The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 25, 1926, Page 8

MEN AND RUBBER, the Story of Business, by Harry S. Firestone, in collaboration with Samuel Crowther. Doubleday Page & Co. $3.50 net. EARS ago,the paper-backed books of Horatio Alger were the rage with every lad in the country; they still enjoy a certain vogué today, Mil- lions know of the stirring struggle car- ried by Ben Beazley from bus boy to broker—a rise attained by sheer grit and honesty; of how New Nixon con- quered the wily moves of a rascally unole, paid the mortgage on the old homestead, saved his dear sacrificing mother from virtual starvation and, by hard work (and more honesty) built up the powerful trading corporation of Nixon, Snuffle & Co.; and who can forget the noble battles with circum- ‘stances that were fought by the dozens “of étief Algerian characters, all of them with invariable success? Those who gained a mawkish inspi- ration from this sort of tripe were, it goes without saying, quickly awak- ened by years of real effort in any work they undertook. The popularity of Alger waned in the exact propor- tion to the materialization of concrete realities. Now the king is practically dead. But Samuel] Crowther lives! And this hack Boswell for Henry Ford, John H. Patterson and others presents us with a “biography” of Harvey S. Fire- stone, written at so much per word, by Boswell Crowther, who politely hides his authorship behind an “in collaboration with.” Who is Harvey Firestone? How did he become a millionaire rubber mag- nate? Why is his name so frequently connected with Liberia and the Phil- ippines? From reading this book you @an never find out the answer to these questions. You are given the flabby story of how Firestone started out as a horse trader for his father in Ohio, struggled up thru a job as bookkeeper, then country drummer of vanilla ex- tract and wild rose lotion, bookkeeper again, rubber tire maker in a shanty, and finally into the position of lead- ing tire manufacturer in the world. The actual process of growth and de- velopment of the business is very vaguely sketched. Pretty tales are told of stock manipulations, of in- creased capitalizations (the smooth run of the story does not prevent one from hearing the gentle gurgle of wa- tered stock being poured into the cap- ftalization and pushing up the divi- dends to very satisfactory heights), of law suits for patent infringements, of “efficiency” (in cutting down the working staff and having one man do the work of three). But you can read the book over and over again without discovering from Crowther how Firestone’s tiny origi- nal capital blossomed into the mil-- lions now at his command, It may perhaps be explained as Crowther would have it, by the story that “in times long gone by there were two sorts of people; one the dili- gent, intelligent, and, above all, fru- gal elite; the other, lazy rascals, | BOOK REVIEW _ OOK REVIEW | CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. spending their substance and more in riotous living. The legend of theological origina] sin tells us cer- tainly how man came to be con- demned to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow; but the history of economic original sin reveals to us that there are people to whom this is by no means esxential. Never mind! Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last noth- ing to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labor, has up to now nothing: to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly altho they have long «ceased to work. Such insipid child- A PEEK EACH WEEK AT MOTION PICTURES DIRECTOR: OF “POTEMKIN” VITED TO GERMANY, S. M. Eisenstein, the man who di- rected the production of the famous Soviet film “The Cruiser Potemkin,” received a request form several of the best German theaters to assume direc- torship of dramatic productions, The theaters are willing to engage the best German artistic talent for his direc- tion, This request was transmitted to Eisenstein thru the Soviet Society for Cultural Relations with foreign coun- tries, In the meantime the Press reports BRisenstein engaged to direct a pic- ture for Douglas Fairbanks for which he has secured permission and a six months leave of absence from the So- viet Films. The Photoplay Magazine runs this interesting comment on the picture, “Potemkin”: “The photography is beautiful enuf to enchant an artist and the action is vivid enuf and swift enuf to satisfy ; any box office demand for melodrama. :| The scene in which the Cossacks pur- :/sue the populace down a long flight of —By Vose. ishness ‘is everyday preached ‘to us in the defense of- property.” The implications of this bit of irony of Karl Marx is neatly substantiated by a slip of the Crowtherian tongue. He tells us that in 1914 some one mil- lion tires were produced, using 1.14 hersepower(!) per man, Today pro- duction is around 7,000,000 tires, using 2.2 horsepower per man, “and this will increase.” So! The intensity of ex- ploitation, thru the systematic speed- up of the workers to a high pitch, has increased 100 per cent in a decade. Wages, however, have only increased, granting even the dubious rise ac- knowledged by the author, from an average of $21.17 in 1914 to $34.96 to- day. And the reports of conditions in Firestone’s Akron rubber works makes the $34.96 average wage sound as ve- racious as a Barnum hoax. You would be led to think from this that the workers in Firestone’s works are not only harried but dissatisfied. Not so, says our Boswell. The “human relation” is nothing short of idyllic. Such a prose poem as Crowther’s de- scription of the sweet and angelic col- laboration of the employes and our Mr. Firestone has not been written for a long time. The workers get free shower baths, they have a playground, they see free movies, and every time they suggest an improvement in man- }ufacture or offer an invention to Fire- stone which nets him thousands of dollars he is so deeply touched that the inventor receives honorable men- tion in the plant and is slipped a five- dollar bill. With such a paradise at Akron is it to be wondered that Firestone says: “We do not believe in shop commit- tees or in any form of self-government in the shops. But we do believe in being fair, and when a dispute arises we take the position that the work- man is right and proceed on that basis.” Which is so much gas and gaiters, as the British say, Just as the author coniveniently forgets to. list, the great labor turnover in the plants, so he completely omits any ref, erence to the great Akron rubber strike in 1913, a desperate struggle for decent conditions which wag bru- tally suppressed by the combined ruthlessness of the Goodriches, Mil- lers, Goodyears and Firestones of the steps, shooting in the crowd, is un- forgettably impressive. When enuf of our directors have seen this episode, you'll find it duplicated in home-made dramas.” As we workers are apt to put it in the vulgar: “Thanks for the buggy ride.” Remember that a worker’s mo- tion picture outfit made the picture in the world’s first workers’ government. Wait a little while boys—there is even better stuff coming! A DOZEN IN BRIEF. “VARIETY’—Go! (Roosevelt) “MOANA’’—Beautiful, “THE ROAD TO ha (heap Don’t waste your tim “MARE NOSTRUM”—Abominable- war propagan Py oe gtd ernie: oo good, gome = Aon OF. THE Bieig ic" -Vslen- “LA BOHEM orth seeing. “TIN GODS"—Rene Adoree is in it (Northsho: re). “THE egg gp GENTLEMAN” —Hokum well photograp “UP IN MABEL’S ROOM”—Good fun in chemise. ae BAT”—A lively spook pic- “BATTLING BUTLER”— Comics in boxing gloves. OTE: Only Chicago theaters a @ program for one week listed. Pictures of current week changed Monday. “Make it a weekly habit. ONE DOLLAR A YEAR. AN AMERICAN MOVIE MADE BY WORKERS. “THE PASSAIC TEXTILE STRIKE.” T is indeed a pleasure to see such working-class enterprise as this. The Passaic strike is on full blast, the labor world is agog with it, and now here it comes for us all to take a good look at it. They are bringing this picture from city to city—seven reels of actual scenes from the Pas- saic strike, acted by the strikers themselves, woven into a_ graphic story to inspire all labor with their deeds. The prologue brings a bit of life of the family of a textile worker. A bit- ter, hard life it is. Then the arrival of Weisbord and THE STRIKE. Picket lines. Demands. Twelve thousand join the union; 16,000 on strike; 645 strikers go to jail. In- junctions, Fight. The company union and more fight. And finally common cause with organized labor in the A. F. of L. Surely, if ever, here is a picture for every working. man to see. For each and every worker to see at least once, to see it for himself, with his own two eyes—to see what labor can do when it wills. If we could, we would send every worker whose vision remains to view this picture for his own good. We would send him to see it, to feel it and to drink of its inspiration to strengthen his head and heart for mil- itant labor. When you go to see the picture, do this for the labor move- ment: take your children. Take your children and as many other children as you can. Give them the opportu- nity to learn of the struggle in which they will soon become a part. Your children are our fighters of tomorrow. “The Passaic Strike” is now being shown in many cities. It will soon be shown in Chicago. The demand is very great, but you can do a service to the labor movement by starting the wheels going to have it shown in, your city. For terms write to the National Textile. Strikers’ Relief Campaign, room 14, 743 Main avenue, Passaic, —W. C. N. J. tire industry. When the test comes Firestone does not “take the position that the workman is right and pro- ceed on that basis.” The ideal tire industry employer, like his prototype in the tim lizzie industry, has built his reputation and his wealth on the body and mind-wracking torture of the highly ingenious and cold-blooded proposition of intensified speeding up of workers, In almost every ointment is a fly; every preacher poimts a moral, The fly is the contrast of America using 75 per cent of the world’s rubber and producing only a small fraction of 1 per cent under its own flag, while Great Britain controls more than 77 per cent of the world’s rubber output. The moral is the exploitation of Libe- rian and Philippine fields, especially the latter, And the last chapter of the story is devoted to propaganda for the removal of what vestige of inde- pendence the Philippine Islands still enjoy. “Surely,” said Firestone to a com- merce of the house of representatives, ‘it is practicable to recommend that our government take active steps to remove those laws in the Philippine Islands which are an effective barrier against largescale development of rubber plantations there and to enact such laws oped, capital must have assurance that it will be properly protected, which the present political situation does not assure,” The rubber industry is a powers one in this country, and Firestone’s camping visits with Harding and Coo- lidge are not in vain. In his interests bills are introduced into. congress to throw the rubber plantations wide open for exploitation, To be sure, this will‘ occur only at the expense of Philippine independence, and will be built up on virtual slave labor in the islands. Rubber will be sapped as much from Filipino laborers as from the trees planted there. But it were asking this captain of industry to turn into a St. Francis of Assizes to sider these concomitants to his ex- pansion policy, For, after all, as he himself admits, he wants to-do this only for the peepul, for all of them, from the humble worker who curses every time he rides his liazie and gets It is a crying shame that the whole nation, high and humble, does not give vent to @ popular demand for the elec- tion of this champion of the rights of the people to the presidency. At least the Ohio electorate showld show their appreciation, Even Delaware has elected its powder king, Du Pont, to the senate. Firestone deserves @ seat im that sugust body—at least. -—Max Shachtman.