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128
The
Nation
[Vol.
127, No.
3292
ping
off so
successfulacareer.And hat,say he “boys,”
is Fra nk Hague’s game.
These are a few of th e chief reasons why independent
Democrats and “Smith Republicans” n New Jersey are so
keenly disappointed in Governor Smith.
It
would have been
bad enough to retain Hague as vice-chairman of the Demo-
cratic National Committee. But for A1 to place a fond arm
around his shoulde rs and murmur, “Hello, Francesco,” and,
quite needlessly, tomakehimanEasterncampaignman-
ager-such thingsarebitterpllls or hinkingmenand
women.
Can A1 Smith carry New Jersey? Well, in order to do
so, it
will be necessary for hlm o overcome a normal Re-
publican
plurality of morehan
300,000.
PerhapsBoss
Hague will be able to secu re asufficiently large foreign vote
perhaps he will find
it
posslble t o swing an unheard-of num
ber of Smith ballots in Hudson County, where t is said they
don’t count the votes but welgh them. Even then, it s hard
to see how Smlthcanwinwithoutmakinggreat nroads
upon the Republican strength and without keeping n ine
the independent Democrat s, many of whom are thoroughly
disgusted with the Hague regime.
To sum
it
up, Hague will getmanyJerseyvotes or
the “happy warrior.”
B u t
he will be responsible for the los
of many others. And the ones he loses will be those
of
pro
gressives who love Smith bu t ha te h is company.
Norman
Thomas
By McALISTER COLEMAN
A
ANKYsix-feet-two of Ohio-bornboneand muscle
unlimbers itself above
the
speaker’s platform at the
corner of Avenue
B
andHoustonStreet, on New
York’s
East Side.Flare-li ghts hrow he ong hadow of
NormanThomasacross heheads of hisaudlence, quat
little tailors, for the most part, with here and there smudged
mechanics, ruck-drivers,andasprinkling of womenand
children.
The speaker holds up
a
huge enlargement of
a
photo-
gra ph of a working-class apartment erected by the Socialists
of Viennaand henproceeds owonder loudly and vehe-
mently ow it comes thatn omparatively overty-
strickencity ikeVienna olkspayaround wodollars
a
room
a
month for such splendid quarters, whereas in “pros-
perous” New York a worker
is
hard put to
it
to find decent
housingat ifteendollars.
Hls
audiencebegins owonder
withhim.And henThomasgoes on to alk of thing s as
they are and things as they mighte ; simple things llke gas
bills and rents and pay envelopes and the youngsters’school-
ing and the price s the women pay in the stores ro und about
Avenue B.
One night last year towar d the end of a hot campaign
in heEighthAldermanicDistrlct a truck oadedwith
a
Tammanybandand
a
collection of children rmedwith
rattlers and other noise-making horrors drove through the
crowd in front of the platform where Thomas was speaking.
The chieftain in charge of the invasion raised a pudgy hand
as a signal to his youthful braves to cutoose and drown out
Thomas.Tohisconsternation, hekids,afterone look a t
thepeaker,ipedwithhrillusto,YeaaNorman
Thomas ”That’sa amlllarenoughwar-cryon heEast
Sidewheneverhegoescampaigning.Thechildren,asyet
unterrlfied by Tammany’s elaborate and subtle machmery of
fear, uspicion, ndgreed,have no hesitancy nvoicing
their love forNormanThomas.Battalions rudge rust-
ingly after him as he goes from one meeting-place oan-
other, hang on the running-board of his campaign car, and
besiege his headquar ters he minute school
is
out. And at
least hree
o r
four imeswhenThomaswas unning or
alderman,mothersappearedwithamazingly vocal inf ant s
whose last names ended in “ski” o r “baum” but whose first
two names were Norman Thomas.
Sometimes a former classmate of Thomas’s at Prince -
ton “respectable” hangover from the Brick Church
days, passing by
a
street meeting at which Thomas is won
deri ng aloud, stops to do some wondering of his own. How
does ithappen hat
a
man
of
suchobviousability,mag-
netism,and iery orcecanstoop oconquer he magina-
tions and hear ts of th e city’s most submerged-the workers
on the East Side, in the Bronx, and in Brownsvill e?
If Thomas is interested in the labor movement, all wel
and good. Ever
so
many ntellectualsare“takingup he
movement,” writing pieces about it for magazines and ews
papers, evincing an ntelligently alert awareness of Its ex
istence. But here s Thomas runni ng his good head
off
a
the beck and call of every ittle union organlzer, every So
cialistwho is gettingup a meeting nsome emotehall,
every rank-and-filer who has a crowd o reach and a cause
to preach. In last autumn’scampalgnThomasmademore
thansixtyspeeches n womonths,mos t of themout-of-
doors, andhewroteenoughwords o fill a double-decke
novel-all because he had been nominated for alderman by
a small local of the Socialis t Party n a strong Tammany
district.When hevoteswerecounted,an gnorantTam-
manyoptometrist,whoseboastwas “I never
g o
outdoor
during a campaign,” was sent back to the aldermanic cham
ber with a blg majority . And now Thomas
is
running
f o
President of theUnitedStates,as he eader of aparty
whosedeathhas been officially announced imeandagain
these past few years by conservatives and iberals and ex
treme radicals allke.
No one need feel sorry for Norman Thomas. There s
littleglory nwhathe
1s
doing.Longnightsn tuffy
sleepers, long days filled with speech-making in labor halls,
at farmers’ picnics, at Socialist rallies; party conferences;
newspaper Interviews ; pamphlet-writing hand shak ing (at
which, by th e way, in spite of long practice Thomas is stil
singularly nept)-this is not most people’s idea of a goo
time.ButThomas is having a magnificentime.Hes
doing what he wants t o do and doing it well.
It is in heTho mas blood from hedayswhen he
Welsh preacher-menThomases xpoundedheirvlgorous
doct rine s n he old country-thisbusiness of articul at
ing ideas and ideals. The
first
of the Thomases
t o
arrive in
thiscountrycame romWales n 1824. HewasThomas
Thomas,
a
parson with a hill hunger on him which took him
to hemounta ins of Pennsylvania,where he preached he
forbidding doctrines of Calvin with a cer tain mellow touch
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8 19281
The Nation 129
thatmadehim hemost beloved man of all hecountry
round. He had found time to work his way through Lafay-
et te College. Hi s son,WellingEvanThomas, followed in
hls footsteps and found himself, of all places, i n charge of
thePresbyterianChurch n he ateMr.Harding’s home
town of Marion, Ohio, where Norman was born on Novem-
ber
20
1884.
The two-story brick parsonage was on Prospect Street,
a
home shel tered by huge old maples, with
a
grape arbor
in
the rea r, an d woods and pasture- land right outside the door.
Even when they moved further into town, and added a cow
andabathtub o heestablishment, ife at th e Thomases’
was still argely rural. Norman, he eldest of six children,
soon learned what hard work meant. A ministerial income
of 1,200 a year for the clothing and feeding of four boys
and wogirls,especiallysuchupshootingchildren
as
the
Thomases,wasnad need of supplement. verybody
worked in that family, and mingled a keen respect for the
fatherwithadeep love for hemother,whobeforeher
marr iage was Emma Matoon, adescendant of the French
Huguenots who came to hiscountry n 1650. Her father
was a missionary to Siam and later became American con-
sul .
On his etu rn o hiscountry, mmediatelyafter he
Civil War, he sta rted one of t he
first
schools for Negroes,
nearCharlotte,NorthCarolina.Start ing schools fo r Ne-
groes in the South in the turbulent days of reconstruction
was no light undertaking.
Normanwasobviouslypredestined for theministry.
He took the Marion High chool in his long stride, being one
of the youngest ever to be graduated from that institution,
And hen, when he family moved to Lewisburg, Pennsyl-
vania, he entered Bucknell. He was a long, gangling fresh-
man, sticki ng out of his clothes, a nd outof his class as well,
for he had read greedily all sorts and varieties
f
books back
in the Marion parsonage and easily led his fellows in class-
roomwork.Bucknell n hosedayswasaboutas igidly
orthodox a place as one could find, but already the youngster
was beginning to doubt and question the validity of creeds
and dogmas. An unexpectedly beneficent relative gave him
the chance to enter Princeton.
He eft he small Pennsylvania college in a mood ap-
proachingexaltation.Princeton, ohim,hadbeena place
todreamabout.
“I
was so afraid
I
would flunkout,”he
says, “that worked like a trooper, tutoring at nights, work-
ing n
a
chair actory nsummer,andsellingaluminum-
ware.”
S o
he stuck n he first group of his class f o r the
next three years, and he was valedicto rian of th at class of
1905 and one of the most popular men in college. He was
on
the debating team, took all the cour ses in economics and
politics which Princeton offered, and was moved, a s were so
many of the young men of those days, by the Princetonian
Wal ter Wyckoff’s pioneer abor book, “The Workers,’’ an d
by he great strike
of
the anthracite miners ed by John
Mitchell. Hewascaught n heThomas radition,andhe
made the best compromise with it tha t he could by taking
a
job in the Spring Street Settlement, in New York‘s slums.
A trip around the world with the dire ctor of the settle-
ment laid the foundations for his international outloo k, but
it
was the World War which finally took him clear out of
church circles into the heartf the labor and Socialistmove-
ment. He was in
a
church in East Harlem, working among
the oreign-born of tenementdistrict,whenhe
war
brought tschallenge ohimas tdid oeveryChristian
minister.
He
answered that challenge by flatly refusing to
haveanything o do with he bloody mess. instantly“pa-
triotic”pressureswerebrought obear on him romall
sides.Contributionsoisocialworktopped. here
were ttempts,mainlyutile, at social ostracism. Then
Morris Hlllqult started his crusading campaign for mayor
of New York City, and Thomas, to the utter consternatior.
of all his respectab le flag-wavmg assoclates, stood up with
Hillquit n hat historic struggle. At he close of th e cam
paignThomas ound himself
a
full-fledgedcard-carrying,
dues-paying member of the Socia list Party , with no church
and only theslendereditorialsalary romhispaper, he
World Tomorrow for t he su pport of a l arge and husky fam
ily. His brother Evan was ugged off to Jai l as a conscien-
tious objector. Snoopers and spies,official and self-appointed
dogged Norman night and day. Postmaster General Burle-
son paid him the compliment of saying that Thomas was
a
moredangerousman han Debs. Hewas dangerous-for
those who were attempting to make a clean sweep of civi
libertie s; who used the war to exploit labor; dangerous for
the peace of mind of every militarist mmister.
With Roger Baldwin and HollingsworthWood he helped
form heAmer ican Civil LibertiesBureau.What a hated
insti tutio n that was After the headquarters of the bureau
had been raided, and the magnificently defiant Baldwin had
been ent o ail,much of thepioneeringwork ellon
Thomas’sshoulders.Andwhenhewasnotbusywithedl-
torialandcivil-libertiesaffairs,hewasgoingamong he
colleges, speakingfor heIntercollegiate SocialistSociety,
the predecessor of the Le ague for Indus trialDemocracy.
To hese wo organizatlons, he one with
its
program
of freedom of speech, press, and assemblage, and the other
with
its
goal of production for use rather than profit, and
tohe olitical xpression of thesedealshroughhe
medium of the Socialist Party, Thomas has devoted his sur
prisingly varied and rich talents.
I have aid hatThomas’sempiricalphilosophyhas
unityandconsistency,and hisdespite he act hathis
usual activities in the course of a day cover what seem o
be a bewildering range of subjects. When the Chinese Na-
tionalists cable for funds, Thomas is on the Committee for
Justice oChina.When hePullmanportersorganize
pioneerNegro ndustrialunion,Thomas s called on or
counsel. When the textile strikers in Passaic are prohibited
frommeeting,Thomas s hemanwhogoesover oNew
Jerse y and speaks under the menac e of high-powered rifles
in the hands of the operators’ gunmen, and goes to jail with
hishead up, s that from hen on he strikers may meet
unmolested.Whensomeadequate eply o hepropaganda
of thepower lobbybecomes apublicnecessity,Thomas s
the driving spiritof the Committ ee on Coal and Giant Powe
which makes that ringing answer.
Always in the back of Thomas’smind s he unda-
mental necessity for he organization n his country of
politicalparty epresenting hehopesandaspirations o
those who produce the country’s wealth by work of hand o
brain. He was one of those who were instrumental in swin
ing his party’s forces into the La Follette campaign, despi
th e opposition of many artySocialists. I have eard
Thomas speak under all sorts
of
circumstances, and o all
sorts of people, but I cannot remember his ever having used
thecredalMarxiandialectic“proletariat,”“bourgeoisie,”
“the economic interpretation of history’’-these are not in
hisvocabularywhenhegoesout o alk oworkersand
farmers, college students , and professional men women
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130 The
N2tion [Vol.
127, No.
3292
Stillhe emainsan nternationalist passionately fol-
lowing the poignant dreamof bread peace and freedom for
people. Whether his speech or pamphlet or statement to
thepressbeginswith a discussion of the ntric acies of
municipal government
t o
which he brings expert knowledge
or
a
headlong attack upon the corruption
of
both old parties
o r the deepdamnation of imperialism hegenerally con-
cludes with
a
compelling plea for a peacefulworld.
When Thomas told the convention which nominated him
in New York that he did not expect to be elected P resident
this year many veteran hands were raised In horror. That
was not the sort of t hing that a candidat e says to his con-
stituent s. A sense of proportion a richly mellowed under-
stand ing of reality is not f ound in the arse nals f most cam-
paigners.
It is
to the credi t of the old-timers in the move-
ment hat knowingvery well NormanThomas’s requent
departures from the faith f the fathers they chose him for
their leader and are givmg liberally to make his campaign
a success. And a success it will be if the re
is
found in this
country by next November a collective intelligence powerful
enough to present to the united front of the two old parties
an opposition worthy of the name.
The
T r u t h
A b o u t Tsinanfu
By H.
J.
TIMPERLEY
J
June
6
APAN’S statement to the League of Natlons concern-
ing heTsinanfuaffair we are old nGeneva dis-
patchespublishedhere hascreated
a
favorable m-
pression. This may well be
so,
for the Chinese side
of
the
argumentwasbadlybungled.
I t
is
improbablehowever
that this impression would be long sustained if the League
took a notion o nvestiga te horoughl y he whole circum-
stances surrounding the case.
One aspect which such an inquiry could hardl y fail to
reveal wouldbe theprovocativeattitude of theJapanese
milit ary all through heaffalr.Neutraleye-witnesses n
which category I take the libe rty of including myself agree
that he Nationalist occupation of Tsinanfu was as peace-
ful as could be wished for. The leading Nationalist columns
whichentered hecity on themorn ing of May halted
quietlya block away from he Japane se barrie rs and dis-
played very little exciteme nt about it. Senseless truculence
o n
the other hand was shown from he beginnmg by he
Japanese oldiery.Not ontentmerely o emainquietly
watchfulbehind heir andbags sAmericanorBritish
troops would have done they ofte n were to be seen stand-
Ing on top of thebarricadeswith heirbayonets hrust
almost under the noses of the Natio nalist troops that went
marching by. “Hereweare come along and hit
us,”
they
almostsaid.Except orapercepti ble ift of theeyebrow
the Southerners made no response to these demonstrations.
It became increasmgly evident during the first two days
of theNationalistoccupation however hatahighly ex-
plosive situat ion radual lywasworking p.Foreign s
well as Chinese civilians were handled on occasion wlth un-
necessary roughness by he Japanese sentries on post. One
suchepisode nwhich
I
waspersonally involved occurred
wlthln an hour or so
o f
the Southerners’ entry. I had gone
across to the Tientsm-Pukow station just in time to see the
la st of theWhiteRussian rmored ars uardinghe
Northern retreat pull out slowly as he Nationalist ro ops
appearedalong he allwayembankment.Chattingwitha
group of thenewcomers I found hem peaceably disposed
and riendly.Stein’sHotelwhere I was taying had
Japanese barricade around it. The sentries stationed here
had let me go across to the station and return through the
barricadewithoutquestion butwhen I returned rom
second sort ie o he elegraph office a Japanese oldier
clubbed me viciously in the small of th e back with the butt-
end of his rlfle. It wasamostuncalled-forexhlbitlon
of
Ill-tempered violence and wit hin a very short space of
time
was elling he Japanese Consul so. Subsequentnegotla-
tions duringwhich twasexplained that myname nad-
vertentlyhad been omitt edfrom he ist of fore ~gne rs o
whom permits o pass hrough he barriers had been sup-
plied ended in
a
verbal apology being offered by
a
Japanese
staff officer to the Br iti sh Consul as well as o mysel f. In
fair ness it ough t to be mentioned that the Japanese Consul
was visibly distressed by the incident and spared no effort
to see hat proper amends were made.
I
was aro und he cit y good deal on the morn mg of
May
2
and took special interest in the actrviti es of the Na-
tlonalistpropagandists.Littlesqua ds of themweregoing
quletly about the business of plas tering the town with post-
ers setting forth the aims of the Nationalist campaign and
denouncing heNorthernmilitari sts. One poster showed
Chang Tro-lin whispering sweet nothings into the ear of a
coyly smiling Japanese geisha while another depicted him
and J apa n tug gin g at opposite ends of a chain and stran-
gling China between them. How the walls of Peking would
totter when the Natlonalists got there was demonstrated by
another heet.Pictures of SunYat-senandChiangKai-
shekweredisplayedsidebysideandpropaganda leaflets
were broadcas t in the streets. Intereste d groups of Chinese
coolies gazed at the posters or listened open-mouthe d to the
street ecturers.Some of the atterwerearrested by the
Japanese urmghemorn ing. Nobody seemedo know
why. I saw hembeingmarchedalong hestreet
in
cus-
tody.Theywent long uite ood-humoredlywithhem
unsmilmgguardsand even salutedaJapanese officer who
cantered p on
a
horse. Some were eleased fterward
but the m aJority wer e detained and no information could be
obtainedabout hem.Thisaroused
a
good deal of resent-
ment among the Nationalists though so Chiang Kai-shek’s
staff officers told me news of
it
mas suppressed norder
not oexcite he roops.Chlang’sstaff also old me th at
on this day Natio nahst officer descri bed by them as being
th e Chief of Tran sportatio n wasshot by Japanese roops
in ron t of the
sinan
Pa o newspaper office. Theywere
notable o ellmeanything of thecircumstancesand I
could get no confirmation of it from any other sour ce.
By
the night of May 2 the Japanese apparently felt the
situation tranquil enough to Justify the withdrawal of the
barrlcades and hesewere emoved owardmidnight.
M y
understandmgas a result of inquiriesmade at the ime
was that thls step was taken purely on the initiative of the
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