The Daily Worker

"Fighting Bob"
By D. D.

Robert Minor, Communist candidate for mayor of New York City, in the short two months the election campaign has been under way, has already earned the name of Fighting Bob-Minor.

The tall, husky, grey-haired fighter is leading the greatest election campaign any Communist candidate has waged in New York. Arrested for leading a picket line against injunctions, using the courts as a forum to denude the cleverly clothed N.R.A., demanding in the Board of Estimate that the rich be taxed to supply relief funds, Minor stands ace high in the eyes of the workers.

In the Communist Election Campaign office at 799 Broadway, there is a calendar listing the meetings at which Communist candidates are to speak. In one month Minor has spoken at more than 100 meetings, the majority on the street corners of workers' neighborhoods. Meetings of strikers, on the waterfront to seamen who are being deprived of their vote, to Socialist unemployed groups to whom the Socialist candidate Solomon refuses to speak, Minor brought the program of the Communist Party.

"Arrange three open-air rallies at which we can reach workers who are still under the influence of the bosses' parties instead of an indoor meeting and I'll speak for your organization that night" is Minor's request to organizations asking him to speak.

In Brooklyn on September 6, a half hour before Minor was arrested for leading a picket line against an injunction at the Progressive Table Co., only ten workers had gathered to picket. They stood outside a three-block anti-picketing zone established by the injunction. Police kept driving up in an automobile, harassing the workers, telling them to keep moving, and that there would "be trouble if they attempted to picket."

About thirty more workers arrived but their still small numbers were no match for the wall of police before the factory. Minor took over the leadership. In the face of threats of violence by the police, walking at the head of the line, he marched the workers through the three block anti-injunction area and smack up before the factory.

Though he and another worker were arrested, Minor is using the case to arouse sentiment for mass violation of injunctions.

Complacent meetings of the city legislature have been startled into attention by the Communist candidates' pointed statements against the recent "soak the poor but make it look like the rich" and tax plan of Tammany.

So effective was Minor's address on the tax program that the bosses' papers were forced to carry his statements. The New York Times of September 26 quoted Minor at length in this manner.

"Robert Minor, Communist leader, attacked the entire city tax program as useless.

"These taxes are useless and worse than useless because they will block a program of real taxation," he told the Mayor.

"What do you mean by real taxation," the Mayor inquired with annoyance in his tone.

"I am very glad you asked me that," Mr. Minor replied. "By real taxation, I mean taxation that will reach the Morgans, the Rockefellers, the Mitchells and the rest who haven't paid a nickle on their income taxes for the last four years. Under the law they have a way out, but a resolute policy would get around that. This program will not infect Wall Street with the disease of taxation: it will merely vaccinate Wall Street against the disease and behind all this inevitably comes an assault on the 5c fare, Mr. Mayor."

"Ah," the Mayor remarked, "now we're getting to the point."

"Yes," the speaker shot back, "now we are getting to the point." Mr. Minor said that the unemployed, "driven by the hammer blows of hunger," would change the policies of the city under Communist leadership.

But Robert Minor did not start his leadership of the New York workers with the present election campaign. At the very beginning of the crisis, Minor, together with other Communist leaders, was arrested and sent to Welfare Island for leading the March 6, 1930 demonstration for Unemployment Insurance.

Nor will Minor cease being a thorn in the side of capitalism after the elections.

The workers of New York have good reason to call the Communist candidate for mayor 'Fighting Bob Minor.'