The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1932-03-30
AFTER THE DEARBORN
NJ AS S AC RE

and the demonstrators"
Police Commissioner John K. Watkins( who is
former Rhodes scholar confirmed Mayor
Murphys statements,
"You consider the privilege of demonstrating
and holding public mass meetings of municipal
right in Detroit don't you?" he was asked
mot only municipal right, but constitu-
tional right both state and national" the police
commissioner replied
1t happens that the Ford Dearborn police pol
icy is directly opposed to Mayor >Murphy's, and
at the last election Ford's candidate, John Lodge
was defeated by Murphy. Ford's factory is out
side the city limits. He does not pay cent OF
taxes to the city. Though Detroit has extended
its territory in all directions, and is beginning
to encircle Dearborn, Ford has steadily resisted
the Incorporation of Dearborn into the city of
Detroit He steadily refuses, it is said, to con-
tribute to the City Welfare Department, although
thousands OF his former employees are Deepen
dent upon the Department for aid. Clyde Ford,
the mayor Of Dearborn, is a relative OF Henry
Ford's and owns Ford agency. Henry Ford's
frequent announcements that he is going TO
open up" hire thousands more men, start pros
perity going again, risk all" in an effort to end
the depression, and so forth-announcementS
which he does not carry out and apparently
does not intend to-anger Detroit middle-class
residents
such announcements keep unemployed men
pouring into Detroit seeking jobs which do not
exist.
The majority Of Detroiters support Murphy
and hate Ford. BARRIERS, mattresses, clerks, most
white collar workers-not radical in any sense
say such things as, II wish they'd tear down his
whole factory. Maybe that would give the I'M
employed job, building It up again"
Murphy is backed solidly by the American
Federation Of Labor, by the Negroes because of
his fairness as a judge in the trial some years
ago of Negro who defended his house against
a mob and was tried for manslaughter by the
Catholic vote (after ALL Murphy is Irish), and
by considerable proportion of the liberals, who
remember in particular his postwar campaign
against the war profiteers. Moreover Murphy
is ambitious He is an old-fashioned Jefferson
ian Democrat with modern political astutenesS
who is not above political maneuvering for his
own ends. Here is his chance. The fight
against Ford, if Murphy has the courage to take
it up, will make an issue upon which he might
climb far above the mayoralty of Detroit.
In this situation, however Murphy is attacked
very nearly as much as Ford. The world thinks
of the Ford industries as being in Detroit, and
of Frank Murphy, the mayor, as officially respon-
sible. During the half hour that sat in the
mayors Office on Saturday, his secretary col
preceding few hours and I looked them over.
Fourteen protests had come in that morning
from various organizations and meetings con-
demning the murders There was telegram
! from the Needle Trades Workers Industrial
Union Of Chicago another from the YCL
| Of Negaunee Michigan another from
branch of the International Workers Order
located somewhere in New York, another, long
resolution adopted at a mass meeting, from
students and teachers in the Columbia Social
Problems Club. The latter, referring to the fact
of industrial depression and the peaceful nature
of the unemployed demonstration at which the
shooting occurred, declared that "the blame for
this ruthless terrorism rests squarely upon the
shoulders of Henry Ford and the municipal gov
eminent of Detroit"
| To a man like Frank Murphy, these things
burn. He sent long telegram to The Young
Worker organ of the Young Communist League.
The League had bitterly protested the murder
because three of the dead were membrs of the
organization. The telegram was published on the
front page of The Young Worker with list of
sharp and pertinent questions for Murphy to
answer.
And, after ALL Murphy, despite the fact that his
city probably provides more freedom Of speech
than any other in the country, does have things
to answer, or at least explain. He does not,
probably, expect Communist support in his ad-
! ministration-after ALL he favors a retention of
capitalism, however much he would like to
remove some of its featureS-but he does want
them to let him alone. When kilograms con-
tinue to pour in and the demonstrators continue
to link his name with Fords-"the Ford-Murphy
Police Terror"-he asks, plaintively, How can
they do this to me?"
1t is not his fault of course, that the Wayne
County Council of the American Legion in the
Detroit district secretly passed resolution in
troduced by Leonard Coyne, an attorney on the
Ford riot" saying, I'VE tender to the Ford
Motor Company and other Wayne County in
dustries the assistance Of our organization and
pledge them the support Of all members in any
further emergency" But it shows a situation
which interpenetrates official Detroit. Miles N.
Culehan one of the assistant prosecutors in
charge of the grand-jury investigation and an
ex-Service man, said In an interview with me
and another journalist, II don't care who knows
1t, but say wish they'd killed few more Of
those damned rioters"
Furthermore, Hugh Quinn and three other
Detroit detectives were present throughout the
affair, and in the first edition Of The Detroit
Free Press Quinn is quoted as saying that
Harry Bennett shot a man during the riot
But afterward when quizzed severely by Muir
ply, Quinn denied everything claiming that his
presence in Dearborn was accidental and that
he saw only stones flying in the air. Several
raids on Communist Party and Trade Union
Unity League headquarters we're carried out dur
ing the next two three days after the riot and
some of these were made nv Detroit r,olice