The Daily Worker Newspaper, December 19, 1934, Page 5

NAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1934 — . |Peasant Guest Houses in Soviet Union a” SHANGE Cement.Bond Between City and Country —THE — || WORLD! ——<« By MICHAEL GOLD E LIVE in an epoch of swift, deep-going social changes. All around us is the chaos, the hunger and the be- wilderment bred by the collapse of capitalism. Our lives are the lives of people who walk along the edge of a preci- pice. We do not know whether tomorrow the world will be plunged into the chaos of a new horrible world war or whether we shall wake up in the morning to find ourselves jobless, our furniture | on the street, and ourselves facing the miseries and terrors of starva- | tion. There is no security. There is no feeling of well-being. There is Spiritual as well as material hunger in our world, We live our lives, millions of us, like people in a nightmare. It is a nightmare peopled with terrors and horrors. It is impossible to believe at times that people who have hearts or heads should suffer as we see people all around us suffering. A great many of us feel helpless. Some of us have been clerks for years and years. We are high school graduates or college graduates, The world seemed fairly simple to us. All one did was graduate from school, get a job, get married, have a little fun. There were no yawn- ing abysses under our feet. There was no black invisibility of the future before us. We believed that if you worked hard, if you were earnest, sincere, and honest, all in the end would be well. The boss would be impressed. You'd get a raise, Or you'd join the local Demo- cratic or Republican Club and get in well with the district captain, This would assure you the nécessary political pull when you needed it. Life was something to work hard at, and if you were & good student you passed the examination. Or you were a worker in a textile mill. Your hands learned and knew every movement of the loom. Your eyes understood each strand and thread. You said to yourself, if you worked hard and you were honest ahd trustworthy and saved a little money, maybe the kids wouldn’t have to go to wotk in the mill. the education you didn’t have. Maybe they’d get a chance at the life you never knew. They'd go away to the big cities. They'd go to work in some office, become doctors or public accountants, and have an éasier life than you had. Everybody was dreaming that life would be good to us. Life could be conquered. If only we worked hard, if only we didn’t anger the boss, if only we were honest, * . . The End of a Dream ND today, the whole dream has collapsed. We know now that no matter how well we work, how honest we are, how sacrificing and hard-working, it doesn’t matter. Five years of hunger, unemploy- ment, iticreasing poverty has taught us that. We have‘ learned to see that the cards are stacked against us. Our government is not ours at all. It belongs to the boss just like the mill belongs to him, or the office furniture, or our jobs. We don’t own anything, except the right to sweat and hunger. We are at the bottom of the social ladder. We're the nameless, obscure, million-strong and million-named mass. Look around us. Look at our class. Look at the millions of workers and toilers like oursélves whose lives repeat ours like each drop of water repeats the life of a million other drops. We work at every possible occupation. Wherever there is some- thing to be built, or broken, or hammered, or Woven, or mended, there you will find us. In the tenements in the big cities, in the frame houses in the mill towns, in the shacks of mining camps, in the road gangs on the desert, in the cotton fields by the river, you'll find our class. Everything that’s made, we make. Everything that’s grown, we grow. Everything is ours except the right to enjoy The products of our labor.- Except the right to usé what wé have earned. They buy and sell us like slaves on the block, Have you evér seen a crowd of stevedores standing in front of the freight office? Have you ever seen the boss picking out the biggest muscles and the largest shoulders from among the hundreds of workers standing in the crowd? They used to select slaves like that on the block. Only they had to feed the slave and keep him during the winter. It is much cheaper for them this way. It doesn’t cost as much, and they have as many of us as they want. Some Still Believe «AND now after five years some of us aré asking questions. Deep, burning questions. But not all of us. Some still think that they are hungry and poor and out of work because they're not good enough, not smart enough, not shrewd enough. They think the boss is a boss because he is smarter and shrewder and worked harder. But think: the richest men in America do nothing at all. Nothing. Because mills and men work for them. All they do is gamble with stocks— stocks which represent the back-breaking work we are doing in the mill, Others think they can escape history. They climb into a hole and pull the hole in after them. Become little storekeepers, or keep @ miserly little job and work hard and be honest and history and capitalism will bé kind to them. They refusé to look at the cruelty and the heartlessness and the poverty of workers under capitalism full in the face. They are trying to play possum with war and hunger and fascism. But they can’t escape. . . * The Others Bo there are still others. These have come to realize that nothing that is good for all and good for themselves can be granted to them while the bosses continue to own the mills and the lives of mil- lions of workers. They have said to themselves that the government is not their government. It is the government of the bossés. It belongs to them, it is run by them and their tools, it is their office boy. And these have realized that the war that hangs over their heads is a war which has been born out of the same womb that gave birth to their hunger and poverty. They know that their class is divided in a thousand ways. That the struggle to survive is intense and terrible. Their class is divided by racial hatreds, native-foreigner hatreds, sectional hatreds. But they know that all these hatreds are illusions carefully fostered by the boss who owns the mills and their lives. They know that bétween worker and worker there is a deep in- eradicable unity of labor. Before this, no false walls, no lying bar- riers can survive. They will fall. And they know that only when their class, only when those who make and grow and create, will own the mills and the land and the houses will they be able to make life worth living. They know that in Russia other workers have this. They know that the workers can create and administer their own laws and courts. And when they look at the richness and greatness that lies unused and despoiled by the brigands of America, they know that some day in America too, just a8 in Russia, all the walls will fall and over their ruins will clamber the great armies of the working class. Then there will be naars and plenty. Only then. contributions received to the credit of “Change the World” to put the Daily Worker drive over the top. L. Borenstein .........0.0.005 .$ 1,00 A. Milmin .. - 525 M. Overbeck 2.00 Budeny Troop, Y. P. A., Mich, 1.00 Henry Chestnut .. oo . 2.00 Previously received 1,049.29. TOTAL 1060.54 * . . ‘To the highest contributor cach day, Mike Gold will preset an autographed copy of his novel, “Jews Without Money,” or an original autographed manuscript of is “Change the World” columa, Maybe the kids would get | Free Shows, Lectures for Guest Peasants This is the second of four ar- | | ticles written by Ben Fieid on the | life of farmers and peasants in the Soviet Union. Ben Field recently returned from a visit to the U. S. S. R. where he made a study of farm conditions, visiting many | collectives, as well as attending the Writers Congress. He con- tributed while there to Pravda, for the Soviet Peasants Gazette and the French “Veice of the | Peasant.” a 7 | | | By BEN FIELD | The Peasant Guest Houses have | done much to break down the age- old antagonism between farm and city in Soviet Russia. Every Peasant House is not only a home for the| peasants when they come to town, it is also a club where they can meet their comrades, the city work- gear box where the peasants ca Study as under a great lense the| swiftly moving different parts of the socialization of agriculture. There aré 5,000 of such Peasant Guest Houses throughout the U. 8. |S. R. Moscow province alone has | 154. The Peasant Guest House in the city of Moscow has accomada- tions for 700 peasants. Here Cir- cassian Cossacks, Kalmuks, Tadjiks, |Tartars, Uzbecks, peasants from the \farflung corners of the U. S. S. R. Stay as the guests of the Moscow workers. The peasants generally stay for three days. Lectures, theatres, con- certs, excursions to factories, etc.. jare free. From 9 to 4, peasants go on their own business. After 4 every guest house makés it its business to entertain and instruct its far guests. You often see Cossacks with cartridge belts and daggers Uzbecks with their skulleaps ‘and padded coats file into Moscow the- atres to be given the front row seats or the boxes. In the Moscow Peasant House |there are always up-to-date exhibi- | tions. Here the peasants can learn in the electric hothouse how the ex- cellent champagnon mushrooms are grown. They see sheaves of rye grown only since 1930 in Moscow region. They study charts show- ing the progress in airplane sow- ing. Almost 1,000,000 acres of wheat \ Were sown in 1934. The peasants can hop into the seat of a tractor from Rostov or from Chelyabinsk. The average Soviet tractor gives three times the service of a John | Deere or a Fordson. Here is a flax cutter invented by a Soviet worker cutting ten acres in eight hours. There heaps of corn kernels with advice as to seed selection. In an- other section of the exhibition the peasants come across scenes in the tamatic fight against drouth, which the Soviets are fast conquering. The Soviet harvest was only 2 per cent Concerts, Kolhoznik, the Literary Gazette, | | and is the American correspondent | It is @ school, a museum, the | or | A Happy Man in A Happy Land lower than last yei |harvest, while the Ameri |was the lowest in 50 years. |tures of Michurin, the plant wizard, after whom a city has been named, whom Soviet Russia has given hun- dreds of acres, assistants, students to carry on his work of helping transform Russia into a real Soviet garden. Every Peasant House has its din- ing room, room for women, room for men with newspapers, books, chess games, nursery. When we |stepped into the nursery the nurse |pointed to a cot. A little girl with la cheek like a winesap apple opened one black eye at us. S only child of young pe: lare collective farm actors. While This is a typical, staunch Sovi | taking part in the collectivization of farming, thus speeding up Social- ist construction in the Soviet Union. ‘iet peasant. Millions like him are rents were visiting Moscow she was being well taken | Peasants Talk Freely | Our guide is a young student who carries with him Romain Rolland’s us downstairs to the courtyard where peasants are sitting in the }sun talking. We talk to one of \the peasants. And here something \happens that helps again shove the |lie down the throats of those who cry there is no freedom in Russia, that interviews with foreigners are | staged.” With us is a young woman from Seeing the bust of Lenin | Oregon. is the in the Peasant Guest House, she! factories everywhere in Russia.” Collectives Better Than Former ‘Deaf’ Village Life When our guide is called aside by one of the men in the office of the P ant House, she s up her ‘Red tape. He ought to be rs. smashed in the face. I'll bet he’s raid the peasant’ll tell us too h. That's why he’s bawling out the student.” The student comes back flushed. Oh, nothing. He's been scolded a little for not having brought the Americans into one of the rooms side, taken several peasants where we would all be comf be able to find out conditio: ctorily, at great length. ing on one leg, so to spea! The peasant is an elderly bearded man with a stick. cataracts on both eyes. He has He le heavily on his stick. He li carefully. His answers are soft, hesitant. He is a member of the colle! farm Spark of Paris Commune. Does he know what the Paris Commune was? He considers for a second. shakes his head. The student tells him. He nods. No, he did not know but he one of the first to join. | He knows what the electric Spark jof Paris Commune fs. In the old pale he lived on a farm of three acres. Seventeen eaters in the ;family. Every loaf was torn to crumbs and every crumb a loaf. | They had no horse. Now his brigade alone made 4,000 pounds of wheat. | There are 100 cows and 75 working ; horses on the collective. | The Old “Deaf” Village Life | The peasants are happy? | The peasants are ha | In what other respe | tivization better than old way? In every respect. | In every respect? In every respect. There is noth- jing in which the collective is not | better than the old “deaf village” life. In every respect. He has come to the city for a month to have his eyes operated on. | He can not see well enough to do ve He is collec- king the _ | his work. How can he afford it? How can he afford to leave his wife and chil- |dren slone, travel to the city, and | Spend a month here? | His lids move softly over the | swollen Gray-clotted eyes, Every member of the Snark of Paris Com- dreds of thousands of rubles, hun- /novel “Jean Christophe.” He brings | mune is insured against sickness. The collective pays. His family away. What would have happened in the old days, in the old days under the Czar? Nothing. Nothing? Nothing. He puts his hands over his eyes like blinders. Nothing. We wish him speedy recovery. He shakes hands. He sits down ants who|had said, “There must be Lenin/on the bench in his bast shoes. He | waits:'in the warm sun, They Gave Up Their Freedom; By SASHA SMALL THE magic of the N. ¥. Times fund for the Hundred Neediest Cases isn’t working so well this year. There’s a hitch somewhere. So far only $116,657 has come in, $6,000 be- hind last year, This magical sum is supposed to rehabilitate families— 100 exactly—that are completely on the rocks. The International Labor Defense is in the midst of a drive for need- fest cases too, at this moment. Its Prigoners Relief Department is con- ducting a Ohristmas Drive for Pol- itical Prisoners and their families. This drive makes no such modest claims as the New York Times! It knows that even a very substantial sum of money and a fine bundle of | clothes and shoes and food for ihe destitute families of the men who are behind bars for their loyalty to the working class, will not solve the problems of these neediest cases. It will take something much more far | reaching and basic than a Christ- mas gift to do that. | But the need of these families is very gréat. They are practically destitute except for the money they receivé from the Prisoners Relief Department of the I. L. D. How- ever, their spirit is not broken. Their letters are filled with misery but not despair. Their courage is inspiring—but it needs solidarity to keep it from being crushed beneath the burden of hunger, cold and lone- liness. | The Christmas Drive for political prisoners and their families has as its chief aim the raising of this sol- idarity—this moral and material aid to the victims of ruling class justice, Its slogan, “They Gave Theit Free- dom, Give Them Your Support,” must be translated into reality by — Little Lefty MR. GOGG 15 GROGGY “AE MOTHERS HAVE HAD “THEIR SAY— BUT BEFORE HE HAS A CHANCE “16 RECOVER UNCLE JOKN | | Srers n— a flood of contributions, money, clothes, shoes, books to the Prison- ers Relief Department, I. L. D., Room 610, 80 East 11th Street, Now York City. cases: Sona Se ILE COCHRAN is serving a three. year sentence in South Dakoia penitentiary. He was one of the pickets during the Iowa and South Dakota milk war in 1933. They bar- ricaded the roads with logs, bales of hay, anything to keep the miik trucks out of the marketing center, Sioux City. The Roberts Dairy Cor- poration was making 300 per cent on every quart of milk. They hired the most notoricus rum runners in town, the Markells, who ran one truck [past the lines by shooting their way through. Next time they came, the pickets wete armed and returned the thugs’ fire. Cochran was wounded, captured and con- John Doe who killed Markell.” Ccechran, “and it sure is hard at times. We do all our work in the Haill the 11th Anniversa: Daily Worker, January 19, 193i I send revolutionary grecting of the American working class. Name .. City . (All greetin: Below are a few of the necdiest | Now They Cail for Your Support! in the crop.” There are seven chil- | dren, ranging in age from 9 to 16. | Their monthly income is about $15. ; The Prisoners’ Relief Department | of the I. L. D. is their only other | source Of income, ts * | {\PHELIA WILLIAMS keeps house | in Chattanooga, Tenn., takes | care of six little children and goes to school whenever she gets a chance. Soon she will be 14 years old. Her mother, Mamie Williams, is 33 years old, ill with a bad heart and must stay in bed. The relief |lady lets them have about two | dollars a week for all of them. Since | her father died four years ago, they | struggled along somehow, but after j he died things got worse and worse. | In March, 1031, the oldest son, | Eugene, who was then 14, left home | to search for work with his friend, | Haywood Patterson. On March 25 | he was arrested at Paint Rock, Ala- sentenced to death with seven other the country and help do whatever she can to set her brother free, but and Lenin Memorial Edition of the to the Daily Worker, the organizer which must be accompanied by cash or mon: order, will be published in the Daily Worker.) to be cared for and fed, she has her hands full. IMMA BRELTIC is 40 years old and serving.a two-year sentence in one of the country’s worst pris- ons, Blawnox Workhouse, Alleghany County, Pa. “Inciting to riot” was the charge which sent her up on the testimony of the Jones and Loughlin Company’s thugs. Her actual crime was running a relief kitchen in the Ambridge strike. During the first few weeks of her sentence she lost 14 pounds, but there is no medical attention at Blawnox. In addition to her two- year sentence there is a $500 fine against her and $200 court costs. She has an unemployed husband and two children, 6 and 9. ey ee HHIL FRANKFELD, young leade: of the Unemployment Councils of western Pennsylvania, is another prisoner at Blawnox. He is serving victed for “being an accomplice of | bama, and early in April he was two to four years for “inciting to riot and obstructing legal process,” | “I am still trying to run a farm| Scottshoro boys. Ophelia has said i.e., leading the unemployed in halt- without a husband,” writes Mrs.| that she would love to go around ing the eviction of another unem- ployed worker from his home. He has been put to work in the rag | fields except two months in the| with her mother sick and all those shop, wheze he spends all the hours yeaz, when we have somebody to put/ little children at home that have of daylight breathing in disease- laden dust. He is allowed only one letter and one visitor a month. His young wife, Mary, has just had a baby. “He is a very sweet baby,” she writes. “He is good, he sleeps a lot and he certainly can eat. He didnt | see his daddy yet, nor did his daddy | see him.” Last time Mary went to |see her husband, he said, “When I | write to you I should tell you that ‘he is all right and he will be a better soldier and even more loyal to the workers when he gets out.” MA GOGG,AS A REPRESEN - MATIVE OF THE WORKERS EX- SERVICEMENS LEAGUE | DEMAND ACTION RIGHT NOW ON“THIS MATTER / 1 AN & DELEGATE OF |, “Tl UNEMPLOYMENT CoUNCIL , AND WE SUPPORT THESE CHILD REN AND PARENTS j00%/ PLOYED “TEACHERS A550C, INSISTS You TAKE BACK MISS GooDHARY \MMEOIRTELY / works on the collective while he is | Page 5 Book on Unemployment Insurance Carefully Ignores Workers’ Bill UNEMPLOYMENT AND by Robert G. Elk F Rinehart, 136 pp., $1. Reviewed by HOWARD BOLDT ERE are two maine and C: down by the RELIEF, 1 these two 1 70 per cent are Ni Here is another small t etta, West Virginia. Stary rampant and relief is sp: $2 a week in Tennessee; Missouri, Mr. Elbert does not cite these figures in his little book—he exam- ines into some superficial and out- ward causes of mass employment barely scratches the surface and offers his panacea. Thus, he writes: “Depressions grow out of a com- plexity of causes. A potent cause is a defective monetary policy d cites maladministration in the Fed- eral Reserve System! But any understanding of this book, which, despite its title, de- votes itself entirely to the question of unemployment insurance, must necessarily turn upon Robert G. El- bert himself. He is a retired capitalist who calls himself an “economic free thinker and realist.” He has served as a member of the Industrial Advisory | Board, and is at present a member of the Business Advisory and Plan- ning Council of the Department of Commerce. 8S ELBERT warms up to his sub- ject, he touches lightly upon a few basic causes of mass unemploy- ment. And now he says, “A wide gap between productive output and national purchasing power is alone a strong enough factor to bring on a depression, even under the best monetary policy conceivable.” And further on, “the four cigarette com- panies known as the ‘Big Four’ actually paid more to their stock- holders in cash dividends in the year 1932 than the American tobac- | co farmer received for h‘s entire crop.” (Author’s emphasis.) Beyond doubt, Elbert has devoted considerable study to the question | of unemployment insurance. Al- though the slender volume takes into consideration only a few of the plans thus far proposed, interspersed | throughout the text are references that show that the author is quite | thoroughly conversant with his sub- ject. ly, the book outlines the main of the Wisconsin Un- employment Compensation Act, the Wasgner-Lewis Bill, the Ohio Plan and the “mode! bill” proposed by the American Association for Social Security. | Briefly, it enters into @ criticism of each of these plans. Thus, Mr. | Elbert says, “I think the Wisconsin | Plan contains about every possible defect that it is possible to incor- porate into an unemployment insur- | ance or ‘compensation’ scheme.” He ; “considers the segregation of re- | serves by companies, as embodied in| the Wisconsin law, a fundamental John Reed’s Famous Book to Be Issued By Modern Library John Reed's famous “Ten Days That Shook the World,” the story by an eyewitness of the Russian Revolution, will be published in a Modern Library edition in the early Spring. Lenin's letter of apprecia- tion to John Reed will be printed as a foreword, and the volume will include facsimiles of some of the all-important Russian manifestoes ; of the period that changed the lives of a hundred and fifty million people. TUNING to the fact 1 com- far to all the eva e Wisconsin ible for the efit payments Had he stopped at a c the various measu the name of unemploymen ance, Elbert would have p valuable e of unemplo: though it is in its, puts forth his owr the subject at revealed the ant clearly as was sho of the Wisconsin Bill, the Wa Lewis Bill, the Ohio Plan or tt |“model bill” of the American Asso- ciation for Social Secu: Unemployment insurance, accord- ing to Elbert, i: income for a li employes cont only a limited nt | In what he plan,” Elbert pu’ lowing proposals domestic servants, professional peo- ple, federal, state and city employes, casual workers and school teachers should be excluded from benefits. Workezs 5! ld cont. continuously employéd shall have right to draw upon the reserv which they themselves have bu up. Benefits should not run more than twenty-six weeks; a pen- alty should be exacted upon t : fired for “misconduct,” and “b spread in wages; i time to which to cover workers. nber of s a “tentative forward the fol- rectly in a st and other fo: this time, are nov a Elbert s er problems must be in another way. Workers should contribute to any unemployment insuranc® plan, El- bert states, in order that the wo) may “feel that his interest in the fund is equal to that of his employ er,” a new slant that has here come to our attention for the first time, and repeats the benefits would be in the nature of a gift unless con- tributions were exacted from the worker. ERTAIN basic facts are ignored by Elbert and all of his ilk, whose main purpose is not to grant a measure of security to the workers but to secure their own profits The loss in income among the working population is at once a direct chal- lenge to the older forms of social and unemployment insurance that have been in effect in European countries and the turning point to newer forms that will be wrested from the owning class only by the mass weight of numbers who are Tallied behind such a measure as the Workers Unemployment Insur- ance Bill. This is the essence of the Work- ers Unemployment Insurance Bill, | the measure which guarantees in- come commensurate with existing wage levels to all unemployed undér direct impost on that class which is | most able to pay, and through the use of war funds. | But the learned apologist, Mr. | Elbert, had not heard of the Worke jers’ Bill. Contributions received to the credit of Lab. and Shop: $5.00 +++- 299.40 Berne and Thomas .... 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Sylvia 10:30-WEAF—One Man's Family—Sketch WOR-—Goldkette Orchestra | ‘WJZ—Denny Orchestra; Harry Rich- man, Songs WABO—Mary Bestman, Soprano; Evan Evans, Baritone ‘Mixed Chorus News WJZ——Coleman Orchestra WABC—Belasco Orchestra 11:18-WEAP—Robert Royce, Tenor WOR—Moonbeams Trio 11:30*WEAT—Dance Music (Also WOR, WJZ, WABC) 11:45-WABC—A Balanced Budget-or In- flation—Professor Edwin W. Kem- merer of Princeton University. Barie Ss Contributions received to the credit of Del: Sec, 5 Unit 30... M. Overbeck Previously received . Del will present a beautiful colored portrait of his cartoon characters every day to the highest contributor