The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-11-08
Human Beings Rebuilt
by Education and
Active Work

the Commune. JEFF Last, who has
had seven books of verse published
and five books Of fiction, reads
eagerly the collection Of literary
pieces by the x-besprizorniks. The
collection is called Formerly and
Now" In another From Pin to
Pen" Ga play on words pin"
being the slang for a knife
zhelesnov, one of the mo- gifted
of the troubled" people writes:
For me a door is opened
To light, from muddy depths.
Jail no longer is my lot.
In life-giving waters
OF labor and study
wash off
My stigma of thief.
We visit the hospital and the
blocks Of apartment houses. Jean
Bloch, short, with bright eyes, runs
eagerly from one room to the other
and calls his wife to look. Cecile
Chesterton, English journalist, says
the apartments are much better
than the famous Vienna workers
apartments. Her paper is The
London Evening Standard, which
has been riding the fence in the
fight against Fascism. She fails to
add that here no worker will ever
be attacked with machine gun and
bayonet by his government.
1t is late afternoon when the
group finally gets to the children's
nursery. The children run to the
director and hang to his arms like
lot Of swarming little bees,
Uncle, Uncle" Tretyakoy, who
looks 50 cold and scholarly, watches
them with twinkle in his eyes
The children are finishing their
supper. How they pillow into the
rice pudding with cream. In an
other room children of 6 and 7
have put aprons on and are help
ing clean away their dishes. The
plaYoom is full of carpenters tools.
Jumps of clay. A locomotive stands
in the corner.
formerly and Now"
The director walks us to the
BUSES. Surely, we've had difficult
ties. We had no models to go after.
We were the first Of 10 such Com
munes in our country. We still
haven't large enough farm to give
US all our products. It is only 100
hectares. Newcomers among us
have conflicts with the older mem
bers who know how to do things
more skillfully, who are used to
our life, who have more than they.
We overcome such difficulties by
giving newcomers credit, by charg-
ing them As rubles for food in
stead Of so.
We've had lots of drunkenness in
the past. We've overcoming that
too. AS a result, many of OUT
people after three years become
members of trade unions, and after
five years they wipe out the past
for themselves and become full
fledged citizens. We have $50
members who have complete rights.
And 400 will have them when we
celebrate our ten-year jubilee in
few months. Also 26 of our people
are members of the Party. This
year at least Is per cent of our
people are leaving us with fine
records"
We shake hands. The buses
shoot past the Commune depart
ment houses, past the firehouses, the
new apartment houses. Out of one
window in the sunset a brass in
strument glows. One of the Com |
munars, members Of the band, is
practicing. We hear the burst of
music long after we ride past the
Commune gates with flowerpots set
on the posts.
None of the writer's saws any,
thing. During the Congress thew
had seen how Russian writers can
become engineers of the soul" to
use Stains phrase. Now they have
seen how the most backward of the
Russian masses can become en-
gineers Of their own souls under
Communism.