WHY I AM FOR NORMAN THOMAS
Douglas, Paul
WHY I AM FOR NORMAN THOMAS And Why A Vote for Hoover or Smith Will Be Thrown Away— By Paul Douglas npHE average American progressive who J- fancies himself to be an lntellestua] continually...
...If they were /or Smith they pretended hat corruption wss a Republican weakness, and if they were for Hoover they ignored the patent fact that he had moved complacently for years In the stench of Republican corruption, and fb:used their Indignation on the Tamnany Tiger...
...WHY I AM FOR NORMAN THOMAS And Why A Vote for Hoover or Smith Will Be Thrown Away— By Paul Douglas npHE average American progressive who J- fancies himself to be an lntellestua] continually deplores the fact that we have no labor party here comparable to that of »"g'»~V and yet votes, with great solemnity, at every election, for the less reactionary of the two old parties...
...Find check for $2 enclosed...
...All this would seem definitely to demonstrate that It is the duty this year of every economic liberal to support Noran Thomas and the Socialist party...
...Imperial expansion, numwIsm...
...Is It absolutely essential to have soma man working ten hours a day —and others tramping the streets...
...If the country is not to experience indefinitely a mere sterile succession of "ins" and "outs," he believes, those dissenters who wish to participate in politics at all must find something more constructive to do with their votes than merely to throw them to the one of th...
...a further earnest of its sincerity in pltaj...
...Esther Horowlta, Hunter CcJJegoiB8...
...But since we are the ones who are inheriting this world of ours, we would like to be given some explanations...
...There were the Pot and Kettle partisans, and some were (or Pot while others were for Kettle...
...We see suffering around us—and no relief for it...
...If your ideal is to be adjusted to your situation, in radiant cooperation with reality, then your success is likely to be Just that and m mors...
...but in practice they will not support any party in which there is not the promise that the seed sown in August shall ripen Into political victory by November...
...He win vote for Norman Thomas...
...The only question, therefore, which should remain for a realistic liberal is whether the Socialist party is worthy of being encouraged as the evangel of the coming labor party...
...Realists...
...There is not enough space to record even a small fraction of them...
...Mindful of past disappointments the liberals were charr^or placing their hopes in oflk^qf^the old-line candidates...
...Within a hundred years, political democracy instead of being the exception became the rule...
...tianlty...
...Still others felt that Harding was Just the man to end the imperialistic policy In the Oarribean which had been fostered by their erstwhile liberal hero, Woodrow Wilson...
...The country was not prepared for any fundamental polltco-economlc reforms, and the student doubted whether an eighth of the four million LaFollette voters were...
...A large proportion of the families of urban anskJIlad labor, as Miss Houghteling has definitely shown, are still below the subsistence level of living, and the others are precariously close to It...
...and (3) whether the Socialist party, as at present constituted, should be encouraged to become its nucleus...
...For once all forward-looking men were united under one banner, and the young man felt the mental exhilaration of being Immersed in a large current of humanity flowing toward a goal that he approved To one whose lot it had been to doubt and oppose, this was a novel and satisfying experience One felt that the world was moving and that dammed-up Ideas were about to find outlet in constructive action...
...An obvious answer is that It now is the only party in the field which can fulfill that mission...
...The singles have been pouring in...
...The student reflected that the Republican Party had discovered another way In 1920 to emerge from the temporary obscurity of a minority position, and It was interesting to find this liberal Napoleon offering even so late as 1928 to march his army down the hill to a re-born Republican Party...
...And those men who owned property, as main support^of^M^govseemed an impossible, a rash, an unusual thing to think that those who worked might be interested In the government, too...
...But these ecstasies have in fact little effect upon the actual political behavior of this species...
...If, in the face of all this, the liberals persist once again in supporting one of the old parties, they will demonstrate anew that they are in fact neither intellectuals nor realists, but merely political Babbitts who worship immediate and visible power and who lightly sacrifice aa ultimate promise of American hte for highly hypothetical concessions...
...And we talis » seems that you would try to prevent asoa tragedies...
...The most fatal thing that could have happened to this progressive movement, the student was convinced, was for it to succeed in placing LaFollette in the White House...
...No liberal politician would ever find him, he resolved, with his heart pinned to his sleeve...
...The Socialist Party Has Endured The failure thus far to create an effective labor party has led many to disbelieve In its ultimate possuuiity...
...John F. Higglns, State Secretary of th< Party in West Virginia, sends in $4 for 2 subs...
...Organization Education Solidarity FREE YOUTH JACK WASSERMAN EDITOR Tseng fssilrt U Esses Straw...
...From the rapt adoration with which they swarm around the luminaries of the British Labor party when these dignitaries visit our shores, the unsophisticated observer might conclude that an American labor party was about to arise by the process of spontaneous combustion...
...The mass that ¦ the beginning seemed so unyielding, w» give way before this new vigor, and ess» Unue to move...
...How about the friend to whom you have ieen giving your copy of the paper...
...Despite the truly gallant efforts of Governor smith to pump political vitality Into his candidacy, there Is every Prospect that the liberals who now support him will have no batter luck...
...2) whether it is possible to build up such a party...
...If a strong Independent political nucleus is encouraged, moreover, it can by its agitation hasten the coming of this larger labor party and can provide an organised framework which will help it to get started...
...Unconquerable hope...
...In 1924 the student was somewhat heartened, for it seemed as though there was at last to be a "wild adventure.'' Like Senator Worris and a few other staunch old fighters of the best liberal tradition...
...For a while...
...Even the New Republic itself furnishes only a very attenuated hope that liberals can help their avowed cause by supporting Smith...
...In the first place, our pseudo-realists...
...Is It absolutely necessary that some men have billions and others have nothing...
...am proud of the fact that I have been a Socialist for 25 years," says G. E. Thornburg, Muncie, Ind., as he renews...
...A new sad bra* • world will come...
...The voter who believed that the contributions of such men created no Insurmountable political obligations, even though no verbs...
...in those few Instances when a darling of the liberals has been successful, events have almost invariably shown that he is far less liberal-spirited than the intelligentsia have credited him with being, and that they have totally underestimated the terrific pressure from selfish business and nationalistic interests to which be Is inevitably subjected...
...The student was amused, upon turning through the files of one of the liberal magazines, to find an editorial Inspired by the Wllsonlan victory of 1916, solemnly advising the Republican Party that if it wished to become more than a minority party it must outbid the Democrats for liberal support...
...We do not understand your method if remedying evils at all...
...Therefore it appears to merit the support ol discontented voters, who, like our young friend, have had their nil of political pragnnati&m.—(From "The New Student...
...A bun) Socialist vote would put far more pressure upon the Republicans and Democrats to liberalize their policies lest they suffer further losses than could any inchoate and unorganized collection of liberals without a party to give them effecttwness...
...Here again was the old disregard 3f economic realities...
...Martin Lofgren, Berwyn, HI., says, "I thank you for the good work you are doing...
...Iso liberal Meed* Win arroa that tt as i xfin mm twit totiJM tuMLiti be cast for a possible winner...
...As we look around us, we see splendid houses unoccupied, while our people are huddled In small rooms...
...or Political Babbitts...
...You taunedlssjly help the orphans...
...The Democrats would be neatly maneuvered into a conservative position by this clever strategist and the Republican Party would become the voice of "the more Intelligent business men, the liberal middle class, > the energetic West, the farmers and possibly even a majority of labor...
...Al Smith, on the contrary, delivered a warm eulogy of Tammany Hall a few weeks after his nomination...
...May bis tribe increase._ "/ got scared stiff to think that I had overlooked renewing...
...Thus we find them In 1908 supporting Bryan, because of his promises to curb injunctions...
...si real wages in America (which Is from 60 to 78 per cent above that of Great Britain), and the recant extraordinary increase in pro Suction, amounting as it has to over 40 per cent, par employee, remove the necessity for any such party here...
...But with the rest of society...
...Now we find Eastern liberals ent.'-iusiastle about Smith because he is humane, believes In the publicly owned grneratlon (though not transmission) of po-ver, and has denounced the Coolidge policy in Central America, while some of the Western liberals lean to Hoover because of the genuinely pacific and humanitarian promptings of his Quaker heart...
...The difficulties in its way certainly should not be minimized...
...Even though Al8mlth surrounded himself with ss illiberal a group of plutocrats as ever lined the Republican treasure chest, rhetoric sonqueredalL Finally Al Smith did speak out In somewhat liberal accents in his acceptance speech, As soon thereafter as "The Nation- went to press It snnounced to the world that "Al Smith baa spoken 5ut- His sceoptanoe speech is worthy of the man and the office Which he seeks.'' But The Nation" with ccmiaendable k** *m tttm* t* to .watf* * m weakness of this new progressivism...
...We must build up the Party press," he says...
...It hat ghw...
...In 1920, like Stephen Leacock's hero, they mounted their horse and rode off in all directions...
...It saws that you are applying salves to saw when society needs a reorganhatloB, a new mode of living...
...The populist movement of the 90's had succumbed to this pragmatic phllospohy and had oeriahed...
...attributed to our Immaturity...
...It has further modernised fa own machinery by abandoning a bsSet in Marxism as a requisite for member* ship, which now rests solely on s btifcf in the democratization of industry sat in independent political action by tbs workers of hand and brain...
...Now, since all this running hither and thither has been Justified in the name of political realism, it is only proper to use that standard in determining whether or not liberal ends have been as well furthered by this wandering as they would have been by the investment of the same energy in fostering an independent party, based solidly on the economic interests of rural, urban and Intellectual workers...
...It is so hard to get the affairs ofwm world straightened out You WiH h»W to help us again...
...And The Sub List Increases As the campaign draw* to a close, interest increases...
...We cannot understand the numerous thlngs_Jjappenlng around us...
...had no rata to do with the basic principles at %. dallsm than the tenets of the fundaroav talists have with the ntassags of Cbra...
...The Thomas - for -President-club has about 50 members...
...Senator LaFollette was a man whom the political skeptic might follow with a few mental reservations...
...Karl Jursek, Minneapolis, fires in a sub for R. B. Threw...
...Borne supported Cox in order to ensure our entrance into the League of Nations...
...Even the mildest of changes, in such a case, would fade away overnight, as did the vaunted gubernatorial reforms of Woodrow Wilson in New Jersey...
...As new classes grasped the power, it suddenly occurred to them that God had meant the world to be that way...
...These are changes which can be effected only by a party founded on the solid economic Interests of those who are to benefit from them...
...The answer to this is that, while the material prognai of the workers has in the last fifteen years been real, the situation is by no means as favorable as Mr...
...There is virtually no collective protection against the hazards of Illness, unemployment and indigent old age, while the distribution of wealth and income Is grossly inequitable...
...Why, may we ask...
...There wss a reasonable basis for hope then...
...IS YOUR SUBSCRIPTION ABOUT TO EXPIRE...
...So I am against all Mr** ganhutions as such, national esss awl and foremost...
...He WSQ Veto Far Theesas . OUT friend win not sots for Smith this rear...
...He began to think about the war and its consequences and about things in general, in those dark days when the Apostle of liberalism was throwing his liberal and radical friends into Jail at the slightest provocation and turning the White House over to his enemies, the hate-poisoned Jingoes and greedy industrialists...
...But these are not Insuperable...
...Is it essential to have children work, while these same men need Jobs...
...If ire remember correctly from our history, feudal lords and feudal serfs accepted the world as it was then...
...To eradicate this distress, we give our youth to help build the Socialist Party—to help gain new votes for its candidate, Norman Thomas...
...Only 5 Million Votes In 1934 hopes best high for the hastily organized candidacy of La Follette, but when the liberals found that only five million others had voted similarly, or approximately as large a proportion of the votes as the Socialist party has ever commanded in France, they were immediately plunged into the deepest dejection...
...The Liberal Press la Agony All during the summer of 1928 the liberal press was in an agony of uncertainty...
...Many Industries, such ss coal, textiles and farming, are In a mess, and need collective measures to pull them out...
...Our sense ot right and wrong must have been poorly devloped...
...SAY IT WITH CARTOONS If yon know- of a voter who is unable to lao-h at the campaign waged by the parties of pelf, profit and plunder, send te The New Leader for the folio of sixteen cartoons by Art Young...
...The radicals had failed In former campaigns and s vote for Norman Thomas would express nothing "but an emotional antipathy to existing social controls...
...It seems proper that we announce that this Is the best of all possible worlds...
...In trying to pick a winner, have generally supported candidates who have had little more chances of success than the humbler parties which they have rejected...
...A liberal can, therefore, exerciss more influence upon the old parties from without...
...If Al Smith only speaks out," they wrote, or "Herbert Hoover might win the respect and rupport of liberals...
...agreements were made, was deluding himself once mora The anonymous political correspondent of Tne New Republic" with his shrewd common sense, did not apparently subscribe to the editors' hopes tor "President Smith,'" for he wrote: "Should the' unexpected happen and Al be elected, the tip is that Jake (Rsskob) will be Secretary of the Treasury, succeeding the sati.ted Andrew...
...Or at least, the inevitable state of things...
...The candidate committed the* familiar liberal sin of expecting immediate returns...
...I must have the N. L.," says Louis Schlossberg of Jersey City, A bundle of papers for the students ot Union Theological Seminary, New York...
...The wheel of progress had moved In spite of them...
...as Patten would have said, the product of a pete economy...
...Its members may day-dream of a strong labor party which will recognise their merit by calling them to leadership (and who, they believe, can be better qualified...
...Thirty cents by mrt'l...
...You grow, but your spirit never jumps out of your skin to go on wild adventures...
...You never transcend anything...
...Al Smith had shown progressive tendencies and, since he had a chance of being elected, a vote tor Al Smith wss a vote for political reality...
...Hoover had eliminated himself from the consideration of progressives by his determination to out-Coolidge Coolidge himself...
...So it seemed, for a while at least, as one outlined one's political Utopia from the platform of an automobile truck on the street corner of a middle-western railroad town, or before a crowded hall of farmers and their wives on an Ohio crossroad...
...N. Cohen, Correspondlnc secretary...
...If the candidates would only 'peak out...
...No one wears a Smith or Hoover button...
...The present indifference of the skilled crafts and the individualism of the farmers are great impediments...
...But Kelr Hardle and his men had what Is rarer than Intellectual subtlety: namely, moral courage, and they knew that they were building, not for a tew years only, but for decades, and, indeed, for all time Itself...
...The prgoresslve choice was between Al smlUi and Norman Thomas...
...He learned his political lesson early—the lesson of skepticism and doubt...
...Liberalism has indeed come to a somewhat sorry pass If such a tarnished and hypothetical pros* pect as this becomes its dominant political goal...
...Moreover, it offers an opportunity to vote for the ideal of government by those who produce as opposed to that of government by those who exploit...
...Henry Hanson, Buffalo...
...The temptation to believe that the old parties can be captured through the direct primaries, the task of getting national unity out of the forty-eight state policies, and the direct ejection of the executive are all difficulties which the British Labor party Is not compelled to face...
...We see crime and bitterness, and no attempt to change conditions...
...While there » youth, questions will be asked, and a* swers will be forced...
...They cannot come from the Republican party, which is quite definitely the party of property, nor can they penaaasntiy be fostered by that hodge-podge of the reactionary South and the boss-ridden Iriah-Osthotlc machines of the North which operates under the name of the Democratic party...
...Finally, in Norman Thomas, it has nominated a man who is intellectually tbs equal of Hoover and Smith, and who, despite their real virtues, Is morally that superior...
...These things do not seem right to us—and yet they exist...
...The Bases of Labor Parties The labor parties of Europe owe their impetus to the positive misery of most of their working classes...
...Don M. Chase, says: "Although debarred from registering to vote, students here are keenly interested and Thomas buttons are worn by a large number of students...
...Thus both the negative experience of America and the positive experience of England demonstrate that, If a strong labor party Is desired, the way to secure it is patiently to build through the years an Independent and aggressive political party, and not to run constantly from one of the old parties to other for those short-run gains which are generally Illusory...
...An orientation in our foreign policy toward peace is moreover, imperatively demanded such as only an international solidarity among the workers can give...
...We are still young enough to believe the wheel of progress will continue to move, that the stamp of Ood's approval will be put on any kind of a world that will exist when it has moved...
...A large number of voters, including non-socialists, are interested in our slant on current political affairs, (the number of these will increase after election), making the securing of subs easier than ever...
...The Student Rebels Our student reflected that this New Republican policy of adjustment to such a hopeless orgafi as the Democratic Party of 1928 represented the desperate straits of a bankrupt political pragmatism...
...We want, now, to register a protest, an active protest...
...In no other walk of life would they expect to gain their ends so cheaply, nor can they, in fact, do so in politics...
...This was precisely the effect in ^g'""^ of the organization of the unskilled, and if the laissez-faire' philosophy of Henry Broadfaurst could be overcome there, then the similar philosophy of Oompers can In time be superseded here by the less skilled...
...Randolph Bourne's essay on "Twilight of Idols," this young man accepted as the best epitaph of those liberals who cheerfully welcomed the war and fatuously dreamed that they were molding It to democratic and world-transforming ends...
...While there is hie sos youth, there is hope...
...It was indeed a period of "inquisitive and watchful hesitation" for progressive editors, If not progressive voters...
...THERE IS NO SOCIALIST LIKE A THINKING AND READING SOCIALIST...
...Don't forget that many of those who purchase the folio, will want to enjoy Young's cartoons which appear In the New Leader each week...
...A man commas suicide after attempting to support MM children on 822 a week...
...Why, may we ask again, did you ever allow those wmdowless houses we see in our cities to be built...
...The defect of any philosophy of 'adaptation' or 'adjustment,'*" Bourne had written, "even when it means adjustment to changing, living experience, Is that there is no provision for thought or experience gettinj beyond Itself...
...AfS* we are campus...
...Sending in for bundle orders and scouting for subs is a habit with him...
...We see unemployment...
...But again, In spite of them the wheel of progress moved...
...They need most of all to ponder and to adopt tbs political as well as moral implications of William James' famous passage: As for me, my bed is made: I sat against bigness and gtsetasss ax al their forms, and with the tBTSBwS molecular moral forces that work hwa individual stealing in thresgk the crannies of the world like so away sat rootlets, or like the eapuBry esstSf at water, and yet rending the bares* monuments of man's pride, if yea fh* them time...
...and to attempt to change It, was to attempt heresy...
...If your policy as a publicist reformer Is to take what you can get, you are likely to find that you get something less than you should be willing to take...
...Without their realising it, the bottom of this world fell out...
...Another group of intellectuals selected their candidate with even less regard for the underlying realities...
...The English Experience If we turn to England, and consider not merely the brilliant maturity of the Labor party, but also its slow growth over nearly forty years, even an American intellectual can see that-this has largely been due to the maintenance of an independent organization through years in which there was absolutely no prospect of political success...
...Is there poverty even in a country with the wealth of ours...
...The Wllsonlan crusade might be understood and forgiven, but to have learned nothing since 1918 seemed preposterous...
...Secondly...
...We are forgetting that young people should be seen and not heard...
...Some took the boat for Europe...
...two old-party candidates who seems the less Illiberal The Socialist Party, he reflects, has lost its earlier vigor...
...For effective political action the progressives should have begun a campaign of education In fundamental reforms, as they had an excellent opportunity for doing...
...He does not forget to send in a sub for a frldhd...
...Frankly admitting their confusion of mind the editors left to the individual consciepce of each progressive voter the question of whether a more realistic party alignment might be secured by voting for Thomas or for Smith...
...A family is found to a basement so damp that water runs down tat walls...
...To vote for Smith really means, however, to perpetuate a contradictory symbol and thereby to postpone that realignment of voters on the basis of real differences of interests and ideals which the New Republic has, on countless occasions in the past pointed out as perhaps the greatest need in our political life...
...I am sendi|T in a sub and will secure others...
...You contribute to gs collection of the New York Times...
...This Is amusing enough, but what is even more mirth-provoking is the guileless belief of these towering intellects that they are consistent...
...Hess liberals have in the past been oataraM from supporting it because in ss aasa they were required to support a shaasah Marxism which, so tar as the labor the cry of value was oonostued...
...Wilson had cut loose from the bosses before he ever became a candidate for the presidency...
...And if his acceptance speech sounded progressive his choice of campaign associates, which spoke louder than words, had s different ring: Rsskob, the virtulently open-shop millionaire, and the scores of others of his kind who loosened their purse strings to prove that the Democratic Party was as safe for Business as the Republican...
...We see ugly, dark shacks called houses, and people living In them...
...WE OF THE EIGHTEENTH ASSEMBLY DISTRICT BELIEVE THAT THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO BUILD UP OUR MOVEMENT IS TO STRENGTHEN OUR PRESS...
...Just received my first copy of the N. L. I like it...
...In studying the esaaj of wars, we find them to be tsriflVrsaia prejudices...
...Perhaps, the student mused, Al smith's mayor of New York, Jimmy Walker would be elevated to the Secretarshlp of State...
...But before one can finally accept this conclusion, there are at least three further questions which need to be answered: (1) whether, despite our verbal allegiance to the idea of a labor party, such a group Is really needed in so prosperous a country as America...
...Why, now that they exist, do you permit people to live In them...
...The Farmer-Labor party of 1920 collapsed because there was not enough spiritual devotion in its members...
...Must there be unemployment in a country that produces in such large quantities...
...ber of the Intercollegiate ObsaadtaW...
...The Church spoke about the need for charity—encouraged those who were crushed in the system by saying that the meek would inherit the earth—that heaven held all sorts of glory for them...
...It declared that that world wss Inevitable, that God had created it so...
...Caning themselves realists, they turn their backs on any movement which, aiming at the same ends they espouse, is tainted with the sin of being numerically weak and, h, support that candidate with a chance of immediate success who promises a few reforms...
...Supporting Thomas is not only the best way of helping to create a labor party, but It la also the best way of wringing concessions from the old parties...
...to "adjust" themse'.ves to one of the two old parties in the hope that a little leaven would lighten these lumps, no matter how sodden they were with reactionary politicians...
...believe that we are so different am those who have gone before us that whs* led them to disaster will lead us » » higher civilisation...
...Since the people were "inert and contented" this was not the year to propose radical political action...
...Some men were to own machines—and mines —and railroads—and others were to work for them...
...We are too ySB* I suppose, to understand your reasons...
...It is, no doubt, to be...
...but whll-> the main part of it is politically decadent, it shows a promising offshoot in the vigorous and mentally alert group represented by its candidate...
...ing itself to cooperate with all groups which may later wish to combine in a labor party, and by its action in tbs la Follette campaign has shown that It h willing to take its place, like tbs ladependent Labor party, in a larger whoia...
...Do you think the children who are cramped there wfil be kept from turning against I think that crime will be stopped by-fa* longer and quicker sentences...
...Now is the time to go after his subscription...
...They are...
...The liberal weakness was to accept rhetoric and disregard realities...
...One of these Pot-and-KetUers assailed our student with the argument that he night to vote for Smith In order to admins ter a salutary defeat a the religious bigots, but he reflected ladly that such a vote would be cast in lupport of a party that maintained Its solid block of electoral votes in the South jy keeping that region a "whits man's gauntry...
...others, like Candide, cultivated their gart'er.s...
...In the Issue of September 12, the most which the editors can find to say for their candidate is that a vote for him Is "an affirmation of the reality of a suppositious political alternative to Republicanism...
...but he is quite ready to lorego the dubious satisfaction of having made his vote "effective" by helping to elect a rhetorically liberal candidate whose roots are firmly imbedded In machine politics...
...Woodrow Wilson is here, of course, the crowning example...
...This week he sends in a check for SO .50...
...At least, then it presents an issue, a fundamental issue...
...Others, at the advice of Hoover and Hughes, rallied behind the statesman from Marion, in order to obtain the same end more effectively...
...There were Worldly Wlsemen galore in England during the nineties who whispered to Kelr Hardle and his followers that it was folly to set up an Independent Labor party, and that labor should, Instead, pin its faith upon either the social-reform sympathies of Joseph Chamberlain or the Gladstonlan Liberals of Morley and Campoell-Bannerman...
...against all Wg seeeaasi and big results...
...and to tavor of tat eternal forces of troth waka stosys work in the Individual and Maasdjrts« tj unsuccessful way, nnderdagi sJwsy* till history comes, after they are keg dead, aad puts them on the tea, —From The New BesssM, The Biography of A Voter A Young Progressive Voter Decides To Cast His Ballot for Norman Thomas By Norman Studer TTE IS one of the thousands of young Americans who came of age shortly after April 7, 1917—too late to be Infected, as he undoubtedly would have been were he ten years older, by the Wllsonlan crusade for the New Freedom...
...For you who are old you era waw from the weight of traditions tt a) aspossible...
...It advocates the nationalization of the coal industry as the, surest means of closing down the eseaa mines, and of joining the industry ap with the development of power, slots among the parties, it demands a thorough going system of social insurance and tot skimming off, through taxes on large Incomes, inheritances, and economic rest, of those socially appropriable surphssj which are not necessary to carry oa pro, auction, but which are, instead, merely tolls levied because of a monopolistic po> sition...
...Such were the sighs and yearnings of these liberals Who wanted desperately to be wooed...
...It calls not only tor tat public ownership of power, as does o«*» ernor Smith, but also far Its mililUiliag by the public, which Smith does Dot eg vocate, and the absence of which WSSM largely prevent the economies of the sspsr power system from penetrating to tat ultimate consumer...
...It was snnounced that God hsd meant the world this way and no other...
...If the UDskJBsd end semi-skilled could be unionised, their natural desire for legislative protection would probably force the American Federation of Labor to support a labor party...
...For almost a generation, therefore, the American liberals have, by their aimless political philandering, thrown away their votes, and they now find themselves at the end weaker than when they began, and without a political home...
...The New Republic," recognizing Smith's shortcomings as a progressive, recognizing also that the majority of the Democratic members of Congress were hopelessly reactionary, chose to gamble on the possibility of Smith > gradual conversion to a more thoroughgoing and mUitant progressivism that would eventually lead him to purge the Democratic Party and make it a powerful weapon for change...
...Hoover and his fellow prosperity -ahouters would have us believe...
...Published Every Week By The New Leader for the Young Peoples Socialist League The "Wheel of Progress THE students of the colleges of the city have organized into groups, whose main interest is campaigning for Norman Thomas...
...but by 1913 they had persuaded themselves that they were indeed standing at Armageddon, not only with Roosevelt, but with the Lord as well Four years later, It was again the Democratic party under Wilson which was the hope of pacific liberals...
...And with startling rapidity...
...Finally its foreign policy a g very model for liberalism, calling as I does for the withdrawal of our troops from Nicaragua and Haiti, the limitation of armaments, the cancellation of tss debts, provided European armaments an reduced: and, If the Treaty of VenmQks is revised, affiliation with the League at Nations...
...Even a poll of five millions did not give the La Follette movement sufficient courage to oonebaa The Socialist party, with an its taste haa alone possessed the vitality to «s> dure, and, what is more, to improve...
...The present platform, T*>»n_ wisely dispenses with all this eeaxxsssi theology, and bases Its program aoaay upon realities...
...We are young...
...The desire to be oa the winning side must be strong to impel one te accept such political bedfellows...
...In his childhood he had learned that water refuses to flow uphill and he now thought that he had learned his political A B C's when he conclasled that the politician is governed in his actions, If not in his rhetoric, by the economic and political limitations of his party Woodrow Wilson had preached against the influence of business in government and then allowed the Industrialists of New England to veto the inclusion of Brandeis in his cabinet...
...The Bull Moose and Wilson Democrats had gone the same way...
...Instead there was the usual scramble for Immedlae success, and the LaFollette party melted away In a month...
...The LaFollette candidacy seemed much more promising than the empty theatricality of the Rooseveltian or the fluctuating progressivism of the Wllsonlan revolt, but there was one flaw that soon became apparent...
...The New Republic," without such pangs of uncertainty, gave its support to Al Smith...
...But for us, who are trays' holds no such fears...
...You weep...
...Whenever he spoke of the party machines thereafter It was In most scorching terms...
...As these gentlemen are now'-preparing to go through their quadrennial performance, it may not be inappropriate to cast an eye over their gyrations during the last two decades, in order to determine whether or not they axe so wise after all...
...And yet we have a tariff bjgar than eves before, with Japanese sad !»• nese antagonized, • more vigorous Jttempt to give our students military treating, demands for a large navy...
...It was the presence of the Independent'Labor party which later furnished the political nucleus upon which the trade unions, In their resentment over the Taff- Vale decision, could build, and it has ever since impregnated the larger body with the stimulus of its own Imaginative devotion...
...A few supported the struggling FarmerLabor party, only to desert It immediately after election...
...Doss the high tore...
...David O. George, campaign manager of Virginia, is one of the reliables...
Vol. 7 • October 1928 • No. 45
