A Call to the Workers of the World
A Call to the Workers of the World Eloquent and Moving Address by Charles Dukes as Fraternal Delegate from Great* Britain to the A. F. of L. Convention at Cincinnati •J*UK following is part of...
...In the recent elections in Den mark, Germany, Sweden and Bel gium, the women Socialists wen an efficient, active and most impor tant factor...
...The budget, which should have contained that provision, was never introduced...
...In the dispatch from Mexico City it is called the latest of the series of Socialist laws, ranging from anti-Catholic measures to expropriatory legislation advocated by the former Governor Adalberto Tojcda who is expected to run for the Presidency next year...
...It all comes from industry finally, but we have determined to say in our country that unless the workman can be guaranteed the right' to win from industry his livelihood, we will use the power of the state to protect him and his dependents...
...But it sufficed to put 200,000 men and women out of benefit...
...It fell to my lot to be fortunate in the ballot...
...Only one woman waf elected from the other parties...
...In Parliament We went into Parliament, not as s detached political movement, but as an integral part of the great labor movement of predominantly trade-unionist...
...It went through and we went out, and our opponents in office said, "Genuinely seeking work...
...In the highly developed industries today it is difficult to say who the owner is...
...I beg you to ponder the significance of that...
...I am tempted here, Mr...
...17' Socialist women were elected as councillors...
...We have traveled far along that road...
...The premature ageing of women, due to the oldfashioned methods of household work under which the women ol the poor classes suffer, is one example of a popular and powerful talking point...
...They are the cockpit of conflicts, both in the field of industry and in the field of politics, and in this world of limitless production, day in and day out, the complaint of the employer is that high taxation is ruining his industry...
...In Belgium, where the women have a strong National Women1...
...Einstein said on the occasion of his visa inquisition, but may we assure Dr...
...At the head of their procession they had this slogan: "Too long have we demanded the right to work...
...The new governor of Vera Cruz has made the measure effective by publication in* the official gazette...
...The law is an imbecile, The law they say is an ass, The law said to Einstein: "You shall not pass...
...In nine months we were defeated...
...It is not true...
...They threw the liability upon that fund, and later financed schemes which rightly should have been financed from the revenue and took the funds necessary out of the contributions of the workmen and employers...
...The movement responded...
...In the "backward" country ol Mexico, Birth Control has been made legal...
...The speech is worth careful study by workers, and will lie printed in several installments: After all, my friends, let us realize the state of the world that we are living in...
...Men would tramp from factory gate to workshop, begging of foremen who were discharging men to give them written evidence thnt they had been there applying for a job.' Those of you who have been in the workshop can understand the reply of a foreman when the fourth and fifth had applied...
...We made that attempt in 1924...
...But we were new in the game...
...Meetings are held every Wednesday night at 9, at the Kand School...
...Her impassioned speeches glowing with Socialist conviction, have often aroused her audiences to enthusiasm...
...Klisabeth Renaud was the founder of the Socialist Women's Group of Paris and the founder, together with Louise Saumoneau, of the monthly journal "The Socialist Woman...
...On Friday evenings students from all over Europe met there regularly to discuss the problems of the day over a cup of tea...
...We have learned in the bitter school of experience...
...Groups of women would surround a scab and escort him to his home, to the amusement of his fellows...
...Social Services We have built up our social service—we have called it that...
...We have passed the day of pretense, we have reached the day that when we meet the employer of labor we not only discuss wages...
...We said, "To every man who is genuinely seeking work and can not find it benefit shall be guaranteed...
...And these are the people who talk about the dole I These are the people who destroyed the insurance basis of the unemployment fund...
...From the materia at hand, it is not possible to maki a definite calculation as to whirl method Is more effective...
...How the Women Co-operated In Sweden, for instance, where the women worked directly in con junction with the party, they did nevertheless, stress problems pe< culiar to women and especially tc housewives...
...we meet to be told that unemployment insurance, the health services, the pension, the education lialibity is part of wages, and we don't deny it...
...We are not alone in the use of political power to win economic security...
...He reviewed the experiences of the British workers during the war and post-war period and the concessions in social legislation which the working class had won from the opposition...
...We are old parties, old industries, we are an organized state...
...The miner's wage of that year had fallen down to forty shillings and a penny a week, seven and onehalf dollars...
...It is interesting t< note, apropos of our own discus sions as to the value of Women'* Sections, that in some of the Euro pean countries, notably in Sweden the women carried on no separati activities, while in others tin Women's Sections functioned ai distinct units...
...What was our experience...
...In a tribute to her memory published in 'Le Populaire," Jean Longuet says: A Noble Pioneer "Elisabeth Renaud is gone from among us...
...I said we were an old country...
...We are living in a world order in which the trust and the combine are predominant...
...Evidently the women among the agricultural population are at last paying more attention to the affairs of this world than to those of the next...
...among them, Louise Saumoneau and Jules Guesde'a children...
...In that Parliament of 1924 we introduced for the first time amendments to the Unemployment Insurance Act, demanding the right to work or the right of maintenance...
...Einstein that while the cackling of the geese in petticoats in the Women's Patriot Corporation, which seemingly was the instigator of the inquisition, may frighten the cacklers themselves and alarm their feeble-minded cohorts, nevertheless Socialist thought and feeling}.is seeping more and more deeplyfand spreading more and more Widely in America than ever before...
...We are moving in a world in which the international cartel, mapping out its Bphere of influence, dominating the markets of the world, has gone a long way to remove that old competition which was based upon the earlier advent of the machine production...
...The Belgium women have also been on the firing line on the industrial front In the wide-spread miners' strike a few months ago the women initiated the manless picket-line, an idea which spread with astounding rapidity through the whole struck district...
...Committee, women were especially trained as propagandists and carried on a strenuous campaign...
...Einstein from this country had been perpetrsted capitalist institutions would continue their process of crumbling and Socialism would march in just the same...
...A Call to the Workers of the World Eloquent and Moving Address by Charles Dukes as Fraternal Delegate from Great* Britain to the A. F. of L. Convention at Cincinnati •J*UK following is part of an address by Charles Dukes, fraternal delegate of the British Trade Union Congress, to the American Federation of Labor convention in Cincinnati...
...The result was that not even the clerks were willing to go to work...
...By Gertrude Weil Klein A Woman's Point of View 4*\NE of the pioneers of the Socialist Women's Movement died in Paris recently at the advanced age of 87 years...
...In four Parliaments labor men had made an attempt to secure -protection for the widow, to say that in one of the wealthiest lands of the world the widow should be conceded her mite in the form of a pension, and four Parliaments fought down the widow...
...In the early days of our movement we used to carry banners proclaiming the right to work, and I remember the French trade unionists parading on the first of May...
...Shylock said, "He owns my life who owns the means whereby I live...
...We were a minority, but we became a power in the state...
...The personal contact is gone...
...The higher we push up the standards of life, the better it will be for the social order...
...Let me illustrate that influence by a little story...
...All those interested in labor and in photography are invited to join, either by coming to the meetings or by getting I* touch with Lee B. Stein, 7 East 16th Street...
...All the time she had to wage a hard struggle for her livelihood, and she might often be seen, even in her Bixties, or her way between two meetings U the local wash-house to do th< washing for her family and he: brothers...
...We went out...
...The record of her career, even in these days when the lives of most active S o c i alists are crowded with many duties, stands out as a highlight of unselfish d e v o t ion...
...She retained up to her very last hours the penetrating intelligence and amazing energy which she had unreservedly devoted, despite the difficulties of a severe struggle for a livelihood, over a period of forty years, to the task of maintaining herself and her children and at the same time carrying on a self-sacrificing crusade for Socialism...
...We have got to issue a challenge to that authority, because those people wholly dominate over the lives of millions of men and women...
...In other words, rent, interest and profit still take more than the total income of tho 16,000,000 working class families of the country...
...Every generation must fight for its own freedom...
...Of the 16 womer candidates put up by the Swedish Socialist Party, 4 were elected tc the Diet...
...They increased at the rate of half a million a week...
...And may we say to the dear, funny, decrepit, perpetual children in the W.P.C...
...Besides fulfilling that function it will be the purpose of the group to search out situations in which photography can aid in propaganda and to train its members to take the greatest advantage of such situations...
...They were desperate...
...We had secured the promise that widows' pensions would be conceded on a noncontributory basis...
...Our opponents in office dare not entirely turn their backs on that measure, but instead of financing it out of the revenue they placed the liability of that pension bill upon the social insurance by taking four pence per head per week from unemployment contriStffaa...
...The General Strike Then came our fight of 1926, the general strike, the episode which was supposed to have been an evil born in the minds of one or two men...
...We brought in that measure for tho pension for widows...
...For half a century our men have paraded the 'lobbies, fooled in one Parliament by the Liberals, fooled in the next by the Tories, and we decided if you want a job done well you must do it yourself...
...Polish and Russian students were there too In large numbers, many of whom s-ere destined to play leading parts in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917...
...If you add the total wages bill of a thousand four hundred million pounds and put onto that the total cost of the social services if you put together every mite of income, it even then doesn't reach half of the total income of the country...
...The life of this humble washerwoman — organizer, speaker-publisher, who all her life had to battle for a livelihood for herself and her children, is a challenge as well as an inspiration to every woman Socialist...
...They were not content with that...
...and diverting it into nancing the Widows' Pensions Bill...
...It is noteworthy, that the rural districts which are often largely Catholic made great gains...
...There is no mystery about that...
...We are living in a day in which industrial magnates wield an influence which was never exercised--by hioiihicK*, wit even in the day of the divine right of kings...
...Believing that they would not so easily be accused of provocative behavior, the women came out and did picket-duty for nights on end at the pits in order to prevent scabs from going in or out...
...They said to the individual applicant for benefits, "You must bring evidence that you are genuinely seeking work...
...At the end of the last century her modest home in the Latin Quarter was ii veritable centre of Sociali.it propaganda and discussion...
...Men tramped from mining villages which were derelict into other mining villages, where all the mines had closed down, in the futile attempt to secure evidence that they were willing to work but could not secure it...
...Can you wonder that the fund for social insurance ran into debt...
...No matter how you gild that, the man deprived of the right of earning his living is a slave...
...Our problem is not that of our grandfathers, it is the problem of our day and we must free ourselves and free our children...
...For the first time from 1919 to 1924 we changed the political psychology of our country, and for the first time wages tended to increase...
...In Mexi j The cackling of her geese may have once saved mighty Rome, as Dr...
...We are called the working class because there has been little else in our lives...
...You can not lead a million men without a grievance...
...CAMERA GROUP OF REBELARTS With the formation of the camera division of Rebelarts the labor and Socialist movements of New York City now have an experienced and well-equipped group, upon whom they can call whenever they have a need for phctografic services...
...We are...
...We were defeated, but not dismayed, and the reply of that defeat was the second labor government of 1929...
...it is time to demand the right to leisure...
...We have got the word psychology and we have got it bad...
...They abolished the non-contrlbntory old-age pension and put the liability of that on the fund...
...It is not difficult to see how the point of focus moved...
...who seem to have no outlet for their exhibitionistie phobia, that even if the colossal imbecility of barring Dr...
...For the first time in the history of politics not a labor opponent dare walk into the lobby in opposition...
...President, to stop for a moment to relate « little experience...
Vol. 14 • December 1932 • No. 24
