The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1935-10-07
Play Shows
Problems of
Immigrants
Story Of Tenement Life
Reveals Brave
Struggle.
BY HELEN WELSHIMER
NEA Service staff Writer

MA service stan writer
TN THE dark, often airless base
ments Of New York's tenements,
tens Of thousands of immigrant
families struggle bravely to build a
civilization, new, vibrant, beautiful
and theirs!
The Moon over Mulberry Street"
pictures that struggle for Broadway
The playwright never neglects to
sympathize with youths attempts
to make adjustments. But he does
something that is even finer. some
thing that current drama and liter
AZURE are inclined to overlook too
often.
He shows us that immigrant par
ents, whose roots go deeply into
alien soil, suffer as intensely in the
transplanting as their children
whose restless roots are not yet ac-
climated to any soil. He makes us
see that immigrant parents, steer
age parents, are persons with Wis
IONS OF tomorrow, dreams of yes
terday, and courage of that more
remote pioneer ancestry that most
OF us claim.
Love and Wrong Address
A father and son are important in
the play. Piccino Morello, the
father, listens to his son berate the
shabby background which the boy
believes has cost him the love of a
girl from upper Park-av. He is too
young to know that love is a thing
OF the spirit and heart, not killed
by wrong address.
The father cries out then, in an
gulSh, that he knows the rooms are
shoddy, the street is cheap, that he
hates it, too, he wants something
else if only some one will show him
the way.
After all, PicCino Morello had read
OF Canaan where the mamma fell at
sunrise. He believed that the torch
which the Statue of Liberty waves
is symbolic of that pillar of fire
which led an ancient band of
refugees. 1t was because he wanted
his children to live in a land which
they might inherit that he left the
cool olive trees Of Italy to come to
America.
1t was his toll which had clothed
0ducated them, and sent them
4nV. le world to mingle with girls
from Parkav whose roots went
deeply into soil Of many generations,
though sometimes, as in this case,
their emotional harvest was not
rich.
Surely, having presented freedom
and opportunity as a free-will offer
ing, no parent wants to be a re-
strlctlVe influence on his childs pro-
greSS. He himself mourns because
1t Is too late to build anew.
Heritage of Courage
There Is pathos in the pictures
everywhere of parents who have So
Journed in the Wilderness for 40
years that they, like Moses, might
wave their children good-by as The
children cross Jordan where the
green fields of the Promised Land
Will raise drawer, better crops.
No boy or girl is worthy of citi-
Zenship Or the sacrifice of his par
ents II he is ashamed of those whose
faith brought him to our land, so
long as those parents are kind and
honest and noble
The blood stream runs unfalter-
lngly and heredity is mighty fac
tor. They should give thanks for
heritage of vision and courage.
After all, worth is not judged by
the pieces of silver on dinner table
or the depth of the carpets on the
floor. They are indicative of breed
ing, but they are acquired traits.
Parents had the desire to escape
from a bondaged life or never they
would have opened the door for
their children. When the older gen.
Grafton falters on the new highway
because the burden of old things is
heavy to carry, it cheers on its sons
and 6anobtorc