The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-10-16
shall l jump oN the Bridge?'

ShaH Jump On ire br1oEe?"
Sitting in the editors ssnctum
reading letters from workers is
fascinating business. One gets
view of conditions throughout the
country that probably could not be
obtained in any other way. In the
same mail will come letters from
the South, from the far West, the
middle West, from Canada, New
England, the Eastern Coast. These
letters tell of the insurmountable
difficulties workers are having with
their health problems. Ones in
dignation is aroused as one reads
of worker mothers unable to feed
the children they have, caught in
an unwanted pregnancy because
capitalistic society and an ignorant
church kept from them knowledge
of how to protect themselves from
pregnancy and now refuse them
the relief OF abortion; of parents
who cannot obtain needed medical
help for their children; of workers
made i'll by specially hazardous
work and thrown on the dump
heap, or others broken down from
overwork and under-rest and
nourishment and unable to obtain
the advice they need. OF young
workers following out their biolog-
ical needs and contracting venereal
disease from which capitalistic
society has not protected them ana
which now provides for them in
adequate treatment. One could go
on indefinitely.
Now and then letters in striking
contrast come in that make us
aware of the human qualities that
go to make us up. We select ex-
cerpts from two Of these for today.
One from an old revolutionary
"war-horse" Of 80 years old who is
still a war-horse, still full of
courage and "rarin' to go" and
ready to face whatever is ahead of
him; the other from a. much
younger worker discouraged, miser-
able and ready to form Society of
Painless determination Of the
Superf1uous.
Listen to how Comrade I. N. B..
Conneaut, Ohio, the man whom 90
years of living has not got down,
puts his problem:
II am a boy who goes on the
92d year. read your advice to
the readers of the Daily Worker
every day. I ran tailor shop in
New York some time in 1ss8-s9.
In that time there was the
Knights of Labor, headed by
Powderly, but I and old Samuel
Gompers wanted to make it over
into a Federation of Labor, SO we
began to issue four-page paper
under the title of The American
Union Tailor. I wrote my two
pages in Yiddish from the right
to the left and Gompers wrote
his in English from the left to
the right. Gompers took his Eng
fish acquaintance and I took my
Yiddish acquaintance to help
and we succeeded. Then Gompers
went to Washington so he could
sell out all the unions to the
bosses in wholesale, but our tai
lors' union went on a big strike.
The strike was lost and because
all the manufacturer knew me
so well, I could not get a penny's-
worth of work in New York to
save my life, so came to this lit
tie town of Conneaut, Ohio, and
opened a tailor shop which my
boys run today
I'm the little paper mentioned
above, I never was dramatic. I
tried hard to turn drama into sa-
tire. l wanted to make people
laugh rather than cry, but now,
1, myself, cry all the time! cry
even when I heartily laugh. That
is, my eyes run all the time and
l feel worse when I read the
D. w. but I must read it.
can't stop reading it as it would
seem to me as if I was dead al
ready if would stop reading the
D. w.
Don't think that I did not try
to do everything possible to stop
my crying. used patent-medi-
cine eye-baths and my doctor
friends all tell me that my eyes
are full of dust, but they can't
stop my crying and it seems as
they want me to hire man with