LOOKING AT THE WORLD

SENDER, TONY

LOOKING AT THE WORLD By TONY SENDER Former Socialist Deputy in Reichstag The Plebiscite Farce In "Greater Germany" ITHOUGHT it good to begin this column with an interview with Herbert...

...And we begin to understand t the machine-worship that has seised so many millions of thstf fellows and i. stirring them out of their millenial sluggishness^ Industrialization, as seen in a concentrated area such as the, seems to have an existence over and above its human creators—a validity beyond the joys and sufferings of individual men...
...Obviously therefore millions o-f Germans and Austrians, possibly a majority, may have voted "Yes" although they meant "No...
...Even if that movement declines temporarily, as perhaps it may, the workers here can never again be wholly cowed and stampeded by the machines...
...In 1931 it was reported that, while man-power had increased a third and national wealth had doubled since 1911, Federal Government costs had increased more than five-fold...
...hounded sal threatened and persecuted as was Gene Debs and Morris Hillquitanf other great Socialists of the ear period...
...He is a person of large and sincere philanthropic instincts...
...Jim went to live with grandparents on a farm, while Charles went to work I in a factory...
...youth...
...cranes and bridges and cables that are the hieroglyphics of our epoch...
...He gave Jim a pamphlet, and Jim was compelled to admit that he was unable to read...
...Genuine trade unionism hat at last obtained a strong foothold in the empire of steel, and it wiB not easily be dislodged...
...Not content with his philanthropic largesse, they insisted on union contracts...
...I knew them by their first names...
...They were generous wafts...
...I hope to see many more Labor women returned to the next House of Commons...
...He warred on the Pennsylvania state police because they were used as organized state-paid strikebreakers, and he is directly responsible for the fact that in moat states today the state police are barred by law from industrial activities, and confined solely to bona-Ada policing...
...The great conflict of our generation, and of many generations to come, no doubt, is between man and machinery...
...I do not know," he replied, "and that ans*ver is a sad commentary on the insecurity in the world...
...They helped in the organization of meetings...
...It was a minor one which was magnified into one of dictatorship by a growing reaction in Congress and outside...
...Not only has antiquated administrative machinery developed with overlapping powers, but useless offices have been created to provide salaries for parasites and party hacks...
...These workers have tasted their strength, 'fin sacrifices and tragedies of Homestead and other struggles have not been in vain...
...IT was not long before he was a * skilled machinist, and active in the labor movement...
...He led strikes, and was blacklisted...
...This was another London party victory and I am delighted about it...
...What an encouraging message...
...The story of his life at that period reads like the history of another Tom Sawyer, with devilish pranks and flashes of intellectual brilliance, combined with genuine leadership of his fellows...
...In Five-Year Plans and Ten-Year Plana, under the names of Fordism and Bolshevism, modernism and Westernism—but everywhere, at bottom, the sassa hypnotic lure of iron and steel, mass production, electric power, belching chuneeja,' and that coveted abundance of the ftve-and-ten cant comforts Sn]p glories of industrialized life...
...The free, tiers of the Industrial Revolution, after more than a century, «• still being pushed more deeply—into the Balkans, Turkey, UaHW Persia, the interior of China...
...For more than a generation he lived on terms of friend^ and on the whole happy intimacy with the men and women whs worked for the wages he gave them...
...He was a rough workingman when he went home to Reading one day a few months previous to that marriage, to get himself presentable for the courtship...
...Jim has done many, many things in his long and temptestubus life, and he gays he has made many mistakes, but that the smartest thing he ever did was to get married on April 15, 1886, his 22nd birthday, to the woman who has stood by his side with loving care for over half a century and who stands by him there today...
...This employer is hurt by the ingratitude...
...He waged a fight for unemployment and old-age insurance tint attracted nation-wide attention, sad he is in a very real sons nht father of our social security teghlatton...
...And now?* Now those workers have gone ahead and organised in unions...
...But there was grinding poverty, death and unhappiness in Jim's life...
...S Can Be Done...
...Labor unions could no more live under its provisions than a snow ball can survive the rays of a hot sun...
...But at rare moments we do become aware of tat mechanical miracle...
...As long as pork barrel politics survives and party parasites draw workless incomes for sitting in swivel chairs we question dw sincerity of their opposition to dictatorship...
...Of course, if they were German women under Hitler they would not be permitted to think freely...
...Knowing this, the individual is apprehensive about voting "No...
...And that is the best way—indeed, the only way—to prevent the catastrophic war into which humanity is drifting...
...LIE was right in the front of tin ** battle against war presses-tiong and against our entry into ta» war, and he wa...
...he was elected to the legislature, and later became president of the State Federation of Labor...
...We have about a quarter of a million individual women members of the party...
...The Fulham triumph was a triumph of Labor's peace policy and a repudiation of the policy of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain...
...Back of the struggle is an issue ignored by the enemies of the bill, a two-party evil of capitalist politics which leaders of both parties have always ignored...
...HITLjER ENROLLS GOD...
...If the majority that voted against the bill were really afraid of dictatorship they could have retained its meritorious features by...
...Population had increased only 24 per cent in this period...
...In 1930 the Department of Commerce reported a survey showing that in eleven years (1917-1928) expenses of the states had more than trebled...
...The entheav asm of those who see industry extending its sway in Turkey or Russia is meaningless, if that new industry spells exploitation...
...IJE was born in Reading on April ** 15th, 1864, of mixed Pennsylvania Dutch, Hugenot, Irish and German stock...
...And every silent plant, every inert crane and smokeless chimney, we recognized, represented hundreds or thousands of families without work, subsisting on relief, uncertain of the an*-*"' row...
...Here ia a parasitic growth that has had two-party sanction and every effort to cut it out has been opposed by party leaders in city, state, and Federal legislative bodies...
...I asked Morrison what part labor women have played in this important task...
...CHINESE VICTORIES _ IF J"eP°rts f« a week of Chinese defeats of the Japanese in Shantung continue and China wins a major victory, it may have an important bearing on the fate of Europe...
...Though he had been good to them, and loved them ¦ his way, they treat him as an enemy and threatened, actually threatened, to strike if he did not yield...
...Here speaks a fighter and an idealist, giving us the lesson that as long as we believe and struggle there is no room for fatalism...
...Not even Barnum's circus will provide us with more interesting acrobatic feats than the thought and action of Congress- j men and reactionary organizations on these two measures...
...bai served a vast and wholesome purpose...
...Hitler did not leave the decision solely in the hands of God...
...THE ROOSEVELT DEFEAT A MAJOR blow was struck at President Roosevelt's prestige last week when 1 08 Democrats joined with 88 Republicans, 6 Progressives and 2 Farmer-Laborites in killing his Reorganization BilL The vote represents a revolt in Roosevelt's own party which is likely to widen into a split in the next few years...
...The panorama is so familiar to us Americans that we take it for granted...
...THE movement for unionization which has gained a lot of ground * here is part of the struggle for liberation, for conquest si machinery...
...Nothing in all human history, not the Seven Wonsen of the ancient world or the magnificence of the tabled Orient, cn compare with modern industrialization for sheer scale, power aai intensity...
...Not industry itself, but its human content is what »»»ttwi_ If the last of the backward nations is filled with machines and chimneys our human race will be no-closer to contentment as loaf as the machine comes before the man who works it...
...The minions of industry rejected and betrayed by the as* mechanized gods...
...Which of then will be victorious ? Until now, it is clear, the machine has had the upper hand, and people have been its slaves...
...his father died, his mother struggled in desperate poverty...
...British working women are worried about the prospect of war...
...amending it to give Congress a check on the exercise of the powers it would have granted...
...This performance was repeated this week...
...The ,««ue between dictatorship and democracy may be deeded by the heroic sacrifice, of the Chinese people, espeewlly ln Shantung which the Japanese imperialist, have regarded as the prize booty of their undeclared war...
...I am tired of being *SSj all my life that "It Can't Be »ntg —I have told m this book bow* Can Be Done...
...Here, in the Pittsburgh area, that dream is spread around a. like some fantastic futurist painting, in Sombre tints and earn, plicated patterns...
...They hold their own meetings and have played their usual big part in this successful effort of the party...
...MOW, in the evening of his Sill *~ Jim Maurer has written IM story of his half-century and mots of active work...
...We passed through Homestead and other places that had boot battlefields in the bitter wars of laboring masses to wrest a lrttlt freedom and a little security from the mechanism that they fori with their sinews and their years...
...His father was a shoemaker, and local policeman, his • mother the kind of woman the very i , thought of whom brings tears to his eyes...
...When he was 16, Jim was working in a shop alongside a highly intelligent man who was a pioneer trade unionist...
...BUT as we went on w# became more and more conscious of the part of this dream of steel and electricity that is nightmare, . Large sectors of the panorama seemed somnolent, scarcely stirriag in its sleep...
...Only one political party functions and it has behind it every conceivable power of the state and all the means of private Nazi tyranny with which we have become familiar...
...As for the President, he has given reactionaries an opportunity to pose as guardians of democracy by asking for powers the Executive should not have...
...j Jim Maurer's Life Mirrors an Idealist's Fight for the Underdog By WILLIAM M. FEIGENBAUM JAMES H. MAURER (Jim to ** several million working people) is celebrating his 74th birthday, and 52nd anniversary of his marriage...
...I had to agree...
...He cannot understand that it is all part of the war between man and machines, in whtoe man, slowly and with heavy casualties but inevitably, is emerging victorious...
...But most of nl he has been a friend, an inifjfce| tion and a comrade to millions) and those who have looked at W* long and useful life know that jjj battle for a better world has n* been in vain...
...PLEBISCITE— A FARCE '•What do you think of the 99 per cent vote in favor of the German dictator's conquest of Austria and the equally 99 per cent of the electorate's ap-p r o b ation of all that Hitler did during the last four years...
...Here is a real threat of dictatorship...
...It is bodied forth in an amazing complex of steel plants, mines, palaces and hovels, square mile after sqaart mile of it...
...Brave, loving, steadfast, she bore and inspired two remarkable men—Jim Maurer and his brother Charles,* one of the greatest Socialists of an earlier day and whose memory is still cherished in Reading nearly 20 years after his death...
...He was the moving spirit in building up the great Reading Socialist movement...
...It is a pity that the newspapers report such a percentage supporting Hitler in last S u n d ay's so-called pie bis-cite, 99.75% in ' A u s t r ia and 99.08% fn...
...In effect the plan provides for government by fiat, with the President as absolute dictator of the nation's destinies, and with an emergency establishment virtually superseding the Cabinet and executive branches of the government...
...mayocs...
...AN employer in Pittsburgh complained to me of the ingratitude of man...
...He became a trade union leader while still a mischieviou...
...Together with Charles, he became a leader of trade unionism, of the Populist party and .Jater of the Socialist movement in the typical working class community in which he has lived all of his life...
...We are asked to believe that practically all of these unfortunate people have voted for Hitler's sadistic tyranny and war policy...
...In his dodfcnnH he say...
...PLOSING his campaign for the union of Austria with Germany, Hitler's speech in Vienna shows that he granted a concession to God by saying that it was "God's will" to "reunite the two great sections of the German people...
...he defeat of Japan would enable Britain and France to concentrate attention on Europe while Russia would be relieved ^.rT,'™ me*ace" Hitler and Mussolini would lose a powerful ally, a sea power on which they count in the event of a general war...
...Morrison, always ready to help our movement in the United States, willingly gave me some of his time, knowing that women in America are specially alarmed about the muddled state of affairs in Europe and the world...
...and answered, "Adolf Hitler...
...Edith Summerskill, the Labor candidate of the West Fulham [a London cistrict] by-election...
...The plebiscite therefore is an organized imposition of the totalitarian state and the individual who votes "No" is liable to be known, particularly in small places...
...He taught himself to read, and to study, without at the same time losing his gay boyishness...
...He found it impossible to get work as a machinist because of his labor activities, and so he became a plumber— and a good one...
...This will bring our Labor women M.P.'s up to three...
...forests of smokestacks...
...We stopped to look at Vat crowded wooden shacks, airless and foul, where steel workers by the ten thousand used to be housed, sleeping in relays, wearing away their lives between factory and slum...
...A Labor Woman Beats Chamberlain "But what may be the further consequences of this Austrian conquest," I asked Morrison...
...He relied on marching troops, machine guns and cannon, to say nothing of the Gestapo and concentration camps...
...The bill presented no issue growing out of the depression...
...God, we are free...
...Moreover, the President invited the revolt by asking extensive powers no President should have, and this played into the hands of a well-organized reaction throughout the nation...
...Later Jim came back to Reading and took jobs in various metal trades...
...In Berlin, the pot-bellied Goering roared, "Who dares speak for Austria...
...However...
...I asked...
...Knowing that the British Labor Party has been conducting a vigorous campaign for peace and security...
...LOOKING AT THE WORLD By TONY SENDER Former Socialist Deputy in Reichstag The Plebiscite Farce In "Greater Germany" ITHOUGHT it good to begin this column with an interview with Herbert Morrison about his impressions of outstanding world events...
...People who are suffering acutely under the Nazi regime are forced to vote, including tortured victims huddled in concentration camps, the business people who have suffered from the Nazi economic boycott of Germans they do not like, the, millions of Socialists, trade unionists and others who have suffered one way or another...
...Instead of fighting for such a check, thus maintaining the principle of democracy, opponents gutted the bill with amendments and then sent it back to the committee to die...
...Industrial towns that used to be feudal strongholds of modern capitalist barons now have C.I.O...
...Speeches are generally made in its favor for the record and then the proposal ia defeated- without a record vote...
...Take the twenty cents mileage which members of Congress still draw...
...fJERE I interrupted our friend again, asking ** him about the circumstances of a Labor woman defeating Chamberlain...
...Meantime, the organized workers of the nation should be mobilizing their forces against this dangerous May Bill...
...That realization was the turning point in his life...
...Of course, it is hardly necessary to add that the vote was nearly 100 per cent in support of Hitler...
...Note that all these figures include many years before the depression...
...the total area...
...American Labor women are, I know, pleased about the triumph of Dr...
...They came to me with their troubles, and I helped them," In explained, a little sadly...
...The great thing for everybody to do is to understand the facts and consistently, enthusiastically and with determination insist that the democratic and peaceful powers regain the initiative in foreign policy," said Morrison...
...In the past forty years it has been a frequent performance for a member to introduce a resolution to abolish it...
...j*.^ A veteran Socialist long resident in these parts, Sidney Stark, acted as my guide and mentor as we motored through these acres of industry, and we talked of the spell that it exercises on modern minds...
...And the proportion of women at our public meetings was very high...
...Small wonder that the thrill of it tears down ordinary human standards, so that the greatest price in life and sorrow L seems small to attain it...
...We catch a glimpse of it ail through the eyts, as it were, of some Russian or Asiatic...
...In fact, the Times even declares that "both Germany and Japan have patterned then industrial mobilization plans" after the Industrial Mobilization Plan of the War and Navy Departments of which the May Bill is the latest version...
...He answered: "The women of the party played a very big and important part in this campaign...
...Japan has sent a peace "feeler" to Great tJntain which is also evidence of weakness...
...Hhe had never cared much about his appearance, and when he bought a new-suit his wise old mother smiled and asker, "Who is the girl, Jim...
...I helped them to get settled when they married, sad helped them to care for their sick and bury their dead...
...Having prepared all this he let God in the back door to pat Adolf on the back and now Hitler's God is a Nazi in good standing...
...It also afflicts city and state governments...
...The latter measure is supported by the War and Navy Departments and its provisions leave no dispute as to its character...
...His reputation as a great Socialist and labor agitator grew, until he was known throughout the country...
...They were worried and uncertain for a time as to the Tightness of a collective security policy...
...A REAL DICTATORSHIP BILL ^ONTINLUNG the theme discussed above, it will be interesting to check the roll call on the Reorganization Bill with the vote on the May Bill now pending in the House...
...But still—we do not want to capitulate and therefore I asked: "What in your opinion can women in this country do to meet this danger...
...He added: "Thou, God, art with us...
...If enacted as reported by the House Military Affairs Committee it would establish a dictatorship immediately upon the outbreak of war...
...We predict that many who voted against the Reorganization Bill on the ground that it would create a dictatorship will vote fpr the May Bill although it does that very thing...
...Reliable figures show the trend in city, state, and Federal governments...
...Now then, watch your Congressmen...
...Even the New York Times declares that "ft forecasts in clear and diagrammatic form the totalitarian, ubiquitous nature of tomorrow's war...
...Hitler's only job for women is the breeding of potential cannon fodder...
...The Japs had counted on a three-months war at the utmost and the conflict is now m its eighth month with Japanese finances in a precarious condition...
...Also watch the reactionary organizations that roared for democracy when the Reorganization Bill was pending and note their approval of the May Bill as a "patriotic necessity...
...Under the guise of preventing profiteering in time of war, this legislation would render Congress useless, provide for universal conscription, and place the whole industrial resources of the nation under the control of a dictatorship...
...In 1932 the Census Bureau reported this increase to be 342 per cent in 1 3 years...
...Fot a number of reasons this is quite misleading," he answered, and continued: "Of course the plebiscites conducted by the Nazis bear not the slightest relationship to an electoral campaign in the United States, Great Britain or France...
...His work has taken root, sal many of the ideals he fought in have come to realization, largsl* through his efforts...
...Jim Maurer's autobiography J called appropriately enough...
...It was a long time ago— away back when Grover Cleveland was President, when working men organizing to demand an eight-hour day were damned as' anarchists and revolutionaries, when administrations did not consider it their duty to worry about jobless working people—that a bulky Pennsylvania Dutchman married a girl he had seen on the street a few months before, and whom he swore to win for his wife...
...He was as a father to his employees...
...Whatever its faults and its weaknesses, the C.I.O...
...The Rand fcfctg Press is announcing simultaeeassajj with the celebration of Jbn Ifffl rer*s birthday that it has sniij taken publishing "It Can Be BenH and plans to have the book ootlfc fore Labor Day of this year, "fjjjfl cial numbered and autographs* copies of the book will be avsMfej for advance subscription «nd*n^ comrade, interested in oetsdsjljf these are urged to inquire of n* Rand Book Store iwmediately.siass then will be a banted uuffrlfM WHERE THE NEWS ENDS By eugene lyons PITTSBURGH, Pa.—The dream of a mechanised, industnsttse4 * world today obsesses the minds of backward nations...
...Taken together, these powers can be predominant in the affairs of the world by coming together and acting together...
...But they have come to see that the choice is between blundering, sliding into a terrific world disaster, or the active collective organization of the peaceful and democratic powers for world peace...
...Jim Maurer has carried the baa* ner of Socialism into every earwsl of the country, and there is sstn labor organization that does est know him, honor him, and' MN him...
...They can make successful war impossible by the aggressive powers...
...More than that...
...At the same tune he dabbled in acting, and for a while he seriously considered the stage as a career, while Charles was for a while a playwright, supplying crude dramas for Jim to act in...
...When children were born to them, I sent presents and took part in tat festivities...

Vol. 21 • April 1938 • No. 16


 
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