The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-08-21

indians that danced like phantoms
thru the pages Of wild romance. Brown
mad told OF the horrors of ventrilo-
gust and hypnotist, Kennedy had
naloed the colonial days of Maryland
and the Carolinas, Simms had roman
tlcled the sunny cline and merry ira
d1tlon of Dixie, and Poe had cultivated
the morbid, but in the work of all
these there was no more social pro-
test than in the skits of Van Vechten
and the homilies of Frank Crane.
1t should not be thought that these
literary radicals of that day were
weak, resistless types. They were
part of the individualism of their time
and yet in revolt against its grosser
aspects. Their heroism, which was
real heroism then, is today but an
amusing gesture. Thoreau's going to
jail rather than pay his taxes, Emer-
sons refusing to pray and administer
the Lords Supper and consequent res
ignation from the ministry of his
church, Alcott's closing his school
rather than exclude a Negro student,
Parker's risking his life in the anti
slavery panic-aIl these were express
sions Of sincerity that can be appre-
ciated only by understanding their his
torical background.
Yet these men had no conscious
ness of the position of the white
worker, in the growing capitalist So
ciety of that period While the work
ers were publishing several dozen la
Dor papers expressing protest and de-
handing change, these bourgeois ideal
lists were content with colonies for
dream-children and distressed philoso-
piers. After the Civil War, however,
things changed. With the organiza-
ton of the Knights of Labor in 1869
scattered class protests began to CO.
here into a united class attitude. In
1877 the socialist labor party had
come into existence, and in 1892 it
made its first nationwide campaign.
The American worker, driven more
and more to the defensive in this De-
Rod of the expansion of large indus.
try, was organizing himself in ways OF
definite protection. By 1886, for in
stance, the Knights of Labor had a
membership of over 100000. With the
great strikes in addition it was a time
Of intense excitement and struggle.
out Of this class struggle came the
~ first book of the workers, Bel
lamy's Looking Backward" In this
novel, as well as in Equality" an
other novel by the same author. we
find an open rupture with the old or
der and striking if somewhat fanci-
full picture of the new. While the
christian socialist school in England
was sentimentalizing the proletariat.
Bellamy was trying to realize it's am
billions in a social order that he con-
ceived and dedicated to the future.
We must remember that in English
novels such as MARY Barton" by Mrs.
Gaskell, and ALTON Locke" by Kings
ley, the proletarian had become an ac-
cepted and alphabetically portrayed
figure in English literature. Senti-
mental tho their approach may have
been, the coming of these novels
marked a different trend than the
aristocratic and bourgeois that had
preceded. In MARY Barton" for ex-
ample, were passages such as this:
Don't think to come over me
with tn old tale, that the rich know
nothing OF the trials of the poor;
say, If they don't know, they ought
to know. We're their slaves as long
as we can work; we pile up their
fortunes with the sweat of our
brows, and yet we are to live as sep
arate as Dives and Lazarus with a
great gulf betwixt US; but know
who was best off them"
Bellamy extended their protest into
program.
In the framework OF Looking Back
ward" was impaled the delicate and