THE WHITE MAN'S BLUDGEON IN INDIA
LALL, D. CHAMAN
THE WHITE MAN'S BLUDGEON IN INDIA Ghastly Conditions in "Misery-Laden" Country Described by Labor Leader By D. CHAMAN LALL Chairman of tha All-India Trade* Union Congress MR. JOHN BURNS,...
...Trade unionism wss new to Indis...
...Who looks after the babies when the mothers sre at work...
...Its full name is the Federation of Cultural, Educational and Sports Association...
...Hell is the epitome of Chicago...
...That organization is known ss the All India Trsdes Union Congress...
...According to the report issued in 1914 by the Calcutta Improvement Trust, the death-rate from consumption was ten times higher in the slums of Calcutta than in the slums of Birmingham...
...The report of the national officers calling for firm resistance to the employers' war upon protective legislation and the unions, for further centralization of the organization and for close cooperation with the Socialist Parties, was adopted practically unanimously, ss the near-Communist opposition hsd only eleven out of a total of 174 delegates...
...Although no definite proposals were acted upon, the feeling of the delegates seemed to be that the difficulties created by the division of Upper Silesia due to the plebiscite of 1921 were in a fair way to be overcome in the near future...
...Workers' Education In Itsly In a report on the National Center for Workers' Education in Italy, the establishment of which was mentioned in The New Leader of July 4, the Amsterdam Bureau of the I. F. T. U. says that the new body is being backed by the General Confederation of Trsde Unions, the National Cooperative League and the Federation of Labor Insurance Societies...
...It wss decided to continue pro-teating sgalnst the anti-union policy of the Mussolini Government and to urge the orgsnited workers of the world to renew their csmpaign for freedom of organisation in Italy...
...The poor Indian indentured laborers on the tea plantations revolted against theae conditions snd against slavs penal laws which tied them to the soil (under the Workmen's Breach of Contract Act) and set out for home on foot Government agents placed Gurkha soldiers at the disposal of the planters, and hundreds of the laborers were bayoneted...
...Progress In Central America According to reports recsived by the Amsterdsm Buresu of the I. F. T. U., the seventh conference of the Trade Union Federation of Nica-rsgus...
...Infant mortality in the cotton area sometimes reachea 167 per 1,000...
...And I tsk my colleagues in the Labor Movement, the British, in particular, to make a beginning by applying the full significance of this truth to the condition of the ^ misery-laden workers of India...
...The mother could not afford to buy any milk...
...God snd s decrepit old women"— we were told...
...a policy which divides the peoples, instead of uniting them...
...THE WHITE MAN'S BLUDGEON IN INDIA Ghastly Conditions in "Misery-Laden" Country Described by Labor Leader By D. CHAMAN LALL Chairman of tha All-India Trade* Union Congress MR...
...Twenty organizations were represented at the conference...
...Preased to state, at the time of his departure, whether he had revised his opinion, he added: "Yei...
...Cubans Would Free Marichal Accion Socialists, the Havana Labor paper, reports the organization of a strong committee of railroad men and other Labor and Socialist leaders for the purpose of urging President Machado to pardon Kmilio Marichal, the youth serving a jail sentence for having slightly wounded Archibald Jacka, the British manager of the United Rail .ways of Havana, on June 9, 1924, during the height of the excitement caused by a strike forced by Jack's stubbornness...
...Harbouring feelings not dissimilar to those which Jed Mr...
...It paid a dividend of 120 per cent in 1920...
...Compare with this the position of s mill with psid up shares of the value of ?17 each...
...The keeper is the cspitalist exploiter—often your master in Great Britain and our master in India...
...Not only the newly-created post-war States, but also ths old free trade countries, are being ewept into thia tendency...
...Pur masters in India are both ladies aae British...
...The congress revised the rules of the organization and elected a Central Committee made up, according to the Amsterdam Bureau, of "comrades of the most class-conscious type...
...Thousands met us at the railway station — thousands that were half-naked...
...Tht cry of the Brotherhood of Mtn (tnd let me say: The Brotherhood of tht Working Man) is not merely s grttt spiritual truth, it is sound economics...
...2s«ats e %wJSimlTSkmmi OH 11 test often aaaeeat te ever &$ per aeat per ana am...
...India today, to ute Mr...
...Jharia and the adjacent town of Ranigmy produce about 84 per cent of the total coal supply of India...
...Our movement has courted many failures, and here and there a success, but after.five years of unremitting toll we are convinced that there is no going' bsck on the central principle which guides our actions...
...Fines are levied on the merest pretext, sometimes amounting to 26 per cent of the wages...
...John Burns to visit India...
...The export price of this coal amounts to 1,200 rupees (the present value of the rupee is about 37 cents), and the miner gets out of this less than TO rupees...
...In 1922 we held our Trades Union Congress at Jharia, in Behar...
...Theae people live in dark and unventilated huts which barely contain two beda...
...It comprises the various Labor education bodies, the Labor University, the Groups of the Friends of Art, the Labor Holiday and Sports Union and similar organisations...
...He will find thers s worse Hell thsn tha Chicago which he visited in the days of Jack London...
...Let me give you a glimpse of the tragic livea led by theae despoiled and starving workers...
...The comniittee has already appealed to the Socialist and Labor International, the British Labor party and the big British railroad unions to use their influence with the British Government in Marichal's behalf...
...At every colliery I heard the same complaints of hunger, low wages, and bad houaing, and nowhere a denial...
...The market quotation of these shares in 1920 was nearly 2143...
...Nearly 200,000 miners are living on ths verge of starvation...
...Often on the cold nights a family, possessing no covering, huddlea round a coal fire, and, aa there is no ventilation, sometimes falls into a sleep from which there is no waking...
...Ths average wages in ths cotton industry in Bombay vary between |10 and $11 a month...
...No optimist has yet denied thst the average income of an Indian today, under a system of ruthless capitalist exploitation, is a little over threepence a day...
...movement and is hsstening to build s backfire against it is indicated by a decree of that Government establishing a National After-work Center for the purpose of developing and centralising all sorts of educational snd sporting activities snd incidentally carrying on "propaganda," the kind of which may easily be imagined...
...rtcently .held in Msnsgus, msy be regsrded as the beginning of a new era for unionism intyica-ragus, as new rules based upon modern Socialist principles were adopted which should result in the affiliation of s number of groups thst have thus far stood aloof from the central body...
...Now there ia a lesson to he learned from this tale ef misery...
...Out of Tg jute sail la, T4 are owned by the British capitalist Your capitalist can afford te shut down his factory in Britain sa long as he can depend upon slave labor in India and elsewhere Suck labor conditions as I have deplete...
...Our endeevour wss to start with ths principle of the One Big Union, to create Provincial Federations directly controlled by the Central Executive, to set up unions where none existed...
...Tha International Federation of Trade Unions of Amsterdsm wishes to rsise a warning voics against this policy...
...Official statistics declare that an Indian miner raiaes 108.8 tona of coal in a year...
...At a conference held In Ksttawitz on June 19 under the chairmanship of Johsnn Ssssenbach, one of the Secretaries of the International Federation of Trade Unions, between rspresentstives of the Polish Trsde Unions snd of the German unions in Upper Silesis, steps were tsken toward effecting unity between the two organizations so that eventually the German unions would form a part of the Poliah central organisation, although retaining considerable autonomy...
...He has invested more than a thousand millions every year...
...Tha workers often live in one-room dwellings, often pitch dark, traversed by.an open drain...
...JOHN BURNS, when asked \>y Chicago interviewers to state hia opinion of Chicago, exclaimed: "Chicago is the epitome of Hell...
...Many periahed of bun-Iger and cholera on thia march, but naae ret armed te the plentatione...
...srt a menace not only to India, but to the workers of Great Britain est] to humanity...
...Tha Industrial Commiaaion appointed by the Government of India declared that a miner's wages were a little over seven fence a day...
...Burns to describe Chicago so picturesquely, seeing poverty and disease and starvation all around me, I decided, five years sgo, to set up a central organisation of the dumb and driven workers of India...
...The combined might of the organized millions of Indian workers and of the organized workers of Great Britain can achieve this...
...Since 1919 the number of national unions haa been reduced from sixty-seven to thirty-one...
...Due to unemployment, emigration and internal dissension, ths membership of the Polish unions on January 1, 1926, wss only 300,221, againat 369,814 a yssr before and 448,774 in 1921, but the decline apparently hss been brought to s stsndstill and the prospects for recovery sre ssid to bt favorable...
...The featurea of the third congress of the Polish Federation of Trade Uniona, held in Warsaw, June 11-14, were reports showing that material gains were being made in the matter of aettling the troubleaome problem of nstionsl minorities and that the consolidation of the various national unions was making rapid progreaa...
...Decision wss postponed regsrding sending a committee of inquiry to Chins, as suggested in s csblegram sent to the British Trsde Union Congress General Council by a group of Chinese unions immedistely following the beginning of the trouble in Shanghsi...
...That the Fascists Government fears the new educations...
...At the second congress of the Trade Union Federation of Salvador, held May 1, eighteen affiliated and aix non-affiliated groups were represented...
...LABOR JOTTINGS FROM ABROAD International For Free Trade After a discussion of the hampering effect upon world trade being exercised by the riot of protectionism now in progress in nearly every "civilised" country, the Executive Committee of the International Federation of Trade Unions, at its meeting in Amsterdam on June 29-80, paased the following resolution: "The International Federation of Trade Unions of Amsterdsm plsces on record thst sines the war a protectionist commercisl policy hss been carried on to sn ever-incressing degree in all European countries...
...The Executive Committee turned down a series of proposals made by the Communist International, the Red Trade Union International and the Inten.ationsl Workers' Relief for joint relief action in China, but decided to collect information from all the Chinese unions with which it could get in touch in order to lesrn whst assistsnee wss required -snd how it could bs effected...
...liah publicists have stated that millions in Indis get no more thsn one meal a day, and that millions hsvs actually died of starvation and many more milliona of preventable disease during the nineteenth century, ***** Shall such an abomination, mtdt possible by the present system of Imperialistic exploitation, continue...
...Berntrd Shaw'a expression, is a kept nation...
...Again, take a glimpse at the man who produces the tea which you drink in peace and aerarity In year auburbsn home...
...The tea-plaatets are saeetiy British, at say settee mill owners are British...
...it herewith urges the affiliated National Trade Union centres to fight protectoinism in their countries ss being a burden to the peoples and as tending to increase unemployment snd tha coat of living, and it calls upon the centrea to make an energetic stand for the general withdrawal of customs tariffs snd for the creation of sn economic alliance, tht object of which shall be to secure the international distribution of raw materials, thereby making impossible unfair competition between the nations arising out of sweating and dumping...
...You can drain him of the last penny by your fh-cessant struggle against him, but you will never break the magic ring of slavery which surrounds you, unless you rob him of the power to rob the world...
...The monthly average wage paid ia as follows: 1118 1921 Men.........t2.«S |2.34 Women ......- 1.67 ¦ 1.84 Children......04 1.11 Do not forget that dividends ef 60 to 100 per cent and more have been declared by the British planters of Assam...
...Today the All-India Tradea Union Congress em brscee more than 600,000 industrial works re...
...Women workers get a little over $6 a month...
...Today there is no greater enemy of the common people than he who mumblea the foolish saying: "Tht eyes of the fool are turned to tht four corners of the world...
...I hsve often invited Mr...
...Outside one of these hujs we found a nude, emaciated baby lying on a dirty piece of torn cloth...
...Thus are nurtured the citsjens of an empire...
...Let ate praised to an oxaaainstion of the textile induttry...
Vol. 2 • August 1925 • No. 32
