You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Friday December 4, 1903
From The International Socialist Review: The Best Books of 1903
W. E. B. Du Bois
Jack London
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Now the Review did not actually name these two books the best of 1903; that is entirely our opinion. The following book reviews are from the November issue:
The Call of the Wild. Jack London.
The Macmillan Company. Cloth. 231 pp. $1.50.
We have no hesitation in saying that, considered simply as a story, this book will rank among the great books of the beginning of the century. As an animal story it easily beats Kipling in his own field. It is the story of "Buck," a dog, who, raised the pampered pet of a California ranch, is stolen and sold to the Klondike. He meets his master in the dog tamer who takes him in hand and he learns the terrible power of the club. This prepares him for the "law of club and fang" that rules throughout the Northland. He discovers that to slip, to give way, to fall, is to die. He learns the tricks of the trade, and fits himself into the environment until he is better suited to it than those who were born into it. He finds his way to the leadership of the team of dogs and, then, adding to the characteristics gained from the new environment, the experience and memories retained from the old, he becomes a dog of fame. He suffers in the hands of incompetent and cruel drivers to fall at last into the hands of one with whom he formed a companionship that was akin to human friendship on both sides. Buck returns from a long hunt to find his master killed by the Indians. He attacks these and for the first time kills the master of animals, "he had killed man, the noblest game of all and he had killed it in the face of the "law of club and fang." And here he is left, having become the Evil Spirit of a certain valley which he rules at the head of his pack.
You do not need to search for social philosophy in it unless you want to. But, if you do, it is one of the most accurate studies of "reversion to type" that has ever been published. And here and there throughout the work one catches glimpses that tell us that the author is a Socialist.
The Souls of Black Folk. By Professor W. E. B. Du Bois.
McClurg & Co. Chicago. Cloth. 265 pp. $1.20.
In the eyes of capitalism, Booker T. Washington is idealized as the leader of the negro race in America. There is no question whatever but what he may represent a social stage through which the negro must pass before he can enter into that heritage of capitalism which it is the business of socialism to realize. Nevertheless we cannot feel but when the history of the black race is written, the author of "The Souls of Black Folk" will rank infinitely above the instrument of capitalism who is perfecting black wage slaves at Tuskegee.
It would be hard to imagine two minds more diametrically opposed than those of Du Bois and Washington. Du Bois is poetical, fanciful, he sees visions and builds castles. Washington is practical, mechanical, he glorifies the dollar and gains endowments for his college. It was impossible that two such men should not come into conflict, and we find one of the principal essays in this work devoted to "Mr. Washington and Others," in which, in a quiet, non-controversial manner, the weaknesses of Mr. Washington's movement are pointed out.
But, after all, it is rather as a series of vivid pictures that the essays appeal to one, more than for the philosophy which they contain. On the question of intermarriage which is always flung at the defenders of negro equality, a most striking answer is found on page 106: "When you cry, Deliver us from the vision of intermarriage, they answer that legal marriage is infinitely better than systematic concubinage and prostitution. And if in just fury you accuse their vagabonds of violating women, they also in fury quite as just may reply: The rape which you gentlemen have done against helpless black women in defiance of your own laws is written on the foreheads of two million mulattoes, and written in ineffaceable blood. And finally, when you fasten crime upon the race as its peculiar trait, they answer that slavery was the arch-crime, and lynching and lawlessness its twin abortion; that color and race are not crimes, and yet there it is which in this land receives most unceasing condemnation, North, East, South and West."
In his essay "Of the Sons of Master and Man" he shows much of an appreciation of the economic causes which underlie the present social relations in the South, but has not seemed to grasp the possibility of evolution into a better social stage. Although now and then there are portions that seem somewhat over drawn in style, yet, on the whole, there is such tremendous strength that it covers up an occasional excess of adjectives. You realize that he is tremendously in earnest, that he has really pulled aside the veil that divides the races to let one see the inmost souls of black folk.
SOURCE
The International Socialist Review
-of November 1903
https://play.google.com/... (p. 327 of 828)
Photos:
Jack London
http://jacklondonfdn.org/...
W. E. B. Du Bois
http://www.upenn.edu/...
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Thursday December 4, 1913
From the Weekly-Journal Miner "Labor Leaders Under the Ban"
Federal Grand Jury Returns Indictments Against Officers and Organizers of
Mine Workers Union
By Associated Press
PUEBLO, Dec. 1.-Federal indictments against national officers and organizers of the United Mine Workers of America were returned by a jury investigating the coal strike. Ten indictments were made public and fifteen more will be held until arrests can be made.
President John P. White, Vice President Frank J. Hayes and Treasurer William P. Green were indicted on a charge of maintaining a monopoly of labor. Indictments charging conspiracy in restraint of trade and interfering with interstate traffic in coal were made against the others....
"The methods pursued by the Mine Workers of America in endeavors to force recognition of the union are an insult to conservative law abiding labor. They have resorted to measures that all fair-minded labor organizations should repudiate; have brought in agitators and irresponsible aliens who have become a menace to the peace, prosperity and lives of citizens."
SOURCE
Weekly Journal-Miner
(Prescott, Arizona)
-of Dec 3, 1913
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Wednesday December 4, 2013
More from the two greatest books of 1903:
Now, that there were no two better books written in 1903 than these two, is entirely my opinion. But I would love to hear about other great books written in 1903. Very possible that I've missed some.
The book reviews above cannot do justice to the beautiful writing styles of both men. Both men were Socialist, but their writing reminds me of poetry/prose rather than heavy handed theory.
Jack London:
The Law of Club and Fang
Buck's first day on the day beach was like a nightmare. Every hour was filled with shock and surprise. He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial. No lazy, sun-kissed life was this, with nothing to do but loaf and be bored. Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment's safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril. There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these dogs and men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang.
He had never seen dogs fight as these wolfish creatures fought, and his first experience taught him an unforgettable lesson. It is true, it was a vicarious experience, else he would not have lived to profit by it. Curly was the victim. They were camped near the log store, where she, in her friendly way, made advances to a husky dog the size of a full-grown wolf, though not half so large as she. There was no warning, only a leap in like a flash, a metallic clip of teeth, a leap out equally swift, and Curly's face was ripped open from eye to jaw.
It was the wolf manner of fighting, to strike and leap away; but there was more to it than this. Thirty or forty huskies ran to the spot and surrounded the combatants in an intent and silent circle. Buck did not comprehend that silent intentness, nor the eager way with which they were licking their chops. Curly rushed her antagonist, who struck again and leaped aside. He met her next rush with his chest, in a peculiar fashion that tumbled her off her feet. She never regained them, This was what the onlooking huskies had waited for. They closed in upon her, snarling and yelping, and she was buried, screaming with agony, beneath the bristling mass of bodies.
To Read the Book:
http://www.gutenberg.org/...
About the Book:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
W. E. B. Du Bois:
The Forethought
Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here at the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line. I pray you, then, receive my little book in all charity,
studying my words with me, forgiving mistake and foible for sake of the faith and passion that is in me, and seeking the grain of truth hidden there.
I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual world in which ten thousand thousand Americans live and strive. First, in two chapters I have tried to show what Emancipation meant to them, and what was its aftermath. In a third chapter I have pointed out the slow rise of personal leadership, and criticized candidly the leader who bears the chief burden of his race to-day. Then, in two other chapters I have sketched in swift outline the two worlds within and without the Veil, and thus have come to the central problem of training men for life. Venturing now into deeper detail, I have in two chapters studied the struggles of the massed millions of the black peasantry, and in another have sought to make clear the present relations of the sons of master and man. Leaving, then, the white world, I have stepped within the Veil, raising it that you may view faintly its deeper recesses,--the meaning of its religion, the passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle of its greater souls. All this I have ended with a tale twice told but seldom written, and a chapter of song.
To read the book:
http://www.bartleby.com/...
About the book:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
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Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal-Paul Robeson
Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.
Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.
-BY Alfred Tennyson