The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 4, 1933, Page 4

| ~~~ Oegenizations. It is necessary in the shortest possible time to mobilize tase boar Dail Published by the Comprodaily Publishing Co., Inc., daily except Sunday, at 58 ASth St., New York City, N. ¥. Telephone ALgonquin 4-7956, Cable “DAIWORK. Address and mail checks to the Daily Worker, 50 E. 13th St, New Yerk, M. ¥. orker Party USA. SUBSCRIPTION BATES: By mail everywhere: One year, $6; six months, $3.50 excepting Borough of Manhattan and Bronx, Canada: One year, 39; § months, $5 $2; 1 month, We Foreign and 38 & months, York City $ months, Who Benefits from | “Share-the-Work?” | HE “share-thework” plan launched by Walter C. Teagle, head of the Standard Oil Company has the active backing, organizational support and the FREE USE OF THE MAILS GRANTED iTS PUBLICITY BY THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR AND THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE. This vicious scheme is one of the major weapons of the capitalists in driving the working class to new low levels of destitution. wealthy for “economizing” on donations to the charity drives. It is being used as an argument against immediate cash relief and unemployment insurance at the expense of the government and the employers. It is being used to set a st of starvaion “emergency” wages which Teagle and his fellow capitalists intend to make the normal scale. In a letter dated Dec. 15 over the signatures of Roy D. Chapin, secre- tary of commerce, and W. N. Doak, secretary of labor, and sent out whole- sale to employers, the proof is given that these two government depart- ments are completely at the serv0ce of Teagle, the Standard Oil and other big concerns in foisting the share-the-work hunger scheme on American workers. The letter says: To the Head of the Establishment addressed Dear Sir: ‘You doubtless know of “Share-the-Work”. It is a national emergency movement to maintain and increase employment by di- viding in a fair and reasonable way among as many workers as pos- sible whatever work there may be “A letter from Mr. Walter C. Teagle, national chairman of the movement, is enclosed. It will give you further details. “For our information and that of the Share-the-Work Commit- tee, will you please fill out and mail the enclosed form, telling us what you have done already and what more you feel you can do to aid this movement?” Teagle himself, in an article in the Sunday magazine section of the New York Herald Tribune for Jan. 1, inadvertently exposes this vile method (vile because disguised as aid) of putting still more of the burden of the crisis on the working class. He says, in the course of a glowing eulogy of the joy that workers experience in being forced to accept a still lower level of living: “True, the method does not proyide more money for spending, but it distributes what moncy is available among more people, more spenders. ‘Therefore, while it does not increase purchasing power, it does increase the use, of purchasing power.” In other words, instead of only the unemployed being hungry the in- tention is to make the workers still employed share the hunger. Further: “Thus, money that would be hoarded—and recent figures by the Fed- eral Reserve estimate the total hoardings held in stocking or mattresses or otherwise kept out of circulation in the United States at around $1,500,- 000,000—is put to use, into circulation, into exchange for goods and services.” It would be pretty hard to cite a more callous utterance than this. It is a clear admission that the share-the-work has nothing whatever te do with helping workers. It is designed to force those workers who by some miracle still have savings left to use them up by reason of the fact | that they can no longer live on their wages under the share-the-work It is a clear admission that the share-the-work scheme is intended to help, not workers, but businessmen and bankers—especially the latter who believe there are still a few dollars in the hands of workers that they hhaye not yet been able to pilfer. This new Standard Oil-Morgan method of robbery of the masses re- quires the most extensive exposure. Communists in the Unemployed Councils, shop groups and commit- | tees and unions must strip the mask of benevolence from the face of the loodsuckers behind this scheme, expose the joint action of the govern- { ment, the bosses and the bankers to put over this plan and rally the working class for militant struggle against it. Strikes against the share-the-work scheme are by no means out of the picture but the main method is the united front mass fight for decent unemployment relief, unemployment insurance for all workers at the ex- pense of the government and the employers—and against the whole capitalist offensive.” Extend the Injluence of | the Daily Worker i al series of Daily Worker conferences held in various parts of the country and the setting up of broad pe tend the influence and circulation of the paper is a definite advance compared to the past. These conferences show that there is an ipe ereasing number of members in the workers’ mass organizations who realize the necessity of supporting the Daily Worker. : The committees already clected, consisting of an average of fifteen members, are busy campaigning in the ranks of the mass organizations ‘and urging the setting up of Daily Worker sub-committees inside these anent committees to ex- gill available forces to come to the aid of the Daily Worker because ‘of the serious dangers that are faced, dangers that, unless overcome soon by a broadening of the mass support of our paper, threaten its very “existence. It is not only essential to increase the activity of those ‘who now support the Daily and who have had and will continue to make gacrifices of every kind to ensure the existence of the central organ of ‘our Party. It is necessary to reach the steadily growing number of work- ers and farmers and ex-soldiers that have not yet become active sup- Of the Daily Worker, but who are participating in the daily | Jed by our Party on all fronts. It is essential that the maximum concentration of available forces | be directed toward reaching workers still in industry, as well as the unemployed; penetrating the ranks of the workers in organizations led. by the reactionaries so that the Daily can be utilized as an effective weapon. in the struggle for winning the masses for the militant fight et hunger and war program. against the Wall Street hunger and necessity for the most energetic work in behalf «7 fhe Daily can be yealized in view of the fact that the weekly deficit of the Daily is at this moment more than $1,200 a week. This condition cannot con- tinue. Obtaining of credit becomes more difficult as the paper plays more and more a leading role in the sharpening class struggles, the new revolutionary rise that characterizes the end of capitalist stabilization. | r there is an immediate decisive increase in the support for the ‘will be overwhelmed with financial burdens within the next again be fac® to face with the danger of suspension. This imposes a great responsibility upon the permanent committees have been set up to support the Daily. The subscription drive should ‘waged with utmost determination and. with the understanding that it a] cal act of the first importance to increase the circulation and of the Daily. a Letters from Our Readers ? MUCH SALARY DOBS DE STALIN GET? East Holden, Maine the Daily Worker, ‘Comrade: discussion with a worker that n't think that the Daily Worker | * * . a paper of the working class, he! Leading Communist Party offi- il me how much salary does| cials in the Soviet Union receive get? The tone in which he| No more than the average wage of the gave me the im-| skilled workers in the factories. ion that he thought that Stalin We recommend Joseph Freeman's o large a salary that the Com- “The Soviet Worker” (International Party of the U.S. S. R, does) Publishers, $1.50) for a detailed e publish it. answer fo these as well as other give the questions about the WT, S. S. By~ | i OM a AR M eg my a the wage and salary system of the U. 8. 8. R. so as to be able to answer these questions and to smash these wrong impressions that he has. Comradely, A. A $ of a book oF | Teromment fy! | At the same time it furnishes an excuse to the | | | TEL Gee aon, { Science In the Service jof Labor--} Article I. published yesterday described the meeting of the So- viet academicians in the House of Culture, at-the same time sketching the history of the Academy of Science during its 200 years’ existence. It conclu- ded with a contrast of the role of the scientists under czarism with their activities on behalf of socialist construction under the preletarian dictatorship in the Soviet Union. il. By D. SASLAYSKY But we do not want to go deep into history. We shall sum up immediately the results—they are evident here, in this workers’ house of Culture, a palatial edifice in the Vyborg district of Leningrad, fam ous for its revolutionary role. A few steps from here stands the me- morial to Lenin at the Finnish Railway Station, Here Lenin step- ped for the first time on Russian soil in 1917. Here was the rallying place of the main forces of the Oc- tober uprising. Here every stone is history. And here, 15 years later, they have met—the academicians and the workers. Most of the peo- ple on the platform are old, and most of the people in the hall are young. The president of the acad- emy, the well known Sayant, Kar- pinsky, is considerably over 80 years. His white hair reaches his shoulders. He is a live chip of the Russia of old. And he shouts now with youthful enthusiasm: “We greet you, Vyborg workers; We are glad to meet for our XV. Anniver- sary among you.” Old workers, delegates from the factories, ascend the platform. They speak of the enormous signi- ficance of theoretical science for Communism. They are proud of the fact that the greatest savants of the Soviet Union are with them. After them, academicians address the audience, and speak of the enormous significance of the prole- tarian revolution and socialist con- struction for science. These are not only speeches on a special oc- casion. They are a summary of the work which has been accom- plished by the new Soviet Academy of Science. rade Ie | IVE or six times a year the acad- emicians meet. They have an exchange of their scientific achievements, they speak about new discoveries. Two of these sessions are generally held in public, at public meetings. with visits to facto:¥s, and excursions to the distant borders of the Union. The Academy of Science informs the whole country about its work, and The first years of dissociation from and distrust of the proletarian revolution on the part of academi- cians are a thing of the past. The working class has been able to win over the academicians to its side. Some of them have joined the Communist Party, and the ma- jority march willingly and con- scientiously with the working class, while remaining non-Party. How did the working class win over these people? By its relation to science, first of all. Second, through socialist construction. The savants have been able to see for themselves that socialist industrial- ization opens up unlimited possibi- lities for science, just at the time when science declines everywhere in the capitalist west. Under Tsarism, the Academy of Science was a vegetating landlord estate. Russian science looked up with envy and respect to the rich scien- tifio institutions of the capitalist countries. The Academy itself was in a wretched state. Only about ten badly equipped institutes were attached to the Tsarist academy. Scientific collaborators could be counted only by the dozen. -The Soviet Academy of Science is surrounded by 90 institutes, mu- seums and laboratories of its own, set up under the Soviet regime. It has up to 1,000 scientific collabora- tors. The magnificence of the equipment is the envy of the in- stitutes of the wealthiest capitalist countries. New scientific cadres hhave sprung up and half of them consist of workers and peasants. Ex-blacksmiths, shepherds, and tailors successfully master viieoreti- cal knowledge. There is, for in- stance, Bendetzky. He is 30 years old; not so long ago he sat in a tailoring workshop and cut out waistcoats. At present he is one of the most intimate assistants of the famous professor of chemistry, | Kurnakov, Azratian, an Armenian, the son of a worker, a refugee from Armenia during the world impe- | rialist war. His family was murdered by the Turks, He, himself, led a | wandering life, was a street Arab and a bootblack in the streets. He is now an aspirant of the Academy | of Science for physiology, and his works, translated into German, can be found on the bookshelves of even well known foreign professors, ... . Reports follow exports, Today the academicians are the guests of the Vyborg workers, tomorrow they will be received by the workers of the “Red Putilovetz.” The audience be- comes familiarised with many fields of knowledge. These are not popular lectures. The Academy of Science is not an evening university. The latest achievements of Science, the most important scientific problems become common property. Here are, for example, the reports made at one of the sessions: Academician Baikov—“How to obtain Iron direct from Ore.” The young savant Fraenkel—“The Theory of Metals.” Academician Komarov — “The New in the Teaching about the Form of Plants.” Of course, not everything is understood by the hearers. But through intercourse with working class audiences, the academicians learn to explain the most difficult questions in language accessible to all. Academicians part company with the special “learned” compli- cated language which is not at all required for genuine science, and serves in capitalist countries only the purpose of insurmount- able barriers between the learned workers. 4 | By ROBERT J. KENTON | (Labor Research Association) 'HE frantic efforts of American capitalism to avoid unemploy- ment insurance has revived an old anarchist idea—the formation of “labor exchange” associations by the jobless. Joshua Warren, an American anarchist leader, estab- lished the first “exchange’ ‘in Cin- cinnati in the early thirties of the last century. : In Seattle, the formation of the Unemployed Citizens’ League by a “labor college” Musie group, along the same line, has recently taken place. Since then it has spread to a great many other cities in the West and Middle West, such as Salt Lake City and Tacoma, as well as cities in California, Idaho and Ohio. A similar scheme is now being introduced in New York City and its sponsors, the Emergency Exchange Association, intend to make this the nucleus for a nation- wide barter system, according to the World-Telegram of December 9, 1932. THE SPONSORS The originators of the New York plan contain such elements as Ernest Angell, an attorney and a leading opponent of the bonus; Jacob Baker, ex-anarchist turned business promoter; the Socialist professor, Leroy Bowman of Col- umbia; the near-Socialist, Stuart Chase;. Russe}l Winslow, former vice-president of the Winslow Skate Manufacturing Co.; two ef- ficiency experts—H. S. Person, Managing Director of Taylor So- ciety, and John M. Carmody, Pre- sident of the Society of Industrial Engineers—and, very ‘appropriately, Professor Frank D. Graham, one of, the American ecoonmic advisors to Fascist Poland in 1926. This is as it should be—a united front of Socialists, fascist advisors, capital- its speed-up and ‘personel’ experts, with an ex-anarchist thrown in for good measure—all imbued with one main idea—the placing of the bur- den of unemployment on the backs of the unemployed. Make the job- less work for their relief funds. This is their purpose. “The purpose of the plan,” we are told, “is to enable the unem- ployed to go to work for each other and to make use of available sur- plus stocks and idle manufacturing and agricultural facilities in order that they may have the advantage of each other's labor, added to the value of the goods purchased with the relief dollar.” (1) This the “friends of labor” are doing, they assure us, So as to give the jobless worker “some degree of security until such time as they re-enter the ranks of normal employment.” The cooperation of the Tammany administration to cut relief has been secured. Five thousand se- lected families are to be the nucleus for the execution of the plan; the money at present given these fami- lies in relief is to be turned over to the Emergency Exchange Associa- tion. With those funds the Asso- ciation expects in time to be able to exploit, the unemployed so success~ fully that it will be able to continue without any further funds from the y. At, this stage the city is to be relieved of the burden of unem- ployinené relief, taxes are to be reduced, and everyone will be happy—that is, everyone but the jobless worker. . 'S is the real basis for the co- operation of Tammany in this “humanitarian schente.” “The country,” we learn, “faces a crisis in unemployment relief. New York City alone faces the problem of supporting at least 200,000 un- employed families . . . at the mi- nimum budget this would require $161,000,000 and this takes no ac- count of destitute single men and K.) Not only {s this true for New York City, the Emergency Exchange Association declares, but it holds equality well for the entire country, “with the rapid decline in thé national income the capacity of business and real estate to sustain’ taxation Js constantly decreasing, while the need for relief increases at an alarming rate.” (1) (1) All quotations are from the as yet unpublished report of the Peg as drafted by the incorpora- Bosses Back New Scheme to Slash Funds for “Relief” DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4, 1933 | THE TECHNOCRATS OFFER A SOLUTION WELLE Me SHOW You" Peres ctency) The ‘Mutual Self-Help’ Racket —© Herbert Hoover and other big | business spokesmen have been saying this for the past three years. | And, today, they are being echoed by the “liberal” sponsors of this Association in an effort to explain away the miserable relicf that thus | far has been doled out by the city and state. HOW THE SCHEME WORKS The operation of the plan is as follows: The city is to be divided into distriets where local exchanges are to be set up. Workers residing in these districts are to be enrolled in these exchanges. A Central Ex- change will act as a clearing house for local exchanges. Some of the significant functions of the local exchanges will be “to facilitate, in every possible way, exchange through the Central Exchange of the labor members of the local for the labor or products of other locals or of farmers and other individuals outside the Mutual Exchange or- ganization.” Another is “to offer the labor of members at current wage scales in exchange for bonds of going concerns, thus enabling the unemployed to risk labor against industry's promise to pay.” The phrase “at current wage scales” shows clearly that the Association intends to pay its workers at the starvation wage scales now in exis- tence. ‘The Association intends to solve the shelter problem by offering property owners “a certain number of hours of services of members of the Exchange System to maintain or improve the premises occupied, or any other properties which he (the property owner) may design- ate;” or “cash payment of taxes or tax exemption in proportion to the time” the workers live in his house, or “credits on the Mutual Exchange for purpose of food or commodi- ties.” Po is et THAT effect will this scheme have on the employed work- ers? Will their conditions be im- proved or worsened? According to the Association, “Competition in the open market is to be strictly avoided so long as relief funds are necessary to finance the Mutual Exchanges. The unemployed will exchange services and the products of their labor on a barter basis (and will themselves consume all they produce), (1) It is antici- pated, however, that once produc- tion and consumption have been set. in motion under this plan, ways will be found to finance these en- terprises so that, as far as possible, the unemployed will be restored to a self-supporting basis.” (2) TO CUT WAGES OF EMPLOYED WORKERS In other words, aft. the initial effort, the System will go into com- petition with employed labor. But the Association vigorously denies this possibility. It says, “Since the destitute now have no moncy whatever and therefore no pur- chasing power, and since their products and labor will all be used by themselves or by persons ex~- Veiaatieeentines ‘ members like myself.” changing goods or services for the goods or services supplied by the System, this plan will in no way come into competition with com- mercial business.” This is indecd a clumsy excuse. In the first place the relief that the city is now forced to give the unemployed en- ables the latter to @ cer- tain amount of purchasing power; this is admitted by the Association itself to be equal to 4 per cent of the total retail sales in New ‘York City. Secondly, as the last half of the quotation shows, it will come into competition with commercial business, reSulting in general low- ering of wages in the industries af- fected, commensurate with the success of the scheme, For the (2) phrase in parenthesis was, signifi- a: pas geri out, indicating learly wnemployed are to be exnlofied: by there “friends hha ‘ In the original report, this | PR Sean a a ry TO PRODUCTION—AND 3 WITH AIS HEAD Hap REMOVED HE WILL Me AAVE ANOTHER Fs Wiaerals [ss HEAD 1§ NOT ESSENTIAL |. MOUTH LESS plan provides for the exchange of goods and services in exchange for goods or services by outsiders. This means that the outsiders will purchase from the System, in preference to purchasing from regular commercial concerns, but only if the System's prices are {| lower, since otherwise there will be no incentive for outsiders to trade with the System. However, commercial business will endeavor to meet this new competition by also reducing prices. ‘To reduce prices they will reduce costs, which means reducing wages. On the other hand, if the Associa~ tion decided not to have dealings of any nature with outsiders, this method also would increase the number of unemployed. For the sponsors admit that the relief fund makes up approximately 4 per cent of the retail sales. This will mean that many workers who are now employed, providing even the few necessities purchased by the un- employed, will be likewise forced into the ranks of the jobless. The process does not end there, since it represents the destruction of a market. The process is like a roll- ing oranes, which constantly grows in size, THERE is the control to be lodged | in such an organization? On this point the report of the com- mittee is plain enough. Control is to rest in the hands of the original sponsors of the scheme: “The gov- erning powers of the Association will be. vested in a Council, two- thirds of which will be self-per- | petuating and the remaining third elected by majority vote of the members of the Association in good standing. The Council will be com- posed in the first instance, of the incorporators who will have the power to determine the size of the Council.” The dozen incorporators thus re- tain for themselves, forever, con- trol over the organization. It would bé difficult to find a more brazen dictatorship over the working class. In . ordinary life an employed worker at least knows how much his miserable. wages will be at the end ofthe week. In the Associa-~ tion, however, even this is denied him. The membership card which every unemployed worker must sign, reads as follows: “I under- stand that the Exchange is not an employer and makes no guarantee beyond the right to a fair share in'the goods and services avialable as a result of the labor of other He is thus forced to accept, in advance, what- ever the Council decides is a fair share. He himself has no say since the determining vote is cast by the self-perpetuating incorpor'a- tors, bi How do the sponsors gain from the operation of this unemploy- ment racket? First, they will be in control of an immense organization —immense since unemployment becomes an increasingly normal feature of capitalism. Second, the Association intends “to offer,” we saw, “the labor of members at current wage scales in exchange for bonds of going concerns, thus enabling the unenyployed to risk jJabor against industry's promise to | pay.” Let us suppose that the method proves a “success”; that through the labor of its members the System asquires control of various factories. The factories will not belong to the workers who had slaved in them, but to the As- sociation which alone determines what each worker will get. Unem- ployed’ workers may later acquire jobs, but the factories will still be controlled by the incorporators, PURCHASE OF SCHEME The main purpose of this scheme is, as we have seen, to place the entire burden of relief on the backs of the unemployed workers them~ as | selves, and to prevent their mili- tant struggles for real relief and for unemployment. insurance. Wherever such: schemes have been tried the workers have suf- fered, In Seattle, the workers re- cently have’ had their relief from the qity cut in half as the result of their too great reliance on a “self- help” labor exchange project. On the other hand, militant struggles for relief have improved relief con- ditions of the unemployed, as = A Contribution to the |American Proletarian Novel TO MAKE MY BREAD, by Grace Lumpkin, The Macaulay Co. $2.50 MONG the various. flowing into the broad stream of revolutionary literature, there is one that is central, that is always currents distinguishable for its strong, straight onrush, that never loses itself in the merging with the literature of the fellow-travellers. It is the literature of the prolet- ariat. . wobbly song of Joe Hill, a rhe- torical mass recitation, a crude sketch by a worker corespondent— yet it is the weapon with which the ing class is dealing decisive at the literary arsenal of the enemy; it is the literature that will arise on the literary ruins of the enemy. To this current in titerature belongs Grace Lumpkin’s recently published novel “To Make My Bread,” % The subject matter of To Make My Bread is drawn from the life and struggle of the newly formed mill-proletarians of the Southern mountains. In the textile region of the South where the elements of an early industrialism have mani- fested themselves, there is being re- peated, in some of its essential characteristics, that grim and brutal chapter in modern history known as the “primitive accumulation of capital.” As in England, where the foundation of the capitalist mode of production had its classic form, we haye here the sudden and for- cible transformation of the rural population into factory workers; we have here, by direct and indi- rect methods, by explusions, by c9- ercions, by cajolings, the expt priation of the agricultural hill- people from their land-strips and their homes, the divorce of the town artisans from their simple tools and workshops, and their im- pressment into the industrial pro- letariat,‘into the reserve army of unemployed. The intense exploita- tion, the capitalist rationalization of industry, have resulted in mass unemployment and misery, in body and mind-wrecking child labor, in destitution, brutalization, apathy, bewilderment, painful hankerings for the past in the mountains. And along with these—the first unclear murmurings of the wage-slaves, the self-recognition of the class, the emboldenment to struggle, the com- ing to grips in the life-and-death conflict of the mill workers against the mill owners: ape RACE LUMPKIN comes to the village life on the Smoky Moun- tains with the memories of a native. Her scenes of the drab rural exist- ence with its privations and painful insecurity are intimate and auth- entic. The dialect of the moun- tain-people is simple, idyllic, re- minding you, in its quality, of the warm folk-rhythms of the Irish | countryside in the one-act plays of Synge. We get a feeling of intimate | onlooking when the dapper young man, a stranger to the hills, ap- pears before the simple farmers with talk of the town-life down below, with glowing promises of houses, mansions, of fine clothing, of high earnings for the women folk as well as for the men, of a grand education for the little ones, We feel the intensity of the drama- tic irony when Emma exclaims: “Hit's like the Israelites a-going to the Promised Land.” We wince at the ‘unconscious foreshadowing in the words Granpap adds: “Only, I hope the Lord don’t leave us in the wilderness for forty years.” At the very moment when these ten- derfoot proletarians set out on their historic trek down to the mills, we realize their vast blindness to their irrevocable course, when Granpap, voicing the feelings of so many of the others, assures -himself: “I'm aiming to stay from the hills no longer than need be.’ Yet, one has the feeling that the full momentousness of this class drama is not given adequate pre- sentation in To Make My Bread. The description of the broad out- lines of an epoch in transformation is fay too miniature; the mighty reverberations of a proletariat in birth, in awakening, in first battles, reach us far too faintly. In miat- ter, the novel is epical; in treat- ment it thins into an idyll. The very presentation of the mountain- life, the long, drawn-out, particul- aristic descriptions, the lingering attachment to the mountain-scene, the great slowness with which the drama develops, give evidence of a certain fetishism of local color, a fetishism having its root, per- haps, in autobiographical un= foldment, but which may be politically interpreted as a nostalgia, a home-sickness for the rural mountain scene, This un- doubtedly explains why bourgeois critics like Soskin of the New York Evening Post find so much to praise in the first half of the book, although they find so much to decry in the second half, in which there occur the transition to urban proletarian life and the open class conflict, Pai ems ECAUSE it is among our initial American working-class novels, in a sense ‘a guide for those still to come, To Make Bread should be subjected to an analysis from which we should wring lessons in, developing our ciass literature. promise that it would not reduce unemployment relief by 50 per cent ~as had been announced. A similar demonstration in St. Louis forced the return to the city’s payroll of 13,000 workers whom the St. Louis’ Officials had dropped on the plea of “economy.” The “way out” proposed by the A Review by V. J. JEROME. It may be but a doggerel + To Make My Bread has present in it elements of the pro- letarian novel; but it cannot be said to pletely into the proletarian novel, 0 i re S against the richly detaileg mountain-life, the scenes of the industrial class conflict, of the great Gastonia strike, are much too slightly rendered, sometimes resulting in deficiencies that bring about a weakening of the politicg! force of the work. An instance dy point is the very intonsequential half-page-long description of the smashing of the strikers’ reliei } store—one of the outstanding mow ments in the history of the great strike. The very nature of. the book convinces one that this per~ functory handling of that historie scene is not due to an avoidance of, the clash of the class war, but rather, perhaps, to a sense of ing adegacy in the author to do the scene justice. Yet one cannot help reading into this omission an unconscious fear of stylistic of~ fense against a work that is, for the greater part, written in a per~ vasively muted tone, And is it not this loyalty to the pervasive style which has led the author to employ soft indirections and muffled tones for ideas an@ purposes that call for bold, oute spoken terms? When organizae tions built and maintained by the working class come to the aid of the strikers with legal defense and financial relief, what revolutionary purpose is served in a novel that is naturalistically faithful to the min- utest detail of the mountain-life it describes, if it refers vaguely to “one of the women relief workers,” or mentions merely that “the union. lawyer was getting their names in order to bail them out with money sent by workers and those sympathetic to workers.” The workers could not carry on revolu~ tionary mutual aid merely through sporadic means of “workers and those sympathetic to workers” Without organization the workers can extend one another no effec- tive relief and no legal aid in strikes or in class struggle victimi- zations. The names of the organie zations that came forward with heroic solidarity to aid the Gas~ tonia strikers and their families were the International Labor Dee fense and the Workers Interna- tional Relief. Have not their names a place in a realistic novel of a historic dramatic conflict in which. they played principal parts? e- s2x8 (HEN we pass from these critical observations to the considera- tion of the positive contributions of To Make My Bread, we come upon qualities embodying principles that affect the very destiny of the prole- tarian novel in America. Let. us take the subject of the book, All too few have been the writers that have drawn for their material on the rich and inspiring revolutionary tradition of the American working class. Still unrendered into stimu- jating revolutionary literary forma are the great heroic struggles, the deeds, the martyrdoms, the vit the lossesand the advances of the American proletariat. ' Now most especially, against the increasing advocates of American exceptional- ism,—of a non-revolutionary out of the capitalist crisis for the Aiuerican working class, of a basic * “American” revisionism of Marxism, the American revolutionary novel- ists must feel themselves called upon to come forward with stirring presentations of the traditional militancy and revolutionary fervor of the American workers: the nae tive, the foreign-born, the white and Negro toiling masses. Grace Lumpkin shows the way by dramae tizing the great Gastonia strike, 9 Tae e Make My Bread represents @ heigthened political level in the development of the American re- volutionary novel in that it is free from the: condescension of class utopians who come to lead the poor people. We have here, although only toward the very end of the book, a proletariat which recognizes that with its own or- ganized strength it must wage its struggles, that its = must give forth its leaders, Jonn, the moun= tain-born, the new prolet comes forward as leader. John of the local working class, John, whom as a boy, we have heard called “white trash” by the rich boys, the living, palpable, unheroie John, leader yet part of the mil hands on strike. To Make My Bread envisages the struggles. of the workers not only against the capitalist structure, but against its huge, complex structure—the State, the the loathsome charity societies, the various open and subtle age of physical and mental It sees the struggle of the workers as the struggle of masses side by side with the as a war against the virus of 1 chauvinism. It sees the victc outcome of the workers’ only in the overthrow of the italist class. It sees the reales tion of that outcome only the basis of a revolutionary n oe through revolutionary , ip. unemployment insurance—an tempt to steer into a blind the struggle for immediate BLACK BELT SKE’ CONTINUE TOMOR: Because of the publica of Comrade Jerome's review, sketch from have realized itself com~ « if @