TIMELY TOPICS

THOMAS, NORMAN

By Norman Thomas TIMELY TOPICS The First Gun WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST'S attack on the " Administration in the name of "democracy" is one of the big guns in an attack that has been brewing for...

...I f...
...By the remarkable power of his will he has made a successful fight for health even behind prison walls...
...I saw Tom Mooney in San Quentin...
...One way almost to outlaw a strike in these desperate times of unemployment and poverty is for some government bureaucrat under business pressure arbitrarily to withhold the relief that Congress, in a mood of unusual enlightenment, declared should be available even for strikers...
...When he was Under-sheriff, Comrade Krzycki maintained order during a strike, as requested by employers, by swearing strikers in as deputies...
...Trade unionism has disappearcd.^ Nothing is left but company unions, officered by Brown Shirts and employers...
...But when that feeling of helplessness passes there will be terrible retribution for what they have had to endure...
...That is the word brought to America by Martin Plettl, former head of the German Clothing Workers' Federation, who arrived here Tuesday for a lecture tour under the auspices of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the International Ladies' Garment Workers...
...Almost without exception cities face a critical situation with regard to relief and school funds...
...On the basis of accurate information we must make our protest The Los Angeles Dressmakers f \ N E of the most inspiring sights I have seen was ^ a great meeting of striking dressmakers which I addressed in Los Angeles...
...Comrade Plettl described methods of secret, underground propaganda now going on, and explained that thus far each party has been working along its own lines...
...In recent months he has done a great deal of work organizing shirt makers in Pennsylvania, resigning from his party post to undertake that work...
...Leo Me Krzycki Is Elected National Chairman of Party QHIG»GO.—Leo M. Kr/v ' i, member of the General Executive Board of the Amalgamated Clothing Worker* .id ft - years county secretary of the Socialist Party r Milwai' , is the new Natit ial Chairman of t' Socialist Party...
...His enemy, Al Smith, preceded him here in Chicago by a very obvious reference to the cold and clammy hand of bureaucacry in American business...
...The Boycott TPHE N.E.C...
...and the Amalgamated are members of the international body...
...Almost the first Chicago paper I saw had an editorial denouncing "Doles to aid perverse strikers...
...Wages are being cut drastically...
...But it is a terrible shock to come oat of a meeting, as I did, where there was some discussion of boycott of Germany only to read the terrible story of a Maryland mob who lynched and burned a Negro...
...There had been rank and file criticism of the policies of the union leaders and the Socialist Party, he said, but under the conditions that prevailed from the time of inflation no honest Socialist policy could have staved off Hitlerism, no matter how different in detail from that actually pursued...
...He has served as Milwaukee Alderman and Under-sheriff of Milwaukee County...
...Thirty years ago he was president of the Milwaukee local Lithographers' and Press Feeders' Union, and in the intervening years he has been active in strikes in the Chicago stockyards, in the Pittsburgh steel mills, and elsewhere...
...It is not a weapon one chooses cheerfully, but it seems the best we have against Hitlerism...
...At least the farmers in states like Iowa have so...
...The Legislature was persuaded to transfer school costs to a sales tax...
...Here is something for workers to get excited about...
...The New National C h a i r m an •THE whole Socialist Party and the labor move* ment are to be heartily congratulated on the eleotion of Leo Krzycki as National Chairman of the party...
...In spits of the destruction of hogs the price of hogs has fallen...
...Comrade Plettl, president of the International Federation of Garment Workers, an organization with over 1,000,000 affiliated members, was imprisoned when the Hitler madness began, but he escaped to Amsterdam, where headquarters of the International are located...
...There will be no better proof of labor's growing power than the release of Tom Mooney...
...ceeded to an amazing degree in bringing sheriffs, judges, and mortgage holders to terms on for*, closures...
...A surprising number of clergymen and social workers have endorsed the strike...
...I cannot see how any intelligent worker with hand and brain who realizes that the outstanding need of the country is a party and not a man in a particular office, or Who observes the nature of this New York campaign, where the MtKee crowd work to substitute new bosses for old and the Fusionists have not yet agreed on a platform, can fail to vote Socialist I am eager to get back for the close of the campaign...
...They cannot bring back the good old Coolidge days any more than they can raise Thomas Jefferson from the g r a v e . The workers have only an indirect and secondary interest in this struggle between two schools of capi t a l i s t s . Some of the machinery of state capitalism may be useful to the builders of the Cooperative Commonwealth...
...From the occasional New York papers I have seen and the still more occasional reference to Socialists in outside papers, I judge that our candidates are the only ones who have stuck tq issues that matter to the workers...
...The country has no better Socialist and labor leader and no finer man...
...Employers who had signed the blanket NRA code were paying a third or less of its minimum wages...
...The Nazis would not have come to power," he said, "if the workers had not been divided...
...Comrade Plettl had a sad story to tell, when he met reporters at the Labor Research and Publicity Bureau, of the condition of the German workers, a story of ruthless terror, of the uosting of fully 100,000 union officials and committeemen and the substitution for them of Storm Troopers "whose only skill is to drill men," or of employers...
...The National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party ordered a telegram of enquiry on the California situation to be sent to the Relief Administration...
...Hence the poor will be expected to fight the educetion of their own children out of their own poverty...
...They are, he said, all sullen and hostile to Hitler and awaiting their opportunity...
...I hope that before these words are printed the strike will have been won with the result, that the position of dressmakers all over the country will have been strengthened...
...and a degree of public sympathy unprecedented in Los Angeles...
...While, the Farmers' Holiday does not sears to be dramatically successful it is by no means over...
...He left nd doubt of the attitude of the working masses...
...In reply to a question, "Then we must 'thank the Communists for Hitlerism...
...Getting Vicious TP...
...That is a strike that is bound to win...
...He was elected unanimously by the National Executive Committee at its meeting here to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Morris Hillquit, and he will serve until the next national convention, which will be held in Detroit in May...
...Elections f\UTSIDE of New York the newspapers talk a lot " about the New York election, but only personalities and mud slinging...
...These gentlemen and others may succeed in throwing some monkey wrenches into the Roosevelt machinery...
...Big business in California thought of a grand scheme to evade proper taxation and in the long run to cripple education...
...Now every time anybody wants to do anything to improve education in California it will be reflected in taxes oa the poor, for that is what sales taxes essentially are...
...He is the first labor victim of Nazi savagery to arrive here...
...IK last California paper I saw contains an ar* tide at once vicious and jubilant, telling how cotton pickers were being forced back to work because the Federal and State governments were withholding relief...
...voted to endorse the comprehensive * economic boycott by the workers on trade to and from Germany...
...He hasn't much hope of Rolph, who in other ways has proved himself a mighty bad Governor, but he knows that his fight, which is the workers' fight, must go on...
...They should, for I never heard worse tales of chiseling...
...German Masses Awaiting Their Moment, Says Plettl "THE masses of German workers are fearfully embittered at their present lot in the Hitler "paradise," and their feeling of helplessness fans their bitterness...
...If there had been no Communist splits, Hitler could never have led his hordes into the places of power...
...Hitler hasn't quite educated the Germans up to that yet...
...By Norman Thomas TIMELY TOPICS The First Gun WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST'S attack on the " Administration in the name of "democracy" is one of the big guns in an attack that has been brewing for some time...
...Some two hundred students picketed with the strikers in a mass demonstration...
...Comrade Plettl leplied positively, "Yes...
...A..n'i it if !. omy 100 iiaciy mat some uranu m r u o n s i s win use it for their own ends...
...Unemployment figures show a decline, he said, and then he showed how the Nazis doctor tli • figures to make increasing wretchedness appear like improvement...
...Order was maintained and the strike was won...
...I am very hopeful for the showing that our comrades will make in New York, and, of course, in Reading and Bridgeport...
...Nor is the Reichstag fire trial likely to be a worse case of capitalist injustice than the Mooney case...
...A T h i r d Phase P VERY WHERE I have been there is general **• agreement that we are entering a third phase of depression and no return to prosperity...
...The I.L.G.W.U...
...It has the enthusiasm of the workers behind it, efficient leadership of the I.L.G.W.U...
...Jasper Mc Levy, the only absentee, was unable to leave his campaign for Mayor of Bridgeport Krzycki, who succeeds the party post held by Hillquit, Victor L. Berger and Eugene V. Debs, is 52 years old, a native of Milwaukee, and a long-time Socialist and labor official...
...The same meeting, attended by ten members of the committee, ballotted to fill the vacancy on the Bureau of the Labor and Socialist International, the vote being tied, five to five, between James Oneal of New York and Maynard Krueger of Chicago...
...But in time the Socialist and Communist masses wil) come together despite policies of their leadership, and work actively for the end of Fascism...

Vol. 16 • November 1933 • No. 19


 
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