The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-11-16
Continued from Last Tssue.)
XXI.
An American Victory

all G4I11S1 1NCV1l 1SNOA
| THEODORE DRESSER is another
man who has told US his own story.
In "a Book About Myself" he makes
himself known to us on page one, and
we observe that the child is father
to the man. Wandering about the
streets of Chicago, a homeless, job
less, miserable youth, he reads a
newspaper column by Eugene Field,
and this comment on local life here
and now, these trenchant bits on To-
cal street scenes, institutions, char
acters, functions, all moved me as
nothing hitherto had" That was
thirty-seven years ago, and Dresser is
still interested in the local life of
America; he is interested in life here
and now, no other time or place; he
watches "street scenes, institutions,
characters, functions" and stores
them up in the notebook of his men,
DRY, and when he has a few million
of them, he weaves them into vast
pattern.
He wanted to be a newspaper man;
he had no idea how to begin, but he
hung around newspaper office, like
a poor stray dog, until people got
tired of kicking him out, and finally
gave him something to write. So
then he saw America from the in
side. II began to see how party coun-
ellis and party tendencies were manu-
featured or twisted or belied, and it
still further reduced my estimate of
humanity. Men, as I was beginning
to find-all of us-were small, irrit-
able, nasty in their struggle for ex-
istence." An editor says to him: Life
is a God-damned, shrinking, treacher-
Gus game, and nine hundred and
ninety-nine men out of every thou
sand are bastards" That is news
paper talk, and that is the newspa-
per mans world, in which Theodore
Dresser spent his formative years.
The men of that world had very
few of them what we call "educa-
tom; they had learned reading, writ
ing, arithmetic, and geography, and
then gone to work. They knew moth
ing about the past, and had no vision
of the future, no science, no under
standing of the causes of anything.
What they knew was the world about
them, its external aspects which they
wrote up" day by day; when they
had "inside" knowledge of anything,
it meant the intrigues and rascalities
Of men of power, "bastards" like
themselves, except that they had
wealth, or the greed and energy to
prey upon the wealthy. Newspaper
offices were dirty, and newspaper
men worked under terrific pressure,
with the aid of narcotics and stimu-
lants; they lived in a blue smoke Of
nicotine, and kept bottle of whiskey
in their desks, and paid visit to the
corner saloon every time they left the
office.
When you climbed higher, into the
magazine world, and became a man
aging editor of Butterick publications,
as DRESSER was for many years, you
found a world externally different,
but spiritually the same; you had a
clean office, with rugs on the floor
and 2 shiny desk and a potted palm
in the corner, but the members of the
staff were the same "bastards," risen
by virtue of their ability to Judge with
greater accuracy what the nameless
millions outside would spend their
money for. Dresser possessed that
ability, and might have been a man
aging editor yet, but there was some
thing else in him, as in Sherwood An
derson. But he did, not let it wreck
him.. he hided his time. arc made his.