Austria Remains a Battleground
Austria Remains a Battleground ly Dr. Siegfried Lipschits AdAlN danger signals fly over lorn and bleeding Central Euroj>e. Again a shot is fired on 'Austrian soil that reverberates throughout...
...He did so, and gave his word of honor, despite the fact that he was aware of his chief's death...
...A letter was drawn up by the New York_ Joint Board of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, OK'd by the Mayor and countersigned by Inspector Valentine, merely stating that the bearer was a duly authorized agent of the union, enforcing the Men's Clothing Code Authority in regard to the 36-hour clause and the state mandate prohibiting tenement work...
...In some cases he had been forced to come through with hundreds of dollars in back psy which hsd been chiseled from the feller hands...
...The only law she knew was the corner policeman, and so she called him...
...Again the tom-tom of cannibalistic war drums draws millions of civilized human beings under its mysterious spell...
...As long as these fundamental rules sre denied, Burope will burn...
...The Austrian class struggle, faemhigly suppressed by bayonets, goes on more violently than ever before...
...When the investigator reported to his union, he found that the other investigators were having trouble, too...
...The same hard times forced employers to seek ___ all sorts of . ^SJHMMMfe expedients for reducing pro- -jg iL^Lm...
...The Mayor said, ''all right, you tell me what you want and I'll OK it...
...Neither the Germans nor the Austrian* but only the allied powers bear the responsibility for the cauldron that boils anew in the heart of Central Europe...
...You understand, the feller hands ha d always been a neglected element...
...The double role of Fey, one of the most ruthless Austrian fascists and mainly responsible for the sanguinary February events, was even recognized in government circles, as shown by the statement of the government speaker, Neustaedter-Stuermer, in answer ' to Fey's pleading: "President Miklas has issued an order sta-ting- that neither you nor any other Ministers held prisoners by the' rebels have any further authority...
...cleaning and HK||jH 7 1. H taking care of IP"t^^"*^**Tl the children, G. W. Klein from early in the morning until late at night, she "felled" coats...
...The Committee on Workers' Rights, organized by the American Civil Liberties Union, has .selected Cowade Thonias-sW lta spokesman...
...It might even be safely assumed that Mussolini himself is a silent partner to the re-grouping of Austria's government forces...
...Behind them stand the highly paid forces of the government and the semi-military retainers of the Heimwehr, consisting of stupid peasant boys who strut around in uniforms and have become a plague to the masses...
...What kind of racket was this "union" fellow trying to put over...
...Then came the NRA, the minimum wage and the prohibition of home-work by the code authority...
...Due to the disintegration of bourgeois and capitalist forces, conditions in Austria have reached a stage where the ruling elements are fighting each other...
...The 'Austrian events were no more and nq less than a repetition of the murderous German events of June 30...
...A day will and must inevitably come when one inadvertently dropped match will lead to an explosion far overshadowing this events of twenty years •*?>, sad leaving S hesp sf ruins where once stood proud ssd civilized nations...
...The overthrow of the Dollfuss government, coupled with the mm...
...The Hitler rule in Germany tot .the present closed all doors to Antcklute...
...The Mayor understood and wag willing to do whatever the union thought was wise...
...By paying a small amount to a sub-contractor, who farmed the work out to the women's homes at a pittance, he got cheap labor and Was relieved of 111 responsibility...
...The dictatorship, whose head fell under the shots of a Nazi assassin, is primarily responsible for this gory finale., The new deeds of violence will only swell the terror and increase the volume of civil war...
...Investigators are as common as alley-cats around the tenements, and the workers have learned to take them in their stride...
...The union could not control home-workers...
...Why Mary Galled the Cops sat *a» . a ¦ a as . •¦ BaTI *> By Gertrude Well Klein MRS...
...Space does not permit us to deal at length with Nazism in Austria...
...Nothing, it must be repeated, has been solved...
...At best she may have managed to earn |5 a week...
...voice the eternal demands of life, liberty, pursuit of happrTtesB and of independence, and who ordered the destruction of everything dear to workers' hearts everywhere, merits no weak-kneed pity...
...Doll-fuss' death was brought about by the same methods which he had set up as a standard in Austria, and which quickly devoured their creator...
...They lead to sal* vation, arrived at by an enormdus cost of bloodshed...
...She was a miserably exploited slave...
...Emil Fey negotiated as prisoner of the invaders with the besieging government troops for their safe conduct to Germany...
...These and other facts brought out before the military court which sent the murderers to the scaffold prove that the era of fascist anarchy is spreading...
...To believe Uist the German and Austitan people can remain separated is to misinterpret history and to (perpetuate an immeasurable wrong committed fifteen years ago...
...MARY CALABRESI is a "feller hand" on coats...
...Being unable to strengthen or even alter the precarious structure on which their powers rest, they are turning violently against each other...
...But this is only one aspect of the Austrian problem...
...Socialists have no reason to rejoice over violence and assassination...
...So far, so good...
...The long raging civil war In Austria reached a climax, for tbo moment, in the death of Chancellor Dollfuss...
...But O'Ryan taught a political lesson to the workers that will not be forgotten...
...One of them had even 'been beaten...
...Thomas en Coast-to-Comt Broadcast Norman Thomas will speak over a coast-to-coast network of the Columbia Broadcasting Company Friday, night, August 3rd, at 10:45, on "Civil Liberties and the California GenersI Strike...
...He was willing to establish a code 'enforcement bureau with official status right in the city administration, if the union would cover personnel expenses...
...Nothing has been solved because nothing can be solved as long as fascist ideology and methods are permitted to rule...
...The weapons of assassination and treachery were in both peases the same...
...Austria, today as yesterday, remains the battleground between the two brands of fascism...
...duction costs, fl ¦ jSSH I and soon Mary ¦ jMiW' found herself ¦ ¦1 -, -a- -IB 1 w orkiiiR at -J^ J*W|H- It home...
...TIMELY TOPICS We regret that Norman Thomas, who is on a speaking tour in Pennsylvania, was unable to write his weekly article for this issue.« Timely Topics wUI appear as usual n**t ''WtWk...
...It is an undisputed fact that the death of Dollfuss, who lately had become a liability instead of an asset, opens the way to undisguised Italian intervention in Austrian affairs and consequently to the establishment of a government 100% docile to Rome...
...The Amalgamated as well as other unions in the city have protested against the order requesting identification for their representatives, and the order will be withdrawn...
...Mary was only vaguely aware of what was going on...
...But the union said "no", they would take care of their own enforcement work, but, they wanted it made plain to the police department that this work was being carried on by duly authorized agents of a regular union and that they were to cooperate, not molest them...
...Inarticulate middle-aged and elderly Italian women, they themselves sometimes hindered the efforts that were being made for them...
...Sometimes investigators came to her flat...
...The only codes Mary knew anything about were the "coads" she worked on...
...A great deal has been written about it and there can be no doubt that Nazism introduced from Hitler Germany is mainly responsible for the series of bloody events sweeping that unfortunate country...
...But the union believed that the Mayor could do something to make the women and the bosses understand that this code enforcement was no joke...
...The dead chancellor and today's ruling clique have never - been backed by more than a handful of privileged groups and their docile servants...
...Talk of Austrian independence is nonsense as long as the people are not permitted to express their own will and to set up their own government The clouds of war are hanging deeper...
...The only visible difference was that the Austrian putsch was successfully waged against their own chancellor, while Chancellor Hitler in Germany destroyed and uprooted, for the time being, the rivals within the ranks of his own government...
...What the effect of an intervention in Austria will be on Germany and her people, whose nationalist emotions .Jtave been whipped to a frenzy by skillful Nazi propaganda, no one can even remotely foresee...
...Both are suffering from the persecutions of Austro-fascism...
...She does not understand English well and does not speak it at all...
...on the other side stand the masses of the impoverished petty bourgeoisie who sought refuge in the Nazi movement...
...Now he was being harassed to pay the minimum wage of -toe an hour or (14.40 a week—in some cases an increase of 300...
...He chased the investigator, not too gently, out of the building...
...In be- ¦^•'^Ssfp It tween cooking, aH|^9 wash i n g, MM v...
...Hard times drove her and thousands of other workers out of the industry...
...Military intervention threatens...
...Personal conflicts and ambitions rule...
...But to follow in the footsteps of the yelling capitalist press and of Mussolini's retainers, and to blame the Germans for everything taking place in Austria means to give to these events an angle which is wrong and actually tends to becloud the Issue...
...The policeman knew Mary was a decent, hardworking woman...
...They said they came from the union and they would not let her work...
...It was this perfectly innocuous letter that Police Commissioner O'Ryan pounced upon and made the basis for his regulation requesting all labor unions to file identifications of their representatives with the Police Department...
...The conflicting reports concerning Emil Fey, the Heimwehr leader and Commissioner of Public Security in the Dollfuss Cabinet, constitute convincing proof...
...But these investigators did not bring food tickets or rent checks...
...The little man who sent thousands of Austrian workers to their deaths because they dared to...
...During the boom days she worked in a shop, belonged to the union and made a comfortable living for herself and her family...
...That was long ago...
...Again governments, stiffened by deadly fear, serve each other with solemn warnings...
...Yugoslavia has already warned against further consequences...
...The reports spread over the front pages of the leading papers telling of the grief of the masses for their chancellor are shameless lies, belonging in the category of propaganda which perhaps more than anything else Is responsible for the uncertainty and moral fog in which humanity finds itself...
...The union was making it entirely too hot lor him, and the next time the union representative came around he called the police...
...The employers had been well satisfied with the home-work system...
...These are the intermediate stages through which every nation subject to tyrannical rule and exploitation must go...
...To see in Dollfuss' death and the crushed Nazi uprising a clarification of the Austrian situation would be a great error...
...This is the firm conviction of leading Socialist and labor circles, and borne out by reports which reached us within a few days after the Dollfuss murder...
...Again armies arc massing at the froniers...
...On one side stand the Austrian working masses, driven underground and clinging gallantly to their Socialist beliefs...
...He had to make room for the feller hands on his premises, which meant enlarging his plant...
...They said it was against the law, against the "code...
...Again a shot is fired on 'Austrian soil that reverberates throughout the world...
...But let the world understand that there csn only be peace if fssciam is overthrown snd free determination is restored to these two peoples...
...der of the chancellor, was in reality a coup d'etat engineered from above and executed with Nazi help...
...The coffin of Dollfuss rests, figuratively speaking, between the two great warring factions of the Austrian people...
Vol. 17 • August 1934 • No. 31
