Open forum, vol. 1, no. 4 (December, 1924)
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" THE OPEN FORUM
Radicalism is the morning costume of common sense. _
vou ds
EDUCATION
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, DECEMBER 27, 1924
FOR PEACE
A Real Peace Talk for Christmastide
or any other Season
By ANNIE RILEY HALE
The simplest, most effective way to abolish war as
an institution is to speak and teach the plain truth
about war as an institution. War as at present or-
dered and conducted, could not command popular
support for a moment, but for.the elaborate myths
with which the war mongers have ingeniously con-
trived to invest it. Take away the beautiful lies
from the war technique, strip it of its various camou-
flages, patriotics, national honor, national defense
and what not; make it stand forth in all its hideous
' nakedness for what it really is, and there will be
found `none so poor to do it reverence" or lend it
support. It will cease automatically.
The best practical aid which the United States
can render the movement for world peace, therefore,
is to advocate the creation of an international agency ~
for conducting an educational propaganda along the
line of popular disillusionment concerning war
myths. Let such an educational campaign begin
with the children, in the homes and in the schools.
Teach young boys that dying on the battle-field is
not "dying for their country"; that slaughtering the
youth of other lands is not `"`protecting the country."
What the country needs protection from above every-
thing else, is that false, vicious idea. A nation so
ignorant, stupid, and bestial as to imagine its welfare
could ever be subserved by killing off the flower of
its manhood-sealing the sacrifice in the most cruel
and brutalizing of all pastimes,-inflicting incalcul-
able hardship and sorrow on its own and other coun-
tries, doesn't need martyrs. It needs teachers. It
doesn't need men to die for it; it needs both men and
women to live for it, and try to bring it to a saner
point of view.
Everybody knows of course about the cruelty,
waste, and horror of modern warfare; but everybody
doesn't know about the bunkum in the militarist pro-
paganda, which keeps the war spirit alive. The old
tribal and feudal tradition of "loyalty to the clan,"
which was the animating principle in past wars, still
persists in the minds of many people of limited
vision and unthinking acceptance of anything bear-
ing the impress of "authority." They do not rea-
lize that times have changed, and that modern so-
cial and industrial conditions render those ancient
fealties null and void.
The first sound in the new anti-war message for
the young generation should be a clear notion of
the historic back-ground of war. In primitive times,
'- when it was the fashion of the tribes to fall on
each other without warning and carry off the women
and booty, then it was every man's duty to take up
'an axe or a club and "defend his own fireside.' In
~ modern times the policemen and the firemen defend
the "firesides,' and the police and fire patrol are
' likely to be ag efficient under one civilized govern-
ment as another. Moreover, there was a community
of interests among those primitive peoples which
does not obtain any where today under modern in-
dustrial conditions. The rise of machine industry
and the consequent enthronement of capitalism have
drawn a sharper economic division between the own-
ing and borrowing classes, employers and wage
earners, than any political or racial divisions exist-
ing between nations; and there is a more hostile
frontier between organized capital and organized
labor in all the countries of today, than any estab-
lished by political States or geographical boundaries.
Teach the young generation to differentiate be-
tween governments and peoples; that the obliga-
tion subsisting between the two must be mutual,
reciprocal; and that no government which is not
administered impartially for the benefits of all the
people has any just claim on the unqualified support
of all the people. The primary object in all civilized
government. was to give protection to the weak
against their natural oppressors-their physical or
financial superiors. The net result of civilized gov-
ernment-as the experiment has worked out in every
civilized country, is to put an additional whip in the
hands of the strong with which to scourge the weak.
The state, in other words, has become the instru-
ment of the ruling class-which is the capitalist class
-by which it bends the mass of the people to its
purposes, even to forcing them to sacrifice their
lives in defense of capitalist interests. Thus the
state, instead of being the protector of the humble
citizen has become his executioner.
The circumstances under which the United States
entered the World War and the method of its prose-
cution, furnish ample evidence of this. While the
man power of the country was impressed into mili-
tary service 100 per cent, the great manufacturing
and shipping interests for whose benefit the war
was fought-were taxed only 30 per cent of their
excess profits. For surely, whatever honest differ-
ences of opinion might obtain about the necessity
or expediency of entering the war, there could hard-
ly be two opinions about the justice of paying for
it out of the profits which the war itself created.
But instead it was financed by an unlimited bond
issue which mortgaged the future and depreciated
the currency to the point of inflated prices, entail-
ing additional burdens on the common people. These
undeniable facts, with the further facts of the inso-
lent trampling of the constitutional rights of the
citizen, and the flagrant violation of constitutional
law by the government officials of the war administra-
tion, forever negative the idea that this is "a gov-
ernment of, by, and for the people;" and justify
the belief that it is a government of, by, and for
predatory wealth. For war in the last analysis is not
caused by peoples, nor by rulers even; but by con-
flicting interests, which in the great majority of
cases are economic interests. The great Italian so-
ciologist, Achilles Loria, who made an exhaustive
study of 386 wars, reported 358 of them plainly
due to economic causes, and the remaining twenty-
eight though on their face religious in character,
were also influenced by ecanomic considerations.
Most of these economic conflicts and trade rival-
ries which make for war, come about among the
backward races in the outlying districts of the earth,
whose natural resources have tempted the exploit-
ing greed of swollen capital in search of new fields
of conquest. Defenders of the capitalist system-
and the wars which it inevitably breeds, usually try
to offset this economic interpretation of war by rais-
ing the cry of "Socialism" or "Sovietism," and. ex-
ultantly point to Russia as a horrible example of
its practical application.
But one does not need to be an advocate of com-
munism or of Marxian Socialism to see and con-
demn the injustice of forcing some men to give
their lives in defense of other men's pocketbook
greed. In a word, one may agree with the socialist
indictment of capitalism without subscribing to the
socialist substitute remedy. There are other ways
of choking the capitalist rat. Put the economic in-
terpretation of war squarely before the rising gen-
eration; make them see that instead of being heroic
defenders of their country, they are merely pawns
on the capitalist chess-board, and they will be
ashamed of the moral cowardice which now prompts
them to recklessly throw away their lives in order
to stand well with a foolish world.
No. 4
Above everything else, iet us emphasize the essen-
tial cowardice in war. It is decreed and staged by
physical cowards, who know their persons are safe
while they perpetrate the infamy of shoving other
men's bodies between themselves and danger; and
it is fought by moral cowards, those weak and vain
enough to fancy they are doing something fine, -vhen
in reality they are doing something extremely fool-
ish-not to say criminal. Vicarious fighters of every
kind-women of all ages, and all men incapable of
bearing arms, whether from age, or physical delibil-
ity, or religious infirmity, who force young men
before the cannon to die either for their pecuniary
interests or their foolish opinions-are guilty of
the most cowardly form of murder; and the time
has come to "call a spade a spade" in this miserable
war game. Women and the war-inciting clergy are
the chief offenders in this regard, and should come
in for a double share of censure. Indeed, it may well
be doubted whether war could persist as an insti-
tution were it not for the enthusiastic support of
these two reputed mainstays of Christianity. They
are certainly the finest recruiting officers in the
world.
Now if the humane and intelligent thought of
the world really desires to abolish war, it can
never be done by merely talking about the wicked-
ness, waste, and cruelty of war; for as Bertrand
Russell so truly observes: "people don't mind being
wicked and cruel if they can get enough other peo-
ple to keep them in countenance in it, but they do
mind being though stupid and gulliable." The first
step in the new anti-war teaching therefore, is to
change the war phraseology. Dont permit the mili-
tarists and "war patriots" to get by with such state-
ments as, "Oh, of course we hate war, everybody -
does! Nobody really wants war-but, etc., etc."
Force these canting phrases into the open with a
few plain truths. It is tolerably axiomatic, that
`if nobody wanted war, we should not have war.
As a matter of fact, there is a small powerful group
of men in every civilized country who not only
want war, but actually must have it to defend their
plunderous holdings in foreign lands; and these,
by reason of their economic supremacy have enough
political power to induce the state to order war
whenever their economic needs indicate war.
Now instead of trying to dissuade these gentle-
men from their murderous courses by preaching the
horrors and inhumanity of war, let us instruct
the youth of the land who will be called on to fight
these wars, in a proper reading of their true char-
acter; that they are of no national significance at
all, but only private enterprises; that they should
be fought by the men who profit by them, or by their
hired mercenaries, if they must be fought at all.
Freed from the hypnotism of such catch-words as
"national defense,' "loyalty to the flag,' etc., the
common citizen will have the courage to refuse to
sacrifice himself or others in the heartless skin-
game of war; and the war beneficiaries, thrown upon
the necessity of fighting their own wars, will no
doubt devise some less expensive method of settling
their differences.
A thorough airing of the biological theory that
war is one manifestation of sex-pathology, would
probably go far toward damping feminine enthusi-
asm for militarism, or at least check the outward
expression of it; since women are oftener the vic-
tims of sex-pathology than men-though very loathe
to admit it. Women-who, contrary to the popular
notion, are now the greatest war boosters-would
also desert its standard when war ceased to be re-
spectable and fashionable, and to that end the new
gospel of anti-war propoganda should be especially
directed. Do away with the present cant of talk-
ing about the "horror" and the "glory" of war in
one breath; speak only of its stupidity, of its hideous-
ness, and above all of its dishonesty and cowardice,
and bring into this indictment every person who
lends it countenance or slpport on any pretext
whatsoever. Teach that supporting war "after we go
in' by those who oppose it on principles, is more
cowardly than consistently favoring it throughout.
Only one constitutional reform is needed to make
this program of popular enlightenment effective in
putting an end to so-called international wars. Take
away from rulers and parliaments the power to de-
clare war, and submit it to a popular referendum.
This, after a thorough campaign of education along
the lines above indicated, will effectually dispose of
the question for all time.
BRISBUNK |
el
The favorite sermon subject of the ajpostles of
Brisbunk, is the successful man. Ame'rica is their
favorite field of observation becauses the success-
ful man here is so numerous, 80,,obvious, and so
set off in the high lights of dramyatic contrast. The
heroes of other-days, were mainly political, from the
days of Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson to the
epoch of Abraham Lincoln, "the rail-splitter'" who
became President, and James A. Garfield, who was
pictured forth as proceeding by the canal tow-path
to the White House. There has been something of
a reversion to this sort of thing in the manner in
which Calvin Coolidge has been played up recently
as the simple-minded farmer of the Vermont hills.
Commonly the heroes of the Brisbanes, and the
rest of the toadying fraternity of writers and speak-
ers who play up the successful man now, are the big
men of business, the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Mor-
gans, Schwabs, Fords, and Huntingtons, and their
like. These are the men of power today and as we
have made not more than four or five new presidents
since the twentieth century began whereas we are
making millionaires by the score every year, and by
the hundreds in exceptionally good years, it is clear-
ly to the interests of those who live by preaching
success to put the business lord and monarch in
the first place. And the first place he has in the
daily papers, the current magazines, the platform
preachments of popular speakers, and particularly
in the paragraphic comment of the highly paid spe-
cial. writers who are forever praising the achieve-
ments and benefactions of our commercially success-
ful men. Efficiency is the doctrine of the day, and
it is mainly efficiency at the point of making money
which the preachers of the doctrine stress on the
platform and in the press. Of course this efficiency
in money making has to be justified by an exhibit
of the benefits which proceed from it to the com-
mon people. The Rockefeller services to scientific
medical research and other educational foundations,
the gifts of the Carnegies and Morgans to public li-
braries and St. John cathedrals, the extraordinary
wages paid by a Henry Ford and his regard in
general for better working-class conditions, and the
manner in which our own California Huntington
gathers around him the rarest findings of the world
of horticulture and. floriculture and makes equally
rare collections of books from the ends of hte earth,
all these items of social benefit are played up to the
utmost in the columns and on the platforms where
Brisbunk prevails.
The thing is not new. It was evidently old even
in Jesus' day for he satirized it sharply when he said,
"those who lord it over you are called your bene-
factors." Plunder the public on a big scale and
whatever crumbs from your overloaded tables you
see fit to throw back to them the more they will
crawl at your feet and lick your shoes. And the
apostles of Brisbunk will lead the pack in doing it.
"Your editor" and "your paper,' writes the young
Vanderbilt, on his editorial page, with sickening
reiteration, as he carries his penny-pursed readers
with him in his millionaire meanderings from Cali-
fornia to Florida and from Florida to California
again, Which is after all no sillier than saying
"our President,' and "our government" concerning
an office and an officialism whose primary function
in relation to the mass of the people is that of
pulling the wool over their eyes while their earnings
are picked from their pockets. Your successful poli-
tician and your successful government is the man
and the machine that can get the largest amount
of pork out of the people with the smallest amount
of squeal. And at that game we Americans are
experts indeed, thanks to the abundance of Brisbunk
that floods the land.
In reality no country illustrates better than our
own what a shallow and mischievous thing all this
so-called success is. Here is the demonstration be-
yond denial of the dependence of all individual suc-
cess upon social factors and natural bounty. It was
oil that made the Rockefellers, as it was steel that
made Carnegie and Schwab and their fellow-buc-
caneers of the steel trust. It was the coming of
new means of transportation which made the mil-
lionaires of the railways and Henry Ford and the
whole raft of those who have enriched themselves
through the motor vehicle revolution. Always it
has been the spoilation of the natural resources
which belong of right to all the people by which
the big profiteers have climbed into the saddle of
economic power. And the presence and labor of the
people has been added to that which nature has
supplied.
4
yLEST WE FORGET
Southern California, prior to May, 1923, was sorely
in need of such a group of militants as the American
Civil Liberties Union. The inherent moral and civil
rights of man were, and for that matter still are,
grievously violated in the city of Los Angeles.
These violations of the rights of free speech, free
press and- free assemblage have been lessened to a
degree by the good work done by this little band.
But there is yet much to be done. Every day, new
instances occur to prove this. Every day, men and
women are being arrested for becoming bold enough
to voice their thoughts. Every day,,men and women
are given jail sentences from the courts for belong-
ing to an economic organization, disliked by the
employers of labor.
The records of this office are incomplete owing
to raids by the police and patriotic organizations.
And the jail records are incomplete because hun-
dreds of members of the I. W. W. who were arrested
and held for from one to ten days, were never offi-
cially "booked."
But we have recorded since November, 1922, thir-
teen hundred and fifty-seven men, women and chil-
dren arrested for their labor activity. Of all these
arrests, only seventy-two were convicted; and of
the convictions, only twenty-three have done time,
the rest were reversed on appeal or dismissed after
conviction. Jn no case was a single overt or violent
act alleged, much less proven.
`Six little children were beaten and_ seriously
scalded with hot grease and coffee in a raid on the
I.W.W. hall in San Pedro by a mob of sadists. Sev-
eral women were manhandled and clubbed on the
same night. Six men were taken by force from
San Pedro; whipped and coated with tar and feath-
ers.
One of our fellow-workers was arrested eighteen
times in the course of a few months and, as a re-
sult of the beatings received and the inhumanities
practiced on him, is now confined in the State In-
sane Hospital at Norwalk.
A young woman was convicted of selling I.W.W.
papers and is now serving her gentence, sick and
weakened, amid abominable surroundings in the City
Jail.
Hleven men have been deported out of the coun-
try because they were members of the I.W.W.
So, consider this, friends of civil liberties. Today,
as you read this, ninety-one men, from various
parts of California, are serving from one to four-
teen years in San Quentin and Folsom prisons, be-
cause they were actively engaged in organizing the
workers into one big union. Coughing out their
lives in the jute mills, convicted of having an idea
and the courage of their convictions. As you read
this, several men and one woman are lying in the
filthy local jails, convicted of a misdemeanor; other
scores have been waiting trial for months. And
every day adds to our number in jail. Another man
is living in a disordered dream in the Insane ASy-
lum. Children are crippled and disfigured for life.
The health and nervous systems of hundreds are
shattered as a result of their intermittent incarcera-
tion under a fiendish system.
All these casualties are resultant from an at-
tempt on the part of the authorities to deprive us
of our civil rights.
Think this over and then re-read the Constitu-
tion of the United States and the Declaration of
Independence.
J. L. BRONSON, Secretary,
Los Angeles Branch of the General Defense Com-
mittee.
--_-_: 4
"No matter whose lips that speak they must be
free and ungagged. Let us believe that the whole
truth can never do harm to the whole of virtue; and
remember that in order to get the whole truth you
must allow every man, right or wrong, freely to ut-
ter his conscience, and to protect him in so doing.
Entire, unshackled freedom for every man's life, no
matter what his doctrine-the safety of free discus-
sion no matter how wide its range. The community.
which dares not protect its humblest and most hated
member in the free utterance of his opinions, no
matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves."
-Wendell Phillips.
SEE? ieee
"The world is just as clean as its dirtiest inhab-
itant, just as free as its least free inhabitant, just as
well off as its worst off inhabitant."-Freemont Older,
The Call.
THE VIOLENCE
OF THE RESPECTABLE
A WILSONIAN AFTER THOUGHT
CHICAGO, Dec. 10-If robbed of their foreign
commerce, if deprived of their foreign mails and
cables, the people of the United States would not
starve.
This is what Secretary Wilbur told a congressiona]
committee yesterday in replying to a pacifist sug.
gestion as regards the abolition of the navy.
But, added the Secretary, to destroy the navy and
the commerce which the navy protects, would be to
destroy prosperity, then "unemployment and want
and suffering would surely follow."
Why did the United States go to war with Ger.
many? To protect America's commerce and com.
mercial rights at sea, to stop the destruction of
American merchant ships, to keep open the lanes of
American commerce across the Atlantic. That was
the real reason. "Making the world safe for democ.
racy' was only an after thought.
Here, then, at last is a public man in public office
who dares to tell the truth about the business side
of this great national question!-By George Wheeler
Hinman in The Hearst Press.
wt
MERCED ROUNDUP DRIVES
FIFTY FROM TOWN
MERCED, Dec. 14.-An ever-growing crowd yester-
day afternoon followed six county and city officers
through the main streets here, The officers were fol-
lowing a small and ragged army of hoboes and itiner.
ants, who were herded to the fire house, where Judge
Harold Bone held an informal court. An order was
issued at noon to clean the city of every vestige of
the order of `Weary Willies." A round-up of the
railroad yards, cheap boarding houses and other
places where the undesirables were apt to be habitues
was staged and nearly fifty marched before the jus-
tice. All were searched and then, with the exception
of three men, including a negro, all were given fifteen
minutes to get out of town. The three detained are
being held on suspicion of being active members of
the I. W. W.-The San Francisco Hxraminer.
-_---_ kh
NO LEOPOLD-LOEB MERCY
FOR THEM
COLUMBIA, Ss. C.-On a cold winter morning, Dec.
6, at daybreak, two more workers went to thei
deaths in the South Carolina electric chair. They
were Mortimer N. King and Frank Harrell, young
cottonmill workers and confessed slayers of Maj,
Samuel H. McLeary.
Desperate and hungry, without funds and in dire
need, the two young mill workers held up McLeary
at the point of a pistol. The major resisted the two
men and was killed in the encounter. An appeal was
made to South Carolina's "praying governor" for
mercy, but it was refused. Both were ex-service mel.
Both had been forced to work in the cotton mills
since early childhood. Both were uneducated and
without friends or money.
They died realizing that Clarence Darrow had
spoken truly when he said, "No murderer need die
if he has the money to hire a good lawyer.'-Feder
ated Press,
He
What is Law where the
Flag is Concerned !
The Women's Independent Republican League of
Paterson, N. J., adopted a resolution to knock off
every hat that's not lifted when the flag goes by.
While they were at it, they should have resolved to
unwrap every grafter who rolls himself up in the
flag -F. Landis, L. A. Examiner, Dec. 16.
-------___--_
There is nothing more dangerous or more commo?
than to clothe one's intolerance with a regard fot
the moral welfare of the community. That is the
way, in fact, in which intolerance has always worked.
It makes the persecutor appear a social benefactor,
instead of being a racial and social scourge, which
he really is-The Llano Colonist.
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FROM VARIED VIEWPOINTS
*K
THE. ELECTION
AND FREE SPEECH
Greater freedom of speech for labor and radical
elements in the United States, as ``a reaction to the
oppression of the past five years," will be one of the
results of the conservative landslide in the recent
elections, according to a report just issued by the
American Civil Liberties Union on `The Hlections
and Free Speech." The report shows that local police
interference. with meetings and strikers' rights con-
tinues in many parts of the United States, and that
the persecution of members of the Industrial Workers
of the World "goes on steadily in California'; but
that in other respects the situation has been more
favorable to the exercise of civil rights.
"Intolerance is now so securely intrenched in
power," the Union's report declares, "that it need not
resort to force to gain its end. The number of prose-
cutions and deportations has decreased, and there are
now 106 state political prisoners as compared with
121 last May. The number of cases of mob violence
and lynching has greatly fallen off, and the Ku Klux
Klan, dominant as it is in large sections of the coun-
try, has also decreased its lawless acts of terrorism!"
According to the Union there is now only one
federal political prisoner held in the United States.
He is a military prisoner, Antoni Karachun, a Rus-
sian alien convicted for deserting from the American
forces in Siberia in 1919; The Union is working for
his release on the grounds that it was unlawful for
the War Department to `take a Russian national to
Siberia to fight against his own people." The Union
is also working for the restoration of citizenship to
all ex-political prisoners, the removal of conditions
attached to some of the commutations and the term-
ination of a number of paroles.
There are now 106 state political prisoners in the
United States, the report states, convicted under
state criminal syndicalism laws "passed during the
anti-radical hysteria from 1917 to 1919." All of the
106 men are members of the Industrial Workers of
the World, not a single communist, anarchist or
socialist being in prison now on political or indus-
trial charges. All but 12 of the 106 state political
prisoners are held in California, where prosecutions
are still active, the report shows.
The validity of state criminal syndicalist laws
throughout the country will be tested shortly before
the United States Supreme Court, when the cases of
several communists convicted in state courts will
come up on appeal. In the case of Benjamin Gitlow,
a communist convicted in New York, the federal
Supreme Court will have to decide whether or not
the states have the right "to penalize for the mere
expression of opinion." In the case of Charlotte
Anita Whitney of California, the Supreme Court will
have to decide whether `mere membership in an
organization" can be penalized. If the Supreme
Court fails to destroy the validity of the state crim-
- inal syndicalism laws, the Civil Liberties Union plans
to carry on a campaign in the legislatures of thirty-
four states for the repeal of these laws. The Union's
report shows that no state except California is active-
ly applying-a criminal syndicalist law at present.
The decrease in anti-radical persecutions is attri-
' buted by the Union's report in part to the recent
clean-up in the Department of Justice, resulting in
the resignation of Attorney General Daugherty and
the retirement of William J. Burns, Under the new
Attorney General Harlan F. Stone, the department
has stopped anti-radical propaganda and incitement
to prosecutions, the report declares.
Efforts to have Congress establish a civil form of
sovernment in the Virgin Islands to replace Navy
Department rule are being made by the Union. It is
also fighting for a repeal of the censorship powers
lodged in the Post Office Department, and taking
court action against the interference with speakers
and meetings by local police. The Union also plans
to conduct a series of speaking tours in the heart of
the Ku Klux Klan territory, aimed against the Klan's
intolerance and- lawlessness. A Committee on Aca-
demic Freedom, just organized by the Union, will
handle cases arising in schools and colleges involving
interference with students' liberal and radical activ-
ities,
K
"K
A FRIEND OF FREEDOM
Albert DeSilver, until recently associate director
of the American Civil Liberties Union, and the man-
aging trustee of the National Bail Fund, was killed
instantly on Dec. 7th when he fell off the platform
of an express train passing through Rye, N. Y. His
wife and little son were on the train at the time
of the accident. Mr. DeSilver left them to go to
the smoker. He started to cross the platform of
the speeding express when it passed the freight
depot a* Rye, where the tracks curve. The door
of the vestibule was open and as the train lurched
on the curve, Mr. DeSilver was hurled out against
the depot platform. Death was. instantaneous.
Mr. DeSilver was thirty-five years old, a resident
of Brooklyn, with a law office in New York. He
was a graduate of Yale, 1910, and, of Columbia Uni-
versity Law School, 1913.
Roger N. Baldwin, director of the Civil Liberties
Union, made the following statement on Mr. DeSil-
ver's death:
"Rew men give as lavishly of their time, energy
and money to public service as did Albert DeSil-
ver. Although he was freed from the necessity of
earning a living, he worked harder than most men.
He gave to the cause of civil liberty year after
year a joyful devotion which no other man has
given. His contributions to the struggle for civil
rights have not been generally known, for they
have been made in the hard routine of office work,
legal research and in generous acts of financial as-
sistance known to very few people. He himself was
bondsman in many cases where bail could not be
obtained from other sources. He gave his help with-
out question wherever the issue of a man's right
to express' his opinions was raised. He made no
distinctions between those whom he helped.
"He was not a radical, but he was profoundly
moved by the cause of tolerance for radicals. Free
speech was the one positive social principle to
which he gave uncompromising allegiance. He sel-
dom ever raised or discussed theoretical questions.
His was a practical service, freely given wherever he
saw the need. He made friends just as simply and
easily among the working-class spokesmen whom he
helped defend as he did among the lawyers and
public men with whom he was constantly working.
His service is unique in the history of this particu-
lar case and it is irreplaceable."
8+
HOW FARES THE NEGRO?
What connection is there between these items, the
one taken from an Hastern paper, concerning the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, the other from the pen of Dr. Sydney Strong
of Seattle. The Philadelphia Tribune says:
"The National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People is the watch dog of the race. It
stands as an ever-present enemy against those forces
which seek to destroy American ideals. It has
brought the race problem, with all of its attendant
horrors before the world in an intelligent and force-
ful manner. It champions the cause of unfortunates
who are unable to combat the sinister influences
which oppress them. It protests day and night
against segregation and its allied evils. Because it
is engaged in a heroic struggle against wrong, it is
not popular with white people and to our shame, it
is not supported by colored people."
And Dr. Strong writes in UNITY, of Chicago:.
"For a score of years or more Americans have
had the unenviable reputation of lynching from 80
to 100 people, men and women, annually. For the
last two or three years the number of lynchings
has dropped very rapidly. so that during the ten
months of 1924 fewer than 8 or 10 have been
lynched. For some cause or other the people have
found their way to more self-restraint."
Doubtless the migratory movement of the negro
from the South has had an economic reaction there
which has had a good deal to do with this "self-
restraint." Also the negro has begun to organize
and to agitate in self-defense. In defending himself
he is doing the white man the best turn he can
do him, unless he can learn the greater wisdom
of a common defense against their common exploi-
tation,
K
*K
GOMPERS GOES
The passing of Samuel Gompers, for forty years
head of the American Federation of Labor, has,
as a matter of course, elicited widespread and very
varied comment. Much of this comment, both fa-
vorable and unfavorable, is of very little conse-
quence, betraying only the personal animus or the
social theorizing of the writer. Neither is the
public ado about his funeral of any weight in esti-
mating what value Gompers' career has had, or what
effect his death will have upon the fortunes of or
ganized labor in the United States. The funeral
fuss, indeed, and the sources from which much of
the laudation of Gompers has come, remind one
irresistibly of the cynical remark made by some
keen wit who said that when the Senatorial Com-
mittee went down to Oyster Bay to attend Roose-
velt's obsequies, it was not so much to pay re-
spect to the memory of Roosevelt as "to make sure
that the Colonel was in his coffin." Most of the
praise given Gompers since he passed out has come
from men whose compliments are more damning
than any criticisms they could speak.
Gompers' going will probably have less of imme-
diate effect upon the course of the American Fed-
eration of Labor than the noise it has made would
lead one to expect. There was a vast deal of
noise about Warren G. Harding's death, but it was
really of little consequence. The capitalist machine
blew its whistles loudly, but the wheels kept on
going just the same. So will the wheels of the
American Federation of Labor move in their ac-
customed grooves, responding to the impetus of
American imperialism hardly less than Wall Street
itself. The great man fetich is still with us, but it
was.never more of a fetich than in the instances so
prominent in recent years of the passing of the mas-
ter-puppets of American public life. The politicians,
whether in or out of the offices of State, are signs in-
deed of the directions in which the currents of
world affairs move, but they are only straws on
the surface of the stream.
----_0x00A7_ -______
ENGLAND IN EGYPT
Whatever the exact technicalities involved, Eng-
land is using against Egypt the same old weapons
that the strong have been using against the weak
from the beginning of time. These are the weapons
of force and violence. When England acted, she
thought of nothing but the fact that she had the
military power to do anything she wanted to with
Hgypt, and chose to use this power not merely to
exact satisfaction for her murdered general, but also
to secure economic and political advantages greatly
desired. She pondered not justice, least of all mercy
and forgiveness, but set her armies and fleets in
motion and took revenge. Whatever the provocation,
whatever the legal justification, this method still re-
mains the war method and not the peace method.
So long as this sort of procedure is tolerated, it is
simply silly to talk about an ordered world. We
may have a dozen Leagues, a hundred World Courts
"-but so long as the sword can flash at the issue of a
twenty-four hour ultimatum, our world is still the
world of Sennacharib and Cesar-John Haynes
Holmes in Unity.
i -______
BEAD WORK AND BOLSHEVISM
BROOKLYN, Dec. 15.-Bead-working to counteract
Bolshevism was advocated by Miss Emma F. Con-
tessa, a worker for the Daughters of the American
Revolution at Ellis Island, who spoke of her work at
a meeting of Women of '76 Chapter, N. S. D. A.' R.,
at the Pouch Mansion. An immigrant is changed
instantly, she said, from a hopeless, disgruntled in-
dividual into a hopeful and reasonable one when pro-
vided with materials for doing handicraft through
the BD. A. Ry
"Please do not believe all the dreadful things about
Ellis Island you hear. They are not true," she plead-
ed. :
--_3-____
No man is much better than his opinion of vther
people.
oat aE EE erry ESTER OT ESN MNF
oe STARS troy ETT ne NS
RSE ee |
THE OPEN FORUM
Published every Saturday at 506 Tajo Building,
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Branch of The American Civil Liberties Union.
Phone: TUcker 6836.
MANAGING EDITORS
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LITERARY EDITOR
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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1924
AFTER CHRISTMAS
They brought Him gold and frankincense and
myrrh,
The wise and mighty of the days of old.
But where were they as the stern years un-
rolled,
When scribes and Pharisees were all astir?
Even His mother, to speak truth of her,
Doubted and feared, and would have fain con-
trolled
Her first-born, too compassionately bold;
Even His mother! Ah, how love can err!
And grant your love who sing His praise today,
Who lay your tinselled trifles at His feet,
And offer verbal incense, cloying sweet,
4 And then like kings and Magi melt away,
Aye! grant your love, how fares it'in the
test?- -
Dare you confess the Christ of the op-
pressed?
ROBERT WHITAKER.
The Season's Greetings from our new home at
3211 Marathon Street, Los Angeles, California
: Robert and Claire Whitaker
TO THE POINT
By L. O'Dell
In `history this will go down as the age in which
King Publicity ruled, and Reason was a beggar.
Call it what you will, but, unless it will give us an
emotional drunk, we are much given to side-stepping
the unpleasant. And we greatly dislike those who
tell us disagreeable truths.
But if you want to get in real bad tell the mass it
is mentally lazy, for its one great pride is that it
works hard.
* * *
Why not write something clear-cut and intelligent!
Very well. The one great question of the present
day is as to whether it is most beneficial for part of
the people, or all of the people, to own all or part
of the means of production. And the world is so
filled with ignorance, bigotry, deceit, egotism, and
love of power, as to make it very difficult to decide
this by other than "cut-and-try" methods.
Incidently, that the growth of social ownership de-
pends upon the growth of political intelligence es-
sential to the election of capable public officials, is
obvious-at first. But the ever-increasing problem
of how the capitalists are going to dispose of their
profits is apt to eventually force matters, regardless.
* * *
As far as the artificial stimulant of the European
loans is concerned, it is well to remember that no
country can long continue to do business with an-
other at a net profit, without first acquiring its
money, then a lien on its property, then its property.
If ~ e net profit is taken by employing the labor of
the country to construct factories, railroads, etc., it
amounts to the same thing, for property is but the
product of labor.
COMING EVENTS
kek ee x
NOTE:-No charge is made for these announce-
ments of meetings, but our space limits require that
notices shall be very brief. Meetings mentioned here
must be of some interest to our constituency, and
preference will be given to those not able to advertise
in the capitalist press. Notices must be in our office
not later than Monday night.
aE eae
Los Angeles Open Forum, Music-Art Hall, 233
South Broadway, Sunday evening at 7-30 o'clock.
i
Church of the New Social Order meets every Sun-
day morning, 10:45 o'clock, Cleveland Hall, Walker
Auditorium, 730 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles,
Calif. Speaker for December, Robert Whitaker. Dec.
28. "A Song of the Centuries."
Oe
Free Workers Forum meetings Monday nights,
8:15 o'clock, at Folk Schule, 420 N. Soto St. (one
block North of Brooklyn Avenue). December 22-
Mr. Vernon Taylor speaks on, "Organizing to Con-
serve Human Time." December 29-"Psycho-Analysis,
Birth Control and the Sex Question," by T. H. Bell.
a
The Seattle Fellowship announces Sunday Lunch-
eons for December, held at Meves Cafeteria. Lunch-
eon, One o'clock Sharp; Discussion 1:30 sharp. Ad-
journment 2:46.
Sunday, December 28th, 1 p. m.-Topic, "The Co-
operative Commonwealth Coming? Worth Get-
ting? How to Get It." Speakers announced
later.
SE ane
OPEN FORUM every Saturday evening at 8:00 P.M.
I.W.W. HALL, 224 S. Spring Street, Room 218. In-
teresting Speakers-Interesting Subjects.
-___4--_____.
CHRISTMAS CANDY
Mothers and their little children working excess-
ively long hours in the sugar beet fields of Colorado,
Nebraska, Montana and Wyoming are producing
record profits for the wealthy owners of Great
Western Sugar Co. The gains of these millionaries
for the year ending Feb. 28, 1925, will run over
$13,000,000, equivalent to 80% on the common stock,
according to the estimates of The Wall Street Jour-
nal based on the year's production and prices.
These profits mean that each of the 8,200,000 hun-
dred pound bags of sugar produced during the year
and sold for $7.20 will carry a profit of approximately
$1.50 which shows what the Republican tariff does
for one corporation.
The company's profits for the last eight years total
$56,722,196 after deduction of all losses, interest, de-
preciation and taxes. This has meant over 250% to
the common stockholders. It is shown year by year
as follows:
G. W. Sugar Co. Net Income Per Share
1918 $12,335,278 75%
1919 6,121,775 34
1920 11,480,973 70
1921 4,264,171 rail
1922 *8,363,418 *56
1923 6,879,113 40
1924 12,004,304 73
1925 13,000,000 80
*deficit
In the same period the stockholders will have re-
ceived dividends totaling $212 a share, equivalent to
271% on the average par value of the common stock.
In order to conceal the magnitude of these profits the
par value has been reduced to $25 by the distribution
of four shares for each one originally held by the
owners,
The children's bureau, U. S. Department of Labor,
tells of the conditions underlying these profits. Con-
tract labor, including mothers and little children,
does the work. The bureau says: "Both women and
children are employed at the work and the possibil-
ity of turning even young children into wage earn-
ers is one of the inducements for taking the contract
which is especially strong in the case of the head of
a large family."
One-fourth of the children workers were found to
be under 10 years of age while only from one-sixth
to one-fifth were over 14. '
The work of these children consist first of strad-
dling the best rows and crawling on hands and knees
from plant to plant thinning at high speed. Later
the children cut off the tops, using a sharp knife
which in the case of the younger children causes
frequent accidents. Hours were found by the gov-
ernment running up to 15 per day.
Living conditions were wretched, with families liy-
ing in shanties not even waterproof. Overcrowding
was prevalent. In fact the beet sugar industry was
found to contain all the conditions which accompany
capitalist exploitation in intensified form-and all
for the benefit of sugar millionaries protected by a
high sugar tariff-Federated Press.
Los Angeles
OPEN FORUM
MUSIC ART HALL
233 South Broadway
SUNDAY NIGHTS, 7-30 O0x00B0CLOCK
PROGRAM FOR, DECEMBER, 1924
Dec. 28.-"Making a New World by Co-Operative
Production," by Albert F. Coyle of Cleveland, 0O.,
editor of the `Brotherhood of Locomotive Engi-
neers Journal' and Executive Secretary of the All
American Co-operative Commission. A great even-
ing is assured with this wide-awake young man as
the speaker. He was the opponent of Theodore BK.
Burton in the recent Congressional race in Ohio, -
His work in behalf of co-operation has been bril-
liant and effective. The musical program will be
furnished by Max Amsterdam, one of the first vio-
linists of the Philharmonic Orchestra, and David
Klatskin, pianist.
a
THE WORKING MAN
I received and read the two first issues of your
paper which [I subscribed to some weeks ago, and
I thought the logic it contained very good. I am a
business man in a little California town; therefore
I am not eligible to membership in your organiza-
tion; but if I was I would not hesitate in indorsing
your policy. As much as I approve of your logic,
however, I think you have a very difficult task before
you in converting the working man to your way of
thinking. After I had finished reading the two first
issues of your paper, I took them out to a hobo camp
here and. gave them to the men. They glanced over
them for a minute, turned up their noses, built a
fire with the papers and proceeded to amuse them-
selves with the comic supplement of the San Fran-
cisco Hxaminer. When I saw that act, on the part of
a working man who needs education, the words of a
socialist writer came back tome: "The working man
has a proletariat's pocket-book and a bourgeoise's
mind.'-John Baxter, Menlo Park, Cal., in The Jn-
dustrial Worker.
4
From E. M. Forster's "A Passage to India'':
The first person Adela noticed was the humblest of
all who were present The man who pulled the
punkah. Almost naked, and splendidly formed, he
sat on a raised platform near the back .. . He
had the strength and beauty that sometimes comes
to flower in Indians of low birth. When that strange
race nears the dust and is condemned as _ untouch-
able, then nature remembers the physical perfection
that she accomplished elsewhere, and throws out a
god-not many, but one here and there, to prove
to society how little its categories impress her.
: :
When Woodrow Wilson, then President of the
United States, wrote to the Chicago packers and ap
pealed to them on behalf of a more restrained policy |
with respect to their profit taking I could not resist
the impulse to parody his message into: "Nice wolfie, `
nice wolfie, don't bite sheepie." There is still room
for the moral appeal, but it is to be admitted that
a lot of it, as it is actually set forth, is about as
convincing as would be an argument with a wolf
about the foolishness of eating mutton. While the
profit takers have the run of society they will take
their mutton as liberally as they can get it.-R. W.
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