The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1932-07-09
The Song and the Facts ~

store 1t In their graneries and sell
it at high prices to the poor farm
ers and Negro share-croppers in
spite of the fact that each sack
is plainly marked mot to be sold"
There are hundreds of abandoned
farms in this state, where the farm
ers have been forced to leave and
their farms taken over by the bank
ers and the state
More Negroes Forced Into Peonage.
AS for the Negroes, who greatly
outnumber the whites in the rural
sections, there are scarcely a hand
full of farm owners left. Overseers
are now standing over the Negro
share-croppers and tenant farmers
with guns, driving them to work
like convicts. These workers are
finding 1t increasingly harder to
escape this slavery, and whenever
the runaways are picked up in the
cities they are promptly shipped
back by felons. In Monroe County,
some Negro farmers were sent gov
eminent loan checks through the
banks, amounting to several thou
sands of dollars. These checks
we're brazenly confiscated by the
bankers and rich farmers of that
territory, and the Negroes were ter
rorized into allowing themselves to
be robbed OF this money. Many of
the Negro families, who have
escaped this slavery, have stated
openly that they will die before
they will allow themselves to be
sent back.
White Workers Forced to New
Low Level
One Of the most noticeable eff
fects OF the crisis in this section is
that the standard of living of
great majority of the whites has
already reached level as low as
that of the Negroes. 1t is COM
mon expression down here, that
a white man can be hired cheaper
that what it used to cost to hire a
Negro. Whites are glad to get Jobs
now that used to be considered
exclusively "nigger jobs"
This situation, which is of the
greatest Importance in the devlop-
ment of the revolutionary move
ment today and is speeding the
unity of Negro and white workers,
means that capitalism is no longer
able to maintain the material basis
for the theology of white superior
ity among ever larger sections of
the white working class. White
workers, in these parts, are begin
ming to realize that the capitalist
bunk about "Anglo- Saxon super
iority," merely gives them the
privilege CD of starving separately
from the Negroes.
Atlanta Cuts Off Relief.
The immediate need of working
class unity has lately been placed
before the workers of Atlanta and
the rest of the state in its sharp
est form. The entire capitalist
press Of this section has been carry
ing on an intensive back to the
farm agitation. In spite of the
fact that numerous workers, Negro
and white, have been forced to
leave their farms because of ina
bility to live on them any longer,
editorial after editorial has APP
peared in the press lauding the back
to the farm movement.
The real purpose behind all this
agitation was brazenly exposed at a
meeting of the County Commission,
together with a group of charity
takers. According to the local
press, this meeting was called for
the purpose of taking up an emer-
gency situation that had arisen in
Atlanta due to the recent closing
OF the relief stations which af-
fected twenty-five thousand work
ers. These workers, who constitute
about one-fourth Of the totally I'M