The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1935-06-20
Liberal Viewpoint
by DIR. HARRY ELMER BARNES


Il American economic society is their stupid
inability to discern that half or three-quarters
Of hog is better than no hog at all. In a coun-
try so new and so potentially rich in resources
as the United States such concessions from our
economic overlords as constitute the very mini
mum of social justice would render them rela-
lively secure in their position for several genera
tons.
Instead, however, they battle against so timid
and inadequate a gesture in the behalf of
decency as the New Deal, laud the Supreme
Court to the skies for voiding the NRA and
oppose with all their might such elemental
measure as the Child Labor Amendment.
1 received the other day letter from the
New York State Youth Committee Against Child
Labor, calling attention to the absurd effort of
our reactionaries to turn over economic perSpec-
tive back for at least a century:
THE decision of the Supreme Court, nullify-
ing the NRA Codes has created an emergency
in relation to child labor. The present crisis
proves that our contention was correct, that only
ratification of the Child Labor Amendment can
be relied upon to eliminate child labor in Amer
ica In New York State about 10000 children
under the age of Is were removed from industry
by the codes Today, there is nothing to prevent
the return of the children to the factories"
THIS committee is not only carrying on eff
l. fective public education in behalf of the
Federal Child Labor Amendment, but is also
! formulating a program designed to give youth
a break in our present social order-namely ITO
provide youth with educational and recreational
facilities financial aid to those who otherwise
would not be able to attend school; and employ
mert on useful community projects for those out
of school and out of work.,
| If our capitalistic leaders had an iota of COM
mon sense they would heartily cooperate in
order to keep American youth satisfied by such
relatively slight and trivial concessions Instead
| fO ho hecf tN iY1p6
American youth Of their hopeless lot under capt.
/ talsm and to make them receptive to radical and
revolutionary suggestions.
The alternative to social justice for youth I'M
der American capitalism was suggested to me by
! a cogent passage from Eugene Lyons vivid book
Moscow CarrouseI' (Knopf $3.50 in which he
thus dramatically describes the spirit and ideals
Of youth in a society which has repudiated CAPT.
talism root and branch:
Three or four hundred thousand young peo-
pie, strdng cheerfully under f1arng torches, the
red Of 10000 floats and banners reflected in their
healthy faces, marched through Red Square IN
the evening Moscow was celebrating 1nterna-
tional Youth Day.
THE sound of young voices raised in songs
and cheers filed the night Stain, Cork, and
other leaders stood or sat at the base Of the
Lenin mausoleum answering hurrahs that broke
against them in great wave after wave
L in the world. But there seems to me a
special quality to the idolatry here. 1t is not
lust another generation. but a new generation
not just a sequence of time, but complete d.f-
ference in kind. 1t has grown up under condi-
tons unprecedented III all history. Its moral
and intellectual diet. its ambitions, its prospects
are without parallel in the past or in the present
outside of the Soviet frontiers.
The youth that marches proudly tonight IN
the Soviet capital will inherit the revolution Tor
good or ILL., It will be totally untitled for life in
any civilization other than the one being con-
StructeG here.
ITO the older Bolsheviks this youth is a mat
ter of the most intense concern: it must be
equipped to carry on the work. More than that
its new life must justify the work now undes
wav. The countless sacrifices, the terror can be
reccmpenSed and atoned for only through the
lives of this youth.
so the elder Bolsheviks watched the parade
With more than merely paternal interest. Ano
they were satisfied with the spectacle. Sun
tanned. robust, high-spirited despite the hare
wears, these young people are match physically
for the average in any large city.
They were all simply but sufficiently dressed
Above all, from the point Of view OF their elders
most significant, they were manifestly Soviet
minded as their fathers and mothers can not be
They have no nostalgia memories TO suppress
no doubts to overcome. They are newborn II
Ia new world"