Henderson daily dispatch., 1936-07-09

New York, July 9-"It's amazing"
said the young man in the blue pants
and the ascot shirt, that YOU can
spend your time writing about such
trivial things. I'd think you would
echo at least a few of the new voices
that are sweeping the land. The Am
erican Youth Movement, for exam
ple.'
All right, I'll go serious and tell him
and you, if you're still reading
what [ think of the American Youth
Movement, 1 think it is the bunk.
1t is the bunk because it is Icased
on a false premise. 1t assumes that
the human race is cut up into sharply
differentiated segments according to
age. 1t assumes that the interests Of
youth and the interests of age are diff
ferent; that older people don't I'M
derstand'' and that the viewpoint of
the young must be constant and their
aims capable of simple statement in
behalf of all of them.
If what the leaders of youth move
mentS" say is true were really true,
their cause" could succeed only by
insuring the darkest Illustration for
all the young people who so bravely
battlod to bring their ends, social,
economic and POLITICAL about. For if
it we've true that the interests of
youth and the interests of age were
SO sharply at Odds then success of
the Youth Movement would only as
i sure all its members an old age of
bleak collision with a society domi-
mated by youth.
Even the leaders of youth move
ments must grant that in time they
; ana their followers will cease to be
young. and there, really, you have the
| most cogent objection to the band
| ing together of youth, as youth, for
| the attainment Of ideals which they
thinking and acting admittedly as
young reople-believe desirable. That
is the trouble with the Youth Move
. ment. there is no future in it.
/ Here in New York you hear a lot
Of loose talk about youth being for"
this or against" that. But if there
is one thing sure about the human
mind it is that it does not form it's
! prejudices, react to its envies and
adjust its hates according to age
! groups. After the age of about six
! teen boys and girls do not even pick
their heroes out of a common, heal
| thy callowness. Usually they pick
them because of the influence, subtly
; or overtiy eNcisedi of some older
! person with whom they are in con-
tact. They pick them, indeed, with
| about the same independence the
/! average American woman exercises
when she retires into the little green
! booth to vote.
You can't erect philosophy or
even build an ineligible move
/ mcnt" on a social strata which is sub
ject to constant and violent flux. The
| Youth Movement leader with silver
| hair and magisterial build is only
J absurd and, although the ranks may
! be recruited anew from burgeoning
! hosts Of fanatics, the captains and
! major-generals of any successful pop
! ular agitation must stay in their jobs
long enough to learn them.
| Some of the same vulnerability
posters the lads who espouse Com
! munism and its allied dogmas of or
| ganized envy. By the very nature of
| their creed, they are unable to get
| leaders who remain on their side of
/ the fence in the fabulous "class war"
of which they pirate. AS soon as a
truck driver or banana vender with
a mellow voice is raised to the lead
ership of the party and gets his
! paws into the party treasury, he be-
, comes an economic royalist of the
(, first water; and a faint note of in
! sincerity is likely to creep into his
voice as he bellows against the
: "haves."
Thus the folk who make proletarian
! anti-success whoopee and the boys
and girls of the youth movements
have failed, in the first case to pro-
vide for the demoralizing accident
Of success in the case of their leader
/ ers; and, in the second case, the apos-
! ties of youth have failed to provide
for the fairly inevitable onset of age.
! And both groups seek to parcel out
the human race with an arbitariness
, equally preposterous.