UNIONISTS LAUNCH FIGHT TO FREE LEADER Longshoremen demand probe HARRY BRIDGES Trial by frenzy A full and complete Congressional investigation of the U.S. government of frameup against Bridges “SAN FRANCISCO agenties responsible for the frame-up of Harry Bridges, J. R. Robertson and Henry Schmidt is being demanded by the CIO Iniernationa! _Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s U nion. Bridges, accused of “‘lying to conceal that he was a Communist’, was sentenced Monday to five years imprisonment for “‘perjury and conspiracy’’ after an 81-day trial which workers are terming “‘an American kangaroo court.”” Revokation of Australian-born Bridges’ American citizenship is being sought by the U.S. justice department. “We learned from this trial that labor cannot get any kind of a break in the courts today,” Bridges told members of ILWU local 18, and urged the unionists who cheered him to “wake up and fight back.” “Labor is judged guilty per se in this hysteria,” continued Bridges. “But the battle is by no means lost. The union. will carry the fight to the people. Every battle we have ever gone into in the beginning has looked tough and hopless, but in the. end we have won.” A caucus of 32 ILWU, longshore, ship clerks and walking boss locals unanimously pledged full and un- qualified financial and moral sup- port to Bridges and other interna- tional officers, denounced the trial as a “farmeup” and demanded a Congressional probe of the govern- ment agencies responsible. > “We maintain that the verdict, based upon the testimony of paid informers and self-admitted perjur- ers, is a gross miscarriage of jus- tice,” said a statement adopted by the caucus. . “We further believe that the jury did not vote truly on the basis of testimony presented, but was in- fluenced by the wave of hysteria that is sweeping the country and was afraid to vote against a gov- ernment case. Soviet audiences identify theatre with own lives The theater in the Soviet Union is one of the outstanding expressions of ‘the new cultural standards applied under socialism. Ralph Parker, in this tenth articles of his series on the life of a typical Moscow family, describes the role of the new theater in the:r life. London Daily Worker. By RALPH PARKER Parker is the Moscow correspondent of The MOSCOW The Central Theater office has a booth just inside the gates of the factory where Vladimir Kuznetsov and his wife, Natasha, work. Here, wihout any extra booking fee, the workers can get tickets for most of Moscow’s 17 regular theaters, the three opera heuses-—which also. show ballet—the operetta and variety’ theaters. f Or where national companies play, Tickets are allocated fairly and plays varies, everyone stands & chance of getting in. A typical audience is drawn from every Sec tion of Soviet life. The theaters, too, are fairly well spread all over the city. One of the newest and best Moscow thea- ters, opened last year, is in the heart of a factory area. All Seviet theaters have per- Mament companies with their own regular producers and de Signers, Some run their own dra- Matic schools and experimental Studios. Some work in closely with play- Wrights and engage clebrated com- Posers to provide the incidental Tausic. This has the result of giv- ing each theater its style, which in time becomes traditional. You can often see the same Play in several theaters but with Very wide divergencies in produc- tion. This is partly due to the care taken in rehearsals which Some times last more than Six months, There is no star system in the Soviet theater. Of course, not all Members of the companies are capable of playing parts, but you often find ‘very famous actors in Minor roles, Nowadays most of the plays Performed are by Soviet authors, although old favorites, Russian and foreign, are not neglected. Many persons’ picture of the Past has been formed by the pen- etrating social comedies of Alex- ander Ostrovsky, by Chekhov's Portraits of the flaccid, aimless People ‘of his time, or by the Slimpses of provincial life Pro Vided by Gogol. d producers are no less pain- Staking in displaying the social €nvironment when they present Such plays as adaptions of Dick- \€ns’ Dombey and Son or Pickwick , novels by Balzac, or those This also applies to such special t heaters as those that put on puppet shows, plays for children, such as the Jew:sh and Gypsy theaters. over all parts of the city. And though the populanty of theaters Spanish and Italian comedies where the aristocratic world is usually invaded by some sturdy rebel from the ranks of the peo- ple. We need to take into account the powerful influence of the heater on the average Russian y we are to understand the point of the Communist ideological cam- paign associated with the name of A. A. Zhdanov. When the Kuznetsovs g0 to the theater, it provides them with something to remember and talk about for a long time. Not be- cause they respect the theater, on it oneal but ‘for something per- haps best described as enlighten- ment. They go there not to escape from life, but to meet it. The first Soviet theater, the Petrograd Grand Theater, drew its public from the revolutionary working class who came to have motions stirred by Schiller the'T shakespeare straight from un- heated factories or trenches on the city outskirts. too, the majority of are working nd women consciously en- Nag in purposeful struggle. They are tremendously interest- ed in their own times. Theirs is wo “unthinking Obedience.” — They live in @ rational society where aims and purposes are par- 1 to see. if ine | es respond warmly to lays that deal with contempor- : roblems that touch them all. Be J found the Kuznetsovs indignant about @ play ae read in a periodical. It was a ey careerist in a managerial pos Sait was only exposed by a coin- cidence. ° thing just couldn’t hap- “a ch a ee Viadimir expostulated, as he not merely for enter-. referred to some of the play’s incidents, pointing out that the author had entirely ignored the role of the trade union branch committee and of other safeguards against an ambitious individual getting away with it. In a provincial town on _ the Volga I saw an audience of work- ers enthralled by a play about an over-ambitious factory manager. The Communist party’s ideolog- ical decrees have had the result of making writers study contemp-. orary Soviet man so that they can present him “in the round.” This doesn’t mean their plays are flat reflections of everyday working life, or that their char- acters are mere ciphers, like those in the German expressionist plays of 25 years ago. Socialist realism is not natural- ism. It insists on a most rever- ent respect for the separate iden- tity of the individual, never pre- senting him as a mere type or symbol. All these plays on contempor- ary theses approach big vital subjects through quite homely intimate plots, with characters that express feelings and ideas a working class audience recog- nizes as valid, though not all are able to express them with the same verbal power as the play- wright. : When the play succeeds—and not all do—its characters join those whom the Kuznetsovs have made their friends and compan- Sons. : I often find them referring to them almost as if they were real people whose behavior in circum- stances they are familiar with sometimes serves as an example to them. And when that happens an un- breakable bond between life and art has been forged. “We recognize that this was hot a trial of individuals but an attack against our union and the progres- sive labor movement with the in- tent to weaken and if possible de- stroy us.” A plain-speaking editoria] in the Daily People’s World voices the thoughts of millions of honest Americans: “The newspapers say that Harry Bridges was convicted of perjury. But Bridges’ real crime is that he is an honest man and not a liar. “If Bridges had sold out.to the shipowners, if he had lied to the longshoremen and warehousemen in his union and told them that Harry Truman was a friend of labor and that the Marshall plan was a great charitable institution, he would never have been brought to trial for the fourth time. “The newspapers say that Har- ry Bridges was found guilty after a fair trial. But Bridges was not tried in a court of law. No court or jury, passing on the evidence, would have convicted on the testi- mony of a Mervyn Rathbone whose testimony was bought with Judas money, or a Lawrence Ross who himself admitted perjury on the witness stand. “Harry Bridges was tried in the panelled board rooms of the Wall Street corporations. He was tried in the spacious offices of the Attor- ney General of the U.S. He was tried in the headlines. He was tried in the screeching fury of the cold war hysteria. “Bridges was tried by edict and he was tried by fear in a time when courts of law have become convic- tion mills and jurors do not dare to say ‘innocent’ of a progressive for fear that they, too, will be held guilty of the crimes of honesty and courage. : “Harry Bridges will be freed and he will be vindicated but not pri- marily by lawers in a court of law. He will be vindicated—in the higher court of public opinion. ‘It is here that the fight must be waged, the fear combatted, the hys- teria dissipated, the frameup smash- ed. ‘ “In a thousand union meetings, in CIO halls and AFL halls, too, in factories and shops and union halls, in public squares and in the neighborhoods—here the fight for Harry Bridges must be waged. “Here the fight must be waged if the Bridges frameup is not to be duplicated in every city in our country, if other union leaders of every variety and every poli- tical view are not to be jailed, if the labor movement is not to be utterly crushed, if the iron heel of fascism is not to be stamped indelibly across the map of our country. “Here it must be waged if the courts of our country are to find out that the stock market gamblers. the war profiteers, the arrogant generals in the Pentagon, the news- paper publishers are not America. “Here it must be waged if the judges are to discover that there are millions in our land who will fight the frameup against Harry Bridges. ‘ “This is our task. This is our obligation. This we must do not only to defend a militant trade union leader but in defense of our own liberties and our own unions and working conditions. “And if we are faithful to our trust as workers, as progressives, as trade unionists, Harry Bridges will be around for a long time on the vicket lines and in ‘the union halls battling for the welfare of American labor.” People’s China has ample grain stocks PEKING The Chinese People’s Republic has in stock 414 millien tong of grain, enough to supply seven cities the size of Shanghai for a whole year, the Kwangming Daily, organ of the China Democratic League, reported here. Pointing out the grain is clear surplus after supplying the army and mainiaing market supplies, the paper said the grain is stored _ along railway lines “and can be used to supply other areas at any time.” “Reports from various places show that the planned five million tons increase in foodstuffs will be exceeded by more than 200- 000 tons. Over one million tons of grain will flow south of the Great Wall of Manchuria,” it noted. Chinese rush huge river — contro} plan PEKING More than 30,000 Chinese People’s Army men are working on a great project to harness the water of the Sang Kan River, in the mountains of Chahar, before the end of July. Owing to the lack of rainfall, North China has always been a drought area, but around August water from the mountain gorges washes away huge quantities of fertile lose soil from the mountains, creating millions of acres of desert. The swift running Sang Kan River carries soil into the Yungting River, where it silts up the bed and caus- es serious floods every year. The present project will divert a great deal of soil and water to the desert fields and turn them into fertile lands, and at the same time it will reduce the flow of silt into the Yungting River, of which the — Sang Kan is the main tributary. Under the Kuomintang, ~ prints of projects to end this situa- tion piled up almost as fast as the silt in the Yungting River but no capital wails ever put into any scheme. But as soon ag North Chi- na was liberated last year, an army _ of engineers and experts was at once sent to study the problem. As a result, a great network of lead- ing canals are being cut in the upper reaches of the Sang Kan River to divert much of the silt and water over 160,000 acres of desert which wil] be converted into rich farmland as the loess settles down. This is one of the many water | conservation schemes which are be- | ing rushed ahead this year and which will result in the great im-_ provement in this year’s harvest both from flood prevention and by making enormous areas irrigabl and fertile. : Britons planning — peace petition LONDON > ‘The British Peace Committee is preparing to circulate a peace pe- tition which will be submitted to parliament before the summer re-— cess. The campaign will be open- ed with a mass meeting in London. Featured speakers include the noted scientist, Professor J. D. Bernal, and Professor J. G. Crowther. é Issuing the appeal for peace, the _ committee called on members of all political parties, religious groups and unions to sign the petition, — which demands outlawing of atomic weapons, a cut in arms expenditures and urges a Big Five meeting to end the cold war. PACIFIC TRIBUNE — APRIL 14, 1950 — PAGE : blue- — :