The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-10-04
What Saturday Evening Post
Cash Does to an Open Mind
The Eminent DR.. Will Durant, Philosophy Prof,
Gets Balled Up in His Lies About the USSR

! the Russian working man is still only
one eighth Of the Americans" There
is no pleasing him.
Durant AYERS that Russia has set
before its people the ideal of physical
| luXuries and goods, and destroyed the
old values of letters and arts. But it
| is in Russia not America, where one
can sit in the first row at the opera
/ without tie, or as Durant relates,
come in undershirts TO view the pic
lures in the famous Tretyakov Gal
/ lery. And it is in America, not Rus
STA, where the magazines, newspapers
and countryside are covered with
| propaganda grabbing your attention
for material things, telling you that
you cannot succeed without this auto,
that davenport, or those sock garters,
eievating bit of broken skin on the
foot to vital factor in the soul.
Tough, All Right! 9lF
The home, shrieks Durant, is to be
deStroyed-the state has offered it
every discouragement." Yes, the
state offers long-term loans at 2 per
cent to any group of workers who can
raise half the funds, to build CO.
operative apartment buildings, with
kitchen and bath for each apart
ment. It's tough, all right!
Nurseries for children of working
women are to Durant just another
plot to ruin the home. But what home
is he thinking Of? The workers home,
where youngsters are sometimes
locked in when mother must go out,
where they play alone with matches
and gas, or where the oldest girl has
to stay home from school? No, Du-
rant is thinking Of a middle class
home with nice big yard and plenty
OF help. And it is not the Bolsheviks
who are destroying this home, which
was always beyond reach of the ma
jority of the human race. Concern
trating capital has turned thousands
out of it in recent years. l~
All for Post" Profits
At any rate Russian women are
eager to give their children the su-
perYised play with other youngsters.
varied experience and training in
health habits for which even wealthy
mothers in America are willing to
pay several hundred dollars a year,
and there are waiting lists for exist
ing nurseries
A sample of the innuendoes on
which Durant makes his post" prof
its is this: THE Great Opera House
still stands, half concealed with re-
pair scaffolding on which no one ever
seems to work; but the world leader
ship which it once held is gone" Yet
somehow the opera house did get nice
and white for the September OPEN
ing, as it does each year; and it's
world leadership is attested by bour-
geois critics. The gorgeous beauty and
dramatic detail of Boris Godunov-
even without Chaliapin-might have
Modified Durant had he tarried to
look inside.
In a final chapter, as if in a cow
ardly desire to put himself right
with everybody, Durant admits he
might be wrong-after imagining
horror after horror for the great pub
lie Of the Saturday Evening Post, he
says he met travellers who had stayed
in Russia longer, yet thought it good.
He suggests that we might profitably
find synthesis Of capitalism and
Russias experience. But what could
be profitable, in the Slavery, barbar-
ism and desolation" with which he
regaled Post" readers except to him