hace THE MILITANT Saturday March 22, 1930 PITTSBURGH CARMEN Naval Conference Talks On FIGHT TRAITORS PITTSBURG (FP) Unable to smash New attempts at the revival of the the solidarity of the striking taxi drivers London Naval Conference, after its sudden ranks by a frontal offensive, the Parmalee collapse in recent weeks, continue to make Transportation Co. is resorting to innuen little or no headway. Almost two months does aimed at the strike leaders. Letters of sessions find the conference today no have been mailed to all the camen with further than when it began. The dispatch photostats of correspondence between or. of Balderston, in the New York World ganizers and officials of the Teamsters and (3 14 30) makes the following characteriChauffeurs union.
zation: The London Naval Conference One letter, signed by Pres. Daniel still lives tonight, although it is fighting Tobin of the Teamsters Intl. criticizes the for its life.
Pittsburg teamsters secretary for admitting the taxi men into a teamsters local. Realizing this condition, the capitaladvise you now that you had no business 1st Jowers are trying in every conceivable to admit those taxicab drivers into your manner to adjust things so that the faillocal union, as this is in direct violation ures of the conference shall not be too of your charter rights, warns Tobin, glaring. The attitude prevails that at Such action on your part without the least something ought to be done.
consent and approval of the international The various powers distrust one anexecutive board is a violation of the laws other. This was evident in refusals to enof the International union. It is not the tertain political pacts among tbemselves.
policy of the international union to admit The French proposals for a political pact to membership men while they are on strike between her and England on the one hand, and with the United States on the other, as told you in our conversation over the long distance phone.
netted nothing. Noither the United States This letter carries the Parmalee capnor Great Britain are ready to accept such tion: Proof of How Your Are Being Misled!
political alignments at this stage, and deAnother letter, intercepted by Parmales clare by their actions that at this juncture sples, refers to the payment of 500 by the of the war preparations, such gteps are teamsters local secretary to the strike com premature. The failure of political pacts, mittee.
It carries the unwarranted Parwhile adding to the further crisis in the melee caption: These mon Eat Whether conference, reopened again the diecusYou Do or Not!
sions on limitations.
The company extensive undercover In the meantime the conference sesdepartment, working incessantly to sions have been postponed in ravor or prewt individual strikers, has been able to liminary discussions between the individreach only five so far. These five were ual powers with the hope of arriving at disciplined by the union for counterfeiting some minimum agrements with which to tickets for a benefit. Thereupon Parmelee continue with the conterence proper. These took them openly on the payroll, opened too, have made to progress.
oince and installed the five Judases as a The main handicap continues to be Back to Work Committee.
the fallure of the Italians to put their The Hearst Sun Telegraph, anxious to cards on the table, giving figures as to discredit the strikers at every turn, has what the Mussolini government considers hailed this committee as indicative of the essential to the security of Italy, it 19 early end of the strike. The strikers ansaid. So far, the Italians continue to swer was to order the arrest of the Quintet insist on parity with France as the first on embezzlement charges. Their own soidessential to an agreement on the Medarity against the company insidious efforts iterranean. In this manner the Times was shown recently when a company set pictures the present situation. The French tlement was turned down with only one refuse to budge from their original propodlgsenting vote.
sal calling for a 725, 000 naval tonnage.
Neither will Italy accept any reduction ATLANTA The Georgia Federation of from parity with France. condition for Labor will hold its annual convention France reduction would be a similar deApril 16 at Waycross, crease on the part of England and the United States, which is a very unlikely change With the apparent impossibility to attain a power treaty, steps have already been taken to arrive at a three party agreement between the United States, Great Britain and Japan. At this writing negotiations on this basis have proceeded and brought with it a renewed attempt to bring about agreement between France and Italy. three power treaty would result in an increase of antagonisms. This would mean that France and Italy, without feeling the atmosphere of the conference, would enter into a heated rave in construction which would in turn be counteracted by ncreased building on the part of the members of the three rower treaty.
It is becoming more and more evident that the outcome of the conference will fail to hit intended mark. Neither of the powers will budge from their demands of sufficient security. Edwin James in the New York Times (3 14 30) says. Looking at the conference broadly, there still e sts a possibility of making a limitation treaty here, but there seems no chance at all or registering any reduction in the sum total of the world war craft.
The conference has thus far failed to make any progress on the contrary It ustains the contentions of the Communists that such conferences of the capitalist powers, are held to bring confusion in the ranks of the working class and to cover the war plans of the imperialists. The unmasking of these attempts at deluding the masses is the task of the Communists. MILWAUKEE COPS ABUSE CHILDREN IN JAIL MILWAUKEE (FP) Police beat and abused eight children, arrested with 60 Adults the employment demonstration March 6, it was revealed when the demonstrators were released from the Milwaukee jail. Twenty five of the adults were charged with rioting and 35 with vagrancy, presumably because of their unemployment.
Six were given six months in jail as one way out of solving their individual unemployment problems and 18 got three months each.
Marion Workers Discuss New Strike MARION, FP) This mill town is seething with excitemont, both amang the blacklisted strikers of last summer and the workers employed in the Marion and Clinchfield mills. Announcement by the mill managements that the stretchout system is to be put back into effect has caused threats of a strike. Before and after work the workers are seen knotted in small groups discussing the new order.
One hundred and thirty families numbering 735 men, women and children are facing starvation here. They are the victims of strikes at the two scab mills, Ev Icted from company owned shacks, they are now living in dugouts, barns and abandoned shacks, as many as 14 adults and children in two rooms. A Letter to the Italian Left Communists (Continued from Page 4)
the type to carry out orders. The sterile quibbling of his speeches, always dofinl.
tively directed to the defense of opportun18ra, is the exact opposite of the vigorous, strongly marked and fruitful revolutionary thought of Amedeo Bordiga. By the way, Is it not Ercoli who tried to adapt to Italy the idea of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry under the slogan of the Italian Constituent Assembly supported by a worker peasant body. On the questions of the the Chinese revolution, the British general strike, the revolution in Poland, or the struggle againat Italian fascism, Ercoll, as well as the other leaders in the bureaucra.
tlc machine, invariably began by adopting an opportunist line and eventually rectifed it by means of ultra Left adventure. It appears that at present, that variety is again in season, Having thus on the one side Centrists of the Ercoll type, and on the other side ultra Left contusionists, you are called upon, comrades, under the dimcult conditions of the fascist dictatorship, to defend the historic interests of the Italian proletariat and of the international proletariat. With all my heart wish you good luck and success.
Yours, Trotsky Constantinople, September 25, 1929.
corTHE ABERLE MILL STRIKE IN PHILLY strike. Continued from Page 1)
dustrial Philadelphia, but the Communist party here has never discovered this.
Lovestone and Foster yesmen, who as District Organizers, have so gallantly par.
aded through this city Bentall, Tallentire, Weisbord, Jakira, Bail, Benjamin and now Gardos, never penetrated into this vast unknown hinterland. Yet, every nationally known Philadelphia product, except Baldwin Locomotives, Kirschbaum Clothes and Scott Sanitissue, is manufactured in Kensington. Miles of streets are lined with textile mills and the homes of textile workers. Here Stetson Hats are made which are carried around the world by ships bullt in Cramps Shipyard. The vast coal and grain piery of the Reading and the world known Disston Saw works are both manned by Kensington workers.
There is probably no larger nor more fully proletarian unit in America.
Kensington is very largely populated by the descendants of Scotch, Irish and English toxtile emigrants, for, before the Southward movement, it was the greatest textile center in the country. There is a cattering of other nationalities, but it is typically American in its entirety. It 18 the proper bare for the working class movement in the Philadelphia industrial area.
Philadelphia Labor Record It is generally believed outside of Philadelphia that it is a city of scabs.
Whatever truth there may be in this, certainly does not apply to Kensington. It has always been strongly unton.
When the textile Industry was in its prime there wore probably 75, 000 organized workers in a kut கம 1vad worked in Kenslagton. This had its natural redex in helping other workers, such as barbers, bartenders, store clerks to unite.
During the great car strike, Kensington was an armed camp. Police, state constabu Sury, National Guard, occupied the streets of the section, and riots were continuous. Ashwagon drivers dumped their loads upon the tracks while women from Learby houses brought oll and gasoline out to burn the stalled cars to the ground.
The Cumberland Street carbarn was only comparable to Belgian fortress on the German frontier. IF THE OF HAD HAD CLASS VIEW INSTEAD OF CRAFT OUTLOOK, Kensington could have been organized 100. Hundreds of lesser struggles attest the fighting qualities of these workers. The outlaw railway strike closed the Reading shops in Kensington, while the last at Cramps is a labor classic.
The pititully inadequate leadership and the wrong policies of the Communist party are here most clearly shown. After ten years of existence in Philadelphia they have absolutely no connection with 1ts most militant workers. Hand picked sent here to keep in order political fences have nover troubled themselves with little things like this. The handful who did realize the importance of Kensington were glven no aid or encouragement. In fact some who were too insistent in demanding that real work be done were driven from the Party.
Left Wing Isolated; Fakers Pleased Where is the National Textile Union in a situation of such magnitude? It It has any existence, except on paper, in this great textile city, the writer is unaware of it. It has not appeared in the Aberle stil It has doubtless been great rellet to the of fatboys, McMahon and Co, that the Communists have so kindly withdrawn from the feld. It tough enough to try to keep in hand a bunch like hese Kensington workers, who, despite all the advice of their officials, have insisted on making this strike real, who, in deliance of injunctions have made mass demonstrations around the mill, 60 of them beins arrested recently at one time. It worth a 10, 000 yearly salary to work that hard, without having a lot of Communists in the union counteracting every effort toward peaceful class collaboration. One can almost hear them breathe, Thank theo, oh God, for the blessed third period.
Of course, it one reads the Dally Worker, another impression might be gotten. At first the Party press virtually ignored the strike. Now, to cover up the inactivity of the Party and the stupid and lying stories are carried.
This gets nobody anywhere. For instance, the Dally Worker captioned, Thousands led by fight Aberle scabs.
An untruth out of the whole cloth, concocted presumably by the Party to cover up the failure of the textile organizer, Murdock. On a few occasions, Party members, not textile workers, have made futile gestures by distributing denunciatory leaflets. The capitalist press has not eren mentioned them, and the capitalist is not likely to overlook any bets to scare up RED issue in the strike. Of the 92 strikers arrested, none are reported as being members of the Party or T, The funeral demonstration, sadly enough, was an of affair entirely. The Mayor, the police and the of tatboys realize the volcano underlying the situation and cooperate in overy way to provide a safety valve that would lessly for them lot of steam: The rest of the Daily Worker reports are in line with the above quotation. As for an oc casional leaflet distribution, this is not the equivalent or substitute for persistent, gol1d, systematic work among the workers.
Establish Roots among the Workers What to be done? There is but one possible course. The Party must be reorientated. Its roots must be firmly planted in Kensington. The work that should have been done years ago, must be begun at this time. The policy of working also within the of must be revived.
If the Party in Philadelphia had adopt.
ed a correct attitude years ago, it would have established bases in Kensington and picked up the broken threads of the It would have built an influence, that, by the time of the Passaic textile strike would have enabled it to have reached masses of Philadelphia textile workers, and have secured their hearty cooperation, both organizationally and financially. The Party today would be in a position to have oce cupied a leading position in the recent great demonstration, When Weisbord finally came to Philly, he spent his time in factional politics, as did all the other apparatus men who followed him.
If such preparatory work had been properly carried out during the past years, Bo called unemployment demonstrations staged here lately at the City Hall, could have been real. There are tens of thousands of unemployed in Kensington. Whole families are unemployed and starving.
Thousands of them have lost the equities they had in homes sold out at sheriff sales.
Will the value of this lesson be lost?
It is for the Communist and the Left wing to turn seriously to the task of obtaining base among the most exploited sact!
of the Philadelph ly in the Kensington area.