The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-03-16
Post Quiz Is attempt to Fog
Real Firetrap Causes, Conceal
Millionaire Realtors Guilt
Cooperate With Rich
Stun Owners to Make
Profits on Repairs
By EDWIN ROLFE

eAA41 bAAC ENAl4NAbg ohDbAASAA1 away
from the miserable conditions which
make life a horrible nightmare for
over 100000 men, women and
children who live in New York
firetrap tenements, Commissioner
I1nrdon w. Post on Wednesday an
nounced that he had asked John j..
McEllig0tt, Fire Commissioner, to
Investigate the scenes of recent fires
fcr the purpose Of discovering
whether they had been the work
Of incendiaries.
Posts request followed a day
during which the first toll had been
particularly heavy. On Tuesday the
following fires occurred:
I27 EdEecombe Ave, Harlem;
Tvo women dead, boy critically
iniu-cd, 20 families lover 100 per-
soRsl left homeless.
355 E. 56th St.: Boy overcome
by SMOKE in basement flat, taken
to R7nevue Hospital.
IS Prince St.: Filimena Mag
gioX. 81 years old, burned to
death.
J4A n. Third St., Brooklyn:
Crippled youth burned to death
in Old tenement in Stun area.
$50 Madison ST.; Ten families
endangered in fire in five-story
tenement.
Jim Crow Fire Victim
It was disclosed yesterday that
the jim CROW rules remained in force
in Harlem even in the case of the
critically injured ten-year old Ne
gro boy Calvin White, who had
been thrown five stories to the
street b. his grandmother in
frantic effort to save him from the
flames at the Edgecombe Ave. fire,
Although Knickerbocker hospital
ambulance removed the boy from
the street, telephone inquiry
elected the information that he
had not been taken to the Knick-
erbocker, but to the jim-crow Har-
lem hospital, at Lenox Ave. and
18Th St., a hospital significantly
known in this working class section
as the Harlem butcher shop" At
the Harlem hospital, the boys con-
dition was described as still very
serious"
The purpose of Posts new move is
similar to that of his ''cruSading"
campaign of the past few weeks; to
shift public attention from the basic
causes and cures for flre-trap Stun
tenements, and by making these
demagogic and misleading gestures,
to fool the f1re-threatened popula-
ton of the city into the false belief
that the Fusion administration is
attempting to do something about
their conditions. AS previously ex-
posed in the Daily Worker, the tie
up between the LaGuardia gang and
the Wall Street banks which own
the mortgages on great percent
age of the Stun properties in the
city is too close for any real at
tempt to be made to raze the rot
ten structures and move the trapped
families to modern apartments with
las the New York District of the
Communist Party has demanded
no increase IN rents.
Aston Generous-at a Profit!
The game of the city administra-
ton was further revealed Wednesday
when Commissioner Post announced
that Vincent Aston, owner of SO
old-law -tenements on the Lower
East Side, had made a most gen.
erouS offer" to cooperate with him
in improving the Astor tenements.
What this most generous offer" was
can be seen Immediately if one reads
Astor's own words:
II am tremendously in favor of
the Federal Housing Program.
Private capital is not in a
position to do it [effect needed re-
pairs and renovations for fire.
safety but 1t Is up to the private
individuals to cooperate with the
Federal and municipal authorities
to see that it is done" Astor also
said that he would be willing to
sell his properties to the city at
a "S5 per cent loss"
Thus you have the spectacle of
the Fusion administration and a
millionaire Stun tenement owner
Cooperating" to shift the financial
burden of fire-safety and slum-
clearance to the pockets of the very
same tenants whose lives are threat
ened by tenement fires, and using
Federal subsidies for their own
profit,
Other millionaire and aristocratic
owners of slum tenements fatty re-
fused to do anything about their
properties, declaring frankly Gun
like the suave Vincent Astor) that
they could not afford to do any
thing about making the lives of
working class tenants safe from
death by fire. Among these own
ers was Mrs. Samuel A. Blatchford
of lis z. 82d ST., and the ultra
aristocratic Stuyvesant family.
CORRECTION