The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1932-04-11
BY CHARLES GARRIs New YoFkl.

By CHARLES GARRlS New York;
THE Alabama Supreme Court has confirmed the
1 sentence Of death passed on the eight Negro
working youths by the circuit court in SCottsborO,
Alabama and has fixed April 9Th as the date
when they will die in the electric chair Just
as in the historic Sacco and Vanzetd case, and
now in the trial OF the Harlan Kentucky coal
miners. and in their consistent ignoring Of the
demand of the masses to free Mooney and Bill
ings, American capitalist justice stands exposed
before the whole world as the hioeous monster
that it is. This case does not represent an
unusual event in the lives of the Negro tOiling
masses Rather is it a daily occurrence. That
these eight Negro boys have not been already
executed or turned over TO an insane mob OF
white landlords and business men to be fiendishly
tortured to death is due only to the mass pressure
and protests OF the toiling masses the world over
under the leadership Of the Communist Interna-
tioual and International Red AID.
The facts Of the case are simple, On March q,
1881 nine Negro unemployed young workers
searching for work were taken off freight train
by an armed mob and thrown into prison The
day following their arrest they were charged
with "raping" two white prostitutes who had also
been found on a different wagon Of the same
freight train. Fifty days later, April 10th, in an
atmosphere Of lynch terror, with a mob Of ten
church and press, bowling for the death of the
nine boys and defended" by two drunken lawyers
members of the Ku KluX Khan, who Cynlcally
and openly helped to convict them, eight of the
boys we're sentenced to death. The trial Of the
ninth was postponed to future date due to the
fact that by this means the ruling class attempted
to give the semblance of fair trial to the case
American capitalism, finding itself in the throes
of the deepest crisis in its history, is taking the
most violent and desperate methods in the at
tempt to extricate itself In the u. S. A. today
there are more than 100000 unemployed
workers, while 100000 more are working only
part time The only relief" available to the
starving masses is bourgeois charity. Millions
more work under hellish conditions in the fac
tories, shops and mines. Drastic and sweeping
wage-cuts are taking place, the working day is
being heightened, the speed-up is being intensi-
fled and the standards of living of the masses are
being worsened from day to day.
The crisis has found the most acute expression
in the Southern States bringing intense SUI
fering to the totling masses especially TO the
Negro toilers. Millions Of Negro poems, share
troopers and tenant farmers are shaving under
the worst forms of capitalist forced labor; the
Negro agricultural workers work under indeScri-
able conditions, from sun-up to sunset receiving
as low as 25 cents to SO cents per day. The
Negro sharecroppers and tenant farmers, tied to
the land by debts, robbed by the double book
keeping of the white landlords, are compelled to
slave from year to year with hardly a chance to
escape their bondage. They become virtual prop
crty of the landlords If they attempt to escape
they are brought back in chains, tortured and
forced into worse slavery. Woe to the Negro
worker who even asserts his most elemental rights
as human being, or the Negro share-cropper
who dares to question the white Landlords honesty
in his bookkeeping. sudden and horrible death
is sure to befau him.
The acute agrarian Girls has resulted in the
iutenSfication Of the misery of the toiing masses
of the countryside. The fall in the price Of
cotton by s854OOO,OOO in 1881 compard with 1929
has greatly accelerated the impoverishmenG OF
the masses in the Black Belt where cotton is
the chief product. The landlords are now seiz-
ing practically the whole of the crop as their
share wave Of bitter discomfort is sweeping
throughout the South and particularly in the
Black Belt Individual gun battles between
Negro and white share-croppers and tenant
farmers on the one side and the white Landlords
on the other, are a regular occurrence. In Ar
kansas the starving Negro and white farmers
demanded and secured food at the point Of the
gun. In Camp Hill, Alabama, the Negro share
choppers organized In the revolutionary Share
Choppers Union, compelled the Landlords to ex-
tend the relief which was threatened to be with
drawn, who attempted to lynch them
The lynch justice segregation and Jim Grow
laws, which have SO far acted as a weapon in
the hands Of the ruling class in keeping the
Black and White masses divided, are being broken