The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-05-21

which the socialists of New York
ever had the ghost of mass support,
the Jewish Daily Forward, and its
English speaking prostitutes of the
type of James Oneal, were forced at
first to call to their aid the riff-raff,
the rag-tag and bob-tail elements Of
the defunct counter-revolutiona
forces of Russia and finally, after
the failure of such scoundrels and
liars as the notorious menshevik,
Abramovich, and the comic-opera ex-
premier, Kerenslxy, they tried to use
the politically bankrupt, J. Ramsay
Macdonald, for their purposes.
IT was a good scheme. There was
nothing wrong with the strategy.
Unfortunately for the Forward gang,
it didn't work. Certainly ]. Macdonald
would never balk at the job of de-
fender of a right-wing movement
against, Communists. His record in
Britain has proved his love for that
sort of thing. He is the defender of
the official right-wing bureaucracy
in the British labor unions. When
]. H. Thomas is in a tight fix he
can always rely upon Macdonald, the
former leader of the Parliamentary
labor forces, to come to his aid.
If Bill Green or John L. Lewis were
in distress, ]. Ramsay would defend
them without hesitation.
But the Forward gang is not the
American labor movement. It never
was even an important part of it and
never will be. In fact it is not
part of the labor movement at all
these days. It speaks for the labor
bureaucracy in the needle trades, a
forlorn outfit of incompetent and
unprincipled office holders who have
been defeated by the rank and file
and who only hold their positions
! through the practice of fraud and
violence against their own member
ship. The main support of the For
ward gang comes from people who
at one time, when the Forward first
started on the lower east side, were
workers, but have evolved into other
walks of life. While the Forward
remained on the lower east side, its
supporters moved uptown, to the
Bronx and Washington Heights and
graduated from the ranks Of the
workers.
Respectable petty shop-keepers,
petty clothing and shoe manufact-
urers, grocery vendours, pawn
brokers. rabbis, advertising writers,
movie show proprietors, restaurant
keepers, high-salaried officials of
the United Hebrew Trades, thugs and
gangsters, the right wing leaders of
the needle trades, labor bankers,
lawyers, doctors (chiropractors,
pull rs, psycho-analysts chiroeo-
dists), garage proprietors, and all
the innumerable petty business out
fit and its official organ, the For
ward. When celebrations are pulled
off to commemorate some such thing
as the thirteenth anniversary of the
founding of the Forward, at which
Macdonald was advertised to appear
but didn't-this aggregation with
their numerous progeny turn out in
full force.
They do not bring their offsprings
in order that they may learn some
thing of the struggles of the work
ers, but in order to. show them off.
Since the parents have managed to
get away from the shops on the east
side, they want their precocious
youngsters to get farther away so
they yearn for them to become violin
lists, saxaphone or piccolo players,
operate singers, contortionists. bal
let dancers, pole vaulters, six-day
bicycle racers, AL. Jolsons and Eddie
Cantors, orchestra conductors, lit
erati-in short anything but workers
and revolutionists. Forward celebra-
tions furnish opportunities for the
youngsters to display before their
fond mammas and pappas their bud
ding genius.
IT was just such an affair at which
the distinguished j. Ramsay was
advertised to appear. He, who had
consorted in knee breeches and silk
stockings with the royal family of
Britain; whose eminence is un-
challenged among the best people Of
England was to appear as court jes-
ter for picket peddlers, sandwiched in
between them on the program like
Will Rogers in Zeigfield's Follies be-
tween FarcSy Brice and Gallagher and
Shean. This was the dismal pros
pect that faced Macdonald. What to
do?
He left England in order to avoid
being in the absurdly ridiculous po-
sition Of being kicked out of political
life by his own party, the Indepen-
dent Labor Party, because Of his
treachery to the working class be-
fore, during and since his term as