The Chicago star., September 14, 1946, Image 1

About The Chicago star. (Chicago, Ill.) 1946-1948

Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL

                
STATE me
flflTl^l
By
Howard
Fast
IN all life—and in all history
too—there is no role so despica
—— ble, so soul de
stroying as the
role of the
Of all ev *l
y / man has pro
~A yr & duced, the part
'\ V <±/ of the renegade
farthest
\ from any hope
\r r of redemption.
J And, strangely
fast enough the role
of the renegade remains a con
stant; in whatever age, whatever
period he operates, the black
stain across his soul takes pretty
much the same shape.
It’s not too difficult to imagine
tfce words Judas mouthed as he
took the thirty pieces of silver,
his muttering about how Christ
had betrayed Christianity, his
frantic explanation of how
Christ, by going into the Tem
ple and ousting the money-chang
ers, had betrayed his own prin
ciples. Isador Schneider, in a new
book about latter day renegades,
imagines this scene brilliantly:
but actually it does not require
too much imagination.
• * #
THE Judas Words still sound
around us. This is, as Isador
Schneider calls it, the Judas
Time. And the payoff is not in
thirty pieces of silver, but in
thirty thousand and ten times
thirty thousand and ten times
that. Never before in the world’s
history did treason pay so well
—treason to the working class,
treason to the United States, and
treason to mankind.
Oddly enough, as a nation, we
are deeply innoculated with a
contempt for treason. Until re
cently, we gave better than lip
service to democracy, and there
by we expressed a historical
hatred of those who would have
sold out our democracy.
Over the generations, Benedict
Arnold is a term of shame; for
a few thousand pounds of blood
stained British gold, he would
have delivered our revolution to
the enemy, even as Aaron Burr
would have smashed our democ
racy to found an empire, even as
Simon Girty sold his birth-right
for a handful of British gold,
even as Wilkinson and Charles
Lee sold out their country be
cause they feared the common
man.
* # #
BUT today, the situation has
changed. As I said before, this
is the Judas Time, and instead
of dispising traitors and rene
gades, we ennoble them and
make them rich and respectable.
In fact, we are currently so
lousy with traitors that one
cannot speak of them in gen
eral terms; one must catalogue
them; one must provide an in
dex; one must analyze the sub
tle shades and distinctions and
odors of the cesspool they col
lectively inhabit.
For instance, one might devide
them in this fashion:
# # #
(A) The old fashioned kind of
traitor, the Benedict Amold-
Simon Girty type. His crime was
not particularly complex; he
See Page 16
Kids fight lunch steal
THE CHICAGO
★
Published
Weekly
Vol. 1, No. 11
§ v 4
. -
PRICE Administrator Paul Sorter tells an audience of work
ers and administrators how the new price control law is sup
posed to operate. Porter opposed Secretary of Agriculture Clin
ton A. Anderson’s livestock price boost. But since Congress had
tied OPA’s hands on food prices, he was unable to prevent the
inflationary increases.
The "Big Four" packers this week swept fresh meat off the market for the second
time in three months in their deadly sit-down strike to smash price ceilings.
Their two-week boycott of livestock shut down 3,000 butcher shops and laid off
10,000 workers in Union Stockyards.
In the most drastic layoffs in packinghouse history work
ers with as high as 25 years seniority were left unemployed.
• * *
THE story behind the “Big Four” sit-down strike—timed
neatly to cripple the 200,000 members of the United Packing
house Workers of America who are in the process of taking
a strike-vote against the industry—reveals the industries’
boldest bid for unlimited profits.
The artificial meat famine caused 20 locals of UPWA to
demand that the federal government “prepare legislation for
the nationalization of the meat industry as a public utility.”
In an emergency session the UPWA locals railed for na-
See Page 10
f ~\
Anti-Lynch Rally Monday!
JR
* " ' ''’jjifP-i l ° n> ana( * a Lee, noted ac
ton Dobbs, of the Southern
msSlMrj' .' at a giant anti-lynch rally at
' % and Madison Sts. on
See Page 16
CANADA LEE *
v / 1
Chicago, September 14, 1946 «^^> 66
famine rises
| as packers
cut supply
Col. MtCratkpot
THIS is Col. McCrackpot, publisher of your favorite funny pa
per. Follow his antics each week in the Chicago Star.
Pop’ writes
about Phil
Murray '
See Page 4
\E