White Bluffs spokesman. [volume] (White Bluffs, Wash.) 1907-1938, 1933-04-06
Howe About:

NuSSLd . 1 11SA1I
Something Wrong
By ED HOWE
THE proudest human being I have
L ever encountered turned up today
as an elevator operator in depart
ment store; girl of nineteen and
rather good looking. The floor man
ager told me she received SIS week.
What is the base of her pride? Prob.
ably the talk of love in moving pic.
ture plays and in magazine stories
the exaggerated compliments the man
pays the woman when trying to entrap
her. ! find no fault with the girl she
is the product of an age in which ev-
eryone pursues wrong policies: prob
ably her father is as proud because he
is voter as his daughter is because
she is a girl. am not proud about
anything, but there are so many mis-
takes am accommodated.
A common and mistaken notion is
that the people, after living many
thousands of years, have failed to find
the easiest and best way, and still
stubbornly and meanly persist in trav-
cling the wrong road. l have scarcely
known a man who did not make this
charge, or offer remedy. One Dr.
W. ]. Robinson, of New York city,
had the idea very strongly, and wrote
to broadcast it. Speaking of Russia
some months ago, he said: 1T is the
only country which holds aloft a bea-
con of light and hope; the only coun-
try which is taking mankind out Of it's
rut, and putting it on another track
from the one it has been following
blindly and stupidity for these thou
sands of years since it emerged from
the Jungle"
During the past summer Doctor Rob
inson went to Russia, and on his re.
turn tells an entirely different story
He saw crowds of workmen in Lenin-
grad returning from their summer va
cations, and wrote of them: "Our
poorest steerage immigrant arriving at
Ellis island looks like prosperous
man in comparison. The impression
was very depressing, and it was inten-
sified wherever l went" He found the
bread UNBEATABLE; the hotels and rail
road trains like pig pens, because OF
the general ineficiency. In the rail
road stations there was always suf
locating, overpowering stencil; mobs
of ragged, barefoot people lying on the
floor. He visited the largest and best
hospital in Leningrad and said an
American dog would not eat the food
offered patients.
At Moscow he visited the dining
room where workers in a textile fac
tory ate their meals, and says the
prisoners in Sing Sing have better and
more abundant food. The average
pay of the workers in the factory was
70 rubles a month; the purchasing
power of a ruble varies from 2 to 10
cents. Everywhere he saw long lines
of people waiting to purchase sup
plies; one man had been waiting six
hours.
He found Kiev had had 10 changes
of administration in two years, each
vieing with the other in the work of
destruction. He declares the Soviet
government an intolerable tyranny
the people in terrible plight. IL re-
luctantly conclude" he writes, that
the whole system is wrong; 80 per
cent of the people of Russia are now
in vast prison, hopeless hell, be
cause of the iron attempt to make the
entire country conform to the rules of
Marxism, or Communism" He went
everywhere, and wrote at great length
about his visit, but found nothing to
commend.
Before starting on his trip he had
declared that Russia was the one
country in which the relations between
the sexes had been put on healthy.
normal basis; on his return he said
he did not see single happy woman's
face; scarcely a decent, comfortable
looking or contented man.
There is something wrong with the
story that times are good when farm
ers receive high prices for their pro
duce. In Russia eggs sell at 10 cents
each; beef at S1.50 a pound; butter
at So a pound. Yet times are very
hard in Russia; the farm problem
there is worse than in the United
States, where lately l paid II cents
for a piece of boiling beef, and it pro.
vided excellent soup and meat for
lunch three days. Il told the story to
visitor from 100 miles away, and
he beat it a cent with a story about
piece of boiling mutton.) With us
eggs are cents each; butter 25 cents
pound; wheat and corn so plentiful
and cheap that corn is being burned
for fuel and wheat fed to cattle and
hogs. There is also something wrong
with the story Of Nautilus, an ancient
still being admired for great wisdom.
He declared it was inevitable that pop
ulation tended to overtake and outrun
the means of subsistence. In the Unit
al Statos there is a sllrfeit of food so