The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1932-10-19

NeW 1OTkl.
II AM more of doer than am
La talker. I will fight with the
workers as long as there is a drop
of blood In my veins" These are
the words of H. G. Coney, share
cropper, accepting the nomination
for governor in the first Commun-
list election ever held in Arkansas.
We visit Coney Coney who led
the famous march of starving farm
ers down to the town of England
January 1881. He demanded food.
He got it.
IN ENGLAND, ARK.
Harry Minium of Little Rock
shows the way to England. This
is the typical southern town full
of stores with striped awnings. Lit
tie crooked streets crawling out to
the fields like spiders legs. Full
of merchants, loafers, few ill-at-
ease shabby farmers. At the post
office eve learn later Conveys mail
is opened they glare at us and
misdirect us. We buck broken
bridges and roads with holes big
enough for sows to nest with lit
tiers. A middleaged cropper out of
a house covered with honeysuckles
says he's sorry he hasn't heard of
Coney, hasn't been off the farm but
once in long months and that for
beehunting. A boy, driving mules,
says we're headed wrong. Coney
lives on Plum Bayou. We switch
roads, get the Ford ditched, and
finally hit the Coney farm.
THE candidate for governor sits
L on the porch barefooted. in
shirt sleeves. Thick shoulders,
square jawed and square handed.
His brown hair is parted in the
middle and licked down. He greets
the comrades cordially. Asks
whether we've had supper. He limpS
placing chairs, the left leg twisted
from an attack of rheumatism dur
ing his childhood. His wife and
boys are also on the porch. Mrs.
Coney, a slim pretty little woman,
dips snuff too. We sit and talk.
Our hosts spit into the dooryard
weeds, yellowish in the dusk.
ALWAYS FOR THE
CLASS
Coney leans forward. He an
swers all questions with a deep
sense of responsibility to his new
duties. Born in Mississippi. Fa-
ther, a bookeeper, one of the
smartest men in the state, died
when he was eleven. He had to
shift for himself then. And has
managed to take care of himself
since. He must have been Com
munist all his life and didn't know
it until they told him SO. At the
convention he was the most sur
prised man in his life when they
called on him to run for governor.
He could could have fallen thru
the floor. He didn't expect it any
more than a jacknife. But he's
always been for the laboring class
until his last drop of blood.
He says this simply and quietly.
We can't see his eyes. But his
powerful arms, bare to the elbows,
seem to glow for moment in the
darkness. Harry Minimum, former
former switchman, says slowly,
We're glad we're on your side
Coney.T
THE ONLY HARDSHIP
Coney grins. 81 don't mind work
ing for governor. We got little
baling hay to do for neighbor.
Then I kin go stumping from one
end of this world to the other.
People round about says it's going
to be a hardship on me joining
this Communist Party. The only
hardship is I'll have to wear shoes
stumping."
WE ALL laugh.
"They warn it's going to be
hardship on the woman and the
boys. It's worse letting things slide
as they come. The trouble with
this part of the world, I been thru
four of these states, is that it's the
tailend of nowhere. You show some
of these people pictures of the Ne
gro Ford and they back out from
hitching up with Jus. Are they
going to let the merchants and the
middlemen in town, our poisonest
enemies, keep hacking us till we're
nothing left?"
THE SHAREHOLDERS
Coney goes on to tell us that most
OF the sharecroppers and renters
are even worse off than him. "The
thirty, forty acres they work doesn't
yield to pay half the sweat they
water 1t with after the merchants
In town are thru with them. The
resorts of the rich now being en-