OSCAR AMERINGER
Mayer, Milton
Oscar Ameringer By MILTON MAYER OSCAR AMERINGER is dead. As if anybody cared. As if anybody cared that a bag of old bones has gone cold when the Russians have just killed 9000,000 Germans, and the...
...he made the Negroes in Oklahoma half-free...
...he made the hypocrites everywhere blush...
...It had to be a good war, whether it was or not...
...Oscar had the insight that saved him, and would save us- all, from boredom...
...Of all the warriors that ever were, Oscar was the happiest...
...I sing of a man who saw in America a chance of winning a war that the kings would not make, a war in which the people would live...
...By way of inducement the Army of mankind offers all of us what it offered Oscar —a lot of laughs, a shroud without pockets, and a front-row seat at the Eternal Concert of the Choir of the Angels...
...I sing of a general whose ragged army is always the terror of all the Caesars...
...He made the miners and the brewery workers strong...
...he helped make Milwaukee clean...
...As if anybody cared that a man is gone who couldn't get it through his thick head that civilized, Christian warfare would save the world...
...he made the labor press half-readable...
...See that your gifts are neither hoarded by greed nor wasted in conquest and war, but are honestly earned and justly distributed for the good of all...
...As if anybody cared that an old man has been carried off when the lives of the best of all our young men are a dime a dozen and nobody counts the cost...
...How fiercely we cling to what isn't worth clinging to...
...Good riddance, say I, to him and his likes, to all gadflies, trouble-makers, hell-raisers, disruptionists, and hecklers...
...He was a one-man New Deal for 40 years before Roosevelt and for 10 years after...
...And now they aren't even waving the Atlantic Charter...
...Before settling the troubles of distant lands, settle your own...
...His happiness sets him apart from the rest and provides the rest of us who would be warriors with the secret of success...
...If Oscar hadn't been able to laugh, he'd have weakened with each defeat, and the Lord would have had to search the vineyard for a man who was better able to go it when the going was tough...
...For economic autocracy and political democracy cannot dwell under the same roof...
...As if anybody cared that a man is gone who wasted his life on the commonwealth and never looked out for himself...
...That you, my America, will be the carrier of the best of the ages and the herald of the better day is the prayer of my heart...
...Not that he sat and studied his navel...
...You alone of all the countries of the earth have neared the land of promise...
...The long and happy view kept him from weakening when the now-or-never contingent collapsed...
...He loved the race like an indulgent uncle, not like a hell-fire preacher, a knuckle-rapping teacher, or a father with a razor-strop...
...I sing of a prophet unhonored, as prophets should be...
...He had the insight that the contentment of a pig is not the contentment of a man...
...And if there is a lesson in this tale, let it be told in the parting words of the dying Faust: This is wisdom's last conclusion: Only he deserves liberty and life Who earns them in the daily strife...
...only an Ameringer would, if he had the chance, live it over again the same...
...And all his life and all his works hammered home the slogan that progressives need most: DON'T WEAKEN...
...He Loved The Race His grin kept him manning the sieve when the water was up to the gunn'les and the rest of the crew had gone to their knees...
...the Lord's work kept him too busy...
...Not to be the richest, the most powerful, and most feared nation on earth, but the torchbearer of all that is good, true, and beautiful on earth —that is the mission of America...
...he wasn't afraid to go it alone...
...The moral of Oscar's life is an easy one...
...Hold fast to the words of the Carpenter: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.' For life pays in kind, love for love, hate for hate, blow for blow, and song for song...
...He loved the race because it was so much like him...
...Each of us,"at the end, wants only to live his life over again, and live it differently...
...When things were at their worst, as they were at the end of his life, Oscar chuckled and said, "Capitalist civilization has become so powerful that it is just about able to blow its own head off...
...He knew the bosses robbed the workers, but he knew the workers robbed the workers, too...
...The war for human emancipation is looking for recruits who are able and willing to go it alone...
...I have not succeeded in saving it from itself...
...As if anybody cared that a bag of old bones has gone cold when the Russians have just killed 9000,000 Germans, and the Germans have just killed 900,000 Russians...
...That Ameringer Slogan Read the list of Oscar's fighting contemporaries who opposed the last war and went overboard on this one—Bertrand Russell, Norman Angell, George Nor-ris, Carl Sandburg, William Allen White, and the rest...
...As if anybody cared that Oscar Ameringer is dead and the oil that was Oscar's life is a little lower in the lamp of liberty...
...he made the tenant farmers organize...
...When the New Deal evaporated, and the Tories cheered and the liberals moaned, Oscar was one of the few men in America who wasn't astounded...
...he made the blood-drinkers wonder a little in 1917 and 1918, and he made them ashamed in 1919 and 1920...
...no man in America ever did more in 73 years, or 173, than Oscar Ameringer...
...Close your glorious arch of religious and political freedom with the keystone of industrial democracy, be the cost what it may...
...He could kid the world—while he tried to save it—but he couldn't kid himself...
...Men like Oscar somehow sense—in the ultimate mystery—that they have been set upon the earth to attend to the Lord's business and not their own...
...And how we hate to give them up, to abandon the emptiness of fighting for money,fame, and power...
...His wisdom, though it never clouded his view that the bosses made the workers rob each other, enabled him to grin and go on fighting when a comrade eloped with the Party treasury and the Party Chairman's wife...
...Oscar knew that he was leaving the world worse than he found it...
...How poor our lives are, we Babbitts...
...Strong men in particular are needed, who would otherwise piddle their lives away as railroad presidents...
...Of course he was disappointed...
...He wasn't afraid just because everybody else was afraid, and the fear that, half a dozen times in his life, drove men to war never touched him...
...Whenever life threatened to get him down—as it does all of us—Oscar diverted the old boy's attention with a funny story and made his getaway while the old boy was splitting his sides with laughter...
...When he put Jack Walton into the governorship of Oklahoma and "Our Jack" proceeded to sell out to the oil, cement, asphalt, and utilities gang, Oscar grinned and went on fighting...
...The Happiest Warrior I sing of a man who came to America from a Swa-bian village where the peasants for centuries said, "The king goes to war, and the people die...
...he just grinne'd and went on fighting...
...My deepest regret is that the days are growing short and there is still so much to see, love, learn, enjoy, and do...
...If war there must be, make it war to the knife against poverty, disease, and ignorance at home...
...And so to sleep in the faith of a better tomorrow, always the eternal better tomorrow in spite of night and death...
...The fact that his socialism and pacifism cost him his shirt whenever he had one didn't bother him...
...That much is certain if anything is certain in this ever changing world...
...I sing of a soldier, of Heine's (Oscar's Heine...
...They couldn't bear to leave the world worse than they found it...
...His happiness told him that the cooperative commonwealth wasn't going to be born next Thursday, and he didn't, as a result, go off his nut when it wasn't...
...Life was real, and Oscar was convinced that we could rig up a world in which it wouldn't have to be so confounded earnest...
...He never had time to pray...
...And it never pays off, so He makes them risible...
...The pay is low, the hours are long, the medals are scarce, the terrain is thorny, the beds are buggy, and the war never ends...
...He lived to see the whole world on fire, and all his old cronies pouring oil on it, and he grinned and went on fighting his war alone...
...I apologize to Oscar for singing of him when he wants to sleep...
...As for me, I have lived my little life and said my little piece...
...And how tearfully we "beg the docs to prolong a life that is too long already...
...he made the-Klan weak...
...brave soldier in humanity's war for emancipation...
...The ultimate mystery—the mystery of that insight—dies locked up in each good man and is born again and dies...
...And they found, as they began their packing, that, by God, it was worse unless you shut your eyes and waved the Atlantic Charter...
...He was able not only to go it when the going was tough, but to go it alone...
...Let us etch out of the glorious story of the race the names of men who boast, as Oscar boasted, that they never led an army up the hill or down the bill or left an army dead on the hill...
...The Lord's business is never done, so He makes the Ameringers durable...
...Anyhow, it's a great life if you don't weaken...
...But he knew his life hadn't been wasted, that no life is wasted spent in trying to persuade the damned fool common man that all he has to do is wiggle a little to throw his riders off his back...
...I asked him a few months ago what he ascribed their collapse to...
...I'll tell you," said Oscar...
...Let us be shut of him and his likes, and of all such misfits who insist that the way to save the world is to substitute cooperation for competition...
...This world, with all its trials -and tribulations, greed, cruelty, and stupidity, is still the best I ever got into...
...Bad rubbish, say I, and so say all of us, and let us throw a hasty shovelful of dirt and get on with the business that Oscar called "moral uplift via mass murder...
...I would gladly spend my last dollar to deprive the heavenly orchestra of a good clarinet player capable of doubling in brass and strings...
...He knew that the truth was never too late, for the race will not succeed in exterminating itself for a while yet, and, in the meantime—who knows?—the seeds that the Ameringers of every age have planted may sprout among the stones...
...Perhaps it is well I failed, for what a dreary world it would be if there were nothing more to struggle for...
...InThe Faith Of A Better Tomorrow' (From the closing pages of If You Don't Weaken, Oscar Ameringer's stirring autobiography...
...I have not weakened...
...But he had something else that goes, with laughter, into the making of a hero...
...I sing of a man who fought all his life in the great undeclared war and never lifted his hand against any man...
...The Moral Of His Life Laughter served Oscar all his days in the vineyard...
...He loved the race because it was glad to be alive, because he knew it was, and able, if once it got the chance, to get a bang out of Beethoven, Goethe, Rubens, and beer...
...You have all that makes life livable, lovable, and secure...
Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 46
