The Daily Worker

COMMUNIST PARTY CALLS TOILERS TO ORGANIZE, REPULSE NEW ATTACK BY BANKERS ON THEIR LIVING STANDARD

(Statement of Central Committee, Communist Party, U. S. A.)

THE present nation-wide growing financial collapse brings into the clearest relief all the features of the downward swing of capitalism, and the steady deepening of the economic crisis. Entering the fourth year of the crisis, capitalism sinks deeper into the maze of its own contradictions. The measures undertaken by the ruling class since the outbreak of the crisis, as the firing of millions of workers, staggering of the employed workers, continuous wage cuts, the whole system of tariff walls, growth of armament expenditures, all these have only deepened the crisis and increased the misery of the workers.

Big Production Drop.

The drop in production has been catastrophic. In the basic industries production has sunk to the 19th century level. The present financial crisis has already resulted in an even further curtailment of production.

The present army of unemployed, already over 16,000,000 workers, is daily growing larger. The currency crisis, growing out of the crisis development since the outbreak of the stock exchange crash, is shaking the entire social structure of American capitalism to its very foundations.

The crisis in the government finances is being aggravated by the present financial situation. The deficit of the government, created by the pumping of millions of dollars through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation into the shaky credit structure and the huge expenditure of money for armaments, becomes daily more difficult to overcome. The present financial situation raises in the sharpest form the question of the very existence of capitalism.

Workers! Small Depositors Fight for These Demands

No reduction in unemployment relief. Relief payments in cash.

Enactment of Unemployment Insurance at the expense of the bosses and government.

Immediate reopening of the banks with 100 per cent Government guarantee of cash payment to small depositors.

Payment of wages in cash, not checks.

Enactment of laws against evictions. Immediate moratorium on rents.

Fight rise in living costs caused by inflation.

Moratorium on workers' debts to banks, corporations and loan companies.

Arrest and indictment of Mitchell and bankers responsible for robbing the small depositors.

What is the program of American capitalism in the present crisis situation? The growth of unemployment, the wage cuts, the misery of the workers in the past years of the crisis will pale in comparison with the present attacks on the whole front against the standard of living of the masses. The present financial crisis means the sharpening of all imperialist contradictions, and the speeding up of war preparations.

In face of the growing unemployment, Roosevelt declared to the Governors Conference that he does not even contemplate in any shape Federal relief, let alone the direct granting of Unemployment Insurance. The staggered workers who received numerous wage cuts will not even receive their wages in regular currency, but in devaluated currency, or paper scrip. The charity rations for the starving unemployed will be handed out in the same way. The employed workers in addition to indirect wage cuts through the devaluated currency or paper scrip will get additional direct wage cuts. Unemployed workers, while being denied unemployment insurance will even have their meager charity relief rations cut. Inflation will raise the cost of living, still further cutting the wages of the staggered workers and the starvation rations of charity. The veterans are being denied their pensions and bonus. The attack on the working class is all along the whole front. Workers, the petty-bourgeois, intellectuals, who have-after years of hard toil-accumulated small savings will be wiped out of their meager funds.

Affects All Toilers.

The crisis has reached a state affecting all the toiling sections of the population. The present financial crisis more than ever before places the very existence and life of the whole toiling population in the hands of a small financial oligarchy on the top. The measures undertaken by the Federal and State Governments, dramatize more than ever before the complete integration of the financial oligarchy with the state apparatus.

In order to carry through this murderous offensive on the toiling masses as a means of getting out of the crisis, the state apparatus is sharpening its terror weapons, to force the toilers of the land into submission.

The financial oligarchy is mobilizing also its agents within the working class to disarm the workers and deliver them into the murderous hands of the capitalist class. President Green, of the American Federation of Labor, who was recently hailed by the Socialist Party as moving towards socialism, in a brazen declaration calls upon the toilers to support President Roosevelt in his declaration of war on their living standards.

The Revolutionary Way Out.

Today capitalism has reached a stage in its crisis where there is only one way out of it for the working class, the revolutionary way out. The ruling class has proven, to be incapable of running the industries, and stands convicted before society. Only the destruction of capitalism, the setting up of the rule of the workers, which alone can make possible a planned economy-only this can eliminate the periodic crises of capitalism, only this can save society from the misery to which capitalism dooms the majority of the people.

The entire toiling population of the country under the leadership of the working class must be set in motion in gigantic struggles against capitalism, and the present murderous offensive, which is manifested, in the bank holiday which tied up billions of money paid in by small depositors; inflation of currency which beats down real wages and increases the cost of living at the same time additional millions of part-time workers are thrown into the ranks of the completely unemployed as production approaches zero; in the further degradation of the poverty of the small farmers; in the invoking of a war-time "trading with the enemy" act against the toiling masses at home.

On the basis of their experiences in the struggles for Unemployment Insurance, against wage cuts, against a rise in the living cost, against the whole criminal gang of bankers, win the masses learn that the revolutionary way out of the crisis is the only way out from hunger and war.

The Communist Party calls upon the toilers to repulse the offensive of the rulers of the land. Workers, farmers, impoverished petty-bourgeoisie, unite into one mighty army for the struggle for the right to live, for the struggle for bread, for the struggle against imperialist war-for the revolutionary way out of the crisis, Organize for the fight so.

Immediate Steps Against New Drive on Toiling Masses

Workers and farmers, employed and unemployed, small depositors --the widest possible movement of the toiling masses is necessary to combat and defeat the growing new attacks of the bourgeoisie against the standards of living.

1. Hold meetings at the factories, develop actions inside the factories against non-payment of wages or payment in scrip. Build factory committees.

2. Hold meetings in the neighborhoods for the payment of unemployment relief in cash and against increases in the cost of living (high prices). Build special women's committees against rising prices. Strengthen and organize block committees.

3.--Hold mass meetings of small depositors in neighborhoods, demanding full payment of deposits in cash. Line up with the employed and unemployed workers in fighting against the attack of the bourgeoisie.