erator

I LET'S NAIL THE LIES OF THE KEPT PRESS

YOU, Mr. Free American, want the news of the world which affects you. .The Kept Press is withholding it, because the Kept Press is controlled by the financial barons. A really Free Press association, with the backing of organized labor, has been started. it will give you the news, and it will tell you the truth about what is going on.

   THE FEDERATED PRESS is the name of the new working class press association. It has already begun to function. It is sending out world news to laboring class papers. But it must have money for its initial stages of development,

You, Mr. Free American, must help to make this Free Press association an immense success. Then you will know what is going on, and you will be able to act for your own interests.

The association is strictly a business proposition. it is co-operative and non-profit-making. It was organized for the express purpose of giving working class news to the worker, which is now either entirely suppressed by the Kept Press or minimized. it has as the chairman of its executive board, Robert M. Buck, editor of The New Majority, which is published by the Chicago Federation of Labor and is the official organ of the American Labor party. Other members of this hoard are. E. B. Ault, editor of The Seattle Union Record; W. B. Hilton, editor of Majority, at Wheeling, W. Va.; R. B. Smith, editor of The Butte Daily Bulletin, Butte, Mont.; J. Deutelbaum, editor of The Detroit Labor News, which is the official organ of the Detroit Federation of Labor; Joseph Schlossberg, editor of The Advance, the official organ of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America; Herbert E. Gaston, of the Nonpartisan league papers at Minneapolis, and F. J. Schwanz, editor of The Worker, Fort Wayne, Ind. The executive head of the organization is E. J. Costello, of The Milwaukee Leader, for seven years an editor and staff correspondent of the Associated Press and more recently

news editor of The Chicago Herald. The business manager is Louis P. Lochner, a publicist of note and until recently editor of The International Labor News Service.

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COL. ROOSEVELT SAID:

"I did a whole lot of reading. I particularly enjoyed half a dozen good detective stories by Arthur B. Reeve-some of them were corkers."

PRESIDENT WILSON'S BLESSED INTERVALS President Wilson is quoted as saying: "There are blessed intervals when I forget, by one means or another, that I am President of the United States. One means by which I for-get is to get a rattling good detective story, get after some imaginary of-fender, and chase him all over."

,   ~ioE. Cod uciL

We Must

Fly Tonight

Out of a deep sleep he woke her. She thought she knew him so well. Yet now, at two in the morning, he burst on her with this terror-this mystery-this what?

It's the beginning of one of the best mysteries ever solved by the great detective.

He is the detective genius of our age. He has taken science-science that stands for this age-and allied it to the mystery and romance of detective fiction. Even to the smallest detail, every bit of the plot is worked out scientifically. For nearly ten years America has been watching his Craig Kennedy-marvelling at the strange, new, startling things that detective hero would unfold. Such plots-such suspense -with real, vivid people moving through the maelstrom of life! Frenchmen have mastered the art of terror stories. English writers have thrilled whole nations by their artful heroes. Russian ingenuity has fashioned wild tales of mystery. But all these seem old-fashioned out-of-date-beside the infinite variety, the ,weird excitement, of Arthur B. Reeve's tales.

FREE 10 volumes POE

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When the police of New York failed to solve one of the most fearful murder mysteries of the time, Edgar Allan Poe-far off there in Paris -found the solution. This story is in these volumes.

Ho was a detective by instinct-be was a story-teller by divine inspiration. Before or since--no one has ever had his power td make terror-horror. To read breathlessly-to try to guess the ending-to enjoy the perfect, flawless style-to feel the power of the master-that is all you can do in each and all of Poe's nndyiny stories.

Get for yourself a thousand nights of pleasure and forgetfulaessof thrills and excitement-by reading ARTHUR B. REEVE. This is a wonderful combination. Here are two of the greatesi writers of mystery and scientific detective stories. You can get the Reeve in 12 volumes at a remarkably low price and Poe 10 volumes over 200 stories, FREE.

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Send me, all 'charges prepaid.

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C?1heAmerican Conan Do2yle

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THE LIBERATOR, a monthly magazine, April, 1920. Twenty-five cents a. copy, $2.50 a year. Vol. 3, No. 4, Serial No. 25. Published by The Liberator Publishing Co., 13S W. 13th St., New York, N. Y. Application pending for entry as second-class matter at the post office at New York. N. Y., slider the Act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1920.

eatespOtIt -tymlft, A'   y

4

Our Candidate

THE LIBERATOR

Vol. 3, No. 4 [Serial No. 25]   April, 1920

EDITORIALS

BY MAX EASTMAN

THE willingness of Soviet Russia in the moment of victory, to make peace at the cost of extensive con-cessions to the capitalist nations, is of high importance. To communists and capitalists alike it is the crucial fact in the history of these times. The New York World's Russian reporter, while quoting the popular opinion of Trotsky in Moscow and among his troops as "one of the greatest soldiers in the history of man," and acknowledging that he is the leader of "the most formidable army in the world to-day ... the most sensational war machine humanity has ever beheld," states that the one thing this formidable soldier sought to impress upon him, was that Russia would offer economic advantages for the sake of peace, and that "peace would lead to the immediate demobilization of the Red Army."

"It is charged in some quarters," said he to Trotsky, "that Soviet Russia is becoming militaristic, that by force of arms you will seek to impose your revolution throughout the rest of Europe." Trotsky's black eyes blazed.

"Ludicrous lies," he exclaimed. "The Red Army is the most anti-militaristic body existing to-day. Nine-tenths of us, I mean organizers, are workers and peas-ants, pacifists all.

"Immediate demobilization is obligatory with its as soon as hostilities cease. The workers and peasants will insist, once the revolution is no longer in peril, on returning to their factories and farms and making Russia a fit land to live in. Frontier guards will be maintained, of course. The framework of our organization must also be preserved in order that with the experience they have received in the past eighteen months our proletarian fighting men can be remodelled in two or three months if the need arises. There will also be some form of military training for the working class, that it may always be ready to defend itself against the bourgeoisie. It is amusing to think that in capitalistic circles I am looked upon as a militarist. I suppose I am by inclination the least military individual imaginable. Militarism, strik

ing as it does at the very roots of Communism, cannot possibly exist in Soviet Russia, the only truly pacific country in the world."

Tactics

I BELIEVE it is the first time in history that an overwhelmingly victorious army ever actually pleaded for peace. And while this may seem disappointing to some rebels who identify the revolution with a satisfaction of their own fighting impulse, it is a profoundly and dramatically revolutionary act.

If. the concessions that are offered to foreign capital should involve any essential or prolonged renewal of exploitation, if the "insistence" of the Red Army upon going to work, turns out to be, as this reporter elsewhere de-scribes it, a "militarization of labor"-then disillusionment indeed! But the detestation of war, the consecration of life, the renunciation of communism-byconquest, the fundamental reliance upon economic rather than military forces to bring freedom to the rest of the world's working-class, is unswervingly in accord with the true science of revolution.

An intuitive knowledge of this fact is what makes it so hard for the capitalist governments to make peace with Soviet Russia. "When the Bolsheviks say they want peace," said Secretary Lansing, "and give assurances that they wish simply to be Iet alone in order to work out their experiment- in Russia, such offers of compromise are purely tactical." Of course they are purely tactical. And worse than that, they are correctly tactical! The breakdown of capitalism has gone so far in the other countries that it is possible, little as anyone hoped it would be, for Russia to develop a system of socialist economies by herself. And if it is possible, there can be no shadow of doubt that from the stand-point of the world revolution, it is the proper course. Let the military and patriotic-authoritarian regime come to an end in one country; and let that country demonstrate to the masses of the people in all lands that happiness, and freedom, and real civilization, and the "decay of the state," do begin from the overthrow of capitalism ; at the same time let that country occupy, as Russia will, a dominating position in the markets of the

THE LIBERATOR

world. That is the strategy of real revolution, and what we have hoped for continually, as we watched the power of the Red Army grow.

The peace that the Bolsheviki make with the Allies will be tactical ; international communism is still their aim. But the peace that the Allies make with the Bolsheviki will be still more obviously tactical ; their aim is inter-national capitalism. Is there anything unfair about this? Is there anything not understood? Is there any hitch or difficulty in the Allies' deliberations whatever, except what rises from the knowledge in the depth of their own minds that capitalism is inherently doomed?

Lenin

N OTHING is better calculated to strengthen one's faith in the internationalism and revolutionary integrity of the Bolshevik leaders, than to read the "Theses of Lenin" read to the party workers at the time of Brest Litovsk. They are published in the report of our State Department on Bolshevism, and they concern the relations of the Russians as revolutionary socialists to imperial Germany and the imperialist Allies. To me this document is one of the greatest pieces of political reasoning ever put on paper-certainly the most important intellectual event of the war period. And it is as distinguished in the unclouded singleness of its purpose, international social revolution, as in the scope and cogency of its science. To envisage an ideal aim with such in-flexible passion, and yet retain a complete flexibility in adjudging the means of arriving there, is to occupy the heights of human intelligence.

It has been amusing to find this man-advertized to the world so thoroughly as a fanatic, a theoretical zealot, a bigot of the Marxian dogma-by far the most pragmatic in his mental operations of anyone who ever attained distinction in the socialist movement. His mode of thinking, and his very style of writing, in the first English translations that reached us in 1918, re minded me very startlingly cif my teacher in philosophy, John Dewey. It seemed as though the instrumental theory of knowledge was at last actively understood. From what I can learn, Lenin's position in the socialist movement has always been that of a practical thinker, a general in the field, a master of tactics, for whom theoretical knowledge is only an indispensable part of the complete equipment for action. He has been attacked at times by the moderates, and at times by the extremists, in the course of his career. And this, because he has never regarded the emotional concept of "being moderate" or "being extreme" as of any importance whatever. He has known that the important thing is to keep a clear definition of the goal, and then be practically right as to the method of getting there.

The popular opinion that Lenin is dogmatic can be eas-

ily understood, however, if we reflect that he is a technical and expert scientist. If the reader has ever endeavored to converse with a chemist, or a biologist, or a physicist, about some question containing an emotional although amateur interest for him, I am sure he has found himself confronted with just that unyielding insistence upon certain fundamental attitudes or modes of mental procedure which Lenin presents and which seems like dogmatism to the minds of naive literateurs and groping unhappy journalists. It is merely an insistence upon science, and might be just as inflexible in one for whom all scientific principles are working hypotheses, as in one for whom they are a priori intuitions of immutable truth.

The science of democratic progress, in so far as such a science exists, has its foundation and main framework in the principles of Economic Interpretation and the Class' Struggle that were formulated by Karl Marx. Lenin's mind as a leader of democratic progress dwells. within that science. He does not bother with a vast clutter of medileval intellectual rubbish which its builders long ago swept away. And that is why, although so very flexible and realistic in his thinking, he has seemed' dogmatic to a world whose other great political figures are still digging around in the rubbish and trying to palm it off upon the public for truth.

Farmer-Labor

W E print an article this month on Farmers and La-borers and their. getting-together ground. It is not so exciting as an article by the same author on Spartacides and Bolsheviks and the battle-field would be, but it is important.

In his report to the Eighth Congress of the Russian Communist Party in April 1919, Lenin discussed the question of the relation of the proletariat to the middle peasantry. "For Marxists," he said, "this question does not present difficulties from the theoretic point of view. . . . I recall, for example, that in Kautsky's book on the agrarian question, written when Kautsky still correctly presented the teachings of Marx and was recognized as an unquestioned authority in this field-in his hook on the agrarian question he says of the passing from capitalism to socialism : `The task of the socialist party is the neutralization of the peasantry; that is, to handle the situation so that the peasantry remains neutral in the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, that the peasantry does not give, any active assistance to the bourgeoisie against us.' "

Whatever the practical complications may be, this statement of Kautsky, endorsed by Lenin, gives us a theoretical compass with which to orient ourselves to-ward such organizations as the non-Partisan League and other farmers' leagues of a class-conscious kind.

APRIL, 1920

A Iittle while ago the United States Post Office sent .out a questionaire to 200,000 farmers, chosen at random in all parts of the country. The replies were such as to indicate, according to the New. York Times correspondent, "a widespread spirit of unrest and dissatisfaction among the farmers of the country, so threatening as likely to disturb the existing economic structure."

A member of the Senate Committee before whom the report of the Post Office was read remarked that the replies seemed to come "mostly from a bunch of Bolsheviks."

As anybody who is "neutral" in the struggle between the proletariat ,and the bourgeoisie would appear "Bolshevik" to the senatorial eye, we may take this report as indicating a wholesome progress toward the state of affairs demanded by the Marxian theory.

Representative?

IN signing the railroad bill, President Wilson stated that its provision for a Labor Board is "appropriate in the interest of the public which, after all, is principally composed of workers and their families." Every voice in the country representing the workers and their families was opposed to that provision.

If President Wilson were still a professor of political science and we attending a lecture in Nassau Hall-as we did once so long ago-on the principles of representative government, we might raise our hand at this point and ask the question :

"Why do the representatives of a public principally composed of workers and their families pass a law unanimously opposed by the workers and their families ?" And we might further ask : "Why do these workers and their families aquiesce in the passage of that law?" And still further again : "How long will they so aquiesce?"

But Wilson is no longer a professor of political science, much less a real dealer in it. He is just an irascible old desk-dweller who has taken to quarreling with his rubber stamps.

At Death

1T OW where the winds of Earth are cool You are completely beautiful, Your spirit blows a daffodil,

Your body is the slim young hill, More perfectly your beauties move Within the universe I love.

I will not let them talk to me

Of other immortality,

For if, because of pain, I took

The brief, distrusting backward look,

I should have lost you miserably

As Orpheus lost Eurydice.

Esther Whitmarsh.

When I Go Out

OBE to me tender, leaves that wait outside This sullen wall, and keep inviolate, Until I come to you with love-dumb lips From out of this dull tenement of hate;

Out of the fresh breathing of the earth

To draw allayment of my rasping fear,

My woundings and my frettings, till my mind

Is soothed by winds that draw like nurses near,

To tend me on my bed of living grass;

And all the hush of spring shall be my cover; The hills shall stand as guards about my peace; And the audacious sun shall be my lover. .. .

A DETERMINED effort is being made to secure ten thousand dollars for the release of Charles Ashleigh on bail pending the appeal of the I. W. W. case. It would be a small and yet a great thing, for some "patron of art and letters" to do, to set that much money aside for a few months, in order that this sensitive and real poet might have the liberty that he knows so well how to love.

THE LIBERATOR

A Journal of Revolutionary Progress

Editors, Max Eastman

Crystal Eastman

Lssoaiate :Editor, Floyd Dell

Busdness Manager. Margaret Lane

Foreign Correspondents. John Reed, Hiram K. Moderwell, Frederick Koh.

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS:

Cornelia Barns, Howard Brubaker, Eugene V. Debs, Hugo Gellert, Arturo Giovannitti, Charles T. Hallinan, Helen Keller, Robert Minor, Boardman Robinson, Mau-rice Sterne, Alexander Trachtenberg, Louis Untermeyer, Clive Weed, Art Young,

Published monthly and copyright 1820, by the
LIBERATOR PUBLISHING CO., Inc.
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Fort Leavenworth Prison

When I go out.... 0 roads of all the world! O Beauty, :Gelds and cities, do not fail !

Await, strong friends, my coming,-let my heart Once more drink glory on a careless trail!

Charles Ashleigh.

L4I you weren't so bloody we might recognize you."

The Log of the Transport Buford

By Alexander Berkman

U. $. Transport Buford, Jan. 3, 1920.

W E are now (12 noon ship time, in New York, 7:30 A. M., Sat.), somewhere in the Biscay Bay, west of France, going to the English channel. No one seems to know where we are bound. Captain claims he is sailing under sealed orders. The men are near crazy with uncertainty and worry much about the women and children left behind, how they will manage, etc. Already 14 days at sea-in every sense. Ship is an old leaky tub-rains and pours into our bunks. Sea very rough, rolling so I can hardly write. We were literally kidnapped from our beds in the dead of night. That rat Congressman Siegel was there, Caminetti, etc. We were told censor was there and so all sent Ietters and wires for their clothing. They took wires, etc., but I doubt if they were ever sent. Took ferry at 4:20 A. M., Sunday, put us on the Buford and started to sea at 6 A. M., December 21st. I wonder when you found out we were gone. Everything secret here, military style. Sentries with fixed bayonets, clubs and guns at our doors. Emma, Ethel and Dora in a cabin, not allowed to see us. 248 men in three cabins. In my cabin 48 men. Sleeping in bunks three on top of each other. Conditions fierce. Two inches of water on the floor, everything wet. No steam heat. Food at first so so; now horrible. Girls getting better food, but have to sit in bed all day, no room to move about. If not rough, we get out for one and one-half hours twice a day. Girls separately where we can't see them. I had visit with E. three times, a 20 minutes. Perkins also saw Dora. All were very seasick; E. only a little. Bianky and I the only ones who were not affected at all. Now all feeling o.k., except a few sick with various diseases. The young school boy, nephew of Bianky, lost his hearing. From a severe cold, I think. Others have bad diseases. All mixed indiscriminately. Representative here from Labor Department with many secret service men. I have been selected to represent the men in their dealings with the authorities.

All orders, etc., pass through my hands and I'm trying to do all I can for the men. They refused to let me send wireless. No mail allowed out. This is just taking a chance, you understand. Becker, Novikoff, Bianky, Perkins and the other boys you know are with me in cabin. Privacy unknown; even in Lavatory 50 men at once. The men discuss, and sing and plan for Russia. Most of these men haven't a thing-no shoes, shirts, etc. We collected stuff here and divided. But it is not enough. Nearly $5o,ooo due to the men in American banks, factories. And most of them penniless on the ship. Think

of it, these men and boys who have helped to produce America's wealth ! I'm making lists of their money and effects left behind. Washington representative (a Mr. Berkshire), says he'll see what can be done. Rumor that a second ship is behind us with things and the women.

It's an awful boat, ships the sea constantly-built in 1885, repaired in 1900. Engine works badly, rolls fiercely. Only makes from 7 to 10 knots per hour. Sometimes less than 200 per 24 hours. Wind blew us out of our course twice.

Sunday noon (N. Y. Time 8 A. M.), Jan. 4, 1920.-Still rolling around in the North of Biscay Bay. Big storm last night. Expected to break up housekeeping here. Many sick now, rolls like an old rubber shoe thrown into the ocean by East Siders vacationing at Coney Island. Ethel's stomach won't digest even eggs. E. has pains "inside." Dora very generally upset. Ethel much worried about Lipman. Dora about Perkins. He's near me, sick in the bunk. Water in my bunk all night. To-day three inches of water on floor of our cabin. We are all wet. Be sure to have other deportees provided with rubber boots and good shoes and warm underwear. Also good warm overcoats and rain coats. Also some medical supplies. Disinfectants of some sort. Plenty of lemons. Some of the men were arrested in their work shops, kept in jails from four to six weeks ; no change of underwear; taken to Ellis Island and put on the Buford without clean clothes or anything to keep them comfortable.

It's just rolling, going from side to side, not forward. Last night we got S. O. S. from some Japanese boat, couldn't go to her rescue, our own boat was in peril. The Japanese boat went under with all aboard. Did you, ever hear of a transport or other boat taking 15 days from New York to English Channel? Columbus made almost better time. Thirty-two years ago I came from Hamburg to New York in ten days in February, (1888) and we stopped half a day in Havre, France. In 1920 it takes three to four weeks. It's some journey this. Glad the women and children didn't come on this boat. Soldiers, sentinels everywhere. Crew armed with big Brownings and Colts carried in belt, openly, to overawe us. We are planning meeting here in memory of 1905 revolution, on the 9th of January. No news from any-where. I wonder what's happening in the world. Be sure to tell others to take along medical supplies, this is important, such as C. C. pills, some disinfectants, listerine for sore throats, asperin tablets, etc. Get our good Doctor friend to fix up medical outfit. Our suitcases and

10   THE LIBERATOR

trunks o.k., though some wet. Wish I had raincoat and field glasses. We were out for half an hour to-day, saw ship in the distance. Waves went over our boat so we had to go down below.

Give the news out that men were not allowed to get things preparatory for trip. No time to get money or clothing. It's an outrage. Some only arrived Saturday morning and evening, direct from jails. Now they are all wet and most of them without a change of clothing. Forbidden to get in touch with their people, till the last minute. I am sure that the American people, if informed, would not stand for another boat-load of deportees being set adrift upon the Atlantic without clothing to keep them warm. I have faith and confidence in the American people, but American officials are rotten to the core.

Must keep this ready. May add a line when we near the Channel. Much love to you all. My heart is with you. How did the Deportation pamphlet look? And read? It was done so hurriedly. I should like to have gone over it. I know it needed my eagle eye over it again. But I have confidence that you will get it out all right.

Sunday evening. Things as uncertain as ever. Rolling hard. Girls and most of the men sick. Get my things, if possible from Ellis Island. Those scoundrels kept my good bottle of whiskey that you gave me before I left. Wish I had it now. As the Jew would say : devorgen zullen zey veren (hope they choke).

Can't write. Love Sasha.

On Board U. S. T. Buford, Jan. 7, 1920.

At last in the North Sea. Water this morning green and quiet and smooth. Now, to P. M. Going North, evidently on the way to Kiel Canal. Still the same mystery ship, no positive information.

Pilot came aboard yesterday. Managed to get some letters, E's and mine, into mail bag. Hope they reach you. Sent you wireless that we are still alive; more was not permitted to be said. We are comparatively o.k. I have been very busy taking care of the 248 men. Many sick; all need help. Bread was very bad. Put to-day two of our men in the bakery. Saw Emma only three times for a few minutes. No news from the world except that 4500 were rounded up in U. S. This was a wireless picked up. Wonder what's doing in New York and how you and friends are. I have many questions to ask, but what's the use, you can't answer. I wanted to send you Preface to new edition of Memoirs, but so far was busy every minute, had no time to think or write. I was practically the only man not seasick among the 248.

This is Jan. 7th, 11 P. M., 6 :05 P. M. according to your watch present, which I keep at N. Y. Time. That little bone file arrangement, in the cute leather case, conies in

handy here. I often look at the inscription there. It has withstood the salt water. I think it will withstand Time itself. The authorities on Ellis Island did not re-turn my pearl pocket knife, note and address book and notes that I made while in Atlanta prison. Get them for me if possible. How about the Jewish translation of my book? I wonder what and how things are at home. If you get new preface from me for new edition of Memoirs, it could be used for Jewish translation also. Let Alex C. translate it. Give him my love.

Friday, Jan. 9, 1920, 10 A. M., ship time, about 5:30 A. M., N. Y. Passed North Sea. A couple of nights very rough; feared floating mines. An American destroyer accompanying us since English Channel. Last night we were at anchor, near Kiel Canal. No ships pass at night. Now passing Canal, no one allowed on deck. They are afraid of something. It's all quite funny. Act queer; orders stricter, etc. Most of the men feel better now, a few sick with rheumatism, sore throat-from the dampness. I'm o.k.; so are the girls. Ethel has been very seasick all the way-ean't keep anything on her stomach. The French chef has been very kind to the girls and prepared them special dishes.

Tried to write preface for book. Couldn't. Too many people around me, too much noise and besides too mane demands on my time and energy. Haven't had enougl. sleep since I came aboard. To bed at 1 and 2 A. M., get up at 6. Tending the sick, taking care of the many needs of all the men. Am worn out. Long for land and a bit of rest away from the crowd. Perhaps too late for Preface anyhow. You wouldn't get it till March probably. I wonder if book is being done. And how you live and work. I hope the general work is going on.

Novikoff, Bianky and Orodovsky ask you to send greeting to their wives. Novikoff was very happy about the things you sent him. He begs me to say if not for your thoughtfulness, he'd be naked. Hopes to thank you for it some day personally, he asks me•to tell you.

Anchored now in Kiel Canal.

Much love to you all.   S.

On the Way Somewhere-U. S. T. Bulford,

Jan. 9, 1920.

Old leaky tub this boat is. Crew and soldiers terribly discontented. Have talked with them. Soldiers ordered on the Buford two hours before sailing, didn't know where they were going and have nothing with them. One was to be married on Christmas, another has sick mother who does not even know where he disappeargd. Soldiers are friendly; also crew, all sympathetic. We've "agitated" them 'a bit. I guess I have told you we're not al-lowed even to see the three women. The men wake me at night when any one is sick-and some one is always sick. Twelve life boats assigned to me for my men. I have divided them in twelve groups with their own cap-

APRIL, 1920

Alexander Berkman

tains and assistant for each group. Have had several trial alarms to teach them how to handle the life belts, find their places and get without confusion to their respective boats. A big job, as there are about ten different dialects spoken by the men : Russians, Ukrainians, Polish, one Tatar from the Caucasus, Letts, Lithuanians, etc. About six non-politicals among us, Mann Act cases: The rest are Anarchists, Bolsheviks, members of the Union of Russian Workers and some unattached. Only 33 trunks here for all the men. Very few have money with them. We collected underwear, shoes, etc., and divided among the needy. Still not enough ; lack especially overcoats and shoes. I have made a list of things they have at home; also of the pay and sums left in banks. Over $45,000 left behind; besides, a few did not care to put their names down. Gave copy to Washington man; one to Commissioner and one for myself. Washington man promised to induce the Government to have the things, trunks and money collected

11

and sent to the men in Russia, but I have little faith in it.

We are all worn out with this long journey, bad conditions, etc. I don't know what has happened in the world since December and what conditions prevail now in Russia; but I mean to go with E. to Petrograd to see Shatoff and then to Moscow. . . . In good weather we are permitted one and one half hours on deck morning and afternoon. The women separately; we don't see them. We have not been out for several days-bad weather. To-day weather very beautiful, but we are not out ; passing through Kiel Canal and they are afraid we'll be seen. I suppose people know what ship this is and who we are. I'm hungry for word from you and other friends. Love to all our friends. I wonder how H. W. is; well, he made a good fight, anyhow; give him my regards. And Alex, Ben C., Bob-my love to them all.

Jan. 9th, 11 P. M.-I may have to close this to-morrow. Rumor that we go to Libau, get there Monday. Considerable excitement here to-day. Got into Kiel Canal and anchored; then started again. Our morning time for deck exercise passed and we were not let out ; in the afternoon the same. Men began to grumble-was fine weather. I sent word to Washington man. Colonel sent orderly to tell me military order to allow no one on deck in German waters or territory. I threatened we'd raise hell. The order was changed and we went on deck. Both sides of ship lined with soldiers. An American destroyer, Ballard, U. S. S. 267 is accompanying us. The authorities were afraid of a demonstration, or of some one trying to make a break for the bank-only a few feet away. At 5 P. M. we anchored at a lock in Kiel Canal, fine big city-we pasted notes on the closed port hole windows and held lighted matches to en-able the people on the pier to read our message : "De-ported Russian radicals from America. Greetings to you workers, etc." It was not Kiel; perhaps a Danish port. We wrote in several languages. Officer came down, almost had a fit. Took me for report to the Colonel ; changed his mind on the way and let me go. He'd report me to Washington man, he said. As if I care; I told him we didn't recognize his Colonel. That my men took instructions only from me; from no one else. Authorities here scared stiff. Officer told me yesterday we've "corrupted" the soldiers. All of them are discontented and 85 per cent very friendly with us. Officers are very anxious.

I have just now been informed very confidentially that we go to Libau. There Washington man is to go with me 70 miles to some place in Finland, with white flag, to make arrangements. If everything o. k., I re-main there and he returns for the men and the three women. So much excitement and confusion here, can't write more. Much love and best thoughts to you all. I miss you.

12

Saturday i P. M., Jan, io.-Stuck in Kiel Canal since last evening. Leaking in boiler serious ; will take at least two days to repair. We're at anchor. How we will navigate Baltic Sea and fight the ice is more than I know. Destroyer Ballard, U. S. S. 267, alongside of us.

5 P. M.-We stand opposite City of Kiel; in the center of the Kiel Bay; on both sides stretches of fine land with beautiful villas and neat clean looking homes. But over aII reigns the stillness of death. Five years of carnage have left their indelible mark. The bloodshed has been washed away, but the hand of death is still visible, appalling, paralyzing.

The misery of Germany, the woe of the world, was expressed in a few words by the Quartermaster of the Canal who came on board the Buford. "You are surprised at the stillness," he said. "Well, we are being starved to death by the kindness of the powers who set ,out to make the world safe for democracy. We are not yet dead, but we are so faint we can not cry out." But the Quartermaster does not know that the dead come back to life. Woe, then, when Resurrection strikes!

THE LIBERATOR

Last night sailors got whisky on board; soldiers and officers got drunk. Had my hands full to keep the men out of trouble. Four soldiers and two deck hands got arrested by ship officers. We were out on deck this morning and afternoon. German boats all around; keeping an eye on the American ships. We are not al-lowed to communicate. We sent you cable from English Channel; were not allowed to say anything or mention ship or place. Trying to send another cable. Tried to write Preface again; can't. Too much trouble and excitement here. Will continue later.

All well, more or less. What the future holds is an-other mystery. I am thinking of you and those left be-hind. I wonder if I'll ever see you again. At any rate, you may assure all friends, we'll do the best we can and the gods will attend to the rest.

Love to you all,

SASUA.

Just been told that we will land at Hango-soldier ran past me and gave the word. Until me meet in Russia !

-...-.--.-.'.'   :.ru+i.n   wad:' •:.•:.•••4-=~'rz J x:.   v....-.wr   ..+~.w.,w....n...w. ..x..,,+,..ru m.a.:; ...n~rti   w.w..-~.:1L

"Why, but I'm Freedom-I'm an American!"

Palmer: "Go on! You can't impose on me, you damn foreigner!"

APRIL, 1920   13'

Fear in the Jury Box

A NERVOUS little man is on the witness stand in Montesano. He is James T. McAllister, whose wife owns the Roderick Hotel next door to the raided I. W. W. hall in Centralia. He testifies that one of the defendants, Eugene Barnett, was in the Roderick lobby all during the Armistice Day shooting and not in the Avalon Hotel, as the prosecution asserts.

"But when you were arrested you said there was no-body in the lobby," says a prosecutor for the lumber trust. "Why did you say that ?"

"I wasn't sworn then," replies the little man. "I didn't want to be drawed into no trouble."

He cowers in his chair, remembering the mob. There was a list of people to be hung that night beside Wesley Everest.

"What's the matter?" demands Vanderveer, counsel for the defense. "Are you afraid now?"

"N-no." The little man shakes as with a chill.

Ten men sit facing the judge and jury and gallows. They are accused of killing Warren O. Grimm, service man, in the Armistice Day parade. But it is not a murder trial; it is a trial of organized labor; the lumber interests seek to crush their most dangerous enemy, the uncrushable I. W. W. The main legal issue is whether men still have a right to defend their lives and property against violence. If these ten workers get a fair trial and are judged solely by the evidence, they will without any doubt go free. But will the jury dare to acquit? A verdict of acquittal would mean ruin for the twelve. Each man's history is known to the lumber trust; it knows how tq break men; it has broken men before.

Grays Harbor County is shadowed by fear. There is an atmosphere of surveillance everywhere ; stool-pigeons for the prosecution appear at your right hand and look over your notes ; American Legion men intro-duce themselves to you and display too keen an interest in your welfare; there is a mysterious knock at your hotel room door while you are bathing; you ask who it is and a man says : "I'll come back later." He doesn't come back.

Investigators for the defense are jailed repeatedly without warrant, are held for days and then released. The case was rushed to trial. Judge John N. Wilson himself stated that a fair trial could not be had in Montesano ; indicated that he would grant a second change of venue. Five days later he announced that the law will not permit a second transfer.

George F. Vanderveer, attorney for the defense, battles alone against six prosecutors, behind whom the lumber trust's shadow always looms. He is quick, forceft4l and fearless-equal to the battle.

"He is a man I'd like to go tiger-hunting with," an; onlooker said to me.

Guns to arm a garrison are exhibited by the -state, to build up an atmosphere of violence and blood-thirstiness around the I. W. W.; a regiment of soldiers is marched into town by the governor to add to this atmosphere ; intimate ,testimony about wounds and death is given ; but the lumber lawyers battle to keep out evidence about Wesley Everest and the mob which tore and hung him, and about the plan to raid the Wobblies'' hall and run them out of town.

The stuff gets in, however, time after time.

There is not the slightest doubt that these ten defend-ants shot in self-defense, and that if the jury votes on the weight of evidence it will vote for aquittal. And this even though the judge rules so flagrantly in favor of the prosecution, that Vanderveer was compelled once to threaten to withdraw from the case. The only question in this trial is whether there is one courageous man in the jury. And no one in any other part of the United' States can imagine the amount of courage it will take for that man to be honest.

One holiday I went to Centralia, fifty miles from Montesano, through stump-lands. The town is like an open wound. Strangers are watched with menacing eyes; are questioned if they pause. I saw the tragedy scene, and the gray skeleton of the earlier I. W. W. hall ; an eye-witness of the torture of Wesley Everest pointed out to me a white-haired citizen who carried a rope in the crowd, a business man who tore strips of flesh from Everest's face with his finger nails, a youngster who helped hang this ex-service man and boasted of it after-wards. Everest died without a whimper; never pleaded for mercy; did not cry out when bayonets were stuck into him; and he was alive then, standing up in the street near the jail with the mob surging around him. My companion saw that. The man with the bayonetted gun didn't have room enough, and the crowd had to push back to let him make the thrust. Then Everest's body was dragged through the streets, covered with mud and blood. On a tree near the bridge where he was hung, which Everest could have seen if alive, is a sign : "Eternity where," Parties of singing men and women and girls came through the night in automobiles to jeer the half-naked figure, swinging in the glare of automobile searchlights; finally somebody cut the body down; it lay in the river for hours; then was fished out and carried to the jail.

That revolting corpse with its foot-long neck was placed where the other Wobblies must see it. Throughout the night members of the mob talked at intervals under Loren Roberts's cell window. "We lynched that guy Everest," they would say. "We'll get this fellow Roberts next if he doesn't come clean."

Courthouse, Montesano.   JOHN NICHOLAS BEFFEL.

14   THE LIBERATOR

Stanislaw Szukalsk~i   DANTE

Condemned Man

c c j T is a still town

1 With no sighing, It is a still town

You go to, dying."

How long I've wanted towns

That quiet be-

So turn the current on,

And let me see.

Harold Cook.

March, 1920

W E long, we watchers on the hungry hills, We long for freshets and the burst of spring. The plowman gazes on the land he tills, He tinkers with his drags and drills And wonders when the meadow birds will sing.

O sudden blossoms in the midst of May! 0 tree of such explicit pink delight!

We count the days until that one sheer day Of beauty, so profoundly gay,

When trees emerge like magic out of night!

There'll not be long to wait; the signs are sure! The ring around the moon last night was dim With wing on wheeling wing of geese, obscure Wild arrows feathering the moor.

Oh, soon there'll be a cherry on the limb!

Oh, soon there'll be the green along the ground, The fluttering spurts of wheat and rippling corn, And pussy willow, silver as the sound

Of silver bells, and soft and round;

One hundred birds will sing at break of morn.

It may be like no other, this next spring.

The earth is swollen, stirring with a seed

That fell at some old harvest's garnering.

We watchers on the hills, we sing,

As gay as finches on a bending reed!

Stirling Bowen.

Oblivion

Y OU had a second birth within my heart, That opened wide to you its unforced doors; Your spirit has become of me a part, As though my body carried it, not yours.

And when this eager Iife shall cease to be, When, faring forth on my last feeble breath

The You within me prisoned shall be free,

Will you not know a swift, dim taste of death?

Will you not feel a taut cord snapped in two,

The closing in of walls on every side, The sudden coming back of You to you,

With you alone forever to abide?

Mary Davis.

Vecch>i etta

S HE is so shrivelled, who was sweet, So brown, who once was saffron-gold; Crippled and gnarled the lovely feet, And blind the eyes that were so bold. Once all the beauty arms could hold

Burned in her, fearless of defeat-And see her, shaking with the cold

Stumbling along the windy street!

Lydia Gibson.

15

A Psycho-Analytic Confession

By Floyd Dell

N OW that the Soviet Government of Russia is about to be recognized and everything, perhaps it will be all right for me to make a frank confession.

I hesitate to do so, for fear this article may be raked up in the future, when we have a Soviet Republic of our own, and I may be haled before a Revolutionary Tribunal and charged with constructive treason for thinking things that no loyal and patriotic Bolshevik ought to think. I have had enough of that sort of thing under capitalism, and so I will enter a disclaimer right here. It is not I who think the things I am about to relate-at !east, it is not my conscious intellect. It is my Unconscious. And I am not legally responsible for the vagaries of my Unconscious. If you know anything about your Unconscious-if you have ever had one yourself-you will know that it is a wayward and cussed thing, al-ways thinking the wrong thoughts. It is always thinking how nice it would be to take a day off and loaf, when your conscious intellect tells you that you must be at the office at nine o'clock sharp, this morning just the same as every morning, so that you can pay the grocery bill. The Unconscious does not think about grocery bills; it just thinks about what it would be pleasantest to do.

Now as long as the Co-operative Commonwealth was a long way off, and we could imagine it to be anything we liked, my Unconscious was all for it. Doubtless the lazy thing expected that we would have one long holiday under Communism. But as it comes nearer, and we can see its initial stages in all their realistic detail, my Unconscious begins to protest. Communism begins to look too much like work.

I may say, with all due modesty, that I do not feel the same way about it. I like work ! I mean, of course, that my conscious intellect perceives the necessity of work, and the moral nobility of its performance. But my Unconscious keeps growling away down there in the dark, and a while ago I sent down a psycho-analytic expedition to find out what is the matter. The part of my mind delegated to that task returned with the following re-port :

"It says it expected something different-more of a change. We have always had to work. We want a rest."

I was about to compose a reply to this, when an Anarchist friend of mine-one of the gentlest souls in the world, a man who wouldn't hurt a fly-came in and made a similar objection to the hard, laborious, ordered efficiency of the Soviet regime in Russia. So I made my re-ply to him instead. I said: "Of course you understand

that that laborious efficiency represents a period of transition. In order to save the Soviet State it is necessary for it to compete successfully with Capitalist States. It has proved that it can beat them in war ; it must prove that it can triumph over them in peace. It must produce more goods, and better goods, in shorter hours."

"In other words," says my Anarchist friend, smiling satirically, "it must prove that it is a superior kind of Capitalism ?"

"I thought," I reply calmly, "that Capitalism was the private ownership of the means of-"

"I take back the word," says, my friend. "Only I thought we wanted to abolish Capitalism to get free from this infernal pressure to produce. If man remains the slave of the machine under Communism, I do not see that he is much better off than he was under Capitalism. Let us say that he gives himself orders to work at something ten hours a day, instead of being ordered by a brutal and selfish employer. Does he like it any better?"

"Well," I answer reflectively, "I have been working on a novel these last few weeks, and I have been giving myself orders to wprk ten hours a day, and I must say that I like to receive those brutal and selfish orders from myself, better than I liked the mild request of the Liberator management to try and put in a few hours a day at my desk. In fact, the more work I got out of myself, these last few weeks, the better I liked myself, both as overseer and as worker."

"But you were working for yourself," said my Anarchist friend slyly. "And you were not doing anything useful. That makes all the, difference in the world. Would you have been as happy working ten hours a day making shoes ?"

"If I were a shoemaker, I would," I asserted stoutly. "The shoemaker also can be an artist, and take pleasure in his work."

"Yes-if he makes the shoe to suit himself, and makes it all. But if he makes a part of a shoe, over and over again, for ten hours-! Tell me, how would you like to work in a fiction factory, and do descriptions ten hours a day, never seeing the beginning or the end of any of the stories you made them for? And yet I hear that Comrade Lenin is anxious to introduce American efficiency-that is to say, speeded-up piece-work-into Russian factories. Is it not so?"

"That is necessary in the transition stage," I replied. "It is first necessary to save Russia from chaos. It will presently be necessary to save the whole world from

16   THE LIBERATOR

chaos. We will adopt any scheme which will enable us to feed and clothe and shelter the human race. Then we will begin to carry out our plans for enabling them to be happy, through doing work as artists, and taking creative pleasure in it."

"Then you do believe that work is an evil? For I must point out to you that when the worker becomes an artist, what he does ceases to be work and becomes play. You wish to abolish work?"

"Yes," I replied reluctantly.

"Aba ! I knew that you agreed with me all the time !"

I looked up, and discovered that my Anarchist friend, with whom I thought I was conversing, had gone away some time ago. It was my Unconscious that I had been arguing with !

That is the trouble of arguing with your Unconscious. It always gets the better of you. And it pursues its ad-vantages in a mean way. Thus, it forced a part of my conscious intellect to work for it, inventing quasi-reasonable arguments for its mere childish laziness, as follows :

"Don't you think that it is a pity the Russian people, who have at Ieast been free from the worst evils of Capitalist efficiency, should be introduced to some of those evils by your Bolshevik friends?"

"It is a stage they must go through," I replied.

"Don't you wish that the Russian people had found some way, as we used to hope, to skip that stage, and go straight into Utopia ?"

"What's the use wishing? We live in the real world, and this is the way things must happen."

"Aren't you hypnotizing your-self with that must happen? Perhaps, if not the Russians, some other fortunate people will discover a way of avoiding the factory and machine stage of existence?"

Here I turned roundly upon my Unconscious. "You can't fool me," I said bitterly. "You aren't as anxious about the world at large as you pretend to be. You are as selfish as you are depraved. What is it you want? Tell me that, and stop pretending to pity the poor Russians!'

"I," said my Unconscious with shameless candor, "I want a million dollars and a large house, full of children."

"I have always suspected you of bourgeois tendencies," I said angrily. "But this is really too

much ! A million dollars-with which to wallow in the luxuries of the idle rich, no doubt. And a large house for ostentatious display. But why the children?.

"You misunderstand me," replied my Unconscious with an injured air. "There is nothing bourgeois at all about my desire. I do not wish to wallow in luxury, I wish only to lead a busy and happy and artistic life. Do you remember Carl Larsson ?"

Yes, I did remember Carl Larsson. I had bought a book of his just the other day. It was in Swedish, and I couldn't read very much of it, but there were dozens of pictures. The young woman who sold me the book told me that Carl Larsson is a painter, a millionaire, and the father of a large number of children. The pictures told me the rest of the story. He and his wife bought an old house, and fixed it up, the way we all dream of buying a house and fixing it up. He sawed and nailed and painted it, and carpentered the furniture himself ; and then he and his wife and children lived in it. And never in any book have I seen a more sane and healthy and happy and delightful life than those pictures represent !

"That's just what I think," said my Unconscious. "I've always wanted to live in a houseboat, with a nice girl and our children, and play in the 'water most of the, time, and not wear any clothes to speak of, and just laze around and talk and laugh and eat and sleep and fool with the kids: That's my idea of the kind of life to live. And once in a while we would go off in a motor-boat with a rifle and shoot a few ducks. You see I'm not op-posed to machinery, so long as it can take its place in a

"Ah, Floyd, you know you want a million !"

APRIL, 1920   17

about them ?"

"But you want them," pursued my Unconscious. ."At least, I do ! Come, now, tell the truth-don't you, too ?"

"Suppose I did," I responded angrily, "that would be mere envy, and as such unworthy of me. Besides, you may not realize where Carl Larsson's million comes from, but I do. Unearned increment ! Yes, sir. Unearned increment. Now, what have you to say?"

"I never can understand those long words you use," responded my Unconscious. "But all I can say is, wherever he got it, he's a Iucky fellow."

I disdained to answer such a childish remark. My Unconscious, seeming to think it had scored, returned to the f ray.

"I suppose," it said, "that you want to take Carl Lars-son's million away from him, and make him Commissar of something or other?"

"Exactly," I replied. "Commissar of House Decoration and the Life Beautiful. I'd make him teach other people how to be happy though married, and how to have fun with their children. And you can't tell me that he wouldn't be glad to be doing that for everybody instead of just for himself."

My Unconscious relapsed into sullen silence. It knew it was beaten. The next day, however, it popped up again with another silly remark. I had just been reading Thorstein Veblen's "Instinct of Workmanship." You wouldn't think an ignorant and unsociological Unconscious like mine could understand a book like that, let alone get any comfort out of it. But it woke up suddenly in the middle of a page and said triumphantly.

"There! Isn't that just what I've been telling you ?"

I looked at the page again. It began as follows : "What is known of the earlier phases of culture in the life history of the existing races and peoples goes on to say that the initial phase in the life of any given racial type, the phase of culture which prevailed in its environment when it emerged, and under which the stock first proved its fitness to survive, was some form of sav-

agery. Therefore the fitness of any given type of human nature for life after the manner and under the conditions imposed -by any later phase in the growth of culture is a matter of less and Iess secure presumption, the farther the sequence of institutional change has departed from that form of savagery which marked the initial stage in the life history of the stock."

"Well," I said condescendingly. "I will explain that to you. Mr. Veblen means-"

"I know well enough what he means," replied my Unconscious. "He means that we are essentially what we were just after the last Ice Age-peaceful, agricultural, home-loving savages, with a fondness for our wives and children and a taste for puttering about the house and garden; and that it's a question if we can endure the strain of what you very flatteringly call `civilized' life-that's what he means. And just look at this !"

I had turned over hastily to the back of the book, to a chapter entitled "The Machine Industry." And just by ill luck I had opened the pages to the following passage :

"Neither the manner of life enforced by the machine system, nor the occupations of those who are in close contact with this technology and its due habits of thought can be `natural' to the common run of civilized mankind. According to accepted theories of heredity, civilized mankind should be best fit to live under conditions of a moderately advanced savagery, such as the machine technology will not permit. Neither in the physical conditions which it imposes, therefore, nor in the habitual ways of observation and reasoning which it requires in the work to be done, is the machine age adapted to the current native endowment of the race. . . . The limit of tolerance native to the race, physically and spiritually, is short of the unmitigated materialism and unremitting mechanical routine to which the machine technology in-continently drives."

I didn't know exactly what to say. However I began. "You must take that in connection with its con-text. Mr. Veblen means-"

But my Unconscious' interrupted. "You," it said, "may be one of those people who like machinery, and want to fill the world with it. But I am not. I want to live in a state of `moderately advanced savagery'-very moderately advanced, I may add. Not too darn advanced. I admit the typewriter, but I bar the telephone. I know I am inconsistent. I admit the Standard Oil reading-lamp and rule out electric lights."

"Lenin says," I remarked, "that in ten years Russia will have seven hundred million incandescent bulbs, and all the factories in the country will be run by electricity from power-stations in the Urals."

"He can have the bulbs," said my Unconscious. "I don't want any such contraptions on my houseboat."

"Who cares," I said rudely, "what you want? The people- "

sane life. And maybe, if I felt like it, I would write a ,few immortal works of fiction, just as Carl Larsson makes those paintings.

"Think of it!" my Unconscious went on enthusiastic-ally. "That million of his keeps him from having to make a business of art. He doesn't have to bother about whether people like his stuff or not-and the result is that people do like it! Because he is a real human being. You see, with that million, he doesn't have to be afraid of women-afraid, that is, that one of them will spoil his life if he takes her seriously and goes off to live with her and have children. He does not have to be afraid of love, and domesticity, and fatherhood. He takes them and enjoys them and paints them, and is happy."

"All very nice," I reply, "but I haven't got the million -not to speak of the children. So what's the use talking

18   THE LIBERATOR

"The people like it, I know," said my Unconscious. "It is a new toy. But they will get tired of it in a few thousands years, and come around to my houseboat idea."

"The Simple Life!" I sneered.

"Confess," said my Unconscious, "that you share the same views. When you went out to your house in the country last week-end, and shoveled the snow off the flat roof over the kitchen where it had begun to leak in, and looked at the garden and wondered how soon the snow would be off the ground, and snowballed your girl when she came out to call you in to dinner, and lay around the house reading poetry and talking about the new porch you were going to build next spring, you were living, in a sense in which you do not live in town. You were living in a state of moderately advanced savagery. All that was needed to complete the picture was half a dozen children, and a million dollars to enable you to stay there and build that porch, instead of coming hack sourly to machine civilization on Monday morning."

"We can't all have a million dollars," I said.

"No-and that's why we're going to have a revolution, if you ask me," said my Unconscious.

"No," I said, "we are going to have a revolution be-cause of-well, you wouldn't understand if I told you.. But it's all in the Communist Manifesto."

"It's true, I never could understand that book." said my Unconscious. "I seem to take more readily to poetry."

"You're a Utopian," I said.

"Of course," said my Unconscious. "And between us, I think you are, too. I think you are a Socialist simply because you want, a different kind of world, one you can be happy in. And you work for the social revolution just as other people work to make a fortune. You want to see your dream come true. But the dream which you want to see come true is my dream-not Lenin's seven hundred million electric bulbs, but a houseboat and a happy family living in a state of moderately advanced and semi-nude savagery !

"Suppose," I said desperately, "that all this absurd

nonsense were true. What then?"

`"Well," said my Unconscious, "1 was just thinking. I remember a picture I saw once. It was on the cover of the Masses. It was a picture of a battle between the miners and the militia during the Colorado strike. The militia had set fire to the little tent-colony of strikers, and were shooting into the tents, killing women and children. The picture showed a striker crouched in front of his blazing tent, with a rifle in his hands. Over his knees was the body of a dead child, killed by the bullets of the militia hired by the coal-company. Under the picture it said : `Strike, for your homes and firesides, God, and your

native land!'   I could understand that. Is'nt that Socialism?"

"Well, yes," I said, "of a sort intended to appeal to the emotions rather than to the intellect."

"It appealed to me," said my Unconscious. "And what's more, it occurred to me that if I were that miner, with a gun in his hand, I would be fighting not so much for the little coal-oil stove inside that tent as for a real fireside with children around it. I would be fighting for a home I didn't have, all my own, and the right to stay there and enjoy life. Is that Socialism?"

"Perhaps," I .said guardedly. "It seems tinctured with notions of private property acquired during the regime of capitalism-"

"My dear young man," said my Unconscious. "I am not merely several millions of years older than you, but I am a few million years older than Capitalism. I acquired those ideas in the Ice Age. There was privacy before there was private property. It is privacy that I am talking about. I don't want the right to sell my garden-truck at a profit to someone else. I only want the right to plant and hoe in a little backyard, and eat my own strawberries under my own roof."

"That sort of thing can be done so much more efficiently on a large scale, with modern machinery," I murmured. "Tractors-"

"Give them to Lenin," said my Unconscious. "I don't want 'ern. But if you ask me, there are enough people to make a revolution who want just the same things that I do. They are dying now in the effort to get a little corner of the world, for themselves, where they can get away from capitalism. Maybe they would just as soon die trying to get the whole world free from it. But I wouldn't die for a million electric bulbs-no, not for a billion of 'em !"

"Lenin gave the peasants their land," I said.

"That was thoughtful of him," said my Unconscious. "I notice he is still in power. And Bela Kun didn't. He kept the large estates intact, and worked them with tractors, I believe. And where is he-in jail. I believe."

Floyd Dell and his Unconscious

APRIL, 1920   19

"Damn it all !" I cried. "Must we regress to a peasant-world?"

"A pleasant world by all means!"

"I didn't say pleasant--I said peasant. Must we do everything by hand, as in the middle ages? Must every house have a kitchen, instead of us going to-"

"Child's? I'm for the kitchens, every time!"

"I was going to say, to large, efficient communal eating-places--"

"Yes, I know. I said Child's."

"-Where food is cooked by experts who know more about cooking than the overworked amateurs of our private kitchens-"

"Get out !" said my Unconscious. "You know food cooked on a large scale doesn't taste like anything."

"But," I said, "can't we all work an hour or two a day in the factories, without pretending to enjoy it, and get the work of the world done, and then have all the rest of the day to live and do as we please?"

"You can," said my Unconscious. "But I don't want to! If people want to work in factories, let them. They'll get tired of it after a while, and find it's more fun doing things by hand."

"It's impossible to argue with you," I said. "You seem to think civilization is a disease that people are going to get over after a while."

"Exactly. It's a dream, a nightmare. Some day we shall wake up."

"But that isn't Socialism. It's petty bourgois utopian nonsense. It has all been demolished by Frederick Engels in the preface to-"

"I suppose so. Well, then, take your factories, and build their up until the they reach the sky. Put electric bulbs everywhere, turn night into day, and install a wire-less telephone in everybody's hat. Extend the under-ground subway system all over the earth, so that people will hardly ever see the top of the ground. You are doubtless right. Give people what they think they want -that's the only way they will ever find out they don't want it. Turn machinery into a toy-and finally grown people will get tired of it, and leave it to children. There will be telephones in the nursery and the children of Timbuctoo will have long conversations with the children of Alaska; and you won't be able to get a grown person to use one any more than you can get him to play a game of mumble-the-peg. Who was it said, `The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom'?"

"A mad poet named Blake. But the science of engineering---"

"Boys will play at that, as they do now at football. It is a fit diversion for the excessive energies of youth. Mathematics will be a child's game, instead of picture -puzzles. Just as we have retained the habits of barbarism in games and 'sports, so we will retain the habits of

capitalism-as pastimes for the young. The railroad engine will take its place with the child's bow and arrow ; and just as there are cranks who still, in their adult years, have Archery Clubs, so there will be Railway Clubs, and if anyone really prefers to sit in a stuffy carriage instead of walking, with a blanket on his back, why -he can ! But normal people will relapse into the comfortable, busy, happy savagery to which they are by nature fitted."

"Economics," I began, ransacking my memory for statistics, "proves-" But I have a bad memory for statistics. So I took another tack. I spoke scornfully. "And because of these futile utopian desires," I said, "you are lacking in sympathy for the great experiment of common ownership of the machinery of production in Russia, I suppose. Because it is not just what you want, you will not give me your assistance-for I do need your assistance-in trying to help people understand it, in order that it may live. You will not do your little share in that task of ours?"

But my Unconscious did not answer. It had apparently forgotten all about the Russian Soviet Republic. It was humming a silly old war-song:

"And shall Trelawney die?

And shall Trelawney die?

There's twenty thousand Cornishmen

Will know the reason why!"

And just as I turned away, it added : "I have gone through a long period of barbarism, too, you know, and I understand that better than you do. Fighting, for the sake of victory! You would be shocked if you really knew me."

I, myself, do not approve of fighting. It is not a civilized thing to do. I shuddered, and took up the current number of the New Republic, and my Unconscious went promptly to sleep.

The Rush Hour

TEARING compulsive rush, the screech and croak Of forces balked by friction; roaring stress Of atmospheres imprisoned that compress With dreadful weight intangibly, and stoke To raging heat the living things that choke Body compact to body-spiritless,

They to one monstrous substance coalesce In oozy soldering of sweat and smoke.

And as the eruption of some burning mount In tumult of terrific labor drives

Into the sky and wide its turbid fount-So bursts the city from her nether dives, Welding to steel and stone the massed amount Conglomerate of crushed and molten lives.

Olga Erbsloh.

20   THE LIBERATOR

Clerk: "Six of the men held for deportation have died." Attorney General Palmer: "Half a dozen, eh?"

Reverse English

I NCOMPLETE reports from Boo dinners and meetings on February twenty-second, indicate that George Washington was opposed to revolutions.

STRIKING telephone operators won more pay in New York. Sometimes the best thing a hello girl can do is to say good-bye.

F -GROPE, the economists tell us, is bankrupt but not Bolshevist. That red flag must belong to the auctioneer.

G ERMAN government bonds are now offered on the market here for as low as $1o.oo per thousand marks. Still if paper continues going up they may be a good investment.

U NDER a Soviet form of government it is doubtful whether Woodrow Wilson would get the support of the cabinet makers.

O NE theory is that Mr. Lansing was released because his private war with Mexico threatened to compete in public disfavor with Wilson's private war with Russia. Perhaps unrestrained competition is no longer sound Democratic doctrine.

«N OWHERE is law to-day so promptly and vig-

orously ~J enforced," says Senator Harding in an attack upon Soviet Russia. This is what is known to the trade as "anarchy."

A CHIP off the old block is Assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt. He boldly and fearlessly holds his peace about the Socialists' suspension until he sees which way the cat is going to jump.

HE young woman who saw Charles Solomon spit

upon the flag in a public meeting in Brooklyn has been so thoroughly discredited that she ought to get a job writing for the Civic Federation Review.

T HE National Civic Federation has appointed a committee to study radicalism and aid in its defeat. Suggesting the case of that suspicious mother who said : "Find out what Willie is doing and tell him to stop."

H EDLEY of the New York subways has announced that a device will be installed soon which permits one guard to close all the doors of a train. Optimists say that each door will catch at least one arm or leg. More casualties at smaller cost is the Interborough's thrifty motto.

S TOCK Exchange seats now sell for $95,000, including a pair of shears to clip lambs and coupons, but chaotic conditions continue in the price of seats in the U. S. Senate. Estimates from Michigan vary from $15o,ooo to $8oo,ooo.

SENATOR SMOOT has compiled a volume of the Senate speeches on the treaty; 3000 pages, six mil-lion words. We fearlessly predict that this book will be one`of the six worst sellers.

W E have never before been able to understand the difference between .puts and calls, but now we are told that the railroad strike has been put off, not called, off.

W ASHINGTON now believes that.Bryan will be squelched at San Francisco and the Democrats will not nominate a radical. Gompers can now choose between a hide-bound conservative and a reactionary.

H ERBERT HOOVER may not be a candidate for President, but when as definite a man as he begins to talk like a trial balance, we are entitled to at least one suspicion. Hoover is clear enough on European topics but he forgets that clarity begins at home.

G REAT BRITAIN seems to have turned off the anti-Russian propaganda, and pleasant things are being said almost daily. In billiard circles this is known as-reverse English.

APRIL, 1920   21

I N the interest of efficiency General Wood wants to re-move the burden of taxation from those who are making large profits and put it ulion those who are more used to carrying burdens.

D PRESIDENT Wilson is said to be mentally lit again. Fit for what? R. PERCY S. GRANT and the Church of the Ascension have been up before the bishop on a charge of out-and-out Christianity. The tolerant bishop let them off with the injunction not to do it in the church building.

G OVERNOR LOWDEN appeared in public recently wearing a shabby overcoat three years old, but the Hood stumpers are not worried. The General's qualification for president is his shabby treatment also three years old.

U NIVERSAL military training has been shelved by both parties as a dangerous issue. T HE goose-step has been replaced by the side-step.

HOWARD BRUBAKER.

"Hang your clothes on a hickory limb, but don't go near the water!"

22

Malatesta In Italy

By Carlo Tresca

k

I N the last week of February, the executive commit-tee of the Italian Socialist Party met in Florence, and passed a fateful resolution presented by Bombacci, leader of the left wing element. This resolution provided that the party send out organizers all over the country to begin immediately the formation of Soviets of workers, soldiers and peasants, in preparation for the revolution.

Turati and his still-powerful group of parliamentaires opposed such extreme action, and are still opposing it. They do not think a revolution can be successful in Italy now. But the one fact that every realistic thinker in Italy knows to-day is that there will be a revolution soon, whether the leaders will it or not. And as usual only the extremists have the courage to recognize this fact, and prepare boldly for what is coming. Whether it will be wholly successful or not is beyond their predictions. But there is a workers' revolt coming, and they mean to be of it and in it; to steady it with true revolutionary ideas, to guide it in its proper economic channels, to make of it, at the very least, another advance in the international social revolution.

It must be remembered that Italy has been suffering from the evils of war since 1912, when she won Tripoli from Turkey at the cost of ioo,ooo workers' lives. The masses gained nothing by this victory; they learned a fruitful lesson then in the bankruptcy, high taxes, and unemployment that followed the imperialist triumph of their country. In 1913 their deep disillusionment manifested itself in a remarkable wave of revolt that began with a number of strikes in Angona-"the Red Province." The military forces were used to crush the strikers, and all working-class Italy rose in protest. During the "red week" that followed, 500,000 workers abandoned their tools, and not a wheel turned in the whole nation. The barricades went up in scores of cities ; republican governments were established in many provinces ; hundreds were killed in the clashes between monarchists and red republicans. But the revolt, unorganized and unprepared for, had taken the leaders by surprise, and they could not hold it together for more than one historic week.

Enrico Malatesta was the soul and centre of this spontaneous outbreak of the people. When the strike subsided, this grand old veteran who is loved as no other man is loved by working-class Italy, was again forced into exile. The government flung troops along every frontier to watch for him, but, disguised as a monk, he escaped into France and from there went to London,

where he lived until his recent return to Italy. After his departure, the Italian revolutionists settled into a period of organization and agitation, and built up a great Socialist and labor movement that withstood even the shock of the new war into which the Italian diplomats, corrupted by French gold, thrust the nation in May, 1915.

With the exception of a neglible minority, every radical element was solidly against the late war. Nothing effective could be done during the war period, however, and it was only in the spring of last year, after the armistice came into force, that the masses were goaded again by the miseries of another "victory" into a revolutionary anger. The memorable high-cost-of-living riots were the first unmistakable symptoms that Italy had begun its revolution. The masses showed a concious knowledge of the causes of their distress. They raided warehouses and shops, but did not destroy the food and other goods confiscated, as unorganized mobs would. The Chamber of Labor in each town and village received the various commodities, instead, and distributed them to the poor. "Facciamo come in Russia!" "Let us do as in Russia," was the slogan of the uprising, displayed on the signs carried by the masses surging through the streets of the Italian cities and towns.

The officials of the Socialist Party and the Confederazione del Lavoro called a general strike at this time, for the people were demanding it. But the strike was called off by the same officials in a few days. The government made a few grandstand arrests of small shopkeepers, (the large landowners and industrial barons being innocent, of course) ; and the masses resigned themselves to paying the same dizzy prices for food again. Their uprising seemed to have brought them nothing.

There followed the general strike of July 21-22, to protest against the blockade on Russia. It was the most successful ever held in Italy, despite the fact that a day before it was to happen the government placarded Italy with posters saying that in France and England the workers had voted to desert the plan. But there was no more tangible result.

Soon after this strike came the campaign for the elections, described by the "Liberator" correspondent in the February number. "We are going to Parliament only to destroy it," said the Socialist candidates. "Your vote means the Revolution."

Lenin was the most popular name in the campaign, and Lenin means Soviets and revolution in Italy. Hun-

APRIL, 1920   23

NICOLA BOMB ACCI
Political Secretary (i. e. President) of the Socialist Party*

dreds of ballots were turned in at the booths on election day, with "Lenin" written in for deputy. The Socialist party, controlled by its maximalist element, stood on a thoroughly revolutionary platform. The masses were given the impression throughout the campaign that this was the last election of its kind, that it was in reality no election at all, but the preliminary to the revolution.

And then came the opening of parliament in December, when two of the Socialist deputies were attacked and beaten up by a band of royalist enthusiasts. The Socialist party immediately called another general strike, and the country was aflame in a moment. The workers in every city responded to the call, some not even waiting for the official word. The barricades went up again; there was fighting. In Mantua the workers burned down the prison and released all its inmates. For three days the city was under their control. And

* Our correspondent in Italy, who sent us this portrait, says: "Bombacci is one of the leaders of the radical Maximalist faction in the party. He is the right hand man of Serrati, though in character the direct opposite. He has the look and manners of a prophet, is wholly a man of emotions, an old-school orator and virulent interruptor in Parliament. Bitterly hated but everywhere respected by the bourgeoisie as an incorruptible fanatic.' "

then the Socialists, frightened by what had resulted from their call, sent deputies into all the provinces to plead with the workers to return to the factories. In the more conservative Socialist press a furious attack was made on the strikers at Mantua, who were called "criminals" for having burned the prison.

Disillusionment with the Socialist deputies has been the result of all these things. "In Florence," wrote a worker to my newspaper, 11 Martello, "the crowds came to the Chamber of Labor with arms in hand to answer the call of December 2. We were ready for the revolution, and thought that was what the call meant. Then came Deputy Caroti to advocate calm. The people, shaken and confused by his plea, returned to the factories on December 4. We are all convinced now that our Socialist deputies have come to like their jobs too well and will never be the ones to lead us to the revolution."

The Chamber of Labor at Bologna voted soon after this strike never to go out on another general strike unless it was for the revolution. And at the syndicalist congress held in Parma late in December it was voted by the representatives of 300,000 workers that the next general strike be called only for the purpose of setting up the Soviet form of government in Italy.

Another result of this disappointment of the workers with their Socialist deputies was the cry that went up from all over Italy for the recall of Malatesta from his exile in England. Great mass meetings and demonstrations were held, and Nitti was at last forced to yield to the demand of the masses for the leader who could be counted on to bring them to revolution.

England granted Malatesta his passports, but the French officials refused to permit him to pass through France, and so this 7o-year-old veteran of the class war added another adventure to his long and thrilling career by stowing away in a ship for Genoa. Three hours before he reached there word was flashed that he was on board, and the workers of the city immediately proclaimed a holiday. More than 50,000 of them came down to the docks and greeted Malatesta as no king of Italy was ever greeted. The same thing happened in Turin and Milan and other cities on Malatesta's tour through the country. The workers surged out in joy to greet the leader who at last would tell them what they wanted to hear. ' For in all his speeches, then and since then, Malatesta urged the unity of Socialists, syndicalists and anarchists for the purpose of immediately overthrowing by force the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

The government is powerless to touch him. During the railway strike in February, which the workers won, Malatesta addressed huge meetings in Florence. There were riots and street fighting there, but the government was fearful of arresting Malatesta. It waited

THE LIBERATOR

ENRICO MALATESTA

till he had Ieft the city, and tried to abduct him at Tom-bolo, a small station on the line. The train crew immediately notified the Chamber of Labor at Liverno and Pisa, and a general strike was proclaimed at once. The government was forced to release Malatesta immediately, and even begged him to go to both those cities to show the aroused people that he was free.

Malatesta has gone directly to the workers, over the heads of the labor and Socialist officials, as is shown in the following dispatch printed in the New York Times :

"MILAN, March 3.-Because of violent opposition of the anarchist element to the joint order, issued by the socialist and labor organizations for a return to work, the general strike which began suddenly yesterday after-noon still continues. The tramwaymen have had to desert their cars, and thousands of work people have been forced to march out of great factories.

"Several arrests were made this evening. A deter-mined attack was directed on the Labor Chamber head-quarters by an anarchist mob r,ooo strong.

"The agitation is headed by the revolutionary veteran, Malatesta, who after last year's amnesty returned to Italy from his long exile in London.

"At a monster meeting in the Napoleon Arena to-day Malatesta urged upon the workers the necessity of taking forcible possession of the big industrial establishments in their own interests."

All over the country the masses are showing by specific acts that Malatesta and Bombacci, of the Socialist Left, really represent their views. The peasants have begun spontaneously to expropriate large estates throughout Italy. And that is the ominous warning bell of every revolution. In the last month, even in Calabria, the most backward state in the most backward part of Italy, there have been peasant uprisings. In Caraffo, Brancheleone, Casnigana, Stoli and San Agita di Bianco there has been wholesale confiscation of the lands of the nobility. In the factories the workers have begun breaking down the centralized conservatism of their General Federation of Labor by means of a strong shop steward and shop committee movement.

Malatesta's arrival on the scene was the clearing of the decks for action. His influence with the masses is incalculable, and his influence is all for revolution. In a recent interview published in L'Avanti, Malatesta was asked whether an article in another newspaper saying that he was against the Bolsheviki was true.

"Are you a Bolshevik?" he was asked.

"In my revolutionary thinking I wish to go further than the Bolsheviki," he replied. "I am a Bolshevik in this however : I believe in the Soviets as organizations of the producers for their mutual interests, and I believe in immediate revolution."

This grand old man has led a life of revolutionary activity. He has been exiled, imprisoned and shot at, but he has never flagged in his simple devotion to the ideal. He is a count by birth, and comes from an old family owning estates near Naples. When a young student he fell under the influence of another young aristocrat-revolutionary, Pisacane, and was a delegate to the First International, where he sided with Bakunin in the split with Marx. He is near seventy now, but his small frame has worn well, and he is more active than hundreds of younger men. His long life may soon be crowned by the vision of an Italy freed from her idlers and parasites, her diplomats and oppressors, an Italy struggling toward the attainment of the anarchistic ideal of free workers producing only under the compulsion of their instincts of social solidarity.

Malatesta dresses plainly, like a workingman. His face and manners radiate affection and tolerance, and he charms his bitterest enemies into friendship by the unmistakable rich goodness of his nature. His leader-ship of the Italian masses is not based on any of those brilliant gifts that are associated with a leader. Malatesta is not a fiery orator nor is he a writer of outstanding brilliance. His gifts lie in the simplicity with which he can explain the knottiest economic problems to the peasants and workers, and in the feeling he gives them that he is really one of them, simple and suffering, and ready to share all the travail and dangers of a revolution.

APRIL, 1920   26.

In Portugal

O PPOSITE me on the train to Lisbon sat a monarchist. He was very lean, had violet rings under his eyes, and a tightly stretched parchment face. He orated all night, bouncing up and down on his seat, and when he reached the climax of his eloquence, as he did frequently, his eyes flared in a most extraordinary way. As he kept handing me most tasty little patees which he took out of an inexhaustible paper bag, I felt excellently disposed towards him, and cheered in the pauses. He said that Portugal was a pequenha Russia, and that only a monarchy strongly supported from the outside, could keep the working people from taking control altogether. The place was not worked with soviets and with the in-famous doctrines of Malatesta and Sorel.

Later, in Lisbon I heard much the same story from the paternal white-haired old gentleman who edited the leading "Liberal" newspaper. His cure was "a strong conservative government" with the usual work and re-construction and no-strike tag. Portugal, he said must fulfill her obligations to her great ally. As I left 1 sprang something on him. How about the rumor that the royalists in the January revolt had landed in Oporto from an English vessel? The Duke of Palmella had been sheltered in the American Legation, hadn't he? The paternal old gentleman went to the door and shut it hastily. Then he cleared his throat and said impressively, "Portugal will always look to England for help and advice. What we need is work and a strong conservative government."

The republic, entirely in the hands of the bourgeoisie, receiving its orders as to foreign policy from Great Britain, having done nothing to free the country from domestic or foreign capital, has fulfilled none of its promises. Illiteracy remains over 75 per cent. Labor is worse paid than in any except the Balkan countries. The mineral wealth of the country is untouched, or else exploited by Great Britain. Portugal is a British colony without the advantages of British administration.

But in Portugal, as everywhere in the world, the giant stirs in his sleep. The story of Russia has spread among peasants and workmen. The first result was the November, 1917, peasant revolt in the province of Alemtejo, where the land is held in large estates. They pro-claimed a communist republic, seized and divided the land and for weeks held out against the troops of Sidoneo Paes. The railway men in the southern part of Portugal struck in sympathy, and for a time it looked as if the revolution were at hand. The organization was insufficient, however. The centers in Lisbon were cut off, and Sidoneo Paes was able to deal with the rebellion with such severity and secrecy that not an echo was heard in the outside world.

Since that time syndicalist organization, on the model of the French C. G. T., has gone on vigorously, until now Lisbon and the south are excellently organized, while propaganda is making progress even with the clerical northern peasantry, who own their own land and form the most profoundly conservative force in the country. A Battalha, the organ of the C. G. T., is the best printed paper in Lisbon, and has now the third largest circulation. Of the editors Joaquin Cardoso is a typographer and Alexandre Vieira a college man and journalist. Cardoso told me that he personally had four separate trials pending, but he added, Iaughing, justice is less expensive in Portugal than in America.

A Battalha has in the eight months that it has existed become the center of the syndicalist movement. I know of no paper that seems so rooted in people's affection. A constant stream of people would pour through the office, asking advice, telling their troubles ; old women would ask help for sons who were in prison; boys would take off their shirts to show on their backs the welts raised by the sabres of civil guards, all with a trustful, burning enthusiasm that will go far some day. After talking a couple of hours with Lisbon workmen, the days of the politician and of the bourgeois seem numbered. And they might be over now if it weren't for British Dreadnoughts.

If organize and wait is the motto of the C. G. T. shout and sing is the motto of the new tendency em-bodied in. the Maxiinalist Federation whose organ the Red Flag, leads a lively and precarious existence. Their aim is to form the nucleus of a red guard which, while leaving all direction in the hands of the C. G. T. shall be ready from the first to fight the counter-revolution.

When I was talking to the editor of another "Liberal" newspaper, this one not fatherly but youngish, in a tight black silk vest, with a monocle in his eye, we heard singing in the street outside that sounded suspiciously like the Internationale. "It's nothing," he said. "They'll be arrested soon. We need a strong conservative government to control this rabble. What Portugal needs is work and order so that we may fulfill our respons. . . .

But I knew what he was going to say. I left in a hurry. I found out that it was the Young Syndicalists protesting against the arrest of some members of the Maximalist Federation. The Young Syndicalists mostly boys between fifteen and twenty, were arrested too. In the prison they continued singing the Internationale. The Fire Department was sent for and the hose turned on them; they sang louder.

When I left Portugal about a week later, they were still in prison, and still singing. People could hear them from adjoining streets, which was demoralizing. But it's hard to see what else syndicalists can do in Portugal but sing until something happens to the Dreadnoughts: Madrid, Dec. 14, 1919.   Jo11N Dos PASSOS.

26

The Liberator, April, 1920.   Spring Come

27

s To Russia

28

A Yankee convention

By Robert Minor

T HE plaster is falling off the ceiling, the roof has caved in, the floor has rotted and the plumbing leaks, in the house of Capital.

Private merchandising doesn't feed people any more. It fails to carry ham and eggs and bread and beef and beans from the farm to the human belly. Likewise it has finked at getting shoes and overalls and overcoats onto people. It's all wrong. People are going without things everywhere. In Europe about thirty million men are wearing old army uniforms because they can't get any other clothes. Is America doing much better? For my part, I'm wearing a borrowed shirt, an overcoat given to me by a Moscow soldier in November before Iast, and a pair of woozy horse-hide shoes. I haven't lately been able to pay money right over the counter in a store for anything except collars. I have been able to buy some new soft collars, and I paid a half dollar apiece for them. It's all wrong.

Isn't the average American covering his meek pride in clothes of Winter-before-last and of fabric as phoney as a New York egg? And isn't his food, for all he pays for it, of the kind that ought to be hauled off by the garbage man? Yes.

Why, the American people are so giddy-headed now for something to eat, that the Wall Street barons are putting tip Hoover for president, knowing the people will vote for him because his name reminds them of food!

Everywhere, people are groping for new ways of getting food and clothes. Aside from that country where they have struck the soviet style of supplying the working class through the factory committees, and letting the bourgeoisie pay 2,000 per cent more to speculators, there is a grand rush toward the co-operative movement. It was strong in Europe long before the war, and .had lapped over into America to the extent of about six hundred retail stores run by -farmer and worker groups. In the past two years under the pressure of hunger and profiteer prices, about three or four thousand more re-tail stores have sprung up. Nobody knows exactly how many. They sprang up spontaneously and haphazard, and in spite of everything that bankers and merchants, lawyers and newspapers could do to stifle them. Many go down under the vengeance of banks and the boycott of wholesalers. But they spring up again in unexpected and unknown places and roughly hang on, managing to survive in the leeway of the difference between whole-sale and retail prices. Enough of the co-operative re-tail stores in the United States have gotten into corn-

munication with one another to establish a dozen whole--sale centers.

In Boston is the "New England Co-operatives Whole-sale Society" (34 Merchants' Row), doing business for forty societies. Warehouses of the "National Co-operative Association" have been opened at Chicago, Hobo-ken and Seattle.

In addition, there is the older "Co-Operative Whole-sale Co." in San Francisco (236 Commercial Avenue), -and another is the "Tri-State Co-Operative Whole-sale" in Pittsburg (39 Terminal Way) which, if it was not born of the Steel strike, at least cut its teeth thereon. Then there are two independent wholesales, which are not a result of the labor struggle but were crystallized by economic pressure on the farmers of the Middle West. They are the Farmers' Union jobbing Association of Kansas City, Kansas, and the Co-Operative Wholesale Society of America, at St. Paul, Minnesota. The Central States Co-Operative Wholesale, East St. Louis, Illinois, and the Co-Operative Central Exchange in Superior, Wisconsin are a couple more of highly substantial wholesales, each serving about fifty societies.

So, you see, it's coming from two directions-from the labor side and from the farmer side.

There is a co-operative packing plant at Fargo, North Dakota, and another at Seattle, Washington, co-operative fish canneries and milk condenseries on Puget Sound. There are co-operative timber mills in Western Washington. The Middle West is dotted with co-operative grain elevators and flour mills, live-stock exchanges and live-stock commission offices. In Brooklyn, N. Y., there is a co-operative knitting works. The land is lousy with co-operative banks, warehouses and grocery stores from coast to coast.

Co-operative restaurants are sprouting up everywhere. That reminds me that while in Detroit recently I had a meal of steak and apple pie of the kind I used to get in Texas twenty years ago but haven't often seen since; and I got it in a co-operative cafeteria run by the "Workmen's Educational Association" in the "House of the Masses," then in the hands of the members of the Communist Party. Until raided by Mr. Palmer's dicks, the place was crowded by the working class of the neighborhood every meal-time and all day. Even the police-men on nearby beats came here because the prices were extraordinarily low for such quality of food. The place had a sort of un-stereotyped, an anti-Childs spirit about it.

Schools are being established on the co-operative basis

APRIL, 1920   29

and co-operative recreation parks are being built. Laundries, coal yards and slaughterhouses, as well.

Maybe it doesn't get the working class anywhere in the long run, but at any rate some of the capitalists are beginning to worry about it. The American trade paper called "The Dress and Waist News" says of the co-operative movement in the United States :

"This is the movement which has virtually delivered the British Government into the hands of radical labor, which, in turn, is responsible for one surrender after an-other' to the most exorbitant demands of organized employes. . . . It is all very well to talk of the "direct-f romproducer-to-consumer" principle. But in its final analysis this would mean the reintroduction of barter for modern trade, and another prop knocked from under the conservative economic structure.

"If our newspapers knew their business they would have knocked the scheme to imitate this system in America on the head as soon as it showed itself, for just as little as business has the right to usurp the functions and rights of labor, just as little has labor the right to become a competitor of business."

I respect business men's judgment about some things. If capitalists think the movement threatens to aid in freeing the working class from them, then the co-operative movement deserves some very serious and favorable attention.

But the biggest thing that catches my eye in the co-operative movement is this : That it brings the farmers' organizations and the labor unions together.

It is strange how little is known among the city masses about the various associations of farmers. They are just now getting introduced to the labor unionists. Some of them are "Kulak" (tight-fisted landlord) organizations, as Lenin would say. For instance, there is the California Fruit Growers' Association, made up of wealthy land barons living in a feudal style upon itinerant wage-slave labor, as the planters of the Old South lived upon chattel-slave labor. They might also be compared to the landed aristocracy from which were recruited the White Guard, and which the political sharps like to call the "1•eal people" of Russia.

But then there are other farmers' organizations whose opinions as economically determined are very much closer to Iabor. In the old "Grange," organized in the 'do's, the main officers and a certain conservative element are unsympathetic to labor, but the vigorous rank and file knows that its hope lies in joining hands vith • the cities' disinherited. The American Society of Equity is a strong farmers' organization with efficiency and courage, fully proven by its work in bringing farmer and laborer together in both industrial strikes and agricultural crises. The Farmers' Union, in its various State branches, has shown itself always for the under dog of city and country. And the Farmers' National Council

CHAIRMAN C. H. GUSTAFSON President Nebraska Farmers' Union

engages in enough militant activities as to give promise of a great future.

Maybe you'll remember that the conflict of interests between the city laborer and the small farmer has been a bugbear to progress throughout the industrial age. The French Revolution was nearly strangled by it, the Paris Commune was checked and left to destruction by the failure to co-ordinate with the peasantry. And, most illuminatingly, the clashes of apparent interest between the peasantry and the city laborers have been the most terrible internal problem of the Russian Revolution. I can never forget the impassioned speeches of Lenin in protest against the treacherous avarice of the "kulaks."

It is for that reason that I get excited about this early-stage agreement between exploited American farmer with American labor. There may be jokers in it, galore, that I have not seen, but the trend of it is right.

On Lincoln's birthday, February 12th, labor and the farmers met together in Streetcar Men's Hall in Chicago. The purpose was not merely to reduce the cost of living in some metaphysical congressional sense, but directly to supply workmen's families with farm products and farmers' families with factory products, with the huge profits of middlemen lopped off entirely.

More than that. The purpose was to break the Elevator Trusts and the banking boycott for the farmers, and to help labor win strikes. And still more. In the background of everything said and done at this convention was the conscious and definite purpose of taking over the entire means of production and exchange by labor of farm and city.

It was a Yankee convention. All the characters that Mark Twain ever talked about were there. For instance, H. A. Fuller, of St. Paul, of the farmers' organization called the American Society of Equity. I wish you could have seen him and heard him talk. The twang of his voice and the way his hair fits on his head, his Upper

ao   THE LIBERATOR

Mississippi grammar and the big-gauged, sweeping cap-ability of him set him off as the typicallest typical American I ever saw. He can stand as a sort of illustration of the whole convention. To hear his store-and-bank talk makes you sit up and take seriously what he's in.

Of the city businessman type, is Dalton T. Clarke, President of the National Co-operative Association, and Allen E. Barker. section hand, was there as Grand President of the Maintenance of Way Employees. Grant Slocum, President of the National Association of Gleaners, be-side Joseph Schlossberg, General Secretary of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers.

Then there were the farmers with their whiskers proudly on and their wits in their heads; there was the guy with the country poem which he insisted on reading to its everlasting refrain; "Co-op-per-ate, co-op-per- - rate"; and the rural ex-store-keeper who'd caught the fever of the new day. And there was Warren S. Stone, Grand Chief of the Brotherhood of Railway Engineers whose appearance seems to shriek : "Toot-toot! Bang-alang! All a bo-o-o-ard!" Present also were the mystic faces of New York's East Side, among them Sydney Hillman. President of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, restlessly stirring about to see if things are going "real"; there were city "intellectuals" and the women sociologists. and farmers, farmers, farmers. It was the Amerieanest looking convention I ever saw.

C. H. Gustafson. President of the Nebraska Farmers' Union, presided over the Congress, relinquishing the gavel once in a while to Warren S. Stone.

Stone had the super-important position of Chairman

J. H. CARNAHAN, Farmer,
Black River Falls, Wis.

H. A. FULLER
American Society of Equity

of the Committee on Banking and Credit. His presence meant the presence of the collossal strength of the Rail-road Brotherhoods. Wait a minute while I tell you that the labor organizations present at this convention have cash assets of about $40,000,000,000, and what they decided to do with these assets to promote the interests of Labor and the farmers.

When Stone opened up his introductory talk on "the Situation Confronting Us," it sounded as though we were in for a spell of those hard-boiled remarks with which the ancient pilots of the American Labor movement have for years eased themselves through annual conventions. He observed that the convention might expect to be pestered by the usual number of faddists ; that "children go to school suffering with malnutrition," which "alone deserves the attention of anyone who loves his country." But this perhaps was only strategy, for, just as I was beginning to wonder why I'd come, he seemed to have eased this stuff off his chest, like a priest rid of his prayers, and he started out talking like a man. He remarked that "Russian roubles are the only thing on the increase." I think he meant increase in value, for the audience understood it so, and gave a whoop of applause. Everybody sat up and took notice and Stone started in

APRIL, 1920   31

Warren S. Stone

then and made a good speech with ideals 'way above the dinner bucket. He said right out that the employees are the only men who know anything about the rail-roads and the only men who should be allowed to run them.

It wasn't a mollycoddle convention. There was a thrill a minute. The American War Veterans, the 750,000 organization that is bucking the American Legion for the proletarian cause, was endorsed by the convention with a unanimous bang. Attorney General Simon Legree Palmer was hooted with a whole-hearted venom that poisoned the air whenever his name was mentioned.

A voice in the audience called out: "In view of the probable presence of an Attorney General, I move that no speaker shall hold any red cards in his hand when he talks." Motion passed hilariously.

Did you ever hear a fellow make a good speech about the price of gloves? I have. O. C. Trask, of the Brother-hood of Maintenance of Way Employees, made a speech full of that sort of stuff. At first it sounded like the palaver of the dried-up soul of a business man, but after a little I began to get the drift of it and, by golly, it was interesting! It was about how the Maintenance of Way Employees got hold of some glove and hosiery factories of Detroit and are now supplying gloves and socks of best quality to railroad men and other workers at low prices, without the exploitation of labor. When these people took the first factory, they unionized it and reduced the workday to eight hours. The employees of the private-capitalistic factories began to desert to go to work for the railroaders' factory. After the first few weeks, the co-operative workers by the very force of their good will produced as much finished product in the eight-hour day as the capitalistic factories' workers produced in nine hours. Then the capitalistic owners of the near-by factories began trying to sell out to the co-operative. One more factory has been bought this way, and it is expected that more will be taken in soon.

Glenn Plumb was there. After you have heard "Plumb plan, Plumb plan, Plumb plan," blazoned around everywhere, and puzzled as to how in the hell the news-papers came to give publicity to anything that seems so 'good, you naturally want to see what this fellow Plumb looks like. He's the lawyer for the Railroad Brother-hoods. It turns out that behind this co-operative convention is a sort of triple partnership of the Labor Unions, the Farmers' organizations and the Plumb Plan League. There were hints of presidential aspirations on the part of Plumb, but I like him too well to believe then. Every-body seemed to be for his plan of railroad nationalization. One of the happenings of the convention was a mass meeting in which Plumb was featured for a speech.

I went to the meeting and my attention was very much arrested by the fact that even Plumb,-presidential aspirations or no presidential aspirations   talked as though a least little ray of the light of these revolutionary times had caught his eye.

Politics were officially barred from the convention, but the Non-Partisan League peeked through the bars, along with Plumb. The feverish appreciation of the value of farmer and labor votes was apparent everywhere, under repression.

Well, what did the Co-operative Congress do?

The principal action of the convention was the appointment of the All-American Farmer-Labor Co-operative Commission of twelve men, to go ahead in the formation of co-operative banks for the purpose of keeping the working man's money in his own control. It means

that the many millions

of dollars in treasuries of unions and the farmers' associations are to be moved to a strategic position for the aid of Labor in its struggle against industrial lords, and to the aid of the farmers in their struggle against elevator combines, meat trusts, railroad pirates and land barons.

The convention demanded that the war debt be paid by a heavy tax on capital, graded up to 75 per cent of fortunes as large as $5oo,ooo,ooo. It asked that army trucks be put to the work of road making

Benigna Green Kalb, Secretary Farm Woman's National Congress

E2   THE LIBERATOR

Editor Herron of the "Farmers' Union"

an hauling farm produce to market, and that there be no "peace time sedition laws."

It protested against the return of the railroads to be the playthings of whatever dukes the Vanderbilt girls may marry, and against the sale to Wilson's London friends of the fleet of ships which we were told we couldn't exist without; and it decided that all co-operative stores throughout the country should have a uniform system.

The convention also took 01' Doc. Warbasse's prescription. That is, adopted the "Rochdale System." The co-operative movement started in Rochdale, a suburb of Manchester, England in 1843. It was started on a capital of $140 by twenty-eight weavers who were sore at being beaten in a strike. Perhaps that is why it started right.

The Rochdale system fixes the prices of goods at the lowest cash market price. Thus the general public as well as co-operative members can be allowed to buy in the stores. At the end of the quarter, the "profits" that have been made are given back to the co-operative members in proportion to'the amount of their purchases. Only in exceptional cases, where a strike makes it necessary, are goods supplied at cost prices.

Now one out of every three persons in England is connected with one of the co-operative societies, which did a business in 1918 of over a billion dollars. The

merchants' associations call them "the devil turned loose on trade." Sixty factories owned by the co-operatives and employing 30,000 men have earned money with which the co-operatives have bought and now own farms, wheat lands, tea and coffee plantations, fruit groves, herds of cattle and coal mines.

It is the same way with most of the rest of Europe. In the Scandinavian countries and in Switzerland, more than one third of the population belongs to co-operatives. Even in the Darkest Russia of before the Revolution, twenty million persons were members of co-operatives. Counting their families, perhaps one half of the population of Russia got its supplies through co-operatives. There is some obscurity as to the exact status of the co-operatives in Russia at present, but when the fog of censorship and blockade clears away, we may find that the Russian co-operatives have bodily become the ready-made food-and-clothing distribution arm of the Socialistic state. We shall see; we don't know yet.

Dr. J. P. Warbasse works year in and year out in his den at Number 2 West Thirteenth street in New York City, with a clerical staff, under the name of The Co-operative League of America, and answers with literature and letters of advice about a thousand inquiries per month from all over the United States, Canada and

Mexico.

He's "the Doctor," all right. He medicates the young 'struggling co-operatives that get started badly and have some-thing wrong with their livers. For, you see, there are scores or maybe hundreds of co-operative stores that start and fail every year in America. It's lack of understanding, lack of education, the Doctor says, such as caused the collapse of the co-operative ventures of the New England Protective Union and of the Knights of Labor, long ago. His office has accumulated the information of seventy-five years on the subject, and from that information he writes out prescriptions for co-ops of failing health. The Doctor hates to see a co-op die. Every co-op funeral is bad for the labor movement; says he,-depressing. Time after time, co-operatives have started up enthusiastically attempting to give pro-visions to wotkers' families at cost price. This is fine, at heart,

Isaac Sherman of the Siberian Co-operatives

•

APRIL, 1920   33

but it won't work. It's just the right ethics, and honest workingmen have hundreds of times started out with a boom, that way, as seems the natural, decent and honest way to start. But, one after the other, every such scheme has failed. No co-operative ever works which gives goods out in the first place at the cost price (plus expense of distribution) ; the market price must be charged in the first place, and the profits can be given back to the workmen-customers later. It has proven.

Joseph Schlossberg,   to be absolutely necessary

Gen. Sec'y Amalgams-   for the co-operative to have

ted Clothing Workers   this margin to work on, and
to manoeuvre around the market vicissitudes.

The Doctor advises against starting "too big" and he advises also against anyone counting on enemies of Labor to do the business thinking f or the co-operatives. "Train your own men," he says, "and don't start anything bigger than you know how to run."

Doctor Warbasse's League does not launch any co-operative ventures itself ; it maintains strictly its function of curing and educating.

The co-operative movement in America was endorsed in 1919 by labor unions and labor political parties and church societies galore. In fact, nearly everything from the American Federation of Labor, the Railroad Brotherhoods, State Federations, City Federations, the National Catholic War Work Council, Interchurch World Movement and the Socialist Party, to the Communist Party.

That's where I get suspicious. Anything that can get the endorsement of church societies and which has a monster bank account in the midst of capitalist pollution makes me nervous. I puzzle to see how it can possibly keep clean -keep unconnected with

capitalist institutions. Anything that grows under toleration of capitalist rule, is likely to get an organic connection with the vitals of the capitalist order; it is

likely to get dependent upon capitalistic institutions and to defend those institutions when they are attacked and about to fall as I believe they are surely doomed to fall in the near future years. I noticed that this was the case, to some extent, with the Russian co-operatives when the working-class revolution came on. The Russian co-operatives were too much in the hands of the let-wellenough-alone. class that

was hostile to the liberation of the industrial slave mass and landless peasantry. So I kept a suspicious eye on the Chicago convention. - Will the co-operative movement in America become a little bastard capitalism? I don't know, but here are some mighty strong evidences to the contrary:

When the General Strike of Seattle broke out, the employing class in terror pronounced it a "Soviet revolution," and the Merchants' Association denied all credit to Union men and their families. The Co-operative answered by promptly offering to back the strikers' commissary. The news was spread by the Seattle Union Record and the strikers' committee issued coupon books to the workers for food at ten per cow below the market price. 10,ooo loaves of bread were distributed free. The only meat and the only milk distributed for four days was sent out by the co-operative on wagons licensed by the strike committee. The workers commandeered the restaurants, prepared food and distributed it to the strikers.

It's hell, isn't it? Mayor Ole Hanson got out a liquor

warrant and therewith staged a raid on the offices of the Co-operative to find out for the bosses what the financial standing of the Co-operative was. 0

The Co-operative stood up in that memorable strike, through the test of machine-guns and the worst vilification that capi• talistic organs could shriek. L remember this particularly, be-cause the "Saturday Evening Post's" hysterical description of it furnished some of the best reading-matter I had in the only

jail sojourn I ever experienced gration Commissioner

William Bolick

McDonald of the United Mine Workers

Duncan

Fred Howe, former Immi_

34   THE LIBERATOR

Glenn E. Plumb

During the Taco-ma shipyards strike, the co-operative store was the commissary department of the strikers.

In the Machinists' and Shipyard Workers' strike in the San Francisco Bay District, the strikers depended upon the co-operative store.

At Great Falls, Montana, four years ago, the Co-operatives worked in conjunction with the A. F. of L. in the strike against the great Flour Mill Combine. The farmers had their wheat ground in small mills and shipped the flour in

union-label sacks of the Farmers' Union. The strike was won for Labor and all the great flour mills were unionized.

In the Messaba Iron Range strike, the Finnish Co-operatives and the American Society of Equity backed Labor. They made a deal with the I. W. W. not only to furnish the strike with provisions but to give credit for the provisions. The I. W. W. guaranteed the strikers debts and have since made good on the bills.

When the great Steel strike started, John Fitzpatrick as chairman of the strike committee invited the National Co-operative Association at Chicago and the Tri-State Co-operative Association of Pittsburg, to handle the strike commissary. The Co-operatives jumped at the opportunity. In the Chicago Steel district, provisions were distributed to the strikers in the Co-operative's own trucks, and long-distance freight shipment were made. Something over a half a million dollar worth of food was supplied.

And now if I have made the once dry word "co-operative" smell and taste like food to you, I'm satisfied. Think of strikes with food!

General strikes with food!

It seems to me that the American co-operative movement has made good with Labor.

The Hopper A Story

By Mary Heaton Vorse

P ETIE and three others stood in the station in Ottawa, and looked at one another with the awkwardness of simple men whose emotion makes them dumb. They had been in hospital together; they had been discharged together; made their journey back together.

Now they were home; the great moment which they had talked so much of had come and left them all vaguely disappointed, disposed to cling together, delaying the moment of departure which was to break the life they had lived together for so long.

Of the four of them, Petie alone belonged to Ottawa. Crump and Billie Sud went on further west. Edwards lived in a little place fifty miles north. And so it was good-bye. They stood searching vainly for something adequate and not finding it. They could find nothing at all but:

"We'll hear from you some time?"

"Rather."

"Good-bye, Petie."

"Good-bye, old man."

He shook hands with them all around and still lingered a moment, irresolute.

"You're in luck, Pete. You're home already." "Yeh."

"Well, so long. Good luck !" They called it after him. Then he was off, plunging through the station up Broad Street. As quickly as he could he left the thoroughfare, for the civilian disorder of the city disturbed him. There were so many people. They were so confused. There was something so alien in the familiarity of it all that his eyes rested with gratitude on a group of soldiers of the 23rd Canadian Rifles. A man of the Royal Flying Corps, his little' cap on his ear, passed by Petie. Three girls with cheeks as red as early apples, ran along laughing and chattering. An old woman in rusty black with a black knitted scarf bound round her head hobbled by him, and after her another pair of soldiers, swinging swagger sticks. He could tell by their well fed carelessness that they had not yet been "There."

A sensation as of pain came slowly over Petie. It was like the rising of a cold tide; it invaded the inmost recesses of his being, and like some bitter water it put out one after the other the lights of his spirit. He did not know what ailed him.

APRIL, 1920   35

"I wish Blasty was here!" was the nearest that he could put it. Blasty was dead. At Mons. And as one must give one's self a reason for an overpowering emotion : "Poor old Blasty !" he thought. "It's rough   him croaking out there, and me home again." He wanted to take Blasty with him to the missis and the kiddies. An-other wave of darkness broke over him. He felt lost and helpless. The indifferent, hurrying people disturbed him, and suddenly he felt weak.

"That damned wound and the cough," he thought, "takes the life out of a fellow."

He had come now to the meaner streets, going up one and then another by habit. His family had moved since he had left, and he looked at the bit of paper which told him the new address.

"Mind where you're going!" a woman cried to him sharply.

He stepped back with a mumbled apology. He had almost run her down. He looked down and his eye caught sight of his clothes. He was not in uniform. His own had been destroyed, and at his discharge he had been given civilian.

"Queer, I can't get used to them," he thought.

An unexpected hatred of his civilian clothes seized on him. He hated them, though he didn't know it, for being the symbol of his anonymity. For three years now he had intensely been part of a great thing, of the intensest thing in the world. Life had been luminously simplified. Choice and conflict, the twin enemies of civilized man, and Personal Responsibility-a heavy burden for any but the spiritually 'robust-had been taken from him. His body had lived often enough in squalor and filth and without decencies. He had seen times when every sick nerve had been shocked by the unspeakable outrages which the accidents of battle committed on the flesh of his comrades; but his liberated spirit, freed from choice and doubt and conflict, triumphed perpetually over his cold and shrinking body. No responsibility-comradeship-a sense of balance and adjustment;' these gifts of the spirit had walked daily with Petie for three years.

These three years he had been accustomed to his definite place in the world. Every one knew everything about him at a glance; that he was a Canadian ; and after that his Regiment and his Company. The eyes of unknown men when he passed greeted him. Now his place in the world was taken from him, and he walked along as though threading his way through a familiar dream, a sense of loss flooding over him.

During the three years he had been away he had seen Anne Marie through a haze of sentiment. Home had meant all the things which he had not: comfort, shelter, your own woman. During the three years he had been away the memories of his marriage had become as conventionalized as a Christmas card. When he thought of Anne Marie, he thought of her as he had first known

her-a dark-haired, ivory-faced girl with a scarlet mouth. He had forgotten the toll the years had so swift-Iy taken of her beauty, for in the five years' of their marriage there had been three children. He had forgotten the way they used to fight.

His first definite memory of what this life really had been like, came to him when he turned up the stairs and a familiar smell of dirty children and damp, greasy dish cloths assailed his nostrils. Then he was in the room. She was there waiting for him. Her dark hair was piled elaborately on her head ; it looked as if it had been greased. She wore a black skirt and her best shirtwaist, which had been given her; and both were a little tight for her.

He gazed at her a moment registering her appalling strangeness. She was a pale, stout young woman with a red, discontented mouth. For a moment they stared at each other, and then they embraced. Tears came to ease the tension of their embarrassment.

"Oh, you've been away so long! It's been so hard getting along, Petie!" she sobbed.

She marshalled the children up to kiss him. They too were in their best, and there was in their looks no one familiar thing to guide him. They embarrassed him extraordinarily.

"If you think with what you've sent back it's been an easy thing to do for them-" Anne Marie began.

She had honestly meant not to bother him, at least at first; but the sight of him had set her complaining tongue to wagging. Life had never been any too easy for Anne Marie. She was not a good manager. Petie was not a good provider; and if he had a good temper, well, she had not. "It's easy enough for a man to have a good temper-he doesn't have to have the children ; he doesn't have to make a little go a long ways. And then if you could count on a man ! There's no telling what he'll spend at any time in a public house, for Petie wasn't always steady. So things at their best had never been too good. Then he enlisted without consulting her. He had just gone out one day and then come back an enlisted man. There she had been with three children and prices of things mounting every minute.

At the end of the twenty-four hours the .felt drowned, drowned in the details of the story of Anne Marie's life. It was a confused, bitter story. There were lady visitors in the story, and penury and want and sickness. A story of incompetence, a story of an untrained girl with none too high vitality, trying to eke out the allowance of a soldier's wife. It was a story of odd jobs and jobs lost. Luck had been against her-she had told him that a dozen times in her aggrieved-way.

All this was mixed up with the story of how the up-holstered chair got broken. It would cost three dollars to fix it- " `Three dollars!' " I said. " `Do you think soldiers' wives are made of money?' A good chair to

S6   THE LIBERATOR

break that way; but with children what can you expect? There's nothing safe. And me out half the time. `You should take a job in the factory,' one of the visitors told me. 'Yes,' T said, `oh yes ; and leave the baby to choke to death, and the children to be run over.' I tell you, to be a soldier's wife is no joke. You're not a wife, you're not a widow, you're no one !"

During their absence from each other he too had acquired a romantic unreality in her eyes. Each in retrospect had imagined a marriage which had never been. Now they sat confronting each other, and as they found in each other no resemblance to the sweethearts they had each dreamed, they both felt cheated and injured. So they sat and looked at each other and struggled to find their way back to each other, for they were bound together by the memory of their early passion and by the fairyland of marriage which they had mutually imagined.

With her talk, some memories of the gray fabric of their marriage began to emerge from the past.. It was funny that he had forgotten that she was always complaining and grumbling. Formerly he had known how to jolly her out of her complaints; but lie had lost the trick. Her talk dripped away the life of him.

Anne Marie had imagined in those years a prosperity that had never existed in their commonplace story of too little money and too many babies. She had moved since he left, and among these people who did not know her earlier circumstances, she had formed the habit of saying with a sigh : "When my husband was home, things were different," or "Before he went away, it wasn't like this."

Suddenly Petie found the cluttered room intolerable. It had been slicked tip when he first arrived, and it had grown progressively untidy. It always seemed cluttered anyway, for Anne. Marie always left everything a little awry. The bed had a handsome crocheted spread on it, lined with bright pink satin, Anne Marie had made this for her trousseau. There, were crocheted things on the table and over the chairs. On the Wall were religious pictures in gilt frames covered with pink netting. There was a Virgin, her heart transfixed with a sword and her eyes full of tears. There was a Jesus and a St. Anne, and under the picture of St. Anne a dirty wreath of paper flowers, green and pink and white; and on the mantel were painted statuettes of. St. Anne and St. Joseph.

There was never anything quite in place, because Anne Marie always began something else before she had one thing finished. She knew this peculiarity of hers, but she accepted it as an affliction sent by God. "I'm like that," she would explain with a perplexed frown and a puzzled look in her limpid eyes. When life was hard, Anne Marie sat down and complained; then she went to church and prayed, and she would come back calm and at peace with things as they were. Before Petie went

away it had sometimes infuriated him to hear her say when she spent money foolishly, when she did not get her work done : "What will you? It is my fate."

Looming through all her talk more and more clearly there came to Petie the understanding that she now expected things to be different. Some way she had identified him with prosperity. He did not understand this at first. The baby, who had grown up in his absence, explained it to him with cruel concreteness. He came up to Petie and put his hand on his knee; and he let fall these amazing words:

"When are you going to buy me my pony?"

Now Petie understood the adoring look with which the children regarded him. He understood Anne Marie's vague allusions as to a Golden Age. It was as though a wave of weakness beat him down.

Of course! He had to support them. He had not thought what this meant. He had fallen out of the habit of personal responsibility and of worrying about the future. He had wanted intensely to get home, to have his own woman near him. Now from his stale disillusion had leaped this fact : they not only expected him to support them, but they expected things, every kind of thing from him that he was quite inadequate to get for them.

He rose. "I guess I'll have to go out and look for a job," he said.

Realities and fantasy were oddly mixed in Anne Marie's mind.

"Lots of the discharged men have had hard times getting jobs," she said. "Girls have all took your job in the factory, Petie."

"Girls?" he echoed.

"Of course," she said impatiently. "Girls. Are you deaf? With all the men gone, what do you suppose the girls did? They had to work, didn't they? The work had to get done, didn't it? You hadn't 'ought to have gone, Petie. Whatever did you enlist for without asking me? We got along so nice. Now maybe you won't get a job at all. What will we do then? Suppose you didn't, Petie? Luck's always been against me. Just when I got a nice job, Joseph must take sick, of course." She looked him over appraisingly. "You don't look strong," she pronounced.

. Some way he did not seem to know quite how to go about it. How did one get jobs? Petie had worked for three years in the sane place before he left. That, though he did not realize it, was one of the reasons why he had enlisted : he had had just about enough of that job. Now it did not exist any more. Girls had taken his place. He found out where an employment agency was. There he made his first mistake. When they asked him what he could do, he answered, "Anything!" which meant to the ears of the man at the desk that there was nothing special that Petie could do. There are all sorts

APRIL, 1920   3'7

of things open for the discharged man, like reunion rooms, where you could get everything except a job. You would meet kindness and encouragement that warmed you at first; ,and then it left, you faint and empty; there was no meat in it. What made it harder was that everybody seemed to think there was lots of work. There was, except just not Petie's kind, which was no kind. There was labor wanted in mines and in the lumber camps. Just here and now in Ottawa there did not seem to be any place for Petie. He didn't know how to do the trick, anyway. He would go up and say in a shy sort of way :

"You don't want a man to work, do you?" And every night going home was like going into a disappointment.

"You look worse every, day,". Anne Marie told him. "'t isn't work, God knows, that's taking it out of you." And self-distrust got him by the throat. At last it seemed there was something for him. Packers were needed in a hurry at a factory. There were men and girls both working together, and there was a foreman who speeded all of them. Petie was not used to the strain of steady work. After a while his ears buzzed and his head ached, and it seemed as if Petie Groff sat very far off, while his body sweated and toiled. It seemed to get further and further from him every minute. Like a fly buzzing very far away, he heard the foreman, a big, dyspeptic Cockney, growling :

"These discharged men-wot good is they? Tell me that ! No good! The blighters sit around France and do nothing for two or three years, and then they come back and lives on us. A ball through their lungs, or shrapnel in their guts, they says. Wot if they 'ave? I didn't put it there, did I? Then I get blamed !" He knew what would follow. He expected it, and yet when the foreman said :