A Call totheWorkersof the World
No Rent Where There Is No Work! Bronx Tenants' League Urges Legislation for Workfes* Tenants —Socialists Lead the Fight. DAISING the battle-cry that "Where there is no work— there can he...
...We brought in our amending measures for unemployment insurance...
...THE VOTE IN BELGIUM The vote cast by the Belgian Socialist Party at the elections several weeks ago, finally tabulated, reached a total of 866,000...
...We have traveled a long road to develop the consciousness that exists...
...The drp coal dust, piled "waist high," according to a Yancey miner who escaped, exploded, burned out tha oxygen, and all waa over...
...The population of Belgium la about 8,000,000...
...The 23 miners, 22 of them married, leaving wives and children, were at work a mile and a half back in the mountain, digging and loading coal at 37c a car, when, without warning, a train of fire swept through tha mine...
...The Socialist percentage of the total vote Is 37.2...
...8. Appropriate from state funds $20,000,000 for the year 1938 for the direct payment of the rent of unemployed tenants who may be placed in danger of eviction notwithstanding the initial safeguards provided for In the.first two paragraphs of this plan...
...persons—nearly one-fifth of the population of the city—will have been faced with the tragedy of homelessness ,the breaking-up of their family life, and all the other heartrending experiences which eviction involves...
...We did enrich the wealthier class, the class who live on fixed Interest bearing securities, and we had forced the workmen down to a miserable standard, measured even by capitalist economists, only 14 per cent over pre-war...
...Thousands of petitions favoring this bfil are being circulated throughout the Bronx...
...Every week of that Parliament we were showered by petitions from every form of anti-labor organization, warning us of the evil effect of high taxation, but the complaint was always about taxation for social services...
...We attempted to riise the school age of our children to 16 years, we attempted to protect the housewife from the exploiter of the big...
...And When you, add to that that percentage Is fixed on a rate not on the earnings—when you add to that the depleted income to the homes from unemployment, from short-time work, it isn't difficult to imagine where the standards of Vie working class of Great Britain have gone in a period in which •ur capacity to produce Is beyond all human experience...
...This is their statement: "In our view—this is the employers' view—the system of unemployment benefit, as operated since 1921, has, by preventing un employment from acting as a corrective factor in the adjustment of a wage level and cost of production, been responsible in no small measure for aggravating the very difficulty from which we suffer...
...This was the fight...
...This situation exists now and every passing day increases and intensifies the misery...
...Hunger, disease, crime, suicide are recognized concomitant evils—resulting from a failure adequately to meet our economic and social problems...
...In the meanwhile, the present emergency is so serious that extraordinary measures are necessary to alleviate present suffering...
...The fact was never related that our national debt had increased rather than diminished, that the Interest of three hundred and sixty millions a year on the national debt, three times the value of the expenditure of social services, had been doubled in value by the precipitate return to the gold standard...
...There has been enough good sentiment and enough tears to have washed away all our difficulties...
...J reed, Lawlessness, Take 23 Lives in Mine Blast By Teas Hut HARLAN, Ky—Bringing to an abrupt end the lives of the final shift of 23 coal miners in Zero mine at Yancey, seven miles from Harlan, an explosion added another tragic chapter to the long story that Harlan County and a chaotic coal industry have for yeurs hern sending out to the world...
...and (b) that there are no vacancies in the same apartment house of similar premises or of the srme number of rooms as the apartment involved...
...In this, the fourth year of the depression, approximately 1,250,00ft...
...I am reading from the official report...
...stores, and we brought hv our Consumers' Council Bill...
...The margin between the man in work and the man out became very narrow, narrow because both were below the human subsistence point...
...We have come out, as one of my colleagues Is fond of saying, through the University of adversity...
...Our wages had been forced down in many industries below the forty shilling level and we paid unemployment benefit for a man, wife and three children of thirtytwo shillings...
...Rationalisation" Wa were not only appealed to to wages...
...We attempted to take into the state land which was Idle, undeveloped, but which was merely being held up to secure a higher market price, and all the forces rallied against us...
...We have tried every expedient...
...4. Enact an enabling measure to empower the City of New York to go beyond its present budgetary requirements and borrowing limitations, so as to permit It to appropriate $20,000,000 for the year 1938 for the same purpose...
...There should be no evictions of the unemployed...
...We have We returned in 1929, and the ftrst act of that government was to restore to benefit the 200,000 men and women who had been deprived of their benefit by our political enemies...
...Since 1927 the number of these proceedings has increased relentlessly by over 800 per cent...
...The Trade Union Bill We attempted to reverse that iniquitous Trade Union Bill of 1927 which was designed to cripple Ds politically...
...Any coal operator knows...
...In our opinion long-range housing plans, involving municipal construction and ownership of homsa for the working masses, are the only adequate solution for tha housing problem...
...Chat...
...The Crisis It requires very little insight into that problem to realise that Britain's political crisis centered around that fact The field had got to be cleared for further reduction...
...820,650 in 1925 and 817,622 in 1929...
...We knew that those social services stood as a bulwark against further encroachment upon our wage standards...
...2. Amend section 1415 of the Civil Practice Act (and any other appropriate statutory provisions) so as to require the landlord to allege and prove, before ha ean maintain summary proceedings or any other action to dispossess an unemployed tenant: (a) that the landlord has a prospective tenant for bona fide occupancy of the apartment involved...
...But others in Harlan know...
...We are convinced that present relief measures do not begin to solve this housing crisis...
...By the end of 1932, approximately 812,000 eviction ordert will have been sought in the Municipal Court of this city...
...We understand our problem...
...There has been enough good sentiment and enough tears to have washed away all our difficulties...
...Tha government men who come to Hanan County each year on tha U. 8. Bureau of Mines' train could tell...
...I hope that position is understood...
...They were digging and loading coal at 87c a car...
...The text of the letter sent to Roosevelt through Matthew M. Levy, chief counsel of the league, follows: At the request of the Bronx Tenants' Emergency League, an organization representing thousands of working-class tenants in our borough, am writing to call to your attention an emergency situation of the utmost gravity which demands prompt and emergency action...
...If there be any doubt, let me give you the answer, not from a labor advocate, but from the witness of the employer before the Local Commission of Unemployment Insurance...
...DAISING the battle-cry that "Where there is no work— there can he no rent," the Bronx Tenants' Emergency league, organized by the Socialist Party in the Bronx, last week petitioned Governor Roosevelt to empower the special session of the legislature to enact emergency legislation which will make it impossible for landlords to evict unemployed tenants...
...A Call totheWorkersof the World...
...The workers of the city have issued a clarion call to our government fQr effective action...
...We talked rationalisation, Industrial development...
...Dry coal dust, piled waltt high —what's wrong with this...
...I have never heard any employer's representative prescribe the remedy...
...The dust was allowed to accumulate...
...They rightly feel that their plight is a direct result of the existing social and economic chaos, and that they are entitled to governmental intervention In their behalf...
...You see, my fellow delegates, that there is no pretense about the economic conflict in Britain, we are in it...
...If they were at all adequate, there would not be such a startling rise, in the number of tenants facing eviction...
...Ha can't imagine why the company didn't act to prevent the explosion...
...The bill drawn up by the league constitutes the first concrete proposal to be advanced which effectively prevents evictions without running afoul of constitutional limitations pending the enactment of the Socialist Party's "Workers' Rights" amendment...
...There is no privation arising from want, there is no privation arising from our Inability to produce, and the only reply that can be given to organized labor is "Produce more and accept less...
...The Harlan Fuel Co., owner and operator of the Zero mine, carried no outside Insurance on its workers...
...mining areas, chemical areas, engineering districts became derelict and all through the country the slogan ran, "Production the Gate to More...
...The state mine inspector could tell...
...If they don't quit having us load this coal with forks and leaving the dust, this place will blow up," one of the victims is reported as saying shortly before the explosion...
...Heroic and unsparing measures are essential at once...
...In other words, another dose of the poison...
...We secured a Niagara of production, and today the world is surfeiting in its own fat...
...Coal dust explodes...
...The 23 miners are dead...
...Wa knew that a new political Crisis was developing...
...According to figures obtained from President-Justice Timothy A. Leary of the Municipal Court of the City of New York, 259, 602 families faced summary dispossess proceedings in that court for nonpayment of rent in the first ten months of this year...
...The emergency plan here proposed is feasible, practicable, effective, and has the further merit of being the logical and constitutional way out We believe It la worthy of a special gubernatorial message demanding action of tha special session of the Legislature...
...Thla figure compares with 672,474 in 1921...
...But it costs a little money to spread rock powder through a mine...
...As counsel for the Bronx Tenants' Emergency League, and in behalf of more than 60,000 destitute families against whom dispossess proceedings have been instituted this year In the Bronx alone, I ask that you make it possible for, and urge, the special session of the Legislature opening this Friday to enact, for the period of the emergency, the following vital measures as the minimum which a responsible government owes to its people: 1. Amend subdivision 8 of section 6 of the New York City Municipal Court Code (and any other appropriate statutory provisions) so as to require the court to grant a stay of execution of a warrant in summary proceedings to recover possession of real property used for dwelling purposes by an unemployed tenant for a period of six months—Instead of the present five-day-stay limitation, generally recognized by our judges as Inadequate...
...This program should be entered upon now...
...We have tried •very expedient...
...The state law says—but what's the use of quoting the state law...
...We received no bankers' manifestos on that, we received no instructions from the great employers' organizations on returning the pound up to twenty shillings when it was below eleven shillings and nine pence, when the money was borrowed...
...Dukes' Great Speech to the A. F. of L. Convention at Cincinnati - II/K returned in 1929, and the " first act of that government was to restore to benefit the 200,000 me- and women who had been deprived of their benefit by our political enemies...
...Our plants were rationalised, the efficient were closed down...
...The following table indicates at a glance the growing seriousness of the emergency: I need not picture for you whst this means in human terms...
...It "carried''-Jta own, An old man, Masse- gill, who lost six of his 11 sons, all miners, in the blast walks about stunned...
...I want to reveal that in all its nakedness so that you may understand...
...There is every reason to believe that the new year will find the total reaching new heights...
...Wkirt thtr§ U nm work, thirt can b* no rtnt...
...Crushed rock, sprinkled over dry coal dust, prevents dust explosions...
...You see, my fellow delegates, that there is no pretense about the economic conflict in Britain, we are in it...
...Next week the petitions will be taken to Albany by a delegation representing working-class tenants...
...The bill for education, for the health services, for the pensions, for unemployment, they were always the evil, but the Fighting Service Bill of one hundred and twelve millions was never mentioned...
...A car holds 8,800 pounds of coal...
...The villain of the story is greed, 100% American and enthroned by the law...
...I think one paragraph will suffice...
...That was the talk, "Down with unemployment relief, so that hunger may be used as the goad to force men to receive reductions in wages...
...We went down again in a political storm, deliberately engineered against us...
Vol. 14 • December 1932 • No. 25
