John L. Lewis TELLS HIS PROGRAM THE MILITANT Formerly the SOCIALIST APPEAL — See page 3 — Official Weekly Organ of the Socialist Workers Party VOL. V—No. 19 NEW YORK, N. Y. SATURDAY, MAY 10, 1941 c^^^^>267 FIVE (5) CENTS UNDECLARED WAR ABOUT TO START Newark Workers Police Guards On Against Jim Crow In War Industries May Day Didn't FDR Spokesmen Vote This W eek Stop This Casualty Commit Us To It LaGuardia’s police on May Day carried out their tradi­ Militant Negro and White Unionists Should tional publicity stunt of post­ Stifling All Debate On Convoy Issue, ing “guards” at St. Patricks Vote For Breitman and Bill Bohannan Cathedral, and the Cathedral They Move Without Consent Of The Masses of St. John the Divine in New York. But the churches were George Breitman, candidate in danger on May Day only The climax to weeks of careful build-up in favor of convoys of the Socialist Workers Party from the bankers—in Seattle came Tuesday night, when Secretary of War Stimson radioed a call for City Commissioner in the one of the largest Episcopal no-t merely for convoys but for sending the U.S. Navy into battle Newark election May 13, an­ Churches on the Pacific coast against the Axis powers. nounced this week that the was taken over on May Day And Stimson said this, the White House staff told reporters, S.W.P. has also endorsed W il­ by St. Louis bankers who fore­ with the knowledge and approval of President Roosevelt. liam E. Bohannan, the only closed on an overdue mortgage But not with the approval of. the people. And not even with the member of the CIO who is a of $266,316. The dispossessed approval of Congress! candidate and the only Negro congregation w ill be forced to candidate running on a labor hold services next Sunday on Stimson’s argument was that, “ after the overwhelming response platform. the lawn of, a city park. to his (Roosevelt’s) appeals which has been made”—that is, Con­ Bohannan, a (Vigorous fighter gressional and public approval of Roosevelt’s PREVIOUS steps— against all forms of Jim Crow- “shall we now flinch and permit these munitions to be sunk in the ism, has chosen as his slogan Atlantic Ocean?” “ Make Newark a 100% Union Town.” Bohannan feels that Members of the National Negro Congress, from Washington and Baltimore, picket the OPM Wliat is Stimson saying here? Roosevelt was this slogan best sums up the Draft Board immediate needs of all the work­ in Washington, D. C., in protest against the government’s support of the anti-Negro job discrim­ able to secure public backing for moves “ short of ination policy of the Glen L. Martin aircraft plant in Baltimore. The corporation has been receiv­ ers, both colored and white. war.” Now this consent to moves which were sup­ ing millions in war orders despite its refusal to hire colored workers. In addition Bohannan has posed to save the country from war is adduced by sponsored in his election the Calls Worker “ Bohannan Equal Bights Bills,” Stimson as consent for taking the country into war! which have already been en­ During these crucial weeks when Roosevelt and his henchmen dorsed by the Greater Newark For Striking WILLIAM BOHANNAN Stalin’s Move Reflects have been building up to the point of committing the country to total Industrial Union Council of the war, they have moved heaven and earth to prevent any debate on CIO. These bills would pledge convoys or other further steps into the war. the City Commission to refuse to buy or contract anything CIO Union Blasts The Nye and Tobey resolutions came up Wednesday, April 30, Crisis In Soviet Union in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. By a vote of 13 to 9, from any firms that discrimin­ ated against Negroes in their Union-Busting Move Roosevelt’s backers—a bi-partisan combination—would not even re­ employment policies and would Of Local Draft Body port the resolutions to the Senate unfavorably for that would have make punishable by a fine of Depth Of Internal Economic And Political Crisis, Weakening permitted debate. They bottled the resolutions up in the committee. from $500 to $2,500 the owners Why do they fear debate ? Their “opponents” for the most part of any restaurants, theaters or Soviet Defenses, Drives Stalin To Ever More Dictatorial Role (The following story is re­ agree with the interventionists on the principle of aid to Britain. other public places which were printed from the May 3 UE The debate between them is limited to what is best for American guilty of discrimination be­ NEWS, organ of the United By JOHN G. WRIGHT <i> imperialism. No one in Congress speaks for the interests of the cause of race or color. Electrical, Radio & Machine Stalin’s “ right-hand man*” his “ closest comrade-in-arms,” American workers and farmers against the interests of American Bohannan has been endorsed by Workers Union (CIO).) Molotov, has been removed from the post of Chairman of Hull Tried To Stop imperialism. In this sense congressional debate would be little more a number of trade unions and People’s Commissars which he has occupied for ten years, since than a sham battle. Negro organizations and is being * * * December, 1930. Stalin himself has assumed this key post in the Publication Of Yet even such a debate cannot he permitted by Roosevelt. For backed by a Com m ittee o f 100 HARTFORD, Conn., April 28— Soviet government, his first public office in years- The only other the issue now is nakedly clear. Up to now he has deceived and be­ trade unionists of both the AFL Repeated union warnings that, the A.P. Convoy Story governmental post ever Iiekl by Stalin was that of People’s Com­ fuddled the people with “aid short of war,” his promises that no and CIO. d ra ft apparatus would be used as missar of Nationalities under Lenin. American boy would fight in foreign lands, his reassuring comment Drawing for places on the vot­ a strikebreaking agency to intro­ Why has Stalin taken such an unprecedented step? Last Saturday morning, that “convoys mean shooting and shooting means war.” But now he ing machines last week put Breit- duce forced labor in the United Reflected in the purge of Molotov and the assumption by May 3, the Associated Press proposes just that: convoys and shooting. States were borne out last week ■man on the top row, as number Stalin of the premiership is the intensification of the unpreced­ sent over its wires a brief dis­ A-6, while Bohannan drew A-8. when the local draft board of West ented international and internal crisis into which the Soviet patch that 23 American muni­ And even as distortedly reflected by an “ isola­ Hartford revoked the deferment There arc 30 candidates for the Union has been plunged by none tion ships had reached the of a striking UE member. tionist” Congressman, the case against Roosevelt five places on the City Commis­ other than Stalin himself. leadership, or raise the confidence Suez canal under U.S. Navy The victim of the intended ag­ sion. The international position of of the soldiers in his ability. The convoy. would be too damning: the lies by which he was re­ Breitman’s slogan on the ballot gression by the draft board is the Soviet Union is little short of very first tests under fire w ill re­ Before most evening papers Donald G. Olson, UE striker at elected, the lies by which he pushed the country step is “Let Labor Control The City catastrophic. Stalin’s latest man­ veal how all of Stalin’s measures went to press, the A.P. wires Commission.” GEORGE BREITMAN the Hanson-Whituey Machine euver is in part intended to make have served only to weaken the clanged with a special warning by step into war, the undemocratic means he em­ Corp. Molotov the scapegoat for the Red A rm y . to editors: . “MANDATORY The UE is striking there for a ployed to do so. Therefore? Therefore Roosevelt isolation of the USSR. Simultaneously with assuming K ILL .” The dispatch, the A.P. union contract and to force the prevents any debate! Among the Soviet masses, and his new post of Premier, Stalin explained, should not be print­ company to reinstate two members within the ranks of the bureauc­ delivered his first public speech This, then, is the “ war for democracy,” entered into without the fired for union activity. ed, because Secretary of State racy itself, there is growing in years—a forty minutes’ ad­ democratic w ill of the people. ON THE WAR FRONTS The local draft board wrote Hull didn’t want it printed. alarm as Hitler’s war machine dress to the graduates of Soviet Some papers, however, had — by GEORGE STERN , - Hanson: As deceitful as the methods employed to drag us into the war draws an ever tighter ring off m ilitary academies. The sum and “Information has come to this already gone to press, others is the asserted aim of the war, A “war jigainst fascism” is precise­ In the offices of the major “Perilously retarded.” Why steel along the Western front­ substance of this speech is a ignored the demand to kill the board that you are no longer ly what it is not. Roosevelt and Churchill, the capitalist rulers ol press assdeiations and news­ then the absence of any public iers. Hitler is now poised on the boast that the Red Army has story, and so it got out.