The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-05-07
Leading Negro Writer
Tells of LAND Where
People Have No Shoes
Haiti Has Become Fruit Tree for American
Imperialism Hughes Declares

hands Of those who are not natives.
Each ship brings a cargo Of articles
imported from the white coun-
tries" Even the post-ofice Of Haiti
is foreign enterprise. The laws
are dictated from Washington.
American comptrollers and audi
tors count the money. And the
military occupation extracts huge
salaries for its own officials and civil
experts.
In that case, how do the dignifed
native citizens who have shoes oc-
cupy their time-those Haitians,
mulattoes for the greater part, who
for decades have dominated the poll
tics of the country and who have
traced class line between them
selves and their Negro brothers
without shoes, just as the Americans
have brought in their own color line
which separates the occupation
from all the rest of the Haitians?
What have these "super-citizens"
been doing in this country which
once was republic? Living for
years and years on the badly paid
labor of the peasants, or upon soft
government Jobs. That is one reply.
Writing ford poetry after the style
of the French Academicians. That
Is another. Causing bloody civil
wars and revolutions engineered by
various political parties and making
eloquent speeches on holidays. Beg
ging for loans from foreign govern
mentS in order to waste the money
among themselves without doing
anything for the people without
shoes, without constructing schools
or factories, without improving the
conditions of the masses, without
developing agriculture, without pro-
viding opportunities. So 1t is plain
to be seen that they have been very
busy maintaining and feeding their
own pride and the position of which
they boast.
The result: an impoverished, ig-
norant country in which the masses
are always hungry; where those in
power are corrupt and Unsuitable
and leave the door wide open for the
even more Unsuitable Yankees from
the North, who bring a more terrible
corruption than any which the
mulattoes with their Partisan cul-
ture would ever have been able to
impose.
TODAY Haiti has become a fruit
l tree for Wall Street, an apple for
Yankee occupation, providing coffee
for foreign cups and poverty, hunger
and misery for its own Negro work.
ers and peasants. The Chamber OF
Deputies CThe Haitian Congress)
approved a project to increase sala-
ries of its members to $3.50 per
month. The workers who labor on
the roads receive thirty cents a day
and the members Of the police force
and constabulary get $3.50 per week.
A great difference in salary. But it
must be understood that the depu-
ties have to wear shoes. They have
to keep up their dignity, They are
the ruling class.
In regard to the American occu-
patton which has lasted for nine
teen years. the only thing which it
has done which deserves any con-
sideration has been the construction
of a few halfway decent hospitals
and limited rural sanitary service.
The roads are impossible and the
schools are conspicuous by their abb
sence.
The people without shoes do not
know how to read or write. The
greater part Of them have never
seen a motion picture nor a railway
train. They live in huts constructed
of mud and dung, or in tumbledown
houses; they get up with the sun
and go to sleep when night falls.
They wash their few clothes in the
river, using no soap because they
are too poor to buy it. They walk
slowly and appear lazy because Of
generations of malnutrition and the
entire lack of stimulation, On Sat-
urday they dance to the beat Of
Congo drums and on Sunday they
60 to mass-because they believe