The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-11-06

Cd the artisan and groans under the realization that
Coal and the industrial power that has
! from coal and the coal mines is king"
The machinery of modern civilization repels and
rifles him The very idea of factory drives him to
despair
In. Russia the new poet unaffrghted by machinery
and undismayed by the coecvization of labor that it
ncups writes of work with JOY and of its meaning with
inspiration. The factory whistle becomes symbol
of necessity made beautiful by changing culture and
freshened life His words:
"The sirens sound the morning hymn of unity echo
the spirit of a new age.
While Sherwood Anderson in an intutive way, ap
precates the importance of economics in life in all
life he protests and despairs but does not see the
destiny of it ALL In other words like the artist he
feels the situation but socialogze it, he senses
the change but cannot analyze it.
In passages like these called from his notebook his
interest in the workman, in proetarian labor is i'm
mediately manifest
What day it will be-the day l mean when
all workmen come to a certain decision-that they
no longer put their hands to cheap material or do
cheap, hurried work-for their manhoods sake.
"The dominant note in American life today is the
factory hand"
Equally striking are these confessions:
Il got a train and to another town, where
slept in workingmens hotel The furniture was
ugly, ana L ala not ike chat, but | had got back
among people to whom / belonged.
81 belong to men who work with their hands,
to Negroes, to poor Yomen-tht wives Of workers,
heavy with child, with work-weary faces. Often l
think them more lovely than any aristocrat, any
of leisure have ever seen That
they do not understand what l feel and do not
know their own beauty when it flashes forth does
not matter. 1 belong to them whether they will
have not"
NIE culture that Sherwood Anderson expresses is al
culture that is antagonstic his soul The culture
that the revolutionary Russian expresses is one that is
part of his soul
In America the cynicsm and mysticism that have
crept into philosophy elements detested by the
Russian realists and revolutonists Theirs is task
demanding of energy and deserving of sacrifice. Men
tai fireworks nonessential to their existence AS
Bertrand Russell said in of Bukharns
Historical Materiaism, there is something intensely
practical and realistic in the fact that here is phi
lOsophy worked out in the very bone tissue of so
cia life, philosophy that breahes not of the cabinet
retreat but OF the great heart cities and the i'm
mense vitality of the plains Altho intellectual diff
ference and strife exist they are movated by deep
issues. 1t is the social problem that determines diff
ferences, sharpens conflict intensifes struggle Att
tudes not anaemfc and tepid, but dynamic horta
tory, aggressive
In America protest is muddled and mystical Our
literary radicals Obsessed with the bizaars fascin
ated by the tnsel of the grotesque The smell of re-
belon has not become familiar to their nostrls The
challenge of social revolution to them is but dead
echo, disseminating and duh.
The candor of Blocks Twelve or OF this fragment
from the poem:
The eity's roar Is far away,
Black silence broods on Neva's brink.
No more poIcel We can be gay