BEST MINDS GONE TO SEED
BEST MINDS GONE TO SEED "Andy" Mellon Joins The Oil-Stained Ranks WASHINGTON. gCANDALS are popping right and left, a brand-new war has broken out, more unemployment increases, the stock market...
...Four millions is, incidentally, the number of those unemployed hi America today...
...ah, fie on such thought...
...This is not only spiritual degradation for the trade unions...
...One less mouth to feed, said Jimmy...
...These ladies I speak of are not of the conservative, home-building, kitchen swabbing, washing and breeding machine variety...
...Hoover, who Is most likely to be our next President, and who was a member of the inner circle while all this skull-duggery was going on, and announces that he will carry on Coolldge's policies, which were Inherited from Harding and the Ohio Gang...
...Workers in the ranks of the unions should speak out...
...Walker himself left the city twice...
...on this record I o*eT my candidacy for President on any ticket...
...why swan you write some more about Kuawig...
...Exactly...
...In the first place there is a Tammany Mayor in office who bears the official stamp of the Central Trades and Labor' Council...
...What a convenient forgetter Mr...
...Moreover, Hedley and Quackenbush have been so confident that no obstruction to their plans would come from Walker and the Tammany Aldermen ¦> that they have heaped humiliation after humiliation upon the Amalgamated and its' members...
...He is rthe fair-hatred boy who tells us what we can and what we cannot, see on the screen...
...On March 9th, the day's trading was the second heaviest in the New York Stock Exchange, with a turn-over of more than four million shares...
...rare and beautiful exceptions...
...These United States T'HE grim tale of a capitalism unable to guarantee workers what the caw-man centuries ago enjoyed—adequate food and shelter measuring up to current standards^is being unfolded in news items throughout the country...
...While unemployment is being used as a weapon by the politicians, as note the speech of Senator Wagner, of New York, in the Senate, very ntae seems to be done about getting idle workers jobs...
...A great struggle like this in any English or European city would have brought the Labor and Socialist members of the municipal body to their feet and there would be some concerted action in behalf of the thousands of men seeking emancipation...
...Use it for ybur purposes before the rats deprive you of any opportunity to, drive them into oblivion...
...It is impossible to consider all phases of this descent to degradation...
...how they plot and plan, and whisper and giggle and gossip, and just stir up all the witch-pots in Troubledom to keep what they so outwardly disdain...
...Remarks from a certain possessive sai most interested lady immediately upon having read Use foregrrfng...
...In New York City burglary has been resorted to and important records have been stolen...
...How be built up a whole religion of rite and taboo about her queernesses...
...Votes of organized workmen that result in other organized workers being forced to wash dishes for scabs, are the ripe fruits of a political policy that means death to all the best Iwpcs of labor...
...Vain hope...
...It has a redllght in front, and a green conductor behind...
...It is spiritual death...
...The oil graft in all its ramifications and the loot from this thievery which found its way into the treasury of the Republican National Committee represent the complete, degradation of the republic to the swine ethics of that party and its grand duke backers...
...Jimmy Capasso, a boy of 15, his father out of work, .his brothers and sisters hungry and cold, walked out into the street and shot himself...
...Senator Norris caustically asks whether, If the President has the power to use the Army and Navy to supervise elections in foreign countries, he has the same authority to use the armed forces of the United States to supervise elections in different states In the union...
...You toilers on the farms, in the shops and factories, in mines and stores are summoned to a solemn duty...
...He also wants to know whether such use of the Army and Navy would be advisable in eases where, the Senate baa official Information of corruption taking peace in State elections...
...Its politics descends to the mire of a, pig-pen, to the drivel of fat-wits, and its actions measure down to its political and economic ideas...
...One need only recall the election to the presidency of a small town roan with the mind of a grocery boy, bringing to Washington as dirty a gang of mercenaries as ever disgraced a nation, he to be succeeded by a phonograph whose disc recorded the wishes of textile usurers and Pennsylvania feudalists...
...We do not have to wait years or decades to understand the present United States...
...Who is responsible for this terrible abasement...
...Our comparisons show that the two party machines have reached the nadir of corruption and servility to a hand furl of ruling oligarchs...
...but like free speech, there is such a thing as license if it goes too far, and a license is exactly what I would refuse to give most women, after seeing what they did with the vote—we Socialists fought, bled and' cried to win for them...
...I ft* fuse to retract one word of It...
...And above all I will be reminded by hundreds, that while what I say might apply to many, there still are exceptions...
...Until that time comes, sad S may not be so far off, all that we ss Individuals can do is to send needed relief to the miners who are holding out so valiantly against the powerful Oases dominated by tbe Mellons and Rockefellers...
...They appeal to the "agreement" of last year and add: "We have .suffered gross indignities...
...Other aspects of the two systems of looting are similar...
...At one time he was in the Cabinet as PostmasterGeneral...
...And now Stewart is cited for contempt for failure to answer those same questions...
...Human Commodities ]\fR...
...and a whole lot more such sublimed platitude...
...of twenty cents a day...
...And what a crew they have all turned out to be, the Republican outfit that were to give us back industrial stability, that were to bring prosperity to the workers, that were to set our feet in the straight and narrow paths that lead to financial heaven...
...On the whole, it has been a bad week far the eentnsss interests which control an ef as aader the name ef the Republican Patty...
...Warm in her touch and her phrases, Soft as a dawn in May...
...I realize dear readers what a storm this erudite essay on Woman, Her Importance and Her Future, will have on the female circulation of this journal, I stand, aghast even now, at next week's mall with its thousands of protests, and yells for their money back...
...Senator Walsh gased at the bellicose oil man mildly and replied, "No, but I'm going to find out In a minute, because I'm going to ask you exactly the same questions...
...If anyone requires evidence of this, let him look at the condition of our basic industries today...
...Will Congress please do something about it...
...sadso few...
...I felt that an open discussion of these vital phases of our modern emotional life might ease up the murderous psychology women have borne toward us poor males since fig...
...gCANDALS are popping right and left, a brand-new war has broken out, more unemployment increases, the stock market takes a fantastic leap upward, and all the candidates for the two old parties successfully avoid saying anything about any real Issue...
...How to this day, gallantry, hat tipping, gentle treatment, and alimony are just the defense mechanisms of a taboo-bewitched male element against the Circes, the Didos and Morgan le Fays of our time...
...Wistful and wise, I see her,, Kind in the quietest way...
...Hm, such a nice article...
...The republic under the dominion of this class is as rotten as Rome in the days of Nero...
...Tam,-4 many politics in the union means Tammany Pall bearers of unionism itself...
...We know that some of the oil loot went to the Republican brokers but how much of the sewer graft went to Tammany is unknown...
...We have been compelled to wash dishes and do menial services for strikebreakers.....When we protested wc were discharged...
...O'Neil would not be happy if he could get the living commodity in the United States as cheaply as the British and Dutch get their labor commodity...
...Why drag that up...
...Those in charge of the Amalgamated and who have been trying to help the men who have joined it have*faced huge handicaps...
...It is all the same whether it is labor .power, iron, ore, rubber, coal, or any other commodity...
...That Is the sad part of this question...
...The whole affair is so sickening that we would gladly turn to more pleasant subjects provided we could find them...
...F.S...
...What liave these gentlemen done in a great crisis that involves the welfare and freedom of thousands of workers in the transportation service...
...Now fellow readers and ladies tolerant enough to hear the rest of this historic harangue, above I have aet my important opinions on an increasingly important subject: Woman, Husband, and Possession...
...Now we must add "Andy'' Mellon...
...They just got up the morning they were enfranchised, walked to ballot boxes and voted into office the very leather-necks that had been keeping them qn a plane with idiots and criminals since Washington refused to tell the fib of the Cherry Tree...
...If that could be realized we could imagine O'Neil and Coolidge yodling an anthem to prosperity from the upper porch of the White House some beautiful moonlight night...
...Absolutely nothing...
...His smug features appeared in the papers, revealing his enjoyment at New Orleans and later at Washington, while the workers on the lines were involved in a desperate struggle to l>e released from the coils of the snake Hedley calls a "union...
...Capitalism is fat and sleek in the upper sections of society while in the lower depths actual hunger is the portion of many...
...I for one, am happy to find however, that the young and older lads of the day have become aware of their value in this market Is them, I see the hope for a complete freedom for men from female domination...
...Now it appears that he lied to the Congressional Committee investigating the oil scandals about the amount of dirty money which he took from Harry Sinclair, who, God be praised, seems to be nearer the cell in which he has been long overdue...
...trees shed leaves large enough to hide their shame...
...I dream of the loveliest lady...
...Driven out of their homes by armed guards, living In flimsy barracks and wretched huts, these miners in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Ohio, who are striking for a decent American living condition, present as startling a contrast to the picture of the screaming gamblers on the New York Stock exchange as does the dreary army of tht unemployed, shuffling up and down in front of the employment exchanges on Sixth Avenue...
...As Moran says to Mack, "I don' wanna talk about that...
...They found there i the most abject misery, on the part | of workers who are supposed to prorkb us with the coal which gives us light and heat...
...The Socialist Party is your agency for a needed change...
...That was why I went in for bigger and better debates on Free Love, Companionate Marriage, and the Electric Chair vs...
...I thought that perhaps with this newer life of economic and sex freedom, evolving out of hip-flasks and the Charleston, the mania for possessing, dominating and destroying- men would diminish on the part of our womanhood...
...The Best Minds There was Harding, a small-town chippy-chasing poker player, his pal Harry Daugherty, a rough-neck hi-jacker, Denby and young Roosevelt of the Navy Department, two of the most Inveterate morons that ever entered public life, old man Fan, taking Boodle from Sinclair and Doheny In black bags, W1U Hays sticking up rich suckers the country over and Calvin Coolidge, a silent accomplice after the ' fact...
...While the smell of this mess rises to heaven the other wing of capitalist politics is preparing to put across a prize exhibit of the Tammany machine, a machine which has debauched elections in New York City, which has enriched many of its leaders, and which recruits the thug and the floater as raw material for its power...
...The vague "agreement" which the Amalgamated had with Mayor Walker last year had no more substance than smoke...
...Then what of those Tammany Aldermen who have the official approval oi the city parliament of organized workers ? Has any one of them moved a finger or said a word that brought aid and encouragement to the Amalgamated men...
...This Woman's rights—,Lucy Stone,—Peaches Browning,—Ruth Elder, and "Queen of Diamonds" matter doesn't get across heavy here in my neck of the bottle...
...From the above you will no doubt conclude, that I am of those red-blooded he-men from such open spaces as the air-shafts and' dumb-waiters...
...He snarled at Walsh and said, "Do you know what I would do if you asked me the sort of questions you have been asking these other witnesses...
...their broad minds for them to snap a finger over...
...Ay, nobler than all that be...
...Were half as rare as she...
...She keeps me without possessing, She holds, yet I dance with the sea...
...Yea, I realize it alL But I have crossed the Rubicon, my back is against the wall, and I cast give up the ship...
...A few men in Congress think that by prying into the secrets of our capitalist masters and their political agents some of the pristine honor and idealism of an old era may be restored...
...Even as this thing is contemplated Tammany contributes an item of looting that recalls the worst days of its former leader, Tweed...
...We wonder if Mr...
...The coal chaos will never be ended until there Is nationalization of tbe mines, and social regulation of tbe entire industry...
...Even the hard-boiled Senators of the Investigatingv Committee, who have been around the coalfields lately, were shocked at tbe horrible conditions under which the striking miners are living...
...She holds...
...The Tammany Mayor and Aldermen are absolutely useless to the organized workers in such a struggle...
...And I wish that the real, real ladles...
...Crude Will Hays When Colonel Stewart of the Standard Oil took the witness stand before tbe Walsh Committee, he was In a belligerent mood...
...you will never understand, how scarce honest, certificate-signing husbands are, In this desert of matrimony, called America...
...Back-Stairs Spokesman...
...Win Hays Is not only a liar but a erode one...
...Not one...
...Now that the omnivorous husband hunters are buying theatre tickets and paying for restaurant checks and in other ways reversing the conditions of twenty years ago, when I courted in the ancient manner, there is still hope for the day when husbands will be taking out life Insurance on the lives of their wives, and fill up the tabloids of to-morrow with sash-weight murders in which the long neglected husband Is the death house hero...
...This gogetter, whose slogan during the Harding campaign was "Boys, get the money," Is as you know the custodian of the morals of those who attend motion picture snows...
...Records of the oil swindle have disappeared and the same thing is true of the sewer graft...
...If there was a labor group in the Aldermanic chamber that body would have been the scene of stirring action and protests against Hedley and Quakenbush...
...And oh, I have learned with what tenacious ferocity they clutch on to their mouse-like husbands and boyfriends...
...They discharged members every few days and taunted the Amalgamated, practically dared it to call a strike...
...Appropriately enough, it is a sewer graft involving many millions of dollars...
...William O'Neil, president of the General Tire and Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio, offers some advice to Congress regarding the rubber problem in the Philippines...
...We know, too, that it has no general distribution...
...A mistress, a bride, a companion...
...how they have become self-sufficient, and how the equality of living should enter into all phases of existence including the freedom of body and will-from that of another...
...took two political ¦ parties into its service, two parties that once were so far apart that its leaders found it difficult to speak to each pther...
...Philosophy 'seems to have had the effect of a tissue paper blanket flung over the crater of an erupting volcano.¦ Oh, I have heard these nberaied ladies tan of hpw no man meant enough to...
...Today they are two souls with but a single thought t » i , '—service to the masters of American life...
...Only the exceptions are rare and beautiful...
...At least so I hoped...
...Yours is the class with the power to sweep the rats out of power...
...J THE CHATTER BOX Song For An Impossible Lady (Written simply enough for most of the Possible Ones to read and understand...
...Labor power is a commodity and American masters of corporations want to get it at as low a rate as possible...
...S. A. de Witt...
...on thai and from this let my epitaph be written...
...Not so much on the matter of material gain afforded by slaving males for parasite dames...
...Naturally, he says, in this matter of labor "we want to buy the commodity as cheaply as possible...
...I refuse to fall for the Feminist fol-de-rol...
...What everybody tjaes long suspected, namely that Win Haws, who was campaign manager far- the late lamented Harding, is a crooked little bar, has now been definitely proved...
...The jobless still seek in vain for work and the statesmen at Washington drool away their time while misery stalks day arid night...
...He observes that cheap labor isn't available in the islands and American corporations have to meet the competition of British and Dutch corporations who pay wages...
...Alas and awoe...
...The ones I have reference to here, are the secretaries, social workers, professional and business women, whose swains were the kind who would not marry until, well . . until the lady friend got a raise.....And let me remark right here that a husband gotten under such circumstances is no cheap bauble to be lightly held and easflj flung, away...
...And never, ah, never to find her Save here in the void of a dream...
...Alas, nothing availed...
...O. O. P.—Got the Oil Plunder...
...Books, learned .books have been written by learned men to trace this phase of strangeness about women how the ancient savage first perceived it...
...Ah, . . . vain sighs and no more for them...
...We do find one Republican, at any rate, with some courage, in the person of Senator Norris of Nebraska, who has presented a resolution questioning whether the President has the power to use the army and navy for the purpose of supervising tbe coming elections In Nicaragua...
...John Thomas, out of work for six months, shot himself as his wife gave birth to a child...
...In Washington the office of Senator Nye, one of the oil probers, has been entered a number of times and attempts have been made to rifle his mail...
...Moreover, each such humiliation and disaster make it more difficult each year to induce the men to make more sacrifices for trade union organization...
...Long ago it...
...Its swindles and graft, its measureless greed and arrogance, have been written in investigation after investigation by committees of the Congress which it owns...
...How do you tell a New York subway express...
...Associated with him in the Board of Alderman is an overwhelming majority of Tammany Aldermen also bearing that stamp...
...Not that the Democrats are any better, only they have net had tbe opportunity for getting at the big money, of which the Republicans have taken such notable advantage...
...Chicago provides a number of interesting and tragic items While the ass who presides as mayor of that burg continues to clown as a "patriot" by defying the British Empire to invade Chicago, a man drowns two of his children in order to reduce, the number of mouths to be fed...
...There will be no cure for this patient so long as workers are kept by the millions from productive tasks...
...Another strike is lost...
...It is a hideous price to pay for Tammany mayors and Tammany Aldermen...
...To be sure, there have been reports on the situation, made by competent authorities, which have completely shattered the myth of Coolidge prosperity...
...I mean husbands fit for women of minds, intellectual persuasions, and all that.....Thus the disinterested observer can understand why modernized woman is so tensely sensed with possessiveness...
...Sometimes, when I walk through the city or travel through the country, or Just ait down and eat at the Rand School Cafeteria, and listen to both conservative and radical ladies, I fall upon that ancient conclusion that there is something fey, or mad, or just abnormal about the fair sex...
...Hays says he forgot about a little matter of $260,000 In Liberty Bonds which he got from Sinclair, and which Sinclair in turn got out of the naval oil leases...
...Just a mere matter of $260,000 between us boys...
...Not once, but many times...
...In its old age it becomes stupid, corrupt, and essentially, parasitic—even criminal in Some respects...
...Of course, as a Marxian disciple I might give an economic interpretation of this phase...
...And along comes Mr...
...Hays has...
...And finally, he add the other Insurgent senator* call upon the administration to get tbe marines oat of McThe Exchange Goes Wild While the unemployed throng all the agencies for relief, and search in vain for jobs...
...Sashweighta...
...Degradation of the Republic a general rule we get a clear perspective of a period in history only after the passing of years, sometimes only after decades...
...and so happily married...
...I have done...
...Oh you on the outside, you with your smug Mass about things, living happily ever afterward, in the comfort of your homes, and in the love of your families...
...We Socialists maintain that such hectic scenes as were witnessed on the Stock Exchange this past week, with vast sums of money hinging on the turn of a ticker wheel are but fever symptoms of a system which is rotten sick at the core...
...Wall Street gamblers rush to buy the stock of General Motors to such an extent that by sheer trading that stock gained in a single day In open market value $150,950,000...
...The Spiritual Death of Trade Unionism 1\EVER has the labor movement of this country suffered the spiritual degradation that has come to it in New York City in the past few weeks...
...to be knowing How a loveliest lady would seem...
...Destitute and without hope, Thomas thought it best to pass on and leave his problem to others...
...Certain glaring facts tower mountain high and only the blind, the stupid, or the mercerrary will fail to interpret the story they tell...
...We now know that that prosperity Is mainly confined to such rich bankers, brokers, and big industrialists as can afford to speculate in General Motors, for example...
...Every ruling class in the world's history generally begins its dominion with a certain code of honor and idealism...
...This woman's equality Is all right as far as it goes...
...Hedley and Quackenbush have taken a delight in kicking the organized workers in the face...
...Now wasn't that just like women, to scratch the hand that freed them...
...If the oil swindlers have swined their way through legal chicane and dodged the penitentiary, the same dodging is exhibited by the Tammany sewer grafters...
...Spiritual death stalks in their midst...
...The cards have been stacked against them from the beginning and it is now time to consider what has occurred...
...Those trade union leaders who have for many years urged and supported the policy of "rewarding friends" in Tammany Hall must bear their full share of responsibility...
...During the course of the last week, the expansion of General Motors stock amounted to more than $387,000,000...
...The Dutch and British purchase their labor power for twenty cents a day but it isn't that cheap in the Philippine Islands...
...Grafters in both cases have also disappeared...
...What has happened in the attempt to organize the serfs in the service of the Interborough Rapid " Transit Company is a symptom of the weakness that has come of archaic policies and methods...
...Senator Borah's suggestion that the Republican grafters give back then* oil bonds reminds us of the tame the Hudson Duster gang took up a subscription for the widow of a rival gangster who they bad bumped off...
...A crude oil Bar, ha other words...
...So these hideous tragedies rise to accuse the top hat gentlemen who stuff their paunches and talk nonsense in legislative halls...
...and yet I am free...
...Finally, of the 53 members of the Amalgamated who have been discharged, 28 have sent a letter to Mayor Walker, the most humiliating document that has ever appeared in labor history...
Vol. 7 • March 1928 • No. 13
