The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-11-22
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The Trials of a Soap Boxer
By JORGE

ION the memorable Oct.s 18TH" writes a
worker, who also happens to be a soap-boXer,
zone hour or so prior to the city hall demon
stration, was calling upon office workers in
Madison Square to attend the public hearing
TN the course of my talk I exposed the truly
burglarious nature OF the City Budget, charac-
terizing Jimmy Walker, ct al, as grafters. This
crowd cheered me, pledged their solidarity and
even assisted by their large numbers in freeing
me from an attempted arrest on the spot The
meeting, from all revolutionary angles, was
wow. But
1.-THE functionaries attending got me back to
their sanctum at the TU.UL., asked me to hang
around half hour or So the while they held a
secret caucus. I had important work to do Il
was averaging $50 copies Of the Daily Worker
street sales per week. but the vision Of a crown
of bay and laurel, elevation to seat in the
Comintern and similar honors heaped upon me
by the Office Workers Union, kept me in tow.
Imagine! When was ushered in finally,
amid appropriate hemrning, having, ETC., re-
ceived lecture on the psychology Of the work
ing-class. Particularly emphatic was the warn
ing not to 'antagonize workers by vilifying city
offcials'l
ut was who wound up that conference I
had them blusting when asked them if they
ever read the Daily Worker, and specially re-
ferred them to the then current editorial on the
front page, entitled "A Burglars Budget"
Such is the complaint And If the facts are
as described, there are several lessons to draw
from this. One is obviously, that numerous
functionaries do not read the Daily Worker. We
note this from many many other examples as
well.
{,. &y,a a;,,Ia
regard the Daily as one of the best Communist
papers outside the Soviet Union, too many
functionaries have the idea that it is beneath
their dignity to read it. Though the staff writ
ers on economic trends and general current
events are supplying them with careful sum-
maries from all sources many functionarieS
think that they are going to get something
superior by their own casual digging in the cap
italist press.
The net result is that they soak up, uncon-
sciously, some of the sea of bourgeois bunk about
the return of prosperity" In no other way can
we account for action Cor inaction) here, there
and everywhere, whose basis can only be an
ignorance Of the perspectives of the Party as
laid down in the Daily Worker.
Thus in the case cited, the comrades who so
mistakenly estimate the psychology of the work.
ers, were proven not to have read leading
editorial on the subject they were discussing.
1t Is logical to presume that they had neither
read the Dailys estimates of the extent of the
crisis and its political conclusions as to the
temper of the working masses They had their
own theory, which was not the theory Of the
Party or its central organ. that the workers
would be "antagonized" That the very action
Of the workers had shown differently, they ig-
nored, perhaps resented. Facts must give way
to their conception Of them
The workers. Party and non-party alike, read
and follow the Daily Worker. 1t is time that
numerous functionaries, who think they are
above doing So were given to understand that
Party policy is to be obtained from the Daily
Worker and not from spontaneous combustion
in their individual think tanks, be they ever so
brilliant.