The Communist Official Paper of the Communist Party of America Vol. No. Chicago, II. Saturday, August 16, 1919 Five Cents Lesson from Russia By WICKS Since November 7, 1917, innumerable journalists, prosti ment. Most American workers know only too well from sad tuted to capitalism, have devoted their entire time to denun experience that the picture of contentment and happiness is ciation and misrepresentation of the Russian revolution. The a deliberate exaggeration, to say the least.
columns of the Morganized press fairly reeked with word pic Let us briefly review the high lights of the industrial contures of the horrors alleged to have been perpetrated upon the ditions in the United States for the past five and a half years.
Russian masses by the inhuman and blood thirsty revolution In the winter of 1913 1914 hundreds of thousands of workers ists.
were upon the streets idle. Industry was disorganized; the Time and again the stories of Bolshevik atrocities have summer of 1914 saw ever larger numbers thrown into the been exposed as infamous lies, yet that fact is not of the slight ranks of the unemployed. The conflagration in old Europe est concern to the yellow press, which brazenly and persistent came as the savior of capitalist industry in the United States.
ly repeats in both news and editorial columns the exploded The sudden demands of the governments of Europe for malies. Even this anvil chorus is evidently not producing the terial ammunition, food, clothing, etc. with which to carry desired results as the capitalist class has now resorted to on the mass slaughter stimulated American industry to an ex.
whole page advertisements alleged to be comparisons of the tent never before known and completely absorbed the army conditions of the Russian people with the condition of the of unemployed.
American workingman.
Establishments that had been used for normal capitalist The Chicago Daily Journal carries a full page advertise production were converted into war industries between 1914 ment containing a cartoon under the caption, Russia Offers and 1917. In fact, the industries of the United States during a Great Industrial Lesson, wherein is portrayed an American 1915 and 1916 were just as much a part of the Allied military worker, his wife and child, sitting at ease in front of their machine as was the British army. It was clearly apparent home; the vines are twining around the door and flowers are that the United States government would be compelled to enter nodding upon the curb beyond the sidewalk a picture of the war on the part of the Allies in order to protect the interhappiness and contentment. In the distance can be seen in ests of the ruling class. With the entrance of this country numerable industrial establishments with smoke pouring from into the war as a military factor industries were stimulated the stacks, denoting peaceful production.
to an extent hardly conceivable a few years before. The seThen we are revolted at the alleged Russian conditions lective draft withdrew hundreds of thousands of men from portrayed below. Instead of peace and contentment there is the industries and the demand for labor power was so great murder, pillaging, rapine. Hundreds of infuriated beasts are that countless thousands of women donned overalls and enseen plying the torch to industrial establishments; others are gaged in branches of industry formerly considered the excluassassinating women and children; women are weeping over sive sphere of men.
the bodies of their dead husbands; children are torn from their The unemployment problem of 1913 1914 caused numerous terrified mothers breasts and hurled upon the earth run red reformers, including persons prominent in the so called so with human blood. Beneath this picture is the sinister warn cialist party, to advocate legislative reforms guaranteeing ing: Let Russia Plight be a Warning to You. Then fol every adult male the right to work. This utopian idea was lows this screed: not realized at that time as the army of unemployed is insep Torn apart by internal dissention and strife, Russia stands conspicarable from normal capitalist production; but in 1918 the uously before the world, helpless as an orphaned child.
United States government placed the famous work or fight Deficient in education, lacking leadership in whom her suspecting law upon the statute books, granting the utopians their right millions can trust, Russia is a pitiable example of the vicissitudes of war. to work with a vengeance. Numerous state legislatures and Contrast America busy factories with the idle workshops of Rus city councils, with an industrial constituency, went a step fur.
sia. From the smokestacks of American factories curls the smoke of peace and enterprise, while inside contented laborers are bending hapther and prescribed long terms of imprisonment for those unpily to their daily task, working shoulder to shoulder with capital.
able to enter the army and who refused to engage in essential The chimneys of Russian workshops are smokeless. Their interiors work. Men were recruited by the tens of thousands from are desolate. Their walls are crumbling and forbidding. while frenzied the farms of the Middle West and the rural districts of the mobs burn with torch and wantonly kill.
East for the war industries. Every arms and ammunition fac Contrast again the lack of government and governmental restraint and encouragement with Bolshevism.
tory, every shipyard operated both day and night; still the Contrast the housed American workmen with the homeless hordes demand for materials was not met.
of starving Russians.
Then on November 11, 1918, came the signing of the The great fundamental principle of American government, which armistice and the speedy demobilization of the industrial inspires initiative in the individual, has proved to be the sound basis for army. Men were discharged from industries even faster than social, industrial and political freedom and progress. It has made the United States the strongest monetary and industhey were recruited. They are returning to their former purtrial force in the world.
buits only to find no demand for their labor power. On the eve of rconstruction and readjustment we all must do our With the collapse of the war we are again confronted with part in co operation and conservation, in order to increase production. unemployment. Already the slave market is overcrowded. Then the wheels of industry will move faster than ever, without Thousands upon thousands of idle men crowd the lodging Jolt or the slipping of a cog, and Labor and Capital will be content.
house sections of the cities. The war industries such as the The creature who drew that cartoon is so debased he would ammunition factories and the gigantic shipyards are working ravish the body of his own mother at the behest of his masters.
only part time and many of them are standing idle. There Just as there are distances in space which the most powerful is no longer a demand for instruments of death. The workers telescope cannot penetrate, so are there depths of human de need food and clothing, but the capitalist owners of industry pravity which the mind cannot measure.
cannot realize a profit from their toil, so the factories, mills But as an analysis of the psychology of the creature respon and mines stand idle and the citizens of this glorious nation, sible for that cartoon is impossible, we shall endeavor to ana which recently made the world safe for democracy, infest the lyze the motive that prompted the lie.
Boup houses or stand in bread lines, as they did of yore.
The fact that there is a groat deal of unrest in the ranks Compare this condition with rovolutionary Russia whore, of the workers in America is so woll known it noods no com(Continued on pero.