The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 23, 1935, Page 5

I a TT TO TT TE LT TT ST La a a RS SS Te etree = MICHAEL GOLD & MEREICAN writers of the left-wing have begun to orS8anize the preparations for a national writers’ congress to be held in New York around May First. It will be the first congress of writers ever held in this country, and should have much of the historic importance of the congress of So- viet writers held recently in Moscow. Since the depression, we have seen a great drift of the lower middle class professionals toward the left. Great sections of the writers, especially among the younger men and women, have reflected this tendency in their creative thinking. We are at the threshhold of a broad and mature revolutionary literature in America. In the first stages of such a movement, there are always many confusions and misunderstandings. Clarity and a broad, general line are necessary. The writers’ congress will serve a political task, in that it will formulate the political terms on which writ- ers can best give their support to the working class. It will also serve to clear up the technical and esthetic problems that beset the writers at such a time of changing landmarks, and help to reorientate them to a new world of esthetics. In preparation for this congress, a wide discus- sion of literary problems is being planned in the revolutionary and liberal press. The letter by Edward Dahlberg, the novelist, which follows, will open such a discussion in this column, I hope. Writers and workers are invited to make their comment on it. I disagree with some of Dahiberg’s formulations, arid shall reply to them tomorrow: * * “ Are Our Critics Too Patronizing? “""' HE number of books published in 1934 by revo- lutionary, proletarian and fellow-traveler novel- ists was exceedingly impressive; but what was often disheartening was the way so many of these books were mishandled. The New York Times, for ex- ample, either gives novels with a definite working class bias an obituary notice or no mention what- ever. Clifton Fadiman in the New Yorker, and this is quite typical, likes books very intensely in four to seven lines, that is books that are danger- ous to like, Marxist books, we know, are betrayed and sold out in much the same manner as strikes, and Marx himself had a good deal to say about the ‘conspiracy of silence’ surrounding the pub- lication of his own works. “It is then correct to assume that these books, which belong to us, would receive the most thorough-going and careful analysis in the Com- munist press and magazines and that a drive would be launched to give these novels a wide circula- tion. But no such thing is done; frequently the very contrary is true. “So many reviews appearing in our various magazines and periodicals are often a series of Slogans and didactic instructions and are to boot vety patronizing. Recently in the New Masses Granville Hicks, estimating proletarian literature for 1934, passed out little gold stars to writers. This system. of demerits and merits, to say the Teast, is very offensive. For instance, Hicks writes, dispraising one author while he insults the other: ‘Langston Hughes’ Not Without Laughter was more disappointing than Calico Shoes because I had expected more.’ Later on he gives Waldo Frank a pedagogical pat on the back, from above .. . ‘I honor him for his persistence and his honesty.’ Honoring a highly serious author and one of the most gifted prose writers in America today for his persistence is simply obnoxious. * * . Class Room Criticism “§ PERFECT illustration of this sort of haphazard inconsistency is Granville Hick’s review of Robert Cantwell’s Land of Plenty; it was a quict burial done in a brief litany of about three hun- dred words. Hicks wrote then: 4... The Land of Plenty fails to sweep the reader along, as William Rollins’ The Shadow Before does, to a high resolve and a sense of ultimate triumph.’ When Cantwell complained, Hicks rhetorically slapped him down with: ‘For what seemed to me good reasons I had to review it briefly,’ and ‘But it does not seem. to me that he (Cantwell) raises the problem cogently enough for his novel to deserve the political dis- cussion he demands.’ In the Jan. 1 issue of the New Masses, Granville Hicks writes: ‘The first part of Cantwell's Land of Plenty has none of the faults of The Shadow Before, and I rank it as the finest piece of imaginative writing the revolutionary movement in America has produced.’ “These kinds of class room lessons and contradic- tions fills the columns of our young reviewers. These Plekhanovs usually spend three-fourths of the space of a book review on a discussion of the deepening of the crisis and toward the conclusion manage somehow to blunder iiito a discussion of the novel before them. A month or so ago Philip Rahy suc- ceeded in packing into a four hundred word re- view of James T. Farrell's Calico Stories the follow- ing: ‘Statisticial lineaments,’ ‘successive drain and flood of objective drama,’ ‘subjective interposition of personality,’ ‘naturalia,’ ‘awaited coordination,’ and did not mention one specific character or story in the book. “Wallace Phelps, reviewing Joyce, has the fol- lowing mutually exclusive statements and, in one short piece: ‘The demise of Joyce's disciples proves that the method of any writer, however effective, cannot be translated to other literary material, par- ticularly proletarian material, and ‘Ulysses is now part of our literary heritage. And it is likely that proletarian writers will use variants of the Joycean method.’ * * The Literary Speed-up “DECENTLY the Partisan Review adopted the literary speed-up in the best briefer notice tradition of the Times and Nation (Newhouse’s You’ Can’t Sleep Here was given a short in the latter and for an obvious reason); the reviewer acted as pallbearer for no less than six books al- lotting something like two hundred words to each novel. “Revolutionary novelists are writing books not to kill time, as Knut Hamsum said a short while ago, but to persuade the hesitant and the wavering that there is only one solution to hunger, home- lessness and bitter despair. “They cannot perform that duty without readers; «ea reaccrs are marshalled and organized like dem- onstrations, there is no ‘spontaneity’ about these things. And until this is done, we have all of us failed to carry out a very significant task: the edu- cation of the masses. Workers will come to the Communist Party through many avenues; a novel dealing with hunger, poverty, the nomadic migra- tions of the unemployed may touch him more deeply and poignantly than a pamphlet. Aside from the Hunger March to Washington in 1932 and Nazism, one of my first revolutionary experi- ences was Neukrants's Barricades in Berlin.” (Signed) EDWARD DAHLBERG. WAUT'LL You Hi WHAT'S ALL~fy! his, stover! HYSTERICS | RGOUY, SPUNKY Haw! HRW IT'LL Jus? SLAY YA! DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JAN ERR IPE, Jaws IN “HE WORLD - TELEGRAM “THERE'S @ HEADLINE: "MIS PERKINS REFUSE 0 GuaRe BATH WITH MEN /* Finicky Fannie! N ARY 23, 1935 SEEMS Like he MADAM DON'T MIND BEIN' IN THe SAME BORT WITH Matty WOLL, ED MaGRADY! "BILL GREEN — - BUT SHE DON'T WANNA BE IN “THE Be | ‘News og Workers’ | Schools from East) ITo West Coast 'HIS column invites suggestions and criticisms comcerning the | subjects and instruction at all Workers Schools. All students, in- structors and those interested in | working class education are urged to write. Students especially, are urged to write in concerning their life and activities in the Workers Schools. Letters should be sent care of this column, 35 East 12th Street, N. Y. C. * |NEW YORK WORKERS SCHOOL The New York Workers School is happy to announce that its li- brary (the Ruthenberg Library) has at last succeeded in acquiring enough books to open a circulat- ing branch. The most important books by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and the more recent books dealing with the class struggle can be borrowed, ‘+e 18 ON TRIAL IN SACRAMENTO When 18 workers (several of them | instructors of the Sacramento Work- ers School) were arrested in Sacra- mento charged with Criminal Syn- dicalism, the right of the entire | working class to free speech, free |press and assemblage was chal- \lenged. The trial is taking place | now against a background of mon- strous terror against the working) class, incited by the police. Nation- Wide pressure must be brought to bear at once for the immediate re- lease of the 18 workers. ‘Two thousand, eight hundred and) | fifty students and fifty instructors of the New York Workers School vigorously protested the arrest of the 18 workers. They unanimously passed a resolution demanding their immediate release. Similar resolutions should be passed at once by all working class | organizations and sent to District | 4 Attorney Otis D, Babcock, Judge Lemmon and Governor Merriam. Pray up PITTSBURGH WORKERS SCHOOL In the campaign launched to raise $1,000 by March 1 to establish a Workers School in Pittsburgh, the | Workers School Committee insti- tuted Socialist competition among the Sections, Units, Locals, Lan- guage and mass organizations in | the District, for the fulfillment of | | quotas. In this campaign, the Hill Sec- | tion is ¢arrying on a series of forums jon the Negro Question, with the object of strengthening the L.S.N.R.| and to arouse the Negro comrades | to the need of and purpose of work- ers’ education, black and white united. School Committees are being or- | ganized in all the Sections, Units, Locals, Mass and Language organi- zations. These will organize affairs to raise funds, and will arrange for their own classes at once. | All reports and contributions | should be sent in to the Workers School Committee, 1638 Fifth Ave- nue, Pittsburgh, Pa. Funds are re- quired immediately to secure head- quarters for the school and to begin | the printing and mimeographing of material to be used in the classes, The Milwaukee Workers School announces a series of Sunday after- noon forums to be given at 1037 |W. Juneau Avenue. New Masses Available In Chicago Libraries | CHICAGO.—Heretofore the New Masses has not been ayailable for readers in the various branch li- braries in this city, but recently a three-month trial subscription was given them from the bulk subscrip- tions obtained at a Spivak meeting, and it has been placed in circula- tion in eighteen branches in this city, re-subscription to be on the basis of adequate demand for the magazine by readers. In order that Chicago workers may know that this is available at the libraries, we are printing below the names and addresses of the branch libraries where the maga- zine is nw available. Albany Park Branch, 3536-38 Lawrence Ave.; Austin Branch, Broadway Branch, 3319-21 Broadway Ave.; Chatham Branch, 79th St. and Maryland Ave.; Chicago Lawn Branch, 62nd Pl. and Kedzie Ave; Douglas Branch, 13th St. and Homan Ave.; Humboldt Branch, 2553 W. North Ave.; Independence Branch, 3718-20 Irving Park Blvd.; Kelly Branch, 62nd St. and Normal Blvd.; Lewis Branch, 1945-47 W. Madison St.; Northwestern Branch, 1615-17 N. Crawford Ave.; Pullman Branch, 110th St. and Indiana Ave.; Rogers Branch 1731 Greenleaf Ave.; South Shore Branch, 73rd St. and Ex- change Ave.; Toman Branch, 27th St. and Crawford Ave.; Woodlawn Branch, 6247-49 Kimbark Ave.; Hild Regional Branch, 4536-44 Lincoln Ave.; Legler Regional Branch, Crawford Ave. and Mon- roe St. * What are you doing to help the Daily Worker secure 10,000 new | and popular booklet by R. Palme | | showed the ability of Lenin’s lead- The Daily Worker is printing serially the extremely valuable Dutt, “Life and Teachings of | ¥. I, Lenin,” published by Inter- national Publishers. January 21 was the eleventh anniversary of the death of Lenin. During these ten years the teach- | ings of Lenin have spread to ever | wider sections of the globe, inspir- ing the workers and oppressed to greater assaults on capitalism. CHAPTER II. Life of Lenin XIV. ‘HE Polish offensive was over- whelmingly defeated, and gave place to a revolutionary offensive which reached to within a few miles of Warsaw. The offensive to War-| saw was from a military strategic) point of view open to criticism and had to be followed by a retreat; but Lenin took the direct responsibility in advocating this offensive, which nearly turned the fortunes of the European revolution, for political reasons, Just as the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and subsequent new economic policy ership to retreat (for which reason these two have been taken by all bourgeois and reformist writers as the height of his statesmanship, as if they were more important than the Bolshevik Revolution), so the advance on Warsaw showed his equal readiness to take the most daring offensive when the situation offered even a chance against odds to gain by it, Despite its subsequent defeat, Lenin judged the offensive a gain | (Report to the All-Russian Commu- | nist Party Conference, September, | 1920), first, because it demonstrated | the strength of the Soviet régime to| western imperialism and put a check on the policy of constant attacks, and second, because of the enormous stimulus it gave to the European working class movement, as shown in the British Council of Action. A completely new world situation | developed from the beginning of 1921, On the one hand the inter- national working class had been able to defeat the attack of im- Life and Teachings of Lenin > By R. PALME DUTT | | | perialism on the Soviet Republic. | On the other hand, the interna- tional working class had not been able to overthrow imperialism out- side the Soviet Republic. In con- Sequence, a temporary “equilibrium” or “balance of forces” resulted, which might last for a shorter or longer period, during which it was necessary to prepare and organize the working class forces so long as the “respite” lasted, until a new at- tack of imperialism developed or a new world revolutionary wave. How was this new situation to be met? It was to the problems of this new period, opening in 1921,/ and still continuing, though now} visibly approaching its clase, that| Lenin gave his final leadership to the world working class. See fies JN the first place, a completely new) turn was necessary in the Soviet Republic. With the ending of the civil wars, the original plans of economic construction, through workers’ state control of production to the organization of socialism, al- ready set out with complete clear- ness both before and immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution, had) now to be resumed. The blockade| and the civil wars had interrupted all these plans and compelled the system of “War Communism,” i.., universal requisitioning and ration- ing, but no organization of socialist | production. It was now necessary | as the Kronstadt revolt and the Tambov revolt in the beginning of 1921 showed the urgency. | Accordingly, in March, 1921, the New Economic Policy was intro-| duced. This replaced the requi- sitioning by the agricultural tax, and restored a limited freedom of small-scale private trading, while the workers’ state retained the “economic heights,” the monopoly | of foreign trade, banking, transport, | and large-scale industry. In this, way the controlled advance to an) increasing proportion of socialist | organization of production could be| systematically carried forward. | At the time, and for some years and reformist comment universally | hailed the New Economic Policy or “Nep” as the return to capitalism and abandonment of socialism. It} was, of course, nothing of the kind, | as Lenin made fully clear at the time, but on the contrary, the| method of the conscious and sys- tematic advance to socialism. Today this is clear to all, and the! old prophecies of the victory of) private capitalism through Nep have already passed into the dustbin of | history, now that the process of | systematic development has reached | the stage of large-scale socialist | construction through the Five-Year Plan. In the time of Lenin it was still possible for the capitalist propagandists to point to the ruin/ and destruction caused by tsarism| and the civil wars (notably the famine of 1921, which took place in the regions that had been devas- | tated by the White brigands) as) evidence of the “bankruptcy of so- cialism” in contrast to capitalist “prosperity” in America and west- ern Europe. Today, when four years of the world economic crisis of capitalism have demonstrated universal declin- ing production, unemployment and chaos in every country of the capi- talist world, while the Soviet Union alone has doubled and trebled its production at a rate unequalled in history, this propaganda is no longer | possible. Yet all this development was already implicit in the lines of policy laid down by Lenin, although he could not live to see it. (To be continued) Art Exhibit Vivid, By DOUGLAS McDONALD T the headquarters of the Tom- kins Square Unemployment Council there is now being shown a Young Pioneer art exhibit which already has attracted the attention of parents and teachers and maza- zine editors. It is the result of se- lection from five weeks of drawing and painting by children who at- tend a Young Pioneer class, The Tompkins Square Unemployment Council, situated at 362 East Tenth Street, Manhattan, sponsors many activities, including classes in Eng- lish and dramatics (“We make our own plays,” the sign says), and plenty of neighborhood activities, but particularly noteworthy is the art class. The visitor who calls at the Coun- cil headquarters on Tuesday after- noon from five to seven will find the place a hive of activity. Some twen- ty-five children from four to four- teen are ranged round the walls. working intently with brush and paint. All kinds of colors and designs are appearing on brown paper “canvases” tacked on the walls. Other children are at the windows outside, faces pressed against the glass, watching, or knocking at the door to ask, “Can I paint too?” These latter are told that the Young Pioneer art class is meeting, and if their parents are willing they may come back the following week and join the class. They are so eager and direct, these poorly dressed children of working-class parents! They fill so full every minute of the three hours! They draw so fast, and so sur- prisingly well! They draw houses, airplanes, trees, flowe:s, steamboacs, in red, black, green, blue and other colors. They dip their brushes in the paint which each has mixed and keeps in a little tin plate. There is no hesitancy on the part of the children, no “copying,” no imitation. Each child appears to know exactly of Young Pioneers Dynamic and Realistic what he wants to paint, and can! scarcely wait to start. ge aes T= teacher of this unusual art | class is Mary O, Johnson of the | John Reed Club, cooperating with the leader of the Young Pioneers. Her assistants are Nancy and Naomi, two fourteen-year-old schoolgirls from a New York high school. Mary Johnson and her assistants are everywhe:e at once. Here Mary is advising a twelve-year-old boy about the color of the hull of a steamboat; there, telling a seven- year-old girl that her drawing of a garden with children running is coming along “swell.” Nancy is cutting off more squares of brown paper for children starting on their second drawing; Naomi is helping a kid tack up his paper, or getting more paint for one who has used up his supply. In the last half hour of each class period, Mary Johnson tells me, they all sit down and have a period of discussion and criticism. Each tells what he likes about various pictures, or doesn’t like. The teacher asks questions, makes suggestions, relates the pictures to the reality of their lives, to the reality of the contrasts or rich arid poor of New York. The week before, she tells me, a little girl made a hammer and sickle as part of a picture of a scene containing trees and grass! “Maybe it had no relation to the picture,” the teacher laughs, “but the little girl felt it ought to be- long somewhere! And she'll learn how to put it where it belongs!” | children’s own lines. The most fre- ‘scenes of children in snow storms, Another thing the teacher pointed out: Expression of direct working class feeling in the drawing is not always immediately apparent to the casual visitor. For instance, the traffic cop has just held up his hand to stop a tin lizzie containing work- ers’ children! And a woman walk- ing in the park is explicitly a poor woman! 4 Rates class began some six weeks ago | with eight children, and imme- | diately the other children of the neighborhood flocked tc the place. There are now some thrty-five en- | rolled. | The exhibit which is now on the walls, tacked high up out of the way of the space used at the weekly) meetings of the class, consists of twenty-eight drawings selected from the work of the first five weeks. One is struck by the attractive col- ozing and design, and by the elose- | ness of the subject matter to th quent subject is, of course, trees and | flowers and grass with children playing in the midst—the thing they want but are denied. There are with the snow falling in great white! balls. Lillian, age seven, has a draw- ing of three children holding hands, | and the motto, “Let's dance and have fun.” One boy shows a police- man directing traffic. Another has drawn a lighthouse throwing out a huge beam of light, with the blue ocean and several boats surrounding it. Some pictures have skyscrapers in the background. There is a pic- ture labeled “East River,” and another which seems to be a sales- man,cazrying a briefcase and call- ing on a lady. A particularly note- worthy painting in the exhibit is by Frances, age 6, showing a skyscraper apartment house with prominent garbage cans standing on the pavement at the corner of the building. All the drawings are realistic, all from their own life experience, all vivid and dynagnic. They are the graphic expression of working class children, culturally starved by the miserable school facilities forced upon them by a class civilization, physically and spiritually starved by capitalism. 7:00 _P.M.-WEAF—King Orch. WOR—Sports Resume—Stan Lomax ‘WJZ—Amos ’n’ Andy WABC—Myrt and Marge 7:15-WEAF — Stories of the nies Chamber — Secret In) WOR—Lum and Abner WiZ—P WJZ — Plantation Echoes; Mark Hellinger, Gladys edian; Hayton Orchestra; Robison Orch.; Southern- Glad; Peggy Flynn, Com- Amateur Review aires Quartet edienne; Travelers’ Quar- | WOR—Hillbilly Music WABC—Just Plain Bill 1:30-WEAF—Gould and Shef- ter, Piano WABC — Diane — Musical | den Lawes WABC—Mary Eastman, So- WOR — Harry Stockwell, Comedy | WABC—Lily Pons, Soprano; prano; Evan Evans, Bari- Baritone @:15-WABC—Edwin C. Hil, — Kestelanetz Orch.; Mixed} tone WJZ—Red Davis—Sketch Commentator Chorus | 11:00-WEAF—Pairchild Oreh. WABC—The O'Neilis 8:30-WEAF ~- Wayne King | 9:30-WOR—To Be Announced) WOR—Ni 1:43-WEAF—Uncle Ezra WOR — Motcr Boat Show Orch. | daily and 15,000 new Saturday subs? Talks WJ@— Lanny Ross, Tenor; WABC—George Burns and | WJZ—Dangerous Paradise falter _Orch.; Dorothy Gracie Allen, Comedi WABC--Boake Carter, Com- Baker, Soprano 9:45-WOR—Sandra Swenska, mentator WABC — Everett Marshall, Soprano 8:00-WEAF—Play, Within the! Baritone; | 19:00-WEAF—Lombardo Orch, Law, with Mary Pickford WOR—Lone Ranger—Sketch tet, Coleman Oreh.; Rosa Tentoni, Soprano WOR—Variety Musicale enthouse Party; Sing—Sketch, ‘Wiz — John Elizabeth Len- 4 nox, Contralto; Chorus; Arden Orch. 9:00-WEAF—Fred Allen, Com- WJZ—20,000 Years in Sing with War- McCormack, Tenor; Concert Oreh. WOR—Literary Justice— From Byrd Expedition 10:15-WOR—Current Events— H. E. Read WJZ—Beauty—Mime. Sylvia 10:30-WEAF—One Man’s Fam- » _ ily—Sketeh WOR—Variety Musicale WJz—Denny Orch.; Harry Mixed Richman, Songs WJZ—Kemp Orth. WABC—Belatco Orch. 11:15-WEAF — Robert Royce, 5 Tenor WOR—Moonbeams Trio 11:30-WEAF—Dance Music | long gamut of moods each its fit- | One might add, as a pertinent | post-script, the following “theatrical Sketch | ‘WIZ — Hollywood — Jimmy | Fidler WABC—Broadcast To and WORLD of the THEATRE | An Accomplished Juliet | =; | to end this system; such incidents | ROMEO AND JULIET, by William Shakespeare; presented by Kath- erine Cornell at the Martin Beck Theatre for five and one-half weeks only. Reviewed by ALLEN CHUMLEY ERY little to date has been done toward a Marxist appraisal of Shakespeare. Stanley Burnshaw in a recent New Masses made the first beginning. Shakespeare, he pointed out, lived and died, to the best of our knowledge, a typical bourgeois of his time. In his class attitude, as shown both in his plays and his lit- tle known life, he never transcended these limitations. Neither, for that |thereafter, all ignorant capitalist |™satter, did he erect them into a world-embracing philosophy. Shrewd, almost opportunistic, as a_ Playwright, he tailored his outlook | on life to the needs of his specific play and the views of his specific] public. | Despite these shortcomings, he| merits signal attention. His plays) afford us as broad and as penetrat- ing a picture as has come down to us of the type of people his class brothers were. For this, if for no| other reason, historic materialists | should cherish his work. And in the| Soviet Union, where the workers, in Lenin’s words, “have a right to true, great art,” where “the beauti- | ful must be retained, taken as an example, and held on to, even though it is old...” Shakespeare | has not been neglected. Within the | last four years there have been wit- nessed in Moscow and Leningrad alone no less than seven notable Shakespeare productions. Tairov, director of the famed Ka- merny Theatre and sponsor of per- haps the most ambitious drama-| turgie project in recent years (that; of fusing into a single dramatic | whole Shakespeare's “Antony and) Cleopatra,” Shaw's “Caesar and Cle- opatra” and Pushkin’s poem, “Egyp- tian Nights”), has summed up the) director's duties in producing class- | ies as follows: First and foremost, | he must give the play significance | for the modern spectator. To do this, he must select and then high- | light only such elements as have | enduring vitality; the rest he must | discard like weeds in a garden. And | at the same .ime he must keep ever | in relief the historical setting, the | social “milieu,” in which the action | takes place; he must achieve this| not by mere “period” props but by intrinsic content. . . . Soviet artistic standards are rigorous indeed. Paatet sore MERICAN producers set them- selves easier tasks. Katherine | Cornell (undertaking the first im-| portant Shakespeare revival within four years) did it for the part— not the play. As an actress nearing | the peak of her powers, she needed but the triumph of enacting Shake- speare to put the last gem in her crown. No new significance of the | play moulded her production. No new masses of people found through her production a meaning in Shake- Speare undreamt of and startlingly vital. Hers was a performance for professors engrossed in mere words and for the “culture-lovers” among} the Four Hundred to whom, in the| sphere of the theatre, it was the so- | cial “event of the season.” Bringing to the vole an alert and, informed intelligence, she read the rich verse with a freshness, a sure-| ness and a comprehension which more “theatrical” actresses had fall- en far short of. Nor did she lack | the technical equipment to give the ting expression. Basil Rathbone as Romeo re- sponded to none of these moods; and his cold, clipped — prosaic — declamation gave the first clue to the play’s underlying weakness. He} made the love story unreal. Edith Evans as the wholesomely bawdy | and garrulous Nurse rendered the| contrast greater by the very bril- liance of her realistic playing. She brought the play down to earth. And Brian Aherne’s Mercutio, changing with lightning-like swift-| ness from one mood to another but | always the apostle of common-)} sense, presented us with a credible human being. note”: During this current Soviet season the youthful Theatre of the Revolution, whose specialty has/ been post-Revolutionary life, will produce this play. They will try—_ in their own buoyant words:—‘to, make the young Moscow Communist | llove Juliet no less thr: Romeo did, | and the young Moscow telephone | girl love Romeo no less than Juliet.” | |Furmanov’s ‘Chapayev’ | Epic ofWarCommunism All the heroism of the Red Army soldiers, horrors and privations of the desperate campaigns they waged against the white armies of Kol- novel, Chapayev. The novel, on which the current Soviet film of the same name is based, will be jreleased in the near future by In- | ternational Publishers. Chapayev is more than a valuable document of an eye-witness: it is chak, are packed into D. Furmanov’s | his attitude to organized Page 5 Questions and Answers This department appears daily on the feature page. All questions should be addressed to “Ques- tions and Answers,” ¢/o Daily Worker, 50 East 13th Street, New York City Father Coughlin and Scab Labor Question: Is it true that Father Coughlin pub up his church building with scab-labor? What is labor? IRISH WORKERS. Answer: Father Coughlin put up his church buildings with non-union labor whom he paid forty per cent below the union scale. He also has his printing done in a non-union shop, and his of- fice workers get less than a living wage For this scabbery he has been denounced at successive conventions of the American Federation of Labor by Detroit delegates. In 1933 the Inter- national Typographical Union introduced a resolu- tion at the A. F. of L. convention attacking Cough- lin for being unfair to organized labor. It said that he “persisted in securing the publishing of his weekly radio talk and other printed matter in non- union printing offices.” The resolution added, “This manifest hostility to organized labor and union wages manifested by the Rev. Coughlin in his own activities as an employer are contrary to the pre- cepts he preached in his weekl; rmons.” The A. F. of L. officials ducked the issue and did not bring back a report on Coughlin’s scab activities. But only recently the Cleveland A. F. of L. attacked him in an open letter for his scab- bery. Coughlin hides his hostility to union labor with phrases about the need for a “living wage” and the “right of the laboring man to organize.” But his deeds have revealed him as a dangerous enemy of labor. He has employed scabs on his jobs. In the spring of 1933 he spoke sympathetically of company unions. He has attacked the use of strikes by workers to win their demands saying that “strikes and lockouts are absolutely unneces- sary.” He has come out for the destruction of unions and the setting up of a fascist system of government supervised collective bargaining. Recently in an interview in the Detroit Times he said: “Make the Department of Labor a real power. Let it take over the function of collective bargainirig that the A. F. of L. is now trying to fulfill. Let it supplant the A. F. of L, entirely, Why should workers pay dues to a labor organiza- tion to protect a right guaranteed by law. The service of the Federation should be a government service paid for by taxation.” Thus he is against all unions and advocates the open shop. This “federal” scheme would destroy the unions and replace them with the kind of collective bar- gaining that the workers at Weirton and the Budd Company obtained from the government. There would be the blacklisting of militant workers, the denial of higher wages and better conditions, and the other aspects of the typical sell-out. Coughlin is associated with some of the worst labor-hating capitalist concerns in the country— Bendix, Remington-Rand, Sears-Roebuck, etc. The Daily Worker and the New Masses haye shown in many articles that Coughlin’s program is the pro- gram of big business, that his interest in the worker is merely to chain him to the dictates of the bankers and the industrialists. It is the duty | of every worker to explain to all those who come to Coughlin because they are seeking a way out, that Coughlin’s way leads only to the serfdom of fascism. Laboratory and Shop By David Ramsey THE “BENEFITS” OF IMPERIALISM A correspondent has sent in a significant ex- ample of the callous disregard that the British imperialists in India have toward the masses whom they exploit. The item reveals the brutal con- tempt of the master class for their subjects, and | the “benefits” that the Indian masses receive from their foreign lords. It is taken from the Indian Journal of Agriculture, and describes “A Dry Smut Method of Treating Oat Seed Against Covered Smut.” The authors of the method—B, B. Mundkur and M. Azmutallah Khan, use a mixture of one pound of formaldehyde to an equal part of water. This is applied with a dry spray. Excerpts from the article follow: “... One laborer applies the mixture to the grain holding the sprayer close to the seed and walking in the grain mean- while. Two other laborers follow this man turn- ing the grain upside down with their legs. The place where the seed is spread should be protected from drafts. The laborers have to be provided with handkerchiefs to cover their mouths and nostrils and they should throw back their faces so as to minimize the chances of their being in- jured by the fumes. [Emphasis mine.] The cost of labor is negligible. A hand pressure sprayer of six pint capacity costs about 35 rupees which is the only costly item. But one should last several years.” Anyone who has worked with even mild solu- tions of formaldehyde knows what it will do to the skin and breathing passages. With the concen- tration recommended above and in a closed room the results must be disastrous. The handkerchief as protection is not even a good gesture. The scientists’ desire to “minimize the chances o f their (the workers] being injured” is truly a touching bit of concern. It must arise out of the knowledge that a fourth man to drag out the bodies would cost a few more pennies. The method not only destroys the wheat smut but also the “excess” population which might want some of the wheat that is saved. It is on a par with our munitions salesmen in South America who use political prisoners in their dem- onstrations of the effectiveness of their poison gases, Mussolini Gets an Earful By Radio—The opera, “Nero,” was having its world premiere in Rome on Jan. 17. its composer, was conducting, and many state notables were present, including the fascist dic- tator, Mussolini. The script calls for one of the Romans to say the following lines: “We are starving; there is- no bread in Rome.” As soon as the singer finished the last word in this sentence one of the listeners in the gallery shouted, “That's. nothing, we have the same condition now!” This is another indication of the fact that in spite of the revorts of Italian fascists and their American fascist friends, thousands of Italian worke an epic of the heroic days of war (Also WOR, WJZ, WABCO, communism, ‘{ ers are starving as a result of the anti-working class Fascist regime. a Mascagtt: *