The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-04-02
The American Proletariat Turns
Toward the Revolutionary Path
BY Fred Ellis

On their head Industry does not expand any
longer, even in the height of prosperity it
operated only at 80 per cent of capacity but
its very hugeness permits of far superior
inner technical transformation, and speed-up
than in any other country, because the industry
instead of by its growth absorbing hundreds
of thousands of new workers yearly throws
them out and this on as big scale as the in
dustry itself.
The effect of this superior industry upon
agriculture (there is no more free land) is to
knock out the small farmer on truly Amer
lean scale. Thus, it came about that even be-
fore the crisis about four million were divorced
from their means of making a living, these
four Million of course, did not lie down and
die, they went about AMI displaced others for
less pay, thus all in all it came about that
eight million or more really were part en-
ployed.
The result Of all this was that the ranks of
the proletariat were swelled by millions who
formerly made living from petty business
but the opportunity to get work continually
kept on decreasing. Thus, we have now whole
sale appropriation instead of growth of the
petty-bourgeoise. Thus, it came about that the
majority Of the workers and their families
were destitute even when the crisis broke out
still keep on coming in spite of all restrictions,
immigrants who formerly fructified the rich
natural resources of the U. S. A. and supplied
the industries with plentiful skilled and un-
skilled labor, are now much more additional
dynamite under the bourgeois social structure
Relief for these completely destitute millions,
the American bourgeosie who is accustomed
only to take but not to give, has not provided,
the American workers are forced into the de-
graded position of begging for charity, hence
now that the crisis has broken out, these mil
lions of workers completely destitute have only
one choice that is to fight, as no one wants to
die for the glory of Wall Street. The economic
basis, for the petty-bourgeois ideal of "gong
into business" has disappeared even before the
crisis, now the American proletariat is begin
ming under the pressure of the crisis also to
cast off its petty-bourgeois reformist theology.
And Bread Lines!
Hunger lines of eight to twelve thousand
in a line waiting for miserable plate of
timed soup or coffee and piece of bread
Tens of thousands Of families evicted by the
landlords with their furniture in the street.
machine guns, armored cars and tear gas
marching up against the hungry, this is the
new U. S. A.
The American workers have not much of
tradition of street demonstrations, their COM
ing out by the hundreds of thousands in re-
Spouse to the call of the Communist Party is
therefore of so much greater significance
Particularly in view of the fact that these
were not "police permit demonstrations but
exactly the contrary they took place as pro-
hibited demonstrations in spite and against the
police, and the militancy displayed by the
masses against the police was not tagging be-
hind Europe, it was at par with, if not even
better, than in Germany. The demonstrations
have given the lie to all the reformists about
the backwardness and fossilized reformism of
the American workers and have shown that