The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-07-10
By FLORENCE PARKER.
"The rich man In his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high and Iowly
And ordAFad thair eetateU

TNHAT inspiring little verse from a
i very popular hymn of the Church
of England was in the main what kept
Alice Johnson, the heroine of this
story land few million other people
who are not heroes or heroines of this
particular story from taking her
place in the emancipation of her class
and kept her also in half doped state
of serfdom.
She was elderly, servile, convinced
that the upper classes" were rightly
on top-and she was religious. In
short, the above quoted little piece of
information summed up Alice John
sons philosophy in pre-strike days.
Not that she was quite unacquainted
with the class struggle. Her mother
had been left a widow with seven
young children to rear somehow. All
of them had gone to work very young
and endured in their various trades all
the exploitation of youth which is so
essential part of life under the capt.
talist system.
Alice had for years worked early
and late, always honest and conscien-
tious, and unfailingly respectful to the
upper" class by which she was en-
ployed-and exploited-as a domestic
worker.
At Is kitchen maid, met her at
81 skilled cook general, still reli-
gious and still able to hear, and to
sing, the above little hymn verse
without experiencing the slightest de-
sire to knock sense into god, hell out
of the rich man or even to move from
the lowly gate to the castle.
THEN Alice went to work for some
L Bolsheviksl
Perhaps you imagine that she saw
some advertisement like the follow
ing:
sre "Bolsheyik family, tired of muir
der and their digestions ruined with
eating human flesh, require the SER
vices of respectful, Christian cook"
Perhaps you imagine that full of the
missionary zeal of her religious sect,
Alice decided that it was her god-sent
duty to go out among the heather boil
sheviks and bring them to the paths
of righteousness.
But no! Alice had no idea whatso-
ever that her new employers were Boil
sheviks.
1t happened this way.
Alice had married an old railway
man, who, fat, asthmatic and a bit
rheumatic in the feet, was finishing. at
the age of So, his last two years as a
ticket collector on the London Met
ropolitan Railways, after which he
would go on the magnificent pension
of Ell Sd a week.
AS may be imagined, by adding up
the weekly wage of Johnson and sub
tracing the ameliorations of life. saw.
OF the Russian worker in regard es-
pecially to rent, food, holidays and
health, savings had not been consid-
cradle, so Alice had turned out to
work again at 46 to make as sure as
possible of financial security for them
both, for the present and for the fu-
ture.
And that is how she fell into the
clutches of the Red Terror!
MO one could possible blame Alice
~ for failing to realize the danger
into which God (for Alice knew from
her childhood that it was God who
had been responsible for the arrange
ment of her life) had led her.
Tho there we're signs from the very
beginning that things were a bit un-
usual at her new place, still there
were mostly such very pleasant un-
usualnesses that Alice never spotted
them as Bolshevism-which only goes
to show what subtle, snake-like people
these British Bolsheviks are!
For instance, she was definitely en-.
gagged at so many hours day and
was told not to stay after the time
was up, as the Bolshevik family were
too hard up to pay overtime and would
not let her work beyond her time un.
less she received overtime pay.
Then they were not a BIT religions