The Middle Class and
Feigenbaum, William M.
The Middle Class and The Revolution Alfred Bingham'* Book ''Insurgent America" Suffers from a Sena* of Urgency, Bat It Lays The Commmist Myth Low. BISU8GENT AMERICA. By Aljfti. M. Bingham....
...They have missed a good bet in neglecting the heritage of the frontier...
...The following day, June 24th, 1894, an assassin plunged a dagger into the heart of F. Sadi Carnot, President of the French Republic...
...cities and states...
...There is irclimate of hurry and scurry...
...fhd British" Labor Party is mentioned only once, and then as "of little revolutionary significance...
...So it must have its blue prints...
...A woman of culture, charm and beauty, she realized that much of the prejudice against the suffrage agitation could be removed if the masses realized that the demand for the vote was not confined to unattractive and disappointed women...
...The weakest feature of the book k its...
...Karl Marx never got chummy with Freud of Watson: But we can take s peek st their books between census reports and the l a t e st "Marxian" pamphlets...
...It would have talked United States—and things would now be different...
...Usually they are people with plenty of time, which sometimes means plenty of money also, and with shrewdness enough to get themselves on the right sort of committees, committees of people who count whose names or* experiences mean something to the newspapers...
...Is oar part of the world we have made colossal changes during the past four centuries...
...In the section on Blue Prints I think he is not-quite-good-enough American...
...Blatch, one of the few surviving members of that gallant band of women who dared ridicule and bitter opposition in the struggle for principle, realized in 1919 that the complete victory of the suffrage cause was only a matter of a short time, and she determined to throw herself into the battle for Socialism, joining the party in her 64th year and offering her services in whatever capacity they could be utilized...
...They had their eyes on real things...
...continually drags Marx and gfej*** into the statement...
...It is our jocular custom to sympathize with the subdued husband of the celebrated woman, but to my mind the wife of the celebrated man is a much more deserving subject of attention...
...of a new" middle class" (p...
...I also want-, to mention that there will be a continuation of the very successful Conference Against the High Cost of Living...
...but when he speaks of the working class and the hazards of life its members face...
...It is "too weak and conservative" to play a big part in the coming change...
...Mrs...
...Woe,woe, unutterable everywhere all through that fair Welsh valley...
...when he said, "The government will not find an opportunity for a vote of condolence with the relatives of those who are lying stiff and stark in a Welsh valley"—then he spoke like the Keir Hardie who became one of the greatest heroes in the history of the world labor and Socialist movement...
...Bingham's low opinion of the American Federation of Labor is partly due to this borrowed notion that millions now living will see God...
...Perhaps I am doing him wrong...
...A revolution needs thousands...
...And the Women's Committee is making most ambitious plans fojt International Women's Day -this year...
...But why must he be as bad as the Socialists ? Why not appeal to all groups which are just naturally set in favor of the right sort of change ? Why leave out a million miners, three million transport workers, fourteen million toilers in factories ? Start With Clean Slate In his remarks on the psychology of propaganda Mr...
...Bingham is on solid ground here...
...Blatch is now at work upon her memoirs, a book, which, when completed, will be a genuine contribution to the literature of the American struggle for justice snd freedom...
...Long a resident of England, she had associated herself with the Socialist pioneers and was for a while a member of the executive of the Fabian Society...
...One member, a Scottish coal miner sitting for South West Ham in London, rose to inquire whether a vote of sympathy would also be moved for the relatives of the 250 men who had been killed in Wales...
...It is to be a revolutionary party...
...Bingham is not only right He is sometimes brilliant He sees that a united front with the Communists would lead to nothing but sectarianism...
...But large bodies move slowly...
...But what's the difference...
...PVB»e author's ideas of Marxism Bp to have been culled from mm,iCorey and Strachey...
...One has to H a all sorts of guesses...
...equal to the working # » . " he means that there are as jjjpy people with middle class amds as there are persons workmi in factory- transport and mines...
...Every Socialist welcomes his aid and acclaims his sound work...
...Mrs...
...It will talk United States...
...He senses, too, that our thinking about TVA and other such projects has revolutionary significance...
...Think of him picturing s revolution in the least industrialised region while the more advanced centers remain static...
...The rniSwinter study season has ' jiiSt started...
...To her the ballot was not an end but a means, and with the struggle for political enfranchisement almost won she felt herself free to work for a cause in which the ballot would be properly utilized...
...But when he comes to talk of the great day, he seems to say that the sun will ri«e as it never rose before...
...There Mdft be argument about some of m* figures used, for the U. S. ftonw Director is not interested Bk economic classes...
...He has not learned enough of William James, of John Dewey, of Benjamin Franklin, of Henrj...
...SulssmonsMp This conjuring of fears is a fa•tilier trick of salesmanship...
...Bingham's exposition of WHf Is weakened by two" things...
...The life of one Welsh miner is of greater commercial and moral value to the British nation than the whole royal crowd put together, from the royal great-grandmamma down to this puling royal great-grandchild...
...In protest against the failure of the House or the Government to take any official notice of the slaughter of miners in Wales the member for South West Ham spoke against it "in the interest of the dignity of the House and in protest against the Leader of the House of Commons declining to take official cognizance of the terrible colliery disaster in South Wales...
...The Hordie Amendment The member for South West Ham then moved an amendment in which the Queen was to be asked to sympathize also with the families of the Welsh miners and the House to express its detestation of the system which made inevitable such fatal disasters...
...Shocked by the law that made a woman's citizenship dependent upon her husband's she worked for independent citizenship for men and women, a battle finally won in 1923...
...On nearly •very page the author strips bare the mythical "Marxist," But this "Marxist...
...Imagine a revolutionary thinker driven to contemplate the division of such an organic industrial unit as the United States...
...Hardie s Speech Hardie's speech—a stenographic transcript of which lies before me as I write—reads curiously today nearly 42 years after the event...
...Every one will mourn," said I Hardie, "with Madame Carnot and rejoice in a subdued kind of way with the Duke and Duchess of York in the birth of their child, but it is to the sore-stricken poor of that Welsh valley that the true hearts of this great nation will turn with over-welling sympathy...
...Rehearsals will start almost immediately * Of course, I can't guarantee you that you'll get your name in the papers...
...K r e L * statement is true, it is fflS Who cares if the "Marxians" S ^ o a g about it...
...The only advance story which Sb* peared on oui* Hotel Permsylvadis Conference, for instance, gave the credit for it to Mary Fox, the eta woman in the Socialist Party who has had nothing to do with oar women's activities...
...Most of them are useless except to their designers...
...In the meantime it is set to use all of its power to preserve and extend the democratic rights which labor in our part of the world—the British and American world—has fought through a century and a half to win and keep.' That has something to do with revolution...
...It was a historic scene, and it was long remembered by those who witnessed it, as J. Keir Hardie began to speak...
...And when be says can be won by optimism and constructive achievement rather than by sob-sister tales or appeals to snvy he is on solid ground...
...Some day I'd like to do a real debunking job on some of our popular national heroes...
...Bingham comes to practical politics, he is all for the Farmer-Labor Party...
...82) jBnSjfjr suggests that changing ^•^•Bs^may change people's without end...
...On the same day, June 23rd, 1894, there was a mine explosion in the Albion Colliery at Cilfyndd, near Pontypridd, in South Wales, resulting from the lack of proper safety devices...
...Two days after that 70,000 Scottish coal miners, in protest against a reduction in their already miserable wages, went out on strike...
...Stuffed Shirrs Now 1 am not proposing any testimonial dinners to these unwilling martyrs, the wives of great men...
...It is changing...
...sense of urgence...
...He stood alone in Parliament, for his sole Labor colleague, John Burns of Battersea who had been elected with him in 1892, had quickly deserted his class and was then—and for many years thereafter—to be found among the Liberals...
...Gladstone and Leader of the House of Commons, moved a vote of condolence with the French people upon the occasion of their bereavement...
...It is about | io tbing>: the middle classes and the need of a native moveBent to change America...
...Sat' thi- is the least important |ftfiure of his job...
...The celebration last Monday of the 80th birthday of Harriot Stanton Blatch, pioneer suffragist, Socialist, author and lecturer, brings into focus the comparative infrequency with which women are so honored, and the relatively unimportant part they play in public affairs, even in this country where women have had considerable opportunity and freedom...
...Hardie's remarks upon the royal and ducal house that had just been blessed with a baby are quite "dated...
...Only those who have witnessed such scenes, as I have twice over, can realize what they mean...
...j But Hardie never learned of the popular note his speech had struck until many years later...
...ft would have fallen heir to this tradition...
...for change...
...Except for changing phases of capitalism the stage is being set with tedious slowness...
...a Communist or nearCommunist, has put something over on him.The notion that" we mast accept Communism .at 4:30 today in order" to avoid fascism at 11:30 tomorrow has given him the Jitters, So he rushes out to organize' a Farmer-Labor Party at j?5...
...For the lickspittles of the press, ; who have no ears for the cry of the poor widow and orphan and who attempt to see in the birth of a child to the Duke and Duchess of York an event of divine significance to the nation, there can be nothing but contempt...
...Bingham will Bpsd to know that Karl Kautsky g * . a sdmirsbk snalysis of the MBk' '.nuddle, class more than years ago...
...A writer who witnessed it wrote: "In all my natural life I have never witnessed a scene like this...
...I'd like to obliterate that confounded feeling of inferiority that the wives of most wellknown men have...
...Perhaps Mr...
...Mrs...
...3 9 ^ has neglected to read it...
...On June 26th Sir William George Granville Venables Vernon Harcourt, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the ministry of Mr...
...In a way Mr...
...Sbere has been no collapse...
...Bight now we have certain groups...
...Bingham ptjirst trying to put legs under technocracy, to set it in motion...
...Blatch contributed color and glamor to the struggle...
...Some elements look too big and some too small...
...You past buy...
...Only those who know that these things are preventable and solely due to man's cupidity, can understand the bitterness of feeling which they awaken...
...But there is more behind...
...The amendment was ruled out of order...
...At the age of 26 she married an English engineer and lived in England for 20 years, devoting much of her energies in social work and Socialist and suffrage propaganda...
...The conference will be, of one session and will be held at the Rand School...
...SSiese humble Americans are quite worth s little study...
...Here Kp>auth6r tumbles into the error CjHe mythical "Marxist" who *** oi proletarian psychology, •ft his broad generalization re•abu correct...
...thereafter she studied in Berlin and at the Sorbonne in Pans...
...on the birth of a son to His Royal Highness the Duke and Her Royal Highness the Duchess of York...
...this medicine or this-inJmetee policy now or never...
...But the upshot of the whole chain of reasoning is a set of useful ideas...
...176...
...Honestly, it's not so difficult to be great...
...to believe...
...Events in Russia, Italy and Bnpny have prepared the atmosffss for it...
...Why dutter ^iP*^ exposition ? ^ W ^ e r weakness of this secassumption of a static jB"RJ*ychclogy...
...It is growing...
...Karl Marx was on his side even if the "Marxians" aren't...
...It is a race against time to save civilization...
...The ^^SMt theory is doubly wrong in par to give due weight to the gP...
...And it is because of the growth of that mighty party in the spirit of Keir Hardie that the whole face of Britain has changed and that today even kings enter the homes of the wretchedly exploited and broadcast appeals for an end to the system that • creates such wretchedness ! And thus have the paths of the member for South West Ham of 1894 and the royal and ducal infant of 1894 crossed" again after nearly 42 years...
...All the industrial and political activities of our labor movement during the past three years show that it goes in a revolutionary direction...
...Here, again, our middle class man is having his leg pulled by the Communists...
...The frontier conserved the old Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, Lincolnian democracy...
...One can understand the impatience...
...Reaction to Hardie It is almost impossible to describe the scene that greeted Hardie's speech...
...Marx on Theories jyjjbise facts are important I W? Mr...
...These twenty-year periods represent its chief phases and suggest its tempo...
...She went to Vassar at a time when few women were so "unmaidenly" as to seek a college education, and graduated with honors...
...25 the conference will discuss the transit question with Louis Waldman as guest speaker...
...I do not g*W seeing a reference to a work Mara...
...Persons who have not learned to think in the American way, look for a great day somewhere ahead- A TVA dam needs one set of blue prints...
...The baby'* mother was the wife of a man whose grandmother was the Queen of England, and so the birth was an event of great dynastic importance, for with the successive passing, over a period of 41 years, of his great-grandmother, his grandfather and his father, that child is today Edward V I I I , by Grace of God King of Great Britain, Ireland and of the Dominions beyond" the sea...
...In other passages he notes changes taking place now...
...The terns of logical dilemmas have hps ignored...
...On June 28th Sir William moved "That a humble address be presented to congratulate Her Majesty...
...Every real Socialist says amen to every item...
...instance, or people who - have no publicity value, and if yea ape willing to serve on a lot of acting committees you will, after a tune, achieve a certain measure oi success...
...There can be no adequate compensation, no satisfactory substitute, not even children, for her loss, for the many long hours she spends in an empty house...
...There is no do* who really has time to go after -ft...
...I f American Socialism had not been started on the eastern seaboard by foreigner...
...It's not important...
...JWthe purpose of the argument ^classification is useful...
...The stage is rapidly being set for the final and decisive act" (p...
...Th* important thing is to know that you're doing your share of the in the best way you can.' Harriot Stanton Blatch Readies Her 80th Birthday U A R R I O T S T A N T O N B L A T C H . pioneer suffragist, long-time Socialist and lifelong battler for peace and for human rights, was honored Monday upon the occasion of her 80th birthday by co-workers in many of the causes to which she has given her splendid energies for so long...
...It is to include the middle classes...
...Beit some of them help...
...L et him give himself room to turn in and then think dynamically instead of statically...
...A new party in fuU, power will start with a clean slate...
...The Women's Conrmitte* is not particularly adept st "tile ballyhoo game...
...t w » ttwat Britain be has learned audi mm — though the United States is a part of British civilizamm...
...The point is that the revolution is going on now...
...Right...
...Coal must be got cheap—even if twelve hundred sturdy miners are murdered yearly in the process— twelve hundred hearths made desolate...
...I'd like to get them to believe in themselves and their own ability...
...When Mr...
...Her father was HenryBrewster Stanton, likewise a noble figure in the ranks of the social reformers of that day...
...At least there is the* to read our own history belisVfte roof falls, -f Om main contention of the book is,soundly established...
...And he mentions experiments that will be made by revolutionary parties in When the New King Was Born Keir Bardie's Protest at Failure to Mourn Over Slaughter of Two Hundred and Fifty Miners on Day of Birth of the Prince—A Page From Socialist History Q N June 23rd, 1894, a baby was born at White Lodge in Richmond Park, a few miles up the Thames from London...
...Her last contribution to the Socialist press was a beautiful and touching tribute to Morris Hillquit written for The New Leader last year...
...A woman who is married to a public figure is not really married to a man at all...
...Likewise, the husbands of great women seem themselves to be almost nonexistent...
...Just don't make th* mistake of spending too mash time with people of no consequence...
...The Socialists have been inadequate in their appeal to farmers and other middle classes...
...The Trade Unions This absurdity is not at all essential to the main argument...
...The author fell into it because he fears capitalism will collapse before Christmas...
...both parents were ardent anti-slavery agitators and the daughter had as a notable heritage a passion for liberty and justice...
...Two hundred and fifty human beings, full of strong life in the morning, reduced to charred and blackened heaps of clay in the evening...
...This is just what the psychologists are trying to teach us not...
...As a Suffragist During the exciting years of suffrage agitation Mrs...
...On Jan...
...Afternoon classes in poplic speaking and parliamentary practice, on labor history, symposium courses on labor, the law and the constitution, are among those being given...
...For every Mrs...
...She was not, however, a new convert to Socialism, although her -aasirriatiflfn with m riniMd Socialism in this country began in that year...
...Hence the .series of suffrage parades and pageants participated in D>- women of all ages and callings, of which she was a moving spirit, that went far to popularize the cause in the minds of the public...
...We need women badly, and they need training...
...The only exception which comes to my mind is that of Beatrice and Sidney Webb...
...There § a.chapter on Blue Prints, but tbis is a condensation of TechSScrscy...
...We can't wait for economic alignments to work psychological changes...
...In s changing time old thoughtpatternsget new points of reference and help fit us into new loyalties and new social groupings...
...Federation...
...The analysis # t » e middle dasses is the heart mihe business...
...Ford...
...When I say the author is a not-quite-good-enough American, I mean that be is not pragmatic enough...
...Harper and JLL?RED BINGHAM'S bode " may T>e regarded as the program of the American Commonweahb...
...far from it...
...Later (p...
...All this is true...
...rffa be sure, his criterion is psyeiefogy rather than source of in1 H , So when he says (p...
...Blatch joined the Socialist Party at the moment of bitterest persecution by the reactionaries, and for several years was active in party work as speaker, writer and candidate for public office...
...There is a lot of good in this idea...
...o»dinary working people, for...
...66) 3w middles classes are numerically *i least...
...A pageant is being planned, and all women who have ever yearned to act, sing, dance or just dress up in a beautiful costume, please register at once with toe Women's Committee...
...He is driven to visualize a revolutionary West seceding from a conservative East Or—which is the same—a backward East coerced into revolution by the threat of secession...
...When she returned from England to live here with her husband she learned that she had legally become an alien by her marriage, and years later her citizenship was automatically restored by the tragic death of her husband, when he stepped on a live wire during a thunderstorm...
...ptjss.' middle classes be includes fcmers, grocers and stenographers...
...Capitalism will collapse, and labor has no white robe...
...And it ? a»good book, well done, full realistic stuff...
...At least half of our •Wang population has middle *f»s ideas...
...Oh, no," said Sir William, "I can dispose of that by saying that the House does sympathize with those poor people...
...Blatch there are, for example, at least ten B. C. Vladecks...
...Capitalism is not the sort of things that collapses...
...It is to be experimental and pragmatic...
...It is t W that there is no adequate Sjjjjuis...
...The sense of proportion is sometimes questionable...
...The last section ftfcvoted to politics, ideas about SjeiUzing sections of the popuJtnor...
...Hardie was a Socialist, a workingman, and a miner who had often faced the dangers the men of Pontypridd had faced, and the fulsome and quite manifestly synthetic show of national joy over the birth of a great-grandchild to the Queen in the face of the official frigidity over the death of the miners enraged him and roused him to make what was called a "scene" that made him the "most keenly hated man of h.s time...
...But by cutting the trade union movement he gets himself into a frightful jam...
...Bingham Sea done an honest job...
...In the author's philosophy the revolution will stem from the frontier, from the Populists, the Knights of Labor, the I. W W . , the Non-Partisan League, the Minnesota FarmerLabor Party...
...Poor Opinion of Labor They would be more useful were it not for the continual playing down of the labor movement...
...I'd like to shake them up...
...His words on the advocacy of force and violence represent the real America...
...Because he foresaw just this, Karl Marx advised his German followers in America not to start a party...
...Bingham does a great service as attentioncaller...
...But I aaartly went over the 1980 figures and I can testify that Mr...
...of the farm group...
...They change because of organic causes...
...They howled and they yelled and screamed, but he held his ground...
...Hardie is dead, but his great life work, the British Labor party, survives him...
...Harriot Stanton Blatch, a daughter of the distinguished Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was born January' 20th, 1856, at Seneca Falls, New York, that famous center of radicalism in the middle years of the 19th century...
...With the exception' of really extraordinary personalities, such as you are more likely to meet in the S;>ciii!i.-'t movement than elsewhere, most of the great and near-great are a lot of stuffed shirts...
...Picture the American trade union movement as it was in 1896, 1916 and 1936...
...While this is a delegated conference, visitors will be welcome...
...Bingham has Itemed a lot from these countries...
...His frequent 18-hour day, the nervous energy he must give to his multitudinous exacting tasks, the constant demands on his attention result in a hopelessly lop-sided equation, with the woman getting the short end...
...In the lobbfes of the House many members who dared not stand by him in public furtively grasped his hand, and in the offices of the newspapers, in which attacks of almost insane violence upon him were printed, printers and even | editors were cheering his courage...
...Times have changed and the baby prince of 1894 who ascends the throne in 1936 has an outlook on life and on the duties»of his craft that would have scandalized his grandfather and his great-grandmother...
...Instead of preparing for the imminent millennium, the dumb trade unionists are dickering about their dinners...
...Since ;*S» war this trick has been used Sonaay earnest and respectable wops...
...jy one has s right to complain...
...She helped draft the city platform of 1925...
...Some have talked a jargon which few understand...
...It is that •^middle classes of America are •prmously important and that SSganeering,1 "vulgar" Marxism ea'nt made a dent on them...
...There will be a new heaven and a new earth...
...This is fine...
...And the instances where the wives of great men have made names for themselves in their own right are almost non-existent...
...He is convinced that a strong jBsmmunist movement will conjure Vp fascism...
...Emperor of India, etc...
...A WordOn Husbands Of Noted Women Why Not Honor Achievements of Remarkable Men and Women While They're Still Alive— Women's Work Goes on Q N E of the too few gracious acts we permit ourselves in a hurried worM is honoring the achievements and services of remarkable men or women before they are dead...
...Socialist Women I'm more interested right now-in calling attention, as I have dope so mam- times, apropos of one thing and another, to the excellent opportunities given by the Women's Committee in conjunction with'the Rand School, for women withodt previous academic training » equip themselves for a real kind of leadership and greatness in diir movement...
...Hardie, the lionlike workingman and son of a i workingman, a man who knew from bitter experience the hazards of life in the coal mines...
...over 260 men and boys lost their lives because the mine owners wanted to save a little money...
...It is just possible ft.a shall manage the present Of|eelt period...
...W% must line them up quick or the train-will run -over the child...
Vol. 19 • January 1936 • No. 4
