The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 14, 1926, Page 11

BE a year, on July 4th, our politicians, professional 8 patriots, captaine of industry and a lot of others e are obliged to use the terrifying word “revolution” in 6 @ perfectly respectable connotation — as applied to an event back tm 1776 guaranteed 100 percent pure American, white and Nordic. They touch the word gingerly. They make wry faces. And they hasten to explain that it wasn’t kind,of a revolution. - Not, you know, the kind associated with wild-eyed Russians or bloodthirsty Mexican greasers or opera pouffe ‘A Semth ‘Americans. There were no radicals in those “vdays because, the only. aliens were the Indians. ° Maybe you think of revolution as something lusty, passionate, headlong, with hoodlum Boston tea parties every Thursday afternoon and'‘a lot of frenzied Patrick Henrys and Nathan Hales snapping their fingers at death. Forget it, brother. The sesquicentennial ‘spell- binders know better!’ Flying’ heads and lampposts as , red flags and: surging’ mobs sing the Marseil- ; 4 all night for the foreigners. But it isn’t in the tradition. Ours was not only a decent revolution, it was a legal one, with some of the best people giving their financial and moral support. * = ares ew Os oe vw Calvin Coolidge, president in direct line of descent 1 from Washington made a special trip to Philadelphia on Indepedence Day last to explain it all. He demon- strated the divine origin of the American Revolution. SS a =F ae. Te eS The Money Bag of 1776 and 1926: “Revolution? Non- [ 1 Not in America!” a) whoever wrote that speech got his’ notion of the American Revolution from its alleged Daughters, recently gathered in convention. Anyhow, as described in that document it was a nice respectable affair, some squabbles of course, but withal dignified—a _ per- fectly legal revolutidn, too, with the sanction of the Almighty, who seems to have been the whole business in the final analysis. “In their immediate occasion,” Coolidge admits, the causes of the thing “‘were largely economic.” Some difficulties about taxation and navigation laws, he intimates. There’s no use going too deeply into these unpleasant and purely materialistic matters. The chief thing is to ascertain whether those fellows fol- lowed the rules of political etiquette, otherwise the em- ed farmers of Lexington and Concord might set a example to the embattled miners of Logan County, Virginia. No note, in the first place, as Coolidge does, that volution “was not without the support of many most respectable people in the Colonies, who mtitled to all the consideration that_is given to , education and possessions”, Also that “‘it in no sense a rising of the oppressed and down- en. It brought no scum to the surface, for the m that colonial society had developed no scum.” ng. The members of the Continental Congress | instructions of their Cconstijuaecies, @nd that, aidee avers, Py government in the sforenl an orderly | t place; but more ae a it demonstrates. that the Declaration of Independence was the Tesult of the seasoned and deliberate thought of the dominant portion of the people of the Colonies. Adopted after long discussion, and as the result of the duly authorized expression’ of the prepon- derante of public opinion, it did not partake of dark intrigue or hiddén conspiracy. It was well advised. It had about it nothing of the Jawless it was maintained on a plane which rises above the ordinary conception of rebellion, It was in no sense a radical movement but took on the It was conservative and represented the action of the colonists to maintain their constitutional rights which from time immemorial had been guaranteed to them under the law of the land.” (Emphasis mine, but inevitable.) | Sarma the stamp of law and order wpon the whole and disordered nature of a riotous insurrection... dignity of a -resistance to illegal usurpations. | By EUGENE LYONS, It was this fact of frock-coated dignity and lega- lity, Coolidge instructs his audience, which makes the Declaration the miost important document in the world.” The fact that it was “the political action of a duly authorized and constituted representative public body in its sovereign capacity, supported by ‘the force of general opinion and”—here Coolidge forgets his legality—“and by the armies ‘ot Washington already in the field.” Fumigating the American Revolution No rounbiiouee. or horseplay about the American | Revolution,’ you »nnilerstand;i so: you néedn’t get wrong ideas ito: your head. The rowdy: element so much to the fore in foreign reyolutions was absent. And every bit of it made in America., Listen: “No doubt the speculations which had been going on in England and especially on the, Continent, lent their influence to the genéraf sentiment of the time. Of course, the world is always influenced by all the experience and all the thought of the past. But | when we come toa contemplation. of the immedi- ate conception of the principles of human relation- ship which went.into the: Declaration. of Independ- ence we are not required to extend our search be- yond our own shores.... Whatever else we may Say of it, the Declaration of Independence was. pro- foundly American.” Not only American, but stemming directly from. the Scriptures. “No one can examine this record and es- cape the conclusioy that in the great outline of its prin- ciples the declaration was the result of the religious teahcings of the preceding period.” Coolidge refers to the writings and sermons of Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, John Wise, Thomas Hooker. (No, he over- looked the religious writings of Tom Paine). These clerics apparently proved to Coolidge’s satisfaction that. “the ultimate sanction of law rests on the righteous authority of the Almighty.” Unlike modern revolution- aries, the American fathers “were intent on religious worship.” .... “While scantily provided with other literature, there was a wide acquaintance with the Scriptures.:: Over a period as great as that which meas- ures the existence of our independence they were sub- ject to this discipline not only in their religious life and educational training, but also in their political thought.” The moral s obvious. Back to the Scriptures! ‘The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, over- whelming as it may appear, wil turn to a barren Scepter in our grasp. If we ‘are to’ maintain? the great heritage which they have bequeathed. to us,‘ we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy.” All the Independence Day orators are fidgety about this material prosperity—proud, you know, but self- conscious. Coolidge refers to it condescendingly at one point as “the less important matter of material possessions,” Senator Butler, speaking the same day in New Bedford, also poo-poos this money stuff people make so much fuss about. “Ours is not merely a story of material. progress,” he says, “. ..... More than that, it is a story of spiritual development, of the growth of a nation devoted to human-rights and aspirations.” (Butler’s spiritual achievements are. well known. He employed private detectives to enforce human rights in his textile mills. No doubt he will protest against the arrest of Harry Dana and a few others that very day ,for reading ‘the Declaration of Independence in Lawrence, where much of Butler’s despised material possessions are concentrated.) The outpouring of July 4th hokum in the rest of the land was ‘along the same lines, I judge from press ex- cerpts. Bishop Manning, William Green, Wayne B. Wheeler, and Nicholas Murray Butler were among those who endorsed the American Revolution. This Butler, in London, publicly apologized to Great Britain ‘or the late War for Independence, as all polite Amer- icans should. “The Declaration of Independence,” he declared, “was not the outgiying of a group of casual disturbers of the peace.” No, they were gentlemen all, and authorized spokesmen and really drew their harsh words from AngloSaxon sources, The formula of these gentlemen and their kind is The Battle of Bunker Hill. The well-trained soldier of the King, armed with a powder-puff, is repulsed by the inexperienced New Eng- land lad whose sole weapon of defense consists of an atomizer filled with five and ten cent store perfume! $a a A colonial mountain boy slaps a red-coat firmly upon the wrist! Indignant members of the D. A. R. vehement- ly deny that any such rudeness was practiced by “our boys.” generally something like this: Ours was the first, the last and the only good and respectable revolution. It settled .everything once and for all time, so that, dis content is not only illegal and blasphemous but en tirely unnecessary. The economic driving motives of the American revo- lution are minimized. And the heroic religio-sentt- mental balderdash is emphasized. The picture of eco- nomic conflict leading inevitably to a climax of revolw tionary direct. action is blurred and obliterated. In- stead we are presented with a tinted chromo that shows frock-coated gentlemen enthroning justice, liberty, equality, democracy and the rest of the loquacious sis- terhood, while the clerics pray for their souls. With this chromo hung on the walls of your home you are safe against damned agitators, Bolsheviks, anarchists —in fact, everybody except the rent collector. It seems a pity that the sesquicentennial celebra- tion should be used to conceal the essential revolu- tionary character of the American revolution. The fact,.is that its impetus was economic—the .emergenca of a rising social class, adopting political and ethical slogans that suited its purposes, precisely as in the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution. Im its methods the American Revolution was as frankly de- fiant of constituted authority or established forms as any Soviet or Jacobin club; as ready to use force, ter- ror, summary elimination of enemies. Royalists in the American revolution fared little better than aristocrats in the Paris of 1789 or the bourgeoisie in the Petro- grad of 1917. The local committees of correspondence and the inter-colonial congresses were based upon the suffrage (where any pretense of suffrage was made at all) of trusted friends to the utter disregard of the ‘lukewarm. and indifferent—in fact, a dictatorship of the faithful. The gist of the Declaration of Independénce wae its affirmation of the right to change a government that has become tyrannical—or, economically obsolete—by. force if necessary, The American Revolution had its right and. left wings and all the other concomitants of revolt, red-hot enthusiasm entirely at variance with the pic ture of calm and respectable legal procedure painted by our reactionary patriots. however distasteful that fact may be to our Coolidges and Butlers. The sequicentennial celebration is a good time for reminding the American people of this essential truth. One of the most unusual features that has appeared in’ the Magazine Supplement begins NEXT WEEK “LABOR AND LITERATURE” by V. F. Calverton author of “The: Newer Spirit.” .A series of five excellent articles begins next iy ‘Saturday, WITH THE ADDED FEATURE OF DECORATIVE ART WORK BY THE NOTED PROLETARIAN ARTIST, FRED ELLIS AIHA Especially it was touched by an ardor and It was a real revolution, | <aeanemensaes.