The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-01-30
BY A. b. MAGU

IT IS not certain whether Elmer
Rice started to write reyolu-
tionary play in I've, the People"
and then lost his nerve, or whether
he is simply expressing the con-
fusion of himself and host OF
other intellectuals who are cropping
unsteadily leftward. Perhaps it's
a combination Of the two. But one
thing is certain: 1--WE, the People"
now playing at the Empire Theatre,
New York, starts out as biting So
cial satire and an acute study OF
the radicalizing effects Of the crisis
on a 100 per cent American worker,
and ends as tedious liberal SER
monizing, popped up with a SenSa-
tional crime motif, all OF it not
only-to put it mildly --non-reyo-
lutionary. but artistically false to
the whole inner logic of the play.
But for more than half of the
evening-what play For the
first time in history Broadway has
seen the capitalist class undresSed
and revealed in all its naked ruth
lessness, its lust for profits and
contempt for human life. Here
they are in the flesh: demanding
wage-cuts to protect dividends,
talking war and defending i'm
perialist aggression (the plumber
OF HATH, consulting with one Of
their chief agents in Congress and
picking their puppet for President.
Even the conflicts within the cap
italist class itself over questions of.
tactics are shown, one section
urging an aggressive, open war pol
icy, the other trying TO drown out
the roar of the war machine with
peace talk. And all this is done
not in the form of abstract social
treatise or symbolic generalization,
but through living characters knit
together by fine sense of dra-
matte structure. You can solve
your own crossword puzzle: if Drew
and Apologize are a composite of
Henry Ford, or the auto industry
in general, then Senator Gregg is
perhaps the double for Senator
Couzens Of Michigan, or is it the
u. S. Senate as a whole? And that
oily demagogue, Ebert Purdy, Pres
ident of State University, whom
the auto kings pick to run as Presi-
dert-a cross between Woodrow
Wilson and Nicholas Murray But
Ter isn't such bad guess. at any
rate, in Purdy, Rice has created an
lInforgettable portrait, rich in So
cial satire. And whatever the par
ticular disguise, here you have
American political life, 1928,
stripped OF all camouflage.
eide by side with this expose of
- the capitalists and their political
flunkeys, Rice develops a sensitive
study of backward worker, labor
aristocrat, and his family. He
shows the development of william
Davis from foreman of the Apple
gate plant, cocksure 100 per-
center, with car, radio and
home (heavily mortgaged) of his
own, to one of the millions of UNI
employed, leader of the demon
stration at the factory gate And
here are interviewer a number of
moving secondary themes: the
story OF William Davis daughter,
Helen, and her sweetheart, Albert
Collins (bookkeeper in Drew's
plant), who can't afford to get
married and so are forced to start
a secret liaison; the tragic story Of
the Collins family, centering around
Donald Collins, who has been she'll
shocked and crippled psychologist
ally in the war; and the story Of
Allen Davis, Williams son. who is
forced to leave college, and then
gets sent to Jail for stealing coal
to keep the house warm. In the
course of these tales within tales
the author introduces a number of
additional political issues. the per-
secution of Negroes and the for
eign-born, the expulsion of teach