British Socialist Is Skillful Campaigner and Organizer
Lewis, Marx
British Socialist Is Skillful Campaigner and Organizer Morrison Contributed Much to Stabilizing the Labor and Socialist Movement by His Devoted Services in a Period of Crisis and Desertion of...
...Their organizers and literature had installed in the workers a vision of the kind of a country Britain could be without the profit system...
...election...
...He rotated crops, he used plants that restore the nitrogen, he raised cattle, depended on natural fertilizer, farmed in small plots and preserved the sod...
...It is true that there i were floods before our fool crvffi-t zation had done its damage...
...i v> Some of the damage has heen...
...Cities had to be built...
...It is a book written by a man who for twenty years had the responsibility of chief executive in one of the important cities in our" country, a city only three hours away from Chicago, but with a reputation for clean and decent government as high as that of Chicago is low...
...Now we've had a revolution !" will not solve one problem...
...Nothing win help bat laftional, economic planning of lnaduse^Some^peoplo may call this oselle sjBsuOaO...
...Through years of specialization in administration, particularly in the field of finance, transport, electrification and town planning, he has equipped himself for the role of practitioner of Socialism which has determined he should play in the transition from capitalism to socialism...
...no stretches where the wind could catch the good top-soil and carry it off to become a curse somewhere else...
...So now we have the dust storms over four or five states at once...
...When the women in the Conaeetieut valley got beck into their houses and found dead frogs andmud in their pianos and radio sets it would have iven them...
...In sections where much money could be made out of a single crop the harm was multiplied...
...Natura Dictates We have had the same sort of thing going on for decades with regard to the floods of the Mississippi...
...We were getting rich quick...
...They were not farmers at all in the sense that German and French peasants are...
...We'll just say "economic determinism" or something and the wild waters will stay tamely within their banks...
...Our engineer-president, Herbert Hoover, gave all his influence to the move to keep the water for the soil instead of dyking up the river...
...But their responsibilities and their duties far exceed in most cases the powers conferred upon them in the charters...
...Pie in the sky" may be a desirable maxim, not only for the preachers, but also for those who, removed from the life of the exploited masses, sit in their studies and draw blue prints of the Road to Power...
...It dominates not only our local interests, but our national interests as well...
...Too little has been written about the importance of local government in our social life, though a great deal has been heard about states' rights...
...He had already acquired a reputation as a skillful campaigner, a resourceful organizer, an orator who combined the idealism of the Socialist with the ability to present in simple language to the masses of the people .the intricate details of the governmental problems with which a Socialist government would have to deal...
...Robbing the Soil The tale of the semi-arid West is the climax of the tragedy...
...I cidn't understand it until I studied economics and their influence dp folk-ways many years later...
...We can do nothing except wait for a revolutionary situation and end the capitalist system...
...fast that it carries the top-soilwith it- You can see the good-fornothing remains, of such thoughtlessness all over America...
...If you can say that the capitalist system is the big bad bogy that caused it all, you are relieved of the need of further thought...
...City Government (Hareourt, Brace & Co., $2.50) is a moving story of the struggle of the City of Milwaukee, under a Socialist Mayor, for better government, for the elimination of waste, inefficiency and corruption...
...done by ill-considered drainage schemes...
...Everything was wonderful...
...The cities are the legal creatures of the states...
...fbTLondon victory presages the g?SL...
...greater triumph expected ^Eaext labor challenges the gotaWBt in a genera...
...They came here from the towns...
...We have right now in this "capitalist" government in Washington men who understand the necessary problems and have mastered the naonaanusj techniques...
...This problem requires a new way of thinking about our entire domain and a new way of administering it...
...Local government,"declares Mayor Hoan, "next to family life itself, is, therefore, the very foundation of our nation...
...Destroying Forests But in the East and the Middle West the damage and danger are due to the crazy destruction of the forests...
...This was a Yankee farmer with the old American tradition...
...But there must have been very few in those days...
...Just saying "Goody, goody...
...Slogans Are Useless But there, is every reason why the Socialist Party and the trade unions should take up this issue...
...It remained in a condition that allowed it to absorb and...
...And this is the most disgraceful chapter in our history...
...If, every time weel id this, we had constructed » dam*, or other device to bold back eeersres pond ing amount of moisture, these projects might have workedout all right...
...Other parts deal with financing, administration and planning...
...Morrison believes in applied Socialism...
...Regrettable as such statements are—and they are to be found frequently throughout the book—they detract from the value of the book itself, and yet the facts set forth are subject to verification and are in themselves sufficiently eloquent...
...His land grew richer over the centuries...
...Now we find that we must consider, not just the Father of Waters, but all the children, the Connecticut, the Delaware, the Susquehanna, the Ohio, and every fool creek between here and the Pacific...
...My father was a German peasant' farmer who loved and preserved his trees...
...We have never yet in this country had a government that was heavily endowed with sense for this sort of thins...
...Peasant Intelligence He learned how to raise crops and, at the same time, increase the fertility of the good earth...
...This dumb peasant, who has been held up to ridicule as the great hindrance to social progress, has literally preserved the soil wealth of the past for the- present generation...
...How well we remember the now-famous retort of a European Socialist that after hearing Krueger he understood why the Socialist Party of the United States had not made greater progress...
...And in two respects Europe was able to deal easily Vita f problem which is now so difficult for us...
...British Socialist Is Skillful Campaigner and Organizer Morrison Contributed Much to Stabilizing the Labor and Socialist Movement by His Devoted Services in a Period of Crisis and Desertion of Their Posts to the Enemy by Weak Leaders, By Marx Lewis ALTHOUGH only in his 40's...
...The "militants'' and "left wing" elements will probably not like it...
...George Washington wrote to'Ttrthur Young.in 1791: "The aim of the farmers in this country (if they can be called farmers) is, not to make the most they can from the land, which is or has been cheap, : but the most of the labor, which < is dear...
...It has nothing in it about "revolutions," "bogus democracy," "seizure of power" Or any of the other favorite phrases and symbols so dear to "left wing" hearts...
...Labor's Great Comeback Indeed it was shortly after the 1931 debacle that British Labor began to stage its remarkable comeback...
...The ruling classes of Araerics have every motive for solving this problem...
...dalism which greedy pront-aeeksts' had begun...
...fundamental soundness of the British Labor party knew that its message had spread its roots wide and deep in the soil of Great Britain and did not despair...
...Such blue prints, and such short cuts, he knows from his own years of experience, set the workers into opposing camps, and make it easier for the ruling class to prolong its rule and intensify its exploitation...
...With wheat at two dollars one such crop on a section of land would give a man such a fortune that he could bask the rest of his life in the California sun...
...James J. Hill built his railway and to furnish freight and passengers rapidly peopled the lain...
...So the treeless field, the unbroken stretch of plowbmd, Became the ideal...
...But wind and water are not amenable to political slogans...
...It shook the poor more rudely than the rich...
...Any ruling class that has any sense will do its best to solve this problem...
...Here were the wide prairies with their thin coverage of sod to hold down the sandy earth...
...But once these smart people were on the spot there was no holding them back...
...That's just that...
...Belts of forest could have been planted as wind-breaks...
...A detailed statement of what has already achieved, and how, will be available to Americans now from the lips of Morrison hhnself when he arrives for bis lecture tour...
...To say that the working class alone suffers is nonsense...
...It means turning a lot of lend back to forests and pastures and dealing with the cultivated landa in prescribed ways so that the moisture will be absorbed and the valuable substances in the soil retained...
...But nobody but a few engineers thought of that...
...It was inevitable that the' early settlers should develop a reel hatred of trees...
...Of course, there will not be floods "under Socialism...
...They won bye-elections steadily and persistently...
...hHass, comfort to know that this "dirt" which caused their woe was the precious stuff that makes food nod may be the foundation of a civilization Action Imperative Stopping this dreadful waste requires much more than building a. few dams along the tributaries of the Connecticut, the Delaware, the Susquehanna and the Ohio...
...More of the workers live down on the flats and so are washed out...
...Nobody stopped to figure out what would happen...
...Jn a very real sense they are a pinishmeirt for our sins...
...Great populations have been plunged into the utmost distress and danger...
...It is nice to have a big word like that to blame things on...
...They have limited powers, only such as are conferred upon them by the charters granted by the states...
...This fact has been properly emphasized in the book...
...It paved the way for the victory last November when British labor increased its parliamentary representation from 59 to 156 and polled 8,500,000 votes or 40% of the total number of votes cast, and it gave to England the leader to whom these millions now turn for leadership and guidance—Herbert M. Morrison...
...When you look at this part cf the story you are, in a sense, justified in saying that capitalism made the trouble...
...If we mer learn anything, the jolt which these rivers have handed us should set our brain cells to functioning...
...Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property have been destroyed...
...ho***1 a clear-cut majority of foaj?pB members in the London OgamCouncil...
...City Government consists of six parts, each in turn subdivided into appropriate chapters...
...The author begins with an analysis of local government and concludes with a plea for "humanizing local government...
...He admitted with regret that the quake was not caused by the capitalist system and then went on to prove that it did show a class bias...
...The nitrogen and phosphorous and potash are running down to the sea this very minata, The population of this country mast therefore act quickly and inteiRgently...
...From the very beginning the Englishmen who came to New England and Virginia went the wroijs...
...Fires completed the vanf...
...It offerex...
...There would have been more good soil, and the climate would have been modified...
...JP Herbert Morrison attained «orld-wide recognition as the spokesman for the British bg?} and Socialist 'movement -jlS, less than two years ago, the aews was flashed around the gorid that the government of jjoodon, the world's largest city, lad keen captured by the Socialists"eCthe municipal elections...
...There have been articles, editorials, speeches, which explained that we caused the floods —and that we can end them—or nearly end them...
...Dan Hoan Writes Volume on City Government By Louis Wakknan rVANIEL W. H O AN, Socialist Mayor of Milwaukee, has written a good and readable book on municipal reforms...
...So the thin sod was ripped off the sand...
...with a hopeless minority in the House of Commons...
...The old kings and •nobles maintained stately forests for the pleasures of the hunt...
...Congress has made appropriations, but that is about all that has happened up to now...
...Theoretically, our government is based on a dual sovereignty—the sovereignty of the states and that of the federal government...
...Though at times Mayor Hoan is inclined to indulge in superlatives in speaking of his accomplishments in Milwaukee, he will be forgiven because it is clear that such statements are made from a great pride he feels in the enviable position earned by the city among the municipalities of the nation...
...The "lumber kings" buik ridiculous palaces and sent their daughters to Paris...
...What had not been built in a day could not be destroyed in a day...
...But if a billion dollars worth of property was destroyed, most of the loss fell on industrial concerns and on farmers...
...Then there won't be any more floods...
...Leber Party Proved Sound Those who were familiar with ?t...
...But it wasn't just capitalism...
...Then the river rose...
...While wild waters engulfed the East even wilder clouds of dust buried the West...
...But we know that it is a long etep from an engineer's plan to a nation-wide reform that will cost billions of dollars and demand a fundamental change in our way of looking at real estate...
...Of course, there were the sceptics who despaired because they were unfamiliar with the true nature of the British movement...
...The water runs off so...
...Trees will grow there...
...Pasture and field and forest could have iteen made into a beautiful and permanently prosperous checkerboard...
...The whole country is involved...
...Both in the North and in the South most of them tended to exhaust their land and move on...
...and J. R. Clynes, leading trade unionist, unable because of advanced years to give the movement the direction it must have as it approaches the assumption of its historic responsibility...
...Europeans had no such preparation...
...But in upper New York state, in the far reaches of Michigan and Wisconsin stood the many mile* of stumps...
...They had had experience of floods and denudation and poverty...
...The engineers finally figured out that this was not the way to deal with the problem...
...Engineers have explained things and Congress debating an appropriation for drainage control...
...They have done the job on a small scale in experimental areas here and there...
...And in ten years, or fifteen, or twenty years they will have a party which will be running this country...
...Mayor Hoan not only tells the story of the administration of Milwaukee, but indicates some reasons for his success...
...It took sweet and labor and curses to get them out of the way...
...In our sense of the word, there are no floods in Europe...
...Fortunes must be made...
...Morrison Typifies His Party But Morrison combines the qualities of leadership and exemplifies the sum total of the ideals of the British masses perhaps to a greater extent than any of them...
...They were small business men try- i ing to get rich quick at the expense of the land...
...They cried aloud like the Hebrew, prophets, but no one gave heed...
...Great tales were told of raising sixty bushels of wheat to the acre...
...As the ruler—some* refer to his present position as that of Prime Minister of London' and its environs— of the most important section of England not only numerically and because of the place it occupies in the set-up of the nation—Morrison is furnishing to students of municipal government the world over an example of how Socialists can take the existing municipal administration, with all of the inherited ills of capitalist misrule for generations and make it serve the needs of the workers...
...It demands thinking, work, money and—something more difficult to get—a change in national mores...
...the consequence of which ' has been, much ground has been ] scratched over and none cultivated < or improved as it ought to have i been...
...O. E. Beker, a anil expert, estimated that in southern Wisconsin, after fifty years of cultivation, the land had lost onethird of its nitrogen and one-fourth of Its phosphorous...
...From Maine to Oregon the forests were stripped away and the land was left a wasted wilderness...
...If the Chinese had settled America they might have done better than our early settlers...
...Many a time I have stood out there on plains just starting to flush green with sprouting wheat and seen the crop on which a man had staked his life literally lifted by the wind and scattered over another man's fields...
...Even more than the states' and frequently more than the federal government, the government of our cities touch intimately the lives and the welfare of the men, women and children of the nation...
...To the early settlers the trees were obstacles...
...Then came lumbering as a business...
...Leaders might come and go, those in whom faith had been placed might even desert to the camp of the enemy, but the strength- of the labor party came from the masses, and while a betrayal or a desertion might temporarily do some damage, the strong foundation and most of the superstructure that had been created by the workers themselves remained unimpaired...
...But nobodythought of that...
...No one thought of replanting...
...There' was one on the Mississippi in IMO and one m Pittsburgh before the Revolution...
...But we smart people, with all our inventions engineers and,, get-rich schemes—we made the floods...
...They did not care for the land, took no thought of future generations...
...Not that he was unknown to the British masses before that victorious election...
...Leadership in a movement that rests on sound principles and on enduring ideals is not acquired overnight...
...way about the business...
...I recall that, boy'aa I was, 1 wondered how two mei» could have such different ideas...
...There has been a good deal of similar thinking during these recent over-pourings of rivers...
...Arthur Henderson, the best beloved of those who remained faithful when the MacDonald break tame, had passed on ; George Lansbury, revered and admired, .who sacrificed his leadership rather than compromise his pacifist views and now along in years, unable to shoulder the burdens of leadership...
...They didn't know how to deal with land...
...When the author says, "I have not attempted to record all of the virtues and accomplishments of our Milwaukee government, but only enough of them to justify our assertion that no other city in the world has accomplished so much in genuine governmental improvement in so short a period of time," it is necessarily not based on any scientific ascertainment as to the accomplishments of any "other city in the world" in the same period of time...
...The working people, farmers, clothing workers, miners, 6teel mill operatives are vitally interested in seeing that something is done quick...
...The tobacco and cotton plantations of the South and the big wheat farms of the West furnirh the proof...
...But there is something to be thankful for...
...Maes of the land is cultivated in sucha way that valuable chemical substances which are not taken up by the crops run down into the streams...
...They do bow to forests, to sod, to dams, to good farming and engineering...
...And there were the Communists with their insidious propaganda ever ready to utilize every misfortune of the organized labor and socialist/ movement for their unscrupulous purposes...
...When the smart white men came the forests were advancing at the rate of about a mile a year...
...Those people were "'mining" wheat, "manufacturing" wheat, making moneyor hoping to make it...
...It was short-sighted, individualistic capitalism...
...It was not a mushroom growth that had brought labor to power...
...They were craftsmen whose ancestors bad been driven from the soil by the progressive enclosure of the fields...
...Then —away back in the 16th and lfth centuries:—there " were rulers who foresaw that these forest reserves had economic worth and planned to preserve and extend , them...
...If God in his wisdom had kept these enterprising Whites away for a few more centuries there would have been more forest and less prairie...
...He possesses the hard, practical, constructive judgment which has served the British labor movement in every crisis with which it was confronted, and has enabled it to emerge from them with its ranks intact and its power unimpaired and he has the advantage of comparative youth and the vigor that will be necessary in the years of struggle and transition that lie ahead...
...The other— and much greater—cause of the better conditions in Europe is the much maligned farmer...
...1 Floods come because nature's i drainage system has been inter- 1 fered with...
...The London victory,' however, marked the turning point in Labor's return to power...
...It's a big job...
...AU groups lose when the damage is done...
...The eastern waters and the western winds will not hear...
...For thirty years the workers of Britain had in increasing numbers, gradually but none the less steadily, yielded to the campaign of education and propaganda which the Labor Party had earried on daily in every part of the country...
...Even the clergy—after serious consultation with higher authority—declared that the deluge was not sent by God as a ¦ punishment...
...ft debacle of several years ojtirr when Ramsay MacDonald, generation the trusted leader e* -fte British labor movement, naflsd to the demands of the conKTTStives on the question of retoeing the 'dole payments, caused % rift in the Labor government and asserted with a few others to the eamp of the enemy, had left the Labor Party...
...But no one listened to him...
...Twenty-five or thirty sears ago it was considered a groat thing to* drain a lake or swamp and raise dumping crops in the thick, black soil...
...Long Range Planning of Land Use Will End Flood Tragedies Generations of Reckless Exploitation of the Soil, Neglect of Policy of Restoring Fertility, and Destruction of Forests, Due to ShortsightedIndividualism,Haue Brought Repeated Disasters By William E. Bohn I RECALL the time when Daniel DeLeon dass-angied the San Francisco earthquake...
...Hundreds of people have died...
...The floods got higher and, being utterly brainless, we built the dykes higher—till we had an elevated rrver looking down on the almost defenseless plains...
...Some of these peasants have come to the United States and Canada and their methods have worked just as well here...
...It concerns us every second of our lives...
...There have not been wanting those who traced it all to the capitalist system...
...With a full realization of the responsibilities of local government and with its capacity for raising the standard of life of the community as they affect the health, the education, the security, the morals and the liberties of the people, Daniel Hoan, his Socialist predecessor, former Mayor Emil Seidel, and Victor Berger, the founder of the Socialist Party in Milwaukee, vigorously applied themselves to the task of transforming a debt-ridden, politically corrupt city into one of the best governed cities m tbs country...
...But the job will take long-range<-planning and vigorous action on a national scale...
...retain moisture...
...I recall hearing a farmer in Ohio say: "I hate a wild, tree...
...In general, their attitude was that of townspeople, of money-makers rather than of soil-makers...
...And finally there were the pseudo-revolutionaries in our own ranks like Maynard Krueger, Norman Thomas' left-wing ally on the N.E.C., who at the Paris Conference of the Labor and Socialist International had the audacity to declare that the British Labor Party was a great obstacle to the progress of Socialism in America...
...Each year, he says, we lose 5,000,000 tons Of nitrogen, 3,000,000 tons of phosphoric acid and 28,000,000 tona of potash...
...A beautiful land had' been despoiled- - ' '. Wasting Cbemicel Values Merely cutting away the forests and leaving the land waste is far from being the whole story...
...They go right shead working against you until ycu have sense enough to make them work for you...
...His achievements he ascribes not to accident, nor to 'any haphazard combination oi municipal reformers, but rather to the consistent work of a party with .a philosophy and a program based on public service and the elimination of the sources of graft and corruption in our municipal life...
...No Conservation Some of the land might have been plowed if other sections had been left...
...This book deals with realities, not with theories...
...Bleak,' barren stretches advertise ear eoo* nomic sins...
...Rain, flood, soil, chemistry, physics take no notice of capitalism, Socialism, democracy, theories, speeches, editoriale...
...It ""is true that once in a lifetime the seasons are right and such crops are produced...
...When the farmers and wage workers rule America they must know how to rule wind and water as well as people...
...Both floods and dust storms can be stopped...
...In 1930, when he was 42 years of age, Morrison, as a member of the Labor Government, had held the portfolio of Minister of Transport, framed the famous road traffic laws, which coordinated the transport system of England and brought him the commendation of all-who were familiar with the chaotic condition which had previously prevailed...
...With doctrines that prescribe a short cut to the millenium he has shown little patience...
...Sweden, for example, has done everything with her' forests that we should have done...
Vol. 19 • April 1936 • No. 14
