The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-06-14
Nv NJ RTBINSTEIN.


(For the International Conference Of Negro
Workers, July 1st)
THE first international conference Of Negro
workers to be held in July this year, is an
event of vast significance for the entire world
labor movement. A new army is joining in the
general struggle against capital and imperial
ism. Fresh millions of toilers, doubly exploited
by capital, brutaly oppressed as workers and
Negroes, are awakening to new life.
The conference will be the new manifestation
and organizational formulation of this action Of
the new, powerful division, on the arena of thc
great international struggle for the emancipa
ton of the toilers
The peculiarities of the present internationa
situation make the significance of the confer
ence, and the perspective for the Negro Work
ers' movement still greater. The world econ
omic crisis, which at the present time is spread
ing like the plague from one capitalist ccuntr,
= TO another, has especially affected the thro
regions where the Negro population are concen
trated. The United States, where there ar
twelve million Negroes, is passing through a
most acute crisis, and unemployment is ram
pant In the Northern states, where hundreds
of thousands of Negroes work at the factories,
plants and mines, the ever-deepening industrial
crisis is leading to attempts by capital to great
ly intensity the exploitation of labor The Ne
gro workers are often the first victims of I'M
IL
the one hand, their working conditions former
ly were considerably worse than those of the
white workers, and on the other hand, it is
absolutely hopeless for them to think of going
back to the farms in the South, they have
nothing else to do, no other hope for Kidding
themselves of the unbearable oppression, than
the determined, heroic class struggle. The Ne
groes in the South, where the greater part OF
the Negro population of the U. S. A. is con-
centrated, in the overwhelming majority are
tenant farmers, share troopers and agricul-
tural workers Their existence depends chiefly
upon cotton cultivation. The world economic
crisis, however, has given rise to an acute
'over-producton" of cotton, to decreased de-
mand, lowered COSTS The Federal Reserve
Bureau is carrying out campaign to restrict
the area under cotton cultivation. Both the
cotton crisis and all the measures taken by
the government to overcome it affect first and
foremost the Negro population of the South.
Negro Movement Powerful Revolutionary
Factor.
The cutting down of the area under cotton,
the transfer of the basic cotton districts to the
West-n Texas and Oklahoma, the commence
ment of widespread mechanization of the work.
ing up of cotton-all this threatens to squeeze
out completely the millions of Negro tenant
farmers, share troopers and agricultural work
ers and portends unheard of intensification by
the exploitation for those who remain on the
farms. Millions of Negroes employed in agri-.
culture in the Southern states lived even before
the crisis in semi-slave conditions. The slave
owners and finance capital, the cotton specu-
lators, the middemen, the merchants, govern
ment officials, ETC., suck the life blood of the
Negro workers like leeches. The greatly wor-
sened position of the Southern Negroes, re-
sultant upon the crisis, is overfilling their
cup of patience, and bringing the oppression
and exploitation to the limit, beyond which
there inevitably commences the spontaneous
protest and desperate struggle. Thus, despite
the thousands of obstacles, despite the veritable
white terror" against all attempts at action
on the part of the toiling Negroes, the legal"
punishment and lynchings, despite the corrupt
ing influence of the church, the press and
considerable section of the Negro intellectuals,
the Negro movement in the United States is
becoming powerful revolutionary factor.
Another region of concentration for Negroes
the West Indes-has likewise been very
strongly affected by the world economic crisis.
The "overproduction" of sugar, coffee, and
number of other colonial products is veritable
catastrophe of the entire economy of Cuba,
Jamaica, Porto Rico, and other islands in the