The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-05-07

mas laIely turned us eQlUOrla
culture Of a nation perhaps L
is in heaven. After much
mediation and research it has
revealed that the Soviet Union
needs sports" Maybe a
national sport of some kind"
it vouchsafes, would serve to make
the Russian picture more attractive
to the rest of the world and to its
own population"
It is unnecessary to ask the Post
what makes it think that the Soviet
Union is unattractive to its own
population-and, for that matter, to
the rest of the world. at least to the
proletarian part of it. The Pos. is
too accomplished in the uses Of
such insidious propaganda as its
editorial. When the other inven-
tons need to be rested for a
moment, one may always call upon
the picture of the Russian people
being forced to live bleakly and
fruitlessly in any sphere enjoyed by
the American. The music, the
drama, the literature and the art
of the Soviet Union are ridiculed
and denounced in pursuance of this
custom. The feature is as prevalent
as the one about the naturalization
of women used to be. 1t is not at
all surprising that the Post should
utilize the athletic phase for its
purpose.
ITS thinking is disclosed, of course,
1 when it refers to a national
sport" The expression is calculated
to conjure up pictures of such
greater or lesser sports as we have
in the United States, perhaps of
professional baseball. Or of pro-
fessional boxing. These are the
sports to which the national is
customarily applied. These are the
sports, including college football, in
which thousands of people and
millions of dollars are involved. 1t
is the millions of dollars which
makes them national" because the
thousands of people do not engage
in them, but merely pay for wit
Messing them. BY their ballyhoo-
ing of profiteering promotions, by
their sponsorship and emphasis OF
the star-systern, the newspapers
have directed the sport conscious
ness of the American people into
the channels of spectatoritiS. The
sports sections can rarely fail to
make any ham into hero, once
they set out to do so with deter
mination.
We have but to examine the rec
ords to see how completely they in
fluence the field. Do they give
workers sports any publicity? They
do not. Consequently. who knows
about workers sports? Who is to
attend workers games, save rela-
tives and friends and casual pass
ersby? And when they devote a
stick or two to workers event it
is in the most formal, unromantic,
condescending fashion, quite unlike
their rawlings over the professionals.
We have an example of their in
fluence in the difference between
attendance figures at college base
ball games and at college football
games. The sports writers play up
the football; the customers are al
ways ready with their money. They
write uninspiredly about the base
ball; who ever heard of stadium
being built for baseball games? On
the other hand, they publicize pro-
fessional baseball to a much greater
extent than they do professional
football, with similar results. The
took boxing from the
river barges and put it into palaces.
THE picture in the Soviet Union is
1 an incompatible one, however.
It is true that a deficiency of tech
nique exists, but in the few years
since the revolution hitherto
crushed people, which had regarded
sports as foreign and mainly an
aristocratic birthright, has become
sports conscious in sense possessed
by no other people on earth Sports,
like the uses of welfare in the So
Wet Union, are for the uses of
everybody able and willing 1t is
the patrony of the Workers and
Peasants Government. Millions of
rubles are yearly expended in the
behalf of organization, construction
and equipment In the United
States you can hardly get play
ground out of the statesmen. In
New York City, ruled over by a
band of public-spirited men such as
have never before been seen on
earth, it has been necessary to pay
for the use even of public school
yards.
To think of factory owners in the