ROCKEFELLER CITY
ROCKEFELLER CITY Oil Refinery Centre of Bayonne Typical Example of Capitalistic Corruption; Workers Periodically Massacred; Tax Rate Among Highest In Nation IF one were to get up a list of the...
...Nation-Wlde Denunciations But the bloody massacres of the workers had proved expensive to the oil company...
...I n this Way, young Rockefeller succeeded in dividing the workers for' all times...
...THE CHARGE What is a Soclamtt...
...WE cannot get from the Da satisfaction than we dU They are as alike aa two peaj Ishaeaf They apeak In a pig dead...
...One who hath yearn...
...If millions of homes are empty !g this age of Industrial depression it Is in part because many domes are empty of intelligent Ideas...
...One summer the workers struck...
...But by this time, the industries had gained the upper band in local politics...
...Taxes last year were considered scandalously high at |41 per thousand, but this year they were raised to *S6, which Is about twice as high as even the graft-ridden city of New York...
...Subscribe to The New Leader and join the Socialist Party...
...The capitalists ride ea I whichever side of the see-saw I Samuel Scabury at the Democn Hall against Roosevelt to get it Tammany in the investigation^ of J rE Scripps-Howard newipaf Roosevelt because Roosevel Smith Is a member of Tammany or Jimmy Walker, whom the I removed from office...
...Besides, so poorly have the city's affairs been administered that Bayonne has one of the highest tax rates in the nation...
...Worker* were permitted to elect delegates, and the delegates were permitted to express their grievances to the company official...
...In Milwaukee, the workers iiave seen the wisdom of uniting under the banner of the Socialist party to rule their own destinies...
...tags ' , 1.4 To exploit from our labor all its hard earnings...
...Bayonne, with its slums, its poverty, its corruption and its municipal bankruptcy is a glaring contrast to Milwaukee, the Socialist city that Is conceded universally to be the best governed city in the nation...
...Hitler's Fascists insist on wearing their uniforms and carrying their arms...
...Lucius F: Donohoe, who is a controlling factor in one of the local industries, the Babcock and Willcox Company...
...They reflect aa era whaj hated each other, instead of bet aa they are today.—New Yerfc j DISGRUNTLED Democrats I a "third party...
...E * See-saw 1* a nice game whs saw...
...I f they could all be induced to get together and practice target shooting with themselves as targets, we will change our opposition to war In favor of that war at least...
...Year by year, while property values kept going up during the period of prosperity, the Industries compelled the city officials to make them concessions...
...Once it was one of the prettiest towns in the East, and President „ Cleveland Is said to bave regarded it as an Weal place for rest from White House cares...
...It should then go to the left In order to be right, strange as that may appear...
...at the caucus of New York deltgt velt and Al Smith are two of th er's skin...
...A fisherman was knocked out off the New Jersey coast by a shark...
...The Rockefeller policy of enslaving th i work- - ers was then in full swing...
...The younger Rockefeller, in order to prevent further-strikes, founded what he xailed a "Republic of Labor...
...To further enhance their influence, the industries helped to finance a daily newspaper, which was kept alive for nearly a year and then allowed to die after it Had served its purpose...
...Soon other oil companies came...
...Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing To fork out bis penny and pocket your shilling...
...Annual Massacres of Strikers To understand the story of Bayonne's scandalous misrule, we mist go back to the annual massacres of strikers that took place in that town between fifteen and twenty years ago...
...The Industries were spared at the expense of the property owners...
...Bayonne In many* respects Is typical of the .Industrial centres of the nation...
...One who hath yearnings > For equal division of unequal earnings...
...The following year the cowed workers rose again...
...More than a generation ago, came the Standard Oil Company and established a refinery...
...Shift Burden to People The Bayonne industries demanded that they be relieved of the greater part of the burden of taxation...
...The Democratic-KepubDM tlrely...
...city Is one of the strongholds of Frank Hague, who is Mayor of Jersey City and chief political advisor to Al Smith...
...Again more than 100* strikers were shot and many died of their wounds...
...Lai that the Democratic com rules of 1840...
...Every policeman who had been on strike duty received a bonus of several hundred dollars from the Standard Oil Company...
...A Socialist movement not founded on the claims of the working class 'is a movement that has gone wrong...
...This time, the Bayonne police beat the county sheriff In the rush to crush the workers...
...The destitution of the workers is so widespread that it has seriously Infected the merchants and the members of the middle class...
...The result Is triat there have been thousands of foreclosures during the past few years...
...e result was a massacre of innocent workmen, women and children that horrified the nation...
...It appears that rules were adopted in 1832...
...COUNTERCHARGE What Is a profiteer...
...Today, It is one of the greatest refining centres...
...Capitalism is on the downgrade but to push it into oblivion requires a powerful Socialist movement...
...at least two-thirds of its workers are unemployed, since the oil refineries have found that with modern processes they need practically no labor...
...Which Is like catting off yea • Cutting off your head to curt William Randolph Hearsfs plan I by sending oil the jobless into t DO TOU remember the govt when the steel workers wt ing compelled to work twelve If Company were stealing twelve 1 • And do yon remember the ft were In power and there was pM the hospitals and the morguesf A fellow who would leash * tempting food nearby, but just H be considered the meanest man i* think of a system of society fa...
...In Bayonne, the workers still go blindly forth to the polls every year electing errand boys (for their masters...
...He can appreciate how millions Of workers feel who have been...
...Beds Used in Shifts So poverty-stricken are the workers that In many home the beds are used in three shifts, as many as twelve people residing in one cramped apartment fit only for two people...
...Bayonne is a peninsula that juts out into New York harbor...
...Company delegates who protested too loudly found they had ruined their chances for promotion...
...j The...
...Wv're all brothers under the...
...Sheriff Kinkead of Hudson County, an underling of Fran!: Hague, the Al Smith leader at the Chicago Democratic convention, rounded up scores of Bowery thugs, armed them with deputy sheriff's badges and let them loose upon the strikers...
...A Bayonne police inspector Is to this day receiving regular pay from the Standard Oil Company for "services" rendered by him during one of the strikes...
...The result was that, year by year, the owners of homes and apartment houses were compelled to pay more In taxes...
...WE BEG to apologize...
...The industrial overlords support the political machine In return for control of the police in times of strike and control of the tax department...
...Tax Rate Among Highest In Nation IF one were to get up a list of the wontgoverned cities In America, Bayonne, N. J., would surely stand toward the top of the list...
...That's (j • The only way for the workers make the Socialist Party the | • "Picturesque Politicians Ian...
...The present Mayor of Bayonne is Dr...
...Don't | they beg...
...It's the politicians...
...on the other hand, company delegates Who discouraged radicalism found for themselves...
...Sheriff Klnkead was rewarded with a seat in Congress by the Democratic party...
...Tenements that were condemned fifteen years ago as pestholes breeding disease, still house swarms of workers and their families...
...today it would be exaggerating to say that there aire 200...
...I t is ruled by a corrupt political machine and is woefully mismanaged...
...I Glutton or despot, or both, he Is willing To eat all the cake and give us the •Willing...
...Most of the officials had received bribes or favors from the companies and were In no position to bold out against the demands of the Industries...
...the headline used in deseriMeg London Dally Herald, the greai • The big issue at the Republu big issue at the Demotratic conv poor, absent-minded politicians du are eleven trillion unemployed is THEY should have cut oft a the thumb to remind then Congress and the state and local • As never before, the works] politicians are alarmed...
...The industries support the political machine not only by campaign contributions, but by influencing and coercing workers through the control of their Jobs...
...because our warehouses an btdgm * j OUR economists tell us that The workers of the natM and again, but comma, whe J. been living wildly in the I magnate visiting New York as cruise around the world...
...Moreover, the nation-wide denunciations of the brutal methods were painful embarrassment to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who was then becoming conspicuous in his church activities...
...naje their votes to the capital Every vote "thrown away" on challenge thrown in the teeth of American people to Ihc brink of JIMMY WALKER says that said that 'a sucker is bon there's one born every second, the basis of the majority he recti • In ancient Rome, when the > against their oppressive masu gnroienat spectacles for their dives people begin to grumble, t Republican circuses to keep f discontent...
...The city has a population of 90,000...
...A t one time there were at least 3,000 employes of the oil refineries who owned homes...
...Today, the Bayonne Industries pay only a small share of the city's taxes, while the home owners and others pay $90 on the thousand, one of -the highest rates in the nation...
Vol. 14 • July 1932 • No. 1
