The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1938-02-17
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
WHO'S NEWS |
THIS WEEK..
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
By lemuel F. Parton

NEW YORK.-Many a good news
1 yarn has been spoiled by the
necessity of "getting the story in
the Lead" as they say in the news
I'll paper shops. This
Story That reporter asks in
Has Kick diligence for saw
at the End ing the kick In
- " this one for the
end, noting merely that it is a
happy ending. In recent years,
there have been so many unhappy
fade-outs, from Sam Langford to
the League of Nations, that any,
thing in the line of an unexpect-
ed Garrison finish rates a bit of
suspense before the news pay-off.
In Maxwell street, Chicago, long
before the fragrance of Bubbly
creek ebbed and sank and saddened,
there was a book-sta1 which was
the Jewish Algonquin of those parts.
The place was overrun with phil
osophers, some white-bearded and
highly venerated, some young and
contentious, all stirred by fever
ish intellectual zeal. They wolfed
new books and started clamorous
arguments about them, the way the
crowds at the big pool hall down
the street grabbed the box scores in
the late sporting extras. Sweatshop
workers used to throng in after a
hard days work and get in on the
seminar.
Wrinkled, merry, mischievous lit
tie Abraham Bisno from Russia was
the Erasmus of the sweatshop phil
osophers.
He used to circulate a lot around
this and other Maxwell street book
shops, and many
Erasmus or times the state of
SUe0tshops Illinois was saved
Makes Peace the expense OF
calling out the
militia because Bisno happened
along to referee an argument.
He was a sweatshop worker,
man of amazing erudition, but of
salty, colloquial speech, never en-
meshed in the tangle of print Ian
guage around him. He used to tease
his friend, Jane Adams, of nearby
Hull house, by calling her settle
ment workers "the paid neighbors
of the poor" He liked to debate
the Utopians, boiling things down to
Gresham's law of money, the law
of diminishing returns, weighted
averages or something like that. He
was the first of a multitude Of
sweatshop economists who spread
light and learning through Chicago's
Ghetto.
Bisno had a bright-eyed, clever
little daughter named Beatrice, one
- -. of several chill
Inc btsnos dren. Old sages,
Pass Beyond up and down Max
ORR K., well street, used
to say the world
would hear from Beatrice some
day. But the world went to war,
regardless of Sir Norman Angel
and all the other philosophers, and
the Bisnos passed beyond the ken
of this writer.
About twelve years ago, I had a
visit from Francis Oppenheimer, a
New York journalist. Beatrice Bis
no was his wife. She was going to
write a book, and did know of
quiet hide-out where she could write
it? I sent them to the old Hotel Hell
vetia, No. % Rue de Tournon, in
Paris. She sat in the nearby Lux
embourgh garden and wrote her
book.
They came home and the book
made endless round trips to pub
fishers offices. The smash of 1929
took the last of their savings. Today
I had letter from Francis Open
heimer.
eve finally threw the book in an
old clothes basket" he said. "Then,
acting on impulse, we used our din
ner money to give it one more
ride. Weeks passed. Beatrice fell
i'll. There came letter from Live
right, the publisher. knew it
was another rejection and didn't
want 20 show it to Beatrice. But
I tore open the envelope and hand
ed it to her. Her eyes were glazed.
She could not read the letter. 1t
slipped from her fingers and fell to
the floor"
And in the same mail today, there
came to this desk copy of the
W.. new book, "To-
1Tt WINS morrow's Bread"
Big Prize by Beatrice Bisno,
W;,b No,eI winning the $4,000
prize award, the
judges being Dorothy Garfield
Fisher and Fannie Hurst. That was
the news that Mr.. Oppenheimer
picked up from the floor when his
wife was too i'll to read it.
Dorothy Garfield Fisher says Of
the book: GA searchingly realistic
portrait of an idealist. What an
idealist does to the world and what
the world does to an idealist is here
set down with power and SINGER
ity."
Winsome little Bisno is gone. One
wishes he could be carrying the
news down to the old Maxwell street
book stall, if it's still there.
n OonSol{do tad NawS FEATURES