Montana labor news. [volume], November 24, 1932, Page Page Two, Image 2

About Montana labor news. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 19??-1951

Image provided by: Montana Historical Society; Helena, MT

                
MONTANA LABOR NEWS
PUBLISHED EVERV THURSDAY AT 120 EAST BROADWAY
BY THE SILVER BOW TRADES AND LABOR COUNCIL
rIt>8H < Imillltiou of II
A F
«•slw and Voicing the DfimunU of the Trade Union Movement
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THANKSGIVING
The Thanksgivings for blessings received in the past
and for the prosperity of our nation would seem slightly
out of place at a season like this. It is true that many of
us can be doubly thankful for the little that we have and
we doubt not that the hearts of all will be thankful. We
can also give thanks for the love of friends and family.
But above all this Thanksgiving should be one of dedi
cation and thanks for what our country might be it some
of the spirit of those who celebrated the first Thanks
giving on our shores were to manifest itself. Lowell
expresses this 1932 Thanksgiving spirit in these lines:
New occasions teach new duties; time makes ancient
good uncouth;
They must upward still, and onward, who would
keep abreast of Tnith.
Lo, before us gleam her campfires; we ourselves
must Pilgrims be,
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the
desperate winter sea,
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's
blood-rusted key.
LABOR MUST FORGE THE WAY
The fifty-third convention of the American Federation
of Labor, which opens in Cincinnati on November 21,
meets under more serious conditions than has confronted
any of the preceding conventions.
Over eleven millions of able-bodied working men and
women are totally unemployed. A large portion of them
and their dependents have to rely on public and private
charity for food, clothing and shelter.
Competent authorities declare that around six millions
of children are suffering malnutrition because of the dis
tressed conditions of the unemployed workers.
Moreover, the employed workers have suffered great
dimunition in their living standards because of part-time
employment and reduced earnings.
The right to work, declared by the last convention to
be necessary for the liberty of the workers, remains a
phantom right because those who own and control in
dustry refuse to recognize it.
Business leaders admit then- complete bankruptcy in
methods to stop the depression and start recovery.
It evidently remains for organized labor to provide the
plan necessary to end this bankruptcy and bring about
employment for all the workers.
According to William Green, president of the Ameri
can Federation of Labor, the job of ending the tragedy
of economic paralysis will be among the major tasks of
the A. F. of L. convention. In an editorial in the current
issue of the "American Federationist," Mr. Green says:
"The opportunity of leadership by Labor holds un
paralleled possibilities.
"Organized society has thus far been primarily
concerned with providing protection for property
rights—but unless society develops proportionate
concern for social welfare and assures opportuni
ties for a good life to all, our social structure will col
lapse from incompetency.
"Responsibility falls upon Labor to organize wage
earners for their economic and social progress and
thereby to promote higher levels of living for all
society. We cannot plan for Labor's progress with
out considering the relationships and structures into
which wage-earners fit, so we have to go outside
those matters which concern Labor primarily to the
larger problem of industrial and governmental pol
icies.
"New problems will come before the Cincinnati
convention which must be met in the light of
changed and changing conditions. We must not be
so wedded to precedents that we fail to see new as
pects of human justice. We want continuity not
necessarily of practices, but of ideals.
We need to turn unreservedly to organization of
workers in the unorganized industries and to the es
tablishment of standards assuring social justice in
our democracy."
The Cincinnati convention, speaking not only for or
ganized labor but for all working men and women, will
undoubtedly meet the requirements of the hour and forge
the way from depression and unemployment to jobs and
social justice standards for the entire body of wage
earners.
ii
SIX MILLION UNDERNOURISHED CHILDREN
On many occasions during 1931 and 1932 the Ameri
can Federation of Labor has pointed to the existence of
six million children suffering malnutrition as one of the
strongest reasons why federal, state and local govern
ments and the owners and managers of industry should
adopt whatever measures are necessary to provide work
BUY ANY CAR BUT A FORD
for the millions of unemployed and thus enable parents
to give their children adequate and proper food.
During the presidential campaign the existence of these
six million undernourished children was used in litera
ture and discussion criticizing the Republican administra
tion. The United State Public Health Service was cited
as the authority for the figures.
In his Indianapolis speech, President Hoover declared
he had a letter from the Public Health Service denying
having made such a statement. This was in effect an
impeachment of the figures used by organized labor.
The fact is that Mr. Hoover himself first presented
these figures to the public, before one of his own con
ferences.
In opening the White House Conference on Child
Health and Protection, Nov. 19. 1930, Mr. Hoover said:
"Statistics can well be used to give emphasis to
our problems. One of your committees reports that
out of 45,000,000 children * * * 6,000,000 are im
properly nourished.
The committee of the Conference referred to by Mr.
Hoover was the Committee on Special Classes, whose
chairman was Dr. Charles S. Berry.
In his report to the Conference, occupying 15 pages of
the official proceedings, Dr. Berry, under the heading,
"Significant Findings," said:
There are in the United States * * * 6,000,000
children (approximately) of school age who are mal
nourished.
In addition to Dr. Berry, the Committee on Special
Classes was composed of ten outstanding authorities on
child welfare.
Campaign orators may have embellished these figures
with colorful pictures of underfed school children "faint
ing at their desks," but that embellishment does not refute
the fact that six million children suffer from lack of food.
The Public Health Service maÿ not have made the
original statement. But it was made by responsible
authorities of the White House Conference on Child
Health and Protection and originally given to the public
by Mr. Hoover himself.
»
• >
SWEATSHOP EVIL CONTINUES
The expressed determination of Wilbur L. Cross, gov
ernor of Connecticut, to drive sweatshops from that state
merits the complete approval of all patriotic citizens.
According to W. J. Couper, deputy commissioner of
labor, the sweatshop brigade of unscrupulous and low
wage employers leaves New York to escape the 48-hour
week law and other stringent factory regulations and in
vades Connecticut, which permits a 55-hour week and
which, "until recently, at least, was noted for lax enforce
ment of its rather low legal standards for employment.
The sweatshop employer hires a low-rent loft, puts in
a few sewing machines, gets women's garments cut ready
for sewing from New York, and hires women and girls
at very low wages to do the work.
"Some of these employers," Mr. Couper said, "lit
erally pay no wages at all. Under the pretense of
hiring learners they get girls to work for nothing for
two or three weeks until they learn the business.
At the end of this period the girls are discharged
and replaced with another group of deluded learners.
The employer thus gets his labor for nothing.
Others, not quite so brazen, pay unimaginable
low rates. The girls are lucky if they get $3 at the
end of a hard week and are rolling in wealth if their
pay check amounts to $6.
Mr. Couper's investigation of these cesspools of in
dustry also revealed that the shops are very unsanitaiy
and that many of them carry no workmen's compensation
insurance, which leaves the' employes without legal pro
tection in case of injury or death. Moreover, the owners
often violate the 55-hour law and work their employes
60 to 70 hours a week. The courts are disposed to treat
the violators of the hours-of-labor law leniently and have
imposed fines in some instances at the disgracefully low
figure of $14 and costs.
In concluding his indictment of sweatshops, Mr. Cou
per said :
••
»
"Sweatshops are the gypsies of industry. As they
move from place to place they are no asset to any
community, a detriment to all. Their low wages will
in time reduce all wages, will destroy purchasing
power, kill retail trade and retard, if not forever pre
vent, business recovery.
Sweatshops are the sewer rats of industry. They
carry the industrial plague. Three groups of shirt
factory girls in Connecticut have gone on strike under
Communist leadership. From these sweatshops so
cial unrest and Communism may spread through our
state and country.
The American Federation of Labor has persistently
fought for the elimination of the sweatshop evil so
poignantly described by Mr. Couper.
The sweatshop is not confined to Connecticut. Its
tentacles extend to other states. The monster will spread
further unless outlawed by public opinion and crimped
by strict factory labor codes.
Organized labor will welcome the co-operation of pro
gressive forces everywhere to drive the evil from our in
dustrial system.
u
Northwestern University
Head Takes Cut to $18,000
EVANSTON, ILL.—(P.P.)—Presi
dent Walter Dill Scott of Northwest
ern University, the Methodist-Big
Business school, will have to struggle
along on only |18,000 for the present
college year. He shares in the 10
per cent wage cut imposed on jani
tors, night watchmen and everybody
else in the institution. Professors
It had been stated earlier that the i
smallest wages would be cut the
hired under contract are also cut,
retroactive to Sept. 1. Employes
not on the teaching or research
staffs are cut as of last July 1.
least and the biggest ones, like
Scott's $20,000, would be slashed the
most on a percentage basis. Scott's
influence with the board of trustees
is believed to have saved himself
and the other big dips in the univer
sity treasury from that plan.
TIMELY AND UNTIMELY
OBSERVATIONS
(Coi
Page One]
During the admin
: I mied tu
grew before,
istration of my distinguished prede
cessor, grass grew only in Central
Park. That grass is gone. What was
not smothered out by the horde of
unemployed who used to sit and sleep
on it was eaten by the liquidated
nurse maids of Central Park West.
Liquidated policemen subsequently
devoured the keep-off-the-grass signs.
Liquidated members of the Stock
Exchange even licked the grass off
the landscapes in the adjacent Metro
politan Museum of Art.
"However, while Central Park is
again the barren rock that emerged
from the Atlantic in the long ago,
green grass grows all around Fifth
Avenue and the avenues paralleling
and intersecting Fifth Avenue. The
Biblical injunction, 'Lead us into
green pastures,' is fulfilled at last.
I point with pride to the Democratic
party which fulfilled it."
Blah, blah, blah—two stuffed shirts
minus heart and brain calling each
other names; this was the presiden
tial campaign of 1932. Oh democracy,
what atrocities are committed in thy
name! * » »
Well, the shouting is over. The
pouting and knouting is yet to come,
for Roosevelt's election will change
exactly nothing. The victorious Dem
ocrat and the defeated Republican
working men (if they still have jobs)
will go to work the day after at the
usual hours and the usual starvation
pay. The victorious unemployed will
be as footsore hunting a job the day
after the election as he was the day
before the election, and so will his
vanquished brother in joblessness.
Whether Kansas went Republican or
Democratic will not change a penny
on 30-cent wheat. Nor would cotton
have jumped from five to six cents
had Texas gone Republican.
What a naive people we are!
Tens of millions hardly know where
their next meal is to come from.
Industrial equipment worth tens
of billions is rotting and rusting
in idleness. Food to support mil
lions is eaten by maggots, weevils,
and rodents, while children go
hungry. Millions of bales of wool
and cotton glut warehouses, while
patched overalls arc becoming the
fashion for both men and women.
Side tracks are crowded with idle
engines and cars while every high
way is crowded with footsore hitch
hikers. The whole thing is an in
sult to intelligence, a challenge to
civilization, an affront to ordinary
horse-sense and common decency,
and we get excited over what par
ticular nonentity will broadcast the
customary inanities from the White
House during the coming four
years. * * *
When the history of this epoch is
written it will be found that we are
living in the very midst of the
GREATEST REVOLUTION OP ALL
AGES.
World war, which very likely was
Sut the overture of the revolution,
the world has little more than riot,
eruption, explosion and turmoil. Gov
ernments come and go. Century-old
monarchies become democracies, or
sink into dictatorships. Kings and
ministers are bowled over like so
many nine-pins. Laborites chase
Tories; Social Democrats chase
Junkers: and are chased in return.
Since the beginning of the
However, irrespective of the most
violent changes in the heads and
character of government, the only
change in the condition of the under
lying population is that from bad to
worse.
The reasons for this non-change
ability in a rapidly changing world
are easy enough to see. Every ex
isting government, be it called
monarchy, republic, democracy, or
dictatorship, is a capitalist govern
ment, whose chief function is to
prolong the present economic or
der—that is, the very system re
sponsible for the deplorable condi
tion of the masses. In other words,
we have new firm names on the
show windows, but the goods on
the inside are the same.
The capitalist nations of the world
are bankrupt, not because they have
the wrong governments, but because
Capitalism is bankrupt. Putting new
shingles on the roof of a structure
whose foundation is crumbling will
not save the structure. England is
just as bankrupt under MacDonald
as it was under Baldwin. Italy is
just as bankrupt under Dictator Mus
solini as it was under King Umberto,
or whatever his name may be. Ger
many is bankrupt under von Papen
as it was under Stressmann and
would be under Hitler. And by the
same token, the United States will
be just as bankrupt under Franklin
Roosevelt as it was under Herbert
Hoover,
The basis of capitalist society is j
FEDERAL SUITS ARE
HINTED IN PROTEST
Page One]
of New York City and published in
part in his recent book, Georgia
Nigger.
With the letter is a long memo
randum detailing the Spivak allega
tions, for consideration by the three
members of the commission—E. L.
Rainey, chairman; G. A. Johns, and
Vivian L. Stanley. The commission
is asked to say whether it upholds
the practices outlined; whether it is
prepared to defend them in public;
whether Commissioner Stanley's re
ported statement that "Georgia does
not feel that the state owes anything
to the convict" is the commission's
official attitude.
Signers of the communication are:
Dr. Broadus Mitchell, member of
Johns Hopkins university faculty,
Balitimore; Dr. Elbert Russell, dean
of Duke university, Durham N. C.;
Robert S. Keebler, attorney, Mem
phis; Dr. James H. Dillard, Char
lottesville, Va., president of the
Jeanes-SIater Fund for Aid to Negro
Schools; Dr. George E. Kirehwey,
former warden of Sing Sing prison;
Prof. Edwin M. Borchard, Yale uni
versity law school; James Weldon
Johnson and William Pickens of the
National Association for the Ad
vancement of Colored People; Oswald
Garrison Villard, editor of The Na
tion; Dr. Harry P. Ward, chairman
of the American Civil Liberties
Union and Arthur Garfield Hays, its
general counsel.
Charges set forth in the letter
follow:
1. Suspension of convicts by wrists
and ankles in stocks in Early county;
stocks used in Monroe and Madison
counties; convicts "put in barrel" in
Banks county, this punishment evi
dently being similar to that inflicted
on Arthur Maillefert in the recent
Florida case.
2. Convicts "restricted of move
ment" in Clarke, Lowndes, Seminole,
and Decatur counties. In Seminole
county, Spivak photographed a boy
"restricted of movement." A pick
handle was thrust between the bound
hands and feet of the victim, which
left him in a position of excruciating
pain. Another photograph of a boy
in a similar position, apparently un
conscious, was taken in Decatur
county.
3. "Stretching" in Early county.
Here, the letter declares, "Spivak
photographed Warden J. D. Williams
lacing a handcuffed convict to a
concrete post. A rope was tied to
the links in the handcuffs. This rope
was then cast about another post
and the convict was stretched until
the rope was taut and his arms were
almost pulled from their sockets.
With the convict in this position the
rope was tied around the second post
and the victim left stretched in the
sun."
4. Convict photographed in Deca
tur county wearing spikes riveted
around his ankles. These weights
cause "shackle poison" from infection,
and prevent the convict from getting
any real rest; whenever he tries to
turn in sleep the spikes force him
to wake and raise his legs to turn
over.
6. Convict photographed in Mus
cogee county with an iron collar
around his neck, and shackled to
his bunk with a chain.
Six unexplained deaths are cited.
George Johnson, 27, died in Clarke
county of tuberculosis, according to
the memorandum; evidently no at
tempt was made to move him to a
hospital until too late. Robert Lee
Battle, 16, died in Madison county
chain gang; "unknown cause," said
coroner's verdict. George Neal, life
termer in Chatham county, died in
great pain after writing the commis
sion that the authorities laughed
when he asked for medicine. Charlie
Riggins, 22, died four days after
admission to Pulaski county camp.
John W. Kendall was shot to death
on Turner county prison farm, "ac
cidentally by J. J. Conner." John
Smith was "killed Sept 6, 1929," at
Stateboro.
(C'intlmidl fro
r
production for profit. Retain that
foundation intact and the structure
above remains intact. Well, there
are no more profits. The foundation
is gone and with it goes side-wall,
roof, flag-pole and bunting.
But of all this the American mass
es are as unaware as the two presi
dential contestants who recently rent
the night air with their schoolboy
talks and vocal grimaces. Airplanes
hum overhead. In far-off Samar
kand, Asiatic women discard veil and
mount Ford tractors.
Russia dedi
cates the completion of its Boulder
dam, opens a few more River Rouge
plants—and we get a new chauffeur
for the Washington ox-cart!
*
Oh well, the election accomplished
one good thing at least. It revealed
the identity of the forgotten
His name ia Herbert Hoover.
man.