Soon after, he moved to the New York Tribune where, in , he took over the position of drama critic. In , he married Ruth Hale, a feminist and early female film critic. His column covered all topics including politics, and he became well known for his writing in defense of underdogs of all sorts, but mostly those fighting for freedom of expression.
In , Broun was fired after a disagreement with his editor over his commentary on the sentencing of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti.
He became increasingly invested in political issues from this point on and in , ran a failed campaign for Congress. In , he founded the American Newspaper Guild, a union group that still exists today as the Newspaper Guild.
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Music by Jule Styne. Musical Director: Milton Rosenstock. Music orchestrated by Robert Russell Bennett. Vocal arrangements and direction by Herbert Greene and Buster Davis. No such kindly explanation is possible. The poor frightened woman from Georgia who changed her vote over to the forces of the Klan was afraid. She could hardly whisper the "no" which helped largely to decide the result. But Bryan spoke fearlessly in a loud, clear voice with oratorical interludes. Once he wrote to a friend: "We will drive Darwinism from the schools.
The agnostics who are undermining the faith of our students will be glad enough to teach anything the people want taught when the people speak with emphasis. My explanation is that a man who believes he has brute blood in him will never be a martyr. Only those who believe they are made in the image of God will die for a truth. We have all the Elijahs on our side. Of course, that is not quite true. William Jennings Bryan was a pacifist for the glory of God.
Eugene V. Debs was a pacifist for the glory of man. It was Mr. Debs who went to jail. But, true or untrue, Mr. Bryan's letter is revelatory.
Jesus Christ was the first and greatest teacher of democracy because his mission in the world was to win belief. He made faith the test of the human soul. Bryan is content to compel conformity. In the present convention the Ku Klux Klansmen were not in the least concerned with what the delegates thought about them. They were only interested in what was said. The demand was simply that the platform should be silent.
Bryan can understand that philosophy. I said that Mr. Bryan spoke fearlessly, but I will not say that he spoke truthfully. He said many things which were obviously false. His capacity for folly and misconception is great, but even so, I think he knew that he spoke falsely. If a Negro in Mr. Bryan's Florida went to the polls and tried to vote, where could he go when his right was denied?
Not to William Jennings Bryan, for Mr. Bryan is on record as giving complete approval to the policy of his adopted State in handling the race question. And so in this instance Mr. Bryan knew that he did not speak the truth.
I hated the thing they did to Debs even at the time, and I was not then a pacifist. Yet I realize that almost nobody means precisely what he says when he makes the declaration, "I'm in favor of free speech.
It would have been better for America to have lost the war than to lose free speech. I think so, but I imagine it is a minority opinion. However, a majority right now can be drummed up to support the contention that it was wrong to put Debs in prison. That won't keep the country from sending some other Debs to jail in some other day when panic psychology prevails.
You see, there was another aspect to the Debs case, a point of view which really begs the question. It was foolish to send him to jail. His opposition to the war was not effective. A wise dictator, someone like Shaw's Julius Caesar, for instance, would have given Debs better treatment than he got from our democracy. Eugene Debs was a beloved figure and a tragic one. And that was a grotesque misconception. People were constantly overlooking the fact that Debs was a Hoosier, a native product in every strand of him.
He was a sort of Whitcomb Riley turned politically minded. It does not seem to me that he was a great man. At least he was not a great intellect. But Woodward has argued persuasively that neither was George Washington.
In summing up the Father of His Country , this most recent biographer says in effect that all Washington had was character. By any test such as that Debs was great. Certainly he had character. There was more of goodness in him than bubbled up in any other American of his day. He had some humor, or otherwise a religion might have been built up about him, for he was thoroughly Messianic.
And it was a strange quirk which set this gentle, sentimental Middle-Westerner in the leadership of a party often fierce and militant. It has not happened yet. Of cold, logical Marxism, Debs possessed very little. He was never the brains of his party.
I never met him, but I read many of his speeches, and most of them seemed to be second-rate utterances. But when his great moment came a miracle occurred.
Debs made a speech to the judge and jury at Columbus after his conviction, and to me it seems one of the most beautiful and moving passages in the English language. He was for that one afternoon touched with inspiration. If anybody told me that tongues of fire danced upon his shoulders as he spoke, I would believe it Something was in Debs, seemingly, that did not come out unless you saw him.
I'm told that even those speeches of his which seemed to any reader indifferent stuff, took on vitality from his presence. A hard-bitten Socialist told me once, "Gene Debs is the only one who can get away with the sentimental flummery that's been tied onto Socialism in this country.
Pretty nearly always it gives me a swift pain to go around to meetings and have people call me "comrade. But the funny part of it is that when Debs says "comrade" it's all right. He means it. That old man with the burning eyes actually believes that there can be such a thing as the brotherhood of man. And that's not the funniest part of it. As long as he's around I believe it myself.
With the death of Debs, American Socialism is almost sure to grow more scientific, more bitter, possibly more effective. The party is not likely to forget that in Russia it was force which won the day, and not persuasion. I've said that it did not seem to me that Debs was a great man in life, but he will come to greatness by and by. There are in him the seeds of symbolism.
He was a sentimental Socialist, and that line has dwindled all over the world. Radicals talk now in terms of men and guns and power, and unless you get in at the beginning of the meeting and orient yourself, this could just as well be Security Leaguers or any other junkers in session. When at last Judge Thayer in a tiny voice passed sentence upon Sacco and Vanzetti, a woman in the courtroom said with terror: "It is death condemning life!
The men in Charlestown Prison are shining spirits, and Vanzetti has spoken with an eloquence not known elsewhere within our time. They are too bright, we shield our eyes and kill them.
We are the dead, and in us there is not feeling nor imagination nor the terrible torment of lust for justice. And in the city where we sleep smug gardeners walk to keep the grass above our little houses sleek and cut whatever blade thrusts up a head above its fellows. The thing is worthy to be believed. It has happened. It will happen again, and the shame is wider than that which must rest upon Massachusetts. I have never believed that the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti was one set apart from many by reason of the passion and prejudice which encrusted all the benches.
Scratch through the varnish of any judgment seat and what will you strike but hate thick-clotted from centuries of angry verdicts? Did any man ever find power within his hand except to use it as a whip?
Alvan T. Already too much has been made of the personality of Webster Thayer. To sympathizers of Sacco and Vanzetti he has seemed a man with a cloven hoof. But in no usual sense of the term is this man a villain. Although probably not a great jurist, he is without doubt as capable and conscientious as the average Massachusetts Judge, and if that's enough to warm him in wet weather by all means let him stick the compliment against his ribs.
Webster Thayer has a thousand friends. He has courage, sincerity and convictions. Judge Thayer is a good man, and when he says that he made every effort to give a fair trial to the Anarchists brought before him, undoubtedly he thinks it and he means it. Quite often I've heard the remark: "I wonder how that man sleeps at night? He saw his duty and he thinks he did it. And Gov. Fuller, also, is not in any accepted sense of the word a miscreant. Before becoming Governor he manufactured bicycles.
Nobody was cheated by his company. He loves his family and pays his debts. Very much he desires to be Governor again, and there is an excellent chance that this ambition will be gratified. Other Governors of Massachusetts have gone far, and it is not fantastic to assume that some day he might be President.
His is not a master mind, but he is a solid and substantial American, chiming in heartily with all our national ideals and aspirations. To me the tragedy of the conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti lies in the fact that this was not a deed done by crooks and knaves. In that case we could have a campaign with the slogan "Turn the rascals out," and set up for a year or two a reform Administration.
Nor have I had much patience with any who would like to punish Thayer by impeachment or any other process. Unfrock him and his judicial robes would fall upon a pair of shoulders not different by the thickness of a fingernail.
Men like Holmes and Brandeis do not grow on bushes. Popular government, as far as the eye can see, is always going to be administered by the Thayers and Fullers. It has been said that the question at issue was not the guilt or innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti, but whether or not they received a fair trial. I will admit that this commands my interest to some extent, but still I think it is a minor phase in the whole matter.
From a Utopian point of view the trial was far from fair, but it was not more biased than a thousand which take place in this country every year. It has been pointed out that the Public Prosecutor neglected to call certain witnesses because their testimony would not have been favorable to his case. Are there five District Attorneys, is there one, in the whole country who would do otherwise? Several points in the official decision of Gov.
Fuller betray a state of mind unfortunate under the circumstances. It seems to me that the whole tone of Gov. Fuller's statement was apologetic, but this perhaps is debatable. There can be no question, however, that he fell into irrelevancies. Surely this is beside the point. Had this been one of the most considerate murders ever committed in the State of Massachusetts, Sacco and Vanzetti would still have been deserving of punishment if guilty.
The contention of the defense has always been that the accused men had no part in the affair. The savagery of the killing certainly is wholly extraneous to the issue. But these references of the Governor are worse than mere wasted motion. Unconsciously he has made an appeal to that type of thinker who says: "Why all this sympathy for those two anarchists and none for the unfortunate widow of the paymaster's guard?
Again Gov. Fuller writes: "It is popularly supposed that he Madeiros confessed to committing the crime. The Governor may be within his rights in deciding that Madeiros lied, and for some self-seeking reason, but it is not only popularly supposed but also true that he did make a confession.
This, I must say, seems to me a rather frowsy sort of psychology. Assuming that Madeiros took part in the crime, fired some shots and sped quickly away in an automobile, how could he be expected to remember the happenings in any precise detail? I have known men who ran seventy yards across the goal line in some football game and after this was over they knew little or nothing of what happened while excitement gripped them.
I would be much more inclined to believe Madeiros a liar if he had been able to give a detailed and graphic account of everything which happened during the flurry. This employee had no memorandum to assist his memory. In this brief paragraph I think I detect much bias. By speaking of the witness as "a former employee," Gov.
Fuller seems to endeavor to discredit him. And yet the man who testified may be wholly worthy to be believed, even though he eventually took another job. Nor does the fact that his deposition was made in Italy militate against it.
Truth may travel even across an ocean. Assuming that Sacco did go to the Consulate as he has said, why should it be expected that his arrival would create such a stir that everyone there from the Consul down would have marked his coming indelibly? And this witness for the defense, according to Fuller, "had no memorandum to assist his memory.
There were other witnesses to whom the Governor gave credence who did not come with blueprints or flashlight photographs of happenings. Memory was all that served them and yet Fuller believed because he chose to.
One important point the Governor neglected to mention in dealing with the testimony of the Consulate clerk. The employee happened to fix Sacco in his mind by reason of a striking circumstance. The laborer, ignorant of passport requirements, brought with him to the Consulate not the conventional miniature but a large-sized crayon enlargement.
And to my mind this should have been a clinching factor in the validity of the alibi. Fuller has vindicated Judge Thayer of prejudice wholly upon the testimony of the record. Apparently he has overlooked entirely the large amount of testimony from reliable witnesses that the Judge spoke bitterly of the prisoners while the trial was on. The record is not enough. Anybody who has ever been to the theater knows it is impossible to evaluate the effect of a line until you hear it read.
It is just as important to consider Thayer's mood during the proceedings as to look over the words which he uttered. Nor am I much moved at the outcries of admiration from editorial writers who have expressed delight at the courage of the Governor of Massachusetts.
Readily I will admit that by his decision he has exposed himself to the danger of physical violence. This is courage, but it is one of the more usual varieties. To decide in favor of Sacco and Vanzetti would have required a very different sort of courage.
Such action upon Fuller's part might very possibly have blasted his political future. I am afraid there is no question that a vast majority of the voters in the Bay State want to see the condemned men die. I don't know why. Clearly it depends upon no careful examination of the evidence. Mostly the feeling rests upon the fact that Sacco and Vanzetti are radicals and that they are foreigners. Also the backbone of Massachusetts, such as it is, happens to be up because of criticism beyond the borders of the State.
Five times as many telegrams of praise as those of censure have come to the Governor, according to the official statement of his secretary. In such circumstances it seems to me that his courage in the business is of no great importance. From now on, I want to know, will the institution of learning in Cambridge which once we called Harvard be known as Hangman's House?
The New York World has always believed in allowing the fullest possible expression of individual opinion to those of its special writers who write under their own names.
The New York World could not conscientiously accept the responsibility for continuing to publish such articles. For the theory that the opinions of a columnist are wholly disassociated from the principles of a paper is ingenious but not practical. Broun himself concedes this to the considerable extent of libel, obscenity, blasphemy and Presidential elections.
He concedes it to the full extent in signing a contract in which, as the party of the second part, he agrees that he "shall and will carry out the directions of the party of the first part or its executive editors in the discharge of his duties. I am sure Mr. Broun will be the first to declare that he has never been directed to write a single word against his conscience. The issue is simply whether or not he may direct the New York World to publish his column against its conscience.
There ought to be a place in New York City for a liberal newspaper. No daily has ventured into the vast territory which lies between the radical press and the New York World. The radicals themselves are meagerly served in English-language papers. There will be no argument, I think, that the World comes closest to being an American Manchester Guardian , but it is at best on the outer rim of the target. Possibly the contention may be raised that there are not enough liberals in New York to support a daily paper.
It seems to me the try is worth making. Liberals need not be born. They can be trained by care and kindness.
The word "liberal" itself has fallen into disrepute. To a radical it is a label for a man who professes friendship and then rushes away for his thirty pieces of silver as soon as the crisis comes. In the eyes of the conservatives a liberal is a dirty Red who probably bought his dinner coat with Russian gold.
Neither interpretation is accurate and it should not be impossible to expose the fallacy of such reasoning. First of all, there must be a tradition and that takes time.
There was the possibility of an enduring association of political liberals when Theodore Roosevelt started the Progressive Party. The leadership was not ideal and many of the followers who clustered around the Colonel were about as liberal as Frank A. Still it was effective leadership and we have none now. Lacking a political haven, the liberal of America might still be rallied into the support of some powerful daily paper content to run the risk of expressing minority thought.
This discussion is confined to the New York field. Perhaps in some other city such a paper does exist. I do possibly the Baltimore Sun lives up to the requirements. The World does not because it switches front so frequently. Nobody has a right to demand that an editor shall never change his mind. New facts on any given situation may require a complete right-about-face. But the World on numerous occasions has been able to take two, three, or even four different stands with precisely the same material in hand.
So constant were the shifts during the Sacco-Vanzetti case that the paper seemed like an old car going up a hill. In regard to Nicaragua the World has thundered on Thursdays and whispered on Monday mornings. Again and again the paper has managed to get a perfect full-Nelson on some public problem only to let its opponent slip away because its fingers were too feeble.
It does not seem to me that the paper possesses either courage or tenacity. Of the honest intentions of all its executives I have not the slightest doubt.
I think the fault lies in a certain squeamishness. That there should be some reaction from the flagrant pornography of the tabloids is no more than reasonable, but this development in journalism cannot be met with prudishness. To be specific I cite a World editorial on the recent squabble about the proposed birth-control exhibit at the Parents' Exposition in Grand Central Palace.
In the beginning Mrs. Sanger's organization was promised a place and this promise was later rescinded at the demand of the Board of Education. The advice of the World to the birth controllers was that they should go quietly and make no commotion. It may be obvious to the World, but I must insist that the reasons for exclusion are not so evident to me. I should think that a building swarming with children ought to be a very logical place for a birth-control exhibit.
The fact of the matter is that in the mind of the World there is something dirty about birth control. In a quiet way the paper may even approve of the movement, but it is not the sort of thing one likes to talk about in print.
Some of the readers would be shocked, and the World lives in deadly terror of shocking any reader. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Sanger and her associates intended nothing more dreadful than an exhibit of charts showing population curves and such statistical material. It is the term "birth control" which frightened the newspaper. Not so long ago a Sunday editor insisted on editing a contribution to one of the newspaper columns. Somebody had written in to say that before the triumphs of Lindbergh most Americans had regarded all Scandinavians as dull-witted.
During the war the World was active in attacking hyphenated loyalty, but to the paper's credit it should be remarked that it indulged in far less red-baiting than any of its rivals. Now that hostilities have ended, the World cannot get over a certain group consciousness. It has, in addition to "Swedish readers," "Methodist readers," "Baptist readers," "Italian readers," and, perhaps above all, "Catholic readers. This, of course, is ridiculously wide of the mark.
The World of today has few roots in the Jewish community. Very probably it does command a considerable circulation among the young intellectual group of the East Side, but the Times is very obviously the Bible of the arrived and successful Jewish citizen of New York.
As a matter of fact, it is my experience that there is very little clannishness among the Jews of New York. There is less standardization than in any other group. Save for downright abuse there is no resentment. The Irish are quite a different proposition. Admitting the danger of generalities I would contend that the Irish are the cry-babies of the Western world.
Even the mildest quip will set them off into resolutions and protests. And still more precarious is the position of the New York newspaperman who ventures any criticism of the Catholic Church. There is not a single New York editor who does not live in mortal terror of the power of this group.
Of course, if anybody dared, nothing in the world would happen. If the church can bluff its way into a preferred position the fault lies not with the Catholics but with the editors. But New York will never know a truly liberal paper until one is founded which has no allegiance with and no timidity about any group, racial, religious or national.
Perhaps the first thing needed for a liberal paper is capital, but even more important is courage. Harvard University has discharged twenty scrubwomen rather than raise their wages from thirty-five to thirty-seven cents an hour. The scrubwomen themselves asked for no increase in salary, but it so happens that the State of Massachusetts has a minimum wage law which provides boards to set certain standards of pay for women and minors in certain industries.
When the board called the university's attention to the fact that it was underpaying its scrubwomen Harvard's answer was to discharge them. The university has announced that it will replace them with men who may perhaps be able to do a greater amount of work, and there is no minimum wage for men.
Possibly ten men will be able to do the work of twenty middle-aged and elderly women. This will result in a considerable saving to the university.
Any working newspaperman is naturally pleased when the editor finds it necessary to sit down and write a piece. My gratification was double because in this case it gave me one more day of vacation. But, naturally, I am grieved to find Roy W. Howard enmeshed in error. He objects to my running for Congress on the Socialist ticket in the Seventeenth District, New York, for four reasons:. One and two seem to square off pretty well from Mr.
Howard's point of view, although I want to say a little more about the second later. In saying that journalism is more important than politics and that Broun could be "more constructive in a column than in Congress" Mr. Howard raises an issue which does not exist. The two things are not mutually exclusive. During the campaign this column will appear as usual. I don't expect to see it any better or any worse. When and if elected I should most certainly have daily opinions and the desire to see them in newsprint.
There is no reason why a man or a woman could not be both columnist and Congressman. If Mr. Howard disagrees I suggest that he secure an option on the newspaper services of Mrs. Ruth Pratt to be exercised immediately after election day. The real sticking point is party affiliation. Surely it would be far more embarrassing for a liberal newspaper to have its columnist affiliated with the Tammany machine or the Republican organization of Sam Koenig than to be serving under the leadership of Norman Thomas.
Indeed, the Telegram supported Thomas for mayor, and I trust that it will also indorse him this year in his fight for Congress. But I don't know. Right here comes the weakness of an individual or an organization construing independence as meaning a permanent place on the sidelines.
In order to have any coherence of policy it is necessary to make something more than annual alliances. At times the Scripps-Howard independence becomes little more than erratic whimsy.
A liberal, for instance, may be pardoned if he rubs his eyes and asks querulously, "What is this liberal independence," when he observes the Telegram supporting in one national election a La Follette and the next time around a Hoover.
As the rowing experts say, the boat doesn't seem to run well between strokes. I think it not in the least inconsistent for Mr. Howard to stop well short of complete acceptance of the Socialist program and, nevertheless, support Thomas for mayor, as was the case last year. It would be silly for a passenger to say, "I can't get on that Van Cortlandt Park express, because I want to go only as far as 72nd Street.
Why shouldn't they get on board? We'll let them off when they think they've reached their destination. Independent liberals always get beaten in American elections because they reserve their commitments until a month or so before election.
Sam Koenig and John F. Curry work three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Organization can't be beaten without organization. The Socialist Party offers the only existing machinery by which the Republican-Democratic alliance can be overthrown. It is hopeless to try to cleanse these parties from within. That's been tried. Pratt herself made a gallant effort to free the local Republican organization of Koenigism I sat and watched a paper die.
We waited in the home of a man who once had run it. The World was ended. Swope, where have you been buying your apples? If I could, by raising my hand, bring dead papers back to life I'd do so. Sometimes in this column I have opposed the theories of those who would break up mergers, end chain stores and try the trick of unscrambling large-scale production. I've said that this could not be done-that it wasn't even expedient. In the long run the happiness of all of us depends upon increased efficiency and a shorter sum of toil.
That's true. I still believe it. I wouldn't weep about a shoe factory or a branch line railroad shutting down. But newspapers are different. In recent years the word "agitator" is almost always used as a term of reproach. In fact, the imagination supplies the prefix "red.
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