Learning Love and Laughter
Learning Love and Laughter NE of the large mob that la trying to dragProsperity out from her hiding place Justaround the corner la the beamish Mr. GrenvllleKJelser, who used to run correspondence...
...It Is Just too sad for words...
...A poet has written R. There are no strident shrieks or gestures against the gods...
...We figured that they just laughed spontaneously when they saw themselves in the mirrorand realized what murder they were getting awaywith...
...In an age of cruel paradoxes, however, there Is no grimmer contrast, than that of the relation between the priceless benefaction of the commodity, and the fate of the hapless tollers who devote their lives to digging it out of the Inners of the earth...
...Hi street andSeventh avenue, is of vital Importance to the continuance ofthe group's work...
...City and stategovernments are generally agencies of the mill owners In the classonflict and chambers of commerceant no "agitation" that will illsourage Investment of Northernapital...
...He sayshe wants "better and finer representatives of everyrace...
...Attendance at this jolly little class fell off a lotright after the Big Blow down on Wall street in1929, but Mr...
...But If you have a heart as well as an Intellectual appetite, Join In with (he struggle of all the workers for a Socialist world...
...Read "Miner" and enjoy it within your soul aa much as I have...
...Sucha magazine has been a crying needin the Socialist Party, and nowcomes talent marshaling ranks forexactly such a purpose...
...Orborn, that all our ills canbe settled by limiting births among "inferiorpeople...
...But these same folks will go back to their selfish routine of living Immediately after having absolved their Irked consciences with asigh and a profession of willingness to someday, "do something...
...Of course this Is no new argument agaWt birth control and we do not think Itby any means conclusive...
...To Bell County," he writes with that good,old Southern charm, "you and your self-appointedcommittee are just one more nauseating smell...
...Something must be done about it...
...In attending thedance, therefore, not only is an Interesting and stimulating evening promised but also the opportunity provided for securing valuable works of art at auction prices.Rebel Arts has already obtained a goodly amount of publicityin the metropolitan press, evento the extent of a patronizing editorial in the sacroscant "Times...
...Chapel Hill,N...
...Once fairly started, the new organization will draw to its rankscreative artists who are hunger ing to voice revolt but at presenthave almost no single satisfactorymedium through which they mightexpress themselves...
...That is about all...
...Klelser used to give, and is thinking of resuming, to do his share in averting the dumps...
...George Sinclair Mitchell tells the history ofthis class conflict in an Interesting small volume ("Textile Unionism and the South...
...The best answer to a letter like that is to digdown and send such Jack as you have to help defendthe Harlan miners and help organize the miners inWest Virginia The Emergency Committee forStrikers' Relief at 112 East 19th street, New YorkCity, Norman Thomas chairman, la the place to•end the money, The success of the Hebel ArtsRevel Friday night, May 6, atthe A1 ha in in a, i zi...
...The widespreadlliteracy, the color prejudice, andthe fact that many of the workers drawn into the mills comerom rural regions, give a different background and provide special difficulties...
...For a task that might break the backs and make feeble the sinews of a thousand giants, coal la power, smooth, and swift...
...Just who Is to decide this?Who does the selecting...
...He appeals to me to give the book consideration In the light of my known "passionate defense of the miners...
...John Macrae, president of E. P. Dutton and Company, publishers, sends me a personal letter in reference to "Miner," a novel by F. C. Boden, poet of the Welsh collieries, that he has just published...
...After readingthis a couple of times, you then go to a course thatMr...
...For me, I have heard Tschaikowski's "Patbe-tique" played numberless times...
...Bo den's book has broken through, where all tlie revolutionary and Socialist propaganda, protests, parades, and the dreadful tales of Ludlow, Calumet and Harlan have failed...
...At the "Revel," many of thepictures hanging in the exhibitwill be auctioned by HeywoodBroun, McAlister Coleman, andSam DeWitt...
...Smith ought to be an expert on smells...
...And the miners will keep on starving, the poets and novelists will keep creating works of artistic pathos, and the middle classes, and middle class minded workers will persist In sighing piously...
...This is a course in laughter for business men.Great executives were wont to stand around in Mr.Kleiser's office and learn how to laugh...
...This short history willrove valuable to those Interestedn American labor history.—d...
...Just now he Is writing poems for the benefit ofoffice workers who may happen to he a bit depressed...
...No union leaders making speeches, no agitators shouting for organization and solidarity...
...Slavery under the sun is preferable to the thralldom of the starless guts of earth...
...Help them In their battles, organise them In a political and Industrial solidarity...
...In it he explains his reasons for taking on this book...
...Pious and Ineffectual sigh of a charity giving, sentimental, middle class soul It Just so happens that "Miner" la a repressed, finely chiselled and altogether effective work of art...
...I have often been sniffed at by birthcontrollers for having an interest in what they callthe superficialities of changing the economic system...
...And then the row would start up allover again...
...To the flesh that cringes for comfort when the iced winds shriek around gables and chimneys, coal Is glow and warmth...
...And something more than merely "something" must be done about the hell In which our mining folk are compelled .to toil and starve...
...S. A. de Win...
...With such busybudies have nothing to do...
...GrenvllleKJelser, who used to run correspondence courses onhow to be a great, big success...
...Success of Rebel Arts Isa Party matter...
...Unless Partymembers purchase tickets, RebelArts will be unable to establishitself as a permanent workingforce for Socialism...
...Admission at the door will be $1.50...
...Learning Love and Laughter NE of the large mob that la trying to dragProsperity out from her hiding place Justaround the corner la the beamish Mr...
...Boards or professors...
...Like this: "Gossip and Gloom Are not good for you...
...Wehave had several...
...If you want a gripping story of worker's life, the short and simple annals of this English mining town will be an experience beyond the ordinary modern novel...
...Teach them that as long as the mines must pay profit to coupon clippers and owners, hopelessness, starvation and drudgery will be miners' wages...
...But then I have been sniffed at by so manpeople lately that I wouldn't feel quite comfortableif someone wasn't making snoots In my direction.One of the lustiest sniffers around Is this yeahrMistuh Walter B. Smith of PlnevlUe, Ky„ by Gawd.He recently wrote a polite little note, overflowingwith Southern hospitality, to the American CivilLiberties, who plan to drop in on him...
...It is the finest thing that has been done to date on the bitter existence in and about the pit If you like fine writing, it will do your mind good to revel In Boden's craftsmanship...
...Nevertheless, a class feeling Ismerging out of working classtruggles In the South and evenually the ruling classes will haveo resign themselves to labor oranization...
...The South presents a differentproblem in organization comparedwith the North...
...Saveus from that grim catastrophe...
...A world populatedwith little Henry Fairfield Osborns is not exactlyour idea of Utopia...
...Failure can beattributed only to rank and fileindifference concerning a highlynecessary cultural development...
...Though, to be sure, they might get some usefulhints on bow to organize for steady eating byreading some most readable pamphlets recently prepared by Katherine Pollack of Brookwood LaborCollege on trade unions, what politics can do to.help the workers, etc...
...Klelser guarantees that this will drive theblues away from any office worker...
...ISTORY never quite repeatsitself and yet there are interesting analogies between oneperiod and another and one maybe observed today In the reactionof Southern capitalists to the organization of their wage slaves.In the first half Of the nineteenthcentury the textile masters ofNew England led in the measureless exploitation of men, womenand children, established companystores, boarding houses andschools, and provided textile pastors to teach the exploited theheavenly bliss that awaited themafter they hod enriched the capitalist class...
...Books like F. C. Boden'a help immeasurably to startle kind-hearted comfortable people out of their smugness...
...Nearly 1,000people have viewed the current ar^exhibition, but appreciation of theservices and devotion of the artists must take the more practicalform of purchase of Rebel ArtsRevel tickets...
...The big problem to be sflr-mounted It that of raising funds,but this task can be accomplishedlargely by the enthusiastic response of co-workers and sympathizers...
...C, University of North Caro activities of Northern unions andtheir relations with the Southernproblem of organization, the earlyattempts at organization, actlvlties in recent years, including theommunist strikes, the reactions,and results of the modern upheaval...
...So the book ends...
...Then they allshouted "ho-ho" and finally just "ha...
...To eyes that strain peer-lngly into the sable deeps of night, » mi is sunshine and cheerful radiance...
...I notethat he was born in .the sweetly named town ofStinking Creek and it strikes me that odors emanating from Kentucky under the domination of Smithand his sort have about them a sort of home-madeair...
...You can't get us soreabout that...
...It gets me under skin and heart...
...Klelser thinks it needs reviving...
...Among other works, the Rivera lithograph, etchings,paintings, and lithographs of JohnSloan, Eugene Higgins, IrwinHoffmann, Aaron Berkman, Reginald Marsh, Heywood Broun,Joseph Presser will come underthe hammer...
...All they want to know is when and what toeat and nobody has written any very helpful bookson that subject...
...Perhaps a Job In some factory or shop...
...They then proceed to the mine fields, forexample, and teach birth control to the familiesof organized miners...
...But the joker is, what do you mean"better and finer...
...Teach them that Socialism will bring freedom to them and a Just share of the sun...
...The new textile capitalists ofthe South are repeating this history while in recent years theirwage slaves have responded to thetocsin of union revolt...
...Apparently nobody tells us much, for up to now wehadn't known that great executives had to be taughtto laugh...
...Plans are already on foot to Inaugurate regular exhibitions of pictures and undertake, also, the Inception of apublication similar to the old"Masses" and "Liberator...
...Something must be done about It...
...But nowadays everything hasV> be taught.We.read an advertisement of a book the other daysaying that this book would teach you how to loveand now comes word of this course in laughter...
...So do we all, Professor...
...Here Is a picture of poverty, pathos, despair and impersonal cruelty such as any mining village here or in capitalist Europe affords for background against the detail of a young sensitive lad, going Into the pits for sustenance and support of starving parents...
...He proceeds to castigate himself and his class for having enjoyed the delights of warmth and illumination without care or thought about the slave* of the coal pits who provide these Joys...
...O. The Chatterbox COAL la a symbol as well as a substance...
...Faced with the alternative of doing the right thing or muddling through In the ancient and murderous manner, American traditions will be preserved at any cost...
...I -vould begin the other way.I would make It compulsory for scabs and nonunion miners...
...But we have In mind thespeeches we have heard by birth control advocate*,telling us, as did Dr...
...Tndfcc may be obtained at the Rand School BookStore at $1.00 each...
...Another self-appointed rescuer of suffering humanity Is Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn whothinks we would all be sitting pretty if we couldget together on "some wise and judicious means oflimiting the number of births In the world...
...They don't even have to be taught how toeat...
...And my reading of "Miner" draws out my ingrained indignation and fires my protcstant inner being with a 'fuller flame...
...After informing the union that he will treat their memberswho come to Kentucky, "Just as we would suppressa mad dog," he goes on to narrate the number ofbad odors which have assailed his sensitiveness oflate...
...They didthis by first muttering "m-m-m" to themselves.Then they broke out into "hoo-hoo-hoo," openingtheir great mouths good and wide...
...My reaction is nearly always the samo...
...When the Philharmonic Society plays it, and, let us say, Toscanlnl holds the magic wand over the scene, my feelings surgo fuller and deeper...
...Fortunately for the workers they are as yet unaffected by all these new-fangled educational features...
...He runs the whole range of Inhuman experience, body breaking work, soul stifling companionship, explosions*, seeing death In its ugliest shapes, finding love and fearing consummation because poverty forbids, starving through lockouts and strikes, being broken by the piteous dole during layoffs, and crying out each thinking moment for a way out of the blackness...
...To vote Socialist, and take the mines away from profit-hungry owners, to nationalize coal as we have nationalized public safety and health, in the name of national health and security, would be "red, radical and Bolshevik...
...And yet no other solution It possible, for the salvation of an essential Industry that cannot pay dividends to parasitic stockholders, and give a decent livelihood to the producing tollers at the same time...
Vol. 13 • May 1932 • No. 19
