Ammunition from Yankee-Land. (1916)

From the October 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

An American Blatchford.

England cannot claim a monopoly of "Socialist" patriots. One of the leading types of American vote-catching "Socialist" Party men is Victor Berger, who was the lone "Socialist" elected to Congress from the city of Milwaukee in the State of Wisconsin. At the present time there is a ballot amongst the members as to whether Berger should be re-called from the National Executive of the Socialist Party of America for his stand on patriotism.

Training the Children.

Berger stated his position in the 'Milwaukee Leader," and outraged the feelings of some of the "comrades"—and to do that it must be pretty bad and rank.

Among his statements are the following:

Any man who is unwilling to fight for his class or nation does not deserve to belong to a class or nation. The "Leader," therefore, is in favour of a "preparedness" that shall unite and protect the bulk of our nation—that is the working people. . . . . This preparedness must become a part of our early education by practising calisthenics and by encouraging outdoor sports from childhood on, in order to produce healthy men and women. But this cannot be all.

National Servitude.

The more to follow that he promises is a new way of "protecting the working people." He says:

Every citizen should devote one year—between 19 and 20—to the service of his nation. The citizen—male or female—may stay at home during the time and receive for the service such pay as will be fixed by Congressional legislation. The education must be in charge of the nation and the nation must pay for it.

Such are the leaders and "brains" of the Socialist Party of America. No wonder "the Party" here is the happy hunting ground of freaks of every kind and of professional wind-bags who find a soft haven of refuge from work in preaching the gospel of Government Ownership and Christian Fellowship, seasoned with a little higher wages and more efficiency.

"Worse than Hell."

Mr. Berger closes his editorial with this:

We Socialists are as much opposed to militarism as we ever were. But the Socialist Party is not for peace at any price. War may be hell, but there are some things in this world worse than "hell." Real Socialist are willing to fight these things.

What "these things" are we are not told. Where ignorance is bliss silence is golden.

A "Socialist" In Sackcloth

This puerility recalls the attitude of the present lone Congressman of the "Socialist Party," Meyer London, who represents the East Side tenement district of New York City, which has been described as "a pocket edition of hell." On May 5th there was a debate in Congress on giving the franchise to the people of the American colony, Porto Rico. After London had said: "The man whose vote you take away will have the right to put the knife of the assassin into the heart of any man who attempts to govern him against his will," an uproar took place in the House and a member moved that London be expelled unless he apologised for insulting Congress. Meyer London apologised. Not only that: as L. B. Boudin said in the "New Review," he did it "in such a miserable way that the reading of the printed record of the scene is sickening and disheartening beyond measure." And as asked plaintively, "What has happened to London?"

History as It is Not.

The conspiracy of silence with which we were met in the English labour Press because we dared to expose the fraud of political compromise and reform advocacy, has spread to America. Ever since the war started the Labour and alleged Socialist Press of the United States has carefully refrained from referring to our Party at all when dealing with Socialism in Great Britain. The "New York Call," the privately-owned organ of the Socialist Party of America, continually refers to the Independent Labour Party as the only party in England that is standing against the war, and this in spite of the fact that we have sent the SOCIALIST STANDARD regularly ever since our masters decided on war.

Some "News."

The "International Socialist Review" is a non-party magazine which is practically run in the interests of the I.W.W. and "Direct Action." The "International Notes" of the July issue (written by Wm. E. Bohn) are an example of the misrepresentation of the movement in England. Says Mr. Bohn, "The Independent Labour Party has been against the war from the beginning." To those who have carefully followed the actions and literature of this body this is grotesque. We know that right through the war it has allowed its members, and especially its members in Parliament, to push recruiting and to appeal to working men to join this this capitalist war. Even its alleged anti-war member, Ramsay MacDonald, states that "we" must carry the war to a successful conclusion. We know that long before conscription started the I.L.P. left it to each member to decide whether he would enlist, which is not a Socialist position. When we recall the speeches of the I.L.P. Members of Parliament like J. O'Grady, G. N. Barnes, Charles Duncan, Adamson, Richardson, and W. C. Anderson, we realise the depth of the "Review's" distortion of facts.

Fact versus Fiction.

The writer evidently that the campaign against conscription (which was not supported by many of its Members of Parliament) entitles it to be called "anti-war from the beginning."

The Independent Labour Party is a part of the Labour Party which has used all its energy to support the war and seduce the workers into supporting it. The Independent Labour Party is pledged to maintain the Labour Party constitution and also its candidates.

When the "Review" says that "we on the outside are obliged to take the votes of the Independent Labour Party and the British Socialist Party as the true indications of Socialist opinion in England and to say that American Socialists are pleased with these indications," it is lying, and that is putting it mildly.

The Test of Socialism.

The Independent Labour Party, whose leaders like Keir Hardie and MacDonald, denied the class struggle; the party which advised the workers to vote for one of the capitalist parties in politics; the party whose members were allowed to support increased armaments; the independent labour party financed by avowed non-socialists; a party which, as Engels said long ago, was brought into being with the help of Maltman Barrie, the paid Conservative agent; this organised body which has lately given support to the nonsensical propaganda of avowed anti-Socialists like E. D. Morel and Mr. Ponsonby, M.P.: this is the party which represents the true indication of Socialist opinion! Save us from such!

The British Socialist is also a true indication of Socialism! A party whose policy has been to support the Conservative and Liberal sections of the robbing class, which has advocated a Citizen Army, a score of rotten reforms, a large Navy and a strong Army, etc., without the protest and in most cases with the support of, the very men who still form the rump of the British Socialist Party. The whole controversy within the latter, too, has been about details of war, and there has been no large conflict of opinion as to the support of the war itself — because the members do not understand Socialism.

I challenge the "Review" to answer—if it can. Perhaps, too, when dealing with influences against the war in England it may find space to mention the S.P.G.B.

Adolph Kohn

Some Pars From America: Not read at the Peace Conference (1919)

From the March 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

As news of the American labour movement is so scare in these days of censorship and Press laws, perhaps the following notes from the December issue of the New York "Class Struggle," an unofficial organ of the so called left wing of the also so-called Socialist Party of America may be of interest to the reader.

* *

  * 

In a candid article on the recent elections it is admitted that the large vote received by the S.P. of A. at the 1917 election was more of an anti-war vote than one for Socialist principles and that this vote has now gone back to the "old parties." By this means the recent "slump" is accounted for.

Nothing seems to left of the sprinkling of Socialist legislators that were elected in the previous year in Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and California. Kansas, Idaho, Illinois, and Minnesota are again without Socialist representatives in the legislatures, and Minneopolis lost its Mayor Van Lear, which is hardly to be regretted. This precious "Socialist" who, at the beginning of the war had opposed the "infamous Public Safety Commission" as the new election approached "compromised himself and the party that elected him, by joining hands with the American Alliance of Labour and Democracy, and by speaking from its platform at a so-called Victory Meeting . . . That Van Lear took this stand not so much from a change of conviction as from openly opportunist motives, above all to get re-elected, by no means detracts from this sorry spectacle.

The article declares that the defeat of Meyer London, the late "Socialist" Congressman for New York, is "one thing to be thankful for." After telling the tale of his reactionary, pro-capitalist activity in Congress during the war the writer concludes: "His re-nomination is not to the credit of the membership of New York, even though it was prompted by the consideration that the district would be lost if another candidate were nominated in his place."

Such are the methods of the anti-revolutionary, anti-socialist ideas which permeate the membership of the S.P. of A. Is this the party which is going to overthrow the best entrenched and most unscrupulous capitalist oligarchy in the world? I think not.

* *

  * 

Very little news has reached this country about one of the most dastardly outrages among the many which American capital has perpetrated upon its wage-slaves. The sequel, too, is interesting. In Bisbee in Arizona, in 1917,

"four thousand miners went on strike against the Phelps Dodge Mining Corporation for a ten per cent. wage increase and a reduction of the ten-hour workday to nine hours . . .  At that particular time there was an enormous demand for metal ore, and the highest prices were being paid. The Company saw fat profits slipping away between their fingers; the strike was costing them millions of dollars. They were, therefore, prepared to come to terms on the question of wages, and would perhaps have granted a reduction of working hours. But they refused point blank to consider the recognition of the union demanded by the striking miners.

Then on the 17th June the bosses took action:

A great crowd of striking miners that had gathered about the entrance to one of the mines was surrounded by an army of police, deputy sheriffs, and gun-men, were driven, unarmed as they were, before the loaded guns of their captors, to the railroad station. There, all of them, men, women and children, were forced with unbelievable brutality into a waiting freight train, in which they were shipped across the border into New Mexico about seven hundred miles from Bisbee, where they were thrown out of the cars in the midst of an uninhabited desert. In this deserted region of New Mexico, completely cut off from all communication with their families and the world, these unfortunate men, women and children were exposed to the most intense suffering. And only the foodstuffs that were brought them by organised labour at the earliest possible moment saved these thousands of workers from a miserable death.

 It took some time before the energetic protests of labour in the West were finally able to force an investigation. It was disclosed that this dastardly crime had been committed not only with the knowledge, but with the assistance of the management of the mines and the local authorities of Bisbee. The corporation officials had paid the gun-men, while the local authorities had engaged the scoundrels who did this dirty work. Indictments followed, indictments that incriminated the highest officials among the millionaire knaves at the head of the company. Proudly the capitalist press showed that there was no class justice in the United States of America, that rich and poor were measured by the same standards, that not even the richest of the men were responsible for the Bisbee outrage would be able to escape the hand of justice.

That was six months ago. Since then things have been strangely quiet. And now comes the news that the entire matter has been dropped because of a technical error in the indictment.  (Italics mine.)

* *

  *  

A very interesting account of the recent food riots in Japan is given by the well-known Sen Katayama. The immediate cause of the riots was the high price of rice, the staple food of the Japanese workers. Dr. Yokoi, "the agricultural authority of Japan, says in 'Industrial Japan': 'The past five years have produced super-abundant rice crops in Japan. Statistics show that there is no shortage of rice this year.'" The article following the Japanese "Oriental Economist," declares that the high prices were directly due to the policy of the Government in aiding and encouraging export trade. The political machinery of the country functions exclusively in the interests of a few big capitalists, while the interests of the vast majority of the people and the workers are completely disregarded."

The various phases of the riots are described in some detail. They "usually began in a peaceful demonstration that went to the homes of the rice dealers or to the granaries to demand cheaper food. Invariably it was the police who met the demonstrants with drawn sabres that turned these for the most part peaceful demonstrations in furious attacks." The riots were very wide-spread, extending "over three prefectures, Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, over thirty provinces, and in Hokkaido, the northern part of Japan. Altogether this rising affected over two-thirds of the Japanese Empire. The 'Oriental Economist' reports that there were destructive riots in 142 different localities; that in 38 places they could be put down only by armed troops. In Osaka (the Manchester of Japan) the rioting continued for three full days and nights, and it is roughly estimated that at its height a force of over thirty thousand soldiers, including cavalry, was necessary to control the infuriated masses."

"In Kure, where the chief Navy Yard of the Empire is located, the marines were called out in full strength to quell the desperate mobs, while all thoroughfares and important crossings were armed with machine guns. But in spite of the rigid military discipline that obtains in the Japanese army, it was found that a number of the marines had made common cause with the rioting masses  . . . In Kobe the populace burnt down stores, offices, and even the residences of the wealthy rice speculators. The rioters were joined in a sympathetic movement of the 8,000 workers in the Mitsubitu shipbuilding yards." It must be remembered that working-class organisations, which might have rendered the movements more effective and less chaotic and violent, are illegal in Japan.

After August 13th the Government, fearing the spread of the disturbances, suppressed all news relating to the riots. "In Osaka the Governor published an edict forbidding more than five persons walking together on the streets. In Yokohama street assemblies were limited to nine persons."

"When the Government saw the magnitude of the movement, it appropriated $5,000 000 with which rice was bought up to be given away to the poor, or to be sold at greatly reduced rates to stem the tide of popular dissatisfaction." This, however, failed to have the desired result, for the movement had developed new characteristics. "Since food riots have ceased there have been labour troubles all  over the country. The 'Oriental Economist' gives a detailed account of seven large strikes that occurred between the 1st and the 19th of August, while the daily newspapers enumerate at least 40 others." The legal machinery, of course, reaped a rich harvest. "According to the latest reports (Sept. 12) over 5,000 persons were arrested and are awaiting trial. It is estimated by the Government that the number of arrests will reach more than 7,000 before the whole matter us settled. Among them are numerous Socialists. Chief among these is Yei Osugi, arrested at Osaka. The Government is particularly desirous of incriminating our comrades as mob leaders."

The article further hints that a contributory cause of the riots was the discontent of the workers with the Government's policy of intervention in Siberia, Whether this is so or not the political sequel to the disturbances was significant, for the Terauchi Government was superseded and the new ministry under Premier Hara reversed the policy of the old ministry in Russian affairs, and openly declares that Japan desires only  a responsible government in Russia, whether it be Bolshevik or not." Of course, this eyewash may satisfy for a time the workers of Japan, but we know that a working-class government can in no circumstances be considered "responsible" by the bourgeoisie.

R. W. Housely