The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-10-25

It is not linen you're wearing out, But human creatures lives. Thomas Hood. l A AFRICANS have made record in the | A organization of all products except human lives. We save all of the hog | "except the squeal; !" out of the waste of coal tar we make dyes, perfumes, and medicine; we know how to handle low-grade ore at profit, but we let the children grow up wild as weeds good part of every day and of every year i've still allow a system thataforces anaemic mothers to work long hours in in- sanitary tenements-a system that still, in spite of all labor agitation, crushes many worker down to beast level, giving him little time for his family, less for self-improvement, and none for intelligent citizenship.
 We are thus guilty not because we lack heart but becauise we lack skill in organiza- tion. Almost any one of us would shrink from doing wrong to his feiiowman; but as state as a corporatiof, or as a company we are unjust and cruel. I
 | The reason of this is that, all our ergapiz- Ting is for profit, for money; the department store, the factory, the railway company, and the steel trust are models of efficiency. On the other hand, our organizations to save human waste are the pathetically insufficient charitable societies and the bellicose partisan bodies of working men.
 It is not through charitable organizations that we will solve the problem, because it is not charity we seek, but justice
 It is not through class organizations of laborers, because we are not interested in the triumph of one class over another, but in the advancement of the whole people. In the organization, of the people, for the people, and by the people we have signaly failed. Our party system, which seems the best we can find, results in turning the people organization in cities over to a compact, sell 1 fish and corrupt band of bosses; in the country at large political parties pelt each other with platitudes. In religion almost all our organization is still upon medieval lines. An intelligent, con- certed action to bring churches into those places where they are most needed, where the mass of the people are, is not undertaken, Each sect schemes for itself follows the we'll to-do into the suburbs, and sends a pitifully few "missionaries' into the slums. The time has come to get together as peo- pie, not as a class, not as profit-seeklng group, but as human beings. :ts | A democracy cannot exist without organi- zation It is not freedom that gives us our rights. it is cooperation. It is intelligent team-play of the free human units.
 The only way the right kind of organiza- ton can be brought about is through politics.
 We sheer at politicians. We look upon them as a class outside of real life. We de- clare that the whole business is to be sus- pected.
 The reason of this is that we think politics means only office holding, struggle for per- sonal preferment, the getting of jobs. 1t IS not. It means the organization of the whole people to secure justice and order in all that concerns their common life. | It means life or death to q democracy.
 There are two life-and-death issues before | the democracy-education and organization. | A speech of one of our revolutionary fathers, which we learned at school, contained the passage:
 eve must educate we must educate, or we must perish by our own prosperity"
 :. With equal truth 1t might be exclaimed: 'rWe must organize, we must organize, or we must perish by our own prosperity. - l We train boys at vast expense in colleges; when educated they enter some profession or 20 into business. Few or none conse- crate themselves to that business where the traired brain is most needed-politics.
 The cream of our mankind goes in for individual preferment. The making of the city and the state we leave to the wolves and foxes.
 The only way to save the human waste of city is to organize the city as thoroughly as Armour's packing house or the Standard Oil company is organized.
 Politics is not scheme. It is a religion.
 The churches are raising millions for mis- sions. But it is more important to organize so as to bring equity decent conditions of life, the living wage. and thorough training to the children, to the last and least of the citizens than it is to spread the gospel to (, Manchuria.
 It is corrupt politics-that is, imperfect or- ganization of the people-that makes human waste.
 The shame of our civilization is that, though we can organise as Methodists. or workingmen, or Masons, oy Sons of the Revo- lution, or as a pickle company, or as Demo- erats and Republicans, we shun organization as a People,
 Organization by class is highly respectable; organization by the people is vulgar.
 That is why children are wroneed, woman hood starved into dishonor, woge earners are depressed, and whilC God is in conventicIes