II
Jimmie was now in the seventh heaven, walking as if on air. A
proletarian government at last, the first in history! A government
of working-men like himself, running their own affairs, without the
help of politicians or bankers! Coming out before the world and
telling the truth about matters of state, in language that common
men could understand! Disbanding the armies, and sending the workers
home! Turning the masters out of the factories, and putting
shop-committees in control! Taking away the advertising from the
crooked capitalist papers, and so putting them out of business! Our
little friend would rush to the corner every morning to get the
paper and see what had happened next; he would go down the street so
excited that he forgot his breakfast.
Jimmie had made a new acquaintance in Ironton; the little tailor,
Rabin, whose name was Scholem, which means Peace, had given him a
letter to his brother, whose name was Deror, which means Freedom.
Each afternoon when the automobile factory let out, Jimmie would get
an evening paper and take it to Deror's tailor-shop and the two
would spell out the news. By God, look at this! Did you ever hear
the like? The man in charge of the Bolshevik foreign office was a
Marxian Jew who had helped edit the Novy Mir, the revolutionary
paper which Scholem had read to Jimmie! He had been a waiter in the
Waldorf-Astoria hotel, and now he was giving out the secret
treaties, and issuing propaganda manifestoes to the international
proletariat.
The American capitalist press was full of lies about the new
revolution, of course; but Jimmie could read pretty well between the
lines of the capitalist press, and the few Socialist papers that
were still in business, and which he read at the headquarters of the
local, gave him the rest of what he wanted. To Jimmie, of course,
everything the Bolsheviki did was right; if it wasn't right it was a
lie. The little machinist knew that the Bolsheviki had repudiated
the four-billion-dollar debt which the government of the Tsar had
contracted with the bankers of France, and Jimmie knew perfectly
well what was the lying power of four billion dollars.
The American papers were shocked because the Russian Socialists were
deserting the cause of democracy, and giving Germany a chance to win
the war. The American papers called them German agents, but Jimmie
did not take any stock in such talk as this. Jimmie was familiar
with the "frame-up" as it is operated against the workers in
America. He saw that the first thing the Bolshevik leaders did was
to make an appeal to the revolutionary workers of Germany. The
Russian proletariat had shown the way--now let the German
proletariat follow! Literature was printed and shipped wholesale
into Germany, leaflets were dropped by aviators among the German
troops; and when Jimmie and Deror read that the German generals had
protested to the Russians against such practices, they laughed aloud
with delight. Well might the war-lords squeal; they knew what was
coming to them! And when in January Jimmie and Deror read of the
revolting of a brigade of German troops, and a strike of several
hundred thousand working men throughout Germany, they thought the
end was at hand. The little tailor got up in local Ironton and made
a motion that it take to itself the name "Bolshevik"--which motion
was carried with a whoop. And these American Bolsheviki went on to
consult with the labour-unions, suggesting that they should form
"shop-committees", and prepare for the taking over of industry
a la Russe!
