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The Communist Official Paper of the Communist Party of America Vol.
No. Chicago, Ill. Saturday, August 9, 1919 Five Cents Wage Slave Riots By WICKS The recent race riots in Chicago revealed at one stroke a that brand of mass murder have been the Washington, new tactic of the capitalist class of this country and also viv and the Chicago riots.
idly impressed upon the mind of the revolutionary worker the The United States government and the government of the necessity for understanding and explaining why such exhibi State of Illinois were powerful enough to have crushed these tions of butchery occur in a so called civilized society.
disorders by using a very insignificant part of their coercive The average person that is the apathetic creature who force, but in both cases the riots lasted for days and many lives never uses his cranial apparatus for thinking deplores such were criminaly sacrificed. It is easy to understand the attitude outbreaks and naively wonders why people riot against each of the police force, as the police are nearly always connected other because of a variation of a few shades in the color of with the underword and many of the participants in the Chiskin. This same element in Russia used to attribute the pocago riots were denizens of the underworld, who have been groms to the fact that some people were Jews and others Gen thrown out of their former habitues and upon the streets betiles, but the Russian revolutionist knew that race hatred cause of the enforcement of national prohibition. No longer against the Jewish population was deliberately fostered by the able to ply its old occupations so effectively this element, comruling class in order to conceal from the exploited workers and prising a part of the slum proletariat, is ready to hand to serve impoverished peasants the real cause of their misery. Because capitalism in every conceivable contemptible manner.
a number of the Jews were tradesmen, and thus economically The government, with its police, which appears so imposeparate from the workers and peasants, it was easy for the tent against race riots, always regains its virility when any pornobility of Russia to propagate the idea that all Jews were the tion of the working class rises against the capitalist class. Who enemies of all other people and that the elimination of the ever heard of strike riots continuing unabated for a week? Let Jews would mean the end of suffering for the Christians who workinmen striking for better conditions even demand their remained. Despite the fact that a larger proportion of the alleged constitutional rights and both police and militia will Jews were workers this erroneous conception prevailed to a wade knee deep in blood in order to teach the rebellious slaves sufficient extent to serve the purpose of the ruling clique. The a proper respect for law and order.
government of the Czar was sufficienty powerful to have pre The riots in Chicago started over a fight among colored vented the pogroms had it so desired, but instead of preventing and white bathers at a Lake Michigan beach, which resulted the massacres it deliberately fostered them at Kischneff, Be in the death of an unidentified negro boy and the fight rapidly lostok, Homel and a number of other places. noteworthy spread to all parts of the black belt of Chicago. Many peofeature of these pogroms was the fact that they always oc ple were killed and hundreds sent to the hospitals for treatcurred at a time of unrest amongst the workers.
ment. The principal fighting was in and around the stock Put the negro population of this country in place of the yards district. In the large stock yards and packing plants of Jewish population of the Russia of the Czars and you have a Chicago thousands of whites and negroes are employed side very good analogy. Ever since the Civil war certain communby side. For a long time it has been persistently rumored that ities of the South have been afflicted with race riots. The exthe negroes worked for lower wages than the white men, cuse for riots in the South is nearly always an alleged attack which engendered a hatred among the white wage slaves by a negro upon some white person. The origin of the riots against the black wage slaves. The beach episode offered an and lynchings can be traced to the creation, through slave excellent opportunity for violent expression of this hatred and labor, of a snobbish Southern aristocracy which monopolized in a few hours the smouldering flame burst into a white all the productive land of the country. After the civil war heat. The white members of the army of the unemployed had thousands of the negroes remained as wage slaves upon the stood at the gates of the employment offices shoulder to estates of their former masters. number of them tried to eke shoulder with negroes who were also there to bargain with the out an existence upon small tracts of unproductive land. There agent of the boss regarding the possibilities of disposing of was also an element in the South living upon unproductive their labor power. In some instances the negroes were emland known as the poor white trash. The aristocracy of the ployed in preferance to the white men and vice versa. The South found its political expression through the Democratic race riots offered the opportunity long awaited for each to eliparty, and as the manufacturers of the North, represented by minate the other from the slave market, foolishly hoping the republican party had freed the negroes from chattel thereby to better their respective conditions.
slavery the colored population of the South was potential votThe capitalist class can now sit back and laugh at this ing cattle for the republican party. The enfranchisement of exhibition of assinity on the part of the wage slaves. The the negroes by the republican party heralded the downfall of capitalist knows that as long as the white workingmen imagine the political supremacy of the aristocracy even in the South, the negro workingmen are responsible for their slavery and so the spokesmen of this aristocracy declared the granting of degradation they will not turn their attention to him.
Many of the irresponsible and to a large extent vicious inthe ballot to the negroes was an attempt to turn the South over to the black race. The impoverished white population, competents who were employed by the United States governabsorbing the ideas of its ruling class, organized for the purment during the war to deliver four minute speeches deliberately propagated mob action, without a reprimand from pose of exterminating the negro or at least establishing such a reign of terror that no negro would dare assert his alleged the government. This same aggregation of degenerates is to a considerable degree responsible for the excesses practiced constitutional rights. The poor white trash, like the Rusduring the race riots. In the last analysis the government is sian workers and peasants who blamed the Jew for their responsible for these outbreaks because it encouraged such misery, were led to attribute their miserable condition to the tactics during the war, despite all the high sounding bunk of negro, thus obscuring the responsibility of the large land holdProfessor Wilson to the contrary.
ers.
The workers, both negro and Caucassian, must realize the Race rioting in the United States, formerly confined to the fact that their misery is not due to race antagonisms, but to South, has, during the past fifteen years, spread to the North Continued on Page and devasted whole sections of cities. The latest excesses of