The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-10-27
by Burck

/ fight for unemployment relief, and
freedom within ten minutes for the
hired gunner of the Rockefeller
coal mines who killed Harry Simms,
the young mine strike leader in
Kentucky. The prisons burst with
workers, but with very few rich
men, and those do not stay long
and do not suffer much. No Ameri-
can millionaire was ever electro
cuted.
In the Soviet Union the courts
are workers courts. There are three
judges, in each lower court, only
one Of whom is professional, the
others being workers right from the
factories, elected to serve in turn on
the bench. Decision is by majority
vote, and the simple workers vote
is as good as the jurist's There is
no awful formality, the judges sit
at a table, with the accused and
his lawyer on the other side. Incl
dentally, lawyers are organized, fees
are moderate and If the accused
can't pay. the lawyers union must
nevertheless provide him with an
attorney and the state must pay the
fee. But with the class element
gone, the ordinary criminal finds
the prosecutor and the judges as
much his attorney as any one-all
are interested in getting the facts,
and reforming the law breaker.
The Peoples Court
I saw a case once in the Peoples
Court in Moscow A young man
had committed some offense on
collective farm, and run away to
Moscow. There he got joe in
bakery, and stole 1000 rubles from
the Office within ten minutes after
going to work He then applied at
another cooperative bakery for
work, and stole their stamp (seaD
and some stationery. He forged
himself credentials as an agent Of
the bakery, and perpetrated a
swindle on a state flour milling
trust, in the course of which he got
500 ruoles for himself He also had
stolen a udarnik's badge and a
Young Communist League member
ship card to give him front"
The evidence showed he had
never worked, but had lived thus by
his wits ever since coming to Mos
cow The judges asked him whether
he had stolen the good suit he was
wearing, but he said he came by
that honestly, he bought it out of
the first thousand rubles he stole.
I should say he was a good ex-
ample of the sort of man who, in
a capitalist country would rise
from Office boy to president of the
corporation-in the days when such
things were still possible. He was
just bright young man, unsatis-
fed with the humdrum honest way
of getting along, and trying to get
up in the world. He even had and
was proud of the bourgeois virtues.
But this Soviet court decided that
a person so totally at variance with
a sane social system must be in
sane, and sent him to be examined
! by a lunacy commission. If he is
| found to be sane, he will get a SEN
tence of a couple of years in a
house OF detention (there are no
prisons. places just of punishment,
in the Soviet Union) and there they
will teach him trade. try to find
out the reason for his mistaken
anti-social course, and try. again
to launch him as a usefv2. Citizen.
If a lad like this came into court
at all in a capitalist country it
would be because he had neglected
to make the proper connections, to
i join up with the gang. But If he
did swindle some corporation there
as he did the co-operatives here,
and came before the judge for it,
he would get, first six months
sentence for contempt of court for
the answers he made, then about
ten years for the swindie. He might
get out earlier if he still made MS
connections and someone needed a
gangster or perjurer in labor case
but in any circumstance, he would
come out criminal.
When the 100000 workers ano
J farmers go to the new elections fol