The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-11-07
By Utt0m Sinclair

mas taken MS place as paymaSCer TO
Wallace Irwin, and the poet makes
pitiful efforts to be funny white kow-
towing before an idol of Cal Coolidge.
Also he makes his bow as a serious
novelist-and of course the thing he
is serious about is the efforts of the
fashionable rich to solve their sexual
problems. Lew Tyler's Wives" yen
can see that they have to make sew
eral tries; and "The Golden Bed
could anyone imagine more fetching
title for best-seller? Could anyone
imagine heroine more romantic than
this delicate, soft, maynard, impul-
sive but lovable rich Southern girl?
She is adored by great plutocrat of
candy, but does not appreciate his
rugged heart, and so ends in tragedy;
bat do not let that worry you, it is
The conventional fate of beautiful
queens, in modern plutocracy as in
ancient aristocracy. "Why are they
called dynasties the professor of
history once asked me, and l answer
ed, Because that is what they always
seem to do"
And then Major Stewart Edward
White-another military man. you
note. When I was young, Major
White made his great hit with "The
Blazed Trail" and I, in my capacity
as socialist agitator, wrote him let
ter asking if he had stopped to real
iZe the social implications of his story
to the lurber-camps. The workers
had exhausted themselves to make a
~'or~iaro IF +i,n tviun7rhan+ vor7np
owner-some had actually got them
selves killed in excess of loyalty; and
at the end of the book we leave them
cheering themselves hoarse over the
marriag of the triumphant young
owner to the lovely rich heroine
and never one hint that there is any
thing coming to the workers, that
| they have any claim to share in the
wealth they have created.
| Major White took my criticism with
courtesy. 81 reported what I saw"
he wrote me--the stock defense of
the novelist. Is it true, or merely
way of fooling yourself? Time
passed, and the truth which was so
apparent to me, began to reach the
slower brains of the toilers in the
lunber-camps; then Major White saw
2 new set of phenomena-these la
borers stopped cheering for their rich
young owner and his bride, and took
to organizing and working out a So
cial philosophy, and publishing papers
and magazines, and preparing them
selves to take over the social herit-
age out of which they had been cheat
ed in 'The Blazed Trail" We saw
the owners bring in their spies and
private detectives, their sheriffs and
militia, and proceed to crush that
'''o''I-Ts' movement by campaign of
savagery combined with wholesale
perjury, We saw the American Lee
gion, of which Major White is a proud
member, set out to mob a hall of the
/ ]. w. W. and lynch it's inmates, and
we saw the entire power of the press
Of America turned to lying about the
incident, and the entire power of the
capitalist courts set to falling the vic
Tins for life.
Here was a full-sized theme for
great novelist; here was something
Major White might have "seen," by
the simple process of turning his eyes
in that direction. Did he do so? He
did not. Would be too crude if l
| should point out that Colonel Lorimer
would have turned down his thumbs
on story telling the truth about the
Centralia massacre? The major went
off to hunt lions in Africa, and prove
that they could be killed with bow
and arrow; an expensive and aristo-
cratic thing to do, and sure-fire hit
with the colonel. l grant you that to
kill the lions of Africa with a bow
and arrow is a man-sized job; but
what about killing the lions of organ
lied greed with a pen?
ITO BE Continued