The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN Basic History So far as the understanding and writing of history is concerned Charles A. Beard ia the father of us all. The boys and girls jrho are now doing the...
...But we could master them all were it not for that old devil Europe...
...The bill, however, was prepared by an anti-Administration Committee and passed by an Anti - Administration House and Senate...
...The monopolistic capitalists are bad...
...Marcantonio knifed the ALP candidate and supported Frankenthaler...
...Their first exhibit is the Wagner-Murray bill to extend health aid to the public at larpe...
...From 1607 to 1944 he sees threads running through all our doings...
...They are more complicated threads than those George Bancroft saw in his simpler day, but their meaning is just as clear...
...He lacks completely the slick look of European scholar...
...Tk*} Scholar and the Common Mom TllK very existence of s man like Beard is proof of some degree of success...
...I relive the immense excitement with which we received An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution tf tht United States and The Economic Origins of Jeferson-i"n Democracy...
...He scorns to believe in some sort of witchcraft...
...They are wrong in the United States...
...This is a brilliant book...
...There are temptations to evil on our own shore...
...On all decisive issues, the national administration rolled up a decisive 5 3 vote as against last year's 6-4...
...One Irving Levey for Supreme Court against Frankenthaler, who had been appointed by Dewey, the other Louis Valente for General Sessions, both jobs paying $25,000 a year for 14 years...
...And he talks straight talk...
...He keeps reminding us that there have been good men in both our major parties...
...established a cooperative medical plan in his shipyards, the AMA cracked down...
...I writ* those Una* with deep regret...
...Last year Marcantonio made a deal with Tammany to endorse their entire judicial slate, including Judge Aurelio...
...The Republicans, trying to play politics on their own pulled out of the Aurelio deal nominated George Fran-kenthaler...
...But in both cases the narrative moved on in ita usual lively and pointed style...
...Marcantonio runs East Harlem (for derails see Dick Rovere's excellent piece in Harpers a while back...
...They go on and on and on and on...
...The boys and girls jrho are now doing the reviews of his new book, Basic History of tha United States, are all his intellectual children or grandchildren...
...And his special theories, the ones on the demonstrstion of which his reputation is so largely based, are played down rather than up...
...Th* answer to the puszle is this: Marcantonio, playing his fancy politic*, mad* a tie-up with Jimmy D* Salvio, a downtown Tammany leader, who work* with Stand...
...Supervision of the Wagner bill would be in the hands of the Surgeon General, at the moment Thomas Parian, a man whom the News has praised for his courageoues stand on venereal diseases...
...Wherever anything is done to even up the burdens and rewards of life, he is in favor of ¦change...
...What they do is not related to their environment...
...What Charles Beard has done is to give us a progressive character sketch of the people whom we call Americans...
...His "progressive'.' reputation couldn't stand too much of this, and so he ducked...
...We became good, one is inclined to think, by the simple act of discarding what we left behind...
...And then I think of the days of the World War, when Professor Beard left Columbia University in order the more freely to express his opinions about the nature and causes of thst conflict...
...Professor Beard ia, of course, forever on the side of the reformers...
...Now the story gets "slightly" involved, so watch closely and follow the names...
...I was curious to see whether in dealing with those periods he would expand upon his special theories, drag in his detailed knowledge...
...A casual reader would never guess how much the author is omitting...
...He claimed Hillman ordered support of Levey...
...Suppose that each of them wrote * lively snd patriotic sketch of his own nation...
...Tba Europeans are pictured a* though they were tba victim* of original sin...
...No matter how wie* or good father is, he belongs to another time , When 1 look at the pictures of Charles and Mary Beard on the jacket of this latest—I hone not the last —of their works, I am taken back to my student days...
...They betray his object, his motive, his point of view...
...The method would be reduced ad ahturdum...
...The bssis of the split between Hillman and Marcantonio—which is authentic — revolves about th* future of the American Labor Party, according to insiders...
...Pegler's poison is just ss insidious...
...It ia only by the Taw of contraries, apparently, that the admirable qualities of this country were developed...
...Finally the News sees in the tax bill signed by the President on March 30 an attack' on schools snd churches because the tax deduction for bad debts is joined with charitable gifts, and some persons will take advantage of this to claim the deduction without gifts to charity...
...A history of a country may be any one of a doten things, it may be the story of politics, of wars, of geographical expansion, of foreign relations, of commerce, of domestic progress, of national thinking...
...When Henry Kaiser (A Communist...
...This year Tammany and the ALP decided to nominate two unknowns...
...But two things happened: Marcantonio lost the ALP Judicial Nominating convention and Hogan revealed that the shady elements had engineered the Aurelio nomination...
...Three times we have been taken in by this lure—and each time to our sorrow...
...Da Salvio'* son is running for the Assembly against Lamula — so, Lamula gets dumped...
...When the story broke in the press, Marcantonio ran for cover...
...His narrative, then, is the tale of the successes and failures in this mighty experiment...
...LaGuardia is supporting Msrcsntonio because he needs the ALP if he runs in 1945...
...Yea would think Europe had never produced a good maa, a good government or a good idea...
...The project is a notable one in the history of bookmaking...
...But each would be prevented from achieving happiness by the others...
...He is real...
...He . has made a masterly effort to put his learning into aim-pie language for the millions...
...Later, as a reward, hia stooge James Pemberton was nominated for the $0,500 a year job of confidential clerk to the Supreme Court...
...Marcantonio crying his innocence stated that he Would run ex-Congressman Capazolli against Valente and that "if I made a deal with Neal, how do you explain that in Harlem I supported the Republican Assemblyman Hamlet Catennacio against the Democratic candidate...
...The .\>m» sees in this control of the medical profession, although the doctors trust, run by the American Medical Assn...
...It waa nothing but "ware, religious revolts, persecutions snd political upheavals...
...The Trotskyites were wrong in Russia...
...I confess that I went on from chapter to chapter with a good deal of curiosity...
...Doily Poison FoR sheer and unadulterated dishonesty, first prize goes to the Daily Sews (it was a close fight, with Westbrook Pegler the strong runner-up...
...He is an embodiment of democracy...
...Now Marcantonio can't have hi* cake and est it...
...Dan Tobin it pushing his peeve against the Trotsky-ites so strongly that in the current issue of the International Teamster his executive assistant writes: "If Trotsky had taken over at that time (Lenin'* death) Russia Would probably today be a part of the Third" Reich and Hitler would be using the resources and manpower of Russia against us...
...We can never get— even in great aets of volumes—more then suggestive sketches of a nation's variegated life...
...But here is an interesting catch: Marcantonio denied an assembly nomination to Republican Assemblyman John Lamula, on the lower east side (although Lamula was the head of a Communist front of which Marcantonio was the vice-chairman)/oh the grounds that...
...Professor Beard would be the first to acknowledge that this is not the wsy to write history...
...For a man whose intellectual life has been so intense, who has participated in so much controversy, this book is singularly easy and well-balanced...
...He insists on keeping in view the fact that Wilsonian reforms were not repealed during the Harding-Coolidge-Hoever era...
...The author does not, for example, stress the economic status of the 66 members of the Constitutional Convention as furnishing the motives for their decisions...
...Over the past year authenticated stories had revealed his tie-up with Clarence Neal and Bert Stand, the boys behind the Aurelio deal...
...His favorite trick is to include a person's birthplace after the name...
...More oaf o./o oad H./lmo...
...Ha produces, in fact, an impressive list of reforms which were made at precisely that time...
...Suppose there were another Professor Besrd in England, on* in France,, one in Russia, on* in China—and so on...
...or in backing on judgeships...
...There are two periods with regard to which Professor Beard is a professional expert...
...What the heck, is Pegler an Indisn trying to buy back the country...
...The picture painted of Europe is completely black...
...In Harlem, Catenaccio, a Dawey Republican, gets Marcantonio support...
...Lamula wouldn't- repudiate Dewey...
...I thrill to it...
...Fortunately, Trotsky is now dead, too many of his followers are not" By the way, what happened between August 22, 1939, till June 22, 1941, when Hitler changed his mind...
...I refer to the time of the aetting up of the Constitution and to the Jeffersonian revolution...
...The N. Y. local is still held by the party liners...
...Catennacio delivers the Republican support to him and the pay-off is the Assembly designation...
...Neal gets paid off in other ways...
...Sample: Pemberton, Marcantonio's stooge, is a Democratic district lesder who supports Neal in the Executive Coun-cil of Tammany...
...But from beginning to so* America ia treated as if it did not belong to the world...
...Public notice cut short that deal...
...Support of Dewey had nothing, to do with it...
...By MURRAY EVERETT Inside and Out The Morcontonio Story TllIS chronicling of Vito Marcantonio's dirty deals is getting to be like the adventures of Stan McGovern's Swimming Horse in the Silly M illy comic strip in the New York Post...
...Hillman, no believer in third parties, wants to dissolve the ALP after the elections and go into the Democratic Party...
...His publishers have collaborated by making this volume available to the entire nation...
...You would have a series of fine, idealistic monographs...
...There is no wall between him and the reader...
...In speaking of them, ProfosVtf Bean} declares a moratorium on the analytical method of which he baa given u* such brilliant demonstration...
...Each country would be pictured aa good, noble, ambitious for the happinees of ita citisens...
...We no sooner get started on a bit of house cleaning than along comes a temptation from that ancient house of prostitution...
...Thus "Felix Frankfurter, born in Austris," etc., etc., and "Sidney Hillman, born in Lithuania," etc., etc...
...When I look at his picture on this book-jacket 1 am reminded of the farmers who lived next to us when 1 was a boy...
...And no matter what field the author may select, he can tell only a little ef what happened...
...In dealing with the Civil War, also, the economic theories which he has developed so brilliantly in his other works are barely stated...
...Now he has tried to sum up what he has learned...
...The man is not a meek and cowed academic...
...Further, Catenaccio's wife took Stanley Isaacs place as a delegate to the Republican National Convention and announced publicly that ahe was strongly Dewey...
...T he Mister y of f*c aa* PrOFESSOR BEARD opens hi* narrative with a list of eight wars which occurred in Europe between the first English settlements on these shores and ear final separation from Britain...
...His mature judgment is that "great talents, wisdom and experience in statecraft were represented in Philadelphia in 1787...
...A book of more than 600 pages, close-packed with good and readable stuff, you csn buy for seventy cents...
...His .looks, his manner, his words sre not those of the professional intellectual...
...The story was told in the Reader's Digest (A Communist publication...
...Marcantonio wants to continue the ALP as an effective instrument for making his deals...
...Labor Notes The national administration of the American Newspaper Guild, which is anti-Communist, increased its strength in the union this year, as demonstrated by convention result...
...Then the same editorial weeps, crocodile tears for the fire insurance companies, because the Justice Department is preparing an anti-trust suit against them for their high rates...
...It exhibits a fin* and intelligent love of country...
...The ALP convention, controlled by the right-wing, nominated Judge Matthew M. Levy...
...The machine politicians sre bad...
...He has character...
...To complete the triangle, Capaxolli, the man Marcantonio suggests against Valente, cornea from Da Salvio'a district...
...But he is careful to maintain the balance as between political parties, various social groups and different sections of the country...
...But Catennacio, the man about whom Marcantonio boasted giving hia support, waa one of Dewey's strongest men in Albany, with an atrocious Republican voting record...
...So an author's selection of material and his interpretation of it must have point and purpose...
...This man has been studying America and writing about America during the whole of a strenuous life...
...No one can push him around...
...So, Marcantonio, the swimming horse, goes swimming on...
...is one of the most tight-fisted in the country...
...To him this country is the wide proving ground where men attempted to embody the spirit of liberty in workable institutions...
...Last week the New* ran an editorial, "The March Toward Communism," which had a deliberate lie in every line...
...If tbey find a fault here or there it is merely because that is the privilege of a rising generation...
Vol. 27 • August 1944 • No. 34
