SOCIALIST APPEAL TUESDAY, AUGUST 15, 1939 7917 LABOR WITH WHITE SKIN CANNOT EMANCIPATE ITSELF WHERE LABOR WITH BLACK SKIN IS BRANDED KARL MARX.
mant on in By Dwight Macdonald Coughlin This is what the War meant to the Bosses THE SPARKS IN THE NEWS Challenge opet loro NEGRO QUESTION Met by Short History of American 200 PROFIT Workers The SWP Tackles Negro Work Kennecott 70 PROFIT 800 PROFIT UNION LEADER ADDRESSES OPEN LETTER TO ON WPA CUTS Liberalism Mr. Walter Lippmann has temporarily severed his connection with the editorial board of the New Republic to enter the service of the War Department. Editorial announce ment in the New Republic for June 9, 1917. Unpardonable. Amazing! don want to waste much more space on The New Leader, but had no room last week to make one Interesting point, namely, that journal current success in getting unattach ed leftist writers to adorn its pages. Its list of contributors sounds like a roll call of the Trotsky Defense Committee: Sidney Hook James Rorty. Suzanne LaFollette, Benjamin Stolberg. Charles Yale Harrison, Max Nomad, Ferdinand Lundberg. The odd thing is that, from what can gather, most of these writers object, with var degrees of violence, to the Leader basic editorial program: its support of the war drive, and its shameless prostration before the New Deal. classic in its Way was the headline on a recent memorial tribute to Morris Hillquit: HILLQUIT LIFELONG STRUGGLE BEARS FRUIT IN NEW DEAL LAWS. But still prefer Trotsky characterization of Hillquit as a socialist leader for dentists. There are many and complex reasons for this curious state of affairs, but right now want to do no more than remark on two fresh and peculiarly dramatic examples.
In the July 29 issue, Charles Yale Harrison devoted his regular department, which is the main feature of the editorial page, to a denunciation of the President for his recent WPA actions. Of the Woodrum relief bill he writes. To place the blame for this iniquitous act solely upon the shoulders of the Tories is sheer intellectual dishonesty. Mr. Roosevelt, as any Washington correspondent will tell you, never lifted a finger to halt its passage. After some fine sneering at the miserable squirmings of the liberal and Stalinist journals, Mr. Harrison has to add: And even the publication which is graced by this column lapsed into an unpardonable editorial silence. If the silence was unpardonable, then it would seem logical to expect Mr. Harrison not to pardon it. But it was hardly a surprise to find him, in the next issue, back at the same old stand.
In the August issue, James Rorty writes a letter beginning: In your July issue read with amazement the resolution on peace, war and fascism adopted at the annual convention of the Social Democratic Federation of New York City. The Leader contributors seem to live in a state of perpetual surprise that Sweet Land of Liberty Department the fascists from three metsabor obligations on these workers, particularis Pennenene government of the revolutionary line by the and the catastrophic logs MAP NATIONAL DRIVE TO AID GUILD STRIKERS MEN AND WOMEN OF LABOR OUT OF THE PAST Social Democrats behave like Social DemoUtah crats. Mr. Rorty letter is answered by AlBy JOHNSON, gernon Lee with a blast headed. SOCIALIST MOVEMENT NEVER PACIFIST: FREEDOM WORTH FIGHTING FOR. Lee doesn yield an inch, of course: the editors know quite 793News stories from branches about Negroes increase. Reuben clearly just what they want and where they Plaskett, a Negro comrade, recently spoke to a meeting pre(Continued from Page 1)
are going, even if their contributors don dominantly Negro. The Chicago party participated in a Negro Calumet demonstration on housing. The party discusses Negro work.
The Leader contributors view its scandal Jews, came out in force this Hellaco All this shows that we did not merely adopt resolutions at the ous editorial policy from a height of magnifi Wednesday night.
cent personal aloofness. They do their stutt in) The Coughlin speaker was convention, but are seriously alive to the Negro question.
one column, while the editors go to town lashing out at the queer peoThe convention said that our first task is the education of across the page. It like very pure and ple with the strange noses, The bis business men are colng to help the country, and they the party. But the discussions usually center around the ques.
high minded young man who, with the utmost reading quotations from the are going to do it as a patriotle duty, not to make money. tion of how to approach the Negroes. Comrades are aware detachment from all that goes on about him, Lake Protocols of Zion and Bernard Baruch, March 1917, after conference with copper of the difficulties created by the prevalling prejudices of Amerlcomes in every night to play the bawdy house referring to the Russian Jew Industrialists.
can capitalist society. Most of them have had ttle contact piano for the customers.
ish Revolution of October 1917.
even of a social nature, with Negroes. It is obvious that Negro as anti fascists arrived. They revolutionists are the best persons to approach Negro masses How That Again Department tooed him effectively.
and of them we have very few. The hesitations and doubts of But shortly the cops arrived. Since the first of the year, the outlook for closed all traffic on Valentine comrades are not without foundation. Still, the present concern the New Deal has undergone a starting trans. Avenue, proceeded to segrewith the method of approach is basically false. The Negro question for us is a political question. The main question for to revive the New Deal fortunes is that the them toward Fordham Road, the party is the correct political approach. From that flows anti New Deal Democrats have come to away from the fascist meeting the method of approaching Negroes which is essentially a subordinate matter.
realize it would be suicide for them and their which then numbered about 75 party to repudiate the New Deal. The ex. persons. To further protect the Dear Mr. President: It is our political approach based on our political underpected assault on the New Deal by an obvious fascists, the cops roped off standing which here as elsewhere will be decisive. The ly conservative Congress did not materialize. their meeting place.
In the midst of the current attempt on the part of reaction us there, large and small, and must be carefully studied.
experience with Negro work gives indispensable lessons for. from an article, The New Deal Has The anti fascists continued, ary political forces in America to undermine the union wage Future by Alfred Bingham in the current however, to picket the meeting rates which many years of suffering by labor has built up, you The Revolutionary and the Negro issue of Common Sense. Mr.
Bingham article shouting anti Coughlin slogans have sald that the workers on WPA have no right to strike bears the sub head: An Editorial Observer up and down the street.
against wage cuts and lengthening of working hours, because The passed through three stages in its Negro work: Finds the Washington Atmosphere Tense with (a) up to 1928 when the Negro work was neglected. b) 1929 35 At the end of the meeting the such a strike is a strike against the government. New Confidence and Sense of Direction. police covered the retreat of If it is true that workers on government projects have no right when it made a drive, the period of which coincided with the hoodaway particularly that the friend sends in the following exhortation from the surrounding anti fas shall not be used as a strike breaking agency. In the present in of nearly all its Negro membership.
printed on the menu of a New York cists.
stance the government is locking out thousands of workers from In The Communist of September 1929, Cyril Briggs reviews restaurant: The anti fascists gathered the only jobs which the collapse of the economic system has left the early experiences of the on the Negro question. For Americans are bad people to cross when afterward and arranged to re them. Further, the government is undermining union wage stan years, the Negro membership of the could be counted their simple pleasures are threatened. Think turn to the same spot next Wed dards by forcing upon trade unionists the alternative of scab literally on the fingers of one hand. In 1928, the drive was what happened over tea in 1776. NOTE BY Dnesday, rates of pay or starvation.
initiated directly by the Comintern which insisted at the 6th Just to show that Earl Browder isn the It is obvious that if workers engaged on WPA are denied eco World Congress that the place the winning of the Negroes only one who knows about such matters. The nomic action to o protect themselves, then their only reliance can as one of its major tasks henceforth in America. The political Boston Tea Party took place December 16, be upon the platforms of the political parties for which they are line of the in those days was of course the line of Social1773. Or what might happen 11 Pie la permitted to vote. The program of your Democratic Party in Fascism. Daily they went into action to make the revolution Mode were denied us today.
1936, Mr. President, stated: on every street corner. They formed their own red trade unions. Where business fails to supply employment, we believe that they called Roosevelt and the New Dealers the worst enemies Think it over. Ice cream on ple stands for work at prevailing the American Way. truly Yankee Doodle state and local wages should be provided in cooperation with of the working class and the initiators of fascism in this country, governments on useful public projects, to the end They foamed at the mouth whenever they mentioned the dish, Americans eat Pie a la Mode only for the that the national wealth may be increased, the skill and energy and other petty bourgeois Negro organizations.
fun of it. Not for duty. Not because they re of the worker may utilized, his morale maintained, and the That political line was false. It was nearly, though not quite told they must unemployed assured the opportunity to earn the necessities of as false as their present line of the Democratic Front: repudi Ice cream on pie is an American heritagelife.
ating the revolution; making out Roosevelt and the New Deal a symbol of a free land, where one can say, The action of the present Congress, with its Democratic Party to be the sole salvation of the American workers: grinning and do, and eat as he pleases. On our menu it (Special to the Socialist Appeal)
appeals to the robust, free thinking. free CHICAGO, Aug. The majority, in its vote upon the 1940 Relief Bill, ratified by your smarking at Walter White and the signature, makes of this platform pledge a broken promise. On eating, free spending type of American who American Newspaper Gulla what, then, can these workers rely? They have been thrown out down. It had opposed the migration of Negroes from the South Furthermore in 1929, the had many blunders to live has built this great country of yours. Let him convention, which met in San of work through no fault of their own and are left completely to the North on the grounds that these newcomers would affect have it.
The pie a la mode, my friend adds, was Francisco last week, mapped without resources.
the economic position of the white workers in the North and While Congress and your administration proceeds to cut WPA result in sharpening racial antagonism. The Negro comrades lousy.
out a nation wide campaign to wages and undermine union wage scales, you nevertheless have who opposed this Gargantuan stupidity were refused the five aid the Chicago Guild strike passed the largest sums of money for the army, navy and air or six dollars they got weekly as postage for the news service against William Randolph force in the peace time history of this nation. You have justified they sent out to about 300 Negro newspapers. The had Hearst two newspapers, the this in the name of national defense. To the workers real na openly opposed social equality for Negroes at a convention in Evening American and the ravages of ten years of mass unemployment. The largest military the capitalist press and extensively quoted in the Negro press.
Herald Examiner, which is machine in the world is an ironic luxury for the protection of a now in its ninth month. nation if one third of its citizens are living in idleness, want and Even when the turn was made to the Negroes, the party was The Evening American, spe disease.
guilty of open acts of blatant chauvinism. In the unions under cial target of the strikers, reAn immediate remedy for this situation is in your hands. You leadership, such as for instance the needle trades, there veals the effect of the intensi lean divert the funds from super armaments to the building of were scores of functionaries and departments for Greek, Italian, in Chicago, has suffered a tre rates whom private Industry cannot use would not only fulfill workers in the needle trades in New York City alone. The perWe Carry His Flag mendous drop recently.
the 1936 platform pledge of the Democratio Party, but would sonal behavior of whites to Negro comrades was frequently Advertising Drops also turn a work of destruction to a work of construction.
such as to damn the party in the minds of all Negroes who Shortly after the Bisbee Deportation, Little Advertising, too, continues to The refusal of the Congress and your administration to accept heard of it. One Negro comrade, Nicolai Garcia, was in Baltileft Arizona for Butte, Montana, to lend a hand fall at a rapid rate. During the this obvious remedy leaves you to share the responsibility for more six days before he was able to get a bed. The white in the mine strike. Local vigilantes acting month of July the Herald and great part of the social unrest which is now sweeping the comrades with whom he came into contact just didn know what to do with him. Yet two days later when white comunder orders from the company lords sent Examiner has lost more than country.
51 percent of its advertising several warnings to Little, William Dunne, and and the Evening American Signed: EMIL MAZEY, President, rade arrived from New York and talked about going to a hotel, LOCAL 212, UAW CIO there were protests and offers from white comrades to put him other strike leaders, telling them to clear out. slightly more than 22 percent. Reprinted from the August issue of the United Automobile up. Such incldents always spread like wildfire among Negroes.
The warnings were ignored. Men like Little This tremendous loss shows the worker, Local 212 edition. Local 212 ts the Briggs local of the Here then was a false political line and a party membership, many elements of which had sympathy of the Chicago work United Automobile Workers Union, CIO.
aren easily intimidated, rid themselves of the crudest discriminations and prejudices practiced by capitalist society.
At three in the morning of August 1, a band ers towards the Guild strike.
Violence broke out again this And yet, despite these handicaps, between 1929 and 1936 the of masked men forced their way into the Fin week when Bill Huht, a big 210 party made progress. The Social Fascist line at least sumnish Lodging house where Little was staying. pound Herald and Examiner moned the masses to struggle. It differentiated sharply between They broke into his room, dragged him out scab reporter, attacked Joe Inthe aims and methods of Communists on the one hand and of without his crutches (he had shortly before grassla, slender 135 pound copy bourgeois politicians and vaguely progressive persons on the broken his leg. and carried him by car to a boy who had been selling cop other. The And despite distonde a revolutionary approach to the Negrocs.
railroad trestle outside of town where they ies of the Guild Hearst Strike of the revolutionary line, the demagogy hanged him.
News on the picket line in front and corruption, the bureaucratic manipulation of the Negro leaders, the chauvinism open and inverted, the party gained The state flunkles who found his body five of the Hearst plant. The attack hours later, regretted the incident, the at Meigs. publisher of the Evewas witnessed by Merrill thousands of members and won By JOHN TRAVIS peared they proceeded to dissympathetic if critical interest (Special to the Socialist Appeal) rupt by hollering What about from many sections of the Negro community Butte City Council, promising an investigation, ning American.
LYNN, Mass. Aus Three Coughlin? The boys took up The Becomes Respectable offered a reward for the capture of the crimcdult Coughlinite hecklers and the chorus.
inals. Needless to say these were never ap: 7, 392 Copies of Antitheir group of misguided youths Comrade Parker took the Then the line changed from one that at least attempted to tablishing the identity of five of the masked War Pamphlets Are tried the patience of a sympa stand to answer the question be revolutionary to one which is today openly tied to American thetic audience at the regular What about Coughlin? He imperialism and the Roosevelt war machine. The result was men.
weekly street meeting of the proceeded to show up Coughlin immediate and unmistakable. of their 2, 000 members in New flunkies pursued their investigation and Ordered in One Week Lynn Branch of the Socialistas America leading Fascist. York State, the has lost over 80 and the same thing then quietly dropped the whole matter.
Workers Party when as proof of his argument, happened all over the country. Here is a revealing example Little went to his death without a whimper.
The youths appeared on the Parker quoted the priest as of the great revolutionary truth that it is the political line which He had worked for the working class. He died scene early in the meeting but saying HE WOULD RESORT is in the last analysis decisive.
on the line of duty. The red flag he drop During the first week of the did not make any serious ef TO THE FRANCO METHOD Comrades, therefore, must put first things first. The general ped, a million will carry on.
War Referendum Campaign forts to disrupt till the three shouts of LIAR, LIAR were political line of the has proved its validity nationally the branches of the Party and adults arrived and immediately raised: plus demands to get off and internationally. Today we know that our cadres would The Bisbee Deportation, July, 1916, ranks have sent in orders set the boys into action. the stand go back to Russia never be guilty of the crude discriminations in personal relo as one of the most brutal outrages perpetrated for the pamphlet Let the What About Coughlin? LET BREAK IT UP! etc. tionships with Negroes which disfigured the less select memberin the history of American anti labor violence People Vote on War to the The first speakers, comrades From this point on there was ship of the in its early days. If we have neglected the On June 26, a strike was called in Warren, wine of 392.
London, chairman, Stone and no let up.
Negro question in the past, a great blunder, we have at least Arizona. The sheriff of the county, hench, the pamphlet, to be fulfilled by War and Roosevelt relle proWith the national quota on Cappella had been speaking on Resist Hecklers no specific errors to our credit. Our main preoccupation at the Many sympathizers, includ present time therefore must be the elaboration of our political man of the Copper Trust asked for federal September 15, set at 15, 000, this gram. The audience was very ing several women, expressed approach to the Negro question. The rest will follow. There is Army officer who investigated and found the tit has already been taken by who later heckled the last the disrupters leave troops. These were dented by the Federal means that near half of the to sympathetic even those youth their anger by demanding that no need to lose sleep at night on the method of approaching situation altogether peaceful. Not to be sway. the branches in one week.
they the Negro. correct political approach, however, is not at all ed from carrying out his obligations to his speaker of the evening (com were not interested in debating an easy matter. During the next few weeks we shall interpret mine owning overlords.
Nine branches have already rade Parker who spoke on the question. Their demands and amplify the convention resolution. Full and free discussion ganized a band of 2, 000 men. This band des ordered the whole amount of Coughlin) showed attentive in grew more firm and the crowd from members and non party persons is invited and will be cended on the miners camp in Bisbee, round their assigned quotas. These terest, at times. However, began to swell and a number dealt with in this column.
ed up 1, 186 men, herded them into cattle cars, are Reading. Fresno, Allen when the adult Coughlinites ap of arguments insued.
and dumped them Hermanas in the desert Toledo town, Hartford, Washington The climax came when it YOU ARE INVITED to join the rate orchestra. At Playland, where for two days the deportees had no food, town, and St. Paul. The first Rochester, QuakerINFORMAL HOUSE was learned from a member of Labor Bookshop Circulating the audience, that one of the in a section reserved for the no water, no shelter. nation wide scandal re three mentioned have overshot Library. Hundreds of titles.
sulted and the men were transported to col their quotas.
Friends of The Russian BulBox 245 Kerhonkson, leading hecklers, a Mr. MarLatest novels, Marxian classletin, we will picnic all afterumbus, New Mexico, where they were taken tin, local newspaper owner. Near Ellenville)
The largest single order went ics, books on Economics, His care of by the National Government until noon, full program was distributing scab issues of 120 acres September. The President commission, 000 on its quota of 2, 000. The to Minneapolis, which took Catskillkorereenland tory, etc. Lowest rates in the pine for sports, games, music, swimsunbathing: handball, ping pong the Lynn Item against which city! 15c per week. Join now!
ming, and fun galore the editorial staff is striking.
headed by Felix Frankfurter, was duly horri. National Office of the archery: swimming and horse116 University Place.
fied, deplored the incident, and said that has also taken 1, 000.
The police arrived to find back riding nearby: dancing.
arranged. The return trip will something ought to be done. Nothing was.
UNUSUALLY LOW RATES crowd of about five hundred, be made on an evening boat. with hecklers and sympathiz BOAT RIDE, PICNIC AUG. 27 with a Broadway show to be Election Campaign news ers squaring off at each other. THE FRIENDS of The Russian offered, followed by dancing.
The crowd Tel. Kerhonkson 118 was dispersed, Bulletin is to hold a boat ride was forced out of the paper Tickets are available at the Workers of New York! Rally and picnic on Sunday, August but the meeting began again National Office at the nomby the threatened Coughlin just around the corner. finally 27. The boat will sail from the inal price of only one dollar.
Against the Coughlin Bands invasion of Union Square. In At Your Service Battery at 10:15 am going closing with the announcement Make your reservations imthe next issue we will print that the would be there up Long Island Sound to Rye mediately before the limited At Union Square August 19 the latest details of the cam THE APPEAL Beach. There will be dancing next Thursday to hold its regnumber of tickets are ex paign POSTER SHOP ular weekly meeting.
aboard to the music of a first hausted.
By EMANUEL GARRETT a. FRANK LITTLE (Lynched August 1, 1917)
When they cut Frank Little bullet riddled body from the railroad trestle where gang of masked vigilantes had hanged him some five hours earlier, they found a note pinned to his undershirt.
Others Take Notice First and Last Warning 7 777 LDCSSWT Crowd Balks Coughlinite Move To Break Meeting The vigilantes were out to do the bidding of the Copper Trust. But the murder of Little no more scared the other strike militants away from their posts than had the warnings which they had sent Little before the lynching.
Men like Little don scare. The newspaper even reported that So far as is known, he made no outery. He was made of that kind of mettle found often in worker militants who live their lives wholly in the cause of the working class. One Hundred Percent Worker Little was Half Indian, half white, all Not that the first half was particularly important, except as it answered the patriots who howled about Germans. Born of a Cherokee Indian mother and a Quaker father.
Little was far less devoted to hs simon pure American birth than to his life work. There he was a one hundred peede Wobbly.
labor organizer whose like a record of major strike battles. And in that work Little bridged the difference between Hunky. wop. Swede and American by the one vital aim in life, labor solidarity for human emancipation.
What he did when he was ten years old, what ambitions he had as fifteen aren recorded.
Little probably never thought it important enough to mention these details to anyone. But in 1906 he did join the fighting group of union ists organized in the Industrial Workers of the World. And that fact is recorded. From then on it was this strike, that campaign, first as rank and filer and then, for the last four years of his life, as a member of the Executive Board of the For seven years he worked in Fresno, Calif.
There, in 1910, he led free speech fight.
Jailed, he refused to work on the rock pile and his jailers threw him into a dark cell, fed him only on bread and water. In 1916, he was on the Mesaba Iron Range, Minnesota, during the great strike battle led by the That same year he was down in Arizona for the mine strikes which were rapidly spreading from state to state.
As the war hysteria assumed vaster proportions, reign of terror was loosed against labor militants in general, and anyone who could be identified with them. The copper and other mine barons saw to that.
Raids were frequent and widespread. The Bisbee Deportation instanced the full viciousness of the boes offensive against labor. 18 Weekly Busses met a Weekend strikers.