The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-04-14
HARLEM FAKERS
IN MASS MEETING
Try Exploit Misery Of
Negro Unemployed
BY CYRIL BRIGGS.

NEW YORK.-With more than
100000 unemployed workers in Har-
lem facing starvation, with scores of
evictions being put through daily by
Negro and white landlords, with white
and Negro women being forced to
prostitution by the boss starvation
system, Negro refornists of various
stripes united last Sunday in
treacherous attempt to divert the
Negro masses fro mthe mass revolu-
tionary struggle against starvation
and to exploit even their present
misery for the promotion Of fake
solution schemes based on the
Strengthening of Negro business men
and landlords at the expense of the
telling masses.
A mass meeting in Abyssinia Bap-
fist Church, called under the pre-
tense of taking up the question of the
unemployed women in Harlem was
literally gassed by the now familiar
lies of Negro business men and land
lords that unemployment in Harlem
can be solved by the Negro workers
sacrificing their last pennies to
strengthen and build Negro business.
The main speakers were the wives of
the Negro business men who stand
to be benefited by the scheme at the
expense of the workers.
Mrs. Clara B. Bruce, wife of Roscoe
Conkling Bruce, Negro front in Har-
lem for the Rockefeller interests,
and, with her husband resident man
ager of the Rockefeller Dunbar
Apartments, told the meeting they
must support Negro stores even if
they have to pay more. Put the
extra cost down to race loyalty, said
Mrs, Bruce, interpreting the selfish
interests of the Negro landlords and
business men as the interests of the
Negro masses and meaning by race
loyalty mass loyalty to the Negro
landlords and shopkeepers at what
ever cost to the masses. The treach-
cry of her own group to the Negro
masses was clearly shown not only in
the attempt to exploit their miseries
tor its selfish ends, but in the fact
that not one of the speakers made
the slightest reference to the eight
Negro youths being railroaded to the
electric chair by the Alabama bosses,
or to the growing misery of the I'M
employed Negro workers in Harlem
Their attitude to the Negro masses
was further shown by their refusal to
permit anyone in the audience to
take the floor. BY rotten naneuvers
and by adjourning the meeting they
denied the workers present the right
to express themselves, so fearful were
they that the workers would expose
them.
Besides Mrs. Bruce, the following
other nlisleaders peddled their bunk:
Mrs. Lucille Randolph, wife of A.
Philip Randolph, the jim-crow agent
of the A. F. of L. who betrayed the
struggles of the Pullman Porters,
spent their money and caused the
arrest and Imprisonment of two
workers who protested at his betrayal
of the fight against the lynchers of
wilkins, pullman porter; Mrs. ia
cob Panken, member of the socialist
party which jim crows Negroes in
its southern branches, and wife of
ex-Judge Panken who, when on the
bench, evicted scores of unemployed
tenants. Mrs. Panken wanted the
workers to starve until next Fall and
then vote for more starvation by
supporting the treacherous socialist
party.
Assemblyman Stephens, author of
a fake employment bill and one of
the boss lackies who dubbed the
Hunger Marchers when they went to
Albany to present the demands of
the working class for unemployment
relief and insurance, appealed for re-
election.
The meeting was held under the
auspices of the Harlem Housewives
League, organized by the Urban
League gang and supporting the Col
ored Merchants Association and the
Harlem Business Mems Club.
Under the fake slogan of unem-
ployment protest, the misleaders are
planning parade in Harlem this
Wednesday.