The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 31, 1930, Page 3

| DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 31, 1930_ A Suicide--He ‘STARVATION WAGES FOR! Had No Blood M&XICAN BEET TOILERS to Sell. to Live. On May -23, 1930, a young man Little Children from Six Years Up Must Toil in Beet Fields Hoover Quelling the Crisis JAPANESE BOSSES PLAY Gold’s Book UP SPORTS FOR OWN USE of East Side Senses Revolt Mike Gold: Jews Without Money. Horace Liveright, New York; $ International Workers Spartakiade to Show World Workers Solidarity In a struggle for the hegemony] refereed by A. Roberts of the dis- ia rE vain to'fitid’some work, and that mitted suicide, leaving a note in ich he explains that he had tried several blood transfusions, fenich netted him a little money and| Wept him for a while, he became so} ik he could not do any work at . He became too weak to sell his Blood. Finally he asked for a small Joan to regain some health and was | flatly turned down by the owner of the “Donors Exchange.” The office of the Blood Donors} Exchange. To the right is seen a} derk sitting over his desk. On the Jett are seen several chairs with oc- eapants. In the background are two | ddors—one ‘leads to an outer hall amd another to a doctor’s office. A! worn out, pale young man enters} and stops hesitatingly at the door, | then approaches: the clerk. | Clerk—You are here again... You | were here only_yesterday. You know it is impossible*for us to accept you.) besides business is not very good} lately, not enough calls for trans-| fusions... I am afraid we won't} need you for a Jong time. | Youth—That’s quite true, but T eouldn’t get any work and I haven't had a meal for a long time. Clerk—But what can we do. We} paid you for every drop of blood we have taken from you. Haven’t you any self-respect? Haven't you any decency at all? Oh, my god,; my god! Youth—But can’t you buy some more of my blood .. . just once more, won't you, please ...? I am an American citizen, born and raised in this country. My grand- father fought in the civil war and. Clerk—Holy mackerel, what has the civil war to do with the fact; that you can’t make enough for a} bowl 0’ soup. Youth—I tried. I really did .. «| Perhaps you could extend me a! few dollars until my next trans- | THE Beet Industry of this section | which is all hand work consisting of | 4 enslaves about 30,000 field work-| thinning and blocking. First hoe- | ‘ers in the states of Colorado, Wyom-|ing, which must be done on the| ‘of good wa, ing and Nebraska; better than 23,- 000 of these workers are Spanish Actual photograph of a child considered old enough for the boss to exploit 12 hours a day at the worst kind of labor in the sugar beet fields, . | speaking, a large percentage com- | ing direct fvom old Mexico. It has been customary for the sugar com- panies, each year, in order to keep on hand a surplus of field labor, to send out their agents to the border states to recruit new material for each year's best crop, as many leave each season because of the miser- able exploitation. False Promises These workers are brought into the beet area under false promises good housing condi tions and a chance for education of. their children. When these wo ers arrive at the point to where they are shipped, the farmer comes to the depot and picks out what is termed, “his Mexicans.” A contract is drawn up between the farmer and | hands and knees, then third hoeing, | jand next pulling and topping. This | work requires about 90 workin; |days from sun-up to sunset, or sometimes 16 hours.a day. The worker must remain on the farm ‘from the first of May until the lat- ter part of November or into De- cember. In the thinning process, the worker must separate the beets 12 inches apart and leaving the big beets; thinning and first hoeing is done through the rainy season or | damp weather; in order to cover the x in an acre of beets for thin-| ning and first hoeing, they must crawl on their hands and knees 26,- | 136 feet, or about five miles. The | second and third hoeing is done | under a scorching sun. Topping | comes in the beginning of winter, | which sometimes means pulling the |beets out irom under the snow at| in the Asiatic countries against the other imperialist countries of the! world Japanese imperialism has called in sports to its assistance. |Through sports it hopes to spread | its influence among the far Eastern |countries for the greater exploita- tion of the colonial peoples. According to the press releases of | the capitalist sheets the Far Eastern | Athletic Meet held in Tokio, Japan, | jon May , has attracted over 100 | 000 people as spectators of the var: ous athletic events. The countries participating in this meet w Japan, China, India and the Philip-| pine Islands. The Japanese athletes; won the major portion of the total] ‘points. Sports now is not only used | by the bosses as a class instrument} in their respective countries but also! \as an instrument in their policy of international relations. International Spartakiade. While the bourgeois sports leaders j zero weather and cutting the tops from them with a large knife. At |this time of the year you will see (children working with bleeding ‘hands. Tn the contract, the worker is to eceive a bonus of 50c per ton for jevery ton of twelve tons per acre. | ker is allowed to draw) By ABE MOSCOW per acre providing his | Hackmen Ride Long and Hours for Living of the world are now holding thei: confab in Berlin to prepare rules for the international bourgeoi | Olympics which will be held in Los Angeles, in 1932, the Red Sports In- ternational is calling a world R,S.1. Congress to lay out plans for the International Workers Spartakiade | to be held in Moscow in 1932, on the « year of the Five-Year Plan.,The jJoads into junk in their rush to ge the first payment hack, and atte trict technical committee, and scored by Gleit and Fisher, with timekeep- ers and judges from the Vesa A. C., the Workers Gymnastic and Sport Money Swatter The mug above is none other than Primo Carnero, whose racket has been interfered with by the state boxing commission. Primo, however, is to go after the dough. again when he mects the Negro fighter George Godfrey. Godfrey is slated to knock him out. God- frey would be champion but the chauvinists will not let him get the matches. Alliance and the Kaytee A. C. grocery account is taken out first.| It’s easy to break into the taxi After the thinning and first hoeing, ;acket in this town. It’s miserable out of this is held $1.00 per acre | Staying in. j Pee anes ‘ luntil final payment. If the farmer| If you can drive a car, if your past pues ee metal oe eet |sees fit, he can break his contract |employment record is not marred] eout back to “cloaks an | . it ‘ | suits.” They carry no compensation. 4 ie work with labor activity, if you never) y : Pp | with the worker before the end of y y In most cases they are lucky to| | the season, and the worker loses were rapped and did a bit in the Im most cases they are lucky to) | both bonus and the dollar held back : ae Spake coaadearne rte |can the police department will slap Nei MIGRE GER? th HOE” cok intial jon acreage. This is profitable to Your mug and finger prints in their) 5, you ¢an always aue.. bi Hate \¢ . . ” y | taxi-drive S ry i |the farmer where he has a large |taxidrivers | rogues gallery and) 2 iaxver in the family who has ji acreage. The best acreage an in- row you the tin hac badge, | My ‘ ic es . 5 | jaers tebepebaaes ‘er for the| It’s easy getting a cab in this passed his bar examinations. | dividual worker can ¢ ver for BG ee . No trouble getting in wrong in y hard work . ‘this “profession.” | year is about 15 acres .00 per acre. It’s tough holding it. | No trouble staying that way. er Xe * running as long as the finance shy- sters allow without meeting the} fat Olympics will be used by the bourg- | eoisie as an arena to display their ee relay— G. Vesa A. rst, . sys. * 200 a * athletic (military) ability and to! “"239 Soa Haaponen, B. Luoma, pread bourgeois patriotism andj} ber ky Sao ka ingoism. The Workers Interna-| : J. Lens, ional Spartakiade will be used to more closely knit the international! class solidarity of the workers and to take stock of the working class forces for the recisive struggles. In| Schweitzer, ei dley Vesa A. ( B. Luoma, wwim—First, A BL 6-10. AL Vesa c., 1-2. rd free style—First, B. Luoms, | t. this Spartakiade the American) worker sportsmen will also be rep-| d, L. Keinenen, 26 flat. resented. | 50 yard breaststroke—First A, Haap- | I, B. Luoma, 31.2, kstroke—First Haaponen, | Boxing Primo Carnera has been touring the country for several months push- d, W. Simmin, W.G. and 0, fusion, I promise I’ll pay it back. Just one dollar—the price of a/ meal, I will pay it back. I won't! charge you any more money for my blood at all ... you can have all of it... | Clerk—Now, look here, young the worker by the sugar company on a family basis. This contract binds This Chicken Coop Is A Beet Workers Home Worse Than Paupers The fleet-operator, large com- The sugar company Has figured | P@nies and individual owners live ithe following schedule this year! the name “hounds” from the very first dog up. They set a minimum booking of $15 on the meter for week nights, and $20 for a Saturday, Sunday, or holiday. A slow night means curtains. You beg, borrow, < e steal or ride your tips to get what | (1930): Male worker—nine acres The cops hate your guts. You've got to chisel “where the angels fear | to tide.” Too many other cow-boys eager to cut in ahead for the “fare” waiting on the corner., A second or! two means your prospective rider is sitting in the other cab and maybe grinning at you (they do) from the! ing over sct ups in fake fights ti! the boxing bugs got sick of it an1! several state boxing commissions laced a ban on him. Now for the first time we shall see what th big bozzo is made of. Primo scheduled to box George Godfrey, the 5 1.20, 100 yard free style—First, Haaponen, 1.05. Second, J. Lenz, W.G. and S.A. 1.10. . yard backstroke—First, kK, Schu- | mann, W.G. and S8.A., 31 1-10, i Second, Luoma, 34 3-10, Junior Events. kstroke—First, flat. Heillita, man, I have been patient enough with you. We don’t need your blood. ; It is no good anyhow. Now be gone | before I call a cop, do you hear? | Be gone! Youth—But ... (he faints). Several people run up and try to} give him~ The frightened clerk | runs off -sereaming wildly: Police! | Police! The young man regains his posture but. becomes delirious and! begins to shott.: | «7. Come on, who wants blood? Cheap human blood! Come on drink it free of charge .. . rivers of it... See it flowing—growing bigger, | bigger, bigger!’ Now you shall all) have enough! A wall of blood is— rising! Drink! Drink! Drink! Until | the beet growers of Colorado and the sugar beet trust think is good enough for a forcign or native born bect worker to raise a family in. you burst! The cops rush in. THAT GEN MR, ROCKEFELLER A new book, “Rockefeller-Giant- Dwarf-Symbol,” by William H. Allen points out that Rockefeller’s FROUS fortune is believed to exceed $2,000,-! 000,000. If it is only a billion, the author points out, the interest on it exceeds the yearly earnings of 15,000 laborers. The author describes the power Rockefeller obtains by his $600,000,- 000 gifts to. universities, ete. How This miserable tar paper shack. the worker and his family to the soil as serfs—that he must do th work but offers him no protectio' as to wages. The worker’s family lis taken out to the fields, where | 20 acres, or $460.00 per year. that hound expects on the clock.| back seat because you gave her the| It’s “bye bye taxi” to pull the rig) gun too slow, or was too careful] in, @clocked short of the minimum! pout walkers to make the play for! dooking. a swift grab. There’s no “copping| | They slide the skids to you with- a plea” for cutting out to land al |out notice, or explanation. Somejvider. The little boys in blue also ‘other muzzler is warming the box} have a minimum amount of book- on your old wagdn the day following! ings in the form of tickets that they| your tough break.” |must hand in to their bosses. And] The night shift starts at 4 p.m.| what’s a softer set up than a cruis-| You’ve got only 13 hours in which! ing cabby for him to get a few) to chisel those nickels on the dinger extra summonses off his stalwart/ before the sun laughs thru and it’s| chest? “He’s got you coming and good-night. It’s ramble hot every, going. Coming to the magistrate’s| minute. Doubling in and out of show; court for traffic violations, and go-| break, hight-balling back from) ing before the hatch bureau com-! dreary Long Island, deserted Brogk- missioner to answer whatever the! lyn, on the button empty, hogging! bulls “rap” calls for. Not sweating) the outside traffic lane, eyes strain-| in a collar, tie, or jacket when it’s | ing for the quickly upraised hand,/90° in no shade. Having a drunk : 3 ears for the distant whistle. take your identification card from} + per season; wife—seven acres per You sit worried, disheartened in ide the cab as a souvenir, losing! eason; each child—five acres. | the side streets of the flowing fifties| the badge, espect (spoken or} In most cases the man and wife | looking for the straggler to lurch) looking) to nervous old ladies, grog-| | with three children can handle only | from the speakeasy. You fret, and/ gy old gents, or gently Broadway The | freeze before gayly sounding en- , hardly more than a dry goods box. j babies, any of these charges mean |in the cafeteria below the Workers 250-pound Negro boxer, whom every | leading white boxer has dodged.! Godfrey is acknowledged to be the/| outstanding boxer in the country.| But the only reason that the title| does not adorn his forehead is just | because it is black. 2 Young Stribling has toppled ovey Primo in a bout in England. What | ‘" will Godfrey do to him providing the bout is on the level? L. S. U. swimming was inaugu- | rated in the Eastern District on May 23, with a district open swim- ming meet of many events and ap- proximately fifty participants. The meet, held at the 28th St. pool, was TWO ARRESTED AT WORKERS CENTER A Veteran of Foreign Wars’ stool pigeon called in the police Satur- day and had two workers arrested N. Singer, Marat, 1.05, oke—First, Singer, partacus 4, 1 Is be awarded ighest scorers: A. Haap- Luoma 14, and N. Singec PARTICIPATE IN DISCUSSION. OUR The Central Committee cails} upon all members of our Party and invites all revolutiona’ workers to participate in our pre. convention discussions. The col- | umns of the Communist press are open for discussion of the prob- lems of the American workers and the tactics and policies of our Party. We especially call upon our comrades working in factories and those active in the trade union movement and in the everyday work of our Party to Center. | types. |housing consist of anything from a/ average wage of a beet worker is|trances of east side halls “waiting |chicken house to a grainery, one bed’ from $150.00 io $300.00 per year.! for the wedding crash. And when {for a family and sometimes not that A family will make $545.00 to 600.00, the wedding haul winds up at the ‘much. It is a common event that per year (out of this comes $20.00 | nearest subway you look at the ‘two | water for drinking is carried over |to $40.00 for fuel, coal and wood) | bit piece and curse yourself for a ja mile, and in some cases they are/ and sometimes slightly more if the | fourteen carat “sucker” for having ‘forced to us¢ water from the irri-| farmer allows them to work in other , played that lousy joint! gating ditches as the farmer’s house crops such as beans, tomatoes, at It’s easy getting hurt in this line. is too far. {one and two dollars per day, at the, It’s tough getting compensation. Rouble tHe. Wo end of the best season. Because of | eka ioe These work be the low wages and non-payment by Lots of “flats” to change. The money when they starte work, | the farmer for labor, these workers yybber don’t go the route for very they ave forced to obiain crec:t for |leave the beet field broke. In Ne- Jong. Sometimes the cab slips off their food, This credit is arranged | braska this last year some workers | the jack on the stiff working under- er without ‘ suspension, * a Between 1:30 and 2 P. M. a wo- Resentment of the affectionate, ™4n appeared on the sidewalk sell- |familiarity used to you by the boy | ing Daily Worker badges. A heavily lfriend of the club and gun as he) built man walked up to her and rests a knee gracefully on your) Said, “I warn you to get off this fender to write cut the ticket could| Sidewalk and get back in where you be easily construed as a “disorderly | belong.” She argued with the man, conduct.” Yet the Baumes law'will|@nd he walked away. Workers saw | get you if you don’t watch out!” {him a little later sneaking into the | Making a few extra nickels by| V. of F. W. office entrance, and |riding with the stick up, the clock; heads began to appear at the win- not registering mileage, and forget- | dows. . | ting to give the boss the 60% he| The police came, evidently called by the fermer and the merchant, received only 30 per cent of their | neath. Sometimes the jack handle jis legally entitled to as his share is) little these gifts hurt him is shown by a few comparisons. “Had one-of the Pilgrim Fathers taken a position on Plymouth Rock in 1620, and given away dollar bills every minute, and had the Pilgrims worked in relays every hour of the day from 1620 until Rockefeller’s birthday in 1929 nearly three-fourths of Rockefellér’s fortune would re- main to be given away.” It is $2.a minute for the whole of 1930 years. ef “If he were only a billionaire, his income would be so great that after giving the merchant first mortgage {to the worker’s wages. These workers being unable to real Eng- |lish, are robbed both in weight and overcharge. The farmer supplies eggs, milk ete. to his workers and | in return charges enormous pr!zes; lin one case I mention, at the end of the season the worker was charged three dollars for thirty-two eggs, when eggs were ling for 20e per dozen. In the recent report of the Colo- |wages. All the farmer's debts to| flies out and lands between the left|“Bye bye hack badge” (if you are |the bank and merchahts come before | eye and right ear. It’s liable to| nabbed.) Doing the above for the | ‘the beet labor. These poverty | mean a free ride in a big, black cab| wife and kiddies (even if you have (stricken workers enter small col-| (not marked 15 & 5) accompanied|such) has no effect on the commis- | onies or go into the cities to starve; by a little guy with a little black) sioner. He may hold your hand, he) for the winter. It is a common oc-| mustache, dressed in white who is! may look deep in the depths of your) currance to see Mexican women and there to see that you at least get! blue eyes, he may even have the) children gathering food from the to his house not looking too messy. tear behind the’smile in his voice as garbage cans in the alleys of Den-|“The old gray cab she ain’t what| he whispers “Out Bum” the city yer and Pueblo. Some are fortunate | she used to be,” you stop “on a dime”| needs no drivers like you! | enough to find work in the mines |to avoid a jam, the brakes lock, or} This hacking is a young man and on the railroads, but are always | give too far and you find yourself graft. If you’ve got the speed, subject to race discrimination and | wrapped around an “L” pillar. Hust-: you've got the nerve, if you’ve a ling trunks might mean a good tip,/cast iron frame, you can bust in. from the fascists headquarters, and accompanied by the same stool pigeon who had made the provoca- tory remark, went into, the cafe- teria and arrested two workers. The stool pigeon pointed out who he wanted pinched. He was overheard to tell the cops, about one man in the restaurant, “Give that fellow a punch in the jaw.” Further de- | tails are not known at present. After the arrests, a group, ap- parently the members of a meet- ing, vame out of the V. of F. W. of- vado Agriculture College, it showed | ¢xPloitation, only to tind misery and \fices and went up Fourth Ave., some that because of ihe housing con- giving away a dollar bill on fifteen corners every half minute for ten hours a day, every day of the year, he would have more money than he started with,” the book says. oe Today in History of the Workers Mav 31, 1817—-George Hervegh, Bocialist and limertarian poet. born in Stuttgart, Germany. 1865 —Three months’ strike of iron puddiers in north of Hagland end- ed. 1909—Strect car workers of | Philadelphia launched successful ‘strike. 1917—People’s Council formed at First AmericanConfer- ence for Democracy and Terms of Peace, in New York. 1918—Rose Pastor Stokes sentenced at Kan- sas City, Mo., to 10 years in prison on charge of violating espionage | Jaw. 1923-—Miners of Nova Scotia | compelled by United Mine Work- ers officials to withdraw applica- tion for joining Red International of Labor Unions. > | | | | Demand the release of Fos-' ter, Minor, Amter and Ray- mond, in prison for fighting | gor unemployment insurance. | ditions and the food these workers must live on there is a high death vate among the Mexican families. Tn one section of northern Colorado, out of 187 families, the death rate was 443. In the Arkansas Valley, the death rate out of 147 families, or 1079 “people was 208. Child Labor In the Beet Fields In the contract of the sugar com- t states very boldly that no of age may work » contract, but we see in elds children of both sex- ix years of age on up, ide with their par- sing beet topping season. Some counties of northern Colorado will average bette than 27 out of jevery huadred absent from school | because of beet work. * Bleeding Handse The beet worker signs a contract for himself and his family to do the season’s work for $23.00 per acre, Collective Farms Eclipse Private Ones MOSCOW, (LP.S.)--The People’s Commissariat for Agriculture an- nounces that on the 1st of May 43,- 170,000 hectares of land has been sown, in other words, 58 per cent exploitation at every turn in the road, especially in the steel mills and or a rupture. Maybe you're “on the) When you are in it won't be long in taxis and some on foot. nut” both ways. A small tip and ‘before all you eat, think, talk, dream, IHeed.1?W. yo( participate in the pre-convention discussion. The comrades are asked to write short and to the point (articles must not exceed 700 words), because of limitation of space. Write simply and use only one side of each sheet ot | paper. Correspondence in ror- | eign languages should be seni directly to the paper of the given |* foreign language; only corre- | spondence for publication in the Daily Worker should be sent to | the Agitprop Department, Can| tral Committee, Communist Party of the United States of America, 43 E. 125th St. COMMUNIST PARTY U.S. A. ‘It Speaks for Itself” Now, children, if you'll be quiet we'll tell you a funny story. You RED SPARKS By JORGE coal mines of the Rockeller Cclo- rado Fuel and Tron Company. Militant Fighters The Mexican i militant worker; m: revolutionary tendencies* from the movement of old Mexico, At pres: ent in the beet area there is a big rupture! It could be worse. and hope for is to get out. There You might slide down a flight of!is one way out. Not as cinchy as staiys on your car the trunk riding) breaking in, but it can be done. A triumphantly on one side of your} battling taxi driver’s union run by neck. the men. And a few of the boys Most of the bosses are smal!| who know how to stop labor fakers, dimers. Here today and gone to-| pie-card artists, rats, stools, and| morrow. They double shift their! crooks from wrecking the way ont! ganized the Beet Workers’ Assi ‘aE 7 ton, with dcmilitant membership} |» WORKERS FILMS jbut a reactionary leadership who! | |swing toward the church and all) ‘other bourgeois tendencies trying to ,mitlead tne workers; but with the work of the Trade Union Unity Lea- gue and the Communist Party lamong these workers, both the i jchurch and the reformist leadership | Proletarian society created the great are becoming very much alarmed be- Soviet film. Not until something of cause of the way the Mexican work- the same discharge of energies has er responds to the program of cla occurred here, will the great Ameri struggle and realizes his common can film, promised in the, present | enemy is the capitalist class and all movie, be realized. The great jits agents, the church, courts, etc. ‘American motion picture will come | trom the creative masses. The mass- (es must anticipate that future day.) They must know too that the film, | used against them in the false por- | trayals of present society, can serve a means to realize that day. mherit. their ond-hand” life. At the theatre he | lives in a plush of “escape.” And! ‘how is the worker himself present- ed? As a hoodlum or a he-man. Romanticized not as a worker, en- during much, getting little, a slave in his own dominion. In the early | days of the movie, the worker was | presented sometimes genuinely. | There was even sympathy for the | striker. Upton Sinelair’s “The Jun- gle” was produced. A film was made | showing worers exploited by the sale | of marsh-lands, which they bought to build homes upon. Today the film in concentrated in} | By HARRY A. POTAMKIN | The Soviet cinema is, 2s Hisen- istein has said, the product of the \“creative masses.” That is’ the new |the power of high finance. It is a | business that sells mental: impres- | The movie obscures the facts of | sions. High finance is not going to! present society with pictures o/ | sell impressions that hurt it. With luxuriance and hope that ensnare|the concentration, the class-fight and betray the worker into a “scc-| becomes severer. As the workers’ of the sowing. plan. 21,727,000 hee- Hares were sown by the collective | them as farms and 19,548,000 hectares the | individual :.easant farms, whils’ the soviet farms’ sowed 1,895,000 he-- tares. hala is see, once upon a time--about a month ago—the mighty British em- pire rared up on its hind legs and howled to beat the old scratch about the vile Bolsheviks abusing and per- secuting the perfectly innocent | priests in the Soviet Union. ‘he | threat advances, the capitalist hands the workers more blarney and less ruth. The workers must make films. The German workers have started well. There is no need to begin|pope declared, and Ramsay Mac- big. Documentaries of workers’| Donald swore to it, that holy men life. Breadlines and _picketlines,|of god, who were absolutely inno- demonstrations and_police-attacks. Outdoor films first. Then interiors. And eventually dramatic films of revolutionary content. Workers’ or- ganizations should support a group to be pioneers on this important front. An immediate thing is the organ- ization of a chain of workers’ clubs, and related bodies for the exhibition and .distribution of films of merit that may not otherwise be released here, or will be mutilated by the commercial exhibitor. The money earned from this could go to the making of pictures. London has a Workers’ Film Society; the union, artists and students of Copenhagen have formed a film league. A mem- ber of the Filmiiga of Holland, Joris Ivens is to make a film on electiification in the Soviet Union. Let's hear from the Amenican worker! Write to the Daily worker on this subject cent of all political thoughts let alone. any political acts, should | never, never be robbed of their right to worship god whether there is one or not—and so on, And see what’s happened now in the island of Malta, ruled by the aforesaid British empire: The archbishop of Malta issued a “pas- toral letter”—“forbidding electors to vote for Lord Strickland and the constitutional party candidates un- der pain of such action being re- garded as a. sin; instructing the | clergy to refuse to administer sac- raments to those who neglected to/ comply with these instructions.” | The New York Times is authority | for this statement, and it is added | that, besides the priests asking the faithful in the confessional what! political party they wouid vote for, the archbishop has “placed a ban on two leading newspapers and for- | bade reading them under pain of | Reviewed by G. HANON HIS volume consists of a series of fragments out of the author’s life woven into a connected auto- biographical narrative. Dragged rather than brought up in the very center of Manhattan’s former red- light district, surrounded by all the vices of a poverty stricken and of- ten illiterate immigrant population, the author has produced a coherent and animated picture of the East Side of several decades ago. Gold was reared in a semi-proletarian family, passing through various stages from comparative comfort to extreme need. He early learned all that this type of life could teach him of sex, prostitution, perversion and gangsterism. It is without doubt this aspect of the book that accounts for the fact that it has al- ready gone through four editions (even at $3 per). But it is not the “romance” of this “maelstrom of wagons, men, pushcarts, street cars, dogs and East Side garbage” which is of es- sential interest or appeal to the class-conscious worker. It is not the “sweet nostalgia,” the delicious yearning evoked in petty-bourgeois “art-loving” souls by this pestilen- tial swamp of a capitalist metrop- olis, this existence of superstition and misery, this enslavement to ele- mental filth, this wholesale equat- ing of human beings to the bloated bed bugs infecting the structures, the walls, the very life of the East Side that constitutes the art appeal of Gold’s book. On the contrary, *| what makes this book worth read- ing by a worker is the fact that it conveys a deep-going sense of re- vulsion against this system of filth and slavery, that it crystallizes an active recognition of the necessity of destroying it, that it succeeds by means of a simple art form in stir- ring up an emotional yet distinctly conscious determination to wage a revolutionary struggle of annihila- tion against the capitalist system. This does not mean, however, that Gold’s volume is necessarily a pow- erful novel. It is hardly that. As a matter of fact, the book is not even free of moments of romanticiz- ing. Gold knows his own environment But his own environment types. But his “internationalism,” his knowledge of the Irish or other non-Jewish East Side residents, is artistically amateurish and second- hand. When he finds himself out- side of his “own Jewish land,” he is just as much isolated as he was when as a child he ventured out of his neighborhood into the territory of an enemy gang. This volume certainly does not guarantee that Gold could write the story of a na- tive American working class fam- ily. In addition, Mike Gold as sub- ject of his book—not as its author— appears, to this reviewer at least, a little too much the “artist” chaf- ing against the restrictions ich capitalism places upon his individ- uality and looking forward to the revolution which will remove the fetters from his personal genius. It is not always possible to draw a sharp line of demarcation between “personal” and class revolt. For ob- viously the working class consists of separate individuals who suffer the slavery of their class in their own individual bodies, emotions thought, ete. Nevertheless, in thi , the suspicion of “pure artis eeps up on one out of Gold’s, pages. The total objective result of Gold’s book, however, is not petty-bour- geois. |His volume definitely helps toawaken the class consciousness of the worker leaving him wtih a faith in himself and his class: “O Revolution, that forced me to think, to struggle and to live. “O great Beginning! sin, warning other editors not to abuse the ‘delicate mission’ of jour- nalists.” As Whalen “It speaks for itself.” pie 4 says, . Hurrah for Vitale-Land! Sssh! Children! The Munic Art Commission of New York h: approved the erection of an Sat 000 flag-pole to be put up in Uni Square slap-dab in front of 1. Daily Worker. But it is to be “memorial” to Charley Mur Tammany leader. Some fa folk objected to the idea, so th say it is to commemorate the 11: anniversary of the Declaration « Independence—four years too ja but that’s what they say. We for it as a Murphy memorial, any flag pole that costs $80,00% ought to net some Tammany graft er at least $79,000. Then the mil- lion jobless of New York can look up at Old Glory waving over s a graft and just swell up and bust with patriotism undiluted with any- thing to eat, . Great Sayings of Darn Fools— “T came hero thinking New York much too official and hardboiled,” said Ray Duncan, bourgeois dilletante mimic of Gandhi. "I found the Police Department sweet and affectignates.”