The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 22, 1924, Page 12

oe This Is This is “The Story of John Brown,” by Michael Gold: Pub- lished by the DAILY WORKER thru arrangement with Haldeman- Julius Company, of Girard, Kans. Copyrighted, 1924, by Haldeman- Julius Company. * * a By MICHAEL GOLD, How John Brown Became an Abolitionist, [* the pagan ages and in the more distant days of savagery, men were individuals. They had no social imagination. -They enn’ stand by and see another man writhe in tortures, and laugh at him. Civilization has been devel- oping social imagination; it has been breeding more and more the type of human being who feels the suffering and injustice of an- other as his own. John Brown was perhaps born with this strain in him. In 1857, when he had already plunged into his life work, and was in the thick of bloody fights in Kansas, he sat down to write a most charming and tender letter to a little boy who was the son of one of his friends in the east. . Those who think of fighters like John Brown as possessed by only a lust for battle, ought to read this let- ter. It reveals how soft was his heart under the grim mask of the Kansas warrior. The letter is autobiographical. It tells how John Brown first be- came acquainted with the horrors of slavery, and what effect it had on his imaginaticn. The letter is so touching, and so remarkable for the picture it gives of John Browrss early years, also for the picture of the man’s mature character as reveal- ed by his own words, that I am tempted to give it in full. I shall give only parts of it, however, Letter to Master H. L. Stearns. “My dear Young Friend:—I had not forgotten my promise to write you; but my constant care and anxiety have. obliged me to put it off a long time. I do not flatter myself I can write any- thing that will very much inter- est you; but have concluded to send you a short story of a cer- tain boy of my acquaintance; and the Story of John Brown for convenience and shortness of name, I will call him John. “This story will be mainly a narration of follies and errors, . which I hope you may avoid; but there is one thing connected with it, which will be calculated to en- courage any young: person ‘to per- severing effort, and that is the degree of success in accomplish- ing his objects which to a great extent marked the course of this boy thruout my entire acquajnt- ance with him; notwithstanding his moderate capacity, and_ still more moderate acquirements. “John was born May 9, 1800, at Torrington, Connecticut; of poor and hard-working parents; a descendant on the side of his fath- er of one of the ¢ompany of the Mayflower who landed. at Plv- . mouth, 1620. His mother’s father came at an early period to New England from Amsterdam, in Hol- land. Both his father’s and his mother’s father served in the war of the revolution ; his father’s father died in a barn at New York while in the service, in 1776, - “T cannot tell you of anything in the first fonr years of John’s life worth mentioning save at an early age he was temnted by three large brass pins heloneing to a girl who lived in the family; and stole thm. In this he was de- tected by his mother: and after having a full day to think of the wrong, received from her a thoro whipning. © “When he was five years old his father moved to Onto, then a wilderness filled with wild beasts and Indians. During the long journey which was performed in part or mostly with an ox-team, he was called on by. turns to assist a boy five years older, and learn- ed to think he could accomplish smart things in driving the cows and riding the horses.- Sometimes he met with rattlesnakes which were very large, and which some “of the company generally manag- ed to kill, “After getting to Ohio he was for some time rather afraid of the Indians, and of their rifles; but this soon wore off, and he used to hang about then: quite as much as { was consistent with good manners, and learned a trifle of their talk. His father at this time learned to dress deer skin, and John, who was perhaps tather observing, ever after remembered the entire process of deer skin dressing, so that he could at any time dress his own -leather, such as_ squirrel, raccoon, eat, wolf or dog skins; and also he learned to make whip lashes, which brought him in some change at various times, and was useful in many ways. “At six years old John began _to be quite a rambler in the new wild country, finding birds and squirrels, and sometimes a wild turkey’s nest. Once a poor Indian boy gave him a yellow marble, the first he had ever seen. This he thought a good deal of, and he kept it a good while; but at last he lost it one day. It took years to heal the wound, and I think he cried at times about it. About five months after this he caught a young squirrel, tearing off its tail in doing it: and getting se- verely bitten at the same time himself. He. however, held on to the little bob-tailed squirrel and finally got him perfectly tamed, -sa that he almost idolized his pet. This, too, he lost, by its wander- ing away; and for a year or two John was in mourning; and look- ing at all the squirrels he could see to try and discover Bobtail, if posible. He had also at one time becom2 the owner of a little ewe lamb which did finely until it was about two-thirds grown, when it sickened and died. This brought. another protracted mourning season; not that he felt the pecuniary loss so heavily, for that was never his disposition; but so strong and earnest were his ‘attachments, It was a school of adversity for John; you may laugh at this, hut they were sore trials to him. . “John wes never quarrelsome; but excessively fond of the rough- est and hardest kind of play; and could never get enough of it. He would alwses choose to stay at home and work hard, rather than go to school To be sent off alone thru the wilderness to very consid- erable distances was particularly his delight; and in this he was often indulged; so that by the time he was twelve years old he was sent off more than a hundred miles with companies of cattle; and he would have thought his character much injured had he been obliged to be helped in such ‘es a job. This was a boyisn feeling, but characteristic, nevertheless, “ “When the war broke out with England in 1812 his father soon commenced furnishing the troops with beef cattle, the collection and driving of which afforded John some opportunity for the chase, on foot, of: wild steers and other cattle thru the woods. During this war he had some chance to form his own boyish judgment of men and measures; and the effect of what he saw was to so far disgust him with military affairs that he would neither train nor drill, bat got off by paying fines; and got along like a Quaker until his age had finally cleared him of military duty. “During the war with England a circumstance eccurred that in the end made him a most deter- mined Abolitionist and led him to swear eternal war with slavery. John was stopping for a short time with a very gentlemanly landlord, since made a United States marshal. This man, owned a slave boy near John’s age, a boy very. active, intelligent and full of good feeling to whom John was under considerable obligation for numerous little acts of kind- ness, E “The Master made a great pet of John; brought him to table with his finest company~ and friends and called their attention to every little smart thing he said or did, and to the fact of his being more than a hundred miles from home with a company of cattle alone; while the Negro boy (who was fully if not more than his equal) was badly clothed, poorly fed and ‘Jodged in cold weather, and beaten before John’s eyes with iron shovels or any other thing that -eame first to hand. “This brought John to reflect on the wretched, hopeless condition of fatherless and motherless slave children; for such children have neither fathers cr mothers to pro- tect and. provide for them. “He sometimes would raise the question in his mind: Is God, then, their father?” (To Be Continued Monday.) ONLY WORKERS CAN DESTROY CHILD LABOR ‘ise to work in any industry that em- iy VERY soft-hearted charity work- er has written something about child labor, A good many of the so- cialists, who later became howling war patriots, as for instance, John Spargo, have written books showing up the evils of child labor. And what -hawe we as a result today? Everything is being left to the U. §& governmental machinery which: has flunked twice already. All the agitation, all the talk is directed to a couple of hundred graft-besmired congressmen and senators, many of whom are employers of children themselves, Se Instead of carrying the issue to the outraged American working class which, thru its organizations could do some real anti-child labor work, Sammy Gompers and his crew of social workers are blind-folding the eyes of the toiling masses and point- ing to the oil-soaked government as a life-saving depot. 2,500,000 Child Slaves. Why is child labor such a pressing cannot overlook it? For the reason that in a country that boasts of tts high attainments: there are over °2,- 500,000 children between the ages of 5. to 15 who work to create pro- fit for some boss; and some of the children. work as high as_ twelve hours a day. : Child labor in the United States is older than the Declaration of Inde- pendence. Since 1890, when 16 per. cent of all the children between 10 ‘and 15 years of age were employed, there has been a steady rise up to the present day with over 18 per cent of all these children employed. The rise seems to be changing into a flood when we discover that in one year there has been a 38 per cent increase in legalized exploitation of the youth; thet means, that even if all the laws now proposed in con- gress had been passed and put into effect this rise of 38 per cent could not have been stopped. There is an idea that child labor is restricted to the south. While it is true that our blue-blooded southern problem that even capitalist-senators gentlemen employ the largest num- The Color Line and Profiteers (Continued from Page 1) ing law will have on south side ess, Alderman Jackson’s Record. Meet Alderman Jackson, who must knock about the disreputable houses, gambling dens, bootleg joints, and crooked deals which abound in his ward, Alderman Jackson is said ta be worth a lot of money. As one shopkeeper said to me, on Indiana avenue, “The high class, protected dens. of vice, which operate on a large scale, have put small bodt. leggers out of business.” Into this complex i society, the DAILY WORKER launched a investigation. The DAILY the negroes tell us, is the first newspaper to write up the ac- tual facts of the conditions under which the Negro workers are forced to live, and then put the paper into the hands of these workers. Bene- fits in increased circulation undoubt- edly resulted from this investiga- tion. But, of course, our purpose was an educational one. For the first time the masses of Negroes living on the south side have been told that there are other lines that they must draw which are more important to them than the color line. We see the Negro pa- pers referring to members of “Our Group.” And the DAILY WORKER has no quarrel with the Subject Race in demanding recognition and'cago. They ber of kids on their cotton planta- tions, the -ndtth and east. furnish many volumes of records of brutali- ties and exploitation of children. Rhode Island and New Jersey em- ploy thousands of children in truck gardens and mills; in Michigan there are children five, six and seven who \work ten and twelve hours a day in the beet fields. The coal mines of Pennsylvania. and highly cultured Massachusetts -manufacturers find it} very profitable to work the-little tots and deny them. even ‘the most ele- mentary schooling. Hair-Raising R eports. ; In a large number of states the’ law permits this, which is the same as encouraging and sanctioning it. Where there exists some sort of pro- hibitive law, it seldom is carried in- to effect. : Where does the remedy lie? To the organized and unorganized wrath of the working-class is left open the opportunity for emphatic protest. The unions pull jurisdictional strikes now. Why not make it the law of every union in the United States not equality. We want to help the Negroes get the equality. But we have helped the Negro, we believe, to train his ear to get a different and more significant meaning out of the term “Our Group.” Workers vs. Profiteers, “Our Group,” to the writer, and to every worker, whether he white or black, means those who work at a meagre wage, while their enemies—those who control the workers job—wield the economic power ‘which determines how the ‘workers shall live. The whether be white or live on the and Gold Coasts tants of the Federal strevts are the skilled Bice eee Ploys child labor and to boycott prod- ducts produced by child labor. Then the unions can open their doors to hundreds of thousands of these child workers themselves. Certainly where the law encourages those between 12 and 15 to work, these young work- ers*should be taken into the Pviee: tive economic organizations of labor’ —even bag 5 dues, if necessary, The immediate task for every member of the wor! class is to help carry these demands into effect: 1) Trade unions and unorganized workers demand the abolition of all child-workers under 16 years of age. . 2) Better wages in those indus- tries now employing children so that the adult workers can have a decent standard of living. 2 8) Vocational training for work- ers’ children, to be under the guid- ance of the trade unions. 4) Organization of all working youth into the existing trade and in- ‘dustrial unions without distrimina- tion and on the easiest terms, skilled who have nothing in common with the wealthy of all races who profiteer on the workers, and make capital out of the workers’ wants, in order to pile up profit for them- selves, The white and Negro work- . ‘0 belong to the same one of and wealth and con- trol of industry and not of color, The only way for the workers suc- FE RRNA ne aR meme ot >