Housing was, is, and will continue to be a central fight of our class. Here Richard B. Moore, running as Communist candidate for Congress from Harlem, describes the conditions in his community , the failures to address them, and offers a Communist program to solve the crisis.

‘Housing a Vital Problem for Negro Workers’ by Richard B. Moore from the Daily Worker. Vol. 5 No. 220. September 17, 1928.

(Candidate for Congress, 21st Congressional District, Workers (Communist) Party.

One of the most vital problems which the Negro masses face is the problem of housing. How very vital, in fact, how actually menacing this problem now is will be realized when it is known that the record of the death rate in cities shows that Negro children are dying from two to eight times faster than the children of other races. This frightful mortality, this slaughter of the innocents, is due directly to the terrible housing conditions imposed upon the Negro masses under the present oppressive capitalist system which is based upon rent, interest and profit.

Rent profiteering, overcrowding, unsanitary and beastly conditions are at their worst in the segregated districts where Negroes are compelled to live. Unable to move out of these miserable ghettos, the Negro masses are forced to pay the most exorbitant and outrageous rents for houses in every state of dilapidation and lack of sanitation. They are the prey of the greedy landlords and grasping capitalists who literally suck the life-blood out of them.

Negroes Jim Crowed.

Exploited at the point of production where they are paid the lowest wages for the most taxing and menial labor, Negro workers are set upon at the point of consumption by rent hogs and landlord sharks who take advantage of their segregated condition to gouge and bleed them to death. Terrible indeed is the plight of these workers caught in the meshes of this vicious and lethal system of profit-making and rent-gouging. Impoverishment, degradation, disease, and death–this is the terrible toll which Negro workers are forced to pay under this vicious system which yields ill-gotten gain and blood money to a few capitalist parasites.

Negro Landlords Just as Oppressive.

It is a fact worthy of special note and full of great significance that Negro landlords and real estate agents are ready participants in and active supporters of this vicious system which pauperizes, degrades, and crushes the masses of the Negro race. It is an undeniable and weighty fact that Negro landlords and agents are no more considerate of the purse, safety, health, and lives of Negro tenants than any other landlords.

Indeed, it is to be observed that Negro real estate agents have been a very active class in increasing rent. They are exceedingly active and skillful in the business of persuading landlords to put in Negro tenants at doubled rentals. What does it matter to them what these tenants do, or how they live in order to pay these oppressive rents? What does it matter to these Negro agents and landlords whether black babies live or die? Only one thing matters with them as with all land- lords and capitalists of whatever race, and that is profit.

Profit For Landlords-Slums For Workers.

The higher the rent, the greater the commission, the larger the gain. And again, the less coal burned, the fewer repairs made, the greater the profit. So rents are raised, steam heat and hot water are hardly to be obtained, and repairs and sanitation are neglected by black as well as by white landlords and agents. With results for the masses of these workers that are terrible to contemplate. Destitution, degeneration, disease, and death, these are the tragic results. When measures are introduced for the protection of tenants or for the improvement of housing conditions, such as the extension of the Emergency Rent Laws, and the Dwellings Law Bill which were brought before the New York legislature this year, it is seen that black and white land- lords unite in the fight to defeat them. They line up together on the basis of their class interests as capitalists to kill laws which would help to abolish fire-traps and disease-breeding slums, laws which would improve in some slight measure the standards of safety and health in the homes of the masses. They ought as one to wipe from the statute books any laws which afford tenants and workers the slightest legal basis for a fight against “unjust, unreasonable and oppressive rents.” The Negro landlords and agents, like the others, protect their class interests, their profits, they fight against the interests of the oppressed Negro masses who are being crushed into the dust.

Workers Fight the Slum System.

It is the workers’ and tenants’ organizations that are found fighting for the protection of the workers, black and white.

The American Negro Labor Congress sent telegrams to the governor and legislature of New York State, demanding the passage of these laws. The Harlem Tenants League sent resolutions and delegates along with the representatives of other tenants’ leagues and labor bodies to fight for the protection and the welfare and lives of the masses of the people.

Lessons.

The lesson of this situation is plain and pointed. It is clear before our eyes. The fight to reduce higher rents and to clean up the vile conditions which menace the health and survival of the Negro workers will have to be waged against the bitter opposition of both black and white landlords who fatten upon these vicious and murderous conditions. The Negro tenants and workers of other races, will have to carry on this necessary struggle for the salvation of the black and white workers.

The Only Solution-Communism.

They must build strong tenants’ leagues and powerful labor unions as their essential and effective instruments for this vital struggle. They must organize politically to defeat the parties of the capitalists and the landlords, the republican. and democratic parties. They must. defeat likewise the socialist party, the treacherous party of the small business men and yellow liberals who have forsaken the class struggle and who fail to fight for the interests of the workers. They must build and support the Party of the class struggle, the Party of the workers, farmers, and tenants which fights militantly against the system of rent-profiteering and capitalist exploitation-the Workers (Communist) Party.

Under the banner of this militant proletarian party the black and white tenants and workers must fight for the abolition of the capitalist system of rent, interest and profit which is responsible for their oppression and degradation. They must fight for the establishment of a workers’ government under which the means of life-land, houses, factories, mills, mines, etc.-will be owned and controlled by all the workers under the system of Communism, which alone can solve the problem of housing, of labor, etc., and guarantee a decent life for all the masses.

In the present election campaign the duty of the oppressed Negro and white workers and tenants is clear. It is to support whole-heartedly the only party which fights for a program of housing and labor in the interests of the masses, the Workers (Communist) Party.

The program of the Workers (Communist) Party on housing demands:

1. Abolition of all laws which result in segregation of Negroes. Abolition of all Jim Crow laws. The law shall forbid all discrimination against Negroes in selling or renting houses.

2. Municipal fixing of low rents for workers. Rent for wage earners should not amount to more than 10 per cent of their wages.

3. Municipally built houses should be rented to the workers without profit.

4. Immediate enactment of state laws providing for abolition of the right of eviction by landlords against wage earner tenants.

5. Compulsory repair by the land- lords of all working class homes in bad condition.

6. Immediate establishment by municipalities of homes to shelter the unemployed.

7. Municipal aid to workers building cooperatives.

(Editor’s note): This article by the candidate of our Party for congress in the 21st congressional district exposes the terrible housing conditions existing in the Jim Crow quarters where Negro workers are forced to live by the vicious racial caste system which capitalist society maintains. Similar conditions are to be found in all working class districts.

In “prosperous” America the workers, black and white, are forced to live in slums and hovels, but in Soviet Russia, where the workers rule, the best houses are occupied by workers and “the building of homes for workers is an essential part of the whole constructive program of the Soviet government which spends millions yearly to erect houses for wage earners.” The oppressive nature of the capitalist government of America is clearly to be seen in the callous dis- regard of the lives of the masses of the people by the capitalist politicians who killed the Dwellings Law Bill, and other such measures. The fight against this capitalist exploitation and degradation of the workers is and must be carried on against the bitter opposition of both republican and democratic parties. This was brought into bold view in the struggle over the Dwellings Law Bill at all the hearings at Albany. One of the most militant fighters for the protection of the tenants and workers in that struggle was the candidate of our Party, Richard B. Moore who as president of the Harlem Tenants’ League, appeared quote in part from one of his speeches exposing before the legislature the oppressive housing conditions.

“If the legislature were conversant with the terrible housing conditions now existing, and if it were moved by considerations for the health and welfare of the people, it would pass this bill forthwith. dreadful conditions among masses will be realized from the pathetic fact that we have mothers appearing in court with children whose fingers and cheeks have been eaten by rats because rapacious landlords refuse to make repairs. The issue which this legislature is now called upon to decide, the issue now squarely before it, is whether the richest state of, the richest country in the world cannot find enough resources, cannot provide a housing code which will provide sufficient light and air and which will compel standards for the protection of the health and lives of its citizens.

“The landlords have raised the cry of confiscation. It must be answered that millions of dollars of slave property were confiscated in order to abolish chattel slavery. But the issue is not now confiscation. We have not yet come to that again. There is not a single confiscatory provision in this Dwellings Law Bill which requires only the barest minimum standards for health and safety. As a matter of fact, this bill does not begin to require what is really necessary for the protection of the masses. Against this false cry of confiscation, we raise the true cry of murder, for the lethal conditions under which the masses of people are now compelled to live amount to murder. To the gentleman who quoted from the decalogue, “Thou shalt not steal,” we reply, that there is another commandment which is still more binding, “Thou shalt not kill.”

“I ask this legislature not to be overawed by this display of the landlords who have packed this hearing. The millions of the people demand the passage of this law. They are the fewer here for the reason that even now at this hour they are toiling and sweating and grinding to produce the profits and rents which these oppressors squeeze out of them. But these workers watching to see whether this legislature will sacrifice the health and lives of its citizens to the greed of oppressive profiteers. They will judge and act accordingly.”

The capitalist politicians of both the republican and democratic parties killed this bill. The workers and tenants should learn from this that they must support the party of their own class which alone can be depended upon to fight for their vital interests. This party is the Workers (Communist) Party. Vote Communist! Join the Workers (Communist) Party!

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1928/1928-ny/v05-n220-NY-sep-17-1928-DW-LOC.pdf