The Daily Worker

"They Deport Me"

(From an interview at Ellis Island with Patrick Devine, to appear in the January issue of the Labor Defender.)

THE United States Government boasts of being a 'merciful jailer.' In reality it is a vicious, merciless dungeon keeper. Conditions are so bad in the federal penitentiary at Atlanta that at this moment there is a near epidemic of spinal meningitis.

It is Patrick Devine, secretary of the National Textile Workers' Union, speaking. He has just been released from the federal penitentiary at Atlanta, and now he is penned up at Ellis Island, soon to be deported. International Labor Defense representatives meet him in the large, wire-fenced room on the Island, where visitors huddle in small, gloomy knots, around a few of the 500 foreign-born workers who are being shipped out of the country by Doak's deportation squads.

He will leave Saturday on the S. S. Ascania, together with scores of these victims of the Doak's drives. Landing at Liverpool, he will be sent on to Scotland, his native country. When we first see him in the deportation pen this militant leader is without money; for clothes he wears a shabby prison suit and shoes that threaten at every move to fall apart.

"The Atlanta prison is supposed to be a model institution, under the direction of Sanford Bates, 'eminent penologist,'" says Devine. "It was built to house 1,200. Today it holds 2,000. Men are crowded together like cattle. The lucky ones are in dormitories which house 400 men and five toilets, two of which are always out of order.

"The food is a scandal, Beans-beans-and more beans. There is an efficient officer named Mr. Boyle in charge. Boyle prides himself on saving $24,000 last year on the food appropriation. That means that $500 a day was taken from the prison's food! What went from the same fund to graft, nobody knows.

"Because of these terrible conditions, there is a near epidemic of spinal meningitis in the penitentiary. From July, 1931, to the time I left, there were about 30 cases of the disease. Nine of them died.

"A window dressing clean-up of a few of the worst evils is going on on the surface--to try to prevent the spread of the disease. But the inmates know that this is a farce and they are scared to death."

Devine spoke of the rigid discipline in the penitentiary, which still clubs prisoners, or puts them "in the hole"--solitary confinement on bread and water--for slight violations of prison rules. He himself was arrested in prison and punished on a charge of "inciting to riot" and "boisterous conduct" for some offense which he did not even know he had committed.

Speaking of the horrible conditions of United States prisons, Devine called the Federal Detention House on West St. in New York "a gold brick which Al Smith sold to the government. It used to be an old garage from Smith's trucking company. He had the government take it off his hands for more than a million dollars," says Devine.

Devine was active in the Lawrence textile strike, and, prior to that, in the Pittsburgh coal area. He was sentenced to Atlanta for a year in connection with his strike activities, and served seven months. Immediately upon his release, he was arrested for deportation.

In a statement for the Daily Worker today, Pat Devine says:

The year 1931 will forever be a landmark in the revolutionary history of the United States and the world at large.

It marked the confirmation, for all who wish to see, of the correctness of the Comintern analysis of the third period post-war crisis of capitalism.

For the American Party, particularly, 1931 has especial significance. In no uncertain manner this, the third winter of the crisis--with its clear disintegration of seemingly all powerful U. S. imperialism, and its rising militancy of the working class as expressed in the Hunger March on Washington, the innumerable strikes, and the ever growing Communist election vote--has demonstrated the counter-revolutionary character of the Lovestoneites and Trotskyites, and the clear cut and correct Leninist line of the Party.

The Lawrence textile strikes, the Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky miners' strike and the magnificent march on Washington are splendid examples of our orientation to mass work in the unions and among the unemployed, organized and unorganized.

We are definitely reducing the gap between abstract propaganda and concrete mass work, with its concretization into organization in the unemployed councils, revolutionary trade unions and the Party.

There are still many weaknesses, however, especially those expressed in Lawrence in February, viz., lack of preparatory work, insufficient attention to the organization of basic committees in the factories, a hesitation to spread the struggle--in itself an expression of our underestimation of the radicalization of the masses--a failure to recruit members energetically enough during strikes, and a lack of connection between our organization centers and their periphery.

The local and district defense organizations must be strengthened enough to make them competent to carry out the necessary defense moves both agitationally and technically.

The practice of spectacularly and sharply bringing forward special cases, such as Scottsboro, Kentucky miners, etc., must not be allowed to crowd out attention to less important cases.

Nineteen hundred and thirty-one has brought our Party to maturity. This growth must and will be continued in 1932. Bigger struggles are ahead.

The present session of Congress accentuates the inherent contradictions of capitalism and exposes the plans for a further reduction in the standard of living of the workers, and the preparations for war in defense of the foreign investments of Wall Street.

The guns are turned on the Soviet Union, and our Party, as the leader of the working class must be prepared to do its share in defense of our Fatherland.

In leaving the United States for new struggles in an old field, I send revolutionary greetings to all the comrades and urge that they intensify their activities, build our Party and march forward to the final overthrow of capitalism and the setting up of a workers' and farmers' government.