The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-05-04
Sherwood Anderson Visits
Strike; HeaUes a FeW Signs

themselves away from the fascinat-
ing machines?
There is always the old question
to make men rise in nobility 70 the
mobility of the machines"
All, here we have the core of the
problem. Speedup, low wages? Pooh,
trifles! We must strike for more
nobility. The brutal bosses are pre-
venting US from becoming equal in
nobility to the noble machines.
! ANDERSON meets Hoffman, the
IA organizer of the United Textile
Workers, the A. F. of L. company
union that has for the second time
come in to help shackle the rayon
workers more firmly to the mill
owners will. Anderson, the sensi-
tive artist, is deeply touched by the
sight of this great man in action.
He describes him as "a fat man, of
the characteristic sledge-hammer,
labor-organizer type" Anderson is a
careful observer. He noticed right
off that this 3OO-pound labor COR
ganizer" is fat. If you want some
idea Of how this "sledge-hammer"
individual looks, just take a peek
at the picture reproduced here.
Hoffman is really too good 10 be
true. The arch-type of the A. F. of
L. fat boy, every inch a labor faker.
Just the sort of fellow to inspire
the confidence of the scrawny, thin
Tipped, half-starved strikers of Hap
py Valley.
RUT maybe you think Anderson is
- one of these high-hrow literary
fellows, an intellectual snob patron
izing the workers. Not bit Of it.
II myself came from the working
class. When l was a young man
worked for years in factories. These
working people are close to me, al
though / am no longer a working
class man. / have my own class. 1
belong to the artist class"
The touching dignity of that last
sentence. Sherwood Anderson has
risen. He is no longer just an or
binary worker. He is now an artist,
and all the gigantic burdens and
sufferings of an Artist are his. An
derson discreetly forgot to mention
that he has also been a boss, the
owner of a paint factory. And that
he is boss right now, the owner
of two newspapers. But it is true
that he was a poor working boy
once. So was Charlie Schwab.
RUT let me not do Sherwood An
~ derson an injustice. 1t is true:
emotionally and above all, sentiment
tally, he is much closer to the work
ing class than the average American
bourgeois artist. His best work has
been concerned with poor people.
But he has dealt with them as
thwarted individuals, thwarted not
by an implaeable economic system,
but by psychologieal-to a large ex-
tent sexual-barriers, defeats and
EMBELLISHMENTS. He hates not cap
italism, but industrialism, yearning
for the petty artisan days when in
dividual craftsmanship was in flow
err. And in all his defeated poor
people he has been busy discovering
and revealing not the American
worker, harassed by wage-cuts,
speedup, unemployment, landlords,
grocery bills, ETC., but more or less
varied projections of the artist,
Sherwood Anderson, who was for
so many years-and still is to a
large extent-a cropping, confused
and thwarted person,
And that's why, coming to Eliza
bethton, Tenn, to see how strikers
are fighting for elemental demands,
he writes about-himself. And that's
why he is so deeply wounded by
the ugliness of buildings.
Undoubtedly a Young Pioneer,
aged ten, could go to Elizabethton
and bring back a more intelligent
report.