The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-05-26

S6NGIl-LOuI MAXIMUM whining Nsly
and 36-hour weekly rest for all agri-
cultural workers. Yearly vacation
with pay for all farm laborers. Ex-
tension to agricultural workers of all
benefits of social insurance and labor
protection legislation demanded for
industrial workers.
Oppression of the Negroes.
American white imperialism OPP
presses in the most terrific way the
ten million Negroes wh0 constitute
not less than one-tenth of the total
population. White capitalist prejudice
considers the Negroes as a Flower
race" as the born servants of the
lofty white masters. The racial caste
system is a fundamental feature Of
the social, industrial and political or
ganization of this country. The Com
munist Party declares that it con-
siders itself not only the party of the
working class but also the champion
of the Negroes as an oppressed race,
and especially the organizer of the
Negro working class elements. The
Communist Party is the party of the
liberation of the Negro race from all
white oppression.
There is a 'new Negro" in process
of development. The social compost
ton of the Negro race is changing.
Formerly the Negro was the cotton
farmer in the South and domestic help
in the North. The industrialization
of the South, the concentration of a
new Negro working class population
in the big cities of the East and North,
and the entrance of the Negroes into
the basic industries on mass scale
have changed the whole social COM
position of the Negro race. The ap-
pearance of genuine Negro indus
trial prOletariat creates an organizing
force for the whole Negro race; fur
nishes a new working class leadership
to all Negro race movements, and
strengthens immensely the fighting
possibilities for the emancipation of
the race.
The Negro tenant and share farm
ers of the South are still, despite all
the pompous phrases about freeing
the slaves, in the status of virtual
slavery. They have not the slightest
prospect of ever acquiring possessing
of the land on which they work. By
means of an usurious credit system
they are chained to the plantation
owners as securely as chattel slaves.
Peonage and contract labor are the
fate of the Negro cotton farmer. The
landowners, who are at the same time
the merchants and the government of
the South, rule over the Negroes with
a merciless dictatorship.
There is the most dishonest and dis
graceful 'gentlemen's agreement" be-
tween the two capitalist parties
against the political rights of the
Negroes. The famous Fourteenth
and Fifteenth amendments of the con-
stitution amount but to a scrap of pa
per. They were never carried out for
a moment. The Supreme Court has
upheld all state laws which disfran-
chised the Negroes. Sheer force pre-
vents the Negro from exercising his
so-called political rights. The federal
has never made any at
tempt to reduce the representation
of those southern states which violate
the constitution, as section two of the
Fourteenth amendment Of the consti-
tuition provides. The republican
party, the party of Lincoln, has sunk
so low that it has provided for meas
ures to segregate the Negro delegates
to its 1928 Kansas City nominating
convention. Lynch law is the hold
over the Negroes. The terror of the
Ku Klux Khan is the constitution for
the Negroes. They are burned alive,
whipped to death, hunted to death
with dogs in the name of white civil
ization.
There is a general segregation pol
icy against the Negro race. Separate
residential sections; Jim Grow cars;
separate schools for Negro children;
exclusion from "white" hotels, res
taurants, theatres and railway wait
ing rooms; exclusion of Negroes from
juries which try Negroes. Negro
teachers can not teach in white
schools. The white masters try to re-
duce the Negroes to illiteracy. Ac-
cording to the 1920 white census, there
were 4 per cent illiterates among the
whites and 22.9 per cent among the
Negroes. The southern states spend
hardly any money for the education
of Negro children, but provide lavish
ly for the education of the children of
the white.
In the cotton states the Negro farm
ers live in shacks together with their
animals. In the cities the Negroes do
the unskilled, the most disagreeable,
most hazardous work and are crowded
into the worst sections of the city.
The death rate of the Negroes is much
higher than that of the whites. In
1925 it was 11.8 per thousand for the
white and 80 for the Negroes.
The southern plantation owners and
their government have tried to keep
the Negro farmers and agricultural