The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1935-01-07
Why We Reds Want to
Destroy Capitalism

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT in his mes
L sage to Congress said:
''No wise man has any intention
of destroying what is known as the profit
motive; because by the profit motive we
mean the right by work to earn a de-
cent livelihood for ourself and family"
Well, we reds do want to destroy the profit
system. And We want at this time to present a
witness
This witness is an auto worker, We don't know
whether he belongs to any political party. We
don't know what his political creed is.
But he tells the truth about his experience with
the profit motive, the profit system. This worker
shaved for % years under the profit system in
Detroit Listen to his testimony, given at the open
MIRA hearings Dec. Is in Detroit (the Henderson"
referred to is Leon Henderson Of the N.RA.; Mr.
Madden is the auto worker;
CHAIRMAN HENDERSON: Let me under
stand that: $3.50 for year for each of the two
past years?
MR. MADDEN: Three hundred and sixty
dollars for the entire two years. The reason, of
course for that, cannot give because it is de-
barred from the hearing. daughter0 I would
like to point out that young are not parti-
cuarly interested in entering employment under
there is maintained penal system in the shops.
a system in which men of spirit who would
he expected to have spirit, and those are more
particularly the young, practically have to hang
their citizenship and their manhood and their
sef-respect the gate when they go into these
places of employment. (Applause)
They are treated with about the amount of
courtesy and consideration that they could find
or perhaps less than they could find in the penal
effects on the workers, the young men, I know
that these layoffs have forced them into bootleg
gng, manufacturing of illicit alcohol burglary
robbery and other means, legal or otherwise by
which they could raise the necessary money to
meet the requirements Of youth amusement and
the things like that of life to which they are fully
entitled.
"On the older man the effect has been differ
emit The effect that I have found have found
it to be in my own case, deterioration physically
deterioration which is accelerated each year
and accelerated particularly by the worry attached
to the layof itself to the fact that one is laid off
to the fact that one cannot supply their families
with the necessary things. All these things tend
to tear man down and, of course, make him less
able to perform. What he will find when he re-
turns to the shops is increased speed-up in the
job he formerly occupied or held"
is ANY more simple and blood -curdng accuse ton
against the profit system possibeP
We don't know whether this man ever read one
line written by Communists describing capitalist
democracy just the disguised dictatorship of the
capitalists But who can tell more wildly, more
dramatically of the horrors of the profit system,
than this worker who relates in simple straghtfor-
ward fashion his experience after % years of work
for the auto barons?
rime-starvation- misery-war-fa these
are what the profit system stands for These are its
fruits, which it creates each day that it continues
its existence
The sweet phrases Of a Roosevelt cannot obscure
this fact. No conscious worker or farmer will be
fooled by the Presidents honeyed words The plain
facts of the auto worker, Madden hurs the lie into
the teeth of the capitalist politician Roosevelt