The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 25, 1924, Page 7

_in the child problem. LETTERS FROM MOSCOW By ANNA Pt PORTER A. little incident in child-reclama-| pieces. tin came accidentally to my notice the | Russia —are put into repairing the old build- ings to keep them from falling to Children are swarming in inadequately cared for in other day. The government is mak-|groups, everyone is clamoring to send ing headway slowly but surely in this|proteges into this or that home or respect as in most others, but the|colony which is already crowded. But waifs do not ‘take altogether kindly|at least the children can interest to being reclaimed from the. gutters| these and teach them, show them how and their adventurous life, and being; the Lenhinists work and play, share troublesomely civilized. It is so much;the Communist ideal with them, and easier in summertime to curl up in|give them the desire to be the com- the angle of a wall at night in your|rades of the other children. Above all dirty clothes, and not bother about|show them active workers in the or- baths and hair-brushing. But here the|ganization who have been reclaimed Young Leninists come in. These little from the same wretched life. It folk af an age below that of the|seemed so hopeful, suddenly, getting Young Communists—down in fact to|a glimpse of the practcal work thru the the tots who struggle so valiantly to|children themselves. keep up in the processions, all under- And the older ones. The new psy- stand, to the youngest, what their|chology is working there even among task is in building the new Russia.}the youth of the dispossessed. How- “Several hundred ‘thousand of these|ever much they dislike adapting them- there are thruout the country. “Be|selves to. the new life, they are learn- prepared,” is their salute, and quick{ing to understand sympathetically. as a flash from the tiniest come@ the| Recently I took breakfast at a small response with hand high, “Always pre-|cafe near by—the kind of cafe which pared!” hangs a sign reading, “Do not give The following incident shows one|!ees—Giver and taker are master and direction in which they are working — servant, and since October this must “always prepared” to handle it effici-|0t be,” and “October” ently. I had been having a sort of dinner-lunch—in the Russian fashion anywhere from three to six—in the co-operative restaurant across the way, under the Second House of the Soviets,—where officials of one sort or another are housed:in the old Hotel Metropole,—with a Russian speaking comrade who is especially interested It was Sunday and as we finished, we saw great com- panies of the Young Leninists come marching from the Red Square,—so many that I think it must have been their “Day.” , Past and past they tramped with bands and _ banners, dressed in their varied gymnasium suits and uniforms, all united by the red neckerchief, until finally one com- pany stopped just in front of our en- trance, and went through their drills, interpretive posturing it might be called, in perfect accord with the - music, while a half dozen little beggar boys who had been hanging about the restaurant dodging the manager, join- ed the crowd who stood to watch the marchers. ‘This last company then swung about and marched into the building to a clubroom or hall they have, and the crowd dwindled away, leaving us alohe with the beggar boys. My com- panion tried to interview them. They were reluctant of course, but they gained courage and gathered around as he craftily shifted. his attention to a young Pole who stopped and be- came interested. He had run away from a reactionary family to Russia. he said, and joined the Communist Party. Then gradually the boys al- lowed themselves to be drawn in, but before Ave had made any headway, two Young Leninists, in their red hand- kerchief ties, a bright-faced stocky girl of perhaps fourteen, and a slender boy of the same age, came out from the hall, swooped down without warn- ing upon the boys and carried them off by storm, herding them alone with loving arms about the ragged should- ers and dusty towsled heads. All but one! The toughest of the lot refused to surrender—a bull-doggy little boy ig a coat of ragged gunny- sacking. We talked to him—to his back—as he tried to escape us by burrowing in a stone wall with his hand. Yes, he would like to go into a home and be fed—but he was grumpy and skeptical in the acknowl- edgement. Again we were supplanted by the two little Leninists of his own age, generalled by the bright-faced, competent girl, and after a very short comradely struggle, they carried him off in triumph—with a sulky reluc- tance on his part it is true—neverthe- less they had him. It took childhood But what can they do with them? I asked. Is there any hope of helping them at once? Not all of them, was/serenades by Vi the reply. The children’s homes are full, housing is hopelessly inadequate, all the energy at present—and funds! bert’s serenades are in conventional means of course, Red October. Some misunder- standing caused the proprietor to ask @ young man in a good-looking. over- coat and soft hat—which marked his bourgeois caste!—to explain to me in French. When he found I spoke Eng- lish, in which he was equally at home, he said, “Oh, I am so glad to meet English-speaking people. There are too many Russians here!” I couldn’t help laughing at the unreasonableness of it. He explained in a discouraged way that he was furnishing the cafe with cakes his mother had made, and he got out a sifter and sifted sugar carefully over each layer as they were taken from the boxes. I waited for him and we walked down the street together. His father had been a rich merchant, and tho he was too young to understand much when the Revolu- tion came, he made with his family, “great opposition.” “I am not afraid to tell you,” he sad. “They know me and I am doing my work and making no trouble and they let me aione.” He is doing “dirty work” for the army— being a strong young fellow and not eligible during this probation, to the ranks—and is “learning.” “There are only hundreds of us,” he said, “and there are millions of workers benefit- ted by the change, but oh, if only the rest of Europe would hurry up, and help us, and so get things along.” He understands the sincerty of Rus- sa’s “war on war,” compared with the pretence of other nations. ‘We have our army, but Russia will never fight another imperialistic war.” I said I supposed he had no chancé in the university and he replied, ‘No, for there is not room for all, and that is dreadful for me, but then before, the. workers never had a chance.” This is what he is “learnng,” poor young fellow, learning with weariness and resignation, but I think with un- derstanding and sympathy, for he is young and he too has a part in Rus- sia's future, as big and interesting a part as he shall prove himself fit to play. But the old are not so easily reconciled. They are indignant and critcal and can only see that their pleasant and comfortable life has been upset, and that there is no immediate prospect of anything better than the present confusion of their: lives. If, as the youth said, Europe would only hurry up! Old Compositions Jazzed up to Suit the Popular Taste By ALFRED V. FRANKENSTEIN. Paul Whitman, the emperor of jazz, gave a concert of jazz music at the Studebaker theater last Sunday. He opened his program with a composi- tion played by the small five-piece dance orchestra of six years ago, showing what a foolish, insipid effect the quintet of blaring noise makes. Then came Whitman’s orchestra of today. Some thirty instrumentalists played over forty instruments. He showed how well-known standard com- positions can be turned into comedy numbers thru burlesquing them, “The Carniyal of Venice,” turned into “So This Is Venice” and into good dance pieces by speeding up the rhythm.. There were a good many straight dance numbers, and a few composi- tions written expressly for Whitman. The technique of the orchestra is astounding. One of the performers, Ross Gorman, seems to play all reed instruments. Clarinets, saxophones, oboes, English horns and a few out- landish instruments such as the oc- tavin, the all but obsolete bass oboe, ~ a queer machine that looks like a cross between a saxophone and a sarrusophone, and sounds like a cow with a cald, have no terrors for him. He gets around them all, and seems to play them all at once. The ef- fects in the brass instruments prv- duced by various freak mutes range all the way from bull frog grunts to a finely spun out, silky hace like tone. In short, the conclusion to draw from Whitman's concert is that while the rendition of jazz music is one of the finest of fine arts, the composition of it is a trade. After two hours of the popular songs of commerce, one has the sensation of being bathed in sugar up to the neck, There is no originality of invention in them, and the form is absolute and unvariable, Whitman's orchestra is as perfect an instrument as Frederick Stock’s, but where Stock has an unlimited field of music to choose from, Whiteman has only a lot of plagiarism and bur- lesques of well-known music. The form of a popular song is as mathe- matically worked out as that of a loco- motive, and variation in the nember of bars allotted to any section of a jazz song is unheard of. There exist, however, three pieces of music pointing a way out. White- man played eho of them, a suite of “Rhapsody in Mase j chestra by George Gershwin. Her- oo either Mi i Nc lh cig egg er PHILADELPHIA TURNS OUT TO MOVIE TO AID STRIKE FUND PHILADELPHIA, Pa.—(I. W. A. Service). Lulu ‘Temple was jammed for two shows of “The Beauty and the Bolshevik” and “Russia in Over- alls.” Both pictures came in for their share of praise, and the feat- ure so interested the big crowd that its five reels ended ail too soon. The local committee is so delighted with its success that it expects to put on the films again for a three or four day run in co-operation with other friendly labor organizations. A feature of the showing was a collection of $345.19 for the benefit of the Paterson Silk strikers. The proceeds of the show will be about a thousand dollars. Alex Bail, the able secretary of the Philadelphia committee for In- ternational Workers’ Aid, writes: “A very successful showing of the new films, which is not surprising considering their character. We are very glad to hear of the plans to ‘expand this work to the extent of producing and distributing Ameri- can and German labor films. The field is fruitedful and as yet un- touched. During a talk with the sec- retary of the Pennsylvania state board of censors a couple of weeks ago, he said ‘The silver screen can be made a powerful weapon for re- volution.’ Be that as it may, we know that it is already a valuable instrument for working class educa- tion. All efforts to extend the work are greeted with enthusiasm in this burg and we will do all we can to help along this important work.” Watch The DAILY WORKER for information regarding the showing of this film in Pittsburgh and other Pennsylvania cities. form, with a lively melody that sounds ood no matter how played. But the arrangement for saxophones, gagged trumpets and trombones and’ percus- sion instruments handled as only a jazz drummer can handle them, makes the suite a real jazz work. Gershwin has gone a good deal fur- ther. There are real jazz tunes in his rhapsody and thé symphonic handling of them, combined with a sweeping, wild and excessively difficult piano part, knocks the highbrows off their feet. This is the first really serious and worthwhile handling of popular rhythms. The third work mentioned above is John Alden Carpenter’s “Krazy Kat.” Carpenter has written a ballet around the familiar cartoon. Herriman, the cartoonist, designed the scenery and Seonmiones Menieareiaetee ae Adolph Bolm, who used to be the bal- let master of the Chicago opera, has produced the ballet a number of times. In other words, jazz must free it- self from the quantity production of dance tunes and come out into worth- while forms. The means by which such music can be played is here. And one “Rhapsody in Blue” is” worth a thousand “Mother, Dixie and You” songs. Res. 1632 S. Trumbull Ave. Phone Rockwell 5050 MORDECAI SHULMAN ATTORNEY-AT-LAW 701 Association Building 19 S. La Salle Street CHICAGO Dearborn 8657 Central 4945-4947 - JAY STETLER’S RESTAURANT Established 1901 1053 W. Madison St. - Tel. Monroe 2241 Chicago Furnishings LADIES’ MEN’S INFANTS’ Tra@e Where Your Money Buys the Most. AO Martin’s - 651 West North Avenue East of Halsted St. MITCHALL’S INTERNATIONAL ORCHES (RA Union Music Furnished For All Occassions Write for appointments te M. MITCHALL, (Teacher of Saxophone) 1640 W. Congress St. Chicago, Ill. Daa Ra. ECT RE NR EERE ERE LEARN ESPERANTO The International Language ¢. The following by Song are received Esperanto ~~ All, grammar and Eeperante and its by Prof. Collin SCAND. ESPERANTO INSTITUTE ROCKFORD, ILL. Critics, son. “PITTSBURGH, PA. DR. RASNICK DENTIST € a oe Van om Service ne. Sige Near . baat i,