◆ SpookStack

Sa a lS in aa cn , Pr ee or questioning the value of high school fraternities, the author- ities clamped a board of censors on us, I got into the habit of not believing things. I beg to understand that the things you were told were devices to keep you from thinking. JI got into arguments with my family, got a reputa- tion of being a radical. If I didn't know the score, at least I was beginning to realize I needed to know it. Until a year ago labor was no more than a word to me, a Considering my background and the nature of education in this wee, country this was not unusual, My father's friends own the distiller- oe ies and banks ard office buildings of Peoria. To them the profit vie Ss A of the employer is a sacred right, the Just reward of the risks hots -: of management. The ewployer looks out for the welfare of his employees - - - they should be grateful. It they try to organize they are being greedy, they are trying to steal what does not belong tc them. If they were any gocdto begin with they wouldn't be workers. Tnis is a free country: any man can be a Henry Ford. {I've heard my father's friends say things like this often} At the time cf the Michigan sit-down strikes they thought Rocsevelt Should send in troops. Private property was being destroyed, Revoluticn and anarchy were roaring their heads. My mother and father think Rocescvelt is a great man but they never dared say eye they were going to vete for him in the last clection. Their ‘oye community was rabidly for Wilkie. Rooscvelt, thoy said, was og leading the nation into socialism, I went to Smith College at Northampton, Massachusetts. I Sg learned all the arguments against things. I studied political Fond theories and criticisms of political theories. JI read Marx and an! Veblen, Stcinbeck and Dos Passos. I read accounts of the Spanish Civil wer and analyses of capital and its by-products. Theories and facts and figures are interesting things to think and talk about, but thinking and talking do not lead to much action. While I felt I wos ready to accept the case against capitalism and its culture, I still knew ncthing of the labcr mevement in the United States. I knew that something called C. I. 0. existed, but I dicn't even know what the initials stccd for. I studied the history cf these last ten years in France, Germany, Spain, Japan, China, Russia. I learned how Fascism came and what it Mcant. Sc, without knowing much about it, I kmew I was for the laber movement in America. I knew I was counting on it to prevent Fascism." ~-L5~ BOTT RIA TA RE ARTE TEE EP A LEE FI TT