1933

Restless New YorkBY WINIFRED JOHNSTON, '24

IF New York is restless itis only as a giant moves in his sleep,attempting to bring back to life a member of his body in which the blood hasceased circulating . Feeling his limbsdead, the great body turns. A groanissues from its lips . The feet movefeebly .But the convulsive agony is all un-

conscious. The brain of the giant stillslumbers .

On Cathedral Parkway the mothersbring out folding chairs to sit beforebank or synagogue ivhi!e their children.play. Boys skate in the street, hook rideson buses and express trucks, swipemoney to seek adventure in the movies .At eight o'clock in the evening the

Times Square subway pratforms are stillfull of people waiting for trains to takethem home from work : men, women,young girls-Woes, Bohunks, Negroes,Jews . A Westerner full of gin andcheer staggers to his feet to shake handswith a tall blond boy in a coonskin coat :"Shake, pal," says he, "I've been in NewYork five clays, and you're the first realAmerican I've seem"

At night the sky above the city glowspink from the reflection of millions ofNeon lights . At dawn the skyline, re-appearing, pierces the clouds against theblue .

It costs only a dollar to see the cityfrom the Empire State tower. It costsonly a nickel to see the tower througha telescope at Battery Park-and past thetower the stars.From the tower the daytime city is

revealed like a map suddenly becomeelevated . Purple canyons, spire afterspire, stupendous masses of steel and con-crete, the two rivers sweeping downwardto the sea."What a site for a city!" someone ex-

claims during a dinner at Columbia'sInternational Rouse."And how ugly in its realization!"

answers a Welchwoman, over in thestates for a year of study . "When I firstsaw your city, as I came in by boat, Iwept at its loveliness . Then I discovered

The Sooner Magazine

Fifth Avenue, with Fourth Avenue justbeyond it-the river, with its horriblerailroad tracks and warehouses! Yourlordly Hudson has been ruined! If onewants beauty one must go to the Seineor to the Thames.""Give us time!" answers the Ameri-

can. "New York has not yet had itsgreat fire and its Christopher Wren torebuild it . And is America alone in in-dustrial exploitation? Give us time for

search, the Rand School of Social Science;the Metropolitan Museum, the RoerichMuseum, the Museum of Modern Art,the Whitney Museum of American Art;the Riverside Church, the CommunityChurch Center, the Brooklyn and theNew York Ethical Societies; the Wash-ington Irving High School Series ofLectures and Recitals ; the WestchesterAmusement Center . Night after night,thousands of people attending lectures,recitals, laboratory and art classes;thousands of people seeking an antidoteto futility and despair.

mAt the New School for Social Research

classes in writing, painting, dancing;showings of drawings, films, music, dis-cussion of drama, politics, and physics.At the New School, too, Fritz Wittels

on general principles of psych,)analysis.At the Rand School, A. A. Brill on theFreudian contribution . At Irving Plaza,Alfred Adler on aspects of individualpsychology .At Columbia, a series of lectures on

American Ideals, delivered by eminentmembers of the American Academy ofArts and Letters : Nicholas Murray But-ler on politics, John H . Finley on edu-cation, Ralph Cortizzoz on art, HenryHadley on music.

There, late in the season, W. Rautens-trauch discusses Technocracy and its re-lation to the enrichment of human per-sonality . Consistently the engineeringprofessor refuses to allow a politicalinterpretation of r_chnical facts. "Whatis the aim, then, of your fact finding?"asks a questioner on the ground floor ."To give the means of life to everyone

23 7

willing to work for it," answers thetechnologist. A poorly dressed man leansintently over the balcony railing . "That'sO.K . with me, Professor," he shoutssuddenly, as the meeting breaks up .At City College a demonstration fol-

lows the dismissal of a young professorof English from the institution's nightschool . Alarm bells are set ringing allover the campus ; there are speeches, apublic trial of President Robinson atCentral Opera House, a hanging of thePresident in effigy . Denials by the ad-ministration that the instructor was dis-missed "because of Communistic activi-ties" ; a statement by the instructor thatthe director of the school's evening ses-sion had steadily opposed the activitiesof the Liberal Club, of which the Eng-lish teacher was supervisor, and that themeetings of the club on the campuswere twice broken up by police at ordersof the college administration .

In November, the International Con-ference of Universities on "Obligationsof the University to the Social Order"-called by the editor of Business Machines"one of the most important conferencesever held in America."Harold Swift, trustee of the Univer-

sity of Chicago, in a speech on the uni-versity and economic change, mentionsacademic freedom to give a berating toa young Chicago professor who hadarranged student visits to Illinois mines.Newspapers had played the visits up,Swift says, so that many of "the decentpeople of Chicago" had gained the ideathat the university faculty was full ofSocialists . Capitalists are making theirwills, he says, and it is well for univer-sities to remember it .

In the evening Trustee Swift is ans-~,yered . Charles Edward Merriam, mem-ber of President Hoover's Commissionon Social Trends and professor of gov-ernment at the University of Chicago,provides one of the thrilling momentsof the conference . In the midst of hisprepared address, Professor Merriamsuddenly raises his head to say, withsolemnity and calmness : "There are stillwitch-killers in Tennessee, in Chicago,and in New York . There is no freedomof speech among professors in Russia ;there is none among professors in Italy.When it becomes impossible for theprofessor in America to speak his freeopinion, then democracy has indeedfailed . When that happens the powersthat be can fight it out in the dark .And with the darkness will come ma-chine guns and clubs."

IIIWithin the barn-like entrance of

Madison Square Garden four mountedpolicemen keep guard against the onrushof people . Without, two on each sideof the great entrance on Eighth Avenue,are their fellows, holding the sidewalksagainst a plunging, jeering, eager, pot' .-

IFrom ten o'clock in the morning till

five in the afternoon the street curbs arelined with baby carriages. In Riverside

that, too."II

The Columbia Institute of Arts andSciences, the Town Hall Forum, the

Park the nurses chat with one another. Brooklyn Academy Series of Arts andLetters; the New School for Social Re-

238

ically-minded crowd. The trained horsesare very gentle . They can muzzle theirway through a mob of excited men andwomen or wheel their flanks in such away as to turn a horde without injuringan individual.

Once again the political parties aretaking their causes to the the people . De-mocracy is enjoying again the show itgets for its money. Republicans, Demo-crats, Socialists, and Communists, allrally their forces for the last time beforethe election of 1932 .Here in New York politics are as real

and exciting as in the early days ofAmerica's torch-light parades.

Fifty thousand tickets were issued forthe Hoover reception . At seven o'clock,an hour before the meeting is scheduledto begin, every one of the twenty-twothousand seats is filled. Two blocksaway a policeman tells a Republicansympathizer that his ticket for an or-chestra seat isn't worth the paper it isprinted on .

Tickets for the Socialist rally werebought four weeks in advance. This isa party which does not have a "warchest" of interested donations. But thetickets prove no more valuable in en-suring easy entrance to the Garden . Atseven o'clock the subway exit at FiftiethStreet is already jammed with peopleturned back from the doors. At SeventhAvenue, policemen join hands to preventa rush across the street . Only the boldsucceed in passing the mounted policetwo blocks below.

Franklin D. Roosevelt staged his tri-umphal show the night of the Repub-lican rally. Two nights after the So-cialists greet Norman Thomas, the Com-munists fill the Garden once more tocapacity .

Over on Manhattan Avenue, a longline of people wait outside the steps ofa brick building bearing the plate ofthe Monongahela Democratic Club . Theretainers of Tammany are having theirannual Christmas party. A policemantalking to a buxom, thick-legged wo-man watches a Negro pass a flask overto a pale, heavy-eyed Caucasian. Insidethe double windows of the MonongahelaClub the lucky ones are already munch-ing buns .

In the municipal election 135,000lose their votes by attempting to write inthe name of "Honest Joe McKee."Thousands of others who also wish togive Walker's successor their votes losetheirs when they find election machinesjammed by Tammanyites to preventany such writing in .Over in Brooklyn 15,000 fill the

Academy of Music to hear Scott Near-ing and James O'Neal debate whetherSocialism or Communism can best savethe country.

The Sooner Magazine

IVBroadway on Christmas night. At

the New York Theatre, Mary Wigmanhas taken twenty-seven curtain calls. Itis her troupe's American debut. Finallyshe yields to the insistence of the audi-ence . Cymbals clash . Out on thestage the dancers come again : hard,stern, proud, in the militant vitality ofa . new womanhood. Reluctantly theaudience lets them go and drifts out-doors to join the Broadway crowd.There are fewer electric signs on

Broadway this year. Radio has takenmany of the old advertisers. For a longtime now the theatres have been movingup beyond Times Square and into theside streets . Now almost the onlyamusement houses left on the GreatWhite Way are the movie palaces . Auc-tion houses, millinery shops, gymnasiumsand gyp bookstores spot the famous way.But here still are pleasure seekers, linedup along the curb, in front of the win-dows, surging up and down the MainStreet of the World.Where will the crowd go when Broad-

way is no more? We pass the automatwhere actors grab their noonday meals.One of the bookshops attracts attention."What goes on on Park Avenue?" asksits glaring sign . "Men, Women, andthe Neutral Sex." says another. Thewindow is full of half-opened books."What about the Frigid Woman?" asksa chapter heading. "This frank state-ment of a neglected subject-Formerly$2.95--now 98 cents," reads the placardin the corner . "Yah," shout two news-boys to the salesman in the door . "Yuhouta be ashamed of yerself . Filling upour minds with that dirty stuff!"The crowd laughs and passes on .

Down Forty-second Street we catch aglimpse of Billy Minsky's burlesquehouse and its flashing sign, "Maids With-out Uniforms ." On the sign at the topof the Times Building the little commachases frantically after the words pre-ceding it : like himself-ChristopherMorley says-always a little behind theworld and trying desperately to catchup.At the corner of Fiftieth and Sixth

Avenue stands Radio City . About teno'clock in the morning the crowd beginsto form a line . By eleven the line ex-tends down Fiftieth Street to Fifth Ave-nue. The doors open at eleven . Attwelve the price advances to fifty cents.Perhaps Frohman was right when he toldRoxy not to worry about the kind ofshow he put on in the amusement cen-ter : that the people would pay twenty-five cents to see the house alone, andthat the tourists would keep coming along time .

Rockefeller's Folly. Empty theatresall up and down Broadway, and emptyoffice buildings all around it . TheWinter Garden used to hold 5,000 peo-

May

ple. Radio City's Music Hall holds 6,-200. McIntyre and Heath led the billthe opening night. A man who wasthere told me that the show was stillgoing at 12 :45. "They had the biggesttheatre in the world on their hands,"says Walter Lippman, "and their ideaof entertainment was to give the peoplethe longest show in the world." Froma great distance the audience watchedone two-dimensional pigmy after anothercutting capers before a microphone .Personality succumbed before space. Nomusical show or variety number in theworld could hold out against such ahandicap . The tendency of Broadwaytoward better and bigger things hadfinally reached its logical end . Themovie had inherited the earth. Withthe kindest of intentions the critics coulddo nothing but enumerate the glories ofthe building . Within a week Roxy hadcut two numbers off of the bill and goneto the hospital . Within two weeks ofits opening the management announcedthat the Radio City Music Hall wouldjoin the de luxe houses showing firstrun pictures .Uptown the de luxe houses appeal to

the multitude with an extravagant pic-ture based upon the fall of Rome .Downtown, in the heart of UnionSquare, the little Acme Theatre showsfor fifteen cents a masterpiece of photo-graphy and direction, G. W. Popst'sKameradschaft, the simple story of thedisregarding of international borders byGerman workers who go across the oldwar frontier to help French fellow work-ers in a mine disaster .

In the little Workers' Theatre at theRand School of Social Science young ac-tors long out of jobs in the commercialtheatres of Broadway accept parts inplays designed to use the stage as aweapon of organized labor.Up on Broadway that disturbing satire

of current politics, Of Thee I Sing, final-ly goes on tour. Success Story too de-parts, leaving Dinner at Eight, Biog-raphy, and The Late Christopher Beanto represent on their respective stagestheir various aspects of American life .

In January these are joined at the oldEmpire Theatre by Elmer Rice's propa-ganda play, We, The People . The open-ing is one of the exciting moments inAmerican theatre history . Out in frontthe idle and curious gather for a glimpseof white shirt-fronts and ermine cloaks .Inside the beautiful and the famous fore-gather in blissful ignorance of what isbefore them . Behind the curtain sixtyactors nervously prepare Rice's indict-ment of industrial exploitation . Theend of the first act leaves the audiencemoved but bewildered . The end of thesecond finds it divided into opposingfactions, alternately hissing and applaud-ing the lines and scenes of the play . Inthe history of the theatre this is a mo-

TURN TO PAGE 258, PLEASE

258

versity would increase, while such studentswho are drawn from the tax-supported col-leges to others would no longer be an expenseto the people of the state .To the end that the soundness and prac-

ticability of this plan may be fully and pru-dently considered, I have determined to addfive new names to the co-ordination committeealready appointed and at work . These namesare : Dr . Eugene M. Antrim, president of Ok-lahoma City University, and Dr . J . N . McCash,president of Phillips university, Enid ; Dr. J .D. Finlayson, president of Tulsa university, andDr . Hale V. Davis, president of OklahomaBaptist university, Shawnee, to represent onegroup of independent colleges, both men of ex-perience in the field of education ; and BishopFrancis C . Kelley, to represent another group,a man whose qualifications have been recog-nized by several universities both in Americaand abroad .

I intend also to give this committee plentyof time, so that the decisions its members ar-rive at may be the result of a most compre-hensive study of the whole field of higher ed-ucation in the state, helped by the best thoughtof educators everywhere, and made with aneye on the necessity of economy, while pro-moting efficiency, and constructing an Okla-homa system of higher education worthy thename .

RESTLESS NEW YORK(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2 .38)

ment which compares with one twohundred and twenty years ago, whenAddison's Cato was applauded to suc-cess by the enemies of despotism andthe supporters of constitutional freedom .The difference lies in the fact that con-temporary Whigs and Tories have notyet realized that despotism is doomedand that freedom needs to be proclaimedanew .

IVFrom nine o'clock in the morning till

six o'clock at night Macy's departmentstore is alive with people . Men finger-ing ties and trying on shoes. Womenlooking at hats, coats, dresses, housedresses, sport dresses, street dresses, after-noon dresses, evening dresses . Menand women fighting for etchings, onsale in the picture section . Men andwomen filling the acre-wide diningroom . Women waiting for chairsin the block-long rest room . People,people, people, turning family incomesback to business channels in the largestcash department store in the UnitedStates.

In the cut-rate fur shop in UnionSquare the painted models make theirendless circle in front of the second-storycorner windows. In the street below apaint-bedaubed dwarf clowns among thesidewalk crowds, pointing attention ofpasserbys upstairs to the procession oftired models .

Business as usual-From Klien's to thecustomer-Gimbel's will not be under-sold-Brother, can you spare a dime?

The crocheted hats in the departmentstores are made by a hat-maker for fortycents a dozen. It takes her a week to

The Sooner Magazine

make two dozen. . . . The aprons in thedepartment stores are made for two-and-a-half cents a piece . It takes the apronmaker a day to earn twenty cents. . . .The frogs on the men's pajamas ar-made by home workers at eighty cents agross. Two sisters and a mother earnby such work a combined family incomeof four dollars a week . . . . Girl cleanersin a Brooklyn pants factory are paid one-half cent for each garment they threadand sponge . Income : six cents an hour,$2 .58 a week . . . . In a food factory pack-

mum daily wage: fifty cents.

one years the Times has presented tocharity such appeal for aid. This yearthe cases are hard to select ."The Neediest for whom aid is asked,"

states the feature writer, "are thosewhose distress is attested by the charit-able societies to be the gravest in all thecity . How desperate is their plight maybe learned by reading the cases publish-ed in these pages today. Here are thebrave widowed mothers, like Amy's, ofCase 109, who have gone hungry thattheir children might have food and noware too ill to earn for them . Here aredevoted pairs stricken by age, like thestarving sister and brother of Case 66,who in their feebleness strive to keep up,dreading separation ; and fathers, likeMr W., of Case 164, going blind andstill toiling to save their families fromwant."Bread lines and flop houses . Sixth

Avenue employment agencies . Over inthe Ghetto twelve people to two rooms.In Greenwich Village five people to onegirl's salary. In Harlem whole familieswithout work . "The Negroes were letoff every job before the white people,"says the secretary for the Association forthe Advancement of the Colored Race .Men pick dirty newspapers from sub-

way garbage cans to scan the want-adsections . "Unite!" shout the handbillslittering subway station floors . "Hungermarchers to convene on Washington!"On every subway train, Negro beg-

gars . At every subway entrance, a phy-sical monstrosity, his hat off for hisevening penny. We turn from the CarlShurz Memorial overlooking Morning-side Park to find a panhandler at ourelbows . "Help me out, sir? Good God!I'm hungry and cold!" Panhandling hasturned into a poor man's racket . Twoblocks down, around the Cathedral ofSt . John the Divine, the lookout may bestanding now, waiting for his share ofthe money collected by his fellows.On the tenth floor of an abandoned

slaughter house, the police find a hobo

May

jungle, where twelve Negroes and threeMexicans have gone into winter quar-ters . Negro Paul, "The Boss," diningon mulligan stew made from scrapsscavenged from meat markets, has notbeen downstairs in four months .On the Grand Army Plaza artists and

their wives shiver in the chill wind ofNovember . Etchings and drawings flapin the breeze, framed oils leaned againstthe war memorial fall noisily to theground . Brooklyn is sponsoring a side-walk art mart . Etchings for a dollar,oils for five. A group of spectatorsgather around the artist who "makesthem while you wait ." It is Sunday af-ternoon. His business is brisk . Afather pays fifty cents for a portrait of

A woman coaxesstand for his picture .shrugs the artist . "If

I make ten a day it will give me moremoney than I've seen for some time ."A gray haired school teacher lives at

the little hotel near the university campussince she lost her position in New Jer-sey two years ago. She is taking an ex-tension course in children's story writing.But her funds are getting low. She hassold no stories . Next week she will moveto the ground floor, where rents arecheaper."They told me at Macy's that I

couldn't stand the work," says the form-er Junior Leaguer, who resigned becauseshe could no longer keep up her dues ."So I'm selling hosiery at Lord andTaylor's . My husband has had no salesin months, and we have to keep our lit-tle girl in private school ."

"If I can sell some blood next week,I'll get by for a time longer," says thesometime contributor to the New Re-public and the New Yorker . "Thanks tomy friends who give me a meal occas-ionally the hospitals find it still tests allright."

Flags fly over the little shack town atRiverside and Seventy-second, where thecitizens' independent mode of living hasattracted the help of municipal officials .But over at East River the shanty col-onists this year kicked over Mr Zero'spot of Thanksgiving dinner . "We wantjobs, not a meal," the colonists declared .In Central Park one of the transients hasa copy of Shakespeare in his makeshifttent . "It wouldn't be so bad except forSunday," the owner said . "Then thepeople come and stare at us as if wewere animals.""I'm so sorry for you, my man," says

a fur-clad matron to one of these CentralPark squatters. "We feel sorry for you,too, Madam," answers the squatter.What does he mean by that?The giant still slumbers . In one of

the members of his body the blood hasceased circulating . The great body stirs .A groan issues from its lips . But theconvulsive agony is still unconscious .The brain of the giant is still asleep .

ingcent for

girls-aged thirteen-receive onefilling a dozen jars, putting

them in wooden boxes, lugging theboxes to the next department . Maxi-

All during the month of December his little daughter .the New York Times in its Sunday is- her Pomeranian tosues runs its annual plea for "The One "What can I do?"Hundred Neediest Cases ." For twenty-