Nase Novine, May 05, 1982

              this vice. He illustrates the point with
personal stories: a girl who was half Polish
and half Jewish and the plight she found
herself in, the Italians, American Italians,
and the Jewish problem. The Jewish
problem isn't necessarily a Jewish prob-lem,
its a human problem. At one time
there was a program in the United States to
deport the Jews to Dakota, in order to
populate the Dakotas. Later in the book,
Adamic's concern is Yugoslavia.
Hitler invades Yugoslavia in 1941 and
Yugoslavia is crushed in a week. A quarter
of a million Serbs and Slovenes were in
concentration camps and guerilla warfare
broke out. The reprisals of the Germans
against the Yugoslav people were great.
For every German killed, one hundred
Serbs had to die. He discusses the plight
of Gerrpan Americans, how they were
driven to approve of Hitler because of the
boycott of German goods and of Germans.
The old country feeling is very strong in
Germans about the fatherland. American
Germans did not want Hitler to win, but
they did want him to destroy Russia and
especially the British Empire because of
the humiliation they received during World
War I. However, they did not want him to
gain dominance over the United States.
They were hoping that the United States
would not go to war with Germany the way
they had in 1917-1- 8. Adamic likes to talk
about the passage into the future. He has
some predictions. He feels war in Europe
is inevitable. At the end of the war there
will be a sort of United States of
continental Europe, but people will be
citizens of the world, with the ideal of
international boundaries being broken
down. He ends the book by talking about
his project — The Plymouth Rock Ellis
Island. He points out how the United
States began as an extension of the British
Isles but can't be seen that way any more.
LABOUR
Adamic has a great social conscious-ness.
All his work contains the reoccurring
plea for the breakdown of the class
structure.
Laughing in the Jungle (1934) if.
Adamic's account of American capitalist .
This system is doomed. It is inivitaoie
that those on the bottom will become
dissatisfied with their lot and try to
overthrow the system. Dynamite — The
Story of Class Violence in America (1931)
is an account of this ongoing struggle.
Dynamite is the history of unions, the
growth of unions in the United States, the
reason why unions exist and how they
came into being. More than just a history
on the growth of unions in the United
States, this book contains Louis Adamic's
economic and social philosophy.
He begins his book by saying "I am not
and never was a member of any labour
union or political party or movement in the
United States". The book begins in the
early 1800s discussing the oppression of
the workers and the way the employer saw
the workers. The workers were seen as
foolish, hot-head- ed foreigners and their
demands were thought of as impudent
conduct. The labourers were thought af as
impudent conduct. The labourers were
ignorant immigrants and considered to be
scum. Adamic feels that unions came
about when the working situation became
intolerable. He quotes a communist
saying "Fight or starve". Ha talks about
the conditions in the coal mines in
Pennsylvania which led to tha early riots in
the 1800s. The people in the mines were
primarily Irish immigrants working in
extremely hazardous conditions. When
the conditions got bad enough they
resorted to terrorism to make their point.
They would blow up the mine and kill the
owners of the mine and of course, the
organization was secret, and they went by
the code name of the Molly Maguires. In
Adamic's opinion, the reason was that
they couldn't sit down and talk to the
owners. Workers would just resort to
terrorism to make their point. The fact is
that the United States was born in a
revolution. There has always been radical
class divider. Some have and some don't
have and yet there is enouht for everyone,
if the system of distribution could be a
little more equitable.
In the 1920s, the United States predicted
the downfall of the Soviet regime and them
was anti-re- d hysteria. They played up all
the brutalities of the Bolshevik revolution.
They were afraid of a similar revolution in
!це United States so they exploited fear
and cultivated fear among the workers.
Also, Adamic is very critical of the work
p.ofiteering that went on in the Uni'eu
States during the First World War. Aftp
the First World War, the employers, with
the power of their war profiteering wealth,
really took advantage of the situation.
There was a great deal of unemploument
and chaotic social conditions. This brou-ght
about a nation-wid- e drive to America-nize
the American workers and the workers
were primarily immigrants. The workers
wanted better working conditions and were
upset with company welfare policies,
group insurance and other such inven-tions.
They were pacified and never really
got what they wanted. Therefore, unions
wire formed to try and help the worker.
Adamic is very critical of unions,
because he sees unions as a racket and
unions are populated by criminals. There
is a distinct correlation between unions
and rackettering. In the beginning days of
the unions, they hired gangsters for
protection from employers and the anti-union
activities. In order to have a bit of
clout, the unions, hired gangsters. These
were the dynamiters and if the workers
didn't get their demands, they blew up
struggle between the haves and have nots.
Crime is just another capitalist tool; its a
billion dollar industry. The class struggle
in the United States has forced the
workmen into the criminal clas. In order to
achieve economic betterment, people had
to resort to crime. Criminals come from
classes which suffer the most from
poverty, uncertain and unhealthy enviro-nments
and evil conditions of life and
"' our The poorer a man is, the less h3
can indulge in honesty. The social
.-.-
micture is oorrupi, inhuman and brutali-zing
from top to bottom.
The book is called Dynamite because
dynamite si the way to bring about what
the workers conceive is just social order.
Dynamite was the tool used. It became one
of the most powerful elements in the
American nation during the 1920s. He
spends a great deal of time talking about
Chicago and the working conditions in
Chicago between 1922 and 1933. This was
when Al Capone and his gang ruled the
city using dynamite. Criminality became a
very important element in American life. It
dified all agencies of the law. The gang
controlled municipal governments and
courts, and fear of violence decided
economic and other issues. The recketeers
were so powerful, they sold jobs. The large
factory workers paid the gangsters for
protection against their workers. Therefo-re,
the gangsters were tools of the
capitalists. They also brought tension
when the workers were rioting. Blowing up
factories brought a lot of publicity and
sympathy to employers instead of emplo-yees.
Adamic sees violence as a very
costly way of drawing attention to the
problem, although it does get results. He
states that the America society is ready for
a revolution, but the workers must
organize their minds. Workers will be
violent until they organize their minds to
the spirit of the revolution. The unions and
or revolutionary stirrings in the United
States. Therefore the labour movement has
always been prominant in the United
States. Louis Adamic blames the imperso-nal
hature and social irresponsibility of
capitalism for the violence that began in
the 1800s and continues to present day
with class structure. He sees the United
States as the crossroad when he wrote this
book in the 1930s during the depression.
Would the country go right or left? Aj the
time he thought right would be the first
course taken but the United States would
eventually go left because of its revok'tio-nar- u
nature. It is a country founded in
revolution after all. After the Amencan
Civil War in the 1860s there was a sprout of
Marxism in the United States. Marxism
was very appealing. He talks about
Abraham Lincoln and sees him as a sort of
socialist. His views were on how the
country was to be governed. He felt he was
socialistic and that Lincoln coming from
an impoverished background had the right
ingredients for being leftist. The narrow,
selfish viewpoint of employers led to the
birth of the labour movement. The labour
movement was born out of the illtreatment
of the employees.
Adamic thinks they are just settling cheap.
Wtah they should be struggling for is a
complete new social structure, where the
workers receive a share of the profits.
Right now they are being paid off to work
and are not really part of the system. This
is creating all the bitterness in this large
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