The daily worker. [volume], July 24, 1924, Page Page Six, Image 6

About The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958

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Page Six
THE PIMIT WORKER.
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Murder in Illinois
The murderer of Boris Popovsky in West Frank
fort, Illinois, is out on bail, furnished by the Ku
Klux Klan, and still on the police force of that
city. Probably he will not kill another young
worker until this case blows over. In order to
be quite safe in the murder, Bozarth, the slayer,
performed his deed in the courtroom. There was
but one witness, a “justice,” so-called, and he says
that he was so busy reading .the paper that he real
ly doesn’t know if Bozarth delivered the blow that
crushed the skull of the young Communist.
Here is a case of cold-blooded murder, com
mitted at the very seat of “justice.” That the lat
ter was blind, according to tradition, is usual
in cases involving workers. Murder is quite “all
right” in southern Illinois, when it is committed
against radicals, against workers, by Ku Kluxers
or other hundred percenters. It is but a few weeks
since a worker was shot in cold-blood, in reprisal
for the wounding of Glen Young, the Volstead fas
cist. Justice has not worried about it
Kecall the great hullabaloo that went up when,
in a pitched battle precipitated by imported gun
men, brought in to break a strike at Herrin two
years ago, some of the scabs were killed. Remem
ber how the Chamber of Commerce raised great
slush funds from private capitalistic sources, to
finance the attempt to hang the union men of
Marion County, protesting that Herrin was a
“stain upon our fair State.”
The Chamber of Commerce will not cry for the
punishment of Bozarth, the murderer of Popov
sky; it probably helped raise the bail money for
him. The reason is, that while in Herrin the men
who were to be punished were workers who struck
against the coal operators, in West Frankfort the
murderer Bozarth performed his slaughter in the
service of the bosses. The courts of Illinois are
instruments in the hands of the industrial and
financial lords. Labor will receive no justice there.
The Super-State of Morgan
If the historic words of a French monarch, “I
am the State,” were justified by the facts of the
feudal society over which he ruled, then J. P.
Morgan could well say today, “I am the League
of Rations.”
New York money market reports state that all
reports of a hitch in the negotiations of the Lon
don Conference on Reparations are being ignored.
Foreign exchange continues to go up, stocks are
steady, and confidence prevails. What matters
it that a few premiers cannot agree? Do we not
know that Morgan is on his way to Europe, that
Ambassador Kellogg is intervening in the name of
the U. S. Government, that two Cabinet Ministers
from this country are there to insist upon Mor
gan’s plans, and that already the puny politicians
are accepting the ultimatum that the final deci
sion on all reparations matters must be referred
to a committee of Morgan experts?
The Capitalist International is being consoli
dated at London. Its left wing, the Second and
Amsterdam Internationals no longer make any
trouble for their masters; its right, wing, the
French nationalists, are being whipped into line.
Morgan reigns supreme—except over that one
sixth of the globe ruled by the Soviets.
That Question of Unity
A reader of the DAILY WORKER writes us
a letter which, localise it is quite evidently honest
and represents many who do not write, deserves
more than ordinary attention. He says:
“I have been reading your very interesting paper
for the last three weeks. I liked it so much that I
stopped taking the Tribune which I had read for the
last 14 years.
“But there are some things I do not understand,
and which I hope you will explain in an early issue.
First, why do you take up an issue that will divide
the workers and have them fighting among them
selves, that is the religious question. You are con
demning the K. K. K. for that.
"Second, in today’s paper I read where your sup
porters spoke to strike meetings at ths Car Shops,
and advised the men to Join the Brotherhood of
Railway Carmen. In yesterday’s paper you say that
once the men were 100 per cent in this organization.
Do you not realize that the days of craft unions are
about over?
Fiwt, we would answer the Brother that we are
not dividing the workers on the'religious issue.
We condemn completely any organization of the
workers on the economic field for denying full
rights in the organization on account of kind or
lack of religion. We want all the workers united,
white, hlack, religious, irreligious. Catholic, Pro
testant, Jew. But that does not. mean that we
cannot light against all the superstitions that help
to keej) these workers in slavery to the capitalists.
Answering the second question should help our
Brother to understand the answer to the first. He
questions the correctness of advising the workers
to unite in a craft union. We agree with him that
the days of craft unions are about over, just as
the days of the superstitions called religion are
almost past. But just as we fight against religious
bunk without allowing it divide what little organ
ization the workers have, so we must fight against
the antiquated craft unionism without breaking
up those little organizations that do exist, but
rather making them the stepping stones to some
thing better.
Communists come to the workers bringing not
peace, but a sword; the message of the class strug
gle, the conception of unity of labor as a fighting
unity against the capitalist class, not unity in
sloth, cowardice, and inaction, brings us into sharp
conflict with all the reactionary forces. But this
conflict makes for health, strength, and progress
of the working class, and toward the fighting unity
that .carries us on toward the day of working class
rule in society.
So we fight against superstition, and we fight
against an outworn idea of unionism; and neither
of these struggles is against the unity of the work
ing class, but for that unity. In both cases we are
opposed to artificial divisions of the workers. All
workers must organize together, and in their un
ions fight out these problems upon which they have
differences of opinion. In that struggle of ideas
it is ohr task to fight for the conceptions of Com
munism, which will finally be accepted by the en
tire working class, because they represent the great
•lass interests of the proletariat.
Why Butler Goes
Last Christmas our strikebreaker president Coo
lidge gave a leave of absence of one year to
Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler of the
Marine Corps to “clean up” Philadelphia. The
Quaker City was overrun with bootleggers, gam-j
biers, vice agents. Our Furitanic president was
anxious to set America’s third biggest city right.
So the excuses ran.
When Brigadier Butler landed in Philadelphia
he had his own ideas of the sort of clean-up the
town needed. He struck his keynote in his maiden
address before the Police Bureau Chiefs when he
declared: “I hear there is a union in the police.
That must be wiped out, too. The federation of
firemen, which I understand exists in the fire
bureau, must also go.”
The strikebreaker Brigadier General Director of
Public Safety has finished this job. Mr. Butler
has certainly cleaned up the policemen’s union or
whatever existed in the department approaching
a union of the men. For this work Mr. Butler has
received the highest praise the country over.
Row Mayor Kendrick of Philadelphia is plan
ning to ask Butler to resign. The Director of
i ‘ublic Safety appears to have made the mistake of
stepping on the toes of several big liquor inter
ests. After all his thunderous talk about purify
ing the city the Brigadier was compelled to make
some gestures in this direction. But Philadelphia,
like the other big cities of the state of Pennsyl
vania, has for sometime had its political machines
in a close alliance with the huge whiskey and
brewing interests. For instance, one of the wettest
cities in the country today is the state capitol,
Harrisburg, where the bone-dry Pinchot lives and
talks prohibition.
Butler has finished his real clean-up job in Phila
delphia. Butler has used the strong arm tactics,
so characteristic of the Marine Corps, very effect
ively against all semblances of unionism in the
police department. All. his other attempts, at po
lice centralization or changes in administration,
are bound to meet with disfavor from some of the
big interests who are concerned only with the im
mediate and do not yet see that Brigadier Butler’s
only aim is to establish a more efficient strike
breaking force in the city. Butler has finished his
job in tbfc eyes of this group. Therefore, Butler
will go.
“Justice” in Coolidge’s State
Massachusetts is Calvin Coolidge’s State. And
it is the State of the Sacco-Vanzetti case. Massa
chusetts is the State where Coolidge is credited
with having suppressed a police strike. In Massa
chusetts it put him in line for the Presidency.
That makes it easier to understand why Ricola
Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are still in the
shadow of the electric chair, despite cumulative
proofs of their innocence.
Massachusetts is a stronghold of the banking
interests. It is permeated by a passionate hatred
of “foreigners” and of new ideas. That is why
Sacco and Vanzetti are still imprisoned, though
witness after witness has confessed perjury.
Massachusetts is the scene of the Lawrence
strikes with their orgies of police brutality. It is
the scene of the Ettor-Giovannitti case. It is a
state of cheap, exploited, unorganized labor in the
textile and shoe industries. % It is where the Press
men’s strike was crushed three years ago and the
telephone strike last ye^r.
Perhaps that explains why Judge Webster
Thayer—a flower of Rew England aristocracy—
has not yet granted a new trial to Kacco and Vnn
zetti when the whole world knows that the orig
inal trial was a grim farce. Against this back
ground of hopeless conservatism, of political de
gradation and fetid reaction, the Sacco-Vanzetti
case is comprehensible. It is but an exaggerated
sample of the general situation in America under
the capitalist dictatorship.
But the Sacco-Vanzetti case is wider than Massa
chusetts; yes, wider even than these United States.
The working class of the whole world watches and
counts this case another proof that capitalism
mist, be abolished thru the dictatorship of the
proletariat
THE DAILY WORKER
RUSSIA IN 1924 - ■■ By WILLIAM Z. FOSTER
x \
(Continued from Last Issue.)
Declassing—Sabotage—Discipline.
Os all the factors tending greatly to hinder the revolution,
few were more serious than the migration of the workers from
the industrial centers to the agricultural districts. The work
ers, starving in the industries, left the cities and went into the
country in the hope of getting enough to eat. This migration
of the city proletariat countryward took on a mass character.
Petrograd, now Leningrad, lost almost 1,000,000 in population,
largely from such desertions. This process literally melted
the cities away. It was the so-called declassing of the pro
letariat, the disintegration of the working class. It not only
robbed the industries of workers who were most vitally
necessary, but it also undermined the Whole Soviet State
by actually breaking up the working class itself, the founda
tion of the revolution. The revolutionary leaders viewed
with the greatest alarm this dangerous declassing tendency,
so menacing to the whole Soviet system. But the danger has
now passed, almost entirely. At present the proletariat is
being reclassed, if I may so express it. The tide of migration
has reversed itself and is now flowing from the country to
the cities. The workers, realizing that it is again possible
for them to make a living in the industries, are streaming
back en masse to the cities to take up their old occupations. All
the industrial centers are growing rapidly in population. In
Moscow, for example, the inhabitants in 1920 numbered 952,-
255, whereas, by 1923, the figure had jumped to 1,481,117.
Other cities show similar great increases. Just as the de
classing of the proletariat—the moving of the workers from
the cities to the farms—injured the revolution, so the reverse
tendency—the coming back of the workers to the cities—is
helping it. The return migration is giving the industries an
abundant supply of the skilled labor which they so badly
needed, and it is in many other ways strengthening the posi
tion of the working class. The fact of the workers thus moving
back en masse to the cities, even if it is creating new prob
lems as we shall see, is one of the most hopeful signs in the
whole situation. It is proof positive that the economic life
of the country is going ahead again. This is only another
way of saying that the revolution is successfully mastering
its latest task, the industrial problem.
Another subsidiary problem, which greatly complicated
the general problem of economic revival, was the persistent
sabotage by the industrial experts, the engineers, superinten
dents, etc., of the old regime, many of whom perforce found,
themselves strategically situated in the Soviet system of in
dustry. For the first several years of the revolution, although
accepting positions and salaries in industry, they absolutely
refused to go along wholeheartedly with the new order of
things, obstinately hoping for the downfall of the Soviet Gov
ernment and persisting in a widespread of passive resistance
and sabotage. Possessing a practical monopoly on industrial
technical knowledge, they easily managed to keep themselves
in strategic positions and to carry on their nefarious pro
gram. The harm they did was immense and the problem they
Bankers Seizing Latin America
THE Dawes plan for Europe: the
Monroe doctrine for the western
hemisphere. All in behalf of the inter
national bankers who pull the wires
from Wall Street.
As this is being written the consul
at Santos is calling for battleships to
Brazil where American interests are
at stake in the clash between two
bourgeois political forces in the cof
fee "region. These American interests
which include big Armour packing
plants at Santos in the affected dis
trict and investments in railroads and
other securities will be made the ex
cuse for getting the same kind of con
trol of Brazil that America has of
smaller South American countries —if
Washington thinks it has the power to
get away with such a program.
Piute’s Opportunity In Brazil.
Until now Brazil has escaped the
fate that America has meted out to
Peru, Bolivia, Columbia and the Cen
tral American and Caribbean states.
There has been considerable financial
penetration but American influence is
not yet dominant. This civil war may
give Wall Street the opportunity it has
been craving for a generation.
Argentina, Brazil and Chile, the A.
B. C. powers; Uruguay, Paraguay and
Venezuela are the only South Amer
ican nations still preserving their
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autonomy against American imperial
ism. (This statement deserves quali
fication so far as Venezuela is con
cerned, however.) All the other South
American nations are under the direc
tion of the American ministers and
American financial advisors.
Hate And Fear U. S.
South America hates and fears
American imperialism, which means
the American banking interests and
trusts backed by the battleships and
marines of the American navy. Her
newspapers and magazines, except
such as are owned by North Amer
ican • capital, or influenced by large
advertising contracts from local Amer
ican business agents, contains articles
in nearly every issue warning against
the United States, plans for complete
dominion over the western hemi
sphere. Exposes of American im
perialism are now occupying much
space in the publications of Japan
and Europe—tho the American Henry
Dubb is in blissful ignorance of his
country’s international program and
may not wake up until he hears that
war has been declared and that he is
wanted for cannon fodder in a far off
trench.
Communists Exposing It.
Let us take a look at what American
marines and financial advisors hav.e
already accomplished in Latin Amer
presented an exceedingly difficult one. But, like so many
others, this apparently insoluble problem has also been largely
solved, or, perhaps, dissolved would be a better term. In my
recent visit economists told me that the studied obstruction
ism by the experts that did so much damage in the past is now
about ended. Various factors have conspired to kill it. For
one thing, the growing strength of the Soviets has just about
extinguished the hope among the industrial specialists for a
return of the old order, and they have been driven to accept,
halfheartedly if not enthusiastically, the new conditions, and
to try to make the best of them. Another thing is that the
revolutionary workers placed at the head of the industries are
learning the technique of management, and the many schools
are turning out revolutionary technicians, all of which tends
to break the monopoly of industrial knowledge formerly en
joyed by the old time specialists. Thus the latter are weak
ened in their campaign of sabotage. In addition, with the
growing improvement in industrial organization, the work
ers are able to check up more closely on the unenthusiastic
specialists, who have come to have a healthy fear of the punish
ment meted out to sabotagers. But in any event, the plague
of sabotage is greatly diminished, and thus another big obstacle
in the path of revolutionary Russia’s economic rehabilitation
is being swept away.
Finally, let me mention another problem that created no
end of difficulty in the early days of the revolution. This was
the question of developing a sense of industrial responsibility
among the workers, of making the rank and file realize that
they had to turn out the maximum production possible in
order to lift Russia out of the slough. The task was to create
a system of voluntary industrial discipline to take the place
of the old-time slave-driving method. When I was in Russia
in 1921, this extremely difficult problem occupied much at
tention. As usual, the pessimists said that it could not be
solved, as the workers would not work unless they were driven
to it. But this problem, too, is now far on the .way tp solu
tion. Efficiency is making rapid strides among the Russian
workers. This is to be seen on every hand. I might multiply
instances of it, but my time will npt permit. Most of this
new efficiency comes from the added faith of the workers in the
revolution, coupled with the fact that they are now getting
sufficient food to really enable them to do a good day’s work.
Where necessary, the workers have not hesitated to introduce
piece-work and bonus systems to produce better results. The
Russian workers have learned that there is a world of differ
ence between these methods when they are voluntarily adopted
and utilized for the revolution, and when they are forced upon
the workers by greedy employers seeking only their own pro
fits. It is the same kind of difference as that between the Red
Army and the Czar’s Army, and the workers understand it
thoroughly. The unions are the greatest champions of efficien
cy. Their working motto is that increased wages must be ac
companied by increased productivity, a principle that sounds
strange to unions accustomed to work only under capitalist
conditions, but one altogether natural under a proletarian
regime.
(To Be Continued Tomorrow)
ica. It will be exposed in fuller de
tail as the Communist campaign
against the Wall Street parties gains
momentum.
An introductory* glance over the
Latin American field shows the fol
lowing countries in complete subjec
tion to Wall Street and Washington.
This list includes only “republics,”
tho the Philippines and Porto Rico
are equally under the American heel.
Six Shackled Nations.
Cuba, Haiti, Santo Domingo, Nicar
agua, and Honduras have no autonomy
on any important Issues. Haiti was
oonquered by American marines who
slaughtered 3,000 of her people, all
without declaration of waj:. Two thou
sand marines are now in control "pro
tecting” a Haitian government elected
under their supervision, with an Amer
ican financial advisor collecting cus
toms and making loans in behalf of
the National City Bank of New York.
Santo Domingo has been ruled for
seven years by the U. S. navy with
2,500 marines on the Job.
Panama, is in effect a dependency
of the United States, with an agree
ment requiring disbanding of her
army and the taking over by Amer
ica of any territory she sees lit.
Nicaragua is under the rule of 100
\merican marines; American officials
collect customs and the bank and rail
Thursday, July 24, 1924
road are owned by America.
Honduras is visited frequently by
American marines and is ruled by the
American minister and the officers of
the United Fruit company.
As for Cuba, America controls the
political and financial life of this
county she "freed” from the Span
iards. She took Cuba from Spanish
exploiters and gave it to the Sugar
Trust and the American banks.
Financial Advisor* Rule.
Next come Salvador, Columbia, Ec
quador, Peru, Bolivia, where Amer
ican financial advisors oversee taxes
and other fiscal arrangements in be
half of American loans. These loans
are floated to pay off European lend
ers and centralize financial obligations
under American creditors—in line
with the Monroe Doctrine.
Guatamala, Costa Rica and Mexico,
while lacking official American finan
cial advisors are largely dominated by,
American corporations which in turn
are protected by the Department of
State with the Department of the Navjrl
ever ready to do its bit.
$2,600,000,000 in Mexico.
American ownership in Mexico now
reaches the staggering total of $2,-
500,000,000, largely in oil lands. The 1
United States capitalists own 73 per
cent of the oil lands and most of
the 64,374,567 acres of land owned bj
foreigners. America recently forced
Mexico so to -interpret her federal
constitution that mineral resourcei
should not be taxed in accordanc*
with the constitution.
In all Latin-American, United Stated
ownership now totals $4,150,000,000 lit
industries and $610,000,000 in publk
securities. Now Wall Street seekr
what is left. „
Watch Our Party Crow.
SHOMAKER
Farmer-Labor Candidate for Governor
of Waihington.
1. Ho, you comrades,
Healr the slogan,
WATCH OUR PARTY GROW,
The way they vote,
In Mlnnraotn,
Makes our people crow.
Chorus—
Hold the votes,
In Minnesota,
The West is going strong,
Send this rail,
To all the nation,
Farmer-Laborers come along. '
2. We arc. the people, .
Don't fflrget it,
We set the pace for all,
The way they vote,
In Minnesota,
SounA the victory call.
Chorus—
. 3. Our cause Is Just,
To win we must,
So Join our ranks today,
The way tfcoy vote, «
In Minnesota,
Will bring success our way.
Chorus— |]