GUIDE TO GOOD READING

Novelist whe makes his
characters come alive

teaders,
and |

TO A GROWING but still pitifully small circle of Canadian
Gwyn Thomas is becoming a name to look for, in Masses
@insiream, in the occasional Tribune article and especially in

the Scarcely-circulated novels which come from his pen.

Standing apart from the stream
°f trashy writing now pouring
Cut of the presses of the big
Publishers is this clean, sharp
Welsh | proletarian writer, whose
sift Of .expression and creative
‘Understanding recall Hardy—but
Hardy in a socialist setting:

The Dark Philosophers and
Venus and the Voters were two
novels of Welsh mining valley
life which brought to a high
Point the increasing stock of
British Working class literature.
°w, in All Things Betray Thee
(Ryerson), with a new theme
an ing full-length story, Thom-
cee of the beginnings of in-

@l capitalism in the British
Valleys,
ae ironmaster, the labor lead-
the il) wrapped | in mysticism,
Cunning middle-class go-
yet 2. are superimposed “pen
Se from a way of life

which belonged to the village
*mmunity,

oe Clash of opinions, the con-
ang ideologies, the spontaneous
Musi Violent class struggle, the
ig ons and the grim lessons
™ed in blood, are expressed
Only truly creative artists can
Press them—as life expresses

ace through the words and
SNe Of human beings who do

Strike you as often as they
tn Working class stories, as

robots and mechanical things

without heart and stomach, but
as people really do live and act
in such upsetting and revolu-
tionary circumstances,

This is a story of Chartism —

the great movement of social
protest of the 1830’s which lack-
ed a clear working class pur-
pose, but which the working
class nevertheless constituted
and carried through. Without a
grasp of the circumstances of
the birth of the modern working
class it is very hard to under-
stand the historic role of that
class.

Gwyn Thomas tells this story
in his poetic phrases which re-
discover the flavor of the simple
and clear.English language and
rescue it from the pédants. You
will enjoy every page of his
magnificent novel.

It is hard to get hold of. It
would be a good thing if public
libraries were asked for his
books. Thomas deserves an audi-
ence and the progressive move-
ment should obtain it for him.
He corrects the sentimentalism
and romanticism of Richard
Llewellyn’s How Green Was My
Valley; he does not yearn for

. a return to an impossible pas-

toral life, as Llewellyn does, but
shows history moving on an as-
cending plane via the efforts of
the new and revolutionary work-
ing class —L.M.

—

STRIPE T-

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a,

An all-union housing project

When members of the International Hod Carriers, Building and Common Laborers’ Unien (AFL)
couldn’t find the low-cost homes they needed this building project in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was their

answer. Here the foundations for the low-éest u nion-financed concrete houses are being laid by

the union’s members.

WHAT PRICE HUMAN DIGNITY?

~#

Dailies distort even story
of Shanghai prostitutes

WHENEVER you
think that the commercial press
has reached the limits of its abil-
ity to warp, mangle and reverse
the truth, it produces another
little gem of so-called “report-
ing” that gives wholly new pro-
portions to the meaning of fraud.

begin to

You may ngt have seen the
tiny story buried on the inside

dealing
Shanghai
and went something like this:

“Shanghai’s ladies of the even-
ing will have to find more pro-
ductive .work, .the .Communist
government decreed today. _

pages of some papers
with prostitution in

“But not right away.

“The newspaper Ta Kung Pao
said that the public security bur-
reau had classified prostitutes
‘unproductive’ in line with the
program .to .make .Communist-
held cities production centers.

“However, the prostitutes will

be allowed to continue in their

present .proifessions .until .more
‘productive work can be foun
for them .. .” ’

That’s about the sum of the
story as it appeared in most pap-
ers. Aside from the fact that it is
nearly all a lie, the only thing
wrong with it is that it misses
the point of one of the most ex-
citing and heartening  experi-
ments in social work in the en-
tire history of man. :

x; * *

THE CHINESE Communists
do not exactly limit their con-
cern to the “productiveness” of
a prostitute, The Chinese Com-

munists—as anyone can readily
discover by reading any of their
literature—are concerned with
the need and the right of every-

one to share equally in the infin-
ite richness of living. That in-
cludes music, and food and trav-
el and the kind of self ‘respect a
person knows out of sharing in
the creative labor of a commun-
ity and a nation.

The Chinese Communists also
hold the revolutionary view that
children of ali
races have an equal longing and

men, women,
an equal right to share in the
joy of building a better world.

The Chinese Communists feel
that prostitutes are women cap-
able .of lives as honorable, as
creative and as happy as” those
of any other women. The Com-
nunists merely feel that prosti-
tutes are merely special victims
of the jackal system and the
cockroach minds of the “free en-
terprisers” of the Kuomintang.

The prostitutes of Shanghai
will soon be the targets for a
program § of
volving medical treatment, edu-

rehavilitation in-

‘cation. special diets and occup2-:

tions] therapy in the form of
work at the manufacture of
special products such as hospitaf
instruments or nursery equip-
ment — things whose vse are
clearly of great benefit to al) of
society.

The pattern of the rehabilita-
tion program has already been
developed and tested in the So-
viet Union. The results there con-
stitute one of the greatest testi-
monials to the all-embracing
benefis of socialism in the whole
history of that amazing land. To-
day, in the Soviet Union, the dig-
nity of every human being is
equally intact. Today there is no
prostitution.

Compare this unique achieve-
ment to the record under capit-
alism, where the sum of the at-

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JULY 15, 199 — PAGE ret

tack on the problem aside from
medical discoveries is a series of
shocked articles in the slick
mé cpzines—eagh one revealing
a larger total of women sucked
down into the hopeless degra-
dation of such a life.

Only in the decayed mind of 2
capitalist — or a capitalist edit-
or — could such an amazing
achievement as the Communist’s
work among. prostitutes be redu-
ced to a matter of “production.”
But then for a capitalst, a man
or a woman is nothing more than
an instrument which can ppo-
duce profits.

They could understand better
the recent history of China if
they realized the concern of the
Chinese Communists is the “pro-
duction” of finer human beings.

-MASON ROBERSON

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