The Party-and Honest Elections
Feigenbaum, William M.
By William M. Feigenbaum The Party—and Honest Elections The Widespread and Continued Poll Frauds Are a Challenge to Socialists—No One Else Cares Enough About it to Do Anything—Our Party's...
...but Social-lets are anxious to tee that every vote cast (or intended to be cast) it recorded, no matter for whom...
...In Cuseo twenty peasants have been massacred...
...The tiny driblet of 1,700 votes cast for Norman Thomas and Jim Maurer in 1928 swelled nearly 900% to a vote of over 15,000...
...A WARNING Watch out for one YPSL member's note: Jean August Halzer, Jr., 5 ft...
...Can the thievery be stopped...
...We will cross that bridge," the Tammany hacks say, "when we come to it...
...we recall the theft by Tammany of the Aldermanic seats to which Algernon Lee and Edward F. Cassidy had been elected...
...Socialists arc not interested in seeing people vote for McKee, or for Alger and Deutsch...
...twice...
...He was "prevented from communicating with the lawyer defending him...
...and that this thievery wss often consummated with the Connivance and the aid of the Republican "opposition...
...Two Parties The Socialist Party is a political parly that never sleeps...
...In Trujillo 500 persons have been assassinated without trial, among them 67 women and 38 minors of 16 years of age, not counting the 44 members of the Apra Party who were shot...
...Indignation peters out...
...Former member of Allen-town circle snd disappeared with quite a bit of money...
...an order was given to close the one small ventilator in his cell...
...Otherwise there ts no real democracy...
...Official returns are expected to swell this unofficial and partial report, while the bitter hatred of the Hoover-Mellon regime is witnessed in the cutting of the head of the Socialist ticket, leaving the balance of the ticket far ahead of the presidential vote...
...Its activities never cease...
...By William M. Feigenbaum The Party—and Honest Elections The Widespread and Continued Poll Frauds Are a Challenge to Socialists—No One Else Cares Enough About it to Do Anything—Our Party's Course...
...For example, there sre five Assembly districts in New York in which the population is steadily declining...
...We have no baseball bats of skipping ropes to give...
...Tammany held the District Attorney's office, and when the thieves finally cams to trial the case was dismissed "for want of evidence...
...Well, how about it...
...Or possibly they would be driven out of Tammany circles in disgrace if they were suspected of election day honesty...
...We can inspire the people with our idesl...
...We,know about the theft of so many tens of thousands of votes in each election that elections became a howling farce, the reported results being only an approximation to thS actual votes cast...
...If it does not give such a picture the returns mean nothing, and democracy is, in effect, a failure...
...Socialists everywhere report that they found their names voted when they went to the polls...
...Tarentum branch was shown in an especially heavy increase in the coal and steel ruled valley of the Allegheny River, where the Socialist ticket in many districts alternately ran ahead of the Republican and Democratic vote, while Fawn Township was carried—Thomas 105, Roosevelt 65, and Hoover 101...
...i. ,.iiv . . i , , t • a,§,:¦,!¦ hi •( Pittsburgh Records Huge Vote Gain PITTSBURGH, Pa.—In spite of a wave of anti-Hoover votes that swept Andy Mellon's home city and county into the Democratic column, a tremendously increased proportion of this great industrial area's workers in iron, coal and steel cast their ballots for the Socialist Party...
...An election means nothing in a democracy unless the election return* give an exact picture of what the people are thinking about...
...When the Machines Came We hoped for better things with mcahines, but in vain...
...No one ctres enough about honest elections to make a fight for them EXCEPT THE SOCIALISTS...
...We must have captains who KNOW the voters...
...We can—that is, if we are anxious, enough to make a fight for it, and are willing to go through with it...
...Then follows a description of the disgraceful conditions under which Haya de la Torre has been imprisoned...
...And so on, and on and on...
...The intensive work of the newly organized...
...and Republicans in Philadelphia and Chicago benefit from the aame gentle practices...
...he was forbidden to speak to anyone...
...That Is a challenge to us...
...Tammany's activities consist in lining up people...
...But they ars afraid to complain, for the "benevolent" Tammany knows how to punish as well as how ts give skipping ropes, ice cream cones and baseball bats...
...and who will be sble to catch ths colonizers with PROOF thai will put the crooka into jail And who will KNOW the voters so that when they watch en Election Day NOT A 8INOLE FALSE VOTE will bo cast...
...and When he complained be was arrested...
...getting a line on them and becoming personally acquainted with every single voter in the city, and in placing aa many of them as possible under obligations...
...It is not even interested in the practical and theoretical questions that face its elected officials...
...Tammany loots the people with the aid of organization...
...We know about the thievery that characterised every election in the pre-raachine days of voting...
...On October 14th an "Open Letter" to Lansbnry in the name of the Parliamentary Group of the Apra Party was handed to him in London by one of the signatories...
...not allowed a visit from his doctor...
...In Juarez more than 60 workers and students have been assassinated...
...Roosevelt and Lehman—not to mention O'Brien-had their majorities piled np by such methods...
...Ws saw S. John Block order the arrest of ths criminals and we personally carried on a five-year campaign to punish the rascals...
...AT LEAST FIFTEEN SOCIALISTS REPORTED VOTING IN THAT DISTRICT...
...possibly because they never learned to be honest and would not recognize an honest count if they saw one...
...Without neglecting our educational and propaganda work we must begin at once "to organize la every district, and whenever possible, in every block...
...But no one went to jail for the bare-faced theft of thousands of votes...
...Tammany Methods In one election district the Tammany hack who is "leader" reported 675 Tammany votes and'one Socialist vote...
...SYKESVILLE, Pa.—This Jefferson County coal town in the heart of the old 2nd (Central Penna...
...Its propaganda and educational work began the moment the polls closed on Election Day...
...Tammany Hall likewise never sleeps...
...Our good friends of the City Affairs Committee are doing the same...
...district of the United Mine Workers gave the Socialist ticket a plurality over the contending capitalist parties...
...AND IF THEY DO...
...But apparently Sanchez Cerro prefers to face the contempt of the civilised world than the prospect of a liberated Haya de la Torre leading a popular increment which would sweep him from office...
...but neither can we (nor do we care to) terrorise the people to vote...
...On August 6th Haya de la Torre resolved to go on hunger strike...
...All the six signatories, members of the Peruvian Parliament, were seized by force and without trial, in the Hall of Assembly of the Peruvian Parliament, and placed on a ahip and banished, despite the immunity and special privileges guaranteed to members of Parliament by the constitution...
...One Deputy (a Republican) protested a man who voted sixteen times...
...it publishes no educational literature...
...If ws mean business in our est litlral work WO have got to go it If we art not prepared to do It we might as well give up ear party and become a mere educational forum...
...Fred Henderson, The New Leader's London correspondent, writes: "Msy I congratulate you on the magnificent series of campaign articles petting the Socialist ease and Us fall appeal Is The New Leader daring the SSSt month or two...
...CVERY year about this time a lot of people—Socialists included —get excited over the sanctity of the ballot and about the election thievery practiced as a routine thing by the dominant political organization in New York...
...We know shout ballot-box stuff ¦**• repeating, terror!satlon and ••Ionization that continued so long that they became the natural and normal things, and that at last— at long last—tens of thousands of voters began to consider the constant Socialist cry of fraud a cry of Wolf...
...We know that in election after election Socialists were elected by substantial majorities—and certificates of election given to Tammany hacks...
...After thanking Lansbury for his intervention the letter gives an appalling picture of the political persecution exercised by ths dictator, Commandant Sanchez Cerro...
...He was beaten up and thrown out...
...Organisation—and Organization Tammany holds the people in its vise-like grip through a certain form of ORGANIZATION...
...and of August Claessens' Assembly seat...
...And those gentlemen either know •bout the practices that give them their majorities, or they do not If they do not, they are a little less th»n bright...
...Aim stole some money from a comrade In Reading...
...he was confined in a damp and unhealthy subterranean dungeon in order to bring about his death...
...We have an Ideal and a hops...
...thus it was impossible to vote, and voters left In disgust—upon which "All-star" votes were recorded to swell the "popular" sweep...
...it conducts no classes...
...And incidentally, we know that there la not a man in high office today who is not the beneficiary of such vile practices...
...but only when we have ORGANIZATION COMMENSURATE WITH TAMMANY'S CAN WE TRANSLATE THAT IDEAL INTO ACTION...
...Otherwise Sociaiiet* cannot conscientiously urge the maeset to vote their hope* and aspirations...
...Wolf!, and so the voters whose ballots were not counted anyhow began to drift away from voting their principles...
...One watcher reported that Tammany hacks instructed voters not to pull the lever sll the wsy over...
...he was deprived of sanitary arrangements...
...whole blocks of tenements are being torn down, schools are closed, the streets are depopulated...
...Ws saw the bare-faced theft of 405 votes in a single Harlem election district in 1921, by the butchering of a tally-sheet IN THE PRESENCE OF WITNESSES...
...In a week all will be forgotten—except by Socialists...
...Tammany's ingenuity Is great...
...He is traveling around the eastern states at present...
...What is happening, Comrade Lansbnry, is that unless all free men throughout the world intervene actively now, Haya de la Torre wilt be slowly murdered in Lima...
...All the independent periodicals are suppressed," ssys the letter, "snd the three universities of Peru and the three national colleges are closed...
...Hays de la Torre hss been aub> jected to court martial, in spite of his having been In prison for three months, in total isolation...
...Although the Sykes-ville branch has only been revived in this community of 2,000 for a few weeks before election, the results ran: Thomas and Maurer—202 Roosevelt___...._____.171 Hoover___.----------158 The rest of the Socialist ticket also carried in equal proportion...
...Yet every year the rgistratlon (under Tammany auspices) increases...
...One Liberal newspaper is gathering evidence of cases in which would-be McKee voters were prevented from voting...
...Mors than 200 undergraduates from Lima ond Trujillo have been sent to Mad re de Dios, a barren region with a terrible climate...
...It carries on its activities 'every moment of every day...
...Can we ever assure an honest count of votes...
...The issue before us is not the facts...
...There is, we have every reason to believe, similar thievery in other parts of the country, where undoubtedly citizens—again including Socialists—work themselves into a lather over the sanctity of the ballot, This year Newark is in the limelight...
...All this in spite of the protests which have been sent to Peru from all parts of the world...
...tall, blond-wiry hair, blue eyes and a scar over his left eye...
...what faces us is the problem of what to do about it...
...There is indignation today...
...Based on many years of experience with New York elections, ws can predict the answer—NOTHING...
...his cell was chsnged, slightly improving his conditions...
...Tammany today is more Insolent than ever before...
...I cannot imagine American working cues opinion being untouched by them...
...Without caring very much whether Joe McKee actually got 135,000 votes or 400,000, it is a matter of grave and profound Importance that votes cast were not counted, and that those intending to vote for McKee were not permitted to...
...Tens of thousands—possibly a hundred and fifty thousnd—who wanted to vote for McKee found that they could not...
...The Terror in Peru GEORGE LANSBURY, leader of the British Labor Party, cabled to the President of Peru in August protesting against the persecution of workers and students and appealing for the life of Hay a de la Torre, the imprisoned leader of the Apr a Party (Alisnxa Popular Revolucionaria Americana), who came so near to success in the last presidential election...
...But it holds no lectures...
...That Tammany henchmen steal vote* even when Tammany Hall does not really need to steal to register the big majorities required by the bosses is an old story...
...9 in...
...One, Socialist caught a woman voting...
...What About It...
...But what will happen...
...Tammany knows its business BECAUSE IT KNOWS THE PEOPLE OF EVERY DISTRICT, PRECINCT AND BLOCK...
...On August 20th the Argentine Chamber of Deputies voted unanimously to approach the Peruvian Chamber with a request that it intervene on behalf of the life of Hsya de la Torre, and it was reported from Lima on September 4th that the National Assembly of Peru had passed a resolution requesting the President of the Republic to give Haya de la Torre his freedom...
...They undoubtedly do it to keep their hands in...
...People have been condemned to death In their absence, without trial, among them the brother of Haya ds la Torre...
Vol. 14 • November 1932 • No. 22
