THE GREATEST MAY DAY
THE GREATEST MAY DAY Unions Join the Socialists in Record March If WillUim M. Feigenbaum 'Tit the Final Conflict, Let each stand in hia place; The International Party Shall be the human...
...platform at the greatest ¦Jt I'ny demonstration in the Iflwy of the United StaUi...
...Forty-eight years ago American labor set May Day, 1886, as the date of a general strike to win the pathetically modest demand of an eight-hour day...
...Votes AGAINST the Nazi, 9; "Void...
...They indkate that those who hope for th* Day ara of good chaar...
...224...
...But that fools no one, either...
...Stand with me %nd watch the serried ranks of Vanguards, of YipMli, of party branch after party branch with clenched fists raised high pledging their all to the only battle wherein no man can f«il, where whoso falleth and dieth yet his deed shall still prevail...
...On May Day, the leaders shouted about the "unity" of the nation...
...Estimatei vary, some capitalist dailies reporting as many at 100,000 in line and in Madison Square, It ii safe to assert that there were between 76,000 and 80,000 worliers in line, most of them members of unio|iB marching behind their offlciala with the banners of their organizations...
...For the Nazi, NONE...
...It was the greatest May Day demonstration in the history of the United States...
...There are many such figures available, but Hitler did not boant about them in his "great" speech on his prostituted May Day...
...On May Day, GSring shrieked and G5bbels raved...
...Electric works—283 votes...
...But the same workers, in their factories, are showing that the spirit of the Socialism that organized them and taught them and inspired them still lives...
...It is likewise an open secret that the workers have been voting fori their own candidates, tried and trusted Socialists...
...NAZI CANDIDATES HAVE BEEN REJECTED IN FAVOR OF 'NEUTRALS...
...Two million Berlin workers were compelled (on pain of savage punishment) to wear bronze buttons bearing the' swastika and the (I) hammer and sickle (!) and to pretend to be thrilled at the sight of the Great Man...
...Trade unioni, Sodallat Party branchaa WhileHitlerRavesandGoering Shrieks, the Workers Prepare QN May Day, Adolf Hitler made a speech to a little gathering estimated at 2,000,000 people...
...It is an open secret^ that to vote against the prepared Nazi list is to invite trouble...
...Nazi votes, 241...
...He talked...
...Here are the results of a few scattering elections, a wisp of straw that shows the way the breeze is blowing and which way the gale and the hurricane will soon bluw: Wolfsbank Mine — Entitled to vote, 1,357...
...IN COUNTLESS CASES, IN SPITE OF ALL THE PROPAGANDA AND PRESSURE...
...To them it was a stirring introductian to the meaning of the unionism with which they had so recently thrown in their lot...
...Stand with me facing *e thousands, the tens of thousands of workers happy in their |rcat May Day celebration, shouting cheers for Labor and for Socialism, singing their hope and their certainty of victory in the Final- Conflict...
...Stand with me during the long , «or8 of the sunny May Day after-f-osn as Madison Square Park Silled up with men and women, ix>)rt »nd girls, with banners and tfith banfls, &» the very air ?tt»ilbed with the stirring strains of the Inteniatlonal, and you, too, «)ll tiffin with me as did every one W Oi...
...He always talks...
...Often the latter are called "neutrals," but the word fools no one...
...And so today, in 1934, May Day was a memorial, a challenge and a defiance...
...Forty-five years ago the world Socialist movement selected May Day as International Labor Day, and for all the years that have followed there have been demonstrations in every corner of the world...
...Often the votes are thrown out as "void...
...The recent elections in the factories of workers' representatives under the Labor Law have increased the alarm...
...CTAND with me on the platform on the east fringe of Madison Square Square Park and look over the vast sea of faces and of tossing red flags as division after division swung down Madison Square each headed by its band playing the International...
...Two million Berlin workers, half the population of that great city, were regimented and marched to Tempelhof Field, there to stand and liatan to apecchei and to raiM their ansa and about Hail...
...A labor of love, the Rebel Arts boys and giria worked for weeka on this plctHfaa<|ue feature to the demonatration that waa wldtfly commented upon by dem< onatratora and miloohera alike...
...and it was a defiant answer to the brutality of the decadent masters who would trample the workers under foot...
...He talked about the fusing of the workers into a great national vyhole...
...The International Party Shall be the human race...
...But on May Day they did not report what has been happening in the shops^ where the workers atsp, being called upon to vote for Shop Coaneili...
...Too much credit cannot be given to Sam Friedman'* Rebel Art* organization, which supplied hundreds of banners, poetere and huge allegorical iiigna carried In the parade...
...a memorial to Johannes Stelling and Kolomon Waliisch and Giacomo Matteotti and to the countless other martyrs of fascism and capitalism in all lands...
...W. N. Ewer, the exceptionally well-informed foreign editor of the London Herald, reports that "The Nazi government is seriously alarmed at the evidences of growing unrest and hostility to the new regime among the German masses...
...Every section of the working class movement — with one exception—was there...
...Today the world lies in ruins, and brutal, bloody fascist reaction rules in once free lands where once the workers marched happily to the strains of the nternational...
...Tens of thousands of workers, organized for the first time in-their lines, marched through the atraets of mid-4own New York to the Square marshalled by their ofRciaU and singing the International and the Red Flag...
...and out of it grew the dreadful and bloody tragedy of the Haymarket ^nd the frame-up and the judicial murders that followed...
...That strike failed, defeated by the united power of the bosses...
...it was a challenge to the might of the exploiters...
...A newspaper printing plant— 319 entitled to vote, 107 Nazi votes and 217 "void...
...Void," 1,116...
...On the May Day they had stolen from the workers they torture and enslave, the leaders of the "new" Germany again proclaimed that the whole nation was hack of them to a man —except for the Jews and Socialists and pacifists and intellectuals and liberals and democrats and Catholics and Marxists and other riflf-rafT and trash like that...
...And so May Day, 1934, was the answer...
...He talked about the dignity of labor...
...It was a real United Front demonstration...
Vol. 17 • May 1934 • No. 18
