@.. LUMBER WORKER ®

Page Five

THE FINN from ECHO TRAI

_A SHORT STORY

By IRENE PAULL

a lumberjack on a cold, dull i on the’ bowery in Duluth. was the winter of 1940, It might been any other winter. Any other Sunday. There was the va- “cant, soggy feeling a guy has when he’s blown his stake and wonders what the hell for, When the aver- age working stiff is sitting home with his family, warming a chair, reading the paper, and you know __ it's time to get out there and grab yourself a “handful of boxcars” for Hoyland, or Ely or the ’Falls. You've got a hangover and a feeling that something's wrong and you don’t know what. Lake Su- -perior is a frozen prairie and the wind has a claen sweep, and the ore cars are rumbling down the tracks, and you know you ought to shoulder that packsack and get out there and get going, so you order another drink. Your last.

SUNDAY ON “SKIDROW” ‘Right: into the dullness of a Sun- day on “Skidrow” swung the Finn's big fist. The saloon on Sixth Ay- enue stirred with sudden interest. The Jacks pushed back their chairs. Spiked boots scraped the floor. A break in the monotony is nothing to be sneezed at. Big Hank was sprawled awkwardly on the floor where the Finn’s fist had lJai@him. He lay there, more stun- ned by amazement than by the blow. He got up slowly, rubbed his chin, and too bewildered for anger, watched the Finn walk out ___ of the door and down the street.

“PLUMB BATS!”

“Plumb bats!” Big Hank whistl- ed, almost sympathetically, “I' think the poor guy’s blowed his top. All I says to him, I says, “Well, Bud, here's to old Mannerheim! I hope he knocks the pants off them Roo- shins!’ That’s all I says, no kidding. First thing you know I’m layin’ in __ @ puddle of snoose. What do you make a’ that son of a gun?” “I gyppoed with him up at Big

Lake on the Echo Trail,” an eager little Jack offered warmly, hungry for conyersation, “cuttin’ pulp . . . never had much to say . . . didn’t ‘Seem like the scrappy kind . . .” ‘There were half a dozen theories advanced to explain the Finn’s un- accountable behavior. Then some- one said briefly, “He don’t like Mannerbeim.”

FINN, AIN’T HE?

The Jacks looked up. It was ‘Wilho Jokinen, the Finn's saw partner. An old timer, tall as a jackpine, hard as hemlock, one of — the most skilled workers in the _ woods, one of the best union men, _ He looked at Big Hank meditative- _ ly, without seeing him. His eyes - the cool but sunny blue of ‘Superior in October, ““Phat’s one for the books,” Hank “He's a Finn, ain’t he?” laybe some German don't like

» eh? Maybe some Finn don’t y nerheim.” Jokinen closed tion. He pulled his aw up over his ears, walked the door and down the

a

A Story Based on an Actual Incident Related to me by a Finnish Worker ;

street to the dingy room he shared in a “skidrow” hotel with Waino, the Finn from Echo Trail.

OLD MEMORIES

He walked slowly. The wind was blowing off the lake, fiercely, and he liked it. No matter how fiercely the wind blew in this cold, north- ern country, he liked it. He liked northern Minnesota . . its lakes, its swamps, its rivers, its timber, its rugged hills and rocky stump farms. It was like his own native Finland and he liked it.

He thought of Waino and the torrent of passion behind that swift blow of his fist in the tavern a while ago.

The recent events in Finland had stirred old bitter memories in Wilho Jokinen. But Waino, since that terrible day in 1918 had been like an ice-locked river, numb to joy or sorrow. So many years had Waino worked silently beside him, Wilho had not known that beneath what seemed a solid surface, still as glass, a torrent flowed swiftly.

THE STORY OF WAINO

Wilho would never forget that January of 1918, when the Soviet , government, having overthrown the Czar who oppressed both Rus- sians and Finns, granted the demo- cratically elected government of Finland complete independence. Wilho’s people owned a little farm next to the stony piece of land that Waino’s farmed with her older son, Imar, and her young boy, Waino. Three other sons had died. The mother was old and thin and wrinkled, like brown leather, from hard and joy- less living. There was a brightness about Ilmar with his ready smile and thick mop of fiery golden hair that lay like sunshne on his head that comforted the old wo- man and warmed the bleakness in her heart. Wilho and Imar were active in the democratic youth movement of Finland. There was great rejoicing throughout the countryside when the news came on January of 1918 that Finland was at last, an independent coun- try.

FINLAND’S FRANCO

The Spanish Republic, twenty years later, was to have its Franco. The Finnish Republic in 1918 had its Mannerheim. Afraid of the democratic upsurge of common people in Finland, this Finnish Franco, with the aid of 12,000 German troops under General Rudiger and General Von Glotz, made ciyil war upon the Finnish people, slaughtered 15,000 of its bravest and best, jailed 75,000. Il- mar, Wilho and two other farm boys spent four months in hiding. Umar’s mother would come to bring them food.

SHOULD FINN FIGHT FINN?

Tt was the springtime of 1918 and the rivers were breaking free of ice and thé smell of pine and cedar was sweet on the hillsides. The steaming ground was ready for plowing and at night the air was full of perfume from the wild

widowed mother |

flowers in the woods. Manner-o heim’s police sent out a plea to all those Finns in hiding in the countryside. Come out and give yourselves up. You will be par- doned. Let there be no more fight- ing. Why should Finn fight Finn? IT IS SPRING, MY SON

Ilmar’s mother came to the hid- ing place that night to give them the good news. It is sprng, my son. The ground is ready for plowing. The work is too much for me and the young one, Waino. They prom- ise you pardon. Come and give yourself up, for what they say is true, Why should Finn fight Finn?

Wilho and the other boys had begged Umar not to go. It was a trap, they said. Ilmar’s glance went from his mother’s worn, wrinkled face to the young faces of his friends. “If it is a trap,” he smiled, “We shall soon find out.” HE DIED IN AGONY

It was 9 o’clock in the morning when Ilmar reported to Baron Von Mannerheim’s police. At 10 o’clock they took Ilmar out into a big field beside his mother’s house and shot him in the belly. They laid hm in the centre of the field and posted guards around. All day his screams and pleas that he be shot and an end put to his suffer- ing echoed across the field into each listening farmhouse on the countryside. The tormented farm- ers and their wives begged the guards to shoot him and end his pain. He dd not die until 5 o'clock that night. His finger nails were full of dirt from clutching the earth in agony.

LITTLE BROTHER

All day long the little brother, Waino, had listened to his broth- er’s anguish. And the mother list- ened. And as if a young boy had not had as much of horror as the human mind can bear, that night when all the comforting neighbors had gone home, he saw his mother standing beside his bed. “I have killed Ilmar,” he heard her say, smiling horribly, “I have killed my son.” A terrible fit of trembling shook him, as if he were being closed in nescapably on all sides by horror and insanity, and the earth itself was giving way be- neath his feet. Two days later his mother drowned herself. Her body was found battered by ice that was breaking up in the awakened river.

Out of love for Imar, out of pity for the little brother, Wilho took Waino with hm when he fled to America. They had logged Minnesota, Wisconsin and Upper Michigan for twenty years, and Waino had been locked in silence, like a frozen stream.

MELTED ICE

Wilho felt lonely and depressed as he walked slowly up the stairs to his hotel and through the dark, dingy hall. The lid was off of memories he had tried to put away forever.

The moment he opened the door

New Book Blasts The Jew Baiters; Exposes

Henry Ford's Slanders

‘History of Bigotry in the U.S.”

By Gustavus Myers; Reviewed by Charles Obermeyer “I am convinced, further, that agitation for the creation of hate against the Jew or any other racial or religious group, has been utilized to divide our American community and to weaken our national unity.” (Signed, Henry Ford, January 7, 1942).

“I confess that I am deeply mortified that this journal, ‘The Dear- born Independent,’ which is intended to be constructive and not de- structive, has been made the medium for resurrecting exploded fic- tions, for giving currency to the so-called Protocols of the Wise Men, of Zion, which have been demonstrated, as I learn, to be gross for- geries, and for contending that the Jews have been engaged in a con- spiracy to control the capital and the industries of the world, besides laying at their door many offences against decency, public order and good morals.” (Signed, Hénry Ford, June 30, 1927). = Democracy has put the squeeze on Henry as it did when the CIO

organized his plants in 1941. It forced him to make the above state- ments.

“HEINRICH FORD”

But the damage was done. “The Dearborn Independent” had been published by Ford steadily since 1920, packed with lying and crude attacks on the Jews. A series of articles were collected from the paper and published as “The World’s Foremost Problem—the Inter- national Jew.” This collection of slanders, carrying the name of Henry Ford, was translated into dozens of languages and circulated widely. In 1923, when Ford was campaigning for the presidential nomination, Hitler publicly expressed his gratitude. “I wish,” he said, that I could send my shock troops to Chicago and other big American cities to help in the elections. We look upon Heinrich Ford as the leader of the growing fascist movement.”

This comes from an important new book: “History of Bigotry in the United States,” by Gustavus Myers, the well known author of “The History of the Great American Fortunes.” The book gives a lot of useful data on the early movements of discrimination in' the U.S.A. and on the Know-nothings, the Ku Klux Klan, the American Protective Association, and on Ford, Coughlin and Lindbergh.

ANTI-SEMITISM

In the second half ,it concentrates on anti-Semitism, something which is growing in the U.S.A. today, and which we in the labor movement will have to fight hard wherever it crops up. It is the surest mark by which to recognize the beast, fascism.

Jews are just like anyobdy else—rich, poor, anti-labor, pro-labor. They are a minority group and so exposed to all the attacks on minor- ities. They are weak and not organized internationally. They have not even a single controlling church in any one country.

CHICKEN FEED In ‘Germany,. they had practically no footing in the proletariat or the peasantry. That's why they were so easy to attack. So much for their unity and strength.

‘As to their money power, it’s chicken feed compared with the in- ternational finances of the Bakers, Morgans, or of Ford. Practically all the great trading and financial companies since the 17th Century have been in non-Jewish hands.

FASCISM NEEDS SCAPEGOAT

Then why were they made the object of Fascist attack? Just because they are weak and have no state to protect them; because they are still considered foreigners, and fascism plays on a narrow, bigoted, national chauvinism to build a mass base; because there are stupid, anti-Semitic legends floating about among the illiterate since the Middle Ages which facists can exploit and blow up; because fascism needs a scapegoat, somebody to blame for failure, and because it needs to divert the attention of the masses from the REAL exploit- ers, the really strong internationally organized fascist financiers who are plotting to enslave the world and to destroy the labor movement. Myers does not bring out these facts sufficiently in his book, but there is enough without them to make “History of Bigotry in the United States” worth reading—particularly today when the need to fight gaainst discrimination shoud be stamped on the mind of every union member with letters of fire. —~ We need national unity behind the war effort as never before, and

anti-Semitism weakens that unity. Even Ford tells us that. (Courtesy The Pilot).

See THE FINN—Page 8