The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 12, 1933, Page 5

isp agente ae a THE SORDID SCENE Feeent Fiction in N CHICAGO, U.S A. ‘Century of Progress” Symbolizes Depths of| Corruption of Capitalism By N. 0. CONRAD F all the gutter sheet accounts used to prove that “national re- ery” from the crisis is’ on the way, the World's Fair in Chicago is used as the most as a shining example. Qriginally it was expected that a people would attend the ai erk tence, On June 27, one month r the opening date, the capital- papers reported an attendance f slightly over 2,000,000 paid ad- nisions, A large percentage of these paid admissions, it must be ibered, are tickets that many forced to buy some ‘Oo or three years ago. not buying these $5 books of ti: ets at that time would have lost their jobs. COMMERCIALISM REIGNS Commere'alism rules the Century Of Progress World’s Fair in Chi- cago, One enters the grounds with the feeling that plenty of money will be needed before the -day is done end you leave the “Bair grounds. And to see all af-the Werld's Fair one will/have tospend soven or eight days there at an ad- mission price of 59 ce: pereday. This 50 cenis edmits you té-the Fair grounds only for one «day. ess pgonis praise the number. of exhibits, but these free exhibits outnumbersd by the conces- Ss whete an admission is charged. 'WANTY-FIV CENTS is thé ad- mission to the Belgian Village. You pess the gates and find your- | self treneferzed to quaint surreumd- ings with an artificial old-world atmosphere. Every. building...’ the Village @ score or a. “shoppe” pwhere. dimes, quarters and) -half | dollars or more are necessaty to puchase the cheep home-made. or manufactured toys, trinkéts;—jew- | elry or souvetulzs displayed on the counters, most of which canbe purchessd in. any 10-cent store.on State St. Cameos of Jesus can-be purchased by his faithiul follew- ets. In asmell temple within ¢he Belgia:. Village is. displayed- the » & $250,000-0il origin, Flemish, Y perfume over vou out of bottle+ja- whe sre masqueraded--as maids, spray imperjed belled de in Germany.” acs ume is sold in the Streets of Paris concession, the Italian ex- hibic and ceverel other European stqtes. part! ing at the Cantury of Progress. “ “LIVING POSING MODELS VISIONS. DART: © SEE PARIS NITE LIFE” All for’ 25 cants besides the 25 | cents admission you pay to see the | Strects of Paris. This is only “éne | of the many concessichs within the | Streets of Too **. “Hit the targe. and roll the girl out of bed” is another at 15 céhts a throw. A third reads “Colénic Nudiste’—Prix: D'Butres 16 cente. On every wall on the buildings within the Sirssts cf Paris i¢ + warnthg to tho »| too much of American made beer |in “Harry’s Place c* any of ‘the many sidewalk cafes.” “Defense durnier contre les murs” translate']—do not urinate agairist tho wall. a We glean this from the Chicago Daily News of Juné 27, 1933. . “Frenchmen visiting the Streets of Paris concession at the World's Fair have informed the French consulate here that they are dis- pleased with this ‘nudist’ repre- sentation of life in the capital of France. The French consul re- quested that the official insigtia of the French Republic be. re- moved from the © gates.” the Streets of Paris one would “a Pag the impression that side cafes, nudiste colonies and stu men and women huddle together to keep out the damp, chilly night 3 and the barricaded streets of aris of days gone by and days x¢t ik Crossing the Midway from one iside to the other yout dodge the col- Hege students dressed in brightly- yeolored shirts and shorts, who are ng rickishaws occupied by tired ee men and their pudgy vives, A university education is te= quired to play the part of a coolie the Century of Progress. Of the 3,000 guides and push. originally hired for the. ‘orld’s Fair, almost 2,000 have. peen laid off and others are laid . ” a See LOSE to the southern entrance to the Fair grounds is the “Days ’49” concession. The barkers e experience some difficulty in g customers even at 10 cents fission. Inside, crude wooden during the five months of its | Workers | who might drink | of the early. mining days | in the West line the L-shaped street and cowboy performers twirl their lassos or shoot at balls in the air for the tors’ amusement. A funeral establishment with a dance halls, bar rooms and a gam- bling joint occupy these frame buildings. “Aren't you working here any more?” a cowboy asks a Mexican girl. walking the et in the min- ing village. “No,” she answers, “I can't work for nothing. | We enter the home industrial arts group, one of the free ex- | hibits at the Fair. At some of these free exhibits, high pressure salesmen are at hand to take or- | efforts are made to obtain your | name and address. (Mulions of unemployed who sleep under bridges, in parks, in Hoovervilles, or clese to the gar- bage dumps sleep on piles of filthy razs, old springs and mat- tresses, stacks of newspapers, and cook out of tin cans or kettles seuttled out of the dumps.) * General Motors, Chtysler and Nash have their own buildings wherein are exhibited th late: types of motor cars and photo- graphic exhibits of the first auto- otive cars made, showing prog- in motor and body construc- r tion from earlier days. (Farmers in Kansas and other states are harnessing teams to their 1925 models, being unable to purchase sasoline.) In the Travel and ‘lransport progress in rail. motor and sovtation form the bulk of e exhibit. (All the railroad workers in the U, 8. are facing a 22 ver cent vednetion in wages. Thousands | ‘pen fhoucands of workers ride freight trains all over the coun- employment that xist. And almost a million homeless youth hitch hike on ail the transcontinental high- wavs of the nation unable to find work.) In the Social Science Building is an artist’s interpretation of Prest- | dent Roosevelt's New Deal. (Seventeen miil’on memployed walkthe streets and hiehways of America, Nwmercus strikes of ‘verkers sgainst low wages and intolerable working ccuditions. Rebellien in the laber camps—a wart ef Roosevelt’: New Deal— against noor food, nnsanitary conditions and semi-mil'tary dis- cialine.) At the exhibit of the Interna- tional Harvester Comvany. the verv latest types of mowing machines, tractors, combines and other aari. cultural equipment is on. display. “(At the International Harves- fer Comnany commun'ty gardens, located in the 8.690 West section on Irving Park Blvd, Chicago. emoleyees of the Harvester trust and their wives amd children work in small natehes ef garden with their bends, hoes, rakes or hand enltivator:.) In the Electrical Buftding. the mest modern and up-to-the-minut> electrical couipment for home. office, institution or fac- tory. (Many workers’ have lost their homes because many factories are closed. In the hardware stores vart-time workers who have had their electricity or gas turned off —being unable to pav the high vrices charged by the utilities trust.) Florida, Georgia, Alabama and ether stetes of the Sunny South, ‘ecated in the Court ef States, have ) exhibit such products of the South as sugar cane, cotton and / manufactured cotton lucts, fruit and nuts, lumber and other prod- ucts native to those states, (The chain gang {s a common sight along any of the state or county highways in states south of the Mason and Dixon line, The chain gang is just as com- ng cotton ele Lies groves or woods. No gangs, however, are exhibited in the Conrt of States or any other part of the Century of Progress.) And so on ad nauseum. This is the real World's Fair, dead dummy lying on the floor, | ders for the products displayed, or | is exhibited | of Chicago kerosette lamps are on | displey and sold to unemployed or Reviewed by ALAN CALMER. EVERAL years ago, a German of proletarian literature in his country, remarked: “One important | task for us is the creation of a mass literature portraying not only the | immediate struggle of the revolu- | tionary proletariat, but also com- batting the pernicious influence of bourgeois literatw There must be literature of this kind .. . ef- | ficiently combatting the flood of | unwholesome, thrilling fiction turn- ed out by the bourgeois publishers.” | If this is true of Germany, it ap- | | | plies even more directly to the America scene, where the publica- tion of dime novels and magazine thrillers is still a major industry. Although the economic crisis has veduced the number and the cir- culation of these periodicals, they still remain the literature of the masses. They are still devoured by factory hands and by the chil- dren of the petty-bourgeois mass- | es, | * * HE bulk of these tales still deal with the old themes of adven- ture, mystery, and love. More than | ever before these stories serve the function of drug-and-dream litera- | disillusioned masses. | ture for the In addition, the economic crisis has created a new field of popular fic- tion, in which unemployed in the | breadlines are represented as buins | and racketeers and in which white- ly brave and conquer the “de- pression.” Finally, a number of serialized novels, choked with ob- scene vilifications of the Soviet people, are being fed to the Amer- ican masses in the cheap maga- zines, The American revolutionary lit- erary movement has built up no protection against this gassing of the American masses, In one field, however, a counter- offensive has been launched. The Cooperative -Publishing Society of | Foreign Workers in the USSR. has started to issue cheap, paper- backed translations of stories and novels dealing with the strugglés and triumphs of the Soviet people. The three booklets under review are examples of this good work. White Stone is a novelette by a worker correspondent who has de- veloped into a talented fictionist. It is an excellent character sketch of a competent Russian worker, veteran and hero of the Civil War, who is possessed with an individ- ualistic ideology. Under the pres- sure of responsibilities at “White Stone,” a backward region where phosphorites are mined, he realizes that “as time went on, it would be individual, as a naked man on a barren island.” Commissar of the Gold Express is a novel dealing with the adven- turous years of the Civil War. It is a thrilling story of a courageous Bolshevik, Rebroy, who outwits the | Social-Revolutionaries and the Czechs in the Urals. |. The Ferry is a bookful of stories dealing with the struggles of the Oyrats in the Altai Mountains, near | Mongolia. In it we witness episodes | is the rise of a backward nomadic | people to the stage of the build- | ing of socialism. One of the most interesting sketches is The Grave of Urmat, a story of how a native | Komsomolets defiés the supersti- tion of generations to build a col- lective farm at the foot of the | hill on which Urmat, the sorceress, | ts buried. In another, Den the | Komsomolets, we sare given a fine psychological picture of the Clash between individual antagonism and social duty. * * 8 | heed these booklets repre- sent only the beginning of an attempt to counteract the vile stories about the Soviet Union. Many more of these stories must be made available to English readers. Moreover, their circulation must be extended. Ways and means must be devised to make them reach a5 many people as the capitalist-mass publications, which ate sold in mil- lions of newsstands, drugstores, and confectionary shops on every Main Street and Back Street in America. HISTORY OF RUSSIA OUT WHEN M. N. Pokrovsky’s Brief History of Russia was first published in the Soviet Union, Lenin wrote the author: “I congratulate you very heart- ily on your success. I like your new book ‘Brief History of Rus- sia’ immensely. The construc- tion and the narrative aré ofi- ginal,” International Publishers has just issued the English translation of Hoty: volume of this important work. The book is issued in two edi- tions. The regular cloth edition sells at $2.50 a copy; the Marxist Library edition, at $2; obtainable at bookshops or direct from Inter- national Publishers, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York City, the Soviet Union critic, in discussing the problems | collar heroes and heroines daunt- | more difficult to go on living as an | DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 12, 1933 man and earth and sky, to work at six in the morning, by the lake of brimstone, The plum-trees soften his heart, | Wake up, wake up! like tigers, mad, yellow tigers at their cage. ‘Wake up! of th fiendish cauldrons, like an escaped madman, Wake up! Clepak, | villages, Clepak, | in the graveyard, graveyard. yard, Clepak. AMERICAN FUNERAL!) mill!” great steel coffin, AMERICAN FUNERAL!) funeral, Teves. STRANGE FUNERAL. ICAN FUNERAL. (From “May Da; A Strange American Funeral in Braddock By MICHAEL GOLD Listen to the mournful drums of a strange funeral Listen to the story of qa strange American funeral In the town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, Where steel-mills live like foul dragons burning, devouring It is spring. Now the spring has wandered in, a frightened child in the land of the steel ogres, And Jan Clepak, the great grinning Bohemian on his way Sees buttons of bright grass on the hills across the river, and plum trees hung with wild, white blossoms, And as he sweats half-naked at his puddling trough, a fiend The green grass-memories return and soften his heart, And he forgets to be hard as steel and remembers only his wife's breasts, his baby’s little laughters and tne way men sing when they are drunk and happy, He remembers cows and sheep, and the grinning peasants. and the villages and fields of sunny Bohemia. Listen to the mournful drums of a strange funeral Listen to the story of a strange American funeral. Jan Clepak, the furnaces are roaring ‘The flames are flinging themselves at the high roof, like It is ten o’clock, and the next batch of mad, flowing steel is to be poured into your puddling trough Wake up! wake up! for,a flawed lever is cracking in one Wake up! and wake up! for now the lever has cracked | and the steel is raging and running down the floor O, the dream is ended, and the steel has | swallowed you forever, Jan Clepak! Listen to the mournful drums of a strange funeral, Listen to the story of a strange American funeral, Now three tons of hard steel hold at their heart, the bones, flesh, nerves, the muscles, brains and heart of Jan ‘They hold the memories of ‘green grass and sheep, the plum-trees, the baby-laughtets, and the sunny Bohemian And the directors of the stecl-mill present the great coffin of steel and man-memories to the widow of Jan And on the great truck it is borne now to the great trench And Jan Olepak’s widow and two friends ridé in a carriage behind the block of steel that holds Jan Clepak, And they weep behind the carriage-blinds, and mourn the soft man who was killed by hard steel. | Listen to the mournful drums of a strange funeral Listen to the story of a strange American funeral. Now three thinkers are thinking strange thoughts in the “O, Tl get drunk and stay drunk forever, I'll never marry woman, or father laughing children. Til forget everything, I'll be nothing from now on Life is & dirty joke, like Jan’s funeral!” One of the friends is thinking in the sweet-smelling grave- AS a Gertick lowers the three tons of steel that held Jan (LISTEN TO THE DRUMS OF THE STRANGE “Tl wash clothes, Il scrub floors, I'll be a fifty-cent whore, but my children will never work in the steel- Jan Clepak’s wife is thinking as earth is shovelled over tie In the spring sunlight, in the soft April air, (LISTEN TO THE DRUMS OF THE STRANGE “Tl make myself hard as steél, harder, Til come some day and make bullets out of Jan's body, and shoot them into a tyrant’s heart! The other friend is thinking, the listener, He who listened to the mournful drums of the strange Who listened to the story of thé strange American funer! And turned as mad as a fiendish cauldron with cracked LISTEN TO THE MOURNFUL DRUMS OF A LISTEN TO THE STORY OF a STRANGE AMER- ” An Anthology of Masses-Lib-raior verse) Song of the Eagle Prohibition is responsible for the depression in this one. Reopen the breweries and prosperity will come pouring out beer bottles from around corners. A stfong ap- peal to the war to veterans organize themselves into fascist gangs! Elmer the Great Joe . Brown in Ring Lardner's famous baseball story. And what baseball! In a potiring rain, with the score even in the last half of the last inning ap:d the bases loaded and even with the pitcher throw- ing crooked balls, “Babe Ruth” Joe Brown does the expected— knocks out a home run, wins the game, the world series, the money and the girl, Nuff sed. ‘ Minute Movie Reviews Hell’s Holiday The actcompatiying mcnologue in- troduced between the scenes of this official world war documentary by a slick te®.gued orator turns this film that réveals the brutality and hor- ror of imperialist war more. vividly than any studio film—into actual propaganda FOR war. Heroes for Sale The central theme in this “New Deal” movie is that breadlines are not so bad and that workers are unemployed because of laziness and the introduction of improved ma- chinery by heartless bosses, to say” not! of the red menace. The most jogic of receit Holly- wood movies, y O'Connor in his . “Mellon’s Millions: The Bi- | ography of a Fortune.” Buh cine Songs for |Workers’ Children | PIONEER SONG BOOK, Published |, by the New Pioneer Publishing Company. 32 pp. Price | Written and edited by Harry Alan | Potamkin. Music by Gertrude |. Rady. Decorations by D. Marya. , ‘Reviewed by SASHA SMALL Pak ake | QHTLDREN marching through the if treets, pale and maybe hungry, their..shoes are kind of torn and | ‘theif’ skinny elbows stick torn sweaters—but they marching and the sun i and they want to sing— | “Emtpty is the cupboard, no pil- | low for the head | Weare the hunger children who fight for milk and bread We are the hunger children who fight for milk and bread | Weicare the workers’ children, | who must Who must be fed.” Children sitting around a camp fire, happy tanned faces, glisten- ing black ones that reflect the glow of the fire—they want to sing— “Hiking, swimming, camping, ball We want these for children all Workers’ children come with us, We're the sons of Spartacus.” Childrén, tired and worn, walk- ing béside their tired and worn patents on the picket line, staring hack defiantly at the cops, need- ing ‘something to show their de- | fiance, want to sing— “The kids are having a peach of ® time, parley vous The kids are having a peach of a time, pariey vous The kids are having a peach of a time Kicking the cops from the picket line, Hirky Dinky, part-ley vous.” And now hers is the Pioneer Song Boox—24 songs between bright red covers with singing chil- dien marching across them—24 songs for children to sing wherever they, ave. The old songs of strug- @le and new ones written by Hatry Alan Potamkin who knew what Kids like to sing. Comrade HAP was able to catch the sounds of children’s voices and turn them into words and jingles. The book was one of the last pieces of work he did before he died. It was ready on the day of his funeral. “He-tock a lot of the old Mother Goose rhymes and translated them into songs for wofkers’ and farm- ers’ kids, leaving enough of the fk in them and adding the fight théy needed to make them real. Like this one: “Sing a song of profits, starving | workers die, | Nine and fifty rich men ‘have all the pie Some day when set before them, with many a groan and cty They'll find a hammer and sickle carved on every pie The same as did Tzar Nicholas How cowld the old guy sing But wasn’t that a dehdy dish to , St before a king? : * bhi PIONEER SONG BOOK is Made up attractively enough to Tival-any of the expensive, fancy books published for pampered rich kids. Marva Morrow’s illustrations on almost ‘every page catch the SPitit. of the songs arid put them into life. they “HONOR. POTAMKIN. . PHILADELPHIA, Pa.—The chil- dren and councilors of the Work- érs International Relief Camp at Lumbetville have arranged a series of entertainments in honor of the memory of Harry Alan Potamkin, who was so well loved by the chil- dren of the working class. ‘Saturday, August 12, on the camp #bounds a play by Potamkin will be: acted by the children, a chalk talk by Al Levon? on Potamkin and @-pageant by the children will be Presented. z PL nN 9 NEWARK, N. J—The Jack Lon- don Club has joined with other working class organizations in honoring Harty Alan Potamkin. Talk with By BEN FIELD. MET him on the road while he was footing it back to Fort Slo- cum, New York State forced-labor camp. A former cabby. He had been out for a day on a special pass. A short gaunt worker with sallow cheeks and a submissive smile. Forty-five years old. No family. The boss system never gave him a chance to settle down. Talk to him for five minutes and you get a picture of that large sec- tion of workers terrorized and crip~ pled by capitalism’s club and pistol. He’s been camp for three weeks. They are going to send the men, all vets, out somewhere west, some say to California. of the vets came to camp with feet sticking out of their shoes and clothes a puff of wind could blow off of them. They are divided into three classes, according to age, Jobless Cab Driver Gives Inside Picture of Life in Roosevelt's G & Some of the men are more than 60, The food ain’t so good as what you get at home, poor as that is. It's steamcooked, and the coffee is got a different taste. There's plenty of it. They had @ lot of young fel- lows down in the camp at first. They sure raised the devil, tail a- flying. The guards were called out after them. But the guards couldn’t .do anything. plumbing and the electric wires. ‘They threw the hash all around the mess hall. Why? The cabby hes- itates and finally answers, ‘They was young most of them Italian fellows. It doesn’t enter his mind it wasn’t mere deyilry that was egging these boys oh. They were protesting the bad conditions in camp. “THE ARMY KNOWS HOW” A captain, two lieutenants and two sergeants are in charge of the no, camp. All they do now is keep their tents clean, do a little exer- cising, about- facing, forward- marching, etc. No, they don’t give much real military training, Maybe when they get us further out ai give us more of the stuffy the cabby Says. It's better organized than if a civilian ran the whole outfit of 800 men. The army knows how to .do such things better. No, he ain't heard about their preparations for war, ¢ . e i bce were going to be shipped to Vermont to help in the flood control. But the governor of Ver- mont stopped that. He sald that there were enough unemployed men in Vermont that could do such and he 't have the “HE WAS FOOTING IT BACK TO THE FT. SLOCUM FORC Vermont governor. That's all he knows about what happened. Yes, maybe it was the workers of Ver- mont that made the governor tell the president where he gets off. Now they say they're going to take them to California where the big trees are. The men are being given four blankets each. They are going to sleep in pyramidal tents with cots for 24 men. They are going to plant trees, them down so they'll blossom \ better. Maybe they'll put the men on the road. The army officers aren't telling you just what they got on their mind. They've been all given typhoid injections. Sure, it seems like this work will take the jobs away from farmers doing roadwork out in such western states, also from the lumberjacks. That'll knock their wages down to the bottom of the ie Asks the cabby. We got to eat, IF HE COULD GET A JOB The cabby shakes his head. He sure would go back to his old work if je could get a job. He worked for ‘all the big companies, and then for a year for himself. There ain't nothing in cabbing now. The streets are flooded with cabs like mos- quitos.. He remembers the good old days when cabs were getting 40 and 30 cents instead of 15 and 5, Then there was money in it. There's no®money in it now. Is there money in it for the companies? ‘There can’t be, he answers. Lots of gar- ages are being closed. That's right, he has seen new cabs on the street. Maybe the big companies are mak- ing money. He didn’t think of that. 5 pk SRE YELL, he's got to beat it, He'll barrel, But what’s a fellow going know more about things in a | with ~a Page Fiv OF U.S. CAPITALISM Miners and Steel Work Bloody Foe in M “MELLON’S MILLIO} BIOGRAPHY OF A FORTU? by Harvey O'Connor. John D HARRY GANNES. lives a cadaverous | whose family controls v ns of a total value of $6,- 091,000,000. His name is Andrew | Mellon. Of the 59 men who rule | America, according to former am- bassador Gerard, And: Mel! listed second only to Rockefeller and precedes Mor The life story of th inny | sponge who can su so much wealth from the American workers is told in “Mellon’s Millions,” by Harvey O'Connor, a labor journal- ist and formerly head of the Fast- ern Bureau of the Federated Press, Do you want to know what im- perialism is? O'Connor ha: its meaning in the of this sin; | individual. Do you want an ex- | ample of monopoly capitalism? Mel- | Jon has created the most complete | monopoly in the United S the Aluminum Company of America, 40 bubsidiaries in Norway, Italy, Germany. land and India | AN OCTOPUS out of | | 000,000,000, ED LABOR CAMP” lorified Slave-Labor Outfit What is fusion of finance and in- dustrial capital, c ing a f B oligarchy? The Mellon family Andrew Mellon at its head,,controls | the Mellon National Bank, the the Union Trust Co, and 22 other banks with resources of over $2,- linked by a thousand threads to the mightiest corpora- tions in Pennsylvania. and through- out the country, with total assets of nearly $10,500,000,000. Do you want an example, in the living flesh, of what Lenin means | when he speaks of the fusion of the finance oligarchy and the capital- ist state power? Andrew Mellon was secretary of the treasury under three presidents, | dishing out $1,271,000,000 in tax re- funds to the biggest corporations, not forgetting himself to the extent of $7,000,000. “The engine of state power,” says O'Connor, “stood at the Mel- ons’ command, not merely to | wring petroleum concessions from semi-colonial governments, to bless the acquisition of monopoly privileges and to shift tax bur- dens, but for the everyday pro- tection of the family’s property. A formidable army in the Pitts- burgh district alone—state troop- ers, city police, coal and iron po- lice, deputy sheriffs, sp'es—was hired to guarantee the Mellons | and fellow employers against the success of movements aimed at better wages and living conditions. It is this power the miners in Pennsylvania now feel in their strike for higher wages, and for union recognition. O’Connor, how- ever, doesn’t add that John L. Lewis and William Green are just as much a tool of the Mellons and Morgans as the capitalist state and the spies and deputy sheriffs. No war can be fought without placing hundreds of millions into the Mellons’ pockets. Every battle- ship and bombing plane that is built sends dollars rolling into the pockets of the Mellons. Poison gas turns into mo: for the Mellons O'Connor traces the story of the rise of the Mellons from the found- ing of the fortune up to the present day. NDREW MELLON was born to wealth. The story of the growth of the Melion billions is the history of the rise of capitalism in the United States, and peculiarly enough traces the rise of capitalism generally as described by Marx in | Capital” and later by Lenin in | “Imperialism.” | Thomas Mellon, the father of | Andy, Was a tone nd | usuret. Like a buzzard he fed on | the corpses of financial failures. He | amassed his fortune on the mis- fortunes of small mechanics a home owners. Thomas, like Andy bloomed and grew fat on crises. At the end of the Civil War he was | already a powerful financier. laying | the foundation for the Mellon bil lions that the first impe the Spanish-American r, gave a | powerful impetus, and that the last World War launched in its full glory. A FORMULA FOR PATRIOTS Speaking of war, old Thomas Mellon gave his sons some advice. “In time you will come to under- stand,” he told his offspring, “and believe that a man may be a pa- triot. without risking his own life or sacrificing his health.” That should be great comfort to the hundreds of thousands of war vets now statving. Andrew Mellon coitied millions out of the Jast World War. From | his aluminum trust alone he made $20,000,000 in 1915-16, Besides sup- week or two. Thirty dollars » months .ain’t a hell of a lot for a single man. But for the married | fellows it is pretty tough. That's true. And some of them werd in the army and their wounds ain't all healed. He never saw act- ual fighting, but if he had lost an arm or a leg, he wouldn't be taken care of by the government. That's one thing, he knows. Yes, at the camp they examine you and if you ate sick they'll send you home. They want only fit fellows. And no devil-raisers like those young Italians. Sure, they deserve to live and eat too. But they ain't the kind the government wants, says the cabby once more. And with this he shakes hands and says So Long. His pass. from Fort Slocum expires within a few hour ers Face Ruthless and ellon Oligarchy inum for airplanes, the sts manufacture time cooled machine guns composed aluminum and ammonium nitrate a powerful explosive Through his billion dollar corpor- ati Mellon can chisel profits in a thousand ways. Not only does he get them through exploiting the tens of thousands of workers in his most powerful companies suck e- the Aluminum Company of America with its 57 subsidiaries, the Koppers Co., with its 65 subsidiaries, the - Pittsburgh Coal Co., with its 22 as~ sociate eompanies, or the Gulf Oil Corporation, with its 21 subsidiaries. But he gets it in the banks, through tax evasions, through renting com- pany houses to miners, through charging higher prices at his com- pany stores, through graft and cor- ruption of every kind, through spe- cially made tariffs and monopoly prices WARDS labor, the Mellon poi-* icy is expresed by his brother, Richard B. Mellon. “You could not run a coal company without ma- chine guns,” he said. <t Every Pennsylvania miner has looked into,the muzzle of a Mellon machine gun. O'Connor gives the history of | scrip, another method that Mellon has of chiseling profits, taking it out miners. The 1873 crisis broke. H. C. Frick, an associate of Mellon, found him- self hard up. “What more practical then, than to pay his men off in ,Sctup redeemable at the (company) store? It worked so well that wher -good times returned, Frick con- tinued the scrip and it became a_ fixed custom in the western Penn- sylvania coal and coke regions.” NOT AFFECTED BY CRISIS In this day of the “New Deai,” © when Green and Lewis never tire of: telling the workers that labor, cap~ ital and the government are really @ cooperative society, we see how little different their ideology is from that of Andrew Mellon. In 1931 Mellon said: “Both labor and capital are beginning to realize that they have common interests. . .-. Labor as well as capital must think in constant terms and must act in harmony with and not in antag- onism to those great. economic .. laws... .” Green and Lewis used almost these very words to drive the 60,000 Pennsylvania miners back... into the Mellon and Morgan mines. When the crisis came, Melion said prosperity would return immedi- ately but fired over half his work- ers. But his profits stayed up in the tens of millions. The Mellon family’s profits during the crisis, not to count thé hundreds of mil-. lions in reserve funds in his many mighty corporations, is a gigantic - reservoir for unemployment insur- ance. Gtlf Oil in 1931 made $2,- 743,000, hand of $178,420,000; Aluminum’s profits was $10,867,000 in 1930; $4,- 595,000 in 1931, and $4,411,000 paid of the hide of the starved’'* of powdered™"—~ at with a surplus fund at -» out in 1932, Koppers, another Mel- « ‘ lon treasure, saw its assets leap in the crisis years of 1931 and 1932~- from $156,000,000, to $186,079,000. Space does not permit the listing of the other tens of millions except to mention that the Melion fin- ancial structure paid a dividend of 200 per cent in 1983, when the First National Bank of New York, pre- mier dividend-paying bank, paid a ~ mere 100 per cent. ine Sea “MPELLON’S MILLIONS” leaves no secret about one of the great- est sources for the payment of un~ employment insurance if the work- ~ ers can rally their forces to demand and get it. O'Connor’s book is a thorough piece of work on the Mellon family. which is a good slice of present day capitalism. It is excellently written, easy to read. While effectively presenting all the available facts of the Mellon mnillions, O'Connor draws no theo- retical conclusions about the devel- opment of American imperialism. We just learn that capitalism is morally bad but get no historical reasons, and no way out is indi- cated. ‘The mere presentation of facts in this manner—without drawing the inevitable political conclusions— limits the value of this otherwise “S* excellent book. Pennsylvania workers who want to know their main boss should read it. AN who want to study present-day capitalism show d read it, International Publishers is going to make its main facts available to @ larger group of workers who can- not afford to buy the book by is-, suing a popular pamphlet by O'Con- nor on “How the Mellon’s Got Rich.” International Theatre Olympiad Is Deseribec in “Workers’ Theatre”. 'HE fitst account published in America of Workers Theatre Olympiad recent- ly concluded in Moscow, U.S.S.R., app2ars in the July-August issue of Workers’ Theatre. It is the first of a series written by John Bonn, delegate to the Olympiad, repre- senting the League of Workers’ ~ Theatres of the U.S.A. Among other features are a review of the bourgeois dance season by Ocko, “A Film Call to Action,” by the Or- ganization Committee for a Na- tional Film and Photo League, and a one-act play, “The Bulls See Red,” by R. Casimir, A special feature is the an- nouncement of a playwriting con- test (for short plays) “for the pur- pose of selecting suitable repertory for the workers’ theatres through- out the United States.” The con- test closes September 30, 1933. “Workers? Theatre” sells for 10 the International ~~ ~ cents # copy, subscription $1 a - year. Address: 42 East 12th St, New York City, er @n Operating Table MELLON:THE STORY - |