Civil WarCominternCommunismSocialismSocialist PartySovietTerrorismWorking Class

JUNE 15, 1921 THE WORKERS COUNCIL 83 The Workers Council No. Vol.
New York, June 15, 1921 89 94 after the civil war, is still virtually the slave of the TABLE OF CONTENTS rich white employing class. His lot is even worse than Page that of the po white trash of the south. For over The Lesson of Tulsa.
82 a century he has borne his slavery blindly, too ignoThe Socialist Party Convention Foretaste 82 rant to know that the nation guarantees him rights he Raising the Grand Chief Salary 83 has never been strong enough to defend. The war Lord Gompers, This Is Your Fight! 84 which drafted thousands of young Negroes into the Free Press and the New York Call.
84 army, and the scarcity of labor in the North which Incredible Menshevik Atrocities. 85 led other thousands to better paid jobs in the large The Detroit Convention and the Socialist cities, gave him the self confidence that he hitherto Party 86 lacked. He has had a taste of life, has learned from From the Italian Front.
87 his own experience, or from the experience of others, The Amalgamated Beats the Wolfthat the black man, too, has human rights. He was International Notes 92 quick to see that the planters of the South were beginProgram Suggestions for the Socialist Party ning to feel the curtailment in their labor supply, and Convention 93 his self confidence rose to the point where he resented Formula for Social Revolution.
oppression that he had hitherto borne with patient reAppeal of Chinese Organizations to Russian signation. In his pamphlet on Georgia and the Negro, Workers 96 Governor Dorsey mentions that cases of Negro insubordination are becoming more and more frequent, a Published by the International Educational Association thing that was unheard of only a few years ago. He BENJAMIN GLASSBERG, Secretary Editorial Board states that on a number of occasions Negroes were WALTER Cook, Secretary Intern. Educ. Assn.
liberated from prison before lynching parties could be arranged. So, he adds laconically, a number of innocent victims were saved from an unjust death.
TEN CENTS COPY The Negro of the South is waking up. But he will Two DOLLARS FIFTY CENTS YEAR continue to be the victim of lynch murders and poThe WORKERS COUNCIL, an organ for the Third Inter groms until he learns that he must defend himself.
national, published by the International Educational The number of lynch murders is increasing from year Association, 80 East 11th Street, New York.
to year. And comparatively few of their victims are accused of rape. Peonage slavery, exists in every state with a large Negro population. The government periodically investigates, but the Negro Editorials lot is unchanged. Political equality for the Negro is THE LESSON OF TULSA a hollow mockery, economically, politically and socially, the Negro is still the paria of society.
Sixty five to seventy dead Negroes and ten to fifteen It lies in the hands of the black man to change it.
dead whites! square mile of Negro habitations He need but show his determination to resent every demolished! Whatever the investigation in Tulsa, unjustified attack by the whites, with the same weaOkla. may find concerning the causes of this latest pons that the whites are using against him. Then, and negro pogrom, these simple facts prove that this was not until then, this butchery of black men will cease.
no struggle between blacks and whites, but a butchery Let the Negro once become conscious of his own manof helpless Negroes by a band of white terrorists. hood, and he will force the white man to see in the That a few white men also lost their lives proves black neighbor a human being.
nothing. Was it not proven in the Chicago race riots that more than one white man was killed by bullets THE SOCIALIST PARTY CONVENTION from the pistols of his own wildly shooting fellows?
FORETASTE There seems to be a great deal of confusion still as The Socialist Party has at last come into its own.
to the immediate incident that precipitated this horIts conversion to Americanism which began at Albany rible outbreak. According to one report it followed when the party blazoned forth as the defender of the upon an attempt to liberate a young Negro from prison sacred ballot and the American system of representawho had been accused of attacking a white woman.
tive government as against the Soviet system of Another version states that there has been a great deal Russia and was continued by the 1920 convention of dangerous unrest among the Negro inhabitants of which provided that only citizens should hereafter be Oklahoma since the peonage scandal in Georgia and eligible for office in the Socialist Party and that the other southern states forcibly attracted their attention clause forbidding elected officials from voting for to the same conditions in their own state.
militarism be stricken out, has now come to a sucThe Negro of the southern states to day, fifty years cessful conclusion. In recognition of its conversion, the city of Detroit has set aside the Northeast High even that, perhaps, of the majority Socialists of GerSchool for the use of the coming Socialist Party many. It is interesting to note that Branstetter Convention.
crony, Stedman, who introduced a similar resolution In making plans for the coming convention, the De in his branch was recently completely snowed under troit comrades mindful of the new orientation of the in a vote for delegates to the Detroit Convention, and party position and anxious to be free from the taint that Engdahl standing for unconditional affiliation of anything foreign, refused to hold the convention was elected two to one. It is hardly to be expected in the workers Labor Lyceum, located in the foreign that the convention will have the courage to face the section. No! That would never do! It applied in issue squarely and pass this resolution.
stead for the use of a public school building. The re study of the convention agenda indicates that quest of the Detroit local was readily granted. Now this newer conception of the Third International it can quite truthfully say, as reported in the New York and Communism is not confined to Branstetter and Call, this is the first time in the history of the Social Stedman, the hero of Minor red Raid in Detroit, ist Party that the national organization has obtained where incidently Stedman is planning an Red for convention purposes the use of a public school. Raid. We find for example, the following motion In short its campaign for Americanism has been swift under Relations with other parties. and short and crowned with complete success. The Motion No. The Socialist Party reaffirms its policy of use of a public school is a fitting recognition of the no fusion, no political trading, with other political parties party attitude and it is to be hoped that the chair or organizations, whether they are avowedly the defenders man opening address will be preceded by the spirited of the existing system or masquerade as Reform, Liberal. Labor or Communist parties. The National Executive singing of the Star Spangled Banner.
Committee is instructed to enforce the provisions in the party What matters it if the party membership has been constitution, prohibiting fusion, compromise or trading with slowly shrivelling, that it has fallen from 110, 000 to any other political party or organization.
about 18, 000 in two years; that it has only one third Another resolution declares its opposition to the of the members that remained after the wholesale Soviet system because it is a system of delegated expulsions and suspensions following the Left Wing power which deprives the working class of any direct episode in 1919! So long as the purity of its principles voice in the election of responsible public officials and remains intact, no migration of members out of the prevents them from exercising any effective control or party will cause it to swerve from its revolutionary, influence over the administration in power. Such a or rather American position!
system of delegated power is opposed to the experience few delegates there will be at the Detroit con ideals and aspirations of the American workers and vention who have striven consistently to keep the will not and should not be acceptable to them.
party in line with revolutionary Socialism, who have long article by Branstetter is being circulated in attempted to keep the party in the path it marked out Branstetter Official Press Service. in which the at the St. Louis Convention. They were in a minority Soviet system is viciously denounced, and falsely deat the 1919 convention, but were overwhelmingly upscribed in part.
held by the membership. They were in a minority at Since the has failed, contrary to the the 1920 convention, but in spite of the many resigna European practice to sign the names of the authors tions after the Albany affair, the referendum on the of the various motions, it is impossible to know which question of affiliation with the Third International the itself is sponsoring.
was lost by a vote of barely 38, showing that the With the working class movement in a ferment, membership was evenly divided between the Rights with unemployment rife everywhere, with capital more and Lefts.
insolent and more thoroughly organized in its war The Party officials nevertheless have ever since acted against labor then ever before and with the Third as if they had a solid and overwhelming majority of International standing forth as a beacon light, as the the membership behind them. They summarily reonly hope of a suffering working class, the Socialist jected the 21 points. They decided to send delegates Party of America, as its final act of treason before its to the Berne conference of Centrist groups, until opcomplete destruction stands forth with its solutionposition within the party forestalled them. They reexpel the advocates of the Third International.
fused to send a mission to Russia although ordered to do so by a unanimous vote of the Convention, and after the mission was elected and had secured passRAISING THE GRAND CHIEF SALARY ports.
Republics may be ungrateful, but not labor unions.
The culmination to this arrogantly reactionary policy While wages of workers everywhere are being slashed, is to be seen in the resolution introduced by the the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers at the close National Secretary of the Socialist Party, Branstetter, of its convention in Cleveland took a strong stand which brands all advocates of affiliation with the Third against this movement. The delegates calmly voted International with treachery and describes them as to increase the salary of Warren Stone, Grand unprincipled and unscrupulous members serving the Duke of the Brotherhood, from 14, 500 to 25, 000.
interests of either the Communist International or the No doubt the collective breasts of the assembled deDepartment of Justice and in either case serving the legates heaved with righteous pride as they did so.
interests of the American capitalists, and demands For could they not truthfully boast of the fact that their immediate expulsion, their Grand Duke was the highest paid labor chief in It is putting it mildly to state that no more menda the country? They were no pikers, not they!
cious, no more utterly dishonest and cowardly resolu What matters if the wages of the workers had just tion has ever disgraced any Socialist convention, not been cut by the Railway Labor Board? What matters