The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1938-09-01
The Cherry Tree
Where We Hdtchet Out
The Truth
Q "REVOLUTION"
Q ECONOMIC FREEDOM
Q WATCHING BOGEYMAN
. ROUND TABLE STUFF

To the ordinary man on the street,
revolution" is a scareword. To the
more radically minded it is one of
the holy words without which he cam
not do his regular thinking.
The form of the word comes from
the mechanical world, where it just
refers to and describes the familiar
motion Of Understanding over, again
and again. Since we are not we'll sup
piled with words for all sorts Of think
ing, we take these mechanical words
and apply them to psychological, So
cial, political conceptions. The results
are, of course, somewhat misleading.
Americans ought to be used to rev.
olutions by this time. We even have
the Daughters of the Revolution, one
of the spiffiest and stiffest of our high
brow sets, to whom any suggestion of
social or political change is anathema.
We could not very we'll help start
ing our history with a revolution, but
the "Daughters" have transmogrifed
all that into something sweetly ira
ditional, ladylike and holy.
X X X
Oh, we'll, we shall be having some
more of them, but they probably will
not be Of the old European type, with
barricades in the streets, and the like.
When we have folks shot down in
the streets nowadays, it is usually
just a bunch of gun-men broken loose,
either on their own job of sticking upa
bank, or in the employ of some steel
or other corporation trying to scare
off wives and children of strikers.
Socialists, and now the Communists,
used to have the idea Of world-rev-
olution, which was quite the biggest
thing you could think of up to that
time Anything they could conjure
up was probably not to be compared
with the present horrible mess in
China.
But the general idea, based upon the
thought that economic freedom was
impossible in any one country unless
all other countries had the same, has
pretty we'll broken down now, especial
ly in Russia-supposedly the head
quarters now Of all laboratory prac-
tice in that direction.
|
But some of our statesmen are still
watching the bogeyman of this ghost,
and seem not to understand the i'm
possibility of starting any revolutions
in this country over something which
happened in Russia in 1917 and the
years following.
Still others, notably some of our
single-track minded industrial man
ayers, seem not to understand that
they have been furnishing the max
ings of real uprising, aiming at
changing some of their practices.
Liberty is not just the French lady
wearing red beret. 1t is something
which comes to peoples minds under
many circumstances. In this country
just now, liberty for the mass of the
working people represents the right to
organize their own unions without any
butting in from the boss or his
stooges.
Whenever people have thought it
necessary to have the barricade and
battle program in their struggles for
liberty, always it became necessary
afterwards to sit down in cool blood
around a table, or something, and
work out the details Of how it would
work.
In this country, we have been try
ing to do the round-table stuff before
the barricades became necessary. That
is the meaning of the Wagner Labor
Act.
And just as soon as the Girdlers and
Fords and their like get it through
their heads that the revolution has
already taken place and they will have
to catch up with the procession, we
shall go on quietly, practcing the mo-
tions which are necessary to the real
) ization of our little revolutionary idea
of the freedom of labor.