The Daily Worker Newspaper, November 22, 1927, Page 6

THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, TU DAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1927 THE DAILY WORKER) “£ BENEVOLENT DESPOT Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO. ) Daily, Except Sunday 83 First Street, New York, N. Y. Cable Address SUBSCRIPTION RAT (in New York onl A Phone, Orchard 1680 work f New oYrk): | 0 six months} onths. A hie - rr oe ee eal By Mail eman Julius, pubs } “Little Blue Books,” | . The marriage is not | unusual except that the ceremony was performed by a clergyman, despite | Mr. Haldeman’s (or is it Julius’s?) | {professed atheism, which of course | may have gone the way of Will Dur- | ant’s idealism by now. Had the | | } i | j | $6.00 per 50 three nonths, ddress and mail out checks to A eg THE DAILY WGRKER, 33 st Street, New York, N. Y. OR .ROBERT MI WM. F. D At New ¥ 1879 ditor... istant Editor y., under} mail the Entered as second-c couple been content with a special edition of the next issue of “Halde- man’s Quarterly,” they would never get on the front pages of the capital- ist papers, but this would be letting a good opportunity to snatch some |publicity for “Little Blue Books” |slip by. ORS ae V ordinary marriage, even in the | family of such an expert -exhi- | |bitionist as Haldeman-Julius would pass almost unnoticed if the Ford of \literature had not a flair for pub- licity. So he turned a union that The Liberty Loan Swindle 4 final redemption last week of the second liberty loan, | upon which the enormous sum of $3,807,000,000 was raised in November, 1917, at the very height of war hysteri brought to a close one of the most brazen swindles ever perpetrated upon the | American masses. | vere forced upon the workers in the war indus- | swivel-chair patriots whose job it These bond tries by the war-mongers, the e 1 {would not tingle the moral nerves of was to terrorize the populace, and the hordes of plug-uglies who |a Vermont cider magnate into a na- organized tar and feather parties to stifle any attempt of the | tional sensation by calling it a “com r conditions. These liberty bonds were workers to improve th handled through local banks, which realized discounts from them, and the workers paid for them on installments out of their wages. When the first expired hundreds of thousands of holders of bonds discovered that their notes had been discounted at the four and one-half per cent rate. Then in 1920 the bankers and other speculators beat down the bonds 18 points in order to buy them up in ther resultant unloading. ' liberties that the masses disposed of these bonds at sduced prices. Industrial depression aided the con- Fly-by-night offices were opened in all the industrial centers to buy up the bonds; fifty-dollar bonds were disposed of at as low as § The result was that they were placed in what the financial papers refer to as “the strict investment class’”— that is, in the hands of the bankers and speculators. As. soon as this shifting of ownership was completed the bonds again rose to par and for the next seven years their holders realized the legal interest upon them. The final redemption was completed last Tuesday, the gov- ernment buying them back at par, and exchanging for many of them short-time bonds at higher rates of interest. Much of the money obtained has also been invested in what are described as “high class foreign loans,” and will draw exceedingly high inter- est—sometimes realizing super-profits through semi-colonial in- vestments. The history of the second liberty loan is a history of an or- ganized, high-pressure confidence game against those forced to purchase the original issues and resulted in consolidating into the hands of the bankers billions of dollars, realized through enforced reduction of the workers’ standard of living during the world war. This history should be kept in mind when next the war- mongers try to peddle their “liberty bonds” to the masses-of ex- ploited workers and farmers. Hail the Seventh Anniversary of Soviet Armenia. A trifle more than three years after the workers’ and pea- sants’ revolution in Russia, the people of Armenia abandoned the path of capitalism and established another government of work- ers and peasants—a Soviet Republic. Today the revolutionary workers of the world greet the seventh anniversary of the revo- lutionary Soviet Republic of Armenia. For a time after the close of the world war the awful de- vastation of that country brought countless thousands face to face with starvation. They were for a time the object of “chari- table’ endeavors of the capitalist nations. But the humanitarian efforts of the great capitalist powers had a peculiar way of re- lating themselves to the needs of strategy concerning nearby pe- troleum deposits. We recall a famous note of the greatest of all capitalist humanitarians, Woodrow Wilson, who pleaded with | the American congress to “Save Christian Armenia” by sending United States military forces to Asia. On closer examination the message to congress in locating the proposed destination of the troops to “Save Christian Armenia,” described exactly the nar- row strip of rightaway of the oil pipe-line between Baku and Batum, and this was precisely on the opposite side’of Armenia from the point where the troubles complained of were occurring. Not only the approach to the Baku oil fields thru Armenia, but also its favorable geographical situation as one link in the imperialist chain about the Soviet Union, were the motives of United States imperialism. The action of the Armenians in es- tablishing a Soviet republic biasted those hopes and aided the world revolution. The DAILY WORKER sends revolutionary greetings to Goviet Armenia and to “Nor Ashkhar,” the Armenian Communist paper in the United States, that is carrying on the fight for win- ning the Armenian workers of this country to the banner of Communism and to the Workers (Communist) Party of America, section of the Communist Internationai. - The sugar magnates of four nations have joined to cut the sugar supply and jack up the price. No sooner did this news break than sugar stocks went up in Wall Street. What the cap- italists want is not more sugar but more profits. PRINCESSES AND NATURAL FORCES By WM. PICKENS. Such strange things do we read about in newspapers, like this: “English princess flees fire in her nightie!” As if a fire would make any difference between a princess and any other woman. The forces of nature are no respecters of mén or women. A fire will burn a princess or a virgin as quickly as it will burn a scrub woman or a prostitut¢é. Why, then, is it any news that a princess will run from a fire? So will a beggar-woman—so must a queen. Nature does not respect rank. Democratic com- tunities pretend not to; but the laws of nature actually do not. Little kowtowing humans get so used to their own inferiority complexes that they come to feel that the very laws of the uni- verse must also bend the knee. Of course a “princess” will run from a fire in her “nightie.” gf It was during this artificial col- | — "(Continued from Last Issue.) The Family Lawyer SXVIL, [ HAVE got this far in my manu- script, when a telegram interrupts my labors. The bookstores of - Bos- ton have removed my novel, “Oil!” from sale, at the instigation of a church censorship. You remember I wrote, a little way back, that when you get a censor you generally get a fool, and sometimes also a knave. So now we shall see! It was my intention in “Money Writes!” to be judicious, and leave out my own writings. But when you are in a war, you cannot always jchoose the battlefield; in this case the police department of Boston has made the choice, and so I state that “Oil!” is a novel portraying Amer- ica’s most speculative and spectacular industry, and incidentally picturing the moral and political breakdown of our ruling classes. The censors will pretend to be shocked by half a dozen brief glimpses of Hollywood petting-parties; but what they really want is to shut off a book of rev- olutionary criticism. } Boston Herald telegraphs ask- ing what I mean to do; and I answer that I will come and sell the book | myself. But meantime the authorities jbookseller’s clerk and rush him to trial. So here I am on a transcon- tinental train, on my way to appear jas witness for Mr. John Gritz of the |Smith and McCance bookstore, in | that city of the bean and the cod | where Amy Lowell spoke to god, and where Amy Lowell’s brother has just |been appointed upon a commission to lecided the fate of Sacco and Van- zetti. The officials of the Union Pacific Railroad find out, and give me a taste of Mencken’s adventures. The passenger agent at Salt Lake, City with an automobile and whisks me off to see the great Mor- |mon Temple in twenty-five minutes, land hear the greatest organ in the |world play “Annie Laurie’! The |Mormon brethren load me up with | their propaganda; and now I sit, gaz- ‘ing out at red mountains and fields |of young sugar-beets, and reading jover again the wonder-story of how ja farmer’s boy in New York state jdug up the golden tablets, Urim and |Thummin, and how god sent the langel Moroni to deliver a new gospel, the Book of Mormon. You may doubt the tale, but I have just seen the \angel, shining on the top of his tem- ‘ple, twelve feet five and one-half | inches high, and made of hammered }copper covered with gold leaf. In all the world it would not be possible to find more naive nonsense than the Mormon mythology; and yet | these people have huge granite build- ings, and a beautiful city with wide avenues—apparently the angel Mo- roni revealed the automobile to old |Brigham Young. They have several ‘hundred thousand faithful and de- | voted workers, and control the sugar |trust and the copper trust and a large section of the Republican party. rocecd to arrest a twenty-year-old| Which brings us to our next poet, Edgar Lee Masters. Some years ago he published a book of free verse called “The Spoon River Anthology,” shivered. “Spoon River” is an imag- inary village of the Middle West— we may guess that it lies not very far from Petersburg, Illinois, in which Mr. Masters grew up. He imagines a graveyard, with head- stones containing epitaphs of an un- precedented sext, telling the truth about the wretches that lie beneath: everything unpleasant in human na- ture—envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness, plus a few feeble gleams of aspiration, inevitably brought to quick extinction. Mr. Masters bears a heavy grudge against his fellow beings, and a still heavier one against the fate which has cre- ated them; he is as ingenious as Maupassant in devising situations to expose the irony of mortal hopes. And then a series of novels, which, and all literary America read it and} “I advise you to protect your own interests and not attend any meetings that may be called by the Amalgamated.” —Frank Hedley, president of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company. Money Writes like, all other novels, are propaganda for a certain point of view. These of Masters exhibit a leisure class, | wandering about lost in the midst of luxury, having no idea what use to make of it. Their author once wrote me that I was mistaken in thinking that he did not realize the dominance of economic forces over his people. So perhaps I had better not pass judgment, but simply say that “Mir- |age” and “The Nupital Flight” are | powerful social * documents, which \have had very little of the critical attention they deserve. Imagine them being written by an ‘old family lawyer, who sits in his private office and has a string of men and women come before him, re- ‘vealing the inmost secrets of their lives; all the base things they have | done or hope yet to do, their cowardly fears and ravenous greeds. It must be a trying kind of life, and judging from the books of Edgar Lee Masters, the only faith it left him is in Stephen By Upton Sinclair ie A. Douglas and the pro-slavery dem- ocrats of seventy years ago. His heart warms to the “little giant.” I} think because the reformers fought | him. One other theme moves him to ten-| derness, and that is boys and the life of boys. But they must be boys of a long time ago, who can be seen through a haze of romance—boys who were simple and natural and jolly, and never had to be reformed with a birch-rod or a trunk-strap! But alas, even these ideal boys grow up, and make a lot of money, and drink cocktails and play with their friends’ wives; and what is to be done about it is something concerning which the Chicago ex-lawyer has had no angel Moroni to descend from heaven and tell him—and so the read- ers of these books will not be led to build granite temples and make the desert blossom with sugar-beets! (To Be Continued.) By ERDE. The principal line of political and educational work among the adults in the USSR is carried on in the clubs and reading rooms. The October revolution has given rise to a huge number of clubs, read- ing rooms, rde corners, Lenin corners, etc. The extent of activities among the adults in the USSR in the sphere |of political enlightment, rational en- joyment and rest may be seen from the following figures: there are at the present time in the USSR 1,860 people’s palaces, 3,595 peasant palaces, 6,015 workers’ clubs and 25,- 000 reading rooms. There were in 1915 only 300 people’s palaces regis- tered in European Russia. These palaces were oppressed by Czarism, The political enlightment of adults which has gained momentum in the development of thousands. of work- ers’ clube and tens of thousands of rural clubs (reading rooms) is not so much a result of the several legal centres of the labor movement of Rus- sia before the revolution as of the underground Bolshevik organizations ‘in which cadres of workers developed and earried on extensive propaganda of ideas for the emancipation of the | working class. { * | * * What is our club and reading room? The clubs help the working man to raise his cultural level, to broaden his | professional and technical knowledge. |The club gives the worker an oppor- | tunity to obtain knowledge in the most | popular form, either in the form of ‘questions or answers, in the form of {lectures, political circles, industrial \ circles, circles of current politics, ete. | The club develops the self-activity of j}its members. It is for this reason that the enumerated circles are or- ‘ganized in them, At the beginning of 1926 there were 25,021 such circles |in the USSR. The network of libraries in the | Workers’ clubs deserves special at- tention. There were in 1923 2,146 \such libraries; in 1924 the number |was 6,803; in 1926 it was 8,085. The Ary princess who is not insane, will run from a fire in much |1 sit and ponder the problem-—which |NUmber of books in the libraries was less than a nightie. The American papers are certainly full of astonishing news; next we may read that some king was afraid to eat strychnine, or that some emperor a dared not to touch a live third rail! jis better, to have faith in naive non- isense and build a civilization; or to |have no faith whatever, and see your civilization crumbling under your feet? ; us 3,800,000 in 1923 and 15,600,000 in The number of clubs in 1925-26 was 4,000 in the cities of the RSFSR. This does not include the Red corners, # The Embryo of a New Life . An account of the club work of one month (December 1926) gives the fol- lowing picture: the number of per- formances was 216 pér every hundred clubs; the number of concerts 54, so- cial gatherings 54; lectures 304; liv- ing newspapers 87; 6 lectures on in- dustrial questions; 28 question and answer evenings; 5 evenings of self- activity, etc. The 8,609 trade union clubs of the RSFSR have now 1,165,000 members. The number of red corners is already 27,723, oo ey oe Lately the trade unions have begun to reorganize their clubs so as to! make them more attractive to adult | workers. At the present time the young workers predominate in the clubs. Workers over 30 years of age} constitute only 30 per cent of the club membership. This correlation is con-| sidered not quite satisfactory. The clubs after their re-organization will become not only centres of mass en- lightenment but also places where workers and their families can find recreation to a larger extent than be- fore. Most of the clubs where it is| possible for the worker to seek recre- | ation are well-attended by, adults | after their working hours where they bring their families with them. Wom- | en constitute 33 per cent of the club membership. Wielka Every workers’ club, every rural reading room, strengthens the prole- tarian dictatorship and forges the new elements ot life both in the towns and rural districts. Every reading room serves an aver- age of 18 villages, embracing from 30 to 40 per cent of the population. Two- thirds of the active club members are young peasants, In 1125-26 the agri- cultural circles in the reading rooms were attended by over 10,000 peas- ants, is The reading rooms usually organize’ collective newspaper reading for il- literates. Many reading rooms have their radio and cinema installations. The rural reading rooms are centres of political enlightenment even to a greater extent than the town clubs, The libraries, anti-illiteracy stations, red corners and reading rooms in the villages are all under the auspices ot} the volost political education commit- tee. Usually the Communist and Young Communist nuclei take active part in the work of the reading rooms. The teachers, rural correspondents, demob- ilized soldiers, ete., are also gather- ing around the reading rooms. The reading rooms help in the work of the different societies such as the anti- illiteracy society, the defense society, etc., explaining their objects to the population. Ca ate | The reading rooms establish rela- tions with the cultural and economic institutions such as the agronomical stations, the model farms, the govern- ment farms, cooperatives, ete., and help to organize such institutions as creches. They help the schools in their work, ete. The role of the reading rooms ‘in the cultural life of the rural districts is truly enormous. The role of the workers’, clubs is also very great. The club and reading room are the embryos of a new life, The homes which formerly gave luxurious shelter to the manufacturers and business men are now either ereches, schools or workers’ clubs, The mansion where Saltichikha (an aristocratic lady who became famous for her cruelty to the peasants) lived | and gave the command to whip a girl in the stable, is now a reading room, | Times change. | ACCORDING to a report of the In-| ternational Labor Office of the league of nations 25,000 workers | were killed in the'United States in one year. This is one-fourth the number of United States troops killed in the world war. Thousands of preventable accidents take place in American in- dustry every year, but the employers are more concerned with making profits than with safeguarding the lives of their employes. * * * . S. KRESGE, the chain store mag- nate testified in court that he owed’ his broker $10,000,000 a few years ago. The trouble with the workers is, it seems to me, that they don’t know how to borrow money, ~__ ) panionate marriage’ which is quite true since the happy couple intend to live together as man and wife. Now Julius and Marcet Haldeman, the good lady who put the renegade so cialist in business, have been able to set their effusions on the Associated ress s, with the result that the sale of “Little Blue Books” should go up sharply. + * * YTEPHEN RUMSEY is a man after my own heart. He is 105 years old and does not attribute his long- evity to following Bernarr MacFad« den’s advice to the lovelorn or taking sun baths in a non-medical boiler fac- tory. It is comforting to know that Rumsey “ate what he pleased, drank what he pleased and had a good time with the best of them.” Here is a chance for a go-getter to make a fortune. The average person is too lazy to take proper care of his health d there is nothing he would like ter than to be kidded for cash inte the belief that by eating and drink. ing as he pleased he would live for a century. Be prepared for the es-+ jtablishment of the Stephen Rumsey Immortality Therapeutic Institute. * * * A RUSSIAN czarist refugee by tha name of Tamara, now living in Greece has developed a technique for keeping her converts to christianity on the straight and narrow path. Just as soon as they sign on the dotted line, she either kills them or marries them. The number of converts con- signed to heaven to date by the de- vout lady is ‘not known, but her evangelical career came to a_hatft*™” when she was about to “save” her second Chinaman. ‘When police reached Tamara’s room the girl was in prayer. Reverently waiting until she had finished, the officers heard her: expound her own worthiness for salvation because of the souls whose eternal bliss she had assured by send. ing them to the next world} at the moment when they were in Heaven's grace.” Had Billy Sunday and Aimee MePherson used Tamara’s precau« tions against backsliding, the loss from wear and tear in their business would not be so heavy. * * * soe writing the above paragraph, I have been informed by a mem ber of the staff who is versed in the history of Mormonism that Tamara’s technique is not a new contribution to the art of a soul-saving. The fole lowers of Joseph Smith, who knew the value of political power as well as being in right with god, religiously killed members of the church who showed signs of becoming lukewarm in their devotion to their deity. A Mormon caught going to bed minus his white flannel underwear was con- sidered legitimate prey for the homi- cidal attentions of any one hundred per cent Mormon who might be hiding behind the curtains. Recently a suspicion has grown among the good people of Salt Lake City that a base motive usually skulked behind the camouflage of godliness that cloaked the Mormon devotion to the tenets of the Smith creed, and Mor- mons can now shed their white flan- nels with impunity, while enjoying nocturnal repose. * * * Aree Court Justice George HY ‘ Taylor, Jr., of White Plains needs the alleged wisdom of Solomon to solve a matrimonial tangle that con- fronts him, A 51 year-old lady wants a separation allowance of $50 a week irom her husband as well as generous counsel fees on the ground of cruel and inhuman treatment, said treat- ment consisting of her huysband’s habit of scratching her with a long toe nail, his aversion to taking a bath oftener than once a year and a prankish predeliction for’ wearing a greasy shirt to bed on _ occasion. There is precedent for granting a separation decree because a husband insisted on sleeping in his boots, but can a man be penalized for letting his toe nails grow? i * * *” PTON SINCLAIR deserves the thanks of the whole working class movement for his chapters in “Money Writes” that apply the rod of casti+ gation to the poets or those who pose as poets. Of course there are excep- tions, and to those poets who can be understood and whose poetry pleases normal human beings or fires the workers with fresh zeal for the class struggle, we uncover our heads. Up- ton Sinclair makes a few exceptions and like the splendid fellow he is, . wife is one of them. Which is as. should be. —T. J. O'FLABERTs j i j i