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SOCIALIST APPEAL JANUARY 25, 1941 SOCIALIST APPEAL VOL. No. Saturday, January 25. 1941 PubMehed Telly by the BOCIALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASSN.
116 University Place, New York, Telephone: AL conquls 854T In Memphis, Domain Of War Reporter FDR Comrade, Crump Lifts The Veil For Moment Editorial Board: FELIX MORROW ALBERT GOLDMAN General Manager: RUTI JEFFREY You re In Trouble If You re Negro And Didn Vote For Roosevelt And The Rest Of Boss Crump Bourbon Ticket Subscriptions: 00 per year 00 for six months.
Foreign. 00 per year, 50 for six months. Bundle orders: cents per copy in the United States: cents per copy in all foreign countries. Single coples: conta Reentered a second class matter December 1989, at the post office at New York, under the Act of March 3, 1879.
FIGHT WITH THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY Yanks Have Gone On the afternoon of January 15, a 21, 329 ton Army transport vessel, the Edmund Alexander, steamed quietly and without any attendent fanfare out of New York harbor. The port of destination of this ship was St. Johns, Newfoundland, island possession of Great Britain off the coast of Canada.
Aboard this troop ship were an undisclosed number of American soldiers, the first United States military forces assigned to the naval bases leased from Great Britain.
Very shortly, additional American troops are to be sent to seven other British possessions in the Western Hemisphere.
By this time, therefore, the first American troops will have set foot on the soil of a watring nation in World War 11. Thus, quietly, and almost without any direct knowledge of the American people, the United States has joined the war, not merely in the indirect sense of giving arms and war materials to one of two belligerent imperialist powers, but of lending direct armed forces.
It is true that these forces are as yet small, a mere symbol and token offering of vast hordes soon to follow. And it is likewise true, that a sly legal fiction is being maintained that these troops have been sent to territory which is now, in a farfetched technical sense, American territory.
But it is a fiction maintained by the administration with a wink of the eye and fingers crossed. It is a Foxy Grandpa game which Roosevelt and the ruling class are playing with the American masses.
The British Empire is at war with the German Empire. Every section of these empires are prey for attack. Whether it be Newfoundland, Australia or South Africa, British territory is war territory, and the presence of American military forces on such territory cannot be interpreted, despite any legal dodges, as other than direct military participation in the war. Tomorrow, Roosevelt will lease bases elsewhere in the British Empire, not excluding the British Isles themselves. An attack on England can thus be termed an attack on American territory, and the United States will defend itself with a super fleet of bombers over Germany.
In this wise will America join the second war for democracy. In cunning guises, in secrecy, behind the backs of the people.
ON THE WAR FRONT: For: Military training of workers, financed by the gov.
ernment, under control of the trade unions. The establishment of special officers training camps, financed by the government and controlled by the trade unions, to train workers to become officers Confiscation of all war profits all company books to be open for trade union inspection. Expropriation of all war industries and their operation under workers control. Trade union wages for all workers drafted into the army. Full equality for Negroes in the armed forcesDown with Jim Crowism. An end to secret diplomacy. peoples referendum on any and all wars.
AT HOME: For: job and decent living for every worker, Thirty thirty 30 weekly minimum wage 30 hour weekly maximum for all workers on all jobs. 30 weekly old age and disability pension. Full social, political and economic equality for the Negro people. Workers Defense Guards against vigilante and fascist attacks. twenty billion dollar Federal public works and housing program to provide jobs for the unemployed. Expropriate the Sixty Families. An Independent Labor Party based on the Trade Unions. Workers and Farmers Government.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. Jan. 18. The reported recently in the Socialist ever. The CIO is attempting to harassed Negro population of this Appeal, scores of Negro residents, organize in Memphis, and is buildSouthern Jim Crow, poll tax city here are being picked up off the ing up working class solidarity be are attempting to organize them streets every day by the police tween the Negro and white workselves to resist a deliberate cam. and held on charges of loiterers. Among the plants which the paign of police terror and racial ing. etc. But while the Phila CIO is organizing is that of the indignities. federal investigadelphia incident was somewhat ex Firestone Tire and Rubber Co.
tion into conditions in Memphis ceptional for that city, this is The Crunp machine has close ties by Colonel Amos Woodcock, spe something which Memphis Ne with this corporation as well as cial assistant to the attor groes have always suffered, ex other big business outfits. No.
ney general, not brought any cept that now it is being system where in the country is there relief.
atically intensified.
such an obvious working arrangeFor months, starting prior to score and more of prominentment between the politicians and the November 1940, elections, pol local Negro residents have been the corporations as here in Mem ice have maintained a picket singled out by name and threaten. phis. And nowhere is there more line before the establishments of ed with being run out of town by open hatred of organized labor.
a number of Negro merchants, in the Police Commissioner, Joe The Memphis boss class is try.
a deliberate effort to force them Boyle. Negro newspaper editors ing to smash the CIO organizing out of business. All customers who have attempted expose the campaign by inciting conflict be seeking to enter these stores are Memphis conditions have likewise tween the Negro and white workstopped searched and otherwise been threatened and intimidated. ers.
intimidated. The police are us. It is clear that the local off. investigation. Weeks have al Little is expected of the federal ing the pretext that they are cals are attempting to provoke a ready gone by since its was in searching for criminals and race riot against the Negroes. Instituted, and nothing has been dope peddlers.
dividual whites, almost as if by done. The Democratie national Tension between whites and Ne, design, have gone out of their way administration will not interfere groes is mounting, with increasing to accost and insult Negroes, even with its local machine, it is felt, individual clashes on the streets, on clearly segregated Jim Crow in shops and trolley cars. This street cars. The Negroes are con especially as this may antagonize is a situation deliberately provok. ducting themselves with extreme chine throughout the Democratic white boss mathe Solid ed by the Democratic boss political caution, fearing that the police South.
machine of Ed Crump, in retalia are just waiting for some defenThe only real defense which the tion for the refusal of many Nesive action by Negroes which the Democratic white bourbon wholesale police violence against the trade union movement, and groes to support Ropsevelt and could be used as a pretext for Memphis Negro workers have is to join with the white workers in ticket in the last election. the whole Negro community. by organized labor action to drive Elmer Atkinson, one of the Already official authorities in back the police terror. More and merchants picketed, has already Memphis have announced that more Negro workers are joining been forced to close his doors. The they have enough sub machine the CIO and other labor organizadrug store of Dr. Martin, guns on hand to care for the sit. tions with the growing awareness against whom the drive originally vation. The police here have a of where their real strength lies.
opened, when he refused to call long tradition of being quick on (Since this article was writoff a rival political rally under the trigger finger in dealing with ten, the federal investigator, the threats of Boss Crump tools, the defenseless Negroes.
Col. Woodcock, has told the at.
is still running.
This campaign of incitement torney general that the evidMeanwhile, paralleling the mass against the Negroes goes beyond ence he collected will not arrest of Negroes in Philadelphia, the local political situation, how. stand up in court. EDITOR. No amount of canned propaganda can polish up the tarnished slogans for which the masses of the world cheered and died in World War The present war is being fought without illusions. On the Allied as well as on the Axis side the war is merely the final sufferance which the masses sullenly endure because they are not prepared as yet to write finis to this bloody eud product of capitalism in its death agony startlingly frank admission of this fact is contained in one of a series of articles published in the New York Post and Chicago Daily News. Wallace Deuel, correspondent recently returned from Europe, wrote in the January 9th issue of the Post. Most of the peoples of Europe are like the victims of a nightmare today dazed, numb, worn out, despairing and confused. The war itself is the monster of the nightmare, of course. But so many other terrors preceded itso many other unbearable shocks and strains and disillusionments that the peoples were worn out be.
fore the war ever came. There is a hopelessness, too, about the nightmare, as well as an almost unendurable fatigue. On the Allied side, there is the hopelessness of seeing Germany rise again only half a generation after it had been beaten for good. How can the German problem be solved, if it was not solved in 1918? There are ways of solving it, of course, but the man on street may be forgiven if he does not see then clearly. Our emphasis. On the Allied side there is the further hopeless ness of the appalling costs of the war in blood and treasure and freedom. Even if the Allies win, what can be the fruits of their victory! Here, again, there are answers, but here, again the man on the street may be forgiven if he does not see them clearly. There is also on the Alled side the hopelessness of the failure to solve peoples own problems, with the result that the peoples have lost much of their faith in their ideals. But there is a hopelessness on the German side, too. It is true that Germany has risen again. But the price in wear and tear on the people nerves has been appalling, and millions of Germans have ceased to believe. If they ever did, that it is possible to hope for rewards which would be worth the price. The longer the war lasts, the more the Ger mans wonder if is worth fighting.
An Admission of Bankruptcy Why do the masses of Britain, Germany, Italy con.
tinue to fight this war in which none believes, a war for which the rulers can give no justification? asko Deuel, and attempts an answer. They fight it, though, most of them, not with the normal reactions of peoples who have fought wars in the past, but against their own wille and fudgment which tell them that the war is not worth fighting and that therefore they do not want to fight il. Because they cannot see anything else to do, because they are the victims of a nightmare. Our emphasis. No such admission of universal bankruptey on the part of the ruling classes of every nation has ever before been uttered in the capitalist press. And it appears in a series of articles devoted primarily to convincing the American masses of the necessity for our participation in the war on the side of Britain!
Deuel, and the whole ruling class for which he speaks, say Fight! Fight without reason, without cause, without hope. But fight!
Unable to offer the masses even the shred of an answer to their problems, the capitalists and bankers of every nation, demand a messianic faith in a bloody mission whose sordid purpose they cannot and daro not admit What has wrung this damaging admission from Deuel? Not devotion to the truth but fear! It is a hysterical warning to the masters of the world.
You have not long to travel, Deuel is saying. The historical road down which you have ridden over the tortured and broken bodies of the peoples is nearing its end. Save yourselves! Give the masses an answer, any answer, but give them an answer before it is too late.
More Competition Just The Right People To Rule On Textbooks No Secret Diplomacy! the Color United. Construction workers they re There are facts that, were they known, would turn the American workers and farmers irreconcilably against the war and the Roosevelt government which promotes the war.
But the American people are not permitted to learn these facts. blackout has descended over this nation, a blackout which conceals vast pitfalls of misery, death and destruction. man made fog increasingly beclouds the diplomatic moves and activities of the Administration. The cozy intimacies of the fire side chats of Roosevelt are inconsequential tid bits and generalities which hide the basic facts.
The facts exist. The New York Times, January 21, reported. The State Department will reject legislative demands that the department make public the diplomatic reports of Joseph Kennedy and William Bullitt, according to rumors on Capitol Hill. One legislator told reporters that the State Department would decline to release the reports, even to Congressional committees, on the ground that they were confidential documents of the Executive branch of the government.
What are the ultimate commitments which the administration has secretly given Churchill? What are the true details about the downfall of that one time friend and democratic ally, France?
What are the real conditions prevailing in that present Fortress of Democracy. England? What are the war aims of the British rulers? And what are the war aims of Roosevelt himself?
These are the decisive questions to which the common people are denied answers. The answers are the guarded property of that tiny handful of conniving politicians, statesmen and diplomats of the ruling classes who manipulate the destinies of nations and peoples.
What is contained in these reports of the State Department that those who are to fight. suffer and die in the coming war dare not know? What sordid deals and mercenary horse trades do they reveal?
What are these awesome facts about the innersprings of this war for democracy which the masses may not have?
We have an idea what facts are lurking in this diplomatic blackout. They are such facts whose publication would blow aside the silken drapings of democracy and liberty beneath which are hidden the ſestering sores of imperialist ambitions motivating the British participation in the war, as well as the Nazi, and which are the sole determinants of America participation.
That is why we say the American masses must demand light in this ominous blackout, must de mand a full and open accounting from the government. The future victims of the war must raise the hue and cry now: AN END TO SECRET DIPLOMACY!
We commented recently on the spectacle of AFL and CIO leaders strenuously competing to establish which were the more respectable and worthy of the patronage of the government and the employers. We cited the example of the AFL Metal Trades Department, swearing off strikes in the hopes of currying favor with the Navy and its contracting shipowners; whereupon the CIO shipyard workers union countered by adopting a gag law to oust all communists.
Another instance is provided by the race between the AFL Building Trades Department and still neck stretch: it a loss up which one will be teacher pet at the War Department.
The AFL officials led off in this contest by surrendering the strike weapon: There is no reason for strikes of any character on defense building projects, declared John Coyne, for the AFL Building Trades Department. But he couldn get by with that, no sirree, not while Lewis (rubber stamp brother of John was head of the CIO United Construction Workers.
On January 11, Lewis sent a letter to Assistant Secretary of War Robert Patterson, demanding that the War Department immediately take action against the AFL. For what? Because the AFL policy militates against efficient prosecution of the national defense program. And Lewis demanded nothing less than that the War Department adhere to its policy of no discrimination against non unionists. in plain English he demanded that the War Department enforce its policy of outlawing closed shop contracts. All this larded with fulminations against the AFL building trades for exacting tribute from the workers (i. e. dues. you think you were reading a letter from the National Association of Manufacturers, instead of one from a CIO leader.
Lewis finky letier, all other things being equal, would have won the race for him; however, the AFL building trades unions have far more members than his construction workers union, and hence their no strike policy can do more damage.
But the competition is close enough between these two contestants the good will of the War Department Fortunately, the workers have still to be heard from. They never gave their leaders any mandate fór grovelling before the powers that be.
By LYDIA BENNETT one time part of the brains beten in the last two decades, this You would hardly believe it, hind Alf Landon and his co phase of organizational activity in but even political reaction has its horts. He is one of the nation itself ought to cut the ranks of funny phase. The Roosevelts, chief snooper outers of social the Association by about 50.
BI! Greens and Sidney Hillmans ism, having found a horrible putting half its membership into do the strong arm job of clamping amount of it in the New Deal. institutions for the mentally in the leg irons of capitalism on the Let us, however, live up to the jured. Every member of the As.
workers; and that not funny, high level of objectivity which sociation is further urged to get But then come the little cowardly, Professor Robey and his in close touch with school boards short sighted, thick skulled, mor display and observe the purposes and individual teachers, the onic camp followers who highlight announced by them. They are closeness to the boards amounting.
with their antics the whole viel out to disseminate public informa we suspect, to complete identity.
ous campaign of reversion which tion that is all on the content The final organizational direccannot be sated until mankind and philosophy of all the social tive is most subtle of all: is pushed back into the cannibal science textbooks used in Ameri, members are to encourage edu.
ism out of which it is just begin. can schools. They should know cators to realize the merit of the ning to pull itsell.
about publle information, too! private enterprise system. Or Aren they the inventors and pro else! What visions of persecutions The National Association of motors of advertising that great and purgings, of private examina Manufacturers, no less, is out to eat of all historical swindles? tions, of classroom thing or two, especially those who aren they the ones who hail as bribes and threats! knows With 1, 600, 000 in hand and a research, sucker born billions of lies told on all the mil.
take modern science too literally the profoundest discovery of mod. its power, and that power came Barnum declara in a flood of gold from all the staff of stooges (including one every minute. tion that lions of billboards in America.
odical Science and Society) this. The guiding lights of There Is the sole educational in Association of Past Masters of the think the spirit of America is dy strument knows and can Arts of Swindling. Haud and Aduting from want of a faith; and they appreciate; it brings in dividends.
have faith to give away. We teration has set out to censor and gather. Maybe they want the caught up temporarily with the In 1815, after reaction had purify the textbooks of the coun. kind of faith fostered by them great French Revolution, the Pope try. Six hundred social science works have come under the eagle the kind that requires the capi issued orders to tear down the eye of Dr. Ralph West Robey and calists themselves to set up a street lighting system introduced whole governmental department to into Rome by the Napoleonic re his associates.
look into the products marketed gime, to rip up the botanical gar The purpose of the scrutiny is by members of in order dens planted there in the interest to ferret out all books which to give some measure of assure of science, to burn and tear and either speak in favorable terms ance to a suspicious publie that cut out every index of progress of the theories of socialism or arsenic will be kept out of tooth to be found in the city. These communism or fail to paint a paste, that horse meat will not be things were done, and now we glowing enough appreciation of sold as beef, that vermin and rats laugh at them. We know when the profound virtues of capitalist and filth will not be used to sea we look at the past that history free enterprise, which parades in son canned soup, that chalk will the lingo of as the Amernot be advertised as flour. We sometimes forget that, when we never marches backward. We ican way of life. These are to suspect, however, that the kind of look at our crazy contemporaries.
be consigned to the flames forth faith they really want to recapwith.
ture and cultivate is that which Dr. Robey should know about leads a poor sucker to buy waterIntegrity and ethics and the deep ed down, flavored alcol as a cure What Stalinists virtue which underlies American for cancer, or pink water at 69 business; he is assistant professor a pint for antiseptic uses, or per Did At Their of banking at Nicholas Murray umed machine oil to restore lost Butler University and was at hair. Lenin Memorial What hurts is that the system of free enterprise in Amer William Foster, National ica is not being talked up in the Chairman of the Communist BANQUET schools as it should. Now, for our Party, has slipped to a pretty side, we say we have absolutely low estate in life. At the For no objection to taking a scalpel Lenin Memorial meeting at GRACE CARLSON to this famous free enterprise and. Madison Square Garden, Jan.
13, Foster opened his remarks The Trotskyist Candidate for day dismembering it with care by saying Lenin is dead. Senator from Minnesota and scientific precision provided then with a sigh of relief he Her Vote Exceeded the Com when we get down to Hopson and devoted the rest of his rebined Votes Cast for the So Whitney and Insull we can hold marks to plugging the latest cialist and Communist Parties. them up in their reeking naked books of the Dean of Canterness for all the students to see. bury, arch theoretitian of Stal Saturday Feb. HOME WORK FOR inist Marxism, entitled Sov.
THE MANUFACTURERS iet Power.
GERMANIA HALL 8:00 pm Let it not be supposed, however, Every speaker either start160 Third Ave. Near 16th St. that the individual manufacturers ed his speech with the phrase Lenin is dead or injected it New York City are being let off easy by Dear me, no! They have a series into his remarks. No speaker AUSPICES: of duties to perform. Each manu.
spoke of Lenin ideas or role, facturer should read in full any but spoke only of the accomSocialist Workers Party book which seems of questionable plishments of the Admission merit. Since this means all the under Stalin.
best books on social science writThe Rulers Have No Answer But the ruling classes have no answer except more violence, more wars, more oppression. Only the masses themselves have an answer; born of their agony. des.
pair and hopelessness, nurtured on desperation and disillusionment.
It is the answer which turns the bones of the master class into jelly. It is the answer which the prime minister s, presidents and fuehrers know to day: and which the workers and peasants of every land will give tomorrow. It is the answer of prole tarian revolution. Word Of Caution Who Backed Camacno?
Mexican Stalinists Just when Stalin will switch from the Nazi orbit to the democratic orbit cannot be predicted.
The switch will certainly not take place so long as Ilitler is in a position to punish Stalin for the change. word of caution to those who seek signs of Stalin switch in the Daily Worker twists and lurns: don forget that the Communist Party was still shrieking for the war of the democracies against fascism the day the Stalin Ilitler pact was announced, and went on shrieking the same tune for several weeks afterward. The Communist parties of Britain and Canada were even permitted in accordance with what the GPU calls its disinformation service to issue manifestoes supporting Britain war, before the Cominlern finally swung over and adapted itself to the StalinHitler pact. The turn in Stalin foreign policy the next time, too, is likely to precede by weeks or months the corresponding turn in Comintern propaganda. Camacho is seen swinging right toward reaction and New president putting foes of people into posts, encouraging reactionaries by slogan No Victors, No Vanquished read the headlines over a story datelined Mexico City, in the January 4th Daily Worker.
Although Mexican people, the workers and peasants, gave Camacho the election victory by their support, they did not gain the real victory. And every day shows this more clearly, proclaims the Drily Ivorter.
When the Mexican Trotskyists warned the Mexican masses prior to the elections that Camacho represented the reaction, the Mexican Communist party called tho Trotskyists everything from counter revolutionary dogs to agents of American Imperialism.
It seems that the real agent of American fm. perl.
alism turns out to be Camacho, the man whoin the Stalinists supported and helped elect to the presidency