The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-01-27
BY MYRA PAGE.

THE situation with which New England work
ers are faced grows constantly more diff
fcult. Wage cuts, unemployment, speed-up
and increasing child labor the order of
the day. The chaos and contradictions in
herent in capitalist economy are finding acute
expression in New England and the capital
lists, as always, are using every means they
possess to make the workers foot the bill.
Only the growing resistance of the workers,
under militant leadership, can halt the bosses
onslaught; while the many industrial and So
cial problems which exist here as well as
throughout boss-controlled United States will
not be finally solved until the American work
ers are strongly organized and have taken
economic and political power into their own
hands.
Unemployment Grows.
state in the northeastern section, and one of
the most highly industrialzed States in the
country, may be taken as an example of what
the general conditions are in New England in
dustfy today. The Massachusetts, Department
of Labor and In lustries tells US that normal
w. Massachusetts has 653,773 workers, of
which approximately one-third women anG
two-thirds are men. In 1928 there were nearly
$4,000 fewer workers employed in the state
than this normal figure. This drop in work
ers employed represents a decline of $4,000
since 1912 10000 since 1928, and $1,000 since
1926 How many more tens of thousands
walking the streets, looking for work, since
the Wall Street crash, is not yet known. Fur
thermore Of those workers who en-
poyed, the Department reports that only
three-fourths had full-time employment. The
other fourth were working two, three four
days week. The most severe curtament
has taken place in cotton goods, the main in
dustly of the state, which normally employs
1l4000 and in 1928 employed little more than
half of this number Barely four-fifths of
the $4,000 wooden and worsted goods workers
had jobs in 1928, and nearly one-thrd of the
boots and shoes force had no work. During
the past year, unemployment among building
trades workers was excessively high. On an
average one in five was continually out of
work and in some months and sections two
out of every three were looking for work.
So Massachusetts industrialsts have thrown
on the dump heap more than $4,000 workers
These jobless wage-earners are expected to
clear out. They are "free' to go searching
for work elsewhere, ask charity, or just die
of, falling easy prey to the many illnesses
which lie in wait for hungry and badly clothed
men and women, and their offspring. This
IL d IleS cOuHliy, anu 81 lHe unemployed dle
free to do any damn thing they please-eX-
eept revolt and demand work and decent wages
Oyerproduction Plus Speed.
What reasons lie back of this permanent dis
charge Of $4,000 workers? One main cause
is 'overproduction," which is really capitalist
term for saying that those working in cotton,
woolen shoe and other factories can produce
more goods than the bosses can sell at good
enough profit to themselves. This situation is
largely due to the fact that the working popu-
lation, which forms the vast majority of the
consumers of goods get such small pay that
they can't afford to buy sufficient of the Shoes
clothing and other goods which industry can
produce. Another cause is the tremendous
speeding-up of the workers. This speeding
up has been accomplished through various de-
vices, such giving each worker more ma
chimes to tend, gearing up the rate of the con-
veycr or "belt" on which wage-earners work so
ihst they must increase their speed in order
to keep up with the machine, replacing week
work with piece work, and cutting piece rates
tnat worker must maintain break-neck