The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-03-28
BY MICHAEL GOLD.

Vi UGluS III CIlOulC AGOClAAOA eSpAAOb
your environment. You walk down
Broadway, for instance, on fine
windy March morning. The sun and
keen blue sky and the magnificent
skyscrapers give you no thrill, how
ever. You are watching the faces of
the people going by. They are dull,
pasty, narrow-minded faces-young
and old faces behind which you know
you will find only one thought-the
thought of money. So you do not en-
joy the fine morning.
The intelligent revolutionist in
American inevitably gets feeling sad;
for on every hand he is surrounded by
greed and stupidity. If he is sensi
tive, he is always fighting the things
he meets; the result as the disease l
have named the Yankee blues.
ONE day 1 found few hundred dol
~ lars and decided to go to Europe,
like other young intellectuals," to
find a cure for these Yankee blues.
I spent six weeks in England, but
England failed to cure my Yankee
blues. In England one finds conserva-
tive old and young men who live in
the past as an escape from capitalism;
scholars who write like the Elizabeth
ans, and statesmen who think like
bloody Castlereagh, whom Shelley de-
nounced as a murderer. l did not like
the classic Oxford literature of Eng
land, with his effeminate ways and
talk, and his silly scholarship. Neither
did / like the new commercialism
that is sweeping England-American
craftsmanship, advertising, and other
capitalist innovations. The labor gov
eminent of Ramsay Macdonald de-
pressed me, even more than does the
American government of Coolidge.
hate liars, hypocrites, labor imperial
lists and such people; men who preach
christian pacifsm while out Of Of
fee. and then bomb native villages in
Mesopotamia while in Office, as did
Macdonald.
60 left London and went to Paris.
~ A beautiful city Paris, but CAPT
talisfn has conquered there. also. The
American bourgeois has made of Paris
his luxury shop and barroom and
house of prostitution. Paris is dis
gusting to a man who hates CONNER
cialism. One sees so many beautiful
young girls on the streets and in the
dance halls, lovely daughters of the
working class who have been trained
to regard their bodies as machines
for the making Of money. The gayety
of Paris that American business men
rave about is the gayety Of whore
house; it is tainted with American
dollarism. The intellectual life Of
Paris is dead-most Of the young art
lists and writers have fallen into a
sterile, specifically brilliant cynicism
outside of few men like Barbusse
and ROLAND, there is no literary work
of any value being done in France.
60 l went to Berlin. This city was
~ the worst horror Of all. The streets
filed with gross, overfed bourgeois
bodies of men and women; the the.
aters sinking with them. In every
little stationery store pictures of the
kaizer and Won Hindenburg and other
royalties are for sale. Sad, ragged
workers on the street cars; servant
girls who work for nothing, just the
few tips they get, defeated, ignorant
paupers and bloated war profteers
dwelling side by side. Chaos, and the
only thrill Of hope vas the occasional
sight Of some young Communist on
the streets; young man, bare head
ed, bis shirt open to the cold winds
at the throat; dressed in corduroy
coat and breeches. the uniform OF
the young Communists; bold fear
less stern youth in rough clothes
walking like silent threat among the
;ewe,Ied, silken bourgeoisie on the
streets.
MO cure there for the Yankee blues
IN Capitalism at its last gasp. but
capitalism still. l decided to go tC