A PAGE OF EXCLUSIVE FEATURES
A PAGE OF EXCLUSIVE FEATURES THE HIGHER HOG-WASH _«rA.vE Just been reading in that excellent magazine, J Hew student," an article by Burnhaa P. Becka>bo took a two years course at the Harvard...
...Hoover provides it with thli fundamental basis: "This ideal of individualism based upon equal oportunity to every citizen Is the negation of Socialism...
...the author has been there, and he takes you with him...
...The Negation of Socialism" The fundamental basis of the Hoover - ian outlook on life Is contained in one paragraph in the acceptance speech...
...We are told that throughout the s^rvard Business Scnoot this professional aspect of aoatrn business is underscored...
...And so why keep up a talk-fast to which so much toward strata and discomfort attend...
...Owns Debs used to set me aglow like that...
...A reading of these addresses convinces us that here is a man whose views are a curious blend of the old Individualism of the last century with the mass production of the present era, an era that has buried thai individualism with the horse car...
...The trouble to that we never learn of It until a suicide or a horrible chancs of catastrophe flips it into a stick or two ta the papers...
...the fundamental reality, from which we radicals all take our start At the end of the volume is an experiment in what ths Russians call Mass Recitation...
...But I'm telling of Art Young now...
...That umpire created a banking class by special financial legislation...
...Hoover is that this umpire is impartial, that it maintains equity in the race, and if some runners fail it is their own fault...
...And here we come to a comparison of shop girls and Peaches Browning, of taxi-cab drivers and "Daddy of the Goslings," of pasts pressers sad prizefighters and the like...
...How glorified street-women get into all kinds of sloppy mixupe with still more sublimed male publicity perverts In order to hay* their ugly persons smeared out over ths headlines, so that their leaser smut-fellows may have enough carnal excitant during the filthy co-mingling through the sewers of the subway...
...Stanford University, Calif, i is a service to all who are interested in contemporary politics...
...The antonymic equations would never end in their trail of injustice...
...J* *a natives of ths Scilly Islands we are all taking £•* another's wash...
...Art Young comes to my mind at once...
...One is impressed with the force of this observation since the election of Herbert Hoover...
...And all for what...
...And so doss Lillian ©Wight's and Johnny Dolan's "As You Like It" tavernlike eaterie just around ths corner from the Rand School...
...ft*a very lively suspicion that this is the sort w_*ag-wa*h with which the young In our Business g*J»» are being slopped these days...
...whether he has character or not...
...but Mike was fussy about it...
...Now it looks as though they were going "a fang on us, with college degrees licensing them as Ad...
...Gowk, say X, that's swell: S. A. ei« Watt...
...So I suppose that a) part of the curriculum is given over to the sady of franchise-snatching, rate-raising and consumer-baiting...
...nevertheless, X advise my friend Mike to look over the Jesuit "Relations," either in Parkman's history of the Jesuits to North America, or in the volume of selections recently published...
...they are simply pictures of proletarian life to America, some little scene, like the death ] of a Negro to a hospital, a group of woobites being released from a state prison, the breadlines of the Bowery...
...Imagine the children of the late Judge Gary of the steel trust and the children of one of the steel workers given "an equal start" In the present economic organisation and ownership of that industry 1 Yet this romance is' the basis of all the political and economic thinking of the next President of the United States...
...This, of sours*, la a counter-revolutionary suggestion...
...You decide that you are getting soft, and want to go back on the picket-line, instead of staying comfortably at home writing books K In short, this is real writing, and a real service to the cause...
...It has the elemental simplicity of one of the best of the psalms—will this new young Hebrew prophet appreciate being compared with the old ones...
...the government...
...It Is the negation of despotism...
...Few, sparsely few are the biassed ones with whom aa orgy of gab is an untrammelled delight...
...Hoover...
...There is a tsls of stark heroism in every household...
...Bach sketch was good enough to make it worth my while to •tart another...
...A PAGE OF EXCLUSIVE FEATURES THE HIGHER HOG-WASH _«rA.vE Just been reading in that excellent magazine, J Hew student," an article by Burnhaa P. Becka>bo took a two years course at the Harvard Bus'-** school and who here tells how the wheels in that jjafag institution go around...
...As an umpire of their destiny humble folk have no reason to be enthusiastic over Mr...
...If ever there was a genuine creative artist whose work has given joy to countless thousands, and whose name will survive us all, it to ths man opposite me at the table...
...Meetly so, because moat people do not talk their real minds out...
...That might be a slam for the Communists, and-again It might be one for the Socialists, but it is neither...
...Hoover has in mind the whole social scheme under the Constitution...
...The public utilities have chipped in a big wad to keep (bt Harvard Business School going...
...be boss out to daenMjstrate his Idas, and ths author takes pleasure to showing what his fellow-men So to him, to demonstrate divine care...
...Here are the workers in their slavery, producing wealth for the wasters...
...When I get started on a story, I like to go on with It: and when I have to stop and begin another one, I usually don't...
...Art of course goes back to his studio...
...Everybody now, lJ**r- Garrett, is working for one thing—SERVICE...
...1 employed in the heir's industry, begins life handicapped and the odds against him throughout his life...
...And how the makers of public news go tonguelolling about for just such gooxy messes...
...it we really shouldn't worry: We are in the liest «f hands...
...Its banking organization arranges for and participates la the marketing of the company's securi« ties, and collects a fee...
...Anyhow, both Socialists and...
...Maybe, however, Harvard men are getting brighter tau in the days befo' the War when we went to college...
...earning his living by adTHE CHATTER BOX Usually, X stssr clear of ooaversatam...
...A touching and Ironical picture of one unhappy young soul caught in the turmoil of our industrial strife...
...picture of the conduct of modern business...
...And so far, that is not being boomed in any srnJsrr1" circles that we have heard of...
...Being controlled by s company that is in turn controlled or otherwise ilnmlr'**/M< by a certain investment banking organization, the company is not free in choosing the chan. sal through which to obtain the funds for purchasing tat supplies and equipment and in choosing the organization that is to carry on the construction work...
...It is ths coming to power of the A"Ttt""»" man, ths) toiler aad farmer who Work for a living...
...Nothing warms me like such a fellow...
...And to keep this up for years, page upon page, headline upon headline, so that the scandal guzzlers, murderers, plug-uglies, gangsters, loungelizarda, saxhounds, and ths rest were just crowded off into ths dumps of unimportance...
...To have a few men or corporations owning a large Industry while hundreds of thousands of workers are dependent upon them for work is in conflict with any idea of an equitable race...
...But as ws ones had such a race and such an umpire he must concede that an unfair race and a biased umpire are possible under the Constitution...
...And here w* break into a few little stories, Art with his drawling incisivenesa, and your scribe with s Talmudic intonation...
...That umpire through judicial deeMona rounded out a philosophy of special protection for corporation property...
...Ths wongT* that there are say rebels left...
...The reason Is that it is wen to understand our enemies...
...Before the guns had casssd to roar to the Ctvn War the umpire was giving away empires of territory to railroad and other corporations...
...I open up on the shrimpy bimbo** who go about lapping up the black milk of press notices.' On how poets and poetesses keep calling and writing in for notices even in such an obscure cranny as this column...
...Art orders scrambled eggs, aad a Rabelaisian agg story breaks on my tongue...
...and also because any one of us la liable to be in jail later on, and wQl hsve to decide what ws mean by the word "God" and by the word "Love...
...Of all the sort of books that I don't like, a book of sketches ranks first...
...It was the mcney Bwer that secured the ratification of the Constitution */ ths several states, committed the country to the leney of protection and thus laid the basis of our presast industrial supremacy, established the American eiakhig system, gridironed the continent with rail"¦•b, secured the resumption of specie payments r.fter •as Civil War, and preserved the gold standard in 1S96...
...That umpire Jacked up tariffs for New England and Pennsylvania manufacturing groups, legislation that was worth millions to those groups...
...aaVt that just dandy...
...Hoover's romance does violence to all the facts of American history and even to the contemporary period...
...There to ever the dread of appearing unimportant...
...But I cannot enter into a mood for touching type keys...
...the small factory and the clipper ship...
...B struck down state statutes intended to enabls ths people in a state to recover conrol over their economic activities...
...Hoover On Socialism By James Oneal ¥N a recent book on American politics and politicians William Allen White, the noted Kansas editor, in a brief passage devoted to the presidents elected in the past forty years, wrote: "Each of these queer Dicks whom we have called to Use White House from odd corners in our national life has been in the day of his power and glory exactly the kind of man whom democracy, if it had known Its conscious mind, which it probably did not, would or should have chosen to represent the spirit of the hour in which he came...
...Speaking of what hi considers the American idea of "equality of opportunity...
...The style Is simple and unpretentious, yet vivid and perfectly adapted to the purpose...
...International Publishers >. I am the possesssr of the firs;, copy of the first edition, duly certified in the author's handwriting...
...only these priests stuck to their creed, to spite of torture, aad sonquered the listens by love...
...and from each one I got another glimpse of that Industrial purgatory of ours, which helps to free the worker from religious superstition, because he knows there cannot be anything worse for him in the future, no matter what he may do...
...a-reral years sgo while on a speaking trip with ¦nads Ernst, I dropped in on that place and was, and JSam, a bit bewildered by it all...
...what books they read, what pleasures they enjoy the most, yea even what dishes are the most appetizing to them, and so on...
...Today the umpire as President of ths United States is given power to adjust tariff rates according to the needs of any powerful industry...
...I have been begging him for ten or fifteen years to write a book...
...which is why I get~ this first copy...
...Everything else said by Mr...
...Now you can get a hint of it in the sketch called "The Password to Thought —to Culture...
...I have made a rule to take no part In the factional disputes, and I am glad to see Michael Gold doing the same...
...It Is Monday night outside...
...Art Young has left me to struggle with "thoughts and things...
...and insisted on waiting...
...iC -- —-———^— * Bis new book, "The American Omen," Garet Gsri**becomes...
...We had caphere in its dangerous forms...
...The assumption of Mr...
...Wouldn t it be sensational for Ins tapes if soma enterprising publisher did hit upon ths novelty of writing up the average father of a family, who works at a trade, supports his wife and children in unseMah fashion, gives his children a larger opportunity for life than was offered to him...
...I would wager my own reputation as a business man that such a newspaper would taks quickly and in time force the duller ones to fall in line...
...irassing advertising envelopes to a New Fork tenement loft...
...You might tell ma that such a newspaper would not be read by the enormous total that now gobbles up the sewage of the tabloids...
...And here he mentions the bit of good some of the tabloids perform by asking five or six passers-by out of the common stream to^offer their opinions on sundry subjects of public interest...
...Bws Is s description of such a company as given us by ws Federal Trade Commission: "A certain operating company needs a new generating unit or transmission line and needs funds with wHch to pay for the facilities...
...God is Love," says the poor old preacher in one of these stories—a retired oreacher...
...Then Art remains himself of a picture to finish, and I mumble something of a column to write...
...Socialism bids all to end the race equally...
...Many years ago X read a sort of autobiographical novel of his in manuscript, and it seemed to me more than good enough...
...And then be says, ***** US...
...Under these circumstances it is customary for the controlling service organization to provide the varies* service agencies and charge fees for its services w> the operating companies of the group...
...For Business you must understand Wnow a Profession...
...he gives you a shudder, and makes you...
...Yes, all through EPm there is a growing group of healthy young u who, somehow, refuse to believe that the Power backed ths Revolution and don't fall for P5* of laborism...
...He certainly would net be so dense as to contend that the race was equal or that the umpire was fair when whites owned blacks and slavery was protected by the umpire...
...So far the only thing that has saved ¦W collective shirts has been the fact that only a few •a* Boys have had such intimate acquaintance with tat inner mysteries and that their operations were natanBy limtted...
...It might do to include at times the struggling artist, the aerioua post, the striving actor and singer aad artisan, and give each of these a full share of ths mention now hogged by the lower forms of social living...
...And the Lord and Ivy Lee will provide, nnfmui William Bennett Munro went-to Cornell a Short time back and told the kids on the hill there all •bant the "Money Power...
...As for the "training, ability and character" of the winners, one has only to recall the Thaws, the Dohenys, the Sinclairs and their kind, to say nothing of the vulgar parvenue millionaires spawned in the twenty year period following the Civil War...
...What sort of an umpire It was in the days of slavery and the slave trade we know...
...It is the negation of Anarchy...
...Morris Hillqult gives me that feeling at times...
...We, through free and universal education, provide the training of the runners: we give to them an equal start...
...j dont know why there is such insistence upon this, everyone knows the nature of the oldest profession in an) worst...
...The "Fair" Umpire But wloat of that "umpire of fairness in the race...
...It is a pleasure to be able to point out a book by a Communist" which is safe reading for a Socialist...
...Hoover during the campaign Is merely an elaboration of tliis paragraph...
...I would even suggest to ss good a Baptist as John D. Jr., that as soon ss he gets through with ths Stewart blotch from ths escutcheon of Standard Oil, he might do a little crusading for decency in the public prints...
...its purchasing organization places ths orders for supplies and equipment, inapects the purchases, and collects a fee...
...Sketches Of American Labor By Upton Sinclair F HAVE a spt*:ial reason for boosting A this book 1120 Million by Michael Gold...
...Today, -j« Mr...
...Mike is one of the 120 Million...
...The tact that one inherits the employment opportunities while millions of workers do not is evidence that under capitalism the race is unequal and unfair from the start...
...Wr" their tribe increase is the devout bops of btVAlister Cotetnan...
...Let's give three cheers and * bfsr for the good, old money power...
...We've escaped these evils...
...But just how you can teach a lot of kids Be mysteries of modern financing and business in genatal is beyond me...
...we provide in the government the umpire of fairness in the race...
...Heresis an engineer, one who is a representative of the mass production of values by human robots and who, as a Cabinet officer, has given his time to finding markets all over the world as a dumping ground for these values...
...So I am paying a compliment to the author of this book when I say that I read it all with interest...
...g*r *» tt he wanted to keep his job...
...That umpire also voted them large sums...
...The implication Is that we have in the Hooverian philosophy something new...
...Well, here is an heir ' to hundreds of millions who controls the I employment opportunities of hundreds of j thousands of wage workers...
...So there isn* ^¦a "ft except this Glory-hallelujah stuff...
...And so I sit up In The New Leader office moping out a trend of logical invective against ths public press and the hordes who snout and grunt and snivel about the black pens for the slop of publicity...
...No professor ** aober senses would actually start to give a 17...
...He has that way with everybody...
...Equality of opportunity in the race of life will never be a fact till the opportunities of employment are the collective property of the nation...
...a shipping clerk in a clothing factory, and is caught by his boss committing the crime of reading a copy of Ruskin's "Seasame and Lilies " Of course the poor boy finds it a hard matter to explain to his skeptical and contemptuous master just what sort of a thing a "Seasame" may be...
...To print pictures, and biography, and tell all about how his wife reels about it, what his children have to say...
...As neither the Commission, the public nor the stockssVfcrs have the faintest idea what this is all about, it asms tc* us incredible that such magic could be comsrthensible to a Harvard man...
...An Utopia f«fatftttaeae...
...That heir inherits these advantages whether he is a saint or a libertine: whether he is able or an imbecile...
...It holds back the speedy to the pace of the slowest...
...it Is simply an expression of the grief which is In my heart these days, because the various factions in ths radical movement spend so much time fighting each other, instead of fighting the enemy...
...Sg|it got into the mails, so that all you had to do was *Tgt Mi the coupon, read a couple of books when the Las) was looking and corns home one night and fall on jar wife's neck with the glad news that you got the • Bat those were the crude days of pioneering...
...clench your bands and set your jaw...
...and its construction organization performs the cdestruction ' work, and collects a fee...
...1 To a considerable extent, especially where the interests controlling the service organization also control the holding company, this savors of trading with aad cashing a profit out of one's self...
...Tt Is like the stories af the Jesuit priests, who earns among ths Iroquois Indians, to upper New York state, to demonstrate the same thesis...
...Coffao brings a spall of higher thinking...
...He laughs, and without any hint of obligation...
...Why net give the notice and praise and encouragement while there to life and hope ? Why wait for ths Christmas season aad ths borrlbto bat of ths "Two Hundred Neediest Cases'' for a tale of struggle against unequal odda...
...In fact, if we had this sort of an umpire at a ball game he would not survive through the first inning...
...Hoover defines...
...And when X read their newspapers, altar ploughing through reams of alovwnly slobbered owar propaganda I come upon tales of the ttwoa of workara aad peasants____ and about them only...
...Fifth Avenue gurgles by like broadening stream on the way to adventure...
...We recall the "New Nationalism" of Roosevelt and the "New Freedom" of Wilson and wj are curious to know what the "New Day" of Hoover has in store for us...
...Here were magniSasst buildings, luxurious dormitories, all the latterJ^pparatua for gilding youth...
...The winner is he who shows the most conscientious training, the greatest ability, and the greatest character...
...Aad I venture into ths realm of publicity...
...aVsWi out onto a defenceless world a new army of assty little go-getters...
...Something mere substantial is awarded the masters of American life in this curious philosophy...
...There are no plots to these stories...
...What of the later period...
...V it is true that these schools are turning out a (¦aeration wise in the intricacies of business practice, flea help us all...
...Even if he is feeble minded he at j a success as a babe before he enters the ¦ race while the workman of strong mind...
...That umpire gave them timber, coal and mineral lands...
...This inferiority bogie gives most of us the creepy tiddle-de-winks...
...But now, ss we |f** labor without laborism, so we know capital with[•* capitalism.'' M all very profound, and slightly metaphysical, [^••aai that there ain't no more capitalists and labjwaa °a account of mass production...
...The title given to the volume, "The New Day," is of some Interest...
...and its consulting managerial organization supervises the management and afsfatlou of the new facilities, and collects a fee...
...Ssy Art, wouldn't it be wonderful if the newspapers just took the other route, and divided up the publicity for every decent lad and lass who goes about the business of living usefully in a difficult world...
...Taks the matter of a holding company, for example...
...The idea of a race in which we ail start as equals with an impartial umpire to fee that the running is fair is very charming but it has no relation to the United States...
...Pickpockets and Able Bodied Burglars...
...Consequently advertising would fall off, sad financial ruin would face the innovator...
...This is romance parading as political economy...
...It is as If we set a race...
...even more lyric about glorifying the Ij^rtcan Businessman...
...We all know bow he chose so much less in material goods, so that his soul have mora to freedom for self-telling...
...He aheds a tear over the "¦PjJfht of poor England which, he tells us, is suffrom the "evils of laboriem...
...The individualism is syrrup for the masses...
...The publication of his campaign addresses in a single volume (The New Day...
...I know that ha could have made a fortune in gold had he agreed to prostitute his soul In ths redlight house of ths Hearst Syndicate...
...Tab sort of thing used to go on In Scranton and small towns under the name of Business Colleges...
...The old-world air about the place brings a flush all over me...
...Norman Thomas has a like magic...
...He has got it in a book "aw> He says, "It was the money power that rallied *) the Revolution and carried the cause of Independasa through the darkest days...
...And to appearances the tete-a-tete is ended...
...There are others, some of ths Jlmmie Hlgglnses and ths unselfish ones like Morris Barman and Qua Claessens and Sam Orr whoa* work for Socialism inspires me to shout hossanas from the house tops...
...Says Art, most of these folks offer opinions that are miles above in common sense and over any remarks made by the Countess of Tomtosauce, who has just divorced her seventh drsg, or the aerial wisdom offered by pretty Miss Emily Gifferpretsel who just swam across the mudflats of Asia Minor to earn enough money for a course in raising superior warts on pickles...
...Why suffer the exposare only when a charitable asotPymlty to allowed for pubhc mention...
...It's Just too lovely...
...If I can succeed in making it a famous book, some day after I am dead a millionaire will bid ten thousand dollars for my copy at an auction sale, and Mike and I can laugh over it, in purgatory or wherever we are...
...Scanning The New Books Mr...
...There to always ths'tanatea of fear that the thing wont be said cleverly enough...
...And yst I have Ej*Jj«oaw them, even at Harvard...
...Ths candles on the Parisian tables flicker us into an oblivion to the world beyond the bay window...
...Anything may happen to any thing that starts from Washington Square...
...Beckwith points out, where Santayana, Royce 0* William James once lectured, the boys are listening B snappy talks on overcoming dealer resistance, the ajsliimi of jobber salesmen, how to raise a billion dolm new capital for the American Telephone and TaleMaa Company...
...Since the passing of chattel slavery la { it true that we now have the race which I Mr...
...Art listens aa only he can...
...Every man who works for a owing, and particularly every worker who supports a family under the trying circumstances that our capitalist society handicaps him with, is to my mind as great a public benefactor and hero as he who gives unearned millions to a cause, or flies across the Atlantic in a monoplane...
...The "New Day" is old, as ild as the hokum of American politics...
...How every mediocrity keeps pounding the doors of editorials rooms tearfully pleading for a puff or two...
...There is one thing that gives aa a big thrill ta ths whole Sovi \. adventure...
...Here I beg to disagree most seriously with the preteatant...
...Communists ought to put this recitation into action in their meetings...
Vol. 8 • February 1929 • No. 5
