The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-11-29

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chant how little he'll take for one Of
his choice adulterated wares, is to in
suit him terribly and to incur his
bouncer's i'll will forever, so that it
becomes dangerous for us again to
enter his emporium of bargains and
the arts. Also to inquire in dulcet
voice in front Of theater box office
how little is the price of admission is
to meet with naughty scorn and an up
tilted nose. So with our contributions
to the churchly collection box as it
swings close to our gaping eyes Of a
Sunday morning. We are supposed to
put in all our wad or the biggest part
Of 1t and no questions asked or an
sWered. When we are arrested for
indulging too freely in free speech and
blocking the bootleggers' traffic, we
should not ask how little, Judge? That
would be contempt of court besides
our other crimes and misdemeanors.
However, we are forced too often
to put this unwelcome query and to
those we love best, owing to the h.
c. !. and the l. G. W. Glow going wage).
Friend wife goes thru our pants and
finds the usual vacuum there and then
kindly requests us to get busy and
fetch in weekly wage Of sin and
misery, so that she can cIothe and
feed the family, purchase school
books, pay rent, car fare, gas and
light bills, water rent, and the month
" dues of the Workers Party, and
the campaign stamps and literature,
with a quarter for the open forum:
we scratch our heads and say: Just
how little can you get along on? And
when she replies that it takes ten dol
lars and forty-nine cents per diem to
run our small shebang of six souls and
keep us in good standing in our party,
we groan and ask: Now just where in
u do you suppose we are go
ing to raise that amount from now
on to the revolution"
Mother replies voluminously and
profusely that if she had to depend on
me Me -. ME! .
alone, the head of the family she'd
never get to see half or a quarter of
that much. All she wants all
she expects all she is looking
for. is for me to get job, any sort
of a job, whereby 1 can earn wages,
regular wages, so she can know what
to depend on and she win, with the
help Of the older children, her needle
and her dogs. dig up the rest.
"All the ten dollars and forty-nine
cents?" ask her innocently and mean
ing no offense. And then the storm
breaks, comrades the real STERN, all
others shrink into nothing in compare
son with it. Ihave been thru Missouri
with the mules in ford stuck in
the mud; have been in Michigan, In
diana, and Illinois when the blizzards
roared down the lake and the Their
mometer struck 20 below zero; l
have been in Kansas and Nebraska
when the cyclones made us hunt for
cellars and none IN sight; have been
on some pretty high mountains, and
in some damned low valleys, in
GLIDING Death Valley and HeIl's Half
Acre, and yet have never experience |
ed half the seventies that l got in |
reply to my simple innocuous family |
query mentioned above when put in |
calm and soothing manner to my
better half. You see, she is only half |
radical; she says she believes as /
do. but she clings to her old bourgeois
vocabulary. It is rich In all kinds
of explosives, too, I'll tell the world.
But then I'm used to her and to hard /
words too; for you see, I'm prole-
letarianized bourgeois. and that is to
say I'm pretty hard boiled mem
Der of the Communist Party.
Since the world war, I've had an
alibi. l say now, Mother. what's the
use Of compIainingf We didn't lose
any of our children in the war; all
we lost was our real estate and our
bourgeois ideals; they were all the
better lost. Let's get busy and figure