Breath of Belial

By prearrangement hot-tongued Communist agitators blew the breath of Belial upon jobless thousands, and transformed them, last week, from idling throngs into rioting mobs in four great U. S. cities all on the same day;

In Los Angeles Carl Sklar, Communist, urged the city's 25,000 unemployed to demonstrate at the City Hall. Several thousand marched to the Plaza, waving the usual "Work or Wages" placards. Sklar mounted his soapbox. Police charged. The mob charged back. Thousands of spectators, embroiled, impeded the police. Tear bombs finally scattered the rioters, blinded 20 policemen as well. Arrests: 27.

In Seattle 300 idle workers under Communist leadership formed to march on City Hall to demand "Work or Wages." Police charged the parade, whanged it with clubs. Arrests: 11.

In Chicago 400 jobless squeezed into Musicians' Hall to hear Communist speakers hotly exhort them to organize 25,000 of the city's unemployed for another City Hall demonstration more successful than that of last month. Police trapped the entire audience, arrested them one by one as they filed out. More than 300 were carted to a station house to prove that they were decent laborers out of work.

In Manhattan several hundred Young Communist Leaguers assembled at the Battery to greet a comrade to be released from the Army Disciplinary Barracks on Governor's Island. The comrade did not appear on schedule. The Y. C. L. paraded up to Wall Street, defied police before the House of Morgan. Infantile rioting followed, amid the high piping shrieks of schoolboys, two of whom were arrested.

Such a fizzle was that demonstration that older Communists next day assembled 200 jobless for a march to New York's City Hall. Forewarned, the police, also 200 strong, were ready. One Red leader dashed up City Hall steps, waved his typewritten demands, asked for Mayor Walker. A detective took him by the slack of the pants, tossed him back to the street. Quickly the mob was cut up by mounted officers, dispersed in ten brisk minutes with clubs, fists, feet. Arrested: 3.

Conspicuous in all four of last week's radical riots, small but symptomatic of the spread of unemployment, were handbills distributed by the Communist Trade Union Unity League, headed by William Zebulon Foster, No. i Communist in the U. S. These called for a nation-wide demonstration of the organization March 6. The typically Chicago-born newsstory to the effect that Communists planned a "world outburst" on that date was patently absurd. Only for ignorant yokels did Mr. Foster need to deny that the Third International had cabled, via Berlin, $1,250,000 to finance demonstrations. There are less than 35,000 full-time Communists among the 120,000,000 people of the U. S. The money Russia sends to the U. S. goes to Big Business.

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