Before We Can Have A Labor Party
SMALLWOOD, J. R.
Before We Can Have A Labor Party By J. R. SMALLWOOD THERE will be no Labor party, one with any chance of success, in the United States in the near future—say, for fifteen or twenty years,...
...True, this is not so frequent nor widespread as formerly lit was...
...will take root in their hearts and blossom when that time comes—in short, the hard, uphill job of organizing and being in readiness to receive the awakened workers according as they wake up...
...Frank Hodges, ex-Civil Lord of the Admiralty and ex-leader of the 1,000,000 coal miners of Britain, who, we are told, has gone bsck to work in the mines...
...Those who choose torture and murder as weapons to suppress opinions can have no objection to the Junker officers who murdered Liebknccht and Luxemburg...
...C. T, Cramp, chairman of the Amsterdam International and chairman of the British Labor party...
...Besides, unless a Republican was elected, there would be hard times...
...A carefully worded document of the Workers' party, printed in its Chicago organ on Jan...
...The audience that paid to hear Abramowitz and not to hear the hoots of the hoodlums resented the interruptions...
...To that extent will there be an awakening on their part to the fact, long ago realized by the workers of Britain, that there is a working class, that they belong to it, with great chances of remaining in it, that there is less hope for them in individual effort than in working class action...
...Today there is an international committee of Communists—the "International Communist Group"—with representatives in Russia, Latvia, Czecho-Slo-vakia, Poland, Germany, India, Afghanistan, and the Tartar Republic, which has issued an appeal to the Communists of all other countries against the Bolshevik terror...
...ward Granville Theodore, Labor Premier of Queensland, Australia...
...motor-men become mayors...
...Is this true or not...
...19, stated that Abramowitz's work would encourage wage reductions and the persecution of political prisoners and that he is an agent of "counter-revolution" against Russia...
...Every reliable documentary source of information, including all the news accounts of the affair, prove that a few of the old army officers upon their own responsibility killed Liebknecht and Luxemburg...
...When some of the Communists got the worst of it they showed a yellow streak...
...3. Why is it that the Communists always point to the Socialists of Germany as the murderers of Karl Lieb-ktie.cht and Rosa Luxemburg...
...And probably more than half of those who voted for La Follette for President voted for regular Republican or Democratic State and Congressional candidates...
...Even Communists who desire the right of free discussion within the Bolshevik party have been imprisoned or exiled...
...There, for nearly 1,000 years, there has been a working class...
...It presents these men's composite views...
...I am writing as a reporter, and the view* herein expressed are those which I found a number of British Socialists who visited these shores recently to have held...
...Whether the noose that hangs the worker is labeled "Communism" or "Czarism" is of no interest to those who are hanged...
...which may partially account for the well-known American passion for "education...
...was two-fold: the widespread wealth and prosperity of America, and the persistent individualism of the American people...
...He joined fraternal orders and voted the Republican ticket...
...It is not so uncommon, even today, to read of cases of working men reaching the very pinnacles of "success...
...Americans as Individualists I 3. For these reasons, and because Americans are individualists, the I American worker has preferred to i trust to his own efforts in his ambition to "succeed...
...Individual and Society Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky, And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die...
...Kipling, "The Law of the Jungle...
...He regarded himself as only temporarily a member of the woiking class...
...A READER...
...They were organized and worked under the instruction of captains...
...As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back For the strength of the rack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack...
...The whole tenor of the document, which Communists thoroughly understand, was to prevent Abramowitz from being heard...
...Only a certain proportion of the Socialist vote of 1920 voted for him because they wanted an American Labor party, because not all even of the 1,000,000 Socialist Party voters are intelligent...
...They subscribe to the theory that truth is a "bourgeois virtue...
...railroaders become presidents...
...he grumbled at paying dues, and regarded the union as something alien to himeslf...
...some because I Smith wasn't nominated by the I Democrats, and others because Mc-Adoo wasn't...
...And meanwhile...
...Their idea was to break up the meetings and when they met opposition to falsify what happened...
...2. Is it true that the Socialists Used rough-house tactics and called in the underworld characters at the Abramowitz meeting in the Casino the other night...
...Some of these qualifications are: the party must be based upon the solid foundation of organized Labor...
...Contrast With England 2. America does not know the sharp cleavage between classes that obtains, for instance, in Britain...
...yet it is still more than a I mere tradition in America...
...Such a party as this is highly improbable in this country for quite a while yet...
...In America, there is not the same rigidity of class stratification...
...Morever, the working class of Russia can have no choice between a Czarism that tortures and murders and a Communist clique that tortures and murders...
...it was unavailing to quote the figures of the average income of wage-earners, and compare them with Government-compiled decency standards)—"the standard of living of American workers is on a level about which the people of even the richest nations of Europe can only dream...
...no doubt there were some who voted for him because of the way he brushed his hair, and, of course, some because they regarded his csndidacy as the stepping stone to an American working-class political movement...
...Nevertheless, and notwithstsnding the trustification of industry and of other economic activities, there is still more than a mere tradition of opportunity in America...
...To my protestations that there was poverty in America, and widespread misery due to underpay, the answer was always "You don't know what poverty is, in America...
...we even read of hot-dog vendors buying the buildings in front of which they were forbidden to stand selling...
...Their reports of the meetings are absolutely unreliable as well as everything else that appears in their organs...
...Bertrand Russell, English philosopher...
...some because "he always was a good man...
...Some because he was opposed to the i Labor injunction...
...Hoots, yells, challenges and repeated disturbance interrupted the speech of Abramowitz...
...Samuel Compel* was a radical, Debs a blood-thirsty revolutionist who ought to be deported...
...he expected to climb and accumulate...
...Furthermore, relatively speaking, America is still a land of great opportunities...
...There are no doubt millions of American people — possibly even half of the membership of the American Federation of Labor and other unions, and others—who ere this have realistically assessed their chances of "success," and have relinquished their hopes of becoming millionaires...
...Among the incoming Britishers whom I interviewed in the past year were: Ed...
...But these men, most of them, have promptly transferred their hopes on to their offspring— which ia why so many Americans will stint and sacrifice to give their ' sons "a good education...
...A. B. Swales, chairman of the British Trades Union Congress...
...Norman Angell, author of "The Great Illusion...
...Hunger strikes and suicides occur as protests against the Bolshevik terror...
...it must maintain central and branch headquarters, with organizers and speakers in the field, in non-election as well as election time, many of them permanently engaged ; it must publish an official organ, and other all-the-year-round educational activities must be carried on upon a large scale...
...As the years pass there will be more and more disillusioned American citizens and workers...
...There ia only one course open to the awakened workers and others who desire a Labor party They must organize the nucleus of the organization and peg away, learning the technique of electioneering, tirelessly issuing and broadcasting the kind of propaganda which, being dinned into the ears of trie workers now...
...Day laborers become judges...
...There ia not the same tradition of class cleavage Men pass from one class to another—workers to capitalist I class, capitalists to working class— j to an extent that never was known | in Europe...
...yet, contrasted, for Instance, with other nations, from which many Americans hailed, America is a veritable Eldorado...
...True, such cases are played up journalistically to an extent to give the impression Hint opportunities are greater than they really arc...
...One's outstanding impression here is of riches and prosperity...
...Please give the best information possible on these questions...
...and, recently, Brigadier-General the Right Hon...
...The New Leader Mail Bag Three Questions Editor, The New Leader: 1. Kindly inform me through your columns if it is true that Scott Nearing has applied for membership in the Workers' Party...
...At the outside, not more than 2,000,000 out of the 30,-000,00p votes cast may be considered a mandate for a Labor party, Roosevelt, running in 1924, would have polled more votes than did La Follette...
...Altercations resulted in fist fights...
...Before We Can Have A Labor Party By J. R. SMALLWOOD THERE will be no Labor party, one with any chance of success, in the United States in the near future—say, for fifteen or twenty years, according to certain jjrominent British Labontes, Certainly not one meeting the qualifications that attach to a genuine Labor party of, let us B«y, the British or Australian type...
...A Emil Davies, L. C. C, London banker, publicist and Socialist...
...They protested when they were beaten at their own game...
...As for La Follette—well, all the great, and respectable and successful Americans—Charles Evans Hughes, for instance, and William Jennings Bryan, and General Dawes, and Professor Nicholas Murray Butler, the great educationalist — opposed him and said be was a menace to "our" institutions, including the Supreme Court...
...I write this article now as a possible contribution' to the current discussion of the outlook for working class political action...
...Motives of the Voters But 5,000,000 Americans voted for La Follette for President...
...This hss made for working-class solidarity, 100 per cent unionism, and, in due time, for independent working class politics...
...Russell's Opinion In conversation with.such observers, at intervals, I was interested to find them privately of the above view...
...This is the assertion of the Communists, and I am interested to know how much truth there is in it...
...In this connection it should be remembered that thousands of Socialists in Russia have been murdered by the Bolsheviks...
...some because he was a Liberal...
...3. Their idea that Socialists murdered Karl Liebknccht and Rosa Luxemburg is in accord with their idea of truth...
...True, the opportunities for the ordinary man are not as great nor as numerous as they used to be...
...Arguments and disputes followed on the floor...
...some because he opposed the war...
...The individual workers know that they are workers...
...they are not ashamed of it, have no expectation of removing themselves from their clsss, and are therefore thrown back upon their class...
...it must have affiliated to it large numbers and groups of dues-paying wage and salary workers...
...2. The facts are that the Communists have planned to break up Ab-ramowitz's meetings...
...theyj will become class conscious and join the unions, and the beginnings will be here of the American Labor party...
...There are others who are dying in Bolshevik prisons of scurvy, malnutrition and tuberculosis...
...so he wore his respectsble clothes and white collar to and from the factory door...
...The average British worker's only hope of raising himself aad his standard I of living lies in the mass at tion of the class to which he knows he be-longs, and he acts accordingly...
...Millions will live to see their sons experience the same disillusionment...
...In millions of cases where he did join a union he was coerced to do so, and he rarely attended meetings except where penalized for absence...
...the Right Hon...
...He relied more upon working hard and long, even taking a second job for nights, saving his money, currying favor with the boss, and cheerfully acting as a scab when "those bloody union Bolsheviks" were on strike...
...Joaiah C. Wedgwood, M. P., P. C., member of the late Labor Cabinet...
...The first meeting in New York found them on hand...
...The answer given with provocative uniformity to my question "But why...
...1. "My dear fellow," said Bertrand Russell, for instance, "America is rotten with wealth...
...Lord Thomson, Minister of Air in the Labor Cabinet, and professor Alfred Zimmern, distinguished scholar and author...
...Syracuse, N. Y. 1. We know nothing of Scott Near-ing's intentions in this matter...
...They have been uniformly careful to refrain from broadcasting it, naturally—such s view would not be considered a hsppy augury for the coming of the working class party which many desire...
...Relatively speaking, he did so in 1912...
...mostly he disdained to join a union, because that would be a confession of failure and an advertisement of his working-class status...
...He liked to be thought sus-cessful, and he exaggerated the size of his earnings...
...the Hon...
Vol. 2 • February 1925 • No. 6
