The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-06-26
BY FLORENCE PARKER.


II agitated about the newspapers
during the strike. And Brown, in
common with most of the organized,
i. e., striking workers had been de-
cidedly heartened by the action of the
printers on the DAILY MAIL" who had,
the day before the strike, refused to
print their paper because it contained
a gross and insulting misrepresenta-
ton of the miners cause.
Brown felt that his class was on
the verge of complete triumph when
the Daily l'-affectionately known
by many as the ''Daily Liar'-was
stopped by the printers, and all the
scab-produced publications of the en-
suing days failed to take away the
sweetness of that first moment of re-
Yenge.
1.-THE first day of the strike there
we're no papers. The second day and,
indeed, to limited extent, ON the first
evening there appeared weird and
wonderful collections Of scraps Of pa
per, printed and otherwise, bearing
news, true and otherwise. The Morn
ing Post" came out as the British
Gazette" and the daily Herald"
turned into the British Worker"
Brown bought the latter, read 1t,
passed it on and was, on the whole,
thankful to get it, though it seemed
to him unnecessarily mild.
But, oh! how Brown loved the strike
bulletinsI
How he, a skilled and critical
printer, took to his heart the typed,
duplicated, often smeared, sometimes
ill-spelt, nearly always amateurishly
made-up sheets, in quarto and fools
cap, on white paper while it was pro-
durable, and later on various romantic
tinted sheets, which were disgorged
all over Great Britain daily and some
times more often, from all sorts of
machines, from printing presses which
some councils Of action were lucky
enough to possess to duplicators and
typewriters in all states of costliness
and efficiency.
Every morning Brown helped with
the production of his local strike COM
mittee's bulletin. He was on excellent
terms with the young schoolmaster
who acted as editor and found him
splendid chap, though at first he had
been warned against him. "They say
he's. a Communist-but he seems all
right"
Then another thrill got Brown in
its grip. He began to develop hith-
erto unknown spirit of acquisitiveness
and feverishly started the collection
Of strike bulletins. The mild, though
determined, duplicated sheets of the
official trade union branches found
their way into Browns pockets, side
by side, with all the shameless inti-
macy of the United Front, with the
Bolshevik, seditious, disrespectful
sheets issued God knows where and
God knew by whom. Brown only knew
about these latter papers that they
must have been produced by people
with incredible stores of energy and
possessed with stocks of information
which made him feel that where and
whoever these demons were, my god,
they knew something about the move
ment and about the right sort of
press for the strikers.
In short, Brown thought only OF
strike bulletins and of the strikers
press. He had worked for many years
as a printer and had often heard such
phrases as "the power Of the press.
Now he was beginning to realize some
thing of this power and had all the
exultation Of being part of the power
behind the press.
What "the shadow of the Kremlin'
meant to the Morning Post" readers
was a pale symbol compared to the
words, ''the power Of the press" il
those days to Brown. He found him
self thinking Of dynamos, and power
full, relentless machinery. He watched
people closely as they read his-foi
he really felt it part Of himself