The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The Tired and The Non-Tired All of this was started in my old head when I surrendered my foothold in New York and moved out to live in a corner of my Delaware...
...But_ this Utopian system never worked, Unions which were run according to it soon went out of existence...
...My father would sit there with the other farmers...
...For 26 years, I have had an apartment on West 12th Street just a step from the corner of Fifth Avenue...
...On any street along which I wandered, I would meet friendly neighbors...
...I have now spent a couple of weeks in the country...
...Every Monday morning I rolled up to the big town, and every Thursday afternoon I commuted back to my garden...
...I remember hearing them talk about how Garfield was shot, but it was merely as they might have mourned the misfortune of any other neighbor...
...But they were held down by their hard labor in the open air...
...All this, of course, is precisely the sort of activity I like...
...Digging out the roots took me back to tales of the frontier days...
...I should never have left the farm...
...The first day after my work on that willow tree, I was sleepy...
...Neighbors would come to our house to spend the evening, or I would be taken by my parents to visit up or down the country road...
...The next morning, I was stiff...
...Some of them had a good deal of native talent...
...The trade-union officials—no matter how conscientious—could hardly avoid acting like members of a different class from their members...
...I had hardly the energy to hold 13 cards in my hand and hardly the brainpower to play them...
...Life would be so much easier, so much more convenient, if I would stay in my garden, forget about the trains, the taxis, the subways, the endless telephone calls...
...They would decree that officials were to receive no higher pay than workers at the bench or down in the mine, or that the trade-union snob was to be sent back to his proletarian job at the end of a certain turn in office...
...I have lived with them these many years...
...And—perhaps prematurely and inadvisedly—I am drawing conclusions about the change...
...The oppressively class-conscious Industrial Workers of the World tried hard to bridge the gulf by making rules...
...There was, for a man in this condition, no thought of having an idea, engaging in an argument or writing a page...
...During my first days on the land, I happened to tackle a couple of rather tough jobs...
...It had all the advantages of a great metropolis combined with many of those of the country...
...I never belonged in the city...
...The work was made harder by the fact that my tools consisted of a hatchet, an axe, a handsaw and a spade...
...Nothing made a deeper impression on me during all my years at the Rand School and The New Leader...
...If they told a story, it would generally be the narrative of some simple incident involving a hired man or a farm animal...
...I know pretty well what intellectuals think...
...They would talk in short, slow, widely spaced sentences about the crops or the weather or some neighborhood event—but always slowly, as if their brains were tired...
...Work that strains the muscles and makes the skin tingle is the best sort of fun...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The Tired and The Non-Tired All of this was started in my old head when I surrendered my foothold in New York and moved out to live in a corner of my Delaware garden...
...The basic distinction—the one which marks the difference between those who rule and those who are ruled—is not the difference between the rich and the poor but between the tired and the non-tired...
...I began then to think about the working people I knew when I was a boy...
...They were naturally thoughtful and able men...
...So I gave in, blinked a few times and ordered a moving-man to go into action...
...First, there was a big willow tree to chop down and chop up...
...Washington Square, Union Square, the New Leader office and all the Greenwich Village eating-places were no more than a few blocks away...
...It is what I was born for...
...There is just one farmer who writes to me at long intervals...
...They never discussed public affairs...
...In the course of a couple of weeks, I have moved from one class to another...
...I am speaking, of course, from experience...
...Nothing can last forever...
...As a New Leader columnist, I get a good many letters...
...Among books and magazines, I instinctively turned to the lightest and least improving...
...The first conclusion which I have reached as a result of my initial period of hard labor is that we must revise our theory of the division into classes...
...At the end of my second day, I found that my tastes and desires were rapidly being transformed...
...I have always wanted most of all to hear from wage-earners and farmers...
...Next, the lawn had to be rolled with a substantial cement roller and three truckloads of mushroom soil had to be scattered far and wide...
...In the city, the distinction between those who do hard physical labor and those who don't is just as sharp...
...For a long time, argumentative termites have been gnawing at my beautiful existence...
...It would please me no end if he would write a comment on this little piece...
...It was a charmingly comfortable and convenient place to live...
...They seldom laughed...
...I wonder what he will think of this notion of mine...
...But there is another side to this tale...
Vol. 40 • April 1957 • No. 16
