by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Continuing with this post on the 6 April 1929 edition of The Open Forum, the weekly publication of the Southern California Branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which was formed nine years earlier during the height of the Red Scare that followed World War I and during an era of concerted crackdowns against suspected far left-wing organizations and individuals, we turn to the third page.
This section, titled “From Varied Viewpoints” included a letter to the editor from W.H. Kindig under the heading of “On Drys and Drinking” and addressed a piece written by frequent contributor “G.H.S.,” one of which was covered in part one of this post. Kindig professed surprise at a commentary on Prohibition and wrote “I supposed that the superficial thinkers who class infractions of the Eighteenth Amendment with such crimes as theft and murder were confined to a few illiterates.”
It was added that there was unanimous agreement about the legal responses to those latter crimes, but Kindig commented that there were not many Americans who had an issue with the consumption of alcoholic beverages and that “drys” did not want to make that a crime. He further claimed to know Prohibition supporters who had their own stash and whiskey and rationalized this by claiming that they were moderate in their habit, but supported the cause because “they are trying to save the other fellow.”
Concluding that if the feeling about drinking was the same as about murder and theft, enforcement of Prohibition would be a simple matter, Kindig offered that,
Those militant, crusading and often hypocritical drys are afraid to let the matter come before the whole American people in a referendum. If they felt so sure about the “temper of the American people” they should welcome a referendum . . . But not law can be enforced without the consent of practically the whole body of the governed.
Four years later, the 18th Amendment became and remains the only amendment to the Constitution that was repealed.
The short essay under the name of “Wholesale Misbehavior” was an excerpt written by psychiatrist Samuel D. Schmalhausen (1890-1964) for his new book, Why We Misbehave, and is very interesting to ponder nearly a century later with respect to our own time (though maybe it could apply to any era?).
The writer was a public high school English teacher in New York City who was fired during World War I for disloyalty because of his pacifism, though his work with labor union organization and his membership in the Socialist Party were evidently major factors. His dismissal led Schmalhausen, with support from such notable left-wing figures as Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle and a contributing editor to The Open Forum, to move into new areas.
This included his studies in psychoanalysis, sex and Marxist politics and thought and he established an organization to provide an outlet for his work. A collaboration with George Goetz, known as Victor F. Calverton in his persona as a radical leftist, included Schmalhausen serving on the editorial board of Calverton’s Modern Quarterly, which was politically unaffiliated and also dealt with the arts. When the publication, which became a monthly, moved more towards far-left politics, Schmalhausen left.
In this fragment, he criticized “the low-thoughted bungling inadequacy of civilization” for its reliance on the legal system and politicians in addressing misbehavior, calling attorneys, judges, police officials, prison and jail officials and elected leaders “a crew of self-centered unimaginative mediocrities as well equipped for the task of ameliorating human life as pugilists [boxers], butchers and hangmen.” One wonders if his firing was somewhat due to his fiery rhetoric!
Yet, he continued, on a tack that somewhat belied that broadside,
If we humbly acknowledge that our civilization is merely a complicated form of savagery, at best simply the higher barbarism, brutishness wearing an attractive mask of refinement, we shall appreciate the truth that if civilization means anything really worth while, it must reveal a high degree of humanization. Humanization is attested by the general presence in human relations of compassion.
Compassion, Schmalhausen went on, moved beyond pity and charity and is a “social sympathy” guided by a relative objective view of justice. Observing that there was a “rough estimate of the vileness of society” through unjust behavior that was generally considered to be of major import and effect, he noted that,
Our dirty civilization is nurtured by violence, hate, envy, inequality, injustice, legal thuggery, moralistic humbuggery, religious hypocrisy, personal rapacious egotism, a truly troglodyte contempt for what is sensitive and sincere in human nature. This so-called civilization, which is a pig-sty made somewhat inhabitable by an inordinate use of perfume, lives by callousness and perfidy. The perfumed perfidy of superior brains under this regime of sanctified savagery is the one conspicuous fact with which as sensitive critics of civilization we ought to reckon.
Having simultaneously invoked sensitivity, sympathy and humility while savaging those with which he disagreed, Schmalhausen’s excerpt ends with the admonition that injustices perpetrated through “legalistic and moralistic cunning” was so pervasive that it “fills every nook and cranny of our exploitative civilization.” It is not difficult at all to see what he was so eagerly and zealously a Marxist.
The Socialist Labor Party portion of the page announced three new pamphlets, priced at a nickel, with one concerning spies planted within the labor movement; another that offered that Socialism was to be guided by “the sociological topography,” whatever that entailed, of the country; and the third propounding that voting was meaningless without “intelligent economic action” of the socialistic sort. A dance was also promoted at the auditorium in the South Park section in Los Angeles, where “a good time is assured to all.” Lastly, the editorial section of Weekly People of the 6th was promised to be useful to those involved in labor issues and could be found at a couple of locations and Open Forum meetings.
The ACLU recently reconstituted an effort begun under the administration of President Calvin Coolidge and renewed with the recent inauguration of his successor, Herbert Hoover, to secure a proclamation to return rights of citizenship to 1,500 persons “convicted under the war-time espionage act solely for their utterances.” A joint Congressional resolution sponsored by Senator John J. Blaine, a recent governor and attorney general of Wisconsin and a progressive Republican, and Representative Fiorello H. La Guardia, another member of the progressive wing of the GOP and who became famous later as the reformist mayor of New York City, was introduced. Listed supporters of the ACLU petition included Jane Addams, John Dewey, and W.E.B. DuBois, among the more than 40 persons.
Ruth Skeen (1879-1947) came to Los Angeles from New Mexico for a typical reason, her husband’s poor health. She was a major figure in the suffrage movement in New Mexico and locally as well as championed better relations between African-Americans and whites, so her contribution to the publication was a review of Black America, a new book by Scott Nearing (1883-1983). He was an economist who led the prestigious Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, but who was ousted in 1915 because of his increasingly radical politics. A stint in Ohio led to his firing in 1917 for pacifism and he was indicted and then acquitted for his published views. He was so independently-minded that he was expelled from the Communist Party in the Twenties and later championed simple living through a “back to nature” ideal.
Given Nearing’s academic background, Skeen began by summarizing that the book “is a valuable contribution to the economic and sociological history of our country since it deals with the colored people not as a social problem, but as an oppressed race.” Nearing’s approach was judged to be dispassionate in its determination, not surprisingly, that the oppression visited upon Black Americans was “largely economic.” Skeen added, as if this was somehow not understood by African-Americans who lived the experiences detailed in the work,
All dark races should study this book if they cherish any illusions about the justice of the white American ruling class toward themselves, for within its pages are found proof of the precedent for dealing with all as they deal with the twelve million dark Americans who comprise a tenth of the total population of our United States.
Skeen went on to observe that, from early in American history, “certain colored people have displayed unusual capacities in all important lines of endeavor” while commenting that “these have not been treated as superior individuals contributing to American culture, but as members of an inferior race with no rights to personal or social recognition.” This “color-psychosis,” she continued only was to be found in the United States and “is almost infantile in its absurdity.”
The reviewer noted that “the colored man is rapidly changing . . . more rapidly than whites realize” and possessed “a powerful race consciousness” and she inquired, “what will happen to us when these twelve million dark people whom we have exploited, robbed, [and] despised, begin to think and act in race rhythm?” She asserted that “the American Negro is less alien to us than any other race” and followed this with “the best white blood flows in the veins of thousands of them.” This meant commonalities in ambition, interests and memories experienced by no other ethnic group in America, though she hedged by wondering if these observations “be any compliment” to African-Americans.
The back page is a mixture of event listings, advertisements and short news items. With the latter, it was noted that Fred Firestone, arrested the previous October under a charge of “alien anarchy” was recommended for imminent deportation and the matter referred to the federal labor department, while his attorney, John Beardsley, planned to file a habeus corpus petition on the grounds on unlawful detainer. A second man, Sophocles Deevranos, was held on $1,500 bail for the same charge and recommendation of deportation, though his case was being reviewed by local officials seeking more charges.
Aside from reports of a revocation of citizenship of a Pennsylvania barber and native of Hungary because of his membership in the Communist Party and the arrest of a labor organizer in the Keystone State during a silk millworkers’ strike, there was also the quoting of a psychiatrist at New York’s Sing Sing prison, who told that state’s legislative judiciary committee that “except in a few instances, no rich man ever went to the electric chair.” Another quote was from former Lord High Chancellor of England, Lord Buckmaster, who an attorney and Labor Party leader and who uttered that “the only hop for the human race lies in increasing the feeling of sanctity for human life,” otherwise, “we shall never get rid of slums, of poverty, or of crime.”
Advertisements were for The Workmen’s Sick and Death Benefit Fund, a typical mutual benefit society, and this one having some 60,000 members in 344 branches in 28 states; contributing editor Primm D. Noel’s Highland Park insurance business; a presentation by Lewis Browne, a rabbi denoted an “orator of grace ad charm” for a talk, sponsored by the Pacific Celebrities Forum, on “Can We Do Without Religion?” at the Trinity Auditorium (which still stands on Grand Avenue near 9th Street); and a pair of presentations by Professor Gaetano Salvemini on fascism on the 7th and 14th at the Open Forum series at Music Art (formerly Blanchard) Hall on Broadway south of 2nd. There are also listed coming events for the International Workers of the World (the Wobblies), the Socialist Party, the Free Workers’ Forum, the Universal Book Shop and the International Brotherhood Welfare Association.
The ACLU has evolved in terms of its dissociation from direct political affiliation, though its paramount concern of protecting constitutional free speech rights remains over a century later. Looking back to these Southern California branch publications from the early days of the organization’s history is instructive and interesting as part of greater Los Angeles history during the Roaring Twenties.