposition growing fainter, perhaps tired out. In the morning they all came down into the lower room. The children stood in a ragged line, mute, and stared: The wife, look- ing much like the children, but with a twin in either arm, also stared. “Companero Ooardell,” said Car- rillo, “we are going away. You have no food for yourselves. The Toads opened last night. Companero Oardell, you are a good man. Your wife, she is a good woman. Your sons, they are good young men. If I go east or if I go west, if I go north or if I go south, I will always come back here. Sometimes I will come to take, sometimes to bring. But I will always remember that you saved our lives. I thank you my wife thanks you, and my chil- dren thank you. Goodbye, com- paneros.” His wife smiled and nodded, and they all went away, having some- how gotten their Ford to start. “So the Carrillos have left you?” said Davis. “I guess that Mex figured there was going to be shooting, and a fight’s a poor place for a greaser.” “Think so? I wouldn’t be too hopeful about the shooting, Mort, In the first place, what are we going to get by shooting—yet? In the second place, though that crowd learned some kind of a lesson when they took the milk from Purcell, they've had time to think it over. You'll see, those that come here today are a little scared of them- selves.” “You forget their kids are still crying.” THE MEETING Before noon the little house was so packed with men and women’s bodies, you couldn’t walk a foot- | The heat rose perceptibly and with the smell of cow and horse manure and humans. “We can’t talk in here,” Wardell called out. “Everybody outside!” “Line up those cars in a half | dozen rows,” he said, “and sit in them.” His own car was standing in front of the house. It was open and the top was down. iHs wife got in, and Davis. Wardell stood on the front seat and talked. I'm glad to see that there are so few of us here,” he said. “It means that only the most reliable and the most needy are here. It means we can move together easier, and have more confidences in each other. And we need that.” “I'm glad to see, too, that you women have brought your babies with you. It’s another sign that you're not afraid, and it means that we'll never lose sight of why we're going to Paris. “And we're going down to Paris. We're starving, and we're going to Paris to get food. I hear that the Red Cross is going to give it to us, Now I want to tell you how they’re going to give to us. “First of all, before they give us aything, we've got to prove that we're not ‘impostrs.’ That’s what they're calling some of us now. In other words, we've got to prove that we really are starving to death. Can you prove it” Growls- “Then, when we've proved that VOICES ? forced Purcell to give us milk. Those men learned something But you've got to be doubly careful today not to use your guns unless somebody starts shooting at you first. Ill tell you why. We're starving. But they don’t want to give us food. They give us food only to keep us quiet. You men with guns are the leaders in forcing them to give us food. Because they're afraid of guns. But they'll kill, you if some of you keep on fighting. They'll kill you, because you're outnumbered. And when you are dead, Purcell and the rest will be boss here, and your babies will be just as hungry, but there'll be nobody to get them food. The time is not quite ripe for shooting. Do you understand?” “Yes.” “We can threaten them today, we can force them, we may even have to shoot, but don’t fire a gun if you can help it. Not today! “Now, the cars with guns in the lead! Let’s go!” The grating of thirty gears, slip- ping from first to second, .to high. “ARE YOU REALLY HUNGRY?” “I don’t see how he can possibly claim to be starving,” visor: (The milk Frances did not buy!) “His baby died two days ago, and nobody knows where his wife is!” “Well, at least he can’t have any milk. That settles that r.ght off!” Frank Frances had not gone to the meeting. He was one of the first outside the relief store doors when they opened. For fifteen min-s utes he had been attempting to es- tablish his status as a starving man. Meanwhile the line grew be- hind him, at first grumbling, then © shouting, “Give him something!” “This is no way to begin!” The supervisor scanned their heads dis- approvingly. “Too many eye sock- ets!” he thought. He was unwilling to cede ground at once, and would not give Lily Purcell the order, “Let him have some bread.” Suddenly there was a shout from the edge of the crowd. “They’re coming! They're coming!” From the west the line of thirty cars swept into the town, two abreast. They stopped in the middle of the street. The men,and women got out, the men with their guns, -the women with their babies. The crowd opened for thirteen men with guns. “Now we'll get some food!” Wardell and Davis stopped where Frances stood suspended in an act of appeal. Lily Purcell and her su- pervisor stared. Shays, Doscher, Drdla, staring back over the ends of their guns, which they rested on the floor. Mrs. Wiggens with a baby in her arms had pressed to the front. Re ay Me “Yes, what are you going to give us?” asked Mrs. Wiggens. “What are you going to give us?” said Davis. “I don’t know that we’re going to give you anything. At least until you put those guns down,” he said, tonguing his lins that were like earthworms that have been out too Jong in the rain. “Give that man some bread,” said Wardell. “I don’t think he deserves any. And I’m not taking orders here, I’m giving them!” | police, all bought and paid for by ‘ is gistered in the last two and a operation -Prop, just | Police, e ro |" ‘Stestifying ‘before the U.S 2 ne Are 5. : “ Exot Speech we're starving, I want to tell you Several men laughed. half months. This decline is no cooperation of the Section com- | Pian li fas Qe a vaske | ate, Elbert Gary, slippriest of eS irae BO aN 2A iat what they'll give us. ‘ “And you, Lily, give Mrs. Wiggens spécific causes, which can be re of ghtment in the | MF” soover’s cabinet buddics, for- | “Steel workers’ wages: Rollers, $32 | great bulk of mill workers receivea || L CRNA. Farmers SCORE CSAETT OE eee Seema AGO be Any yed by york ot. very ust Mr. 's cabi 8, for- | Sem E me tel ; voices: “Ssh! Ssh!” Ik “ages 4 ee Py coneaenieous wore. Not verg hard. Just the | ser Secretary of Commerce, Rob- | ® day.” Investigation proved that | §4a day. Figure that out for your- | 5 | “Never mind, Al Crocker, just EcouBISGaniGet” Beet Seeeien oie Oe cue pale What applies to Section 7, ap- | eT’ Lamont. ipratae ciel pars, 8 Anse | self. Since then, they have re- F ight Tax Sales }| sememberihai we aid tell you, | the Red Cross knight. a plies to every other section in | THE BLOODY }. Solved several wage cuts, and four- when the time comes,” Davis | “Give her some flour!” the present election that all obstacles be r Distric: 2. On to mass distribu- HAND OF MORGAN. piece-work speed-up system. Still, until a few years ago, there were a fifths have been fired outright. And so now, after years of being bawled back. “Don’t give her flour!” said the {| ) the way of mass distribution of tion, Which means mass recruit- ; aoa: (By Farmer Correspondent) “They're going to give us one | supervisor. “These people are not Bie teeta shen) into the Revoluidonary eee hepa an ene KULPSVILLE, Pa, Aug. 24—One| loaf of bread! Not one apiece, but | ready for relief. ‘They don't know ie Lev as wasiew ee! Oita Movement. Paget En ere | hundred fifty farmers met here Aug-| Ome to each family! One bag of | how to take it. This place is closed! yar ale af iterats ara eee BY IaRE —— Ten years ago, the mayor of oe | ust 1, and organized a Farmers’ Com- flour—the same! Maybe some | Get out!” tion 7: ea ahs quesne said publicly: “Not even Je- The American F fag eG a teed tcc atg By Se pan ett Da conan ee ee + s ux m iscussion centered aroun low- ? “Don’t any) . See that ev- Women’s Mi ll sus Christ can berg ies Pig Lead] | reeman cost of production milk prices, “‘sur-| Woman- erybody gets a bag, Mrs. Wiggens.” : Seaiiicin Neen peer pe lligalae ie ° H. “ + yy ||plus” milk, sheriff sales, gas taxes,] “Enough for two days.” “Oh! Oh! They're stealing our < a9 fan W. ages Dr op rouble’ among the steel workers.” vles ard to Ex lain mortgages, interest rates and taxes,| “What good does two days do? | flour! They're stealing our flour!” = 38s 8 Piisedlcrsor Gulp bat terrae Most of the farmers who spoke called| We had @ day's before, and we | Lily continued to scream until the #3 «ED in P | Srerywhen cer ane “Walton Bates: | SS pee \for unity between farmers and work-| made it last three. Now if they | store was stfipped and empty. Mrs. <8 in Fenna. vue pose Peat aio or Bs ers expressed as follows: “Workers Bie be pete sot we eee it | Wiggens, who had been nassing out tis , a and — . — and farmers must stick last five, what'll we do when it’s | the bags, was the last %y May 5150 $104.17 $200 By Labor Research Association. | it was a claw. It was in this val- A Technical Error; 2? But Then both are being ice aoa gone?” she sith up her vn wee Lie, ‘ June 3285 7147 2500 'N 1929, half the women in the | ley that Fanny Soilins had her cs forget what fi ‘is “It's the same with all the rest ‘ tried to stop her. yl Suly 2693 66.16 2150 knit-goods industry in Pennsyl- | head smashed in by the butt end | Steals Browd er’s S h eal aN ledieaorat tp) a! sais i Aug. 1 vania were getting under $15.40 for | Of @ gun in the hands of a thug peec terests of the working class.” to15 210 ~—17.80 35 | ‘full-time work. Now half of them | Who danced on her corpse; that vase “Why this decline for the last two and a half months? | At the last meeting of the Sec- tion Literature Directors, on Au- gust 12, the following facts were ‘brought out in regard to Sec- tion 7: 1, No cooperation from the Section Committee. are getting under $10. In 1929, half of the women in the full fashioned hosiery mills—among the highest paid textile workers — were getting $20. Now half of them are getting under $13.50. In 1929, half the women in silk mills were receiving less than $16.30 a week. Now half of them are get- school children were ridden down by mounted cossacks; that steel workers were driven out of their homes, meetings were fired on, leaders kidnapped. Here, too, the relation between the Morgan-owned Steel Trust and the U. S. banker government was clearly revealed when in the strike of 1919, posters appeared all yp and HE Socialist “American Freeman,” which the Daily Worker in its July 28 issue exposed for its brazen political swindle in stealing the ac- ceptance speech of Wm. Z. Foster, has planation.” R Ransacking its printshop for, the smallest type available, the Hal- demann-Julius publication, on Aug. 15, attempts to whitewash itself, Its “explanation” is so hollow that it requires little comment, at last emerged with an ex- A group of milk wagon were pres- ent and described conditions that they must face in the city, fighting the same enemy, the Milk Trust. They told of wage cuts and deduc- tions for breakage ‘and bad bills. The meeting endorsed demands for one-half the retail price of milk for the farmers, no gas tax, no evictions or sheriff sales, a cut in interest > t “, i rates from 6 per cent to 2 per cent, Ee om he | ig under $12.60, down this valley with a picture of Says the “American Freeman”: 3 Sateen eae ee a THe : ‘Gection: Committee SERRE TEE pile Sara Oe eigen cehae ; ine pecarialy he this office took Wm. Z. Foster's speech and se- | Pay taxes or wiper aile . * . : ected a number of paragraphs for publication in The American Free- The farmers around here are ve 1 a Ri ga a literature |Pyt Communists On Sam Says: ‘Go Back to Work’.” man, The idea was to change the word “Communist” to “Bo ialist” |conservative, religious and eid with a view of showing the reader that what a Communist says about | loving, coming mainly from the Ger- FOSTER, LEADER 4) Literature money was used for'.rent and other purposes, making it impossible to buy new Ballot In 40 States! Answer Socialist Lie! literature when needed. As a result of these four ob- NEW YORK.—The National Cam- OF STEEL STRIKE. ‘The leader of this strike of 400,- 000 workers was a tall, lean work- ing-class native-born Americau, great public questions would not look incongruous in a Socialist paper. ._ This was to be covered in an editorial “lead” which was to run at the head of the selected paragraphs, It happened, however, that the make-up editor had some holes at the bottom of several columns, and man peasants who settled here 300 years ago- Now for the first time they are actually confronted with the prospect of losing their farms on a mass scale, The new situation re- stacles, the following situation |paign Committee of the Communist] named William Z. Foster. ‘The | 00King around for “fillers” he came on these paragraphs, which he This resulted: Party issued, today, the following| strike was smashed by the usual Veoh A gee into the forms, and leaving the covering editorial un- Apart eg bf, t « ‘ <1.. Units were not visited by statement: “Hoping to discourage | Murder, frame-un, terror and be- ‘ ees What kee pene ted Lillie i duitiocans eatere ee the section literature committee |the militant workers and farmers| trayed by the A, F. of L., but by The explanation is worthy of the erime, ‘The workers who have been | These farmers organized under the| june? ‘There's took caovgh a the | maul itt” Sho hung on to the to explain to the unit members from pasticipating in the eleotion| this time, the workers of the world | awaiting it will not be surprised at its unprincipled character. The “Am-.|name “Pennsylvania Farmers Pro- ie, of Parle As fae Redon anh. with the grip of a kind of death the proper methods of literature Sebution. . Branches of mass organi- zations were not visited to push the sale of revolutionary liter- ature. 3.'No meeting halls of unions and organizations were covered struggle, the Socialist Party, as us- ual, is whispering about that the Communist Party will not be on the ballot except in a very few states, Heywood Broun carried this lie in his column in the World-Telegram . on Friday, August 19. While it is true that an attempt is being made by the goyernments in the various states to stop the Communist Party from having its name on the ballot, and in California it has been caifried 4. No attempt was made to start house-to-house routes. “5. No meetings of Republic- @ns, Democrats, or Socialists were covered by our comrades with literature. through with the help of the Social- jist Party, we wish to state, em- phatically, that because of the mil- were so enraged that the Steel Trust was forced to grant some de- mands. Wages were raised ten per cent, and the 14-hour night on the furnaces abolished. With the union smashed and the Pittsburgh press fixed to tell what “high wages the steel workers get”, the Steel Trust retained its bloody-fisted control over the valley for twelve years. Besides terror, the Steel Trust used for this aim the old motto: “Divide and Rule.” During the strike, thousands of Negroes were brought up North and into the erican Freeman” is clearly trying to cover up its studied political swindle whose purpose was to corral, for the Socialist Party, the thousands of the west.’ radicalized workers and farmers in * * NE final word: The “American Freeman” blames “technical errors” for its steal of Foster’s speech. But how will it now explain away the (June 18) it continues its demagogic ac- from the keynote speech delivered by Earl Browder at the National Nomina Convention of th | Party held in Chicago May 28-29? a4 Nac come \kaia Browder: “The capitalists have two main weapons, demagogy rror, to put across their attack upon the workers, They use these weapons thru their parties, Republican, Democratic and Socialist.” The “American Freeman” repeats this sentence in lifting a whole sec- eliminates fact that in a subsequent issue tion by lifting whole paragraphs and . .tective Association,” which ‘now has membership in four townships around Kulpsville. Some of the demands, particularly against taxes and fore- closeures are similar to those of the United Farmers League. These farmers should consider affiliation to the League, to get nationwide backing for their struggle. National headquar- ters of the League are in Superior, Wis, P. O. Box 94. Stop the billion-dollar subsidies to the trusts and banks. Immediate But they won’t give it to us, because the Red Cross will only give a litle money for a place like Paris, and most of that went to buying Pur- cell's milk for today’s relief. Never mind how I know! “The thing for us to do now, is to force them to give some food today. And to do that, we’ve got to all go down together. If we go in one by one, they'll cheat us, or they'll say we're not starving, and we won't get,any relief at all. “Now before we go, I want to ask you something. How many of she felt freezing her. Finally Mrs, Wiggens wrenched it loose, The girl's nails had torn the bag. “Sow!” cried Mrs. Wiggens, see ing the waste. She struck Lily Pur= cell across the lower face with the bag. The flour whited her face like a clown’s, Her glasses fell off and smashed. She screamed. { “She's killing me! She's me! She's stealing! She’ me! She's stealing!” Sho was sob- bing, a gulping blubber that, shook her breasts. “Shut up!” Mrs. Wiggens her killing | killing . litant fight made by workers and| strike. Most of them were men | tion of Browder’s speech, liberatel ccahiialgr Meat iaeea self screamed. “Shut up! Dm, somry | Are above shortcomings |farmers, the Communist ticket wif mills in scaled boxcars to break the publish, Danwerane and: Sostaliee if us shielding Peasy athe f ne Ab Sie es te ie gt yeaa * pam i flew sto, orcs? Do they |be on, the “ballot in atleast forty] and youths without industrial ex- | the Socialist Party and its big brothers. pense of the government and em- | Gooai Every man who brousht his | of Gene ga> the baby, she tam ous | in AD, SFpeIDesOnA! stale" <n acta ipso sD peplenee, siraleht-trom-the cotton |, | Need anything more be N82 veal 2% : oh MO a 2 wwe J sun_today, was with us when We gga, (To Be Constnwea, i ‘ ‘ ; : ePaper |) |