The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 23, 1926, Page 11

the Rich; the Dominators, the Rulers. The beatific smile of the courtesan striken in the midst of her adorning at the moment inj powder has made her the queen of ay, th pinched grimance of the little blond, op poliShing his nails, the despotic impatience ‘lof the fat rake who fumbles in the bosom of the pretty chambermaid, while his bloated wife, with closed eyes and slippery smile, sleeps in the other twin-bed, all say: “I, Iam more .|important here than anyone else. I can do anything I please. Everything is allowed to Me, to Me, to Me. . .” Their secret is visible in the signs of their .|death: voracious egoism. It is natural. Yes, . lit is natural, it is hateful. The climax of this masterpiece. fe I see now only the sovereign obscenity, the universal coarseness, of this wallow of weath. In time common thifigs float up; I remember bits of scandal that were coupled with certain names, gossip that ran in-their lifetimes, whis- pered intrigues: and the stories of parasites, idiers and adventurers, are confirmed or made woe on every side. ages + 4 ’ Dhayve only pried into one single row of dons, the first I happened upon in a fashion- ble hatel. I know that everywhere the same sight awaits my eyes and my Last Judgement —in this whole country, in this.whole world. To spell out, door by door, the disorder of an epoch, a whole lifetime would not be long enough for that! I have had enough of this vision; enough ‘of dirty linen and entrails! The sights I have seen weigh me down, entangle me like com plicity in crime. Aloud I accuse them (but my voice, a strange burst of sound, unheard, re- turns to me): _| “By what right do you dispose of every- ; thing?” They laugh. They continue to laugh as tho they heard me. I shake my fist at them. My one poor arm against the universe! My arm soon falls. My head is bowed, and I bend to- ward the’open eyes of a sliky little dead dog: innocence, simplicity, childishness, almost sacred, in the heart of the corruption of men. I go down to tne street. I sit on the curb- stone, with my head in my hands... . All these ye gs - . didn’t I know them? No. Ti saad knew thems but'T lied. ‘To know is harder Tehoweit!” oT oe I think of life. I suffer in my very blood the calm and silence of the minutes, and the chill of the sun. The need of motion fills me like a hunger—to see myself move, since there is no- one but myself. I must have a mirror, and | am not comforted_until see myself advancing, pale and strange to myself, on the mosaic floor of a vestibule. Two steps away, in a large garden, is plant- ed a mimosa tree. The downy tassels of the flowers, like drops of yellow silk, spatter across the light green leaves and the branches. It the busa living? Has the terrible gas killed the plants too? A problem. it would be too frightful if the flowers and trees too . i With my fingers I caress’ the firm little winged leaves, and the golden flowers which seem warm to me; and they light a ray of hope for me, aes ee OSS ae vVvimMNmeaewrii whierwhiee wer +» Along the sidewalk, as I bend my *|head, the moving axis of an empty world, I ‘ nake a discovery: a bit of carrion, and jn it : crawling worms: living organisms, that move! That little bundle of writhing worms, awakes in me joy, respect, glory! <i - ‘THE avenue. Briskly I turn into a little sid Street that ends in an alley. There are not only the rich. There are the people who work and who make everything go. Their.old quarter of town is.as dead as the other. They, where are they? I see dens, ramshackle garrets, stifling cel- lars; pale thin women asleep over their work: in th damp yards children playing with gar- | A woman with delicate features, young , Jas Sp.ingtime, with dusky hair and muddy hands: she smelis bad: it is not her death, it is e | what remains of her life. 1| In a kennel of rotten stones, a young man ;|whose death was not much hastened by ‘the f |deluge: hollow-cheeked. and hollow-eyed,. his bony lips half-opened to the bad air of the cel- y |lar, he was dying in the filth, ~On the rag -|clenehed in his thin hand, even his blood is y |dirty. Only one ornament in the room—his War Medal. This is a Hero, one twenty-mil- j |lionth of that anonymous crowd: that cement- ed wietory—the vested power of Wealth—with 1 | thele; viecera, ool) via |! r| Among the big tenements, the flats all alike, e | humble lives; all alike, are hidden. Sometimes, : destitution so terrible that it could not be The Attack on Mexico By Manuel Gomez “(YUICK action!” You hever saw anything quicker. The imperial- ist bulls could not have been far away to start with. Mexico’s new oil and land laws make them see red. The smell of oil is in their nostrils. They move ominously forward, horns lowered, ready for the charge. Poor Mexico! Unless you are some torero, you will soon be gored to death.’ The brazen warning of this cartoon from the Chicago Evening Post is re- peated in similar cartoons and in editorials and special articles printed in a host~of different capitalist news- papers all over the United States. The campaign against Mexico is ap- proaching its climax. It. began more than six months ago when Sheffield, the oil trust ambassador, informed President Calles that the claims of American capital would have to be “met in full.” Then followed the first explosive and insulting note from Secretary of State Kellogg, inexplica- ble at the time to many, in which it was declared that the recognition of Mexico was “not final,” that Mexico was “on trial before the civilized world.” Mexico was on trial to see whether or not she would enforce her constitu- tion, which protects the republic against encroachments of foreign cap- italists. The laws recently adopted are a step in that direction. They limit the estates of foreign land- owners in Mexico and provide that no foreign oil, mining»or other cor- poration can operate in Mexico with- out first agreeing to disclaim special privileges and to accept the same treatment as Mexican corporations before the law. American absentee investors, unwilling to give up priv- ileges that enable them to bully the Mexican government by constant threats of diplomatic intervention on their behalf, declare that the. new laws are retroactive. They £55 18%, They merely carry into practice a constitutional provision that was adopted nine years ago and that was in effect when Mexico was recog- nized by President Wilson. That Am- erican imperialism was able to make the Mexican constitution a “scrap of paper” for nine years is an indication VusT GAVE TA LITTLE WAVE, QUICK ACTION : (From the Chicago Evening Post, Jan. 20, 1926. A brazen boast of an American capitalist paper that the American government ‘will attack Mexico with military force wnless Mexico changes her property ; law to suit the American imperialist bandits.) road, to which is to link the entire tock, On several occasions within the American continent to Wall streetlast few years American troops have with bands of steel, fixing the imprint vitorias, has jalready,.../ Some sections of track have already been laid in parts of central and south America. Plans have been developed for the léng-projected U. S. to’Panama highway. For thousands of miles south nearly all the territory is al- ready under American imperialist control, Only Mexico stands in the actually invaded Mexican soil. Peri- of. imperialist control, over vast ter- odically the cry for “armed interyen- m begun. tion” is raised here, now on pretext of © destroying banditry, now with the excuse of revolutionary disturbances. But it is around the headlong and un- concealed struggle for Mexican oil that the tumult has been loudest. The imperialist war against Mexico. is a permanent consideration of Am- erican foreign policy. Wall Street is of the seriousness of the danger that now hangs over Mexico, ~ With increasingly bolder strokes, the lords of Wall Street are carving out a worldwide empire, the primary base of which is in Latin-America. The Rio Grande to Cape Horn rail- spite of Latin-America.” fought against—which I reconstruct in my mind hastily as I unearth it. The terrifying sight of a drunkard, standing with fists on the table, leaning like a crumbling tower, blind drunk. . . the woman who hides her face in her arms, and the little child sit- ting on the floor, bored with his play and gravely watching his father. = : Nothing unexpected in all this. Instead of the romantic episodes that a writer might have strewed along my way if he had imagined my adventure: a consumptive in whom the war bore its fruit, women worn out by the dust, and alcoholic fathers of terrifying height. Monotony, banality! But because of the tor- rent unfurled on the world, this banality seem- ed to me for an instant as it really is! What a tragic fairy-land if we really saw what we see! There is a debasement which I can no long- er avoid seeing. There is the grinding press- ure of the happy on the bottom-most, the proof that their well-being is made of the mis- ery of the others, the proof of the systematic condemnation of vast masses to bestial un- certainty of life, to dirt and ignorance. This crushing of the poor is poor itself, without thought, stupid—a bottomiless pit. I saw awhile ago at the glittering hotel a great titled lady, renowned for her generosity, who smiled in her soft arm-chair, like a statue, .-vand the pious smile of that padded old lady -seems to me now as revolting as this rabble. Because, her bounty is-only a royal caprice, and-the old woman in her armchair is the heavy statue of Charity, built on the flesh of living. sacrifices, There is not only the debasement. There is the imprint, and it is more important. The ‘ation of cheap houses and way. Stubborn and unyeilding, hold-threatening war now. Where Mexican ing firm to its national autonomy inoil is concerned one governmental Mexico has won title of “the rock of can depend betrayals, upon “quick action.” American labor must be prepared to stand by Mexico. A united front Every possible pretext has been of all oppressed elements against the seized upon for blasting thru thisexploiter of ‘the western world! rere eer Se stains of luxury from above filter down and dye the vanquished army below. I find the shame of the rich feebly aped by the slaves. The corruption above is contagious—the serf is drawn to the cabaret as a prisoner to the airhole of his dungeon—. And the iron law of success is contageous, since those above have made it the one law of life. In miserable and in commonplace walks of life, men strug- gle with tooth and nail, to success against the rest. I have seen. sordid and hateful parsi- mony, torn in little bits from the less fortun- ate—as I have seen the child in his tinsel sol- dier-cap playing soldier; or the sickly lad with his nose in the secret instruction of the scouts, leering at the striking workers and dreaming of the day when he can play policeman or sol- dier against them, Even to the bad taste of the rich that filters down in the rubbishy decor- smears them with ugliness, I have seen it. _ I never bothered myself with what wasn’t my business., I don’t know anything about social questions, But here face.to face with it, Ihave _ to admit that the worst crime of the powerful. of the world, is not so much that they swindle the masses for their own advantage, as that | they force the masses to imitate them ignobly; struggle, dunghill, each-for-himself—misery, rottenness and blood. At this moment of my life I feel lifted above myself. [I have come to the reason of things, and it effaces my personality and my personal tragi-comedy. To go back to causes, is a ¢al- vary, but it is the calvary of an honest man. (To be concluded newt week in the New Saturday Magazine Supplement of the Daily Worker—the issue of Saturday, January 30), :