The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 11, 1934, Page 3

—— fs Cot helped Bakhmetieff Juggle | Kerensk Money des hams Could! Have Been Used To | Pay Off Debt (Continued from Page 1) rust, 1918, received in “salaries,” | \422,822.88. In the “secretarial de- vartment,” headed by C. J, Mad- ikhovsky and Ananieff, $144,875 vas expended for “salaries.” Mr. Jerge Ughet, during these six nonths did not overlook himself. He received $10,000. Payments during these six months for “sal- aries and expenses” amounted to the tidy sum of $1,169,820.28. The Roosevelt government wants he workers in the Soviet Union to ye considered in “default” for such sums and pay them te the Amer- ican government so that Roosevelt can increase his war budget and be able to shoot down Japanese workers, or workers and peasants in the Soviet Union. The United States government | itself helped to supply the Bakhme- tieff gang with money that it could very well have kept and applied; against the Kerensky loans. | For Example: After the downfall of the Kerensky regime, the United States government purchased from the provisional Russian government representatives in Washington mu- nitions that had been contracted for. Tt paid $11,000,000 for these zoods. The money could very well have been kept in the U. 8S. Treas- ury for future accounting against the loans. But, no, that was not the object of the United States gov- ernment in buying the supplies. In- stead, the money was placed in the National City Bank to the credit of the counter-revolutionaries. The United States Shipping Board chartered some vessels be- longing to the Provisional Russian government, It paid Bakhmetieff 31,400,000 through the National City Bank in the same way. “Ze, Industrializatsiu” is so un- kind to point out some historical precedents on the question of loans and debts that are incorporated in the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution. That amend- ment applied to the Civil War in the United States. British bankers aelped the South through funds in fighting against the North for the dissolution of the union, and for the retention of the slaves, The 14th amendment repudiates all of these debts. Yet the Roosevelt gov- smment wants the Soviet Union to pay money spent in graft to Amer- jean bankers, to Czarist agents, and | used te murder Russian workers nd peasants in the interest of over- hrowing the Soviet government. Workers! Protest! Meanwhile, U. S.-Soviet trade is, being blocked. This is not to the interest of the American workers ind farmers, and to the Soviet | y Money Leather Union Officials Drop Fight for Raise | Sold Out in Strike, Men Oppose New “‘Check- Off” PEABODY, Mass., May 10.— Hail- ing the recent betrayal of 8,500 leather workers as a “victory,” the leaders of the National Leather Workers Union are trying to en- force a check-off system for the compulsory payment of dues. The agreement signed by these officials does not grant the demands of the strikers for protection on the job, increased wages and better shop conditions. The demand of the workers for @ 25 per cent increase in wages has been submitted to arbitration and is being shelyed by these officials. The officials ame pressing the check-off system to insure their position. The bosses are opposing| this in the hope that the resent-)| ment of the membership will lead to the break-up of the union and open the way for bringing in the company union. Three firms, employing 560 work- ers, have not signed the agreement. The workers in these firms are carrying on a struggle over the heads of the officials. The membership is demanding) that a referendum of the member- ship be held, and that independent struggles be carried on in the shops for higher wages and against dis- crimination for union activity. is trying to obtain every penny it can lay its hand on to increase its war budget, to supply greater subsidies to the big bankers and corporations who have already re- ceived billions. Every worker, every workers’ or- ganization sympathetic to the So- viet Union, should immediately pro- test this criminal deed of the Roose- velt, government. Wire your protests to Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hull, de- manding an end to all impediments to trade with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, the only gov- ernment in the world which has never defaulted on any of its loans, which alone has a stable financial system, which alone is increasing its productive machinery for the good of the toiling masses, must not be permitted to be branded in the manner the enemies of the So- viet Union are seeking to do. Demand the immediate opening of trade with the Soviet Union and the granting of full and free credit facilities. ped = By MARGUERITE YOUNG | JT’S Lenin’s name you hear | 4 along the waterfront where \last Spring it was God’s. The |collective voice of working men prevails where once the honeyed soprano of gospel mission singer mingled with | the flailing of the policeman’s night- stick and the epithet of the Shan-| |ghai artist. Revolutionary struggle| |has driven religious racketeering| | off the streets—the seamen haye| | won their fight to administer relief. They are to face an assault by enemies allied with and more power- ful than the same “Holy Racketeer” | {but in order to draw a fair con-| | trast, we visit the Seamen’s Project while the workers hold control. | | Eighteen seamen, paid by the) | federal government but elected by) | their fellows, staff the Seamen's | Relief Project. It is a three-story | building that houses 125 men, On the first floor, two seamen clerks are in charge of a glass-windowed | office. The dining floor is burnished | white. A bulletin blackboard carries | Notices, but instead of the evangel-| | ists’ meetings heralded in mission| houses, here are announcements of | |a Young Communist League dance, | “Negroes and white, all workers in- | vited,” and of ships on strike in! | port. Worker Control | There is no dormitory here; the| second and third floors are parti-| | tioned into individual rooms, one| | man in each. No double-decker beds, | Clean linen, On every bed, a copy of “The Daily Worker,” on virtually every chair a revolutionary pam- phlet on forced labor or on Negro and white unity. There is a shoe repair shop, a tailor shop, open to/| | all without charge. There is a 20-| | bed hospital here; a “Sick Bay,” to| | supply medicine for minor ills. The |“Clothing Room” provides tooth | paste, razors and blades, tobacco,| stamps, as well as all articles of clothing on a show of need; there is a shower-room with plentiful hot water. The house rules are posted by order of the Seamen’s Sub-commit- tee: “If you don’t work, you don’t eat or sleep. ... Drunken and dis- orderly conduct will not be toler- ated. . . . Schedule of meal hours, details of work periods, .. .” The latter applies solely to the collec- tive work necessary to keep the pro- ject, and as more seamen enter, the apportionment per seaman is cut down to two hours every third day. There are no straw bosses here, no officials. Cooks, galleyman, orderlies, ticket collector, clothing department men and stewards do their work and draw their wages—and parti-) men, The Recreation Hall men’s Recreation Hall, provided by| the government upon militant de- mands by the seamen. Checker and card tables are here, and several DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, FRIDAY, MAY 11, 1934 Labor Rouses the Waterfront Il.—BEFORE AND AFTER WORKER CONTROL Job sharks, company blacklisting and crimps were eliminated from the Baltimore waterfront when the seamen set up their own shipping agency where jobs system. were given ont on a rotation Above is shown the Marine Workers Industrial Union Hall which also served as the office of the Centralized Shipping Bureau, the seamen’s own job bureau. two barbers’ chairs in which the| good deal of time in a smaller hali seamen are served free. The walls| & couple of doors away, the Marine| are filled with posters, notices? | Workers Industrial Union headquar- “Read the Daily Worker’ next to) “Don't Spit on the Deck.” And the bulletin board here, in addition to notices of meetings, holds a card- board. permanently exhibited. It reads: | “The ‘revolution’ has been recog-| nized by those who are constantly | being held out as glowing figures in} American history. “Thomas Jefferson: ‘I hold a lit-| tle rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the} Political world as storms in the physical. . . . What signify a few lives lost in a century or so? The) tree of liberty must be refreshed | from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.’ “Abraham Lincoln: ‘This country with its institutions belongs to the} people. Whenever they grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their reyo- lutionary right to dismember or| overthrow it.’ “Woodrow Wilson: ‘We have for- gotten the very principles of our origin if we have forgotten how to object, how to resist, how to agitate, to the extent of revolutionary prac-| tice.” | fight for your rights.” Pictures of the Scottsboro boys | and of Ernst Thaelmann are here| also, and more notices of strikes,)and the bunks were reeking with|ris said, “but we know that while | ters. There is the headquarters of the Centralized Shipping Bureau; there, between placards, commemo- rating strike victories, are plaques and pictures of Lenin, Marx, Engels. Y¥.M.C.A.—A Contrast Between the recreation hall and the Seamen’s Project, on the corner of Thames and Broadway, stands the Y.M.C.A.’s Anchorage. There are fewer than 20 seamen inside, for this is @ busiriess establishment. Its public restaurant charges consider- ably more than other waterfront eating places. It administers “re-| lief” only when it lacks a house} full of paying seamen and then only when the applicant can prove himself penniless. He must agree to owe for his bill, and if he re- turns later, he pays up before be- ing given a bug-ridden bed in the basement. “It works like this,” seaman Doty told me, “and there are official rec- ords to prove what I say. “I was discharged from the Ma- rine Hospital because, they said, they needed beds, on March 14, 1928. I was recovering from an operation. The Red Cross nurse in the hos- cipate in the collective life of the| how to pull.down and build up, even| pital, seeing I couldn’t work, sent me to the Anchorage. She said I'd get my meals and lodging until I Around the corner, a block and| “So exercise your right! Fellow | was able. The Anchorage gave me a half down Broadway, is the Sea-| worker and seamen: Organize and/a $2.50 meal ticket for their res- | |taurant and told me they would| credit me with one week’s room rent, $1.25. We were two in a room get out or go to work in the An- chorage. I was sick, so I got out. I lived from hand to mouth until I got a ship. Ini the fall of 1933 I was back on the beach and went back to the Anchorage for relief. They opened up their books and said “You owe $3.75 from 1928.’ I didn't have it. I didn’t get into the Anchor- age.” “But you couldn't get in whether or not you owed them,” Seaman James pointed out, “if you hap- pened to be the least bit militant |I tried it myself and they threw | me out. | Holy “Relief”—At a Profit “They have cops stationed there | continually. Jensen, their secretary, | shipping erimp and pawnbroker. He would lend money to the fellows jinside, for their keep, and take their watches for it. more than 700 seamen out on jobs Paying less than the regular wages. We can prove that 90 per cent of the arrests on the waterfront took | Place right inside the Anchorage. “But why shouldn't they pull this stuff? They get contributions from shipowners; they got contributions |last year from Nelson and others. | What they never answered us is | where the money goes if not into their pockets. They conducted pub- |lic campaigns in the name of giv- ing relief to seamen—thousands of | dollars. Their own published state- | ment of their budget only professes | to show they spent a little over a |thousand dollars more than they took in on seamen.” |ceive from the Anchorage con- | sisted of the bunk and one break- | fast, of thin oatmeal, coffee and dry | bread, on the forced-labor basis of | his agreement in advance to do | hours’ work. In order to get a sec- |ond meal, a bow! of stew, he must | work another hour and walk miles |uptown to the Salvation Army headquarters. His work, in addition |to cleaning cuspidors, ranged from repairing or improving the property |to performing menial service for | Director Hardin, such as washing | his automobile. Yet the costs of the Seamen's Project, with all the services and goods it supplies, is less than the | average spent on transient projects! The difference spells the grafting |and corruption eliminated by | worker control. The average spent on transients throughout the country, federal sources told me in Washington, is | 75 cents per man. For those living joutside the Seamen’s Project, the government allowed 85 cents, three meals at 20 cents and a 20-cent bed. | But the average cost per man per |day in the Seamen’s Project, on a collective, non-profit basis, was just 56 and 4-5 cents, including meals, laundry, wages, office supplies, bar- ber, shoemaker, tailor—everything. “They never would tell us how much it cost when the government had the Anchorage running federal relief,” House Superintendent Har- meetings, protest demonstrations. ...| bed-bugs and other vermin, When | it cost them $3.98 per man per week | Was known to seamen for years as| He shipped | That “relief” the seaman did re- | 128 Ships Page Three Tied Up In Longshoremen’s Strike In the West high as $9 a week for room and board of transients uptown, and they sleep two men in a bunk.” To keep down the costs for the capitalist government that financed this Seamen's Project is not a pri- mary consideration with the revo- lutionary workers who lead the sea- men—they are concerned first with the standard of living it maintains But the elimination of graft and corruption automatically reduce the expense and increase efficien: Innumerable difficult problems came with their victory. Most of them they met correctly. Some, par- ticularly those never encountered before in the labor movement, they could not solve. | Some Mistakes Made | Incomplete analysis of the victory | itself led to a basic weakness—isola- |tion from the broad mass of the | other unemployed and the em- |Ployed in other basic industries. | Pailing to appreciate that this vic- tory resulted not only from their heroic militant battle and their complete exposure of the corruption of the Y. M. C. A. regime, but also from tke circumstances that Balti- more relief officials underestimated the seamen’s ability to run the project successfully and that neither the shipowners nor the federal offi- cials suspected the import of recog- nizing the seamen’s committee, they allowed the totally unfounded sug- gestion to creep in that here was an incipient “Soviet on the Water- front.” It further separated them from the rest of the working class, |hastened the assault upon them, {and handicapped them in meeting it. The opposite tendency also ap- peared—the misconception that the responsibilities of those leaders who became government employes might hold back in their leadership of the struggle. It tended to weaken the unity of their leading forces. In the beginning of the struggle | they were insufficiently aggressive |in dealing with the Negro question. | Later they instituted a campaign | of education and developed a strug- gle on this issue, and an application lof the policy of protection of na-| | tional minorities, such as has rarely | been seen. But before they obtained | control, they failed to raise special |e into the backwardness of many in their ranks. They were unable | |to avoid segregation until they had \carried through their education | campaign—they were unable, there- \fore, for @ time, to utilize their | struggle to gain active support among the Negroes. | Yet desptte the shortcomings, which arose not only in the sea- | men’s movement but in the Com- |munist Party forces outside, the | marine workers developed a leader- {ship and raised their struggle to | political levels that make history lin the militant labor movement. (Tomorrow: Who's Who in the demands for Negroes, and this play-| | Message Freni A. F. BE, Leaders To Call off Strike Ignored (Continued from Page 1) are calling on all working class or- ganizations to support the strike. No Cargo Moves in Portland PORTLAND, Ore. May 10.—Ne cargo has moved in this port follow- ing the strike of 1,100 longshore- men. Ship owners have threatened te lock out the strikers if they fafl te return to work today. The strike, however, continued | Strong, with seamen leaving the ships and the unemployed refusing to be used as scabs. Truck drivers have refused to handle any cargo. The strikers are mass picketing al! the docks, while large ads in the capitalist press are trying unsue- cessfully to recruit seabs. TACOMA, Wash, May 10—The men struck solid here morning following s unanimous vote upholding the re- cent original strike vote. A thousand dockers are involved in the walk-out tying up the un- i loading of four ships which are at present in the harbor. Picketers show great spirit and determination to win the strike. The organizer of the Marine Worker: Industrial Union got a good recep- tion when he went to the long- shoremen’s hall to speak. A motion made at the strike meet- ing to exclude all but members of the I.L.A. was lustily booed down by the dockers. The Daily Worker and other workers’ papers are being sold af along the strike front. . ABERDEEN, Wash, May — Four hundred longshoremen are ont on strike here, The steamships Yorkmar, Ester Johnson and the Shiraha Maru are tied up at the docks and are taking on no loads. The crew of the steam schooner Ester Johnson are sympathetic with the strike and have offered to sup- | port the longshoremen. The only ship to load since the strike began was the Anna Shaffer. Seamen and mill hands have joined the strikers on the picket |line. The boast of the Stevedore Company that it will break the strike is being laughed at by the strikers. pe ee Mobile Dockers Strike MOBILE, Ala. May 10.—Joining the general Gulf port walk-out, 20¢ longshoremen struck here yester- day demanding recognition of the International Longshoremen’s Asso- ciation and refusing to work under a non-union foreman. Union foremen aided in the load- Union. The Roosevelt government Defend the Soviet Union! ernment. Behind the Organize Railroad Workers COMMUNIST PARTY RESOLUTION CALLS FOR WORK AMONG RAILROAD WORKERS TO RESTORE PAY-CUT, BREAK SPEED.U NOTE: Resolution below was adopted at the national fraction meeting of Communist Party railroad workers. Railroad transport is a most vital factor in he economic and commercial life of the nation ind constitutes the most immediate and im- oortant apparatus for the mobilization of troops and the transportation of munitions in prepara- sion for and in times of war. For this reason the 13th Plenum Resolution f the Communist International, adopted by Sommunist Party leaders from every corner of he globe, says: “In fighting against war the Jommunists must prepare even now for the cransformation of the imperialist war into civil war, and concentrate their forces in each coun- try at the vital parts of the war machine of imperialism. “In addition to increased agitation, the Com- munist Parties must by all means in their power ensure the practical organization of mass action preventing the shipping of arms and troops, aindering the execution of orders of belligerent ountries, organizing demonstrations against nilitary maneuvers, etc.) ...” The program of the Communist Party of the J.S.A., embodied in the Draft Resolution to the ith Party Convention, finds it necessary once nore to sharply emphasize that the railroad industry is a major concentration for the entire Party. It calls upon the Party Districts, Seo- | tions and Units to carry on systematic day to day work among railroad workers, with particu- lar emphasis on those workers organized in the reformist unions. The capitalists and their government fully appreciate the importance of railroad transport. To this end they have enlisted the railroad union leaders as their agents, in order to spread and put into practice the false theory that the interests of labor are identical with, but sub- servient to the political and economic needs of the capitalists and their government. These union leaders, in order to stifle opposi- tion to their collaboration policies, have im- posed the most stringent gag rules in the lodges and locals, expelling members for any effort to break these laws, and have worked hand in glove with the companies to discharge workers who persist in the fight for their rights. The strictest government supervision has been extended over the railroads to give them finan- cial support, but especially to undermine the fighting capacity of the rank and file, to keep them tied in a knot, defenseless before the attacks of the railroad managements. In 1926 the Railway Labor Act was drawn up jointly by the roads and the railroad union officials, and enacted by the capitalist government over the protests and warnings of the militant ele- ments in the railroad labor movement grouped around the Communist Party. Railway Labor Act Shackles the Workers Since the passage of this Act, thousands of grievances and unsettled claims have accumu- lated on the railroad systems of the country, because the men accepted the provisions of the Act and abstained from taking direct action. Thus the men were shackled to the stalling apparatus of negotiating committees, adjust- ment boards, mediation boards, boards of arbi- tration and emergency boards, while the roads did as they pleased and continued to disregard the ever mounting number of claims and griev- ances. The fruits of class collaboration ripened in 1932, when the roads reached an agreement with the Brotherhood leaders to enforce a 10 per cent cut for all railroad workers. This cut has been twice extended against the wishes of the rank and file by the Grand Lodge Officers, supported by the intervention first of President Hoover and then of President Roosevelt. Encouraged by their successes, the roads in- tensified their drive against labor. They laid off additional tens of thousands of workers; irew up a plan for consolidations to still fur- ‘Mer abolish hundreds of thousands of jobs, and astablished a dictatorship to enforce the bill, using the liberal, Eastman, for the purpose. ‘This mensure, called the Emergency Railroad Transportation Act, was accepted by the Brotherhood Chiefs against the protests of the rank and file Brotherhood Unity Movement, after a few meaningless changes which made it easier for the union officials to face the membership, Under the rail co-ordinator, the attacks orig- inating after the passage of the Railway Labor Act were intensified. Mass lay-offs have been carried out. Speed-up has been multiplied through consolidations, doubling of work, and lengthening of train runs. These “economies” at the expense of railroad labor have become the basis for the capitalist solution of the crisis. Today a million men who built and operated the railroads walk the streets. Many of them, after a lifetime of service in the industry, are unqualified for any other work. The stagger system has reached an extreme whereby tens of thousands receive only one or two days work a week. Overtime, which was given major consideration in fixing basic rates, has been completely abolished, and on a num- ber of roads, straight hourly rates are replacing the obligation to pay on a mileage basis. Earn- ings have already been reduced by approximately half since the present basic rate of pay was first put into effect seamen-attendants, paid by the tila big room— Under the Roosevelt and Eastman “New Deal,” company unions have been given government sanction, and are now recognized by the various \labor boards functioning under the Railway | Labor Act, despite the fact that during the past year the men have been making the most heroic efforts to get rid of the company unions. Disillusionment with the “New Deal,” disgust | with the servile policies of the union chiefs grows daily. The roads, the government and the Grand Lodge Officers are afraid they can | no longer keep the men in check and are rapidly taking the path for suppression of the | most elementary rights of the workers. Eastman has now proposed changes in the Railway Labor Act to enforce compulsory arbi- tration, to destroy the independent power of | effect direct dictatorship of the capitalist state | in the settlement of wages and working condi- tions for railroad labor. All these drives have been supported by the liberal and so-called radical politicians, the Wagners, the Eastmans, the Dills, Hatfields and Kellers, the Farmer-Laborites, the Socialist Party leaders. They have all joined hands in helping Roosevelt patch up and try to save the decaying capitalist system, They are trying to | keep the workers from going over to the pro- gram of the Communist Party, and to chain | labor to the band wagon of big business, to the program of war and fascism. Results of Party Work tw ‘the fadatry Although the importance of winning railroad workers is generally accepted and placed as an outstanding task in all of its resolutions, the Party as a whole and especially the Districts, have failed to mobilize their basic units and turn them toward systematic and persistent work in this industry. The Central Committee in turn has badly neglected railroad work and has failed to check up to see that the resolutions on railroad work are carried out by the Party. There has been a slight improvement in this respect before, and a little more since the Open Letter. Although Negro railroad workers play a very important role in the industry, especially in the South, where they are employed as firemen, brakemen and switchmen, in addition to doing most of the work in the shops, yards and track; although they are barred from membership in the transportation brotherhoods and forced to organize into Jim Crow unions, in spite of some steps taken in Norfolk, Birmingham, St. Louis and New York, we have not carried out a sys- tematic struggle for Negro rights, against white chauvinism and for the unity of Negro and white raliroad workers around their immediate demands. As a result of its neglect, only in very rare cases has the Party participated in the growing movement of the railroad men or taken the initiative in mobilizing them for struggle. This explains why only 110 railroad workers were recruited into the Party in the years 1933-1934. Although this recruitment is an improvement, it is still insignificant. What is more important, it shows the great possibilities for successful work among railroad workers if we apply the principles of the Open Letter and carry on concentrated activity in the railroad industry. The rank and file opposition within the stand- ard unions, that is, the Railroad Brotherhoods Unity Movement, which accepts the class strug- gle program, has established 40 loosely organized monthly publication, Railroad Unity News, has/ a circulation of 5,000, In the last six months the number of groups were doubled, the num- ber of supporters quadrupled and the circulation of the paper doubled. This shows that the rank and file are ready for independent action. However, it is important to note that only @ small part of these workers are directly con- nected with the Communist Party and that our main Party recruitment has not come from the ranks of these workers. The main weakness of the Unity Movement, which prevents it from becoming the recognized leader of broad sections of raliroad men, is the widespread legalistic illusions and the hang- overs of the one big union idea. While it is true that these misconceptions have their main roots within the unity groups, they are also found to a lesser extent within the leadership of the Unity Movement. ‘The legalistic illusions express themselves with being content to protest against the attacks of the Grand Lodge Officers and the railroads by passing resolutions in the lodges without at the same time taking practical steps to utilize the sentiment created in order to mobilize the men in the lodges and on the job to defeat these attacks as they arise, The one big union hangover expresses itself where the loosely organized groups have as their Perspective the development of larger loosely organized groups to include all men, regardless of craft or union divisions, instead of trying to work in the direction of building militant groups in the lodges and on the job, which will unite in common struggle, for the imme- diate improvement of conditions. Both of these ideas substitute general agita- tion and schematic plans for patient daily work to improve the conditions of the men. Both must be combatted and overcome if the Unity Movement is to become the leader of the grow- ing discontent in the railroad industry, break the influence of the reformist leaders and lead groups and has some 800 active supporters, Its the men into major class battles The unemployed seamen spend a’ the week was up, they told me to/in our project, they are paying as’ Seamen's Movement.) To Smash The STOP SHIPMENTS OF MUNITIONS ing of vessels that were in the port, Imperialist War Plans! It is clearly the task of the Party to center our duty to win railroad labor to fight against the rank and file trade unionists, to put into | its main attack against the social fascist lead- | the extreme nationalism and chauvinism which ers in the railroad industry who prevent direct action by the railroad workers and hold them | back from the revolutionary movement. It is | 5 “Win R. R. Workers The most immediate problems of the industry | vhich we must rally the men to fight | organized. ae : |A. F. of L., to take the leadership in these |unions and work toward making these lodges are: | exists in the railroad industry and for the class struggle program of the Communist Party. rogram” To take the initiative in organizing the un- Where railroad workers join the 1) The immediate, unconditional return of the lcenters of the class struggle and part of the 10 per cent cut and an additional 10 per militant opposition movements centered around cent increase in wages to offset the rise in \the Unity Movement. the cost of living. | To abolish speed-up and lay-offs, violations | of agreements and force immediate settle- ment of all unsettled claims. | Against compulsory arbitration and for the | right to strike. | Against all gag rules and restrictions of the Grand Lodge officers which stifle the very life of the unions, act as an obstacle to the unity of the rank and file and restrict them from acting directly to settle their grievances. The broadest mobilization for the Workers Unemployment and Social Insurance Bill 3 4 5 (LR. 7598), for jobs and cash relief, against | forced labor and for the establishment of relief committees in the lodges to repre- sent the men in the fight for these de- mands. The immediate establishment of the 8-hour day in the railroad industry without any reduction in the hourly or monthly pay- checks. To arouse railroad labor against the war preparations of the Roosevelt government; to establish anti-war committees on the 1D job; to mobilize railroad workers to stage | demonstrations and wherever possible pre- vent shipment and export of war material, Against international fascism, against the rapid growth of fascism in the United States and particularly as it expresses it- self in the railroad industry (Co-ordina- tion Bill, Compulsory Arbitration, etc.) To carry out these tasks it is imperative to develop a broad opposition movement inside the 21 standard railroad labor unions with their 500,000 members, inside all independent Jim- Crow railroad unions and in all cases with special attention to the transportation brother- hoods. To develop a mass struggle for the destruc- 8) tion of the company unions; to carry on sys- | tematic work in the company unions building groups around the immediate demands of the men, at the same time leading the workers toward the formation of a class struggle union of their own choict ‘ | | | | | Where the men form independent unions, we |take the leadership and try to make these | unions class struggle organizations. As against the splitting tactics of the union officials and the roads, we unite organized and unorganized; employed and unemployed; Negro, foreign and native born to fight for the im- provement of their conditions at each partieu- lar shop, roundhouse terminal and system. It is the duty of every Communist railroad worker to join the union of his craft and to fight against bureaucracy and the Jim-Crow ideology of the railway labor aristocracy. Where no organization exists every railroad Party mem- ber must take the initiative to start organiza- tion. All Districts, Sections, Units, and all fractions in all mass organizations must do everything possible to popularize the above demands, to | mobilize railroad workers in their territory for these demands; to help build the Unity Move- ment and introduce and circulate Unity News among railroad men. Therefore the struggle of railway labor for nigher wages and better working conditions, for social insurance and the right to strike are part of the fight to abolish the capitalist system itself, and cannot be separated at any time — from the building of the Communist Party, which leads the workers in struggle against #he © capitalist system and for the establishment of — a workers’ government in the United States, In winning railroad labor to the program of — our Party, all Communist papers, including the foreign language press, but particularly the Daily Worker, the central organ of the Commnu-_ nist Party, become of decisive importance. et | Friday railroad edition of the Daily Worker must become a mass paper for railroad men. Railroad workers all over the country must take the responsibility for making this issue reflect the daily grievances of railroad labor and the center for exposing the maneuvers of the capi- talists and the union and social reformist poli- ticians. Through such exposure, carried systematically each week, we will win labor away from the influence of these forces —