Now is the Moment for Labor To Reach Out for Great Power
Cohen, Joseph E.
Profiles e Nuthouse By Joseph E. Cohen Now Is the Moment for Labor To Reach Out for Great Power The Labor Movement Needs Fast-Growing Membership to Win Things Needed to Combat...
...Instead of unions going when business drops unions will have to grow...
...The play or the piece ia the thing for every creative soul...
...For labor is not satisfied to wait in distress, accept a mere spoonful of relief and to sink deeper in misery...
...Something there is in the thing called genius that denies the flesh and oftentimes the possessor as welt...
...to float down like a laijr breeze-wafted fluff of feather...
...Did it ever occur to you that your mother or father never went about telling the world the details of your conception T Albeit, they were always proud to show you off to the friends and relatives, particularly when you showed promise of brightness and a chance to grow into fine usefulness as a man or woman...
...The unions flourished...
...It goes without saying that being a majority in numbers, if they were together one hundred per cent in their unions the government would be for them one hundred per cent...
...Beyond that is the need for limiting the workweek to thirty hours, raising wages and fixing prices to give buying power the chance to balance production...
...But we have entered upon different times...
...Did Beethoven give one whoop what the literary concert snoopers would say about his work from the scientlflc-pseudo-intellectual angle...
...or what have you...
...Unemployment insurance is being considered seriously in a few commonwealths...
...Aren't we happy enough to be blessed with the chance of sitting before one hundred masterful players and drenching our souls with the nectar that pours from the strings ana reeds and brasses ? . .. Isn't it Just too good to be true that neither on Olympus or in the Valhallas of the past have the gods been fortunate enough to listen to music drawn out of the constellations, and that even we poor mortals by the mere act of hearing are lifted higher than their boasted realms through long and glorious momenta...
...In all this it may seem that labor is turning away from what it has been expecting out of its trade unions to the political field...
...THE CHATTsTJUsOX A Chant of Praise for Groat Music Magnificently Played—But Spare Us the Voluble Comments by Critics...
...Labor has never been so busy as it is now in claiming that the government serve the masses...
...It haa worked out differently in a thousand great examples...
...That was the labor movement curve in the business cycle...
...Those in each trade belong in their union...
...For all that awaits, labor must organize more than ever before...
...Mr...
...And instead of losing in membership, in strength and in ag gressiveness the unions must pick up and reach forward...
...Factory legislation is to be built up and enforced...
...Workmen's compensation laws are to be improved...
...The ordinary rules of harmony, counterpoint and symphonic composition he accepted as readily and as unconsciously as Shakespeare took on the iambic pentameters of his playwritings and verse...
...By S. A. DeWHt DEETHOVEN became totally deaf toward the end of his amazing career...
...What the working people will gain from the government depends on how well they are organized...
...More are following...
...How much they are to win will be shown in how well they bring the nation to stand with them on what they must have, to rise out of the depression and to go ahead to better standards of living...
...I make no pretensions at being a connoisseur at anything, but when I viewed several »f Whistler's muchly criticized "Pots of Paint" I walked away from them with distinct additions to my mental gallery of unforgettable things...
...Olin Downes of the New York Times, famous mualcal critic, will give you his usual informative and critical explanation of today's program...
...And is a man's philosophy or emotional experience always and necessarily a part of his creative work I...
...No longer should they have to' wait in line for "welfare orders," and sip the bitter drops of private or public charity...
...A Task for Labor As each state takes up old age pensions, unemployment insurance, child labor, workmen's compensation and similar humane legislation, the power of the organized labor movement will decide how good such measures are and how quickly they can be amended for the better...
...I simply cannot tell you clearly why my very lnners twist and squirm every time an Olin Downes or some other musical writer gets before the microphone and makes clear to the world with alarming exactness the details of Tchaikowski's personal life as hidden in the folk-themes of his Pathetlque, or just why Ravel and Stravinsky have abandoned the ancient classics for their method of self-revelation and have made bold with the da-da-isms of modern discords...
...Membership Is what counts...
...For that fifteen minutes or so, thanks be aaid for the dial and the flip-switch, and the Beechnut Jaxs Orchestra...
...And just when you...
...Profiles e Nuthouse By Joseph E. Cohen Now Is the Moment for Labor To Reach Out for Great Power The Labor Movement Needs Fast-Growing Membership to Win Things Needed to Combat Depression...
...Heretofore trades unions boomed in good times...
...And what is more, I didn't have to look for the "butterfly" signature to convince myself of the creator...
...To what extent labor laws passed are carried out will likewise depend on what the organized workers do to follow through...
...And I suppose, in Beethoven's time, as in the lifetime of others equally as great in other spheres of creative art, the master was analyzed, berated and begrimed a-plenty, and it took decades after his passing for lovers of music to recognize and drink with great pleasure from the flagons of sound he had filled and left behind to posterity...
...The two go together...
...With the labor market empty and prices going up, it was the right time to organize and demand better terms for work...
...Bless the musicians and music lovers who take their con* certs In the raw, go direct to the hall, read their scores .. • and hear and make no comments...
...It is this mean process of subjecting immortal expression to mortal rules that brings suffering and tedious drudgery into lives that by every reason of justice should be spared their taint and odium...
...And when interstate commerce is planned on the thirty-hour workweek, with living wage scales and equitable prices, it will take the vigilance of the organized labor movement to maintain them...
...And always a personal anecdote and secret is revealed to bear witness to the lecturer's divination...
...To the extent labor is to be served, labor must serve and be the new power...
...For me there is something as strangely delicate in the birth of a poem, a symphony, or a painting...
...I think it was the delicious conservative Ruskin who declared that many of Whistler's "Nocturnes" In color were merely "pots of paint flung into the face of the public...
...Two Weapons But this is a very short-sighted view...
...jgKVERAL states have adopted old age pension systems...
...Few readers of literature or listeners to music sense the tragedy of purpose and spirit that attends every great piece of work in the arts...
...What he gets from his Job depends most on how much he is on the job...
...They will have to be busy in their unions...
...What care I, or you for that matter, whether the wind instruments are being cleverly used for the first time to denote passion, or the trilling piccolos are subtly interspersed to balance the bellowing of the big bass bassoon ? .., What matters it to you or me whether the wall of the first violins after the crashing of the drums depicts faithfully the composer's heart-rending grief after the landlady had thrown him downstairs, with trunks and manuscripta tumbling after...
...Ballots would seem to be taking the place of the union card...
...When Fsctories Closed As factories ran less or closed and wages fell or stopped, membership, duos were not paid and unions dwindled...
...Payment of dues, to whatever extent possible now, doer npt come first...
...And while the Peeping Toms and fleshrakers of the literary world have ascribed that affliction to a number of racy reasons I am fond enough of the old giant to believe that he wished deafness upon himself so that he might not listen to music critics and harmony historians while they tried to explain just what he, Ludwig van 11., meant when he stuck in that turn tee-tee tummm as the leit-motif of the Fifth Symphony, or why he chose Schiller's Hymn to Joy for the vocal chorus of the Ninth...
...Such music as poured itself out of the cornucopia of Beethoven's genius suffered the tether of man-made rules of composition only enough to make it manageable to his own human understanding...
...settle back to let yourself down ecstatically back to earth...
...The citizen Is no less a wage-earner...
...When Congress adopts widescale relief and public works programs, organized labor will have to be on guard to see that they are properly enforced...
...the announcer brings you down with the thump of lead...
...And now when I go to concerts, or listen in, I am mindful only of those who sit and and drink hi with great thirst, and make no erudite smacking of the lips and knowing smirks and encyclopaedic comment...
...Once the ice is broken, as it has been in Wisconsin, there will be further dipping in for fresh water to soothe the parched throats of the millions without work...
...Even a speech by Senator Hooey Blah on the gold standard la welcome and thoroughly endurable during that hateful Interim...
...Instead of dropping down, labor is up and militant...
...Atfer that, understanding of the new duties and goals...
...And whether they were hastily composed, fretful daubs, or really were studied and labored-over masterpieces hardly affects the delightful experience that viewing them .afforded me...
Vol. 15 • February 1933 • No. 5
