The Daily Worker Newspaper, November 30, 1934, Page 1

— a DISTRICTS, MASS ORGANIZATIONS, TRADE v4 UNIONS! FULFILLIN Yesterday's receipts Total to date . Press Run Yes CONCENTRATE ON G QUOTAS! terday—41, 800 Vol. XI, No. 286 Entered as second-class matter at the Pest Office at New Y,, under the Aet of March & 1878. == Daily -A Worker CENTRAL ORGAN COMMUNIST PARTY U.S.A. (SECTION OF COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL ) NEW YORK, FRIDAY, VEMBER 30, 1934 NATIONAL EDITION (Six Pages) Price 3 Cents HOPKINS SEEKS TO END CASH RELIEF Student United Front Formed 2d for Scottsboro Defense NEW FIGHT PLANNED AGAINST SALES TAX ESTIMATE New York Raises BOARD VOTES FOR MEASURE One More Hearing Due Wednesday Before Bill Is Signed As labor and small taxpayers’ or- ganizations were preparing further protest actions over Thanksgiving Day, the bill for the 2 per cent levy lay on Mayor LaGuardia’s desk yes- terday, after its adoption by the Board of Estimate on Wednesday, awaiting the signature of the Mayor. The signature is, however, a for- mality and the passage of the bill | is virtually assured unless between now and Wednesday, the day that LaGuardia is to affix his name to the measure, a storm of protest is unloosed which makes the Mayor change his mind. The bill, which will levy a tax of 2 per cent on all retail sales in New York City, with the exception of food and medicines prescribed by a physician, will go into effect on Dec. 10 and will run until Dec. 31, 1935. It is expected to yield $40,000.000, the funds to be used for | unemployment relief purposes. Talk Tax Strike A tax strike was among the meas- ures discussed in many sections of the city, with many small mer- chants and consumers declaring themselves in favor of such a move. Large business opposition continues to rail against the tax, proposing, however, in its stead a 7-cent fare, equally obnoxious to New York’s soiling population. Delegations to local aldermen are veing organized in a number of! neighborhoods, learned yesterday. the Daily Worker These delega- tions will demand that the alder- | men rescind their support of the sales tax and endorse the principle of taxation of the wealthy to finance unemployment relief. Arrangement of new loans from the bankers, obviously aranged be- forehand, are already under way, Comptroller Joseph D. McGoldrick has announced. It was on the basis of a “broad-based” tax like the sales impost that the bankers agreed to Joan funds for unemploy- ment relief. Tammany Squirms Another public hearing, as re- quired by statutory provision, will be held on Wednesday morning at City Hall. Directly after this hear- ing the sales tax will be signed by LaGuardia. Discussion ran high around the tity on the tax yesterday, with the strategy of Tammany coming in for much comment, The Tiger forces, after their upper circles had agreed to unite with Pusion to carry out the wishes of the Morgan-Rocke- feller banks, are somewhat appre- hensive over the political results of the entire matter. They are care- fully terming the sales tax, “the LaGuardia plan,” although they are as much.a party to it as the Mayor. With this in mind, they are pro- posing some concessions in the gross income tax and the business tax. A number of Democratic Aldermen who hail from the work- ing class neighborhoods have an anxious ear cocked to local feeling, their nervousness being in direct proportion to the amount of or- ganized protest being led by the Communist Party. Farley Forgot to Talk About the Big Subsidies, Hiding 52 Million Loss WASHINGTON, Nov. 29. — An analysis of the Post Office depart- mental figures revealed today that Postmaster General Farley’s an- nouncement of a $12,000,000 “sur- plus” for the past year actually is & $52,000,000 deficit. Farley had announced that the Post Office for the first time in 20 years had operated at a profit. But his calculations did not in- clude the large subsidies which the Government pays to air and steam- ship lines for carrying mails, and the costs of “franking” the mails of the Congress. These items contribute mainly to the department's losses. Farley has been pursuing a policy of slashing employees’ wages as far as possible as well as cutting down By PHILIP STERLING The working class of New York} is determined to maintain and build its own revolutionary press by any sacrifices which may be necessary. More than 1,500 delegates of Com- | | munist Party groups and mass or- | ganizations gave an _ enthusiastic demonstration of this determination on Wednesday night at a banquet for the Daily Worker at the New Star Casino, 107th St. and Park Ave. The banquet, arranged by the New | York District Committee of the Communist, Party to rally all sym-| pathetic forces for the final stages | of the Daily Worker's $60,000 fund) ldrive, resulted in contributions | totaling $3,850. The sums making up this total represented the collec- | tions of Communist Party units and sections and mass organizations, trade union and professional groups. | Most.of the organizations repre- sented indicated, by their contribu- | | tions, great forward strides in com- | pleting their allotted amounts. All| except two sections of the Commu- | nist Party went over the top. | The contribution reports were | opened amid vigorous enthusiasm | GREEN DEFIED IN BUILDING TRADE WAR WASHINGTON, D. C., Nov. 29.— The building trades department of the American Federation of Labor was declared reorganized by officials of seven building trades unions in the jurisdictional war with officials of twelve other building trades unions. The convention of the build- ing trades department just con- ; cluded here, ended with the reor- ganization. The officials of the seven unions, supported by William Green and the majority of the San Fran- cisco A. F. of L, convention, de- clared the offices of ‘the building trades department vacant and elec- ted William Williams of the Carp- enters to head the reorganized de- partment. Meanwhile, heads of the twelve building trades unions which adhere to the old department met in the Federation building under Michaei J, McDonough, president of the old building trades department, and de- fied Green and the reorganized de- partment. Both factions of officials met in the American Federation of Labor Building. The dispute between the two sets of officials is a fight for control of jobs and for control of the building trades department. The officers of (Continued on Page 2) It protests, loudly and lengthily, Daily Worker, “$40,000,000 Tax on with which to argue. dent, however, that the editorial on whatever work protection rules existed e , capitalist class in this crisis: to load the economic crisis on the shoulderg @f the masses | YESTERDAY'S New York Times, like Mr, Shake- @speare’s well-known lady, doth protest too much. jest part of the burden of the sales tax will not fall on the masses of the city. Significantly enough, it picks the headline in Wednesday’s issue of the Here we will not stop to comment in detail on the fact that of all the opponents of the sales tax, the Daily Worker is the one chosen by the New York Times at which to direct its main blows. It is evi- Times are perturbed for good reason. The Daily Worker alone, of all the English language news- papers in the city, is leading a militant, uncom- promising fight against the sales tax. The Daily Worker, as the central organ of the Communist Party, has explained the class char- acter of the sales tax, pointing out that it is but another expression of the main line of policy of the $3,850 at Banquet For Daily W Worker I. W. 0. Leads Contributors With $1,300, Com- pleting Quota—Hathaway, Krumbein, Casey and Mother Bloor Speak by Nathan Schaeffer, secretary of the New York City Committee of | the International Workers Order, | who presented on behalf of more than 200 local branches of the Order | a check for $1,300, completing the} Order's quota. Clarence A. Hathaway, editor of the Daily Worker; James Casey, managing editor of the paper; Charles Krumbein, district organizer of the Communist Party, and Ella Reeve Bloor, veteran working class fighter, were the speakers on the occasion. Joseph Brodsky, chief of the T.L.D. legal staff, was the toast- master. Hathaway Cites Race Hathaway, in outlining the new | program of the Roosevelt adminis- | tration for a new drive to slash the| economic standards of the working class, coupled with speedy prepara- tions for more open fascist rule, warned the ‘gathering: “We are in a race—a race be- tween the revolutionary working class and the forces of fascism to (Continued on t Page 2 MARINE MEN ASK FREEDOM OF O'DONNELL A joint meeting of the West Side Local of the Marine Workers In- dustrial Union and the West Side Waterfront Unemployment Council on Wednesday night adopted a vigorous protest against the im- prisonment of William O’Donneil, New Jersey farm strike leader who was compelled to end his hunger strike by the threat of forcible feed- ing. A letter of greeting was also sent to O'Donnell in the Cumberland County jail. The joint meeting also endorsed the National Congress for Unem- ployment and Social Insurance, to be held in Washington, Jan. 5, 6, and 7, and the meeting also decided to further popularize the Congress among the seamen on the ships and on the beach, and also to raise funds to send two delegates to this important congress, Plans are un- der way to hold a mass meeting of seamen on the west. side to elect delegates. LONGSHOREMEN AID STRIKERS LOS ANGELES, Noy. 29.—Long- shoremen here are closely cooperat- ing with flying squadrons of strik- ing street car employees in swift and effective picketing maneuvers. that the heay- Masses Voted,” sponds with the writers of the the burdens of To It": of the people. The LaGuardia administration, with its “loyal” Tammany opposition, is helping to carry out this fundamental line of policy. The Daily Worker has consistently proposed tax- ation of the wealthy, of the millionaire class, their banks and corporations, to pay for the maintenance of the unemployed. This is’ a method which corre- These political truths, at which the Daily Worker has hammered away day after day, have a pro- found power. They are making their way among the masses of the city—the workers, professional people, small home-owners and little business peo- Ple—with a speed which the New York Times and the class it represents finds alarming. This, and this alone, explains why the New York Times, the most consistent organ of Wall Street, must take up the editorial cudgels against the position of the Daily Worker on the sales tax. * . 'AYS the Times in its editorial, “Ip yesterday's Daily Worker there is a big | Several Witnesses Say! Dead Couple Were | With Children By Cyril Briggs The analysis given in yesterday's Daily Worker of the death of three | children, whose bodies were found | last Saturday on a mountainside |near Carlisle, Pa. has been con- | firmed by the reluctant admission lof police, linking the dead children |to the unemployed couple that died in a suicide pact on the same day. The bodies of this couple, found |mear Altoona, Pa., were identified | yesterday by several persons as that of a man and woman, who, with the three children, asked for lodg- ings on the night of Nov. 21 at the |tourist camp of Mrs. 8, Kroemer of Gettysburg. Unable to secure lodgings at that camp, the quintet later applied at the camp of Mrs.'| |Kroemer’s daughter, Mrs. Snyder, | {where they passed the night. Described As “Down-Hearted” Another woman, Mrs. Dill, also | identified the three children as having passed through her camp} at South Langhorne. She had pre- | viously identified photographs of the dead man and woman as “the) | down-hearted couple who accom- | panied the children.” | | She will be taken to Altoona to! view the bodies of the dead couple | |who are reported to have traveled! as Mr. and Mrs. J. C. Malone. On Tuesday, Larry Carney, 4 Philadelphia worker, positively | identified the dead man as Horace | Hughes, a worker he knew in Cali-| fornia and met again in Philadel-)} | phia on the Monday before the |tragedy. Hughes told him then he was up against it. The wife of a Carlisle, Pa., res-| taurant proprier, also identified the | quintet as having stopped for a/ {neal at that restaurant. She de-| clared she remembered them be-| cause the man had asked to be allowed to split his orders and) by a conversation she had with one} of the little girls. The girl told) her, she said, that the family was broke and jobless and often went} hungry. Police Hidse Cause of Tragedy While police yesterday claimed |that the three children had been | poisoned, Dr. George R. Moffitt, city pathologist of Harrisburgh, an- | nounced that an autopsy revealed no sign of poison. He advanced the theory that the three small girls had been slowly suffocated by gentle pressure on the throat by they slept, or by a pillow held over the nose and mouth. The bodies; of the children were found on a) earefully-made bed of pine boughs | and blankets, For days, Pennsylvania author- ities and police and the capitalist press concealed the real facts in the case: the truth, now admitted, that the five dead persons must be numbered in the long and ever- growing list of working class vic- tims of capitalist chaos and crisis, of mass hunger and misery in the midst of plenty and cynical denial of adequate relief to the unem- ployed and their starving families. needs of the masses of the city. entitled “Driven DEAD GIRLS NSL AND LID Plans LINKED WITH SET NATIONAL SUICIDE PAIR ACTION WEEK’ Mintatemteen Are Assailed by I.L.D. Leader Mrs. Janie Patterson, of Haywood Patterson, arrived in New York yesterday from Chat- tanooga, Tenn. to take an ac- tive part in the work of the In- ternational Labor Defense and the National Scottsboro-Herndon Action Committee campaign to force the U. S. Supreme Court to hear the appeals and reverse the lynch-convictons against Haywood Patterson and Clarence Norris. Mrs. Patterson has completely repudiated Samuel S, Leibowitz, and the so-called “American Scottsboro Committee,” who claimed that she was opposed to the I. L, D. leadership and con- duct of the Scottsboro defense, and even had a Harlem police- man’s wife impersonate her in a | speech over the radio, The united front struggle for the} lives and freedom of the nine in- nocent Scottsboro lads was further developed and strengthened yester- day with the effecting of a united front between the National Student League and the Student League for | Industrial Democracy for a nation- Lie student demonstration from) 1 to Dec. 7, to demand the re- | teed of the Scottsboro boys and |the dropping of the “insurrection” charges against Angelo Herndon, heroic young Negro leader of the working class. Increasing mass support around | {the organization of delegations to| |visit the offices of the New York \Amsterdam News, reformist paper, and the Jewish So- cialist Forward, to demand a retrac- tion of their slanders against the | |defenders of the boys and correc- tion of their deliberate distortions jof the facts.in the case, was also reported by the National Scotts- boro-Herndon Action Committee at 2376 Seventh Avenue. “Nation” Distortions Protested The International Labor Defense, | through its acting national secre- tary, Anna Damon, also sent a sharp protest to the “Nation,” liberal | weekly, against the false and mis- leading statements contained in an \editorial in its Nov. 26 issue, The National Student League an- nounced that directives had already been.sent out both by that organ- ization and the Student League for Industrial Democracy to their chap- |ters suggesting the setting up of committees, including Y.M.C.A.’s, clubs and student groups of all kinds to broaden the campaign in the colleges for the Scottsboro boys and Herndon, and to raise money for their defense. Against Discrimination The National Student League further announced that it will link the struggle for the release of these victims of Southern lynch terror to the campaign against racial dis- (Continued on Page 2) better. Speaking as an opponent when he was in Congress in 1932, “A sales tax... is odious.... tax is equitable is ridiculous. A $1,000 for subsistence, exempting the mercy of bread which is so generally bestowed, means that Such a burden is out of all proportion even to the gentleman who is dieting on caviar and pate de foie gras.” Certainly the workers and small business people, already reeling under the blows of the crisis, will not be fooled by this type of argument. They see family will pay $22.50 tax... . in Press) mother Harlem Negro) THE N. Y. TIMES TRIES TO WHITEWASH THE SALES TAX AN EDITORIAL headline, ‘$40,000,000 Tax on Masses Voted.’ This is misleading. It omits the fact that the food of the masses is exempt from the sales tax. More- over, the small purchases of people of scanty in- comes will yield but a small portion of the $60,- 000,000 revenue which is required and expected. The bulk of it will come from persons able to pay.” Whom is the Times trying to fool with this fake. argument? Certainly the very gentleman whom they are trying to whitewash, Mayor LaGuardia, knows |National Organization Urges Resistance to | FERA Attack The National Unemployment Councils yesterday denounced the attempts of the Federal Emergency | Relief Administration to slash wages in private industry by ordering the abandonment of the thirty cents an | hour wage rate on work relief jobs, | and called upon relief workers to | resist any attempt to lower their! wages by the election of job com- | mittees and the calling of work re- lef strikes. The National Unemployment | Councils further called upon all re- | lief workers to elect representatives | from their jobs to participate in the | Naional Congress for Unemploy- | men Insurance, which will convene ;in Washington on Jan. 5 for a} three-day session. The Council statement declared: | “The federal government has an- | nounced that henceforth workers | on relief projects will not receive thirty cents an hour, as provided up to the present, but will have to work at the prevailing local rates. This means that the hourly rates may be reduced to as low as fifteen to twenty cents an hour. workers, particularly in the South, | will not get more than five to six | cents an hour. The ‘reason’ oer | | for this slash in pay is that the ployers are complaining that ty cannot obtain workers in the fac- tories because the pay on the relief jobs is higher. Cuts Are Cited “The real purpose, however, {s to reduce the pay of the relief workers | to a starvation level and to use this | in a drive to cut the wages of the | workers in the shops. In various cities, workers are now being trans- | ferred from work projects to home | relief, relief thereby being cut. By Jan. 1, they will be assigned to re- lief jobs and will then receive as | ‘pay’ what they are now receiving in home relief. “This is part of a plan to reduce the wages of the workers generally throughout the coun- try. Thus the government an- nounces i program which will be put into ef- | fect provided the building trades | workers agree to reduce their scale. | This is to be put through on the | ‘promise’ that they will receive | ‘more work and thus get a larger yearly wage.’ In reality, it is a wage-slashing proposal. | “This drive against the working class is backed up with ‘promises’ by the government; actually it is designed to reduce the standards of | living even lower than they are ee day. “At the same time, the govern- ment declares that relief can no longer be a ‘responsibility of the federal government.’ trary, the government is — (Continued on Page 2) very clearly tha in their already family, the head he buys. less food. of the sales tax LaGuardia said: To say that the family spending $5 a week for a heretofore. Morgan-Rockefe! 4 | unemployment, Let us put the matter very simply: bills, shoes, shirts, Benjamin to Speak At Detroit Meeting Against Relief Cuts (Special to the Daily Worker) DETROIT, Mich., Nov. 29. Herbert Benjamin, national or- ganizer of the* Unemployment Councils, will be the principal speaker at the great countrywide mass meeting at Arena Gardens, Woodward Avenue and Hendrie on Sunday at 2:30 p.m., to pro- test the drastic relief cuts. The meeting has been called by the Detroit conference for unemploy- ment relief and insurance, con- sisting, of 38 trade unions, 10 unemployed organizations and 46 fraternal and social organiza- tions. ‘ In the midst of the prepara- tions for the mass meetings, the Detroit conference for unemploy- ment relief and insurance has re- ceived a. letter from the Wayne County ‘Welfare Commission, re- jecting all its demands for in- creased relief presented at a con- ference with John F. Ballenger, County Welfare Administrator. Ballenger and the Welfare Commission have been invited to appear at Sunday’s mass meeting ‘Subsistence’ Farmi ng And Forced Labor for Jobless; Councils Urge Relief Strikes Scheme Would Scatter Unemployed Millions on Homesteads WASHINGTON, Nov. abolition of all cash relief payments by the government, t complete allocation of all relief activities to purely local bodies, and the launch- ing of a plan f inding millions of families to slave-like “subsistence” homesteads scattered throughout the ‘country are the latest developments in the Roosevelt Administration's Program, as outlined tenta- 29. — The ‘social” tively by Harry L. Hopkins, Federal Relief Administrator. As part of this new attack against the 17,000,000 now officially ad- mitted as subsisting solely on relief, Hopkins’ tentative plans provide for @ program for housing which, it is alleged, would provide new business |for the building monopolies while giving homes to those families with incomes of less than $1,000 a year, | ‘Hopkins ‘has admitted that’ all’ pre- vious Roosevelt housing schemes had es since the great major- | been fail and defend their policies which have slashed relief from 10 to 30 per cent for over 66,000 families. GREEN ADMITS UNEMPLOYED ON INCREASE While the administration and manufacturers are engaged in a wage-cutting campaign with the tacit cooperation of William Green and other leaders of the A. F. of L.,| |Green admitted yesterday that the nation was “entering the winter of with 550,000 more out of work | ity of Americs |to pay for the $2,500 home: vided for in the Roosevelt housing program. But even the present tentative program amounts. only to the | vaguest talk without any specific ap- Propriations or plats. There have been rumors of a ten-billion dollar | Program, but thus far only $23,000,- |000 is available for this purpose. The Roosevelt housing programs have as their main objective the reviving of profits for the heavy in- dustry monopolies. As part of this drive, the Roosevelt government has launched a drive to reduce wages in the building industry. The re- lief slashes are also part of the | “housing” program. | It is significant that the proposed “subsist ” homesteads are in- tended to permit the workers to augment their work-relief earnings with home farming, thus forcing the workers to accept new low stand- | ards of payment on the work-relief jobs, Also, these homesteads are so placed as to disperse the great army of jobless in the cities where their inereasing militancy makes them a growing threat to the Roosevelt Wall 8 than we had at this time last year.” | The A. F. of L. figures show that | 10,671,000 were unemployed in Oc- tober, 1934, as compared with 10,- 122,000 in October, a year ago. These figures, it has been shown by the Labor Research Association, are a serious underestimation of actual and 15,000,000 is probably a far more accurate fig- ie: In November, Green said, unem- ploynient also showed a greater in- crease this year than last, and the number on part time work in the: first half of November was the highest during the course of the crisis. Consequently, many of those this year than last, despite the need (Continued on Page 2) t the sales tax means another cut low purchasing power. here is a of which earns $25 a week. He must pay a 2 per cent sales tax on gas and electricity almost everything that | He cannot get along without gas, elec- tricity and clothes. These are essentials. His pur- | chasing power is therefore reduced. This reflects inevitably on the worker’s table. It actually means drugs, For the person on the relief rolls (there are be- tween 300,000 and 400,000 heads of families in this category) the sales tax is disastrous. With rising prices the small relief check (amounting to about family of five) buys even less than The Times lies, consciously and deliberately, in order to cover up the enormous crime against the masses of the city of New York perpetrated by the er banks, the real dictators of the Dyers Study New Proposal On Agreement PATERSON, N. J., Noy. 29.—The settlement committee of the strik- ing dyers held a conference early | today with the employers, to con- sider a proposal of Nathan Sheff- erman, of the National Textile Re- On the con-|who have jobs have lower incomes) lations Board, which is termed a | concession t owards the 100 per | cent union shop idea. Although de- | tails are not yet available, it is re- | ported that union men are given | preference in the hiring. When reports came of scabs at the Clairmont, and General Piece Dye Works yesterday, the large picket line which mobilized thers found that only two dye foremen were working, Silk workers are called to a mass meeting on Saturday to 10 a.m. at Carpenters Hall, where the rank and file delegates which they elected jto the recent convention of Sill | Workers will give a report. |Defense Group to Fight Conviction of Turney On Accusation of Libel BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Nov. 29,.~ The International Labor Defense announced today that it would ape | peal the conviction of Pete Turney, | who was convicted of criminal libel | tor possessing a leaflet put out by |the International Labor Defense characterizing members of the “red | squad” as rats, and of Israel Ber= j lin, convicted under the Downs Ore |dinance of having more than one copy of a leaflet against war and fascism in his possession. \ fae.