The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-03-23
Stop the Firetrap Deaths,
Force LaGuardia to Act!

CEVEN more working class men, women and chill
dren were burned alive in an East Side tenement
fire on Wednesday!
Forty-eight human beings-men, women and
children-have died excruciating deaths by flame
in New York's slum iretraps since the progressive
Fusion administration assumed Office on the first
Of the year less than three months ago.
Forty-eight men, women and children burned
to deathl This is the CHASTITY toll Of LaGuardia's
demagogic policy Of pilng promises TO the SKIES
but taking action.
And Tenement Commissioner Langdon w. Post
merrily continues on his much balyhooed and fake
crusade" occasionally demanding Gin the presence
OF the press and newspaper photographed that
an obviously rotting tenement be evacuated
There are $1,000 old-law tenements in this city
Figure out for yourself how long it would take
to empty them all at Posts snail-lke pace.
The Fusion administration knows what it rs
doing. It is to its own advantage to keep these
fretraps occupied long it possibly can, the
agonizing deaths Of AZ men, women and children
Notwithstanding.
LaGuardia through his Tenement Commissioner
yesterday resorted again to the old demagogic trick
of blaming the firetrap deaths the previous city
administration. At the same time he virtually alb
solved the wealthy owners of any Of the guilt for
the fire deaths by declaring that the Sammany
officials should not have '1ulled into q sense Of
security" these tenement ownersl
How long will LaGuarda get away with thsP
How long will he be permitted to with empty
honeyed phrases while the Astors, the Stuyvesants
the Hamilton Fishes, the Wall Street banks con-
tinue to reap their blood-stsned profits from these
$1,000 tinderboxes? How long will these wholesale
deaths-these wholesale understanding?
THE rests with you, the workers Of New
L York City who are forced to live in these build
ings to pay your hard Learned and miserable wages
for the privilege of existing in constant fear and
danger of death by FIRE.
The answer rests with you! You can force
LaGuardia to take action if you organize COM
mittees in your tenement house, your block,
in your neghborhood! Get your entire neighbor-
hood solidly behind the following demands pro-
posed in a recent statement by the New York Dist
riot of the Communist Party on the tenement fire
deaths
Organize in every house. Set up committees
in every slum block. Demand that all tenants Ne
gro and white, in flretrap buildings be moved at
once into safe and sanitary dwellings; that the
Home Relief Bureaus assume responsibility for
moving expenses and rent payments for all unem-
poyed families; that all workers families living in
fretraps be given preference in all city dwellings
in all city apartment houses now in existence and
those to be built.
Fight against any form of discrimination against
Negro tenants for the right of all tenants to choose
themselves the section in which they wish to live
Demand that LsGuardia Immediately carry ont his
campaign promises.
Demand that the slums be torn down and that
freproof sanitary apartment houses be built-the
rentals to be from four to six dollars per room max
imum
Tenants are already organizing in various parts
OF the city to remove this death threat from their
midst. Tenant strikes are already in progress at
221 z. 9th St, and at 1879 and 145 Houston St. in
the heart Of the Lower East Side Stun district
Workers of Red Hook, Yorkville, Harlem and
other workingclass districts of Greater New York
Follow the example set by these striking worker
tenants!
Refuse to pay cent Of rent while the lives
OF your families your friends and neighbors are in
dangerl