Honor The Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (March, 1919)- Honor The Anniversary Of The Historic First World Congress Of The CI.

Honor The Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (March, 1919)- Honor The Anniversary Of The Historic First World Congress Of The CI.

Markin comment:

Some anniversaries, like those marking the publication of a book, play or poem, are worthy of remembrance every five, ten, or twenty-five years. Other more world historic events like the remembrance of the Paris Commune of 1871, the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, and, as here, the founding of the Communist International (also known as the Third International, Comintern, and CI) in 1919 are worthy of yearly attention. Why is that so in the case of the long departed (1943, by Stalin fiat) and, at the end unlamented, Comintern? That is what this year’s remembrance, through CI documentation and other commentary, will attempt to impart on those leftist militants who are serious about studying the lessons of our revolutionary, our communist revolutionary past.

No question that the old injunction of Marx and Engels as early as the Communist Manifesto that the workers of the world needed to unite would have been hollow, and reduced to hortatory holiday speechifying (there was enough of that, as it was) without an organization expression. And they, Marx and Engels, fitfully made their efforts with the all-encompassing pan-working class First International. Later the less all encompassing but still party of the whole class-oriented socialist Second International made important, if limited, contributions to fulfilling that slogan before the advent of world imperialism left its outlook wanting, very wanting.

The Third International thus was created, as mentioned in one of the commentaries in this series, to pick up the fallen banner of international socialism after the betrayals of the Second International. More importantly, it was the first international organization that took upon itself in its early, heroic revolutionary days, at least, the strategic question of how to make, and win, a revolution in the age of world imperialism. The Trotsky-led effort of creating a Fourth International in the 1930s, somewhat stillborn as it turned out to be, nevertheless based itself, correctly, on those early days of the Comintern. So in some of the specific details of the posts in this year’s series, highlighting the 90th anniversary of the Third World Congress this is “just” history, but right underneath, and not far underneath at that, are rich lessons for us to ponder today.
********
Arthur Ransome
Russia in 1919
The Third International 
March 3rd.
One day near the end of February, Bucharin, hearing that I meant to leave quite soon, said rather mysteriously, "Wait a few days longer, because something of international importance is going to happen which will certainly be of interest for your history." That was the only hint I got of the preparation of the Third International. Bucharin refused to say more. On March 3rd Reinstein looked in about nine in the morning and said he had got me a guest's ticket for the conference in the Kremlin, and wondered why I had not been there the day before, when it had opened. I told him I knew nothing whatever about it; Litvinov and Karakhan, whom I had seen quite recently, had never mentioned it, and guessing that this must be the secret at which Bucharin had hinted, I supposed that they had purposely kept silence. I therefore rang up Litvinov, and asked if they had had any reason against my going. He said that he had thought it would not interest me. So I went. The Conference was still a secret. There was nothing about it in the morning papers. 

The meeting was in a smallish room, with a dais at one end, in the old Courts of Justice built in the time of Catherine the Second, who would certainly have turned in her grave if she had known the use to which it was being put. Two very smart soldiers of the Red Army were guarding the doors. The whole room, including the floor, was decorated in red. There were banners with "Long Live the Third International" inscribed upon them in many languages. The Presidium was on the raised dais at the end of the room, Lenin sitting in the middle behind a long red-covered table with Albrecht, a young German Spartacist, on the right and Platten, the Swiss, on the left. The auditorium sloped down to the foot of the dais. Chairs were arranged on each side of an alleyway down the middle, and the four or five front rows had little tables for convenience in writing. Everybody of importance was there; Trotzky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Chichern, Bucharin, Karakhan, Litvinov, Vorovsky, Steklov, Rakovsky, representing here the Balkan Socialist Party, Skripnik, representing the Ukraine. Then there were Stang (Norwegian Left Socialists), Grimlund (Swedish Left), Sadoul (France), Finberg (British Socialist Party), Reinstein (American Socialist Labour Party), a Turk, a German-Austrian, a Chinese, and so on. Business was conducted and speeches were made in all languages, though where possible German was used, because more of the foreigners knew German than knew French. This was unlucky for me.

When I got there people were making reports about the situation in the different countries. Finberg spoke in English, Rakovsky in French, Sadoul also. Skripnik, who, being asked, refused to talk German and said he would speak in either Ukrainian or Russia, and to most people's relief chose the latter, made several interesting points about the new revolution in the Ukraine. The killing of the leaders under the Skoropadsky regime had made no difference to the movement, and town after town was falling after internal revolt. (This was before they had Kiev and, of course, long before they had taken Odessa, both of which gains they confidently prophesied.) The sharp lesson of German occupation had taught the Ukrainian Social Revolutionaries what their experiences during the last fifteen months had taught the Russian, and all parties were working together.

But the real interest of the gathering was in its attitude towards the Berne conference. Many letters had been received from members of that conference, Longuet for example, wishing that the Communists had been represented there, and the view taken at Moscow was that the left wing at Berne was feeling uncomfortable at sitting down with Scheidemann and Company; let them definitely break with them, finish with the Second International and join the Third. It was clear that this gathering in the Kremlin was meant as the nucleus of a new International opposed to that which had split into national groups, each supporting its own government in the prosecution of the war. That was the leit motif of the whole affair.

Trotsky, in a leather coat, military breeches and gaiters, with a fur hat with the sign of the Red Army in front, was looking very well, but a strange figure for those who had known him as one of the greatest anti-militarists in Europe. Lenin sat quietly listening, speaking when necessary in almost every European language with astonishing ease. Balabanova talked about Italy and seemed happy at last, even in Soviet Russia, to be once more in a "secret meeting." It was really an extraordinary affair and, in spite of some childishness, I could not help realizing that I was present at something that will go down in the histories of socialism, much like that other strange meeting convened in London in 1848.

The vital figures of the conference, not counting Platten, whom I do not know and on whom I can express no opinion, were Lenin and the young German, Albrecht, who, fired no doubt by the events actually taking place in his country, spoke with brain and character. The German Austrian also seemed a real man. Rakovsky, Skripnik, and Sirola the Finn really represented something. But there was a make-believe side to the whole affair, in which the English Left Socialists were represented by Finberg, and the Americans by Reinstein, neither of whom had or was likely to have any means of communicating with his constituents.

March 4th.
In the Kremlin they were discussing the programme on which the new International was to stand. This is, of course, dictatorship of the proletariat and all that that implies. I heard, Lenin make a long speech, the main point of which was to show that Kautsky and his supporters at Berne were now condemning the very tactics which they had praised in 1906. When I was leaving the Kremlin I met Sirola walking in the square outside the building without a hat, without a coat, in a cold so intense that I was putting snow on my nose to prevent frostbite. I exclaimed. Sirola smiled his ingenuous smile. "It is March," he said, "Spring is coming."

March 5th.
Today all secrecy was dropped, a little prematurely, I fancy, for when I got to the Kremlin I found that the first note of opposition had been struck by the man who least of all was expected to strike it. Albrecht, the young German, had opposed the immediate founding of the Third International, on the double ground that not all nations were properly represented and that it might make difficulties for the political parties concerned in their own countries. Every one was against him. Rakovsky pointed out that the same objections could have been raised against the founding of the First International by Marx in London. The German-Austrian combated Albrecht's second point. Other people said that the different parties concerned had long ago definitely broken with the Second International. Albrecht was in a minority of one. It was decided therefore that this conference was actually the Third International. Platten announced the decision, and the "International" was sung in a dozen languages at once. Then Albrecht stood up, a little red in the face, and said that he, of course, recognized the decision and would announce it in Germany. 

March 6th.
The conference in the Kremlin ended with the usual singing and a photograph. Some time before the end, when Trotsky had just finished speaking and had left the tribune, there was a squeal of protest from the photographer who had just trained his apparatus. Some one remarked "The Dictatorship of the Photographer," and, amid general laughter, Trotsky had to return to the tribune and stand silent while the unabashed photographer took two pictures. The founding of the Third International had been proclaimed in the morning papers, and an extraordinary meeting in the Great Theatre announced for the evening. I got to the theatre at about five, and had difficulty in getting in, though I had a special ticket as a correspondent. There were queues outside all the doors. The Moscow Soviet was there, the Executive Committee, representatives of the Trades Unions and the Factory Committees, etc. The huge theatre and the platform were crammed, people standing in the aisles and even packed close together in the wings of the stage. Kamenev opened the meeting by a solemn announcement of the founding of the Third International in the Kremlin. There was a roar of applause from the audience, which rose and sang the "International" in a way that I have never heard it sung since the All-Russian Assembly when the news came of the strikes in Germany during the Brest negotiations. Kamenev then spoke of those who had died on the way, mentioning Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg, and the whole theatre stood again while the orchestra played, "You fell as victims." Then Lenin spoke. If I had ever thought that Lenin was losing his personal popularity, I got my answer now. It was a long time before he could speak at all, everybody standing and drowning his attempts to speak with roar after roar of applause. It was an extraordinary, overwhelming scene, tier after tier crammed with workmen, the parterre filled, the whole platform and the wings. A knot of workwomen were close to me, and they almost fought to see him, and shouted as if each one were determined that he should hear her in particular. He spoke as usual, in the simplest way, emphasizing the fact that the revolutionary struggle everywhere was forced to use the Soviet forms. "We declare our solidarity with the aims of the Sovietists," he read from an Italian paper, and added, "and that was when they did not know what our aims were, and before we had an established programme ourselves." Albrecht made a very long reasoned speech for Spartacus, which was translated by Trotsky. Guilbeau, seemingly a mere child, spoke of the socialist movement in France. Steklov was translating him when I left. You must remember that I had had nearly two years of such meetings, and am not a Russian. When I got outside the theatre, I found at each door a disappointed crowd that had been unable to get in.

The proceedings finished up next day with a review in the Red Square and a general holiday.

If the Berne delegates had come, as they were expected, they would have been told by the Communists that they were welcome visitors, but that they were not regarded as representing the International. There would then have ensued a lively battle over each one of the delegates, the Mensheviks urging him to stick to Berne, and the Communists urging him to express allegiance to the Kremlin. There would have been demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, and altogether I am very sorry that it did not happen and that I was not there to see.

Veterans For Peace Stands with Chelsea Manning

Veterans For Peace stands strongly in solidarity with Chelsea Manning.  Chelsea has been a remarkable example of principled dissent.  She showed great courage in releasing documents and now again standing firm against the questionable practices of a grand jury.  Veterans For Peace calls on Chelsea to be released immediately.

Veterans For Peace and many VFP members were among the most committed supporters of Chelsea Manning when she was arrested in May, 2010 and eventually court-martialed for releasing the Collateral Murder video and other critical information about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that the public had the right and need to know.

Veterans For Peace members were arrested outside the Marine Base at Quantico, Virginia, where Chelsea was being held in torturous solitary confinement. Members rallied outside her court martial at Fort Meade, Maryland, and sat in the courtroom every day. Veterans For Peace helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Chelsea's defense, in conjunction with Courage To Resist and the Chelsea Manning Support Network.

As an organization, we were dejected when Chelsea was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison.  We were very grateful when President Obama commuted Chelsea's sentence. Our members have watched with admiration as Chelsea has evolved into an important activist for transparency (the public's right to know) and for transgender rights.

Once again, Chelsea Manning is demonstrating remarkable, principled courage. And once again, the powers-that-be are persecuting her. Chelsea has refused to participate in a grand jury fishing expedition against Julian Assange and Wikileaks. A grand jury is rumored to have already issued a secret indictment against Julian Assange.

Chelsea Manning has been arrested and jailed, and is facing a possible 18 months in prison.

As she was being taken back into custody on March 8, Chelsea declared,

"I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech."

Daniel Ellsberg, a member of VFP's Advisory Board, responded,

"Chelsea Manning is again acting heroically in the name of press freedom, and it's a travesty that she has been sent back to jail for refusing to testify to a grand jury. An investigation into WikiLeaks for publishing is a grave threat to all journalists' rights, and Chelsea is doing us all a service for fighting it. She has already been tortured, spent years in jail, and has suffered more than enough. She should be released immediately."

Veterans For Peace agrees with Daniel Ellsberg. We are proud to stand with Chelsea Manning once again. We will add our voice and our energies to supporting her in her courageous stance.

FREE CHELSEA MANNING (again)!

Useful information and resources are available from Courage To Resist.

Before The Jug….Was The Jug-With John Sebastian’s Hungry Eye Jug Band In Mind

Before The Jug….Was The Jug-With John Sebastian’s Hungry Eye Jug Band In Mind 

By Lester Lannon

A while back, maybe two three years ago just after they had witnessed the fiftieth anniversary union performance of what was left of the original Jim Kweskin Jug Band (Jim, Maria Muldaur and ex-husband Geoff Muldaur) at the Club Passim in Harvard Square Sam Lowell, Bart Webber and Jack Callahan had been sitting in Jack’s down the street sipping some high end whiskeys when they started to cut up old touches about their own experiences at jug music and jug band under the long ago influence of that very jug band(and of course through them finding out running back to genesis to the Memphis Jug Band, Cannon’s Stompers, The Mississippi Shieks and a half dozen old state name in front Shieks where all the really good jug band material was to be found). Jack, the old-time washboard player, had blurted out what was on everybody’s mind after that performance-“what the hell we have time now let’s get a hold of Laura Lynn and Frank Riley and give the old Riverdale Jug Band a local revival.” (Riverdale the home town of all five of the original named players, an occasional sit in fiddler and magic kazoo player were from neighboring Gloversville and hence Riverdale).

Sam, the jug man supreme, was at first hesitate for the very same reason the band had disbanded after a couple of years and some local success-there was not enough space in the then fading folk revival minute to support, support as a professional operation more than one serious jug band and that band was clearly the Jim Kweskin outfit (which in their turn would split up for various reasons, personality clashes, declining energies, declining public interest and the usual hubris). Fifty years later and a look at the greying demographics at Passims’ only made Sam more sanguine about such prospects. At least that night Jack was unsuccessful in persuading either Sam or Bart both who were in the slow process of giving up the day to day running of their respective law office and print shop to know that they had needed more time think about reforming the old group. His argument that the Kweskin Jug Band was, except for ceremonial occasions, not now an on-going operation went for naught. His other argument, a historical argument, that even the Kweskin experience back in the day had only been possible because of various reconfigurations in the personal of that band after various “raids” on other jug bands also fell on deaf ears that night.

But Jack sensed that there was some mulling over going on and so he went for the jugular (no pun intended) and brought Laura and Frankie into the mix. Did it in a very tricky way. John Sebastian, well known from the folk and folk rock days as the leader of the group The Lovin’ Spoonful (that left out “g” all the rage back then when everybody wanted to be at one with the “folk” although one never saw a real “folk” who were trying to get away from that designation and could not be found within ten miles of any folk revival site) which had hits with Summer in the City, Lovin’ Spoonful (remember no “g”) and Nashville Cats, was scheduled to appear at the Newport Folk Festival down in Rhode Island like he had in the old days. Jack had purchased a block of five tickets in order to entice them back to that old summer stomping ground where they had done a daytime, although no primetime, stage performance a couple of years in a row when their star was rising (and the lack of any serious follow-up, follow-up in the way such things counted in those days with a record contract except a small nimble from Dollar Records who thereafter passed on producing their first album claiming their work was too derivative, derivative of the Kweskin Jug Band particularly which started Riverdale Jug band members, first of all Laura to get married, to go their separate ways).

The hook of Newport for Jack was that he was privy to something that the others were not aware of. John Sebastian in the old days before the Lovin’ Spoonful success had been the founder (and re-founder) of various jug band combinations in the Village in the early 1960s when jug music was getting a lot of play in the folk revival. Sebastian’s most famous group, his most famous effort was the Hungry Eye Jug Band with the great Fritz Diamond on wash basin and Maria Donato on vocals and tambourines. That grouping was ready to break out, make it to the night stage at Newport when Fritz and Maria abandoned ship, went over to another unnamed jug band (but one could figure that out easily enough) and that was that. John as we know landed on his feet and so he therefore claimed no foul. The source of the story-John Sebastian himself one night when he was playing by himself in a stellar performance at the now defunct Boston Folk Festival.           

See in those free and easy 1960s days s groups formed, reformed, talent got stolen away and every other thing that has happened in the music industry since there was an industry, maybe before. Jack though if the other members of the old jug band heard John’s story they might reconsider their position of not re-forming the band. He also figured once they were back together, back on the road a few nights playing small coffeehouses and cafes to grab some work in order to work out the kinks in their material that they too could “raid” the talent pool. Might have some name in lights like John Sebastian and the Riverdale Jug Band. Or the Riverdale Jug Band with Jim Kweskin (it would emphatically not be the Riverdale Jug Band with Maria Muldaur not if he didn’t want to lose Laura and with her the whole enterprise since her vocals and good looks had gotten them plenty of play and she would not then nor now abide playing second to any other female vocalist). But he needed to get them on board, needed to get them to sunny Newport, needed to have them heard that patented John Sebastian story. 

Jack need not have worried because there must have been something in the air as the next time the group of five gathered in Cambridge for drinks and conversation Laura asked if it was still possible to sign up to do a daytime workshop at Newport. The subject- jug music. And Sam was talking feverishly about where he could find a worthy jug these days, and so it went. Yeah, before the jug was… the jug.  

Like Some French Girls That He Knew-With The Musee D’ Orsay In Mind

Like Some French Girls That He Knew-With The Musee D’ Orsay In Mind

By Zack James

He didn’t know exactly when he first noticed her in her short mini-skirt showing well-turned legs, her slender body always a plus with him, those eyes which from that distance he was not sure of but he would have predicted (giving hope to the answer) blue and that long ravishing hair, black and shiny sheen. It might have been as he left the Metro stop at the Musee D’ Orsay and headed toward the museum entrance and he had noticed that by the swish of her hips that she was that kind of sexy girl that if he had been America, his homeland, he would have gone up to and began some kind of half-clumsy school-boyish conversation and hoped for the best but that on foreign territory, sweet beloved Paris, he found that he wanted to be more circumspect.

That notice business might have been when she turned around and looked across the street toward the Seine wistfully to notice that storm clouds were forming that warm September day and that she probably rued the fact that she had not brought her umbrella (at least from hi vantage point then no umbrella against the day’s storms as noticed by him. Probably the first real connection though it was at the ticket counter when he, a couple of lines over from her as she turned to get her wallet out of her pocket book to get her Euros for admission, noticed that she looked in his direction and gave him a semi-Mona Lisa smile which he took for an interest of some sort. Of course under the influence of museum Paris and the Mona Lisa home across the river Louvre he very well could have imagined that smile designation. In any case that last quizzical smile was all he needed to make his plans for that afternoon. He would “stalk” her, discreetly of course until he could find some obvious reason to make a comment to her about some painting and see what played out.

An old trick, that sublime “what does that painting do for you” line that  he had learned long ago when somebody in Cambridge after he had suffered through his first divorce told him that spicy, spunky, sexy, intellectual young women, and older women too in that same category but then he was like now hung on the younger female set, would “troll” the bookstores then plentiful in the Square looking to be “picked up” to use a term of art of the times by guy who were looking for fetching intelligent company. One of those bookstore “pick-ups” had after a few dates told him that his friend’s intelligence was right but that the “real” pick up locale was the museums because while most guys would be willing to troll the bookshops that would probably balk at hanging around museums so anybody willing to go through that ordeal to meet interesting women must have something going for him.

So he had his game plan ready. He noticed that after paying her admission fee she went directly to the mezzanine to view the Gauguins and Van Goghs which then had a special section. Along her way around that section though he noticed that she had stopped at a painting of a secondary Expressionist painter who had been grouped with the “boys,” you know the “school of” artists, the subject matter which was of the fallen revolutionaries of the Paris Commune from May 1871 when the Thiers government unleased a bloodbath on working-class Paris. She stood before that painting for several minutes before he realized that this event was his was his big chance. Big chance on the off-chance that she might have some knowledge or connection with the events of the Commune which if she was French, and he was not sure if that was the case although everything about her “spoke” French to him, a lot of people he had met had some connection with even over hundred years later. In any case he had plenty of knowledge about the Paris Commune because when he was younger he had been devoted to that event as an example of working class solidarity and the possibilities of left-wing rule in those heady Commune days when if a couple of things had gone right they might have survived longer (he was not sure the thing could have survived in Paris alone then over the long haul)

He boldly, boldly for him seeing that he was probably twice her age and not sure of her nationality just then, slide up beside her and commented that those fallen brethren deserved all the pictorial commemoration any true artist could have given them. Back then when choosing sides counted-and could cost you your head. She turns around and after a confused moment gave that same semi-Mona Lisa smile that she had thrown his way earlier. Then she said, “My great-grandfather Dubois on my mother’s side suffered transportation to Tasmania for his devotion to the “cause.” Bingo. Then he went into a short spiel about how when he was younger he was devoted to the memory of the Communards, used to commemorate March 18^th every year with fellow radicals and reds in Cambridge when after the failure of bourgeois politics to change anything, to stop the Vietnam War particularly, everybody headed to start reading Marx and the others and in that pursuit came across the Marxist defense of the Communards.                       

Second bingo-the male model for one of the fallen Communards represented in the painting was great-grandfather Dubois’ son, her great- grand uncle who had passed away when she was very young but who was always spoken of in hushed terms both for the modeling job and for surviving the bloodbath of 1871 when he was only fourteen and on the barricades. They found that conversation required more attention and so sat down on the marble seats that are scattered around that great big train station of a museum. After talking about the Communards and those sorrowful beautiful memories of such heroic action for the benefit of working people they got around to their respective professions. He told her that while he tried for a very long time, longer than most of his friends, that he had eventually broken from his active radical past and gone back to law school and so had practiced law for a number of years (he, and probably every older guy trying to relate to younger women was vague of dates and number of year issues to avoid the generation whipsaw of non-recognition of events, personalities, and fads by the later).

She startled him when she told him, making him laugh when she said it must run in the family, referring to that long ago relative used as a model for the painting that drew them together, that she was a cam model. A cam model being then the new Internet come hither sex site novelty where a woman, presumably a young woman although nothing would have precluded an older woman from doing the same thing  then, maybe now too on a sex site catered to a taste for older women, acted provocatively on camera and “lured” guys in with texted sex talk…and more. For a price she laughed. Meaning she told him to get to see or hear anything of real sexual interest required the usual joining the site at so much a month on the credit card (with small print telling you that unless you opted out you would continue to be charged monthly even if you signed up only for say a month and didn’t expect to go further with the pursuit). She made him laugh at that last part since he had on occasion pursued such sex sites. 

Now that cam model stuff then was pretty tame, almost a public service for shy or inhibited men with big sex dreams and appetites (and credit cards0, compared to the anything goes stuff today but it still kind of made him a little fearful to go forward. But she had that winning smile and those nice bodily features that got his thinking up a bit of bedrooms and wild sex. Moreover she seemed to have no particular desire to leave his company when he asked her if she would join him for lunch. She smiled and said yes that she was hungry and that she liked the way the conversation was going. 

At the Café Blanc up on Saint Germaine Boulevard toward Notre Dame after they had ordered some wine and a light lunch she told him more of the details of how she got into her profession as a sex worker (a term of art that he appreciated when she first mentioned that was really what a cam model was as he had in the back of his mind whore, prostitute, and call girl from his own upbringing none of those terms deemed by him to be offensive as he had in the early days of his legal career represented many streetwalkers and call girls from the “Combat Zone ” in Boston when the city authorities made their periodic raids to show they were doing something about crime but his religious upbringing was a hard thing to shake). She had come from a very pious family background of good Catholic radicals and had been a very good student at Saint Clare’s when she was in high school. Had dreamed of college maybe being a doctor, something like that. Still had the edges of those dreams in the back of her mind. But then her father, a well-known marine biologist, died when she was fourteen leaving her and three younger siblings, all boys, along with their mother to fend for themselves.                           

Initially there had been some family help, the mother worked and she juggled school and playing “mother” to the three younger boys while the mother was at work. Then her mother developed lots of unclear to her health issues and from there circumstances spiraled downward. She admitted that by the age of fourteen she had already had very quietly in another part of the town she had grown up in had sex with a boy a little older. She blushed when she said that saying that even now if anybody knew it would have been quite a family scandal. She also said that she had liked it, still did (which he noted with a wink at her when she said that), and that the boy had taught her a few things about what turned a guy on, and what a guy liked.    

Sometime when she was sixteen she decided on her own to take her interest in sex to another level. To help with the family financial stresses and help the younger boys in their studies toward entering college. Even now the priority in poor French families was toward making sure that the boys, or at least one boy got ahead. So she would come to Paris from her suburban home and on weekends “work the streets.” Not literally but she would go to places, hotels, swanky bars, always well made-up and with a set of nice clothes on after a while, and allow herself to be picked up by guys who were looking for a “good time.” (Her expression). By hook or by crook she made some serious money because she was good at her job (he thinking job, good blow job, and she probably was good at that from a look at those big ruby red lips, when she said that) and because she always acted like a sullen mistress who needed to be sexually satisfied she had built up a good clientage after.

After a while the weekend night life turned into four or five nights a week and so she quit school nobody then much minding that action since she was bringing in many Euros. As a cover she told her family she had made the money working as a waitperson at one of Paris’ finest hotels. She laughed at that thought since she had been taken there a number of times, mostly by American men, and so knew everything about the place, had stories to tell so nobody suspected her real “career.” At eighteen though she left her home after she got into trouble for “soliciting” (which was fixed by a client, a Paris judge) and knew that she had to leave home before anything else got exposed about her real life. So she worked the streets for a while, had been a short term mistress to an Englishman until his wife shut off the funds after finding out about the affair (she laughed about those stuffy English women and their cheap ways where a rich French woman would write the whole thing off and have an affair of her own), had worked in a couple of brothels and then tiring of being on her back some much (and “playing the flute,” which she told him later was just her term for a blow job that she had learned from that first boy lover who said for her to “play the flute for me” and she didn’t know what he meant until he pulled her head toward his cock and took her to put it in her mouth she would figure it out from there) made a connection which landed her the cam modelling job. She laughed when she said it was easier on the back-and the mouth too.

That story told as they sipped their after meal small wine as they went through the banter of what to do next. He suggested they go to his hotel. She asked where. He mentioned that same famous hotel that she knew so well which made her laugh as she accepted. They left the Café, stopped for a couple of bottles of wine and headed to the hotel. After a hard afternoon of love-making, including her “playing the flute,” which as he suspected she played well she told him she had to go. But before going she said she was still supporting that threesome of younger brothers these days through college. Could he give her, besides the taxi fare home, a “donation.” Now it was his turn to laugh as he unfolded a one hundred Euro note. Every time he was in Paris for the next couple of years he would call her up when he was in town. She would come and “play the flute” for him and other delights. And always ask for a “donation” with the cab fare. He would smile a wise smile as he unfolded the one hundred Euro note as he had that first time. Then one time he called her number and got no answer, got no forwarding message either. He figured, wanted to figure, that the last of the brothers had finished up school and so she had moved on too. But he would always remember some French girl that he knew.                 

“The Better Angels Of Our Nature”-Katharine Hepburn And Spencer Tracy’s “State Of The Union” (1948)-A Film Review

“The Better Angels Of Our Nature”-Katharine Hepburn And Spencer Tracy’s “State Of The Union” (1948)-A Film Review   

DVD Review

By Film Critic Sandy Salmon

State Of The Union, starring Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, directed by Frank Capra, 1948 

Originally I planned to title the headline in this review Bernie Sanders Redux reflecting the uplifting message, the playing to the “better angels of our nature” as Lincoln put it back in the 1860s, of aspiring American presidential candidate Grant Matthews, played by Spencer Tracy, in the film under review State Of The Union and which Sanders tried to encourage in the last American presidential cycle. But then that seemed too big a stretch and so I was reduced to “stealing” a line from Lincoln. Not a bad guy, not a bad guy at all to do a little pilfering from when all is said and done.  

Catch what this Grant Matthews was trying to bring to in the back room “bosses” world of 1948 presidential –a little honesty, a little less sugar-coating the hard truth and attempting to bring everybody under the big American political tent in a positive way. Yeah, I know we got lost somewhere along the way since then, very lost. Just like Matthews did for a while under the spell of the “fire in the belly” egged on by the fixers that everybody has to have to go through a modern presidential campaign and come out alive, or half alive anyway. Dealing with the media, with every special interest imaginable and in those days (maybe lesser today at least out in front) the “fixer” man-the guy who could wheel and deal to bring those delegates to your side for a price, theirs and his. Otherwise you were/are yesterday’s news.      

Of course sometimes the man and the moment must meet, or be cajoled into meeting and that is exactly what the plotline to this  half political satire and half screw-ball romantic comedy on which Director Frank Capra cut his eye teeth is about. Here’s the drift. A powerful woman publisher, Kay, played by Angela Lansbury, who also is playing footsy with Matthews wants to make him President for her own purposes. Grant, a self-make man rising from nowhere to be a successful businessman with some ideas, at first balks, says he has no use for politicians or politics although modestly he makes no bones about being presidential timber,  Republican presidential timber for those who are asking. Eventually he gives in and let’s Kay’s henchman, fixer man, Jim Conover, played by Adolphe Menjou, lead him by the nose. Let’s him get far away from his natural instincts in the search to be the dark horse nominee against Harry Truman (in the real situation in 1948 it was ex-New York Governor and previously defeated presidential candidate Thomas Dewey so except in the magical realism world of cinema Grant Matthews was a non-starter)      

What about Katharine Hepburn who plays Matthew’s wife and mother of his two dear children? What does she have to say about all this? Well naturally she is miffed at Grant while his playing footsy with Kay but she goes along because, well, because under it all she thinks he would make a great president. As long as he keeps true to himself. Her role is to see that he keeps true to himself although that turned out to be an arduous task once Kay got her claws into him. But in the end even Grant knew that whatever he thought he was after wasn’t going to accomplished by groveling to every political hack who still had breathe in him or herself. Knew he had to stand outside the big tent with his Mary and yell to the rooftops about what was going on in the world. Yeah, in the end Grant found that “better angel of his nature,” so maybe my headline was not so far off after all. 

When The World Believed In Fairy Tales And Other Assorted “Fake Legends”-Woody Allen’s “Magic In The Moonlight” (2014)-A Film Review

When The World Believed In Fairy Tales And Other Assorted “Fake Legends”-Woody Allen’s “Magic In The Moonlight” (2014)-A Film Review   

By Will Bradley

Magic In The Moonlight, starring Emma Stone, Colin Firth,      

Blessed be the niche writers. That at least is what I got for an answer from site manager Greg Green when I asked him why I was “chosen” to review the film under review Woody Allen’s Magic In The Moonlight. Apparently, and contrary to stated publication policy established by Greg and the then newly established Editorial Board set up to oversee the assignments and their distribution, I am now in the “legend-slayer” niche (and blessed) ever since I started taking up the cudgels again recently with reviews of fake legend Spider Man and real legend Jack Reacher.    

I am okay, and very much so, with the legend-slaying assignment which have been my entryway into getting my by-line ad freedom from free-lancer stringer status. But I will be damned if I know what legend I am supposed to be slaying in this frothy little 1920s based romance a la late Woody Allen after he stopped overusing the New York urban themes of his earlier career. My problem is that Moo Shi Beef or whatever alias Stanley Nevins, the famous magician who every aspiring magician even now bows down to, was using at the time when he was fooling everybody with parlor pink magic tricks in Paris and its environs was already a well- known charlatan and cultural appropriator (the Chinese garb and moniker of a well-born Englishman) who Lex Marshall had long ago exposed as a fraud and flim-flam artist who made his real money selling dope imported from China to his select clientele. Moo Shi Beef (sorry if I offend anybody but no insult is intended since Stanley worked the rackets under a bunch of names all Chinese as part of his scam but also to ease the way to get the dope he was peddling into England under an import-export license issued by a minister in high places who was being bribed by him. 

The female part of this legend-busting expose was the famous, or rather infamous Sophie Baker the well-known medium who bilked half the nobility, the male nobility although I am sure if she ran out of men she would have gone to the women’s side, of Europe before she was done. Although she never was fully exposed since she had secret lover in Scotland Yard and maybe another at Interpol I do not believe that recently anybody had thought of her as a legend. It turned out I was wrong that she was subject to a female cult of worshipers, especially among the Roma people and that her exploits are the stuff told to their children as an example of what it was like when the world could easily be hoodwinked by a beautiful if harebrained fraud. A whole generation of fortune-tellers, spiritualists, mediums, and grifters worked their rackets based on the little booklets she wrote on the subject after she retired to some castle in Nice.    

That was later though, after both Moo Shi, hell, I will call him his silly English name Stanley, and Sophie had passed their prime. This film is really the story of their brief affair (they were supposed to get married after Stanley had in a drunken stupor proposed to her but she backed out after some prince beckoned with castles and diamonds and Stanley could only offer the loot gathered from card tricks and magic travelling circus magic tricks) after Stanley, Stanley of all people although this was before Lex lowered the hammer on his operations to prove that Sophie was a fraud. See Stanley along with the Chinese magic tricks gag had a big reputation as a debunker of others, of being the last rational man in the Empire. Basically a snob and stuffed shirt. But that was part of his grift, his cover which is why Lex had to dig deeply to expose him and Lex always considered him a very worthy opponent for just that reason. She was brought in to break up Sophie’s scam, her seance silliness that half the English nobility and gentry were paying big dough to be thrilled by.  

Maybe it was that two kindred had so much blarney in common but from the first minute they met anybody who was around then could see that they would go under the silky sheets before long despite the eyewash they were feeding each other. And so it went back and forth, back and forth under the night they got drunk and wound up under those already mentioned silky sheets. I already have told that they would have a brief affair and no marriage despite Stanley’s proposal once Sophie went to serious gold-digger work on that dubbed prince. What I didn’t tell you is that Stanley’s fortunes rose for a while until Lex dumped his evidence on the world and he wound up selling life insurance on cold calls back in Bristol. We already know Sophie’s upscale fate. What I want to know is why was I brought into this low-rent scene when I could be taking dead aim at Tony Stark’s silly Avenger operation which desperately need to be exposed. For now.

***Sitting On The Rim Of The World- With The Son Of The Neon Wilderness Nelson Algren In Mind-Take Four

***Sitting On The Rim Of The World- With The Son Of The Neon Wilderness Nelson Algren In Mind-Take Four

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

He wrote of small-voiced people, mostly people who had started out in the world with small voices, small voices which never got louder, never were heard over the rumble of the subway, working stiffs and their women, sometimes their kids, their kids growing up like weeds, who turned out to be disappointments but what could expect more from the progeny of small-voiced people, guys who sat around gin mills all night (maybe all day too I knew a few who inhabited the Dublin Grille in my old hometown of North Adamsville, another town filled with small-voice people). Never wrote, or wrote much, about big-voiced people who tumbled down to the sound of rumble subway stops out their doors, people who fell off the rim of the world from some high place due to their hubris, their addictions, their outrageous wanting habits never sated before the fall (not some edenic fall but just a worldly fall that once it happened the world moved on and ignored). Wrote of the desperately lonely, a man talking to himself on some forsaken park bench the only voice, not a big voice but a voice that had to be reckoned with, of the stuffed cop swaggering his billy club menacingly to him move on, or else, a woman, unhappy in love, hell maybe jilted at the altar, sitting alone like some Apple Annie in that one Ladies Invited tavern on the corner, the one just off Division where she had met that man the first time and meets all men now, all men with the price of a drink, no more. Yeah, a big old world filled with the lonely hearing only their own heartbeats, heard no other heartbeats as they waited out their days. What did Eliot call it, oh yeah, measured out their lives in coffee spoons. Wrote of alienated people too, not the Chicago intellectuals who were forever belly-aching about the de-humanization of man, about how we had built a mechanical world from which we had to run but the common clay, the ones who manned the conveyor belts, ran the damn rumbling subways, shoveled the snow, hell, shoveled shit day and night. Wrote of the night people, of the ones who would show up after midnight in some police precinct line-up, the winos, the jack-rollers, the drifters, the grifters, the midnight sifters, maybe a hooker who had not paid the paddy and thus was subject to the grill. Wrote of the  people who inhabit the Nighthawk Diner (artist Edward Hopper’s all shape angles, all dim lights outside, bright fluorescent no privacy, no hiding lights inside, all the lonely people eating their midnight hamburgers fresh off the greased grill, another grill that forlorn hooker knew well, or Tom Waits’ rummies, bummies, stumblers, street-walkers looking for respect all shadows left behind, take your pick), the restless, the sleepless, the shiftless, those who worked the late shift, those who drew the late shift of life, those who worked better under the cover of night in the dark alleyways and sullen doorways.

He wrote big time, big words, about the small-voiced people, big words for people who spoke in small words, spoke small words about small dreams, or no dreams, spoke only of the moment, the eternal moment. The next fix, how to get it, the next drink, how to get it, the next bet, how to con the barkeeper to put him on the sheet, the next john, how to take him, the next rent due, how to avoid the dun and who after all had time for anything beyond that one moment. Waiting eternally waiting to get well, waiting for the fixer man to walk up the stairs and get you well, well beyond what any doctor could prescript, better than any priest could absolve, to get some kicks. (Needle, whiskey, sex although that was far down the list by the time that needle was needed or that shot of low-shelf whiskey drove you to your need, again.) Waiting for the fixer man, waiting for the fixer man to fix what ailed them. Not for him the small voice pleasant Midwestern farmers providing breadbaskets to the world talking to kindred about prices of wheat and corn, the prosperous small town drugstore owners filling official drug prescriptions and selling the under-aged liquor as medicine or whatever the traffic would bear, or of Miss Millie’s beauty salon where the blue-haired ladies get ready for battle and gossip about how Mister so and so had an affair with Miss so and so from the office and how will Mildred who of course they would never tell do when the whole thing goes public (although one suspects that he could have written that stuff, written and hacked away his talent)who in the pull and push of the writing profession they had (have) their muses. Nor was he inclined to push the air out of the small town banker seeking a bigger voice (calling in checks at a moment’s notice), the newspaper publisher seeking to control the voices or the alderman or his or her equivalent who had their own apparatuses for getting their small voices heard (although again one suspects he could have, if so inclined, shilled for that set). No, he, Nelson Algren, he, to give him a name took dead aim at the refuge of society, the lumpen as he put it in the title of one short story, those sitting on the rim of the world.

And he did good, did good by his art, did good by his honest snarly look at the underside of society, and, damn, by making us think about that quarter turn of fate that separated the prosperous farmer (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not short-weighting the world), the drugstore owner (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not dispensing his wares, his potent drugs, out the back door to a craving market) , Miss Millie (assuming as we must that she, secretly, was not running a call girl service on the side), the banker (assuming as we must that he, maybe secretly maybe not, was not gouging rack rents and usurious interest), the newspaper editor (assuming as we must that he, very publicly, in fact was printing all the news fit to print), and the politician (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not bought and paid for by all of the above, or others) from the denizens of his mean streets. The mean city streets, mainly of Chicago, but that is just detail, just names of streets and sections of town to balance his work where his characters eked out an existence, well, anyway they could, some to turn up face down in some muddy ravine, under some railroad trestle, in some dime flop house, other to sort of amble along in the urban wilderness purgatory.

Brother Algren gave us characters to chew on, plenty of characters, mostly men, mostly desperate (in the very broadest sense of that word), mostly with some jones to work off, mostly with some fixer man in the background to wreak havoc too. He gave us two classics of the seamy side genre, one, the misbegotten Frankie Machine, the man with the golden arm, the man with the chip on his shoulder, the mid-century(20^th century, okay) man ill at ease in his world, ill at ease with the world and looking, looking for some relief, some kicks in that mid-century parlance, and, two, that hungry boy, that denizen of the great white trash night, Dove Linkhorn, who, perhaps more than Frankie spoke to that mid-century angst, spoke to that world gone wrong, for those who had just come up, come up for some place where time stood still to gain succor in the urban swirl, to feast at the table, come up from the back forty lots, the prairie golden harvest wheat fields, the Ozarks, all swamps and ooze, mountain wind hills and hollows, the infested bayous and were ready to howl, howl at the moon to get attention.

I remember reading somewhere, and I have forgotten where now, that someone had noted that Nelson Algren’s writing on Dove Linkhorn’s roots was the most evocative piece on the meaning of the okie–arkie out migration segment of that mid-century America ever written, the tale of the wandering boys, the railroad riders, the jungle camp jumpers, the skid row derelicts. Hell, call it by its right name, the white trash, that lumpen mush. And he or she was right, of course, after I went back and re-read that first section of Walk On The Wild Side where the Linkhorn genealogy back unto the transport ships that brought the first crop of that ilk from thrown out Europe are explored. All the pig thieves, cattle-rustlers, poachers, highwaymen, the -what did some sociologist call them?, oh yeah, “the master-less men,” those who could not or would not be tamed by the on-rushing wheels of free-form capitalism as the system relentlessly picked up steam, the whole damn lot transported. And good riddance.

The population of California after World War II was filled to the brim with such types, the feckless “hot rod” boys, boys mostly too young to have been though the bloodbaths of Europe and Asia building some powerful road machines out of baling wire and not much else, speeding up and down those ocean-flecked highways looking for the heart of Saturday night, looking for kicks just like those Chicago free-flow junkies, those twisted New Orleans whoremasters. Wandering hells angels riding two by two (four by four if they felt like it and who was to stop them) creating havoc for the good citizens of those small towns they descended on, descended on unannounced (and unwelcomed by those same good citizens). In and out of jail, Q, Folsom, not for stealing pigs now, but armed robberies or some egregious felony, but kindred to those lost boys kicked out of Europe long ago. Corner boys, tee-shirted, black leather jacket against cold nights, hanging out with time on their hands and permanent smirks, permanent hurts, permanent hatreds, paid to that Algren observation. All the kindred of the cutthroat world, or better “cut your throat” world, that Dove drifted into was just a microcosm of that small-voiced world.

He spoke of cities, even when his characters came fresh off the farm, abandoned for the bright lights of the city and useless to that short-weighting farmer who now is a prosperous sort, making serious dough as the breadbasket to the world. They, the off-hand hot rod king, the easy hell rider, the shiftless corner boy, had no existence, no outlets for their anger and angst, in small towns and hamlets for their vices, or their virtues, too small, too small for the kicks they were looking for. They needed the anonymous city rooming house, the cold-water flat, the skid- row flop house, the ten- cent beer hall, hell, the railroad jungle, any place where they could just let go with their addictions, their anxieties, and their hunger without having to explain, endlessly explain themselves, always, always a tough task for the small-voiced of this wicked old world. They identified with cities, with city 24/7/365 lights, with Algren’s blessed neon lights, city traffic (of all kinds), squalor, cops on the take, cops not on the take, plebeian entertainments, sweat, a little dried blood, marked veins, reefer madness, swilled drinks, white towers, all night diners (see it always comes back to that lonely, alienated Nighthawk Diner just ask Waits), the early editions (for race results, the number, who got dead that day, the stuff of that world), a true vision of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawk for a candid world.

He spoke of jazz and the blues, as if all the hell in this wicked old world could be held off for a minute while that sound sifted thought the night fog air reaching the rooming house, the flop, the ravine, the beer hall as it drifted out to the river and drowned. Music not upfront but as a backdrop to while the steamy summer nights away, and maybe the frigid lake front winter too. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, he spoke of a small-voiced white world, residents of white slums and pursuers of white- etched dreams and only stick character blacks but his beat, his writing rhythm made no sense without the heat of Trouble In Mind or that cool blast of Charlie Parker, Miles, Dizzie be-bopping, made absolutely no sense, and so it went.

He spoke of love too. Not big flamed love, big heroes taking big falls for some hopeless romance like in olden times but squeezed love, love squeezed out of a spoon, maybe, but love in all its raw places. A guy turning his woman into a whore to feed his endless habit love, and her into a junkie love. A woman taking her man through cold turkey love. A man letting his woman go love, ditto woman her man when the deal went wrong. When the next best thing came by. Not pretty love all wrapped in a bow, but love nevertheless. And sometimes in this perverse old world the love a man has for a woman when, failing cold turkey, he goes to get the fixer man and that fixer man get his woman well, almost saintly and sacramental. Brothers and sisters just read The Last Carousel if you want to know about love. Hard, hard love. Yah, Nelson Algren knew how to give voice, no holds barred, to the small-voiced people.

The Fire This Time-In Honor Of James Baldwin Whose Time Has Come Again-From The Archives - Books To While Away The Class Struggle By- The Works Of James Baldwin-Blues For Mr. Charlie

The Fire This Time-In Honor Of James Baldwin Whose Time Has Come Again-From The Archives -  Books To While Away The Class Struggle By- The Works Of James Baldwin-Blues For Mr. Charlie

Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By” and "Films To While Away The Class Struggle By"-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs and films that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some books that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. Markin

Book/Play Review

Blues For Mr.Charlie, James Baldwin, Dell Publishing Co., New York, 1964

I have written a number of commentaries in this space on the subject of the heinous murder by “white trash”, allegedly for whistling while black at a white woman, of black teenager Emmett Till down in small town Mississippi in 1955. The firestorm raised over the horrible deed, including the not guilty verdict by an all white jury, by his mother and others in the wake of the verdict did much to galvanize Northern opinion, black and white, for the then brewing black civil rights struggle that would dominate the first half of the 1960s. Mississippi put the world on notice that not only adult black men were subject to the “white is right, blacks get back” free-fire zone but black children as well.

Working such an inflammatory subject into literary form would seem to be right up the alley for one of the premier black writers of the period, James Baldwin. Moreover, unlike some of the more exclusively literary types who hibernated in New York during the Eisenhower 1950s, Baldwin was a committed and articulate advocate of black rights. And a voice for righteous black rage, although not necessarily of a revolutionary bent. Thus, when prodded by the subsequently slain Mississippi civil rights leader, Medgar Evers, to do a treatment on the Till case, Baldwin had to step up to the plate and throw some fire into the flames.

Rather than attempt a novelistic treatment which could, on reflection, diffuse the emotional impact of the subject behind much eloquent verbiage Baldwin created a three act play which, as his stage directions indicate, would do more than a novel to bring home the intense racial animosities that centuries of racial tension had engendered. Although some of the characters seem like stock figures now: the black "Uncle Toms" who smoothed the way for the white power structure; the “white trash” who had no stake in the society except not to be, mercifully, black; the uppity black “agitator” who had been to the North and learned Northern de facto segregation ways there which provided just a little more elbow room if no less danger; the black clergy preaching, ever preaching, forbearance; the thoughtful black woman who knows that the life expectancy of a black man, and hence part of her happiness can sometimes be counted in days; and, the sympathetic "liberal" white Southern who also held the system together by not going beyond well defined bounds that would upset his fellow whites, in high place and low.

Hey, we all know what the jury verdict was in the Till case. We also know even before turning the first page of this play what the verdict will be in the death of the black man by a white in this case , modeled as it is on the Till case. We also know this, that over fifty years after the event been no real justice in the Till case. We know as well that James Baldwin, if he were alive today, might very well still be able to write about some current Till case. And, finally, we know this anytime the racial question in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s, or later, came up- Nina Simone may have said it more lyrically than Baldwin, perhaps, but they both make the same point. Mississippi goddam.

*The Roots Of Protest-Songs Of The Early Women's Suffrage Movement

Click on title to link to more songs of the early women suffrage movement.

Here are the lyrics to some songs of the woman's suffrage movement. The lyrics of some songs do not necessarily represent a socialist perspective(and in the case of the first song definitely does not do so) but are placed here to show the tensions that existed between the goals of the feminist movement and the socialist movement at the time, a tension that is still very much with us. These lyrics do not necessarily represent the views of this site but are provided for historical purposes only.



Suffrage Songs and Verses

By
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

10 Cents

THE CHARLTON COMPANY
67 Wall Street, New York
1911

Here is one that shows a tension between feminist and socialist thought.

THE SOCIALIST AND THE SUFFRAGIST

Said the Socialist to the Suffragist:
"My cause is greater than yours!
You only work for a Special Class,
We work for the gain of the General Mass,
Which every good ensures!"

Said the Suffragist to the Socialist:
"You underrate my Cause!
While women remain a Subject Class,
You never can move the General Mass,
With your Economic Laws!"

Said the Socialist to the Suffragist:
"You misinterpret facts!
There is no room for doubt or schism
In Economic Determinism–
It governs all our acts!"

Said the Suffragist to the Socialist:
"You men will always find
That this old world will never move
More swiftly in its ancient groove
While women stay behind! "

"A lifted world lifts women up,"
The Socialist explained.
"You cannot lift the world at all
While half of it is kept so small,"
The Suffragist maintained.

The world awoke, and tartly spoke:
"Your work is all the same:
Work together or work apart,
Work, each of you, with all your heart–
Just get into the game!"


SONG FOR EQUAL SUFFRAGE

Day of hope and day of glory! After slavery and woe,
Comes the dawn of woman's freedom, and the light shall grow and grow
Until every man and woman equal liberty shall know,
In Freedom marching on!

Woman's right is woman's duty! For our share in life we call!
Our will it is not weakened and our power it is not small.
We are half of every nation! We are mothers of them all!
In Wisdom marching on!

Not for self but larger service has our cry for freedom grown,
There is crime, disease and warfare in a world of men alone,
In the name of love we're rising now to serve and save our own,
As Peace comes marching on!

By every sweet and tender tie around our heartstrings curled,
In the cause of nobler motherhood is woman's flag unfurled,
Till every child shall know the joy and peace of mother's world–
As Love comes marching on!

We will help to make a pruning hook of every outgrown sword,
We will help to knit the nations in continuing accord,
In humanity made perfect is the glory of the Lord,
As His world goes marching on!

THE ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS *

Fashionable women in luxurious homes,
With men to feed them, clothe them, pay their bills,
Bow, doff the hat, and fetch the handkerchief;
Hostess or guest; and always so supplied
With graceful deference and courtesy;
Surrounded by their horses, servants, dogs–
These tell us they have all the rights they want.

Successful women who have won their way
Alone, with strength of their unaided arm,
Or helped by friends, or softly climbing up
By the sweet aid of "woman's influence";
Successful any way, and caring naught
For any other woman's unsuccess–
These tell us they have all the rights they want.

Religious women of the feebler sort–
Not the religion of a righteous world,
A free, enlightened, upward-reaching world,
But the religion that considers life
As something to back out of !– whose ideal
Is to renounce, submit, and sacrifice.
Counting on being patted on the head
And given a high chair when they get to heaven–
These tell us they have all the rights they want.

Ignorant women–college bred sometimes,
But ignorant of life's realities
And principles of righteous government,
And how the privileges they enjoy
Were won with blood and tears by those before–
Those they condemn, whose ways they now oppose;
Saying, "Why not let well enough alone?"
Our world is very pleasant as it is"–
These tell us they have all the rights they want.

And selfish women–pigs in petticoats–
Rich, poor, wise, unwise, top or bottom round,
But all sublimely innocent of thought,
And guiltless of ambition, save the one
Deep, voiceless aspiration–to be fed!
These have no use for rights or duties more.
Duties today are more than they can meet,
And law insures their right to clothes and food–
These tell us they have all the rights they want.

And, more's the pity, some good women too;
Good, conscientious women with ideas;
Who think–or think they think–that woman's cause
Is best advanced by letting it alone;
That she somehow is not a human thing,

And not to be helped on by human means,
Just added to humanity–an "L"–
A wing, a branch, an extra, not mankind–
These tell us they have all the rights they want.

And out of these has come a monstrous thing,
A strange, down-sucking whirlpool of disgrace,
Women uniting against womanhood,
And using that great name to hide their sin!
Vain are their words as that old king's command
Who set his will against the rising tide.
But who shall measure the historic shame
Of these poor traitors–traitors are they all–
To great Democracy and Womanhood!

WOMEN DO NOT WANT IT *

When the woman suffrage argument first stood upon its legs,
They answered it with cabbages, they answered it with eggs,
They answered it with ridicule, they answered it with scorn,
They thought it a monstrosity that should not have been born.
When the woman suffrage argument grew vigorous and wise,
And was not to be answered by these opposite replies,
They turned their opposition into reasoning severe
Upon the limitations of our God-appointed sphere.

We were told of disabilities–a long array of these,
Till one could think that womanhood was merely a disease;
And "the maternal sacrifice" was added to the plan
Of the various sacrifices we have always made–to man.

Religionists and scientists, in amity and bliss,
However else they disagreed, could all agree on this,
And the gist of all their discourse, when you got down in it,
Was–we could not have the ballot because we were not fit!

They would not hear the reason, they would not fairly yield,
They would not own their arguments were beaten in the field;
But time passed on, and someway, we need not ask them how,
Whatever ails those arguments–we do not hear them now!

You may talk of suffrage now with an educated man,
And he agrees with all you say, as sweetly as he can:
'T would be better for us all, of course, if womanhood was free;
But "the women do not want it"–and so it must not be!

IT is such a tender thoughtfulness! So exquisite a care!
Not to pile on our frail shoulders what we do not wish to bear!
But, oh, most generous brother! Let us look a little more–
Have we women always wanted what you gave to us before?

Did we ask for veils and harems in the Oriental races?
Did we beseech to be "unclean," shut out of sacred places?
Did we beg for scolding bridles and ducking stools to come?
And clamour for the beating stick no thicker than your thumb?

Did we ask to be forbidden from all the trades that pay?
Did we claim the lower wages for a man's full work today?
Have we petitioned for the laws wherein our shame is shown:
That not a woman's child–nor her own body–is her own?

What women want has never been a strongly acting cause,
When woman has been wronged by man in churches, customs, laws;
Why should he find this preference so largely in his way,
When he himself admits the right of what we ask today?

********

Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be? (Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be?) by L. May Wheeler

Set to a popular parlour tune, this song addresses an argument made against woman's suffrage: that women already had everything they needed - male protection, a sphere of their own - and didn't need to vote as well.

Chorus:

Oh Dear, what can the matter be
Dear dear what can the matter be
Oh dear, what can the matter be
Women are wanting to vote

Verses:

Women have husbands, they are protected
Women have sons by whom they're directed
Women have fathers, they're not neglected
Why are they wanting to vote?

Women have homes, there they should labor
Women have children whom they should favor
Women have time to learn of each neighbor
Why are they wanting to vote?

Women can dress, they love society
Women have cash with all its variety
Women can pray with sweetest piety
Why are they wanting to vote?

Women have reared all the sons of the brave
Women have shared n the burdens they gave
Women have labored this country to save
And that's why we're going to vote

Final Chorus:

Oh Dear, what can the matter be

Dear dear what can the matter be

Oh dear, what can the matter be

Why should men get every vote?


Keep Woman in Her Sphere (Auld Lang Syne) by D. Estabrook

This song is found in numerous suffrage songbooks, and was widely sung at rallies.

I have a neighbor, one of those
Not very hard to find
Who know it all without debate
And never change their mind

I asked him"What of woman's rights?"
He said in tones severe--
"My mind on that is all made up,
Keep woman in her sphere."

I saw a man in tattered garb
Forth from the grog-shop come
He squandered all his cash for drink
and starved his wife at home

I asked him "Should not woman vote"
He answered with a sneer--
"I've taught my wife to know her place,
Keep woman in her sphere."

I met an earnest, thoughtful man
Not many days ago
Who pondered deep all human law
The honest truth to know

I asked him"What of woman's cause?"
The answer came sincere --
"Her rights are just the same as mine,
Let woman choose her sphere."


The New America (America)

Sung at the National-American Woman's Suffrage Convention, 1891, this song reflects a common suffrage argument - that giving women the vote simply fullfilled the promise of 1776.

Our country, now from thee,Claim we our liberty, In freedom's name
Guarding home's altar fires, Daughters of patriot sires, Their zeal our own inspires, Justice to claim

Women in every age, For this great heritage, Tribute have paid
Our birth-right claim we now, Longer refuse to bow, On freedom's altar now, Our hand is laid

Sons, will you longer see, Mothers on bended knee, For justice pray?,
Rise now, in manhood's might, With earth's great souls unite, To speed the dawning light, Of freedom's day