Our Country Is Arriving At the Half-Way Mansion
Cohen, Joseph E.
By Joseph E. Cohen Our Country Is Arriving At the Half-Way Mansion America Has Turned a Very Sharp Corner—Report on Social Trends and Interest in Technocracy Significant—Now on to...
...This God-baiting business is a trifle wearisome...
...And the questions asked of me were decorous to the highest degree...
...To mo there is a* much questionable sanity in the *nti-theist who g*ta bloody eyed and convulsive as he biffs Jehovah about th* rostrum a* than ia in that saddest of all humans, th* Billy Sunday evangelist . . . and his saw dust trailer...
...were the March Wind...
...THE CHATTERBOX Our Poet Addresses a Crowd of Free- Thinkers and Becomes Sad at the Pasttime of God-Killing By S.A...
...Uprooting woodland*, Lushing the oceant...
...They are banging—and not with bare knuckles...
...Whether the chiefs of the party soon to be vested with full government power arrive at an understanding of how serious the crisis la will decide how readily they meet their new responsibility...
...Piecemeal the jagged industrial trouble is puttied and painted...
...Accepting the findings in the report on social trends, America has turned a sharp corner and entered its half-way house...
...But then 1 may be misjudging . . . You are not of the kind who will shirk . ., Perhaps the depression ha* hit you too, And you're just out of work...
...Soon must be felt the spur to get up and go...
...To a March Wind // 1 were the March Wind, If I held hit passion, I would not watte it In hit wanton fathion...
...They have a mad up against the Church, God, Jesus snd the Holy Ghost, and run along the miniature railroad Una on which these names are stations, and let their lives of protest go at that form of travelling up and down from on* ineffectual dawn to another...
...Not "reluctantly" but lustfully may such prospect of plutocratic dictatorship be relished by the tories...
...I wish they'd leave Him alone, especially the vociferous, blng-banging Atheists, Free Thinkers and their ilk...
...The forgotten millions who are wage-earners are not tapping gently on the door...
...With the challenge of Technocracy and the report of the committee to the President on "social trends," America is knocking on the door of HalfWay House...
...Before spreads out the program of public service which is—on to Socialism I Hapgood Improving INDIANAPOLIS.—Powers Hapgood, Socialist Party's national executive committeeman, who was accidentally wounded several weeks , ago, i* getting steadily better although he is suffering a great deal not only from th* origin...
...There can be no dodging or shirking...
...DeWitt O LORD I Your children mutt sleep in the doorways...
...And thiver on line* for bread . . . When a Father like you should provide them With clothing and food and bed...
...While the farmers by organized force are putting a stop to sheriffs' sales, Washington talks of jacking up the price of some produce...
...But having gained the halfway house, there is no sign the people will surrender to slavery...
...Behind is what is still unfortunately left of the menace of individualism and capitalism, with its industrial breakdown and consequent general horror...
...Being a bit technocratic, I started in to figure out just how much emotional energy units were being wasted in this shaking of fists and spewing of anathema against the sublime Zero...
...wound but also from nrgical mumps Which B0t Infrequently follow an abdominal operation...
...The Clearest Method The clearest method is the adoption by law of the sane hours...
...An upper limit may be put upon Inheritances...
...I am enough of a Free-Thoughter to permit these folk* full freedom of nosethumbing and socking th* living daylights out of any and all man Imaged deities...
...But it will not rest long here...
...But her* my tolerance abate* somewhat...
...Nathan Margolie...
...Here were two hundred adults, all of them articulate, all of them obviously intelligent, thinking folks, getting Holy Rollerish by punting Jehovah around the room, and finding a giddy thrill in that sort of abuse...
...Here and there I interspersed a verse or so in which He was mentioned and then tried to explain just how He managed to enter...
...What combines of oil well owners cannot get out of sale in a dropped market, governors or states secure by militia...
...IN driving toward a way out of its industrial crisis, America has now turned a very sharp corner...
...If it is sound to give the farmers extra money for limited output, it is still more sound to boost wages and sink profits everywhere...
...It seems to me nothing more than another form of fiddling while Rome goes up in flames...
...In this manner alone can be brought together the idle hordes of gold and the millions of idle men,1 after Congress has minded the suggestion in the President's report: "Progressive taxes may be graded at still steeper rates...
...And strangely enough, these people have read Voltaire, Tom Paine, Ingcrsoll and the rest...
...But then, alasl It takes all kind* to make this most possible of all worlds Impossible...
...For the loose nearly-forgotten disputes among Republicans and Democrats in the recent campaign echo like stumbling in the barren wastea of open country...
...And for a change I just speculated and meandered about that nebulous, intangible thing that most of us poets refer to ss God...
...And most of them have a real economic reason for being het up against the existing order...
...I'm always with the underdog anyway, in any kind of company...
...If only I could gather that power together, control it and send it out against the very substantial, material thing called Capitalism, what real effective assistance we might get in this manner for a Heaven on earth, and the godliness in all mankind...
...Instead of yielding political democracy to plutocratic dictatorship America may use its popular government aa a foundation for industrial democracy, through "a larger measure of public control to promote the common welfare...
...To reach the heart of the trouble the government will have to go after the problem of wages, profits and prices .as a whole...
...This sort of procedure gave me a blah taste around the gills...
...In the words of the President's report, hanging over the conduct of the new administration will be the impending danger of "violent While Industry Chokes Reactionaries will not grasp this as the exact result of their relentless effort to seize as their possession as much as possible of the country's wealth...
...Only to will the public purchasing and consuming power cover the total product of industry...
...It was their general preoccupation with just slamming God around as if He really were somebody tangible, and at the same time violently proclaiming Him to be nothing at all really, and then denouncing Him as a Jewish brute, and being responsible for all the ills of mankind...
...Then, as if in protest, I read them an old poem of mine...
...From the American Federation of Labor and the railroad brother1 hoods to our half-way house is presented the claim for the thirtyhour work-week...
...And you just csn't get them to rise up snd fight for a real change...
...If I had hit pattion, I would find utt for it In a grim fathion...
...I felt sorry for the old boy...
...Last Sunday I spoke to a Bible Class of the Freethinkers' Society under the heading, A Poet Speaks About God...
...The ladies and gentlemen who compose that famous Society treated me royally...
...And the more I get about speaking to this specialized group and that, and the more I keep summing up the time, energy and money these well meaning, kind-hearted, fervorfilled folks spend tilting against windmills of religion and philosophic tangents, the more my hatred for this cruel waste waxes in heat...
...Even if prosperity is not found lurking just there, nevertheless progress has been made...
...Poor harassed fellow He must be, with all these sects, culls, religions and poets yammering against him, and praying to Him so madl., so frothedly, so eternally...
...The only course they accept as capitalist business and sound banking is to continue to let industry choke over cuts in wages and drop in public buying power, long hours and unemployv-ment, idle money now estimated at half a billion in the vaults of the big bankers, to say nothing of billions more in reserve out of reach of public service, and concentrated in the hands of the few...
...But inside it is no less out of order...
...CACRELIGIOUS these verses, I'm sure, and they hardly fit in with a family newspaper like The New Leader...
...The poem got over, but my subtle intent slid by without leaving a trace of meaning for them...
...In truth, I'm straining a bit at the halter of my sense of appreciation for hospitality as 1 write this...
...By Joseph E. Cohen Our Country Is Arriving At the Half-Way Mansion America Has Turned a Very Sharp Corner—Report on Social Trends and Interest in Technocracy Significant—Now on to Socialism...
...Again the President's report may f be quoted: "Many have been led to conclude reluctantly that the emergence of tome recognized and avowed form of plutocratic dictatorship ie not far away...
...I would not tpend it In idle emotion...
Vol. 15 • January 1933 • No. 2
