The Daily Worker

"Be Kind to Animals"

WE are reminded by the New York Post that this is "Be Kind to Animals Week."

Indeed, it is said that there is "a great deal of cruelty" to animals.

At the same moment we receive from Detroit an editorial from a capitalist paper of that city, entitled: "They Are Treated Too Gently."

We hasten to correct any confusion. The New York Post was talking about animals. While the Detroit capitalist paper was talking about workers.

In Detroit the unemployed, homeless and penniless workers, if not run out of town by the police, are put into what amounts to a jail but which is called "The Municipal Lodging House," where they are furnished with a limited amount of something that has been misnamed "food,"

and where they are manhandled, pushed about and discriminated against if they protest.

But this is not all, nor the worst treatment of jobless workers.

Supposedly as a "compensation" for being treated with this cruelty, humiliation and semi-starvation, they are required to do forced labor!

Workers may be sure that, in spite of the fact that forced labor exists

in Detroit and any number of other cities—neither Mr. Fish as representative of capitalist government of the country, nor Matthew Woll who

also represents American capitalism, but in the guise of the vice president

of the A. F. of L., will raise a word in denunciation of this forced

labor.

Moreover, the same capitalist newspapers which raised "damnation

bow-wows" over Fish's and Woll's brilliant discovery of "forced labor" in

the Soviet Union, and are now greatly concerned over horses, dogs and

cats, are faced with the embarrassing extremity of admitting that the

millions of starving unemployed, particularly those forced to labor without pay, have only one defender—"the reds."

In Detroit, because the Unemployed Council took up the demand of

the jobless workers against forced labor, the capitalist press suddenly discovers that forced labor is all right, that it is holy, just, and righteous

altogether. They say that the "reds demand a bed of roses" and, as

stated above, the unemployed are treated "too gently."

They go on to add that the workers are "a lot of useless, ungrateful

leeches," who should be "thrown out bodily, or else put into the workhouse, where involuntary servitude is entirely legal." In other words,

capitalism's remedy for forced labor is—forced labor!

Mayor Murphy of Detroit, at whose feet all of the so-called "liberals"

have been worshipping, was quite astonished to hear the workers shake

their fists under his nose in demonstration against his wonderful "plan"

to "relieve" unemployment. He was indeed, "officially horrified" and has

ordered forced labor discontinued.

But beyond this he would not go. Nor would he reinstate the workers who refused to be driven to forced labor and who had been thrown

out of the miserable refuge of the Municipal Lodging House. When the

unemployed workers raised the question as to what these workers are

to do, and demanded an hourly wage of 55 cents for labor performed,

Mayor Murphy fell back upon the excuse that "the city has no money."

Ridiculous! With Henry Ford's $50,000,000 profit last year, with the

tens and hundreds of millions gathered in by the automobile barons, and

wasted in luxury by ten thousand parasites, neither Detroit nor any other

city can escape from the duty of feeding the jobless workers who produced

these profits!

Before May Day and after, and especially upon that date, the workers must raise this question. Against forced labor! Full wages on "relief"

work! Unemployment insurance for every jobless worker! All out

to demonstrate on May Day!