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OUR NEW PRESIDENT
Allan L. Benson
SOME men are so fearful lest others shall sometimes fool them that they fool themselves all the while. I know no class of men of whom this is more true than it is of Socialists. Therefore we now hear much about the "adroitness" of Woodrow Wilson, or of "old Doc Wilson," as some of these gentlemen are pleased to call him. They believe Wilson is trying to fool them. They never pause to consider how absurd is such a belief. They never contemplate the solemn fact that if the President were twice as adroit as he is, he could not possibly hope to fool gentlemen who have reserved the exclusive privilege of fooling themselves.
I am not so afraid of being fooled by others as I am of being fooled by myself. I would rather be fooled by others once in a while than to fool myself all of the while. Also do I know something of the danger of too hastily tying a blue ribbon to a new broom. Yet, notwithstanding this consideration, I am frank to affirm that on the twenty-s:xth day of March (the day I write this) I have a very warm feeling toward Mr. Wilson.
Not because I believe in his economic philosophy. I don't believe in it. Not because I believe in the measures he advocates. I don't believe in them. Not even because I believe he will lighten by a feather's weight the load upon the back of the working class. I don't believe he will lighten this load. I like Wilson because he seems to have a fairly tight grip on the fact that things cannot much longer go on in this country as they have been going. And I like him because he seems to be approaching the great problems of the Presidency with the realization that the best way to serve the people is not to serve the plutocracy first. To me Wilson in the White House is like a breath of fresh air in my lungs.
I frankly admit that this is because I have lived forty years in a tannery—nationally and politically speaking. The fumes from the White House, so long as I have known it, have been fierce. They were fierce long before I knew it. Grant felt at home there—but he had been a tanner. The stench of his administrations nauseated everybody but himself and the grafters who passed gold bricks to him while he smoked. Hayes, though not so stolid and stupid, was no more inspiring. Garfield, politically speaking, was so crooked that he could hide behind a corkscrew. Arthur knew all about corkscrews but nothing about the Presidential duty of serving the people. Cleveland might have been a great man if heredity and environment had not decreed otherwise. Harrison lived and died a corporation lawyer. McKinley will be remembered in history only as the man who made Mark Hanna famous. And Roosevelt? Yes, Roosevelt—the "Terrible Teddy," the "Eat-em-alive" gentleman, the man who fought, bled, and fried in the White House for more than seven years without even so much as cutting the price of a pretzel—the man who put the organ in Morgan and then set it to playing "He Certainly Was Good to Me!" Terrible Teddy— when shall we see his like again? Not this side of hell, I hope. "Come over and meet me some dark night" he wrote to Harriman when he wanted campaign contributions. "Harriman, you are a malefactor of great wealth and an undesirable citizen," he said
some months later when Harriman, fried of his fat, was no longer of any use to him.
These men constitute the background in front of which Woodrow Wilson now stands. Is it any wonder that Wilson looms large? Would not a spindling schoolboy look like a Jack Johnson beside a bunch of hunchbacks ?
But in keenness of perception and sincerity of purpose, I believe Mr. Wilson will be found no spindling. I have watched him as carefully as I could for more than a year. He has been changing, and is still changing so rapidly that it is difficult to keep cases upon him. But gentlemen who are not so afraid of being fooled that they fear to open their eyes, will observe that Wilson's changes all tend to make him keener in his determination to put a crimp in some of the grafters. A few years ago he was a fine example of the smug aristocrat. All he wanted was to "knock Bryan into a cocked hat," and prevent the initiative, the referendum and the recall from getting anywhere. The grafters nomiated him for Governor of New Jersey, believing that he would wear a plug hat gracefully and turn his back whenever they wanted to pull off anything. Wilson kicked the stuffing out of the bunch, from old Jim Smith down, and went about it to put a little justice into Jersey.
I first heard Wilson speak at the banquet of the American Periodical Publishers' Association in Philadelphia a year ago last winter. As I sat there I was captivated. He had imagination. I could see that. He had vision. I could see that. And he had the most wonderful faculty of choosing what seemed to be the precise word that he needed to convey a given idea.
The next day I began to think over what Wilson had said. After beholding a beautiful landscape, did you ever fall out of a balloon? If you never have, you don't need to try it to get the sensation. Find Wilson's Philadelphia speech. Read it. Sleep over it. Then try to figure out what it means. To me it had melted almost to nothing. It so little resembled an administrative chart that, beside it, the celebrated portrait of "A Nude Descending a Staircase" almost made one feverish.
During the campaign there was much more of the same, sprinkled here and there with something more nearly definite. The first effect of actual election to the Presidency seemed to overwhelm him with a sense of what was to be his responsibility. I remember how I despaired of him the next morning. Some Princeton students had called to congratulate him. He met them upon the lawn. He hopped up on a chair. And the best news he could give them was to caution them against expecting him to do anything. The substance of what he said was that our wrongs were so deeply seated that no one administration could be expected to bring about much improvement.
Perhaps I was so afraid of being fooled that I fooled myself. I still believe, however, that when Woodrow spoke then he was suffering from an aggravated case of cold feet. But I have observed no such symptoms since. With the exception of McAdoo, his Cabinet seems to me to be creditable. McAdoo is too close to Wall street and Charlie Murphy to look good. But
during the campaign he was also close to Wilson, and the effect of association counts for much. Moreover, he knows something about finance, about which Wilson probably knows little, and it is a fair assumption that Wilson wanted to put the Treasury Department in charge of some one who understood the game.
Certainly Morgan did not get much nourishment when he sent two of his partners to Wilson to perpetuate the scheme for robbing China by means of a loan. I do not now recall the exact words of the President's statement, but the substance was: "Get the hell out of here, or I will have you pinched."
I like that kind of talk. I do not over-estimate its importance. I realize that, of itself, it can never emancipate the working class. The emancipation of the working class is the only thing about which I much care. But a man who talks that way can do much to emancipate the workers. He himself may not know it, but he can. He can split the Democratic party up the back. The Democratic party must be split up the back before the Socialist party can do much business. And, if Wilson proceeds as he has started, the Democratic party in four years will be as great a wreck as the Republican party.
If Wilson plays the game as he has begun, how can a split be avoided? He has taken what he believes to be the side of the people. At any rate, he has. not taken the side of Wall street. He tells the people that if the men whom they elected last fall shall prove unfaithful he hopes they will "be gibbeted throughout all history."
Does Wilson want to be gibbeted? If he does, I have absolutely failed to understand him. I believe Wilson has a pretty thorough understanding of the critical nature of this country's condition. I believe he honestly wants to prevent a smash. I must also assume that he realizes that, whether he will or no, history will insist upon passing judgment upon him. I do not believe Wilson wants to go down in history with George III. and James Buchanan.
He will be compelled to, however, if he refrains from fighting the men who control the Democratic party. History will surely hang those fellows up by the heels. They would all be hanged by the neck now if theft were properly defined by law and capital punishment were still the penalty for theft. Wilson must go the route or land in the ditch. If he were a jackass or a crook, I should expect him to land in the ditch. Believing that he is neither, I am prepared to see him do business.
I thoroughly expect to see Wilson stiffen up the backbone of this country by imbuing it with a greater conception both of its rights and its wrongs. Except by way of clearing the ground for those who are to come after him, I have no hope that he will accomplish anything else. Toward the trusts, which embody nearly every wrong from which we suffer, he is reactionary. As an exponent of capitalistic individualism he is as blind as a bat, or nearly so. But he wrote the finest inaugural address since Lincoln's second one, and I believe he believes what it contains. As a Socialist I fundamentally differ from him, but up to and including this twenty-sixth day of March, I respect him. That does him no good, but it does me good.
[pgbrk] 4
The Hands of Christ
Drawn by Charles A. Winter.
[pgbrk] THE MASSES
VOL. IV. NO. VII.
MAY, 1913
ISSUE NUMBER 24
Max Eastman, Editor
KNOWLEDGE and REVOLUTION
Drawings by John Sloan
INVESTIGATING VICE
THEY'VE got it in Chicago. They've got it in Michigan." They've got it in Ohio. They've got it in Sacramento. They've got it in Salt Lake City. They've got it in Philadelphia— "Got what?"
Why, the Investigating Vice—isn't that what we were talking about?
It really isn't necessary to investigate vice. There are enough people in public life thoroughly familiar with the subject: All the investigation effects is to drain off the enthusiasm of those who might otherwise have been led to do something about it. Investigation as a preliminary to action is the essence of wisdom. But investigation of a matter, the essential cause of which is already known—investigation as a substitute for action—that is a habit that ranks high among the credentials of hell.
I would almost say that there wouldn't be any academic people in hell if it weren't for this vice Whereas it is well known that hell is chock-full of academic people. But that is a little aside from the subject.
I was going on to say that I believe vice is so interesting a topic—so much more interesting than misery or hunger—that probably these investigations will not go up entirely in gas. A certain amount of legal action will perhaps result. And thanks to Christ and Karl Marx and some other agitators, it looks as though this action were going to be directed at last against the true cause of the trouble—the economic condition of the workers. That is a matter for rejoicing.
Not that this action will essentially change the condition of the workers, any more than it will solve the problem of prostitution. No, the most that we can expect is the establishment of a National Minimum Wage for women, a "Living Wage" —which is probably the meanest conception the reform spirit ever gave birth to. This Minimum Wage once nationally established will give the moral people in the community a comfortable feeling (the same one they had before vice was discovered by William Rockefeller in the year 1912) that if any girl goes wrong it's her own fault. She had a chance to go to heaven on a Minimum Wage, and she went to hell on a toboggan.
I perceive this attitude already in reports of the investigations. The line between Virtue Ensnared and Vice Rampant is going to be drawn by a few quarts of beans more or less per week, with no regard for individual temperament or the sacred love of life. Sympathy is going to stop at the dead line—a living wage. If I were a girl working all day and suffering the im-
*If it was not known before, it will be now that we have published Art Young's double page cartoon in this number.
Max Eastman
position of a living wage in a rich country, I trust I would be either a prostitute or a thief. And until the general public is ready to make exactly the same statement it will have no true apprehension of the problem of prostitution, and its measures will go but a short way toward solving it.
No—there is no ground for hope that reform enactments will solve the problem of prostitution. But there is ground for hope in the fact that all intelligent society is learning to talk of this problem in terms of economics. For when we have learned to see one of these ancient and sacred "immoralities" as an economic result, we are on the road to see some of our most famous moralities in the same light. We are on the road to a genuinely revolutionary idealism.
PROBLEM: If it takes ten to twelve dollars a week for one girl to keep alive and free, how can a man bring up a family on the same sum or less?
Minimum Wage
THE QUESTION OF VIOLENCE
SAYS the parson to the Socialist: "When you say Revolution, do you mean that you expect a struggle which will be attended by violence?" And says the Socialist to the parson: "Man, will you just open your eyes! Do I expect a struggle? I see the struggle every day.
"Do I expect that it will be attended by violence? I read news of the violence attending this struggle in every newspaper that comes to my hand.
"The soldiers of West Virginia have been engaged either in warfare or cold murder, under the direction of the Steel Trust, for something over a month. Even the Governor of the State, in order to justify an assault upon the liberties of men under the name of martial "law," had to declare West Virginia in a state of insurrection.
"West Virginia is in a state of insurrection, and it has been for months. And that, simply because United States Steel is out to kill organized labor, and organized labor is out to fight for life. The number that will lie dead as a direct or indirect result of this fight will exceed the days it has lasted. And right at the crisis of such a situation, which even capitalist newspapers have called a 'civil war,' you come up to me, and you ask me in that mild, bookish way,
"'Do you expect a struggle that will be attended by violence ?' "
Now let us remodel this question about violence in such a way as to make it mean something. It is not:
"Will there be violence?" but
"How much violence will there be?"
And when the parson asks you this question, you can answer without any hesitation:
"That depends to a considerable extent upon you."
[pgbrk] 6
THE MASSES
How long the violence will continue, how much it will increase, depends to a considerable extent upon the ministers, the professors, the literati, the doctors of this and the doctors of that—who profess to, and in some measure actually do, possess a disinterested judgment and a respectability that does not rest upon an economic basis. If they—every one of them—would acknowledge the conflict, and take their stand on the side of the dispossessed, that would do more to minimize the violence attending the social revolution than any other single event we can imagine.
But so long as they—the scientists, the acknowledged idealists—hold off, and deny truth, and read books about mercy, and hold their lips shut while the military power of their government goes out to murder the poor, as it has these weeks in West Virginia, and as it does continually in great industrial struggles—so long as that continues the chances of a general armed conflict in America are not small.
If you want to perpetuate and propagate violence— you who are free—continue to stand on the side of Benevolent Tyranny while the workers of the world wake up to Liberty and Justice.
EX CATHEDRA
EVER let any so-called Marxian tell you that the power of disinterested idealism is nothing, or is negligible. Point to the life of Marx himself. All that his philosophy rejects is the alleged disinterestedness of those whose interests are really at stake.
For instance, there is a big spiritual force under the roof of the church, and as the power of the church declines we want to bring as much of that force our way as we can. We want to save up all the virtue that is being wasted in trying not to swear, and swing it into the channel of true revolutionary effort.
STATISTICAL
IN the New Review for March 22 an economist of international reputation, writing under the name of Isaac Halevy, concludes his study of "Social Economic Classes in the United States." I mention this study, not especially because of the conclusions arrived at, but because a scientific analysis of these matters is so rare and precious an occurrence.
Those in love with an opinion are poor lovers of the truth. And it is only this fact—it is only a kind of fear of the truth—that can account for the scarcity among Socialist writings, especially in America, of the deliberate effort to determine and make public the facts about class development and the distribution of capital.
These facts are not such as to promote a superficial hopefulness in those who rely upon the method of the class struggle. According to Mr. Halevy it will require another generation of the present rate of change before a bare majority of our population can reasonably be called "proletarians." And if he had taken into consideration the distribution of capital, through savings and insurance, among wage-workers, he might have given even a darker account of the facts.
I think, however, that these facts are dark only to those who view the doctrine of the class struggle with academic stiffness. Neither pure proletarians nor pure capitalists will ever form a majority of society. But the pure proletarians already greatly Outnumber the pure capitalists, and the line between capitalist and proletarian is the sharpest line that can be drawn through society upon the basis of economic interest. It divides society into the two largest groups. And once we can marshal these two groups consciously on opposing sides of the line, the inter-
mediate groups will divide and fall in, some upon one side and some upon the other.
In short, if the "pure proletarians" stood unitedly for their own economic interest, if they stood for the Social Revolution, millions of people whose economic interest is indifferent, or not strongly, or not in the long run, opposed to the revolution, would stand with them. The hope of the class struggle lies not in the evolution of a pure proletarian majority, but it lies in the evolution of pure class consciousness in those who are proletarian. It lies not in the abolition of a real middle class, but in the abolition of a fictitious middle ground between the pure capitalist and the pure proletarian class. It lies in drawing a line of battle between these classes clearly and without compromise.
Every battle line passes through the center of the souls of thousands of people, but when the battle rages these people have to take their stand upon one side or the other. In this fact lies the promise of the social revolution. And all we need ask of the statistician is to reassure us that we are drawing a true line upon the basis of economic interest, and that the number whose interest falls wholly upon our side of the line is not diminishing.
DEFENDING CHIVALRY
MRS. PANKHURST has been sentenced to three years of hard labor. She threatens to leave prison either dead or alive in a short space of time. She will fulfil her threat. And the British judiciary, which has on its head the blood of Joan of Arc, will have that of another fighting martyr of liberty, if
some intelligence or some imagination does not descend upon them soon.
And when our children shall ask of history why they persecuted the saints in the year 1913, what can history say? They were acting in defense of the regime of chivalry!
DRY POINT
HARRISON FISHER, the Saturday Evening Post impressionist, speaking of the visit to New York
of Paul Helleu, the French artist, says that a special medium is required to depict the personality of the American Woman, and he knows of nothing that hits her off better than the dry-point etching. It has "dash," he says. And he hopes that the women of America will rise to the opportunity to have their portraits dashed off by Paul Helleu at three decimal points to the dash.
In the absence of Mother Jones, who is spending a short vacation in jail in West Virginia, American Womanhood at its best will perhaps have to be represented by a delegation of White Goods Workers who are still in the city in spite of a rather arduous social season. These girls have exhibited more dash in the past three months than any other American women who have succeeded in keeping out of jail, and we recommend them especially to the French tradition.
We like a dry point ourselves, and for this reason we do not hesitate to remark that if Monsieur Helleu would look a little more after the dash, and a little less after the cash, he might convey to his contemporaries, if not to posterity, an impression that American womanhood really exists.
[pgbrk] THE MASSES
7
He Wanted To See
Horatio Winslow
BROUGHT before the Grand Jury little Willie Smithers wept and confessed that he put the stone on the track to wreck the train because he wanted to see the engine stand on its head. Sounds foolish, doesn't it? Well, it doesn't sound half so foolish as a lot of excuses would sound if the Grand Jury could only question the real trainwreckers. F'rinstance:
It was unanimously decided that the wreck on the K. O. & N. G. R. R. in which twelve lives were lost was caused by vicious economy in the maintenance of the right of way.
"Why didn't you replace the rails when you knew they were worn out?" inquired the foreman.
"Because," replied President Robert R. Squealer, "new rails eat up dividends and I wanted to see if 1 couldn't have a bigger country estate than that owned by Henry O. Hicks, President of the Universal Gas Company."
The District Attorney frowned.
"And now, President Pigeon, will you tell us why you didn't provide the proper safety appliances that would have prevented your last four wrecks."
"Oh, sir," replied Peter P. Pigeon of the O. U. R. R., "I couldn't. I had to do without safety appliances because they would have cost me a great deal of money and I wanted to see each of my boys start life with a million apiece."
After ten minutes' deliberation the jury found that the recent ten-life wreck on the Speed & Bump Line was wholly due to the overwork pressure on the employees.
"I made them all work overtime, thus saving money for the stockholders," declared President Oscar X. Ox, "because I wanted to see my wife keep her French chef and her social position. I knew if I did what was right the stockholders would elect somebody else President and I should have to look for a new job."
Christianity In Akron
THE four great rubber companies in Akron, Ohio, paid during the last year dividends amounting at the highest to 800 per cent.
The earnings of their workers have declined during this period, in spite of the rising cost of living, and they have been speeded up beyond the limit of endurance. One girl reports a ten-hour day on piece work, at which by straining every nerve all day she could earn $4 to $4.50 a week.
This merely illustrates the law of Surplus Value—a law which might be formulated as follows:
"Unto him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that he hath."
Twenty thousand of these workers are now on strike against the operation of this law. And it is reported that the entire Young Men's Christian Association of Akron have been sworn in as special deputies to help put down the strike.
This law of Surplus Value seems to be one of the Scriptural quotations that "Christians" are most eager to sustain.
Another is, "The poor ye have always with you."
July Curtis.
Keep off
the
Grass
Drawn by Cornelia Barns.
Lords of Creation
"moisten your lips a little—there—that's perfect !"
A POINT OF VIEW
(Extract from the Speech of Patrolman X before the Patrolman's Benefit Association)
.... Gawd knows w'at we're comin' to, brutterofficers! D' good old days is gone. Wunst ev'ybody had a pleasant wuyd and a hand-out fer t' man in blue. W'y I couldn't count all d' ones and d' fives dat was slipped me t'rough d' basement doorways and in back rooms. Half d' time I didn't know w'at 'twas fer, but I took it t'ankful, and did my best by all.
But now, Holy Mackerel! w'at a diff'rence! Now we got nottin' to do but walk d' streets and take abuse! W'y have dey tuyned on us, I want to know? Ain't we alius done d' square t'ing by dem dat squared us? W'y yeh don't dast even assess a fruit-stand peddler half a dollar no more. And w'en yeh ast d' guyls fer yours, dey give yeh d' laugh—guyls yeh may have known fer yeahs!
Ev'ybody's got lip fer d' police now'days. We git. it comin' and goin'. And d' cost of livin' trying' fer new altitood records, w'ere we goin' to get off at, I want to know? Awmost ev'y day dey come down on us fer a new assessment to defend some inspector or lieutenant dat's been arrested. How kin we make ends meet? How are we goin' to raise d' coin to git d' grafters off, if dey cut off all our legitimate sources of graft? Answer me dat!
Gawd! It's enough to make a good organization man tuyn refawmer!
D' newspapiss started it. W'at are dey lookin' fer? W'at did we ever do to dem? And w'ere's d' man higher up, I want to know! Fer w'at are we sup-portin' a man higher up if he ain't able to fix t' newspapiss? It ain't just nor right. De public don't show no consideration fer us. Do dey tink t' police ain't got no natural feelin's? I'm a sensitive man. Just because a man grafts like ev'ybody else he don't like to be called a grafter in t' mawning-papiss.
W'y can't dey leave us alone? We're all good fellas. Treat us kind and yeh kin do anyt'ing wit' us. Dere all after us, t'ain't' fair; newspapiss, district attorneys, refawmers, muck-rakers, strikers and sufferagettes! Specially dem female sufferagettes, pokin' deir noses in w'at don't concern 'em. Say, yeh can't so much as convuyse wit' a friend on d' cawner, but yeh don't hear one o' dem squawky voices say: 'Officer, I want your number!' Say, it's got so's I hear it in me dreams. Public spirit dey call it! It's hell on t' police.
And say! dey's tellin' us now, we shouldn't treat t' strikers so rough! Strikers! W'at d'ye know about dat? Strikers don't cut no ice! Dey ain't got nothin' or dey wouldn't be strikin'. T'ings has come to a pretty pass w'en even dem furrin strikers has got rights over de American police.
Say, it takes de snap outen a man's club-arm. I can't git no more satisfaction out of knockin' d' fight out of a bum no more. I'm changed. W'en a guy so much as asts me d' way to d' Haymarket, it gets my goat. Wat's d' use of tryin' to keep up w'en ev'ybody's got it in fer yeh? I'm losin' me nuyve! (He breaks down.) (Loud expressions of sympathy.)
HULBERT FOOTNER.
Fixed Idea
"INDEPENDENT Cigar Manufacturer Commits Suicide—Thought He Was Being Driven Out of Business by a Trust." Funny notions these insane people have.
H. W.
[pgbrk] 8
BUMS—A STORY
By Mary Field
HE came slouching out of McDougal Street. The battered toes of his shoes pointed in no particular direction. His head hung. His eyes roved. Now and then as he shuffled along he stopped to cough and spit in the gutter. On the corner he hesitated, stood still, then as if blown by a gust of wind, he drifted into Washington Square. The park benches were pretty well occupied though it was not yet nine o'clock. He recognized the men who sprawled over the seats as members of his fraternity. They wore no emblem, yet he knew them as fraternity brothers, knew them by their rusty clothes, by the glance that flashed the password "out-of-work."
Chucky thought at first he would sit down by Mc-Gillvery, but McGillvery was licking his lips as if he had had a breakfast, so Chucky changed his mind and scuffled along down the path to an unoccupied bench. Back of the bench, tied to a tree, was a wire basket for waste paper. Over it was a sign that said "For a clean city." Chucky pulled out one of the newspapers, a yesterday's copy, and slouched down on the seat. He hunted out the Want columns. It made him think he was looking for work. It was his last effort at respectability.
"Wanted Help—Male." Chucky was glad he had gone three years to Public School and wasn't like the ignorant old Dago across the path. He could read. He straightened his thin shoulders a bit with the sense of superior education, and as he swept one eye down the column of wants, he watched with the other what he thought to be the envious glance of the Dago. "Wanted an artist, an acrobat, an automobile hand," on down through the A's into the B's, he read slowly. Queer it was, how many barbers were wanted and box-makers, and bunchers for cigars. Why hadn't he been a barber, or an artist? It was just as Sandy said, "If ye're a carpenter, it's ditch-diggers is wanted; if ye're a ditch-digger, it's carpenters they's hollerin' after."
Ah, here was what he was looking for! He pounced upon the tiny letters. "Wanted, a non-union Baker." "Alright! That's me!"
He read on. "Must be single and ready to leave city."
"The job's all square on the non-union part and the bakin', but what's a feller to do with a wife?"
Somewhere, he didn't know just where, he had a wife. He was married. It was an excuse for not taking the job—and no railway fare! That was another reason. This looking for a job was funny business! Seemed like everybody had work who didn't want it, or wanted work who didn't have it!
Listlessly he let the paper drop. He had made his usual morning effort. He had tried to find work. He wasn't wholly a bum—yet. He leaned forward, feeling a little weak, put his elbows on his knees and sunk his head in his open hands. He didn't think. He didn't muse on the problem of unemployment. He didn't dream of anything higher, or better, or different. He didn't feel sad nor happy. He had drifted on the surface of existence out of the struggling current into a kind of stagnant marsh. Hunger, the cough, cold,—these were his only sensations of pain. Food, whiskey, the sun,—these his sensations of joy. And in the great city all six sensations could be more or less easily obtained, especially the first three.
So Chucky was not thinking of any white-haired mother who made crullers, and put a candle in the window at night, and sang at the organ, "Where is my wandering boy?" The fact was, he didn't remember whether his mother's hair was white or red, or even whether she had any hair. Her very existence was dubious. Nor was his conscience troubling him about the whereabouts of his wife and children. They had drifted beyond memory.
He watched without interest some silly ants tugging with all their tiny might at a dead fly. After ten minutes of their valuable short lives they gave it up, and in solemn procession disappeared into a crack. For want of anything else to do, Chucky mashed one of them with his dilapidated boot. He followed vaguely the whirl of a dying leaf as it danced a last dance.
Legs passed him—legs with creases in the trousers. These legs always walked briskly, crushing the fallen leaves. They always terminated in a pair of well blacked boots. Other legs passed. They scuffed along slowly, and out of the frayed pants always protruded a pair of battered shoes like his own. Women's skirts swished before him. Without so much as glancing up, he knew the waist and hat that went with each skirt. Little legs scampered by. Many were as thin as the twigs overhead, a few were chubby. Now and then an iron brace, a crutch clicked along on the pavement. (Chucky didn't call this knowledge of life and of clothes, knowledge. His knowledge was the baking trade. He called that only knowledge, which can be bought and sold.)
Now a peculiar pair of legs was approaching—the kind in the creased trousers, but there was something wrong, for they did not walk briskly. They paused, and Chucky felt someone sit down beside him at the other end of the bench. Out of the corner of an eye he saw him take a paper from his pocket and open it, fluttering out its wide pages like wings. Then the man coughed. The cough Chucky instantly recognized. It spoke the language of his fraternity. It made Chucky straighten up slowly, and look stealthily at his bench-mate. Legs with creased trousers didn't usually cough like that. Chucky took a good look at him. Correct! Hat brushed; face smooth shaven; collar clean; tie, vest, and coat with the shoulder padded ; and finally, proof perfect that the stranger belonged to the Society of Creased Trousers—a watch-fob ! Then with the same sweeping glance that took in these outer items of respectability, Chucky noted, not without surprise, that the stranger had spread the pages of his paper open to the Want Columns.
"Damn it!" thought Chucky, spitting to relieve his perplexed mind. "What's the bull? Ten o'clock, creased trousers, want columns, watch-fob, cough! He must be one o' dem high-up rummies—or mebbe a gumshoe!"
At the thought of the stranger's being a detective, Chucky slowly shook himself together. He moved like an old, mangy dog who loathes to leave a sunny spot. He edged toward the end of the seat—but— well—he would wait a minute. There was plenty of time. He guessed they weren't lookin' fer him, anyway.
"Hello, pard," said the stranger quietly. " 'Lo," growled Chucky, sidling still farther away. He wasn't used to having well fitted trousers address
him—excepting blue ones that said "move on.'
"There doesn't seem to be much doing for anyone but canvassers and messenger boys!"
"Yup," admitted Chucky. Then he had a new idea. Perhaps the guy was off in the head and—that watch chain! Slick Goldman's was a good fence. With five dollars one could live. He thought of food. He felt a little dizzy. He slid back a bit nearer the stranger.
"Y'ain't lookin' fer a job?" he ventured.
"Sure."
"I see they's jobs repairin' leaky roofs, or sellin' sewin' machines."
"Nothing doing, pard." The stranger folded the paper neatly and put it back in his coat pocket. With the folding of the paper, a terrible fear clutched Chucky's heart. Maybe the guy would be going, and the fob!—Again he felt the dizziness, again the cough. This time the man coughed too, as racking a cough as Chucky's.
"Fierce, old pard, isn't it?" panted the stranger when he got a little breath,
"I'm thinkin' o' goin' Sout' fer my helt dis Fall!" grinned Chucky. "I read a avertisement wot says 'Out o' blizzards into Bliss,' an' you don't need nuttin' but railroad fare an' hotel money!"
The stranger turned sidewise toward Chucky, crossed his knees, put his elbow on the back of the seat, and rested his head on his palm.
"Tell me," he said, "how'd you get here?"
Chucky, suspicious of all the world, looked up into his face. The eyes looking straight into his were blue and serious. Fine lines, like those in a kindly old man's face, radiated from the corners of these eyes. Two deep lines as if cut in the flesh ran from the nostrils to the corners of the mouth. Yet this man was young—not much older than Chucky.
"How'd I get here? Come up McDougal," answered Chucky, avoiding the glance and the question. His eyes involuntarily sought the fob. It held him hypnotized. Instinctively he located the park policeman. It meant breakfasts and whiskeys for an eternity.
"How did you get here?" insisted the stranger, his eyes compelling an answer. "What's your trade?"
"Baker."
"Always worked at it?"
"Twenty years ! Ever since I was a kid."
"Bad luck?"
Chucky was silent. His past was not vivid. It was hard to isolate any facts. Hunger, cold, the cough,— these were the chief memories.
"Married?"
"Yup."
"Children?"
"Yup. Say, y' takin' de census?"
"No," said the stranger. "I'm a bum, like yourself, and I'm taking notes."
"Crazy for sure," Chucky mused. Crazy guys were easy! Whiskey and pot-roast he'd buy with the five dollars--
"Where are they—the children?"
"Dunno. Some died, I guess. Never had steady work. Got the cough young. The bosses wouldn't hire me. Las' place I worked—God, they're all alike! Bakin' bread in a basement. 'Twas wetter'n a pump, and hotter'n hell, and col' when yer come out, and the flour a flyin' in yer face, and I took sick, couldn't do a lick o' work fer a year. Got kind o' used to settin"
[pgbrk] THE MASSES.
9
aroun', and the ol' woman done scrubbin' an'"—he stopped. His breath came laboriously. The stranger's grave eyes were still upon him. They compelled him. They drew him. He was a "fer-sure queer guy."
"And so—," helped the stranger.
"And so, one day, I come home, been trampin' to fin' work, and the ol' woman and the kids is gone. Left word she'd got sick o' s'portin' me. S'pose she had. So I took to settin' aroun'. Ain't so strong anyway, but if I had work—I was lookin' fer a job this morn-in'. But they say there's a law now as to employin' lungers in bakeries. But wots a lunger goin' to do, damn it!"
"A baker, you say?"
"Yup."
Chucky leaned back against the seat, spread out his thin, dirty fingers beside him and looked up pensively at the leafless trees.
"Where'd you work?"
"Ev'rywhere." He made a circle with his head to indicate the whole city. "Soon's I'd get t' coughin', the boss says me fer the fresh air!"
"Ever work at Bradfield's?"
For answer Chucky laughed—a strange, distorted sound, the laugh of a gargoyle.
"Bradfield's? That's were I took the sickness first! That's the hell o' the basement I'm speakin' about particular, and that's where when I come back to the boss, he says its nixie on the lungers. I tol' him to go to hell, and he hollers at me an'—" The rest of the story came gurgling a few words at a time between spasms that shook the ill-fitting clothes.
And now it was the stranger's turn to laugh; not the careless laugh that usually went with creased trousers and watch fobs; not even the coarse laugh that gurgled out of a whiskey bottle,—a grim, horrible laugh that made Chucky shiver and look almost in terror over his shoulder. Once he had believed in the devil.
"So you worked at Bradfield's?"
"Y'bet. Damn 'em!" He was planning how he could end matters; how he could grab that fob and run.
"Funny, ain't it!" grimaced the stranger, unconsciously reflecting Chucky's rhetoric. "You ain't got a job because you're sick and poor, and I ain't got a job because I'm sick and rich. Never did anything in my whole life; just bum around. Didn't need to; father made piles of money. I was wild, you know, like all young chaps without work and with plenty of cash. Got the cough, not from working, like you, but from not working, as you might say.—I'm sick of loafing. I'd like a job all right. Tired of being bored. But I'm like you, see? I'm a lunger, and they can't use me in my father's office any more than they could down in the cellar with the bakers. I'm a bum." The mockery had faded from his eyes, the laugh died on his lips. "I'm a bum," he whispered softly.
"Damn it!" said Chucky sympathetically. "It's a hell o' a worruld."
"So you worked at Bradfield's ?" Then before Chucky could "damn 'em" again' he added, "I'm Bradfield's son."
With a gasp Chucky drew in his breath. He felt as if he were being dropped twenty stories in an elevator. When he recovered, the stranger was standing up in front of him, and Chucky's chance at the watch-fob was gone. The stranger drew something from a side pocket, and extended his arm.
"I'd like to make sure you have something hot for dinner to-day," he said.
As Chucky clutched a half a dollar in his scrawny paw, the other bum walked away toward the avenue.
"I wisht I hadn't been so dam' slow," mumbled Chucky.
A Plea of Self Defence
OUR new chief executive is being praised for his self-denial in refusing to run about the country and attend public gatherings when he ought to be at home executing. His predecessor went on the theory that the President and the people should be better acquainted. Considering what happened to Taft when the acquaintance got good and ripe, perhaps Wilson is acting less in self-denial than self-defence.
Back to the Cloister
LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR O'NEILL of Indiana believes in the efficacy of prayer. He also believes in free liquor. And when the chaplain of the Senate started in petitioning the Almighty for an eternal separation of the State of Indiana from the alcohol trade, Brother O'Neill brought down his gavel on a marble slab, and advised the reverend that the Senate would dispense with further blessings and proceed to business. "That was not a prayer but a political speech," he explained.
I've noticed that ministers always get into trouble
the minute they regard themselves as anything more than ornamental. Phillips Brooks was credited by the newspapers with having delivered "the most eloquent prayer ever addressed to a Boston audience." But I surmise he maintained the usual degree of churchly irrelevance. The safest way for a minister to pray, if he really wants to propose something, is to enter into his closet and wait till he has shut the door.
Progress
THIS talk about the minimum wage for women has not been without its effect. The Harvester Trust has ordered sweeping increases of women's wages to eight dollars a week, and a New York surrogate has granted to an orphan girl of fifteen an increase in her allowance of from $12,000 to $20,000 per year.
A NEWSPAPER headline reads:
"Eberhart in Tombs; Once a Rich Man."' This, if true, looks like a dangerous precedent. They'll be putting somebody now a rich man in jail if we're not careful.
Drawn by Maurice Becker,
A True Christian
"WHY DO YOU KEEP MISS PERKINS IN THE CHOIR? SHE SINGS OFF THE KEY ALL THE TIME, DOESNT SHE?" "YE-E-s, BUT I REALLY DON'T THINK SHE MEANS TO."
[pgbrk] 10
[defeated]
Prostitution
Drawn by Arthur Young.
DEFE
[pgbrk] THE MASSES, May, 1913.
ATED
Commercial
Greed
11
[pgbrk] 12
A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE
John Reed
MRS. SHUGRUE deigns to launder my weekly shirt and two collars. Withal, she is my philosopher and friend. Every Saturday night she gets drunk; each Sunday morning she repents. And from continual change and upheaval, her soul is always healthy and youthful. Mrs. Shugrue's personality is plump, unkempt and aggressive. When she brings back my shirt and collars of a Friday morning, she will stop and converse with me, as I lie in bed.
One Friday she toiled up my stairs, and instead of the usual "God walk with you," she greeted me with a short "Mornin'," and wiped her face sullenly with her petticoat. I said nothing. So she finally began.
"Glory be to God," said Mrs. Shugrue sadly. "The ongratitude of childer is a turrible thing, surely. It's about my son Tim, he that do be working for a fine piece of money on the New York Cintral. Ye know I told ye how he was going to marry himself with a daughter of a dirty Protestant out of Ulster?" I nodded.
"It's a good straight Catholic I am, Mister, communicating and confessing and putting my nickel in the poor-box every couple of Sundays. Poison it is for a religious woman like meself to see her son—and him with a fine job on the New York Cintral—caught by the tricks of a Belfast wench, at all. But I'm broadminded too, I am, and that's no he; so when himself come to me, telling me about it, I says to him, 'Young blood will be young blood, and I can see it's love entirely in yer bright blue eye, Timmy, me boy; an' a hard thing it is on mothers, the way their sons do be leaving them for other women, and they after suffering the pains of birth and all. It's a bitter thing, surely, for any mother to see her son marrying himself out of the Church into some small religion where the Virgin herself ain't treated with the respect owing to a lady. But I'll not complain, God help me,' I says. 'Though never yet did I know of a wife being suitable to her mother-in-law I says. 'I'm not acquent with yer Mary.' 'Ye will be,' says Timmy. 'We'll be after making a social visit with her next Sunday afternoon.'
"It come a Sunday after mass. Mind ye now, I'm that broad-minded the like of me ye'll not find in the whole town at all. Straight from mass I come, with the blessed words of the priest a-ringing in my ear, and me wearing my decent black suit with the jet buttons, the way
there's no woman on the street can make a better showing on Saints Days and the Sabbath; and we went walking down to make a visit with his Mary.
"'What does she work at?' says I. 'She's a stenographer,' says Timmy. 'God help her,' says I, and right away we come to one of them iligant marble hallways that looks like the Pope's tomb. 'It is here she lives with her mother,' says Timmy, and a young felly with a uniform of a Gineral in the Queen's Guards runs us up in the elevator. 'I do be thinking,' says I, 'ye're making a mistake and courting Mr. Vanderbilt's daughter,' I says. I'm not crazy about this place,' I says, going up in the elevator.
"Well, Mister, it would disgust you entirely to look at the parlor where we went in; what with a bit of a chair here, and a slim tiny table ye couldn't eat off of, and not even a coal stove for to warm your legs at, and never a sight or light of a sofy where a tired woman could rest her back-side. And when Mary come in, God love me, I says to myself, 'A fine wife she won't be making my boy Tim,' I says. 'The way she teeters around on them little heels, with her thin
stockings and her high hair up for all the world like a fleecy cloud. Them soft hands,' I says, 'will do small washing and cooking I'll be bound.' 'Pleased to meet you, ma'am,' she says, holding out two fingers up high in the air, like she was afraid I'd dirty 'em on me own. 'Come down,' says I, 'I got a twinge under me right arm,' I says. 'Anyhow no one '11 see ye. We're alone,' says I. I could see she didn't like that a little bit. A spiteful look she give me, God help her.
" 'Will ye have something, Mrs. Shugrue ? she asks of me a-setting there on the naked edge of the little chair.
" 'I will then, and thank you kindly,' I says. 'So much praying at mass dries up me throat the way
that a drop of beer-'
" 'Beer!' says me fine lady, hoisting up her eyebrows like they was going to crawl into her hair. 'There is no beer in this place,' she says. 'Perhaps you'll take a cup of tea?' she says.
" 'And perhaps I won't,' says I. 'Faith, it's a simple matter to send down a can to the corner,' I says.
" 'No intoxicating liquors shall ever come into my house,' says she, short and haughty. 'Will you take a drop of tea, once and for all?'
'"I will not,' says I. 'Be damned to your tea. And what's further,' says I, 'you'll marry no son of mine, you Protestant whelp, and keep the beer away from him, the time he comes home of the evening, all weary with working himself to the bone for you,' says I, 'and your childer, if you have any, which I doubt,' says I. And with that I up and took my leave.
"I'm a broad-minded woman, I'm telling you, Mister. Bitter it was for me to see my Timmy marrying himself to a Protestant woman out of Ulster, surely; but God help me, I would not destroy the holy passion of love for what the priests do be saying. But I call it wicked, bad hospitality and no kindness at all to refuse an old woman her drop of beer that the good Lord put on the world, the way people can be praising Him with the drinking of it."
Mrs. Shugrue fetched a gusty sigh. "The ongratitude of childer is a turrible thing, surely," she said. "He will be marrying the girl this day."
AREN'T these vice-investigations fun! They just thrill you all over, and they don't do any harm to anyone! Why, I just can't hardly wait 'til next year!"
Drawn by F. M. Walts.
A Portrait
[pgbrk] 13
MASSES BIBLE CLASS—II. David, The Live Sport
Eugene Wood
IF I were a boy once again, say 12 or 14, I'd get a heap more pleasure out of David than out of all the Sherlock Holmes dope-fiends in the world. I don't see the sense of worrying about who stole the bunch of rubies, when I can read about a boy no bigger'n me that braced up to a giant six cubits and a span tall—How tall is that? Wait till I turn over to the back of the book. Six tums. . . . Oh, about 8 foot 4. Some giant; what?—Bracing up to him, and giving him lip, and swinging a sling till it hummed, and letting it go, BIFF! and taking the big stiff right in the forehead, and he keels over, and then I run up to him, and pull out his sword, and saw his head off, and grab it by the hair, and walk away with it. And the king would send for me, and talk to me, and ask me what my name was, and what room in school I was in, and all the time the blood would leak out, drip! drip! drip! That's the stuff for me!
The style too is "exceedingly magnifical," and I could say a lot about that at my present age, but it's the story of David that makes me young again. It grips; not a dull moment in it; impossible to lay it down until finished. It embodies what I should call, "the fundamental facts of fiction." It isn't one of these "translated from the Russian" things, sad, where everybody gets the worst of it, and the snow still keeps sifting into little Jimmy's pants. And yet it isn't one of these literary gum-drops, either, sticky with sentiment, where the hero worries about her from page 8 till the last paragraph, when she turns her flower-like face up to his and murmurs, "I love you!" David wasn't a bit fussed up as to whether she—any particular she—was going to love him or not. They all fell for him. And why shouldn't they?
When he was just a poor boy, the same as you or me, he was a red-cheeked, hearty, husky young fellow that could grab a-holt of a lion by his mane and slap him to death. Not only that, but he had a nice voice; he was always billed as "the sweet singer of Israel." And not only could he sing the popular airs of the day, but he could make up new ones out of his own head, words and music both. And he could pick a banjo with any of 'em. Why, let me tell you. When Saul had one of his bad spells, and they couldn't do anything with him, they'd call for David and he would sit there by the hour, plunking away, tickity tat-tat, tat-tat, tat-TANGY-tat, and pretty soon Saul's head would get in a weaving way, and he would pat with his foot, and forget all about his homicidal mania Later when he began to be suspicious, he would watch his chance when David was tuning up the E-string, and throw a javelin at him. It would stick in the woodwork and quiver, but David was somewhere else by that time. He wasn't so busy with that E-string that he didn't have an eye out for the old man. Oh, he was a soon young man, David was. Nothing slow about him. The girls were crazy about him, even when he was a poor boy like you or me.
And when he got to be king himself, all in his own right—Oh, my land! they had to put up a sign in Jerusalem for the ladies, "Line Forms On This Side."
Ho! he never bothered his head about whether or not he could get Her. That was the least of his troubles.
And he was a smooth dancer, too. It was probably soft-shoe work he did, but I gather he could go it some, because when he brought the ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, it says that David danced before the Lord with all his might, and David was girded
with a linen ephod—which means something a little more or less than a shirt. Now when David danced with all his might, you can rest assured he wasn't just shuffling his feet along—you can bet on that. He wasn't caring much for appearances. Michal, his wife, was, though. When he got into the house, all in a glow from his lively exercise, she just gave him one look! "Well," says she, "how glorious was the king of Israel this day, kicking up his heels and making a spectacle of himself before all the hired girls," says she, "like one of these low-down orn'ry fellas!" (I'm paraphrasing what she said.)
"Oh, is that so?" says David, mad in a minute at hearing any woman talk that way to him. "Is that so? I'll be more low-down than that, if you please, ma'am, and these 'hired girls' you speak about will have something to brag of that you never will again." And he kept his word, too.
If you read with a discerning eye you'll just about fall off the chair at some of the pranks David played when Saul was hunting him, as David expressed it, "like a flea." Because when Saul put his finger down, why, David wasn't there. Only a boy would have thought of cutting up such didoes. Here was the king, for in stance, out hunting David, lying in his tent one night snoring like a saw-mill, and at his pillow was his spear stuck in the ground, and his canteen of water. 'Long in the night, they wake up to hear a man hollering, "Oh, Abner! Abner? Abner! Where's the king's spear and water-bottle? You're
a fine fellow to keep watch!" Blest if David hadn't sneaked in and copped them! And that other time when David cut off the tail of the king's coat, I can just see the fellows in his crowd rolling on the ground in convulsions of laughter, I can hear them whooping and hallooing when David tells them how he cut off the piece. You have to read a little carefully and with some imagination to get the situation, but, honestly, it is about the funniest practical joke in literature. A little Rabelaisian, but ...
As you review the adventures of David, this essential feature of his character becomes increasingly apparent : He was a real sport. There was one time, before he really got to be king, when he was running his Black Hand business only in a small retail way, that three Philistine deputy sheriffs had him rounded up in the Cave of Adullam, and had put a garrison of Regulators in his home town of Bethlehem.
In David's gang of fellows ready to fight at the drop of the hat, there were three especially distinguished. They were the kind that would walk up to a big strong man armed with a spear, and all they'd have would be a stick, and they'd beat him up with the stick, and grab his spear away from him and kill him with it. Or they'd face an army of Philistines single-handed, and all that the rest would have to do would be to come out and rob the corpses.
Well, one day when David was holed-up by the deputy sheriffs, David longed and said, "Oh, that one would give me to drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem which is by the gate."
These three, Indian-like, slipped through the cordon, got to Bethlehem, drew the water, and got back alive with it to David. I can imagine them saying, a little proudly, "Here y'are, chief," and looking to have him say, "Why, boys, you oughtn't to have put yourselves out just for me," to swill it down, smack his lips, and exclaim, "Gosh! That's good. Right out of the northwest corner of the well!"
Wood's Discoveries in Holy Writ
Raven
Mt Sinai
Elija
THUNDER
Spot where
Jacob Wrestled
With Angel
LADDER
Lake of Fire
Babylon Belle
Solomon
No, sir! He turned right round and poured it on the ground! He wouldn't drink it! He said it was the blood of men that went in jeopardy of their lives!
"Well, what do you know about that!" We may imagine the three braves whispering to each other, "Ain't that the chief all over, though? The real sporting blood!"
Could anything have been handsomer than such divine insanity?
Oh, you couldn't help liking David. All the boy in you awakens as you read of him. Anybody less sure of himself would have played it safe. But not David. He knew he couldn't lose, whatever the odds. He was just naturally lucky. And he would take no mean advantage of his luck. He had the king cornered—O, I don't know how many times—where he could have stuck a spear in his ribs and ended the game of hide-and-seek. But not he! The king would kill him if he got caught, but he wouldn't hurt the king. He wouldn't "put forth his hand against the Lord's anointed." No—he would only snip off a piece of his coat-tail when he wasn't lookin', and then wave him good-bye with it!
David knew his luck. More. He knew whence it came and acknowledged the source. The Lord might let others get the worst of it, but He looked out for
[pgbrk] 14
THE MASSES
Hobson's Choice
David all the time. One of the loveliest songs that David made boasts of this very thing, the one that begins, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." A good many people know it by heart, and repeat it, thinking it applies to them. They say it off about how their cup runneth over, and goodness and mercy shall follow them all the days of their life, and they haven't a job, and the landlord wants his rent, and the grocer won't let them have anything more till they pay something on their bill, and the children's feet are on the ground. That's what is called "faith." David knew his luck, but there is one point we overlook, and that is that he lived just when he did. If he tried such coarse work nowadays, and he should take a trip up on the New York Central, his station would be Ossining.
The Better Way
HOW much better than sending people to prison was the action of the government in the Wanamaker case. When it was discovered that the custom house had been flimflammed out of $100,000 in duties, the blundering examiner was discharged, and Wanamaker, glad to be reminded of the error, paid over the money!
What The Public Needs
A CAPTIOUS New York health official complains because the foam on soda water is often made of soap. He seems to think that what the public wants when it goes to a soda fountain is a drink, not a bath.
This complaint arises from the popular belief that the public wants what it needs. The report of the State Bureau of Mediation upon the textile industries at Little Falls will do much to explode this superstition. What the strikers wanted was an increase of wages, but what they really need, the report shows, is better ventilation in their houses.
H. B.
To Change The Headlines
DISTRICT Attorney Finds No Evidence of Buttonhole Trust." "Rumors of Acorn Trust Absolutely Unfounded." "Nobody Alleges Existence of Thunder Trust." "There is No Bluebird Trust."
H. W.
Unconscious Humor
I AM glad to be in this presence, because it is a Unitarian presence. My father was a Unitarian, my mother was a Unitarian, my grandmother was a Unitarian, and it has always been a wonder to me why all the world is not Unitarian." —Wm. H. Taft.
"A report that the King scowled at the suffragettes is semi-officially denied." —New York Times.
"The purpose is the thing we want to know of an immigrant. If he comes here intending to make his way by hard work we want him. The effect of a stringent literacy test, it seems to me, would be chiefly to make our native Americans take up hard work again." —Commissioner Nagel.
LIEUTENANT HOBSON, the hero that got kissed into oblivion, after sinking the Merrimac, has now the chance to acquire a more enduring glory. He is the chairman of a Congressional committee appointed to consider whether we should extend the suffrage to women by national amendment, or whether we should waste our best feminine resources in twenty to thirty years more of inane conflict over what we declared in 1776 to be both practical and right. It's a big choice for a lieutenant.
Tod O'Sheel.
Supplementary Report of Our Private Sleuth
COMRADE HIGHBROUGH of local Hogswallow was seen entering a Carnegie Library with a volume under his arm 18 inches square by 4 inches thick. He had been under suspicion of being an intellectual or having strong leanings towards intellectuality. But no such rank betrayal of the proletariat had been anticipated. His resignation has been accepted.
A correspondent informs us that the members of Branch I, Local New York, wear silk stockings. Our detective thinks there ought to be an investigation. A general exposure of the branch will probably follow.
We are sorry to report that with these important disclosures the great work we have so generously embarked upon will have to be temporarily suspended.
We have reason to suspect our detective.
Owing to the reproduction upon its editorial page of a couple of our finest cartoons last month, a rumor was started that The Masses had bought up the New York Journal.
We believe that the detective is responsible for this injurious rumor, and that he is double-crossing his clients. This has necessitated our hiring another detective to shadow the original sleuth, and just to make assurance doubly sure we have put a gumshoe man out after this second detective, and a Pinkerton expert will get on the trail of the gumshoe man, and a Burns special will make sure of the Pinkerton man, and a couple of bloodhounds will follow the Burns man, and eighteen special deputies will go after the bloodhounds, and the whole series will be put in charge of a secret service committee comprising the entire Socialist movement of America. That is the beauty of detective work when you once get it well started. It gives everybody something to do for the great cause of liberty.
Two Grand Suggestions
A GENTLEMAN named Carver, who bites his bread by virtue of being a Professor at Yale, reveals anew the advantages of a college education. Speaking at a banquet in New York, the professor declared that what this country needed was not Socialism, but laws prohibiting immigration for ten years, and forbidding any man receiving less than $5 a day to marry. He said that if immigration were to be prohibited for ten years jobs would be so numerous, as compared with men, that "capital would be the slave of labor."
With the first suggestion all patriotic citizens should be in accord as it stands. It is an ungodly hard proceeding to bring about Socialism, requiring as it does many wearisome campaigns, while the immigration laws could be changed by simple act of Congress. Yet what schoolboy does not know that the European nations, which have no immigration, are prosperous? What schoolboy does not know that it was by prohibiting immigration that all the other great nations of the earth brought about the prosperity they have so long enjoyed? It was to the everlasting glory of Peter the Great that he flung around the Russian frontier doors that opened only outward. The first Hohenzol-lern, as we understand it, insured the prosperity of Germany for all time by prohibiting anybody from coming into the country except by due process of nature. William the Conqueror may not have been all that he should have been, but he at least had the sagacity to make slums impossible in London in 1913, by prohibiting immigration some hundreds of years ago. God knows, Don Quixote stopped immigration in Spain, and later research only goes to show that William Tell, instead of shooting at an apple on his son's head, was shooting at a man who was trying to enter Switzerland.
The suggestion of a minimum income of $5 a day for gentlemen who feel inclined to marry would seem not to be in the same finished condition as that about immigration. As wages now go, such a minimum would bar practically the entire working class. That in itself perhaps would be a consideration in its favor. But we must look farther. We must consider not only the race that is, but the race that is to be. In other words, unless we were to descend into unspeakable domestic irregularity, the birth-rate, under the $5 minimum, would go absolutely to smash for lack of financially eligible fathers. We therefore move, as an amendment to the professor's motion, that each gentleman who has dough be permitted to take as many wives as he has multiples of $5 of income. This, we believe, would keep the birth-rate stable, besides having a highly beneficent eugenic effect upon posterity.
A college education is certainly a grand thing—for those who need it. The only pity is that some gentlemen cannot be compelled to take a ninety-nine-year course.
Allan L. Benson.
Historical
DID it ever occur to you, sweet fellow oddities, that if Adam had existed, had lived 'til now, and had saved a thousand dollars a year for the six thousand years the clergy say this globe has been twisting, our revered, thrifty and cheese-paring ancestor would have a trifle less than six million dollars? And this Adam with his entire pile of savings would not be able to pay interest on the yearly income of Mr. Rockefeller.
W. E. P. F.
[pgbrk] 15
Drawn by Arthur Young.
" 'I GORRY, I'm tired !"
"there you go! YOU'RE tired! here i be a-standin' over a hot stove all day, an' you wurkin' in a nice cool sewer!"
Economic Interpretation
Minerva Moses
WHEN you say White Slave these days, you start
a conversation about Women's Wages. That is a long step in the direction of public intelligence. It has mighty implications. These are pointed out in some alarm by a prominent New York editor:
"If these crude and hasty assumptions were true," says this Watchdog of Capitalism, "if this relation between wages and virtue is accepted as established, if we must believe that the bulwarks of morality are to be sought in economic conditions, then millions upon millions of sermons that have been preached through the long centuries, and are preached to-day, are shown to be false and futile."
Doesn't he catch the point quick?
Now if we could only get the public intelligence to work as fast as that, we would soon be rid of all those millions upon millions of barrels-full of old sermons, which are among the heaviest burdens that the public intelligence has still to bear.
Immortal Lies
THE New York Times regrets the wide publicity given to the slanderous story that the Sphinx has a hollow belly, even though the wicked falsehood was exploded within twenty-four hours.
"A lie," says the Times, "can never be wholly killed."
The Times is the paper which announced that the King of Greece was assassinated by a Socialist.
H. B.
TO SHELLEY
Harry Kemp
OH, thou chief son of liberty, whose days Were brief as thy power over men is long, Keep my soul young, till, like to thine, it blaze, Like fire in a great wind, against all wrong— And century after century wake again Prophetic power and passion in the world's young men.
And let no man who serves the Truth grow old, Even though wrinkles gather 'round his eye,
Nor cringe and seek again the pampered fold;
Nay, rather let him breast the storm and die—
And may he perish ere he leaves his youth
That ever before men denies the bright god Truth.
Dead Souls! Dead Souls! They move along the street!
Dead Souls in breathing flesh that dare not live! Bound with convention's grave-clothes, hands and feet,
They take the stale modes their dead fathers give— Ah, different, Shelley, was that soul of thine;— But we must make new bottles for thy fiery wine.
We must sweep off the earth this vampire thing,
This System clutching all men, great and small;
We will!—and then the spirit's upward wing May unimpeded soar, and, each for all,
And all for each we'll live—and Man shall reign!—
And thou and thy high hope will not have soared in vain
[pgbrk] 16
THE INGENUITY OF YVETTE
Robert Carlton Brown
THE world had plunged into being. Earthquakes, cataclysms and all the spasms of space had rumbled and roared through their courses. Then came quiet—conscious, deadly quiet, perfect but for the incessant chatter of the race of simians with which the earth was peopled— a rare old species of chimpanzee which took to the trees in fright and shivered and waited, their teeth clicking, until the time when the kingdom over which they were to rule should be perfect.
Time rolled on, as time will. The earth passed safely through the colic days, its rugged surface gradually took form and began to cool. The ancient race of chimpanzees, unacclimated, moved steadily toward the equator in a frantic endeavor to keep warm. Some were left behind in the migrations, and thus at length the world was populated.
Then came one, little Eva by name, who put up what back hair she had, and changed her name to Yvette, eons before the world possessed stage heroines called Gwendolyn and cash girls named Dorothea.
Yvette looked round with the calculating eye of a new woman, sized up the limitations of the little old world and forthwith decided to be the Mrs. Pankhurst of her day. Remember that this was in the good old times when fellow simians addressed each other of mornings with, "Is my vertebrae on straight?" and "How is your evolution?"
Yvette had a passion for progress; she had been favored by birth with a fairer skin than her family and she despised her parents for their hairiness; also, having no fear of cataclysms, which were not so stylish then as in the times of her ancestors, she could find no excuse for living in a tree. To Yvette it was vulgar, and she spent most of her time on the ground, practicing to walk exclusively on her hind legs and experimenting with new modes of speech. The simian vocal box was to her mind despicable, and the habit of walking on four legs, old-fashioned and offensive. She was of the new order of things, and suffered both the censure and the abuse of her day.
"Forward hussy!" exclaimed the neighbors as she tilted about on tip-toes and picked fig leaves, which attracted her from infancy.
"What will we do with our little Eva?" said her father.
"The Lord only knows; I only hope she doesn't come to some bad end," responded his trial-marriage wife, for that was in the halcyon Nat Goodwin days
But Yvette had no patience with her family, and in answer to their scoldings she would always say, "Prithee, leave me alone, you will yet have cause to be proud of me—who am y-clept Yvette."
Yvette was quite too self-sufficient to seriously consider her parents. She was no idle ape. She originated the study of eugenics, and though there were few among her friends advanced enough to see what great good she was going to do the world, Yvette did not despair.
There was among her acquaintances a friendly boa-constrictor with whom she was wont to discuss her plans for world progress.
Balboa, this serpent, held high sociological ideals and loved to exploit them to his simple but sincere lady-friend. In close confab they foresaw together equal suffrage, trust annihilation, and the solution of the liquor problem, which subjects were then far in the dim future.
"Ah, Balboa," pined Yvette one day as she sat beneath the apple tree about which her coilly friend continually twined. "If I could only find a noble knyght, yonge and freissche, one who would a loyal housbondes meke, then we could properly propagate the race." She spoke partly in the poetic tongue which Chaucer later adopted. It was new in those days and considered quite an innovation.
"I know the piece of protoplasm for you," answered Balboa in the vulgar tongue of that archaic day. "Great stuff! Adam's his name. If you an him get hitched an' settle down to life on the installment furniture plan it'll be nothin' but brussels sprouts and camembert for life. He's quite a superior organism, parts his hair in the middle with his front feet. Believe me, he's the boy for you! You're always kickin' about the limitations of simian speech. Why, Adam's got a vocal box that would make a harmonica jealous. Possibly you might arrange together to—well, I think I could fix it so you could meet him some night. Would you like to have me bring him around?"
"Pray do," responded Yvette, which is the first reference to bridge whist in history.
The wily serpent, out of a lofty interest in eugenics, brought the two most perfect creatures of the day together and introduced them with grave formality, as Luther Burbank would present a pomegranate to a cauliflower for the good of posterity.
"Much obliged to meet you," said Adam, who was very uncouth, standing with difficulty on his hind legs while giving one of his fore-paws to the lady. But his voice was perfect in range and his hair was neatly parted.
"And you are y-clept Adams," breathed Yvette. "It's easy to see she's dead gone on him," snickered the serpent.
"That's my handle, Miss," replied Adam, a little put to it because of her quaint, archaic phrase.
"Prithee sit thee down on yon bramble bush and we will hold converse," breathed Yvette, who had the temperament and wasn't at all practical.
Adam said he preferred standing, and was immediately sorry for having committed himself, because he found it difficult to stand on his hind feet, and Yvette frowned if he even rested a fore-paw on a rock.
"What do you know about eugenics?" asked Yvette with much naivete, the serpent having modestly withdrawn.
"I don't know him, but I think I seen his sister last night," replied Adam impromptu.
"I mean, don't you think our race is shamefully degraded ? Don't you feel that by applying scientific principles and-ï"
"I get you—I get you," answered Adam slyly, though he didn't understand a word of it.
"What are your notions on race suicide?" asked Yvette pensively.
"I don't know how anybody could think of suicide at all, when they look into those lamps of yours," which shows that Adam was the original Hibernian.
"Methinks you'll do. You show signs that I've hoped to see in posterity," remarked Yvette.
"I don't care anything about posterity, but I'd like to be shuffled into the pack along with you. Will you marry me?" said Adam, with what would seem a little precipitation if his crude times were not taken into consideration. Remember, this was even before the
stone age, and love-making was just an ordinary Robert W. Chambers affair.
"But my family, they would never allow it; mother wants to keep me at home to help wash up the cocoa-nut shells after dinner," said Yvette sadly.
"Then we'll elope!" he spoke with primitive emphasis.
The notion fitted in nicely with Yvette's advanced theories, and because she had never even heard of an elopement she sympathized heartily with the movement.
So they took the serpent into their confidence and he told them of a garden where they could live happily and alone.
Yvette ran home to get her vanity box, which consisted of little more than a bit of red chalk and some ground rice. In ten minutes the pair was palpitating on the edge of the home-thicket waiting for Balboa to say that the coast was clear.
The friendly serpent soon glided up to them and remarked, "It's all fixed. Make a neat get-away and good luck and long life to you! It's a day's journey to the garden, and in case you get hungry here's something for lunch." He slipped an apple into Yvette's hand.
Next day the happy bridal party entered the Garden of Edam, and there they lived happily for many a day, unbothered.
At length Yvette presented Adam with a babe.
Together they marvelled at the fine fair skin of the youngster and at his lusty cry, so un-simian, almost human.
Yvette never allowed her babe to crawl, but taught him to stand upright from the first.
"Isn't it a pretty thing!" she would dotingly say to Adam. "We will call it our man-child and it shall be first of the tribe to be known as Men."
"I wanted to call him Esau," pleaded Adam, pitifully, his lower lip trembling.
"No! Never! See what a vast improvement he is on us! He has no barbarous coat of fur. As scientists, as inventors, we have the right to name this new species a new name. We will call him Man, and when he grows up he shall stay in the Garden of Edam, and never know to his shame from what common stock he sprang."
"Oh, well, have it your own way," said Adam. "The kid may be all right for a scientific experiment, but I hoped all along for a nice little buffalo rug of a boy we could have called Esau."
"You're not worthy the name of scientist!" cried Yvette, putting down the fig leaf nighty she was darning. "You've done your Darwinian duty; be of good cheer, our names will go down to posterity for this creation of ours, linked together for all time."
Towards Democracy
MAXINE ELLIOTT denies the report of her engagement to an English tennis player. The tennis player also discourages the rumor. A denial from the press agent will make it unanimous. Meanwhile, the number of people who are not engaged to Miss Elliott is running well into the hundreds. A pursuit which was once a rich man's hobby is rapidly coming within reach of the masses.
Howard Brubaker.
[pgbrk] 17
Drawn by John Sloan.
"CIRCUMSTANCES" ALTER CASES
"positively disgusting ! it's an outrage to public decency to allow such exposure on the streets !"
S. C. P. W. G.
THE Society for Curtailing the Pleasures of Working Girls held its regular meeting yesterday afternoon in the gold room of the St. Ritz-Plazaza. Mrs. Snivelling-Holier was in the chair and opened the meeting with a few remarks. She said in part:
We have made the horrible discovery that our working classes are taking up with some of the dances which have become so popular in the better circles of Newport, Narragansett Pier, and elsewhere during the past few seasons. Need I insult the intelligence of those here present by explaining that working girls cannot afford to be so immoral as those whose income is assured ? Morals are like everything else. They should be placed where they will do the most good. Morals should be regulated by their friends. I am in favor of increasing the activities of this society and, if future results are commensurate with the past, I am
safe in saying that, within a very short time, we shall have wiped out the very last vestige of fun and relaxation from the ranks of working girls."
Mrs. Van Cortlandt-Turner-Reno-Endicott-Sullivant-Smythe followed with a short talk on the appalling increase of divorce among the working classes. She said that an increase in divorce would lead inevitably to increased extravagance, for she knew from her own experience that the railroad fare to Nevada was excessive. This increased expense, she added, would lead to a demand for increased wages which, in the present condition of the stock market and the price of taxicabs, employers could not afford to grant.
Mrs. Henry Carminebeak Potiphar laid special stress on the menacing habit of having bars in connection with dance halls. She said she had made a personal investigation and found that much beer was drunk. "You ladies will agree with me," she said in conclusion, "that this is very demoralizing and quite a different thing from the habit of the better classes of confining themselves exclusively to champagne, well-
brewed punches and other well-bred drinks. Indeed, I never could understand why the working girls persisted in preferring beer to champagne. To my mind there is no comparison between them."
Mrs. Algernon Peekaboo Hobble emphasized the fact that many of the working girls attended dances in gowns that were so low that the collar-bones were actually exposed to the gaze of brazen admirers. "I don't know why these indecent exposures have such a revolting effect on me," she continued. "Perhaps the texture and the style of cut have something to do with it. Under certain circumstances—at the Charity Ball, for instance—I don't seem to mind a dress cut clear to the waist on all sides, but these working girls must be protected. I think we should all be proud of the uplifting we are doing."
Before adjournment, highballs, tea and cigarettes were passed and while these were being disposed of, a number of the latest scandals were brought up to date.
Ellis O. Jones.
[pgbrk] 18
THE WORLD-WIDE BATTLE LINE
William English Walling
" Clearing The Way For Progressive Union
UÕDER this title the Metropolitan Magazine gives its explanation of the motives behind the recall of Haywood from the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party:
"The recall of Haywood will rob the Socialist Party of many adherents; but it will also bring new recruits. In the Progressive Party founded by Roosevelt there are thousands upon thousands of good citizens who are Socialists in sympathy, but who never would take part in the Socialist movement until it was purged of the Haywood element. The event of last February clears the way for a better understanding between the Progressives and the Socialists. The intelligent people in both parties are practically united in principle."
We trust there is no truth in this view. Professor George D. Herron at least does not agree with the editor, as we can see from the following expressions taken from his article, in the same number of The Metropolitan:
"The Socialist movement, apologetic in its attitude toward institutions of existing society, timidly led, warped by compromise, giving hostages to its enemies, shaped by unclean political hands, exploited by a parasitic evangelism, might easily become the false prophet and the consequent despair of man. But that such will be the course of the Socialist movement I do not for a moment believe."
From The Inside
PHILIP SNOWDEN is undoubtedly among the most influential of those Laborite leaders who call themselves Socialist. In a recent address he gave us the essential facts about the Labour Party of which he is an ardent partisan. I quote the account in The Labour Leader :
"The Labour Party was no larger than it was six years ago. At least five-sixths of the Labour Members held their seats because of electoral support given by other parties. There was no constituency in the country where the Labour Party could return the candidate if he had to oppose the combined forces of the other parties."
What Is Sabotage?
FEW of the anti-Socialist papers have failed to note with satisfaction that advocates of "sabotage" are to be expelled from the Party. But those on the inside know that the real difficulty is to say what "sabotage" is. While waiting for the Committee of ten opponents and ten advocates demanded by the Tennessee Party, to meet and fight it out, we may take a turn ourselves—avoiding all originality, etymology, and metaphysics, and sticking to the authorities.
First the definition of Debs. "Its advocates have shown that it means anything, everything, and nothing at all." Debs opposed the clause that demands expulsion for advocating the above, but believes that the clause is now in the constitution and must be obeyed. Personally he approves of "some of the practices that now go under the name of sabotage, "since almost everything goes under that name."
Emile Pouget, the editor of the French daily "Bataille Syndicaliste," defines sabotage with the
epigram, "Poor pay, poor work." He quotes documents of the French Confederation of Labor to prove that this is the correct definition. He says the idea was imported from Scotland.
Our Italian Syndicalist editor and poet, Arturo Giovannitti, has given us two rather long scientific definitions of two kinds of "sabotage." He expands the "poor work" idea by adding "the restriction of trade and the reduction of profits in the commercial field." But in approving such sabotage he makes these qualifications: It must be practiced only "when no other way of redress is open," and only for the purpose of coercing employers (i.e., not merely to make more work, which is a time-honored craft union practice).
Giovannitti's second definition is popularly expressed thus: "When you go on strike make the machinery strike too." But again he adds the precaution that the machinery must only be "temporarily disabled."
Trautman of the I. W. W. has a very polite definition: "Withdrawing efficiency from the work." The boss gets the work, but the wage slave keeps the efficiency.
"Striking on the job" is a very popular definition. Adding this to the familiar "off the job" form of strike, we have what might be called the strike perpetual.
What Is Syndicalism?
‘ INDUSTRIAL Socialism; i. e., Socialism ob-tained by economic or "direct" action.
2. The movement for a purely industrial society, organized on the basis of autonomous and democratically controlled industries without other government.
3. An opportunistic economic movement; believes that by sufficient solidarity labor can push employers back step by step until there is nothing left of them; begins now.
4. An opportunist economic philosophy; distrusts the future revolution ; all life and hope, if there is any hope, lies in present action.
5. A futurist philosophy and movement; present defeats will prove to be moral victories and will lead to greater and more hopeful conflicts; meanwhile we are learning to fight; "la gymnastique rev-olutionaire," as Herve calls it.
State Socialism And The Farmer
CLYDE J. WRIGHT has reviewed the agricultural situation in Oklahoma in a way to indicate the general need in farm sections for "State Socialism."
The majority of the farms of Oklahoma, Wright points out, are now operated by tenants. He continues :
"I am forecasting an abandonment of the present tenant system of farming on the grounds of inefficiency; farms are declining productively; the commercial clans dare not permit this to continue, tenants are failing to make even a living; farms are not earning their landlords enough, deterioration considered, to make land, for rental purposes, a good investment, and farm property is tending to become poor security for money.
"Business is suffering in Oklahoma on account of inefficient farming. In this State agriculture is the single great resource for tonnage for the railroads, interest for the money lenders, profits for the merchants.
"An inefficient system of farming, in a country dependent upon agriculture, means a decline in banking and railroad stocks, and it means bankruptcy for the merchants.
"Scientific agriculture has become necessary. But a tenant, first, cannot, and second, will not, build up another man's farm."
Exactly. And anybody who wants to secure the support of the agricultural sections for the next half century will have to propose plans to do away with the tenant system and increase the number of small farmers who own their farms. This is what Perkins and Roosevelt, Bryan and Wilson, La Follette and Hiram Johnson are undoubtedly going to do. They are going to secure the support of the agricultural states by means of the regular agrarian programme of state capitalism, which may be summed up as follows:
The state assures small farms to everybody with a few hundred dollars in the bank; this it does through land banks and compulsory purchase as in Ireland, or through reclamation schemes. It also encourages co-operation as in Denmark, lowers railroad rates as in Australia, ensures against various losses as in New Zealand, and in general follows the well-tried policies of those countries or sections where the vote of the small agricultural capitalist has become necessary to the capitalist class. The smaller the farmer, the more numerous he is, and the more valuable for the political purposes of capital—as Socialists have always understood and proclaimed from the beginning of the movement.
But permanent success and comfort for the small farm owner, even with all possible governmental aids, depends upon a gradual increase of his capital. And even with the most scientific assistance from the government and the maximum of ability on the part of the farmer, the accumulation of a larger capital demands sacrifices from himself and his family that some farmers are too self-respecting to make. It is these farmers, and these only, that we may claim for Socialism.
The General Strike
THE last railway strike in Great Britain was set-tled by the promise of the present Railway Rates Bill, which allows the roads to charge up the cost of higher wages to the country and the consuming public. The Government surrendered to the railways on the real or pretended ground that it feared the strike would cripple the country's military power just when the Morocco trouble was most menacing. From this situation Keir Hardie draws the following conclusion:
"Owing to the railway strike of 1911, the Government was powerless to send a single soldier across the Channel. The strike and the need to protect the railways made that impossible. If, therefore, when next, if ever, war is about to break out between any two industrial nations, the railway workers, miners, and transport workers generally, of the two countries affected, have an agreement to cease work the moment war is declared, that of itself would make war impossible, and set our statesmen searching for some other means of composing their differences. This is no longer a theory. It is a fact which the proceedings connected with the railway strike of 1913 prove conclusively.''
[pgbrk] THE MASSES
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Statement of the Ownership, Management, Circulation, etc.
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Name of— Post-Office Address.
Editor, Max Eastman,
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150 Nassau St., New York Publisher, The Masses Publishing Co.,
150 Nassau St., New York Owners: (Stockholders holding 1 per cent. or more of total amount of stock).
Eugene Wood............Northport, L. I.
Charles Winter,
53 ≈. 59th St., New York City
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Andre Tridon,
112 E. 19th St., New York City Hayden Carruth, c/o Woman's Home Companion, 381 4th Ave., Õ. Y. City Geo. Allen England, Bryant's Pond, Me. William Watson,
21 E. 15th St., New York City
Horatio Winslow.........Alleban, Õ. Y.
Maurice Becker,
234 W. 14th St., New York City Arthur Young,
9 E. 17th St., New York City Alex. Popini,
Flatiron Bldg., New York City Marjorie Hood,
21 E. 15th St., New York City J. B. Larric,
c/o Herald, 35th St., New York City
Leyton Smith.............21 E. 15th St.
Power O'Malley,
c/o Life Pub. Co., New York City Anton Otto Fischer,
15 W. 29th St., New York City William W. Nutting,
c/o Motor Boating, New York City Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders—None.
William Watson, Bus. Mgr. Sworn to and subscribed before me this 7th day of November, 1912.
Nathaniel Miller, Jr., Notary Public, Kings Co. Certificate filed in New York Co. (My commission expires March 30, 1913.)
Note: This statement of ownership supplies an omission in our November issue. The present ownership will be published in the June issue.
Drawn by Cornelia Barns
"Say Mamie, I heard Pa readin' in de paper how us minimums is a-goin to git more wages!"