The autebiography of a working woman “Some seed fell on good ground and brought forth fruit’—Matt XIII, 8 ‘Edited by MARGARET FAIRLEY ERE the author concludes the story she began with an account of her childhood in a foster home in England and later @s a child worker on a Canadian farm and traced through her ex- _ Periences in Lancashire sweat- shops; her return to Canada and _ her marriage to a soldier in the First World War; the bitter years ~ they spent on uncertain wages and , relief, from which they sought “escape by taking up a government land grant in Muskoka; and her €xperiences as a domestic worker in Toronto, striving to give her daughter the education she herself had been denied. Tt was probably my fault, Per- re haps I forgot how much we try to ‘i hide from one another, and how deep we bury our natural feelings - 8nd thoughts, especially when we pre unhappy. I should not have Unfeeling just because they did Not open up on me. Maybe they ‘thought the same of me. It May seem strange that I ~~ Shoula write the story of my life 8nd say so little about my ghil- @ren “But 1 have already told you that I have tried very hard to act _ 2 the principle that their lives _ Ye their own and not mine to in- ‘ - terfere with, and I am afraid of pe 1 Judged them as thoughtless and | writing anything which could pos- sibly decrease their freedom. That is the reason, too, why I cannot sign my name to this story. My children are my pride and joy, and they have been my care and anxiety ever since they were born. They have learned the hard way and I have not been able to do more than give them a start and suggest to them a clue. They know more than they should of suffering, but they know how to deal with it, and no one of them will ever cause needless suffering to others. could say that truthfully of their children? How many rich women In the first war I lived on the army pay of my husband, eked out by very hardly earned wages; in the second war I received army pay for my son; now again I am entitled to army pay, though find- ing it hard to draw it. But my children and myself are in the ranks of those who are fighting for peace. ness no longer leads me to des- pair; I am on the contrary hope- ful, because I know that we are 'My own weak- many, strong and weak together. That is a great change in my viewpoint, the most important change that one weak woman could make. It is the change in such as me that will change the world. 4 You Deparfinznt | lite Coalition really pul bite on this reader UNLUCKY DOG, Vangouver, B.C.: Marquis looked up at me with fever-ridden eyes that plead- ed for medical attention. The old boy was sick with the flu and I was not much better. I ner- vously raised his paw, felt his pulse, put my hand on his hot brow. His condition was definite- ly dangerous. I must call the doctor at once, “Yes, this is Dr. Spaniel’s dog hospital,” a sweet soprano voice answered. “May I speak to the Doctor, please.” x - “Dr. Spaniel speaking,” came a strong, confident voice over the ‘ wire. “Marquis and I are sick with the flu, Doc,” I mumbled. “Marquis sick?” He ignored me completely. “I'll send an am- bulance, we’ll have a bed for him on arrival.” “But, Doc, he has no Hospital Insurance, and I have,” I said, hopefully. “Cut out the funny stuff,” bark- ed the Doc, “The fog's life must be saved.” “But what about mine? I mean, what about the Co-Insur- ance, the $35, I mean?” “Co-Pilots, Co-Insurance, this is a hospital, not a Coconut fac- tory. I'll send the bill when he ‘gets home. Now get him here before it is too late.” The sharp click of the phone told me Dr. Spaniel was tugging on the leash. As I dragged myself to Mar- quis’ bedside I could tell by his ’ face he had overheard the call .and was annoyed at me for try- ing: to crash the dog hospital. “IT thought your Hospital In- surance had to be paid up before you could get in,” I stammered. “Hospital Insurance,” he growl- ed. “Are you mad?” “But I must pay Hospital In- surance,” J remonstrated. 3 “You're a sap, brother,’ he leered. “Look at you, sick as a dog, but you can’t get into your hospital.” “Please, Marquis,” 7 said. "it I don’t pay BCHIS, you know ru go to jail.” “What’s the difference, you'll either die at Bpme or get well in jail.” “We must have hospitals,” I ventured timidly. “Try and get into yours.” He was angry again. “My hospital takes in dogs. Yours has gone to the dogs.” ' “There are laws,” I said, “Oh,, shut up,” he yelped, Ill call the SPCA.” “or Here are quotations this reader wanted H. BARR, Victoria, B.C.: I en- close a money order for $7.50; $2.50 for a sub and $5 as a dona- tion. I wonder if you could help me out on a little matter? I had a clipping of an article from the Pacific Tribune entitled “What They Said About Russia Then.” It was handy to read to those dyed-in-the-wool “patriots” you run across. But I loaned it ~to a man and he lost it. I would appreciate it very much if you could look up that back number —sometime in October or Novem- ber, 1949, I think—and send me. a copy, or reprint it in the PT. The quotations referred to weré made at the time of the Reg Army’s historic victory at Stalin- grad, which turned the tide against Hitler and saved the dem- ocratic world. Here they are: “J don’t thing enough can be said in praise of the Red Army.’- —President Harry S. Truman. What + Pleate. “The defense ‘of Stalingrad will be something for the whole world to remember as an extraordinary test met by human beings with a devotion seldom seen.”—Eleanor Roosevelt. - “The struggle and victory of this army has been an inspira- tion to those who do not know the spirit of the _Russian people.” —U.S. Senator (now Vice-Presi- dent) Allen W. Barkley. “The triumph of the Red Army is a triumph of all peace-loving humanity and heralds a new day in world affairs as well as the emergence of a great new demo- cratic power in the world.” — New York Times. ’ .“Stalingrad will remain for- ever as a symbol of the imperish- able will of a free peaple for liberty and independence. The world owes a lasting debt of grati- tude to the Red Army and its leader Marshal Stalin.”—St, Louis Post Dispatch. Hooverville fo Korea --Mac and Ike alike C.HLL., Stewart, B.C.: The Ko- rean massacre continues and the armies of the U.S. and UN are pillaging, burning and raping. In a recent copy of Life maga- ziné I-noticed a picture of Mac- Arthur and Eisenhower oversee- ing the burning and clubbing of returned vets’ in Hooverville and cleaning’ out all packing-case homes in 1932. Very few people will understand the picture, as 1932 and the Great Depression is forgotten by so many people. They had poison gas in 1917 but this “gas jelly” from the air is more deadly and horrible. But then today nothing is barred, the U.S. stops at nothing; as Lord ~ Byron said of Waterloo, “the Red’ River made the harvest rice grow.” ra A TREASURY FOR FOLLOWERS OF FISTIANA plHE WILD BULL of the Gampas, Luis Angel Firpo, is fans remembered by boxing "8s for his hectic battle with Jack Dempsey, in which the Ar- - Bentine giant knocked: the eavyweight champion of the "orld clean out of the ring with ; oe hand wallop in the first Not ‘80 well remembered is 0's meeting with President ‘See Coolidge, which was also. ieee, Morable in its way. » Taken rh "nd to the White House by ok na wteentine ambassador, Firpo al the president shake his “Who was that fellow?” Firpo ' Teliably reported to have seh, ens nterpreter later. Sowers of fistiana will “Buck le over dozens of stories of Bencky calibre told by sports ed John ‘Lardner in his new Big rene book, White able he and Other Tigers (avail- tty, ere at the People’s Cooper- ug Bookstore, 337 West Pender. “Uh of the material in Lard- the Ok appeared originally in New Yorker, and for once Publisher's blurb doesn’t ex- ‘tate when it calls the ac- Ulated yarns “one whale of a Ports eng ” ‘ tar } is ‘e seul * oe MAKE oe \clear. that no chauvinism expressed ner’s writing, despite the f the chauvinistic term x ~ June, “white hope” in the title. No one can describe the “golden age” of the ring, the 1910-30 period, with- out dealing with the “white hope” search of the Jack ‘Johnson period. As Lardner says: “The administration of Joe Louis as heavyweight champion of the world, which began in 1937, and ended in 194° (when he retired) or im 1950 (when Ezzard Charles beat him), was not only the longest in box- ing history, either way you look at it, but one of the most popu- lar with the public. Soon after Louis won the title, a few pro- fessional prizefight men, spoke of the need of finding a ‘white hope’, but that was only. a good ex- ample of reiex, in the psychologi- cal sense of the word—a simple, inherited method of res response to a stimulus.’ at The term ‘white hope’ as used to describe an athlete of So-called Caucasian background, who might retrieve the heavyweight \ championship, for the \honor of his race, from a Negro incumb- ent, enjoyed its first and last real vogue when Jack Johnson was champion, from 1908 to 1915. (It was almost never applied outside the heavyweight division; race honor. became an issue when the seales reached 175 pounds.) Even before Johnson surrendered the title to a portly Caucasian named Jess Willard, the expression had * started to lose its meaning” and ‘ 1 Lardner entertains with yarns o to become jargon among the peo- ple who worked it most busily— commercial . boxing men. One talent scout, Walter (Good-Time Charlie)\ Friedman, went to China to look’ for a white hope sone the Chinese peasants. “Twenty-two years passed ‘be: tween Johnson’s defeat and the accession of the next Negro heavyweight champion, Louis. What ‘white hope’ meant by then to the handful of promoters who revived the term from memory is best illustrated by the case of Jack Dempsey, a former white champion, who gave his name and services to a project for de- -veloping white hopes to beat | Louis. A friend visited Demp- sey’s resgtaurant one day at the junch hour. Dempsey pointed with a sweep of his arm to a herd of young boxers agraze in his rolling acres of steaks and chops. ,: “The best lot of white hopes ever collected,’ he said proudly. “Looking them over, the friend - caught sight of a dark Negro boy, cropping sirloin at a centre table. +3 eeOw about that one?’ said. ¥ “Dempsey slapped the visitor’s back in congratulation. “*You got a good eye for fighters,’ he said, ‘he’s the best— prospect in the bunch.’ _ “Po Dempsey, ‘my new white he hope ’meant the same thing as ‘my new heavyweight,’ or “my boxing’s golden years new tiger that fights Claffey in Newark next week.’ In a short time, it became clear that the white population’s attitude to- ward Louis and race supremacy did. not justify the use of ‘white hope’ even as jargon, and it fell out of currency. The last pub- licist to invoke the idea—or ra- ther, to paraphrase it—was the late Dr. J. P. Goebbels, when he billed Max Schmeling’s ' second . fight with Louis, in 1938, as a mission to restore the champion- ship to Aryan control ‘Aryan’ is a word with a narrower, trick- ier meaning than ‘Caucasian’ as the Doctor pointed out to Schmel- ing in a lecture about Schmel- ing’s partnership with a Caucas- ian, but non-Aryan, manager, Joe Jacobs. Schmeling replied that without Jacobs’ American con- nections, he could gain neither | glory’ for his/subdivision of the \ white race nor large sums of money for himself. As it turn- ed out, he settled for the latter, after two minutes of anguish at Louis’s hands.” . x * * sire LARDNER POKES some sav- age satire at the vicious chauy- inism of the early “white hope” period, and pays tribute to the stubborn. qualities which enabled’ Johnson ‘to defy the white-black conventions of the ring, circum- vent the “color line’ and win the heavyweight championship. .. oF . “He defied convention,” writes . PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JUNE 1, 1951 — PAGE ll Lardner. “He insisted on his rights as a man of the world when most ,Americans believed that Negroes should live their lives’ as discreetly and intra- murally as possible.” ‘ * * * WHEN DEMPSEY and Willard met in Toledo on July 4, 1919, one sports scribe who had pre- dicted that there would be no talk of “troglodytes and abysmal brutes” in connection with this piddling sequel to war, found himself betrayed and embarassed. The fight was troglodytic. Lardner tells in vivid reportage the stories of Dempsey's fights With Carpentier, “Gibbons, and Firpo. No less interesting is the saga of Jack Kearns, the sharpie promoter who broke four Mon- tana banks in the famous “Sack of Selby.” : Add to these chapters the col- orful” and fantastic history of Battling Siki, the wild man who whipped Carpentier in France in 1922 and wound ‘up dead in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, in 1925; and the entertaining inside story of Luis Firpo’s* battles in the ring ‘and in boxing’s shady anances : circles. The result is the best book on | boxing to be published for many years. Highly recommended for all sports followers. | — BERT WHYTE.