The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 21, 1934, Page 5

3 CHANGE ‘coe ——_THE— || WORLD! = By ORRICK JOHNS Batting for Sender Garlin pees I am going to ask the readers of this column to gaze on a certain picture: Several hundred leading Communists of California are sworn in as deputy sheriffs. They raid a meeting of the American Legion, line up the Legionnaires, whack a few of them with pick handles, then draw their guns and search them for Legion membership cards. A picked band of Sacromento orchard workers belonging to the Agricultural and Cannery Workers’ Union goes around Sacramento throwing bricks through the windows of the leading bankers. On each brick is a note #:ying: “Get out of town or you know what will happen to you. Go back to the country you came from.” The Italian and \Chinese bankers are worried about the idea of going back to the ‘blessings of Mussolini and Chiang-Kai Shek. Another picked band, this time of the Marine Workers Industrial Union, goes to the house of Mayor Angelo Rossi of San Francisco. Nobody is home so they go through his library and take away his private papers. They find a laudatory biography of Hitler and carry it off in triumph to the courts to use as evidence of treason. A score or so of members of the International Labor Defense break into the offices of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, tear the files from the walls, drop the typewriters out of the window, man- handle the stenographers, kidnap a few assorted vice-presidents and secretaries and lock them up on charges of panhandling. Members of the Workers’ Ex-Servicemen’s League go about shoot- ing soabs with dum-dum bullets and throwing teargas bombs into the meetings of the directors oft he shipping industry on the Pacific coast. A Liberal’s Version We COULD go on with this picture ad libitum but it it is already as cockeyed as Harpo Marx. Yet, according to Mr. Arthur Garfield Hays, there is nothing wrong with this picture. It is literally true. Over a radio broadcast a few days ago, Mr. Hays made the following statements: « “The policeman cracks a Communist on the head. The Commu- nist says, ‘What for?’ and the policeman answers, ‘Because you be- lieve in violence.’ These people adopt Fascist methods of terrorism in order to prevent Fascism. They adopt Communist methods of tyranny to avoid Communism.” If this somewhat involved statement means anything at all, it means that Mr, Hays intends to say that there is no difference between police and vigilantes on the one hand, and Communists on the other— both use violence, and “tyranny.” He intends to say that the heroic struggles for bread, led by the Communist Party, are the cause of Fascism, and therefore the police, in order to put down Fascism, crush the struggles of the Communist organizations. ; Yes, this is the wheel-go-round reasoning of the famous liberal gentleman, sent over a radio broadcast arranged by the Joint Com- mttee for Workers’ Rights, on which the I. L. D. and the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners, as well as the Amer- ican Civil Liberties Union, are represented. Needless to say these other organizations were not consulted about Mr. Hays’ remarks on the sub- ject of vigilantes and Communists. The vigilantes actually did to the workers’ organizations and the Communist Party all the things I have pictured above (in reverse) and a lot more. And therefore this is the picture Mr, Hays would have us accept. He could only add that the San Francisco Chronicle build- ing was burned down by a shock brigade of the Young Communist League, as the printing plant of the Western Worker was burned by agents of the police. It is easy for anyone who knows anything about the labor move- ment on the coast to brand Mr. Hays’ parallel as viciously false. The superb discipline, the restraint in the face of provocations shown by the workers of California is too well known to need proof. Yes, and the successes. While we are on the subject of the destruction of workers’ property and the imprisonment of leaders, we don't want to forget the successes, the improved conditions won, the increases of wages and relief, the splendid rallying of workers in the midst of terror, the wonderful defense campaigns conducted by mass pressure. We re- member these victories, because they were victories of life over death for thousands. But nobody has ever seen a single example of omganized violence or of individual violence except in defense of their lives by class- conscious workers of California. It is easy to prove the fantastic non- sense of Mr. Hays’ scrambled thinking about vigilantes, Communists and fascists. Mr. Hays declares himself to be anti-Nazi, he is deeply shocked by Nazi brutalities, yét the words I have quoted would not sound a syllable out of place in the mouth of Propaganda Minister Goebbels. They are the kind of equivocal demagogy that Goebbels relishes. A Striking Contrast wear & contrast to the firm stand taken by Lincoln Steffens on the raids and deportations in California! Steffens, suffering from a Jong illness in bed, his house watched, boldly denouned the California terror. His voice rings out with the truth and courage of Emile Zola’s famous “J’accuse.” While Langston Hughes, the greatest of the Negro poets, is driven from his home in Carmel; while Tillie Lerngr, youthful revolutionary novelist and the mother of a young baby, is arrested and imprisoned; while prosecuting attorneys are demanding injunctions against people “showing sympathy with Communists,” and Lincoin Steffens fights flat on his back, Hays and others snuffle their hypo- critical fears about “Communist tyranny.” This is the class of liberal conversationalist who tries to make you think that the cruelties of Hitler and the Nanking government are due to something in the German or Chinese character—something racial and peculiar that would never crop out in America, of course. But sadist power in California springs from the same conditon as sadist power in China and Germany—from intolerable exploitation of the masses and greed for profits. Wherever exploitation is so atrocious that the ruling class is forced to resort to fascist means to preserve the status quo there is always savage persecution. The virtual peonage of California ranches and canneries sprouts Fascism as a cellar sprouts toadstools. The slightest assertion of civil rights is a provocation to.violence under such conditions. The mention of the Constitution in California is enough to get anybody listed as a red. An article in the current New Masses by Michael Quin gives a fine picture of the human products of this soil in the ruling class. The article is a character sketch of William F. Hynes, captain of the “Red Squad” of Los Angeles, who began his career as a stool pigeon, and claims, in @ recent affidavit, that he was a “member” of the Communist Party for one year as well as an informer in the ranks of the I. W. W. I quote the following paragraph from Comrade Quin’s article: “Let us briefly review his (Hynes’) ‘activities’ during a period of eleven months, January 1, 1932, to November 26, 1932. During this period Hynes and his squad prevented 19 meetings from being held, raided and looted 17 offices and headquarters of organizations, searched seven homes without warrants and arrested 148 workers on suspicion of criminal syndicalism, of which not one single case was brought to court. In addition to this, 124 workers were arrested on miscellaneous charges such as vagrancy, blocking traffic, loitering, etc. In all of these cases, the real cause of the arrest was paricipation in working-class or- ganizations, which is no crime, and the charges for which they were booked were sheerly a matter of convenience . . — ‘g With stich examples before us of how the ruling class is creating its roehms and Goerings in America, to enforce mass exploitation, will Mr. Hays repeat his statement that the police are putting down Fascism by crushing workers? WHAT’S ON KEEP Sunday, August 26, Open! Daily) from Europe, South Africa, Australia, ete, Worker Picnic at North Beach Park. | Adm. 10¢, Splendid program being arranged. Pee eae CLARENCE HATHAWAY will speak on “Europe on the Eve of the Proletarian Tuesday Revolution,” Friday, Aug. 24 at 50 B, 13th St. Auspices: Workers Bookshop. The pur- ar tay tttadad Societe, case te on of $1 bathe of pamphlets entitles Reed . ve, ry you @ free ticket, Tickets are 25¢ 11 ton 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. Documents, pictures | advance, ' { DAIl.Y WORKER, NEW YORK. TU SDAY, AUG 21, 1934 Page Five C.W.A. Sweats 1,200 Men in Construction Who Are the Forces Behind the “Legion Of Decency” Drive: | Boast of Classy Bear Den While Jobless Crowd Benches By EDWARD NEWHOUSE | NEW YORK.—In the shadow of the millionaire Temple Emanu-El and of the 22d Precinct police sta- | tion and of a Fifth Ave. apartment house advertising a 23-room suite with 11 baths—1,200 men, sole sup- port of their families, are at work constructing homes for a few mon- keys and hyenas. The shabby) buildings of the old z00 had long been an eyesore to renting agents along the Avenue. Therefore the three million-dollar ©.W.A. me- nagerie project. | There has been enough slander | and kidding about C.W.A. laborers. Irate Taxpayer waxes wroth on the editorial page of the “Times” and no two weeks pass but the cuties on the New Yorker have some charmingly spun yarn of slothful- | ness to forward. True, the ward| captain’s nephew does drive around | from project to project and he does pull down $12 a day for sticking his head out of the front window and | saying, “Everything okay, boys?” | But spend an hour rambling around | the Gentral Park menagerie that is beginning to take shape and see if you can spot any laborer leaning on his pickaxe handle or exchanging a pleasantry with his neighbor. It’s no cinch toting a shovel in that gang with efficiency experts on your tail every minute of the day. Most of the unskilled hands are middle-aged New Yorkers, who had never handled road tools. At that, according to Superintendent of Construction K. P. Doan, the city is getting 80 per cent of best professional efficiency out of them. Mr. Doan is modestly, but duly, elated about that percentage; “It toko us some time to weed out the troublemakers, but now production is clicking on all cylinders.” “Do wages of these men come up to 80 per cent union scale?” He looked up at the word. “We don’t recognize any union here. Un- skilled laborers are allowed $48 a month. and the skilled mechanics $60, These are the plumbers, elec- tricians, etc. Some of them have union cards, but that doesn’t cut any ice here.” Make Them Feel at Home Would Mr. Doan care to com- ment about any particular feature of the construction? “Well, the buildngs are plain co- lonial style and the pool of the sea lions is going to be enlarged and, let me see . . . the monkey house will have glazed brick interiors and . +. Oh, yes, There will be a real faithful, natural reproduction of a bear's den, make them feel at home, you know.” The men appeared to be consider- ably less intrigued at the prospect. They passed furtive warnings along as Doan passed. A wiry little la- borer with sweat running down both cheeks reported he is going for a drink and I went with him. “How do you feel about your job?” STAGE AND SCREEN WALTER HUSTON —_==__—ti—“—ts Featured player in “Dodsworth,” the Sidney Howard-Sinclair Lewis play, which reopened last night at the Shubert Theatre. Twelve hundred ©. W. Central Park in order that shelters completed by November. their choice of benches to sleep on. A. wor kers are rushing day and night at for a few baboons and emus may be When the job is done the men will be given “How would you feel about it? Sometimes I wish I was back on home relief and this is nothing like what we had in the winter time. One fellow had four toes frozen and they cut them off, He's back on the job and glad of it. The one who had his chest caved in by a 500-pound rock un at Fort George never came back, but we heard he was done out of every cent of compensation. How would you feel about an outfit like that? I’m a cutter on shoes and there was times when $100 a week was nothing to me. And every pen- ny of that went, in a family of seven like I got. We have to do on $12 now and we live in a hole on Henry St. that wouldn’t rate as out- house to that bear den. And I’m supposed to be in the velvet com- pared to the birds that’s been laid off. They’re spending millions of dollars for this zoo and millions for that beer garden on the west side of the park. They'll never get their returns on that. Anyhow it’s money that remains in the country.” By HARRY KERMIT 'E scene is the downtown court in Brooklyn, although it could just as well be any police court in the city. The day's routine is the same. Downtown court opens at 9 a.m. It is crowded at 9:30. The usual Police court audience awaits the magistrate’s arrival. There are sharp-eyed shyster lawyers, unem- ployed shopgirls, dockworkers and clerks, street-walkers, pimps, cops in plain clothes and neighborhood toughs, The magistrate comes in at 10 o'clock. An attendant raps his gavel. The spectators rise, then they sit down. The magistrate nods to the attendants, to the court stenographer, to the lawyers. He looks well-rested. He is middle- aged and red-faced and is known as a good Tammany hack. The calendar is crowded but the cops and lawyers are not worried. This judge is an old hand at crowded calendars, he is finishmg twelve years on the magistrate’s bench. Lawyers’ clerks come up to ask for postponements, bondsmen appear with bail bonds, political club hangers-on ask for squelched arraignments, there is a lot of writing and hand-shakng. You do not see laborers among those ob- taining squelehed arraignments. Nor do you see men in frayed clothing shaking hands with the magistrate, The first defendant takes the stand at 11 o’clock, He is a youth of twenty who has been arrested for selling razor blades in the sub- way, violating a city ordinance »y peddling without a license. He says his name is James Bergen. He has been kept in a cell all night. TUNING IN| 7:00 P. M.-WEAF—Baseball Resume WOR-Sports Resume—Ford Frick WJZ—Stamp Club—Capt. Tim Healy WABC—Beale Street Boys, Songs 7:15-WEAF—Gene and Glenn—Sketch WOR—Comedy; Music WdZ—Jack Parker, Tenor WABC—Wayside Cottage—Sketch 1:30-WEAF—Danny Malone, Tenor WOR—Talk—Harry Hershfield WJZ—Higher Administrative Stand- ards—Professor William Anderson, University of Minnesota WABC—Biljo Orchestra 1:45-WEAF—Sisters of the Sikillet WOR—The O'Neiils—Sketch ‘WJZ—Frank Buck's Adventures WABC—Boake Carter, Commentator 8:00-WEAF—Reisman Orchestra; Phil Duey, Baritone WOR—Variety Musicale ‘WJZ—Will Aubrey, Songs ‘WABC—Concert Orch.; Frank Munn, Tenor; Muriel Wilson, Soprano 8:30-WEAF—Wayne King Orchestra ‘WOR—Van Duzer Orchestra ‘WJZ—King Orchestra WABC—Lyman Orchestra; Vivienne Segal, Soprano; Oliver Smith, Tenor $:00-WEAF—What Civilization Owes to Communicaticns—George Henry Payne, Member Federal Communi- cations Commission WOR—Variety Musicale WJZ—Edger Guest. Poet; Concert ira; Charles Sears, Tenor WABC—George Givot, Comedian; Rich Orch.; Edith Murray, Songs 9:15-WSAF—Russian Symphony Choir 9:39-WEAF—Dramatic Sketch WOR—Micheel Bartlett, Tenor ti 9:45-WOR—Eddy Brown, 10:00-WEAF—Operetta, Pinafore, Gloria _La Vey, Soprano: Edward Noll, Baritone, and Others WABC—Troopers Band 10:15-WOR—Current. Events—H. E. Read WABC—Mountoincers Music 10:30-WOR—Lane Orchestra WJZ—Tim Ryan's Rendezvous WABC—Melodic Stringr With “Where do you live?” the magis- trate asks. The youth shifts nervously in the witness chair. “Central Park.” “You mean you sleep in Central Park?” The youth nods. “Where do you come from?” “Des Moines.” “Towa?” “Yes.” “And now you're begging.” The youth’s face goes red. “I couldn't find work,” he says sul- lenly. “I wasn’t begging. I was selling razor blades.” The magistrate looks annoyed. “Why didn’t you stay home?” he asks. “There aren't enough jobs to go around in New York.” “There aren't any in Des Moines either,” the youth replies doggedly. “That's why I came east.” The magistrate drums his fingers. He studies the oak-paneled walls of the courtrecm. Then he looks at the speculaters. He wrinkles his brow. You can see he is thinking. He turns to the defendant. “Young men,” he says finally, the milk of human kindness in his voice, “T'll suspend sentence. Go home to Des Moines.” Then, sharply, “If you come up before me again, I'll send you to the workhouse.” The defendant steps down from the stand. The magistrate nods to the reporter for the local news asso- ciation who is standing near the court clerk. The reporter nods back The magistrate can see the sevezal paragraphs in the afternoon papers. “Homeless Youth Freed." The humanitarian benche Faery Pane T= other cases follow in rapid succession. A raw-boned Swed- ish laborer is arraigned for beating t — Day int Po He reconsiders that, He appears to be talking to himself. If the Going Gets Too Tough .. . “What if it does remain in the country, what do we get out of it? It seems to me the government ought to give it to us outright without monkeying with beer gar- dens and sinking it into materials. I don’t mind telling you if the go- ing gets too tough we'll take it. I'm ready for anything. That's if the going gets too tough.” “Isn't it tough enough now?” “T think it is and lke I says I’m ready for anything. But the rest of these men, most every morning they're treated to the sight of gangs of sleepers being pulled into the precinct there. Men who sleep on benches and all that. Some of the first offenders are discharged, but {they take your record and finger- prnts. It’s no lark messing around with those boys.” He pointed to a plain-clothesman emerging from the station house. He said, “Compared to the men he lice Court his wife. “Please you honor, I don’t want him punished.” “But he struck you,” the magis- trate reminds her. “It isn’t his fault, your honor. When he has no work he is worried and he drinks. Then he does not know what he does.” The magistrate looks thoughtful again. No doubt about it, he is in good humor today. “T'll put you on probation and suspend sentence,” he tells the la- borer. “Don’t get drunk again.” The laborer and his wife leave the courtroom. The attendants know he will be back again. The Jaw says he must not beat his wife. But the law says nothing about in- suring him a job. An Irish housewife and her daughter are charged with assault. The complaint is their landlord, “You assaulted this man?” magistrate asks. “He sed he'd be puttin’ us on the street.” “Your honor.” the landlord breaks in, “the bank is foreclosing on me. Here are the letters,” “We can’t pay if we ain’t got the money,” the housewife says. The magistrate looks annoyed again. Good humor cannot solve this problem “Adjourned until next week," he announces. Let another magistrate pass judgment. This meek-looking man with the | Scraggly musteche is charged with bigamy. It is a case for a higher court. He tells the magistrate he and his first wife couldn’t get along. That doesn’t justify bigamy, the magistrate informs him. The man replies he works in a laundry and cannot afford the legal fees for framing a divorce. The magistrate looks at the clock. He is becoming hungry. He holds the man in sey- eral thousand dollars bail for the higher court. An attendant brings up two work- ers arrested for leading a demon- j stration at a home relief bureau. “You're charged with disorderly conduct and resisting an officer,” the magistrate reads the complaint tersely. He knows how to handle Reds. No humor here. “We came to ask for food for a poor family,” the workers reply. “You caused a riot and resisted an officer,” the magistrate says sharply. “We eame.to demand relief.” the workers repeat. {The city does not have to give you relief. Thirty days in the work- house,” he announces. “You can’t get away with revolution in New York City.” At noon the cou:t recesses. But when the magistrate returns at one o'clock he will find the same cases. Broken homes, tenants resisting eviction, jobless men selling razor blades, worried fathers abusing their families, more squelched arraign- ments for those with influence. Here are class lines drawn clearly, the heartache of men and women helpless in the face of established Jaws and customs. Here are cry- ing protests ageinst the misery and privation spawned by capitalist so- ciety. But you will not find sym- pathy for these protests in the jowled magistrates. Nor will you find it in the class-angied news the columns of the metropolitan press. You have to be there to see it. of Shelters for Monkeys and Hyenas ‘Union Cards Cut No Tee Here,’ Says Project Head lays his hands on, these C.W.A. boys figure maybe they got it good. I’ve | Movie, Church | been talking too much.” By TOM BRANDON (Continued from yesterday) 18 significant that only a few months after this historical and Congressional movie producers Conference, the | The dick started toward us andj and distributors were able to boast ; the shoe cutter } eyes? Well, there's one gleam } which is just as unmistakable. That is when he sniffs a chance to get j hisname in the paper. This dick Precinct. It affords me xpressible joy to be in a position | to keep his name out of the print | he craves, “It's a Pip” | He said, “I hear you're a reporter. | There’s nothing much doing around (here. It’s dead territory. I could take you to places where you'd see enough things in an hour to fill | four editions. Here all you get is | bums and cranks. The other day we get a telephone call, some guy says he’s going to hang himself in the park. So the search starts and sure | enough in a hour we find a guy | hanging off a tree on Cat Hill, west |of the 59th St. lake. He had a big hunk of dry bread in his pocket, it | must have been weeks old, but no marks of identification. Spanish looking fella. Have you seen the | new bear den yet? It's a pip. Come, | I'll take you around.” | Sie NERA AS |What's Déing in Workers Schools Of U. a WEEK-END TRAINING SCHOOL AT LANCASTER The Lancaster section of the Communist Party is completing ar- rangements for a week-end train- ing school to begin the 15th of September. For the first time in this part of the country, members of the Party and close sympathizers will have the opportunity of receiving a political training to enable them to carry on their work in organizing the un- organized, the employed against the speed-up and stagger system and for more pay, the unemployed for more and better relief, against evic- tions, for jobs, and to train the workers in the revolutionary way out of the crisis. The school will begin Saturday, Sept. 15, with two courses given on Saturday and two Sunday. Students will include active work- ers from the Unemployed Council, Party, LL.D., etc, from Lebanon, Pa; Harrisburg, and Lancaster, where the school will be held. Workers are urged to donate books for the school. Send all do- nations to Workers School Commit- tee, 418%4 Green St., Lancaster, Pa. Soh A A WORKERS SCHOOL IN BUFFALO The establishment of a Buffalo Workers School is finally being real- ized. Registration will begin the 4th of September at the Labor Educa- tional Club, 760 Main St. But this is not all. Funds are needed to car- ry on the work. In addition, the library of the Workers School needs many books and pamphlets. Dona- tons and loans of such books and pamphlets will be gratefully re- ceived. The courses given will be few, but of vital importance to all workers participating in the class struggle. They include: Principles of Com- munism, Trade Union Strategy and Tactics, Negro Problems, Political Economy, Organizational Principles and Elementary English. * SCKOOL ESTABLISHED IN CROWN HEIGHTS We just received some good news —a Workers School situated in Crown Heights is now definitely be- ing established. The Provisional Committee has found a building in the heart of the Negro and white population of Brooklyn and is plan- ning to have several classrooms, a lbrary, office, and other facilities. They are planning to involve not only our mass organizations, but Negro lodges, clubs, and churches as well. A conference is being called during the early part of September. The school plans to open on Sept. 24 with a curriculum of approxi- mately ten courses. The enthusiasm expressed by the comrades in charge is highly encouraging and has already brought results. As a result of the pledge cards and gen- eral financial plan, one comrade alone brought in over the week-end more than $108, collected and pledged by sympathetic friends, . BROWNSVILLE SCHOOL ANNOUNCES 23 CLASSES The Brownsville. Workers School, 1855 Pitkin Ave., has worked out a schedule of 23 classes for the com- ing Fall Term, beginning Sept. 28. Classes include Principles of Com- munism, Introduction to Political Economy, Political Economy A, B and C, Negro Problems, etc. New features for the Fall Term include courses in News-of-the-Week, Mim- eograph Operation and Leafiet Making, and Principles of Commu- nism taught in Jewish. The Brownsville Workers School managed to overcome the summer season lull by running a house party. Comrade Markoff, director of the New York Workers School, was present and delivered a talk on “Working Class Educaticn.” The Party netted the school almost a month's rent. * . NEW YORK SCHOOL COMPLETES ARRANGEMENTS The New York Workers School has completed all ffnal arrange- ments for the Fall Term. Cata- logues will be out next week. For information concerning the Fall Term write or come to the Work- crs School, 35 E. 12th St., New York City, Room 301. Another feature of the Fall Term will be a symposium on Literature from the Marxist Viewpoint, which will be given under the auspives of the Workers School and the New walked off. Have|of having boycotted an | you ever seen lovelght in a girl’s|ently produced and exhi in | that exposed the corr j the orbs of a New York flatfoot| gress and Congressmen has a moustache and belongs to the|on a play “If Christ Came to in- | gres The film that brought condemnation of the “In industry and the Church wa. the Shadow of the Dome,” Such a film was did not fit in with the standards ie Clergy-Movie-U. S. Conference ot “decent.” It | | | which had decided (as the very lit- eral Moving Picture World, Feb. 1920, put it) that pictures were to be shown to “foreigners and weak- | ling Americans to inspire them to the mission of Democracy.” Six months later, however, the | Church and movies had thei model: Ralph Ince’s “In the Land of Opportunity.” It is almost need- less to add that the great masses of American workers and farmers who at this time were seriously ques- tioning the validity of their sag: fices in the World War, were told in “The Land of Opportunity” that the conception of the “equalization of wealth” was absurd and anti- social and under the present system we were living in the best of all pos- sible worlds because we lived in the land of “equal opportunity.” Decency in 1934 'HE present Church crusade, somewhat more subtly con- ducted, nevertheless contains the essential features of the earlier campaigns. The similarity in ob- Jectives can be discerned by a close- up of the current crusade. This campaign, like the former cam- paigns, abounds with hypocrisy that is concealed under the cover of “de- cency.” What is this “decency”? Does the Church want pictures that tell the truth about life in America today? Do they want films that will help achieve decent living and working conditions for the working men and women and their chil- dren? The “Black” and “White” lists is- sued by the Bishops of Detroit and Chicago expose themselves. A first glance shows the sheer hypocrisy of their claims to Church does not agree on what is indecent! The Detroit Council of Catholic Organizations have placed on the Recommended List: Double Door, It Happened One Night, Little Miss Marker, 20 Million Sweet- | hearts. Rev. F, G. Deneen, representing the Chicago Catholic Churches, in his lists, disagrees. He charges that the behavior of Shirley Temple, Claudette Colbert, Ginger Rogers, etc., in these films on the Detroit list, should not be seen by every- body—they should be in Class B. On the other hand, Father Deneen says that the following will harm nobody and can be seen by the whole family. The Chicago Catholic Churches have told their followers, “O. K. See these!”: Bulldog Drummond, Hell Cat, Lost Patrol, Melody in Spring, One is Guilty, The Witching Hour, A Very Honorable Guy, Or- ders Is Orders, etc. But, lo and behold! The Detroit Council says, “No! These films are partly indecent and should not be attended by everybody. Only adults should take a chance on these.” The Chicago guardians of “de- cency” say, “Absolutely No” to: Here Comes the Groom, I Hate Women, Let's Try Again, Murder in the Vanities, The Thin Man, Sing and Like It, and some 25 other cur- rent films. While the Detroit guardians of “decency” say, “These are not so bed. Adults may go, but lock the children up at home.” of |’ ri- | ; It is interesting to see that th Duchess County Squire, the R | Hon. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Pres | dent of the United States, has bee sailing around on his Hawaii tri with six of the “black cent films. Fog Over | der in the Vanities, Cock liers, Crime Doctor, Party's O are six films at which the Bishps ¢ | Detroit and Chicago tfit their nos heavenward. Here Is Decency! Innocuous escape from reality Bengal, Circus Clown. Murder in the Private in Trinidad, The Mys 1 of Mr. X, Son of Kong, Secret of the Blue Room, etc.) 2. Virtuous, docile, patient tale to induce “social stability.” (Th, }Crown of Thorns, The Fightin Ranger, Honor of the Range, Qui’ | ter Thirty-Day Princess, You Car |Buy Everything, The Poor Ric | Smoking Guns, Baby Take a Bow |The Most Precious Thing in Life, | David Harum, We're Rich Again, A Very Honorable Guy, etc.) 3. Anti-struggle, distorted reality, pro-war and pro-fascist. (House of Rothschild (whitewash of the inter- national war-making family of bankers), Cavalcade (tear-jerking affirmation of the inevitability of war, and invitation to “have a stiff upper lip” and sacrifice for impes rialist war), The Mad Age (dise torted collection of newsreels of las bor and other struggles since the war .. . labor's fights viewed as madness), She Learned About Sail- ors, Come on Marines! (glorification and ballyhoo for joining the Navy and Marines), Stand Up and Cheer | (jingoistic, “laugh away the depres- | sion” ballyhoo for N.R.A.), Oper- |} ator 13 (glorification of the military spy, produced by Richard Boleslay- | sky, Russian White Guardist and _| former spy), World in Revolt (com- | Pilation of newsreels that distort |the world-wide wave of strikes, | struggles and revolutions as being discreditable violence caused by la- bor), No Greater Glory (vicious pro- war ballyhoo, directed at the entire populace, especially the women and children, affirming that there is “no greater glory than to die for your country.” A tear-perking pro-war film that embodies in it the treach- erous character of the whole cru- sade for “decent” films. eH 8 H has anti-labor, jingoistic, pro-war code of “decency” has already been accepted as a model by the Motion Picture Producers and Dis- tributors Association through Will Hays and Joseph I. Breen, a solu- tion which follows faithfully the formula advanced in 1920 by Secre- tary Lane! The great masses of moviegoers who have been leaving both movies and Church in the past few years. will recognize in this program of “decency” a striking resemblance to the kind of decency brought into their struggles for unemployment relief and for the right to organize, strike and picket, by the repre- sentatives of the Church in the N.RB.A. anti-labor “Arbitration Com- missions.” May Rossi and Arch- bishop Hanna of San Francisco, like Father Haas of Minneapolis, carried the Church's standard of decency into the great General’ Strike and into the Minneapolis strike — a standerd of decency that was ex- pressed in practice as a bloody aid to the savage fascist-like assault on the embattled workers. The standard of “decency” of the Interfaith Church crusade, it is ap- parent, is a standard erected in sup- port of a system of society that is maintained by political reaction, economic oppression and cultural decay. It is a standard of “values” devoid of any value to the working class, to the movie audience, or to the art of the motion picture—on the contrary: the Church crusade presents grave dangers to the art of the movies, to the audience, and to the working class as a whole, Leading Foreign ‘Athens Attend Soviet Congress (Special to the Daily Worker) MOSCOW, U.S. S. R., July 19 (by wireless). —-The Congress of Soviet Writers opened in the Hall of Col- umns of Moscow, the home of the trade unions on the 17th. participate in the work of the Con- | gress. Foreign guests continue to | arrive. | The following authors have al- jready arrived in Moscow: Martin | Anderson Nexo, famous Danish au- Workers’ clubs, libraries, reading thor; French authors, Andre Mal- rooms and book stores are very busy. | reaux, author of “Man's Fate”; Jean An enormous Literary Exhibition | Richard Block, Paul Nizna and Louis was opened in the Park of Culture! Aragon. Turkish authors include and Rest, devoted to the Writers’ | Palikh Rifki Bey and Jacoub Bey; Congress. In the factories and/the Spanish author, Alberti; Ger- parks the literary evenings are at-|man authors include Theodore tracting large audiences of workers. | Plivier, Willi Bredel, Gustav Regler, Delegates from distant regions |etc.; Greek writers include Varnalis and Republics of the Soviet Union and Glinos; Swedish authors, Harry are in attendance at the Congress.| end Moa Martinson; Czechoslovak= At least seventy-five per cent of | ian writers, Nexvall, Hoffeister, Lin- the authors of the Soviet Union will grad, llemnitsky and others, Masses. This course will include a - three-month subscription to the New Masses. Some of the most out- standing and leading critics on the subject will conduct the class, which Amusements PUNCH GOES RED! will be held every Friday, at 8:30 7 ae Workers Laboratory The school has made preparations Theatre for a tremendous regisiration and is presents therefore announcing that 22 classes in Principles of Communism will be conducted, the largest number ever Lou Bunin’s Marionettes ‘Yusse! Cutler’s puppets in a program of new political satire ccnducted before. Classes in Ele- || @ “Schnozzie,” “Durante Interviews ments of Political Eeonomy, a new “The Shamus” course, will also be taught. “Hang ths Hangman” ~ MT ies ra and others CARI, BRODSKY. Chairman IRVING PLAZA Irving Place and 13th Street Friday, Aug. 24, 8:30 p.m. Admission 30c. Tickets at W.L.T., 42 B. Adm. 30¢. Tickets at W.L.T., 42 KE. 12th 3t., Workers Bookshop, 50 E. 13th St. LAST 4 DAYS CF NEW SOVIET TALKIE! HO U Ss E of “Unquestionably merits enthusiastic | reception."—DAILY WORKER. ; GREED Based on Famous Russian Novel, With V. GARDIN “Gentlemen Goloviev,” by Saltykov-- fof “Shame”) Schedrin (English Titles). i ACME THEATRE, l4th St. & Union Sq.—Always Cool—2nd Big Week— The Harlem Workers School is making elaborate preparations for the Fall Term in their new quar- ters, located at 415 Lenox Ave., New York City. Catalogues will be out next week. |