JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Harold Ware, 1889-1935, son of activist and Communist Ella Reeve Bloor, early member of what would be the Communist Party of the United States and suspected spy for the USSR, gave Franklin Roosevelt a very grabby and animalistic (in the bad sense of the word) hand for attacking/taking the goods of the poor working class...amidst much else. This occurs on the cover of his 1934 pamphlet--sold for 2 cents and written "George Anstrom"--The Government Takes a Hand, which was an indictment of the enforcement of class and racial conflict in the working classes of the United State. In particular Ware takes aim at the cotton workers and their plight. I've included some of what he wrote (below) as there's a lot of it that makes pretty good sense, and much of it which is correct. He does however take a dim view of the New Deal and of the agricultural relief action of 1933/4, which Ware maintained was the theft of what little belonged to cotton workers. In any event, here's a sampling from Ware's work::
"The Wall of Race Prejudice Set Up by the Bosses
Across narrow country roads white tenants and croppers see Negro neighbors pulling cotton like themselves. But more than that road separates them. Between them rises an invisible wall——the barrier of race prejudice-—deliberately set up by the boss class and its government agencies. That wall is built of fairy tales of white supremacy to keep the white toilers from uniting with the Negro masses against their common exploiters. From the cradle to the grave the poorest white child is taught to look down on, hate and fear his Negro neighbors."
"Any sign of protest from Negroes is met with instant terror. Boss inspired Ku Klux Klan raids and lynching parties are the order of the day. The Negro share croppers of Camp Hill, Alabama, organized and fought back against a lynch gang in 1931. They won their demands through organized struggle. But the bosses create a general scare of “Negro rebellion” to justify their chain gangs and other forms of suppression."
There is a belt of 350 counties across the South which is the rightful homeland of the Negroes. But there, where the Negroes are a great majority of the population, where they have tilled the soil for generations, the white ruling class oppression asserts itself with inhuman ferocity.
Both white and Negro tenants live in rickety cabins. Both families live on hog-side, meal, and beans. Both families have pellagra and walk in rags. Each family--white and black--plants, chops, and picks cotton.
The white children go to miserable schools for a few weeks--the Negro children are lucky to use a bench in some unpainted Negro church instead of fighting together against slave standards of living, these two great peoples are divided--white from Negro.
Surplus and Starvation for Us
But we Americans go on suffering under this foolish system that uses food and cotton to make money for a few capitalists while millions shiver and are hungry.
The Fight for Land, Homes, and Cash
This New Deal. scheme is to reduce 15 million acres of cotton. This is equal to squeezing at least 500,000 families out of cotton farming. It will take the jobs of thousands of cotton pickers. Where are we to go? Can. they force over 2 million souls to starve? Certainly not. We will not starve, we will fight! But how? Race prejudice whipped up by the bosses keeps white and Negro farmers apart. But starvation brings us together.
The first step in our struggles against the grab system of the capitalists must be the fight for food. We will not starve. We will not eat acorns, snakes, and squirrels. We will get all our neighbors who face the New Deal death to march on the county Court House for immediate relief. This will not be easy. For some are white and some are black. But more and..more of both races see’ through the" wall of hocus-pocus and, above all,l we are hungry.
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