The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-12-13
The Bewildered JOsephus

Woodrow Wilson's secretary of the navy,
the Southern bourbon, Josephus Daniels, is
still groggy after crawling out from under
the Hoover landslide that buried the demo-
cratic prophets Of his part of the country on
November 6. Meeting the train of Franklin D.
Roosevelt, the Tammany governor-elect of
New York at his home town of Raleigh,
North Carolina, Daniels consoed himself
with indulging in the favorite democratic in
door sport since the election of trying to ex-
plain why the "solid South" was broken into
bits. Here are the reasons as revealed by
Wilson's secretary of the navy, to his one
time assistant secretary of the navy, who
since the election, has become the white
hope" Of the democrats:
81 don't know of voter in North Carolina
who cast his ballot for Hoover except, of
course. the old-line republicans. In the vote
against AL. Smith prohibition was the strongest
factor in his defeat and religion next
republican cam - gn speaker in North Carolina
publicly told the people that roman catholic
must not be elected president
This old bourbon, representative of the
small-town, middle class elements of the
democratic party like his leader William
Jennings Bryan another ornament of the i'm
perialist Wilson cabinet serving the interests
of the House of Morgan was always immune
to the effects of the political currents of.the
times. His mind still reacts to everything as
though the cold South" were still reality
instead of memory He is blind to the
changes that have taken place before his
own eyes.
While no one would deny that prohibition
influenced many Southern votes and the re-
hgious question others, these things certainly
were not determining factors in breaking up
the formerly solid South. This political
change is to be found in the industrial in
vasion of the South change that has af-
fected the state of North Carolina more than
any other state. The new textile mills of
Charlotte and vicinity that sprawl over vast
acres and that enslave thousands upon thou
sands of men, women and children, that
brought to the South a chain of newspapers
speaking the language of the Fordney-Mc-
Cumber tariff, that subsidized scores of
preachers and teachers and other "moulders
of public opinion" to teach the masses the
gospel of the new industrialism also brought
about the defeat of Smith and the breakup
of the solid South.
DuI IudC Change Is Ouly Iue lHSI elleCI VI
industrialism. There has been created by it
huge industrial working class organized by
the mechanism of capitalism itself. This
class already feels the whitening blight of the
cotton slave pens. 1t will in time be organ
lied into trade union whose struggles will
bewilder still more the unresponsive brain of
Josephus and his cronies of the small capt.
talist element of the democrat party. In the
class struggles that must inevitably rise out
of the industrialization of the South the
workers will become conscious of their class
interests, conscious of the necessity of class
political action. Then, in response to the
same economic forces that broke the solid
South in favor of the republicans, the work
ing class of the mill towns, with it's allies, the
horribly exploited masses, Negro and white,
who slave on the plantations, will break the
republicans and all other parties Of capitalism
with such decisive political action as Josephus
Daniels has never dreamed of.
When that time comes it will not be pos
sibe for even Josephus to blame prohibition
and religion for the debacle that overwhelms
him and his class.