THE BOURGEOISIE

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 40, 16 August 1919, Page 10

THE BOURGEOISIE

VOICE OF ONE OF THEM

.VICTIM OF BOLSHEVISM.

Daniel T. Pierce writes merrily under the caption of " Bellow of a Bourgeois," in the New York Times. He opens :—

I rise to a question of privilege, a question being about the only privilege I have left. For lam one of those despised creatures known as a bourgeois. After talking to certain parlour Bolshevists here, to a few genuine Bolshevists in Europe, and reading much up-to-date literature on the subject, I am not even sure that I have the right to ask a question. But with the courage of desperation I nevertheless ask it: What is going to become of us?

If this sounds like the cry of a man going down for the third time in a sea of political fury, it sounds just the way I feel. " '

As long as it was only the capitalist who had to "go," I could view the situation with relative calm. Evidently the new movement was not aiming at me. But to my chagrin and amazement I find that I am only a degree if any less objectionable than a capitalist to the LeninTrotsky school. • ■

It does not decrease or temper my chagrin to find that the man who sells peanuts at the corner and the publisher who gives me a job is equally objectionable. The peanut vendor is bourgeois; so is the publisher and the editor and the butcher and the baker and the can-dle-stick maker. They are deriving private profits from activities which must be "nationalised" and "operated for the benefit of all." STATE PEANUT STALLS. If peanuts are to be sold it will be by the State, and as for editors and other idlers " who produce nothing," I am not sure that we shall have anything of the sort in Bolshevikia. A nationalised press with a Burleson at the head and State-paid directors, such as those who run the railroads and the wire companies, will answer all the requirements of the new regime.

If anyone thinks that these are fanciful or far-fetched' statements, he has not kept up with Modern Thought on these subjects. Just wait until the Soviets, those "highest expressions of democracy," get to work here, and the nationalisation of newspapers, and peanuts will become a stern reality. . Meanwhile, awaiting the full ripening of the Bolshevist State, our own proletariat is getting what is coming ft) it by a method less laborious than revolution and Soviets and the like. Our proletarians agree perfectly with the Bolshevist idea that everything belongs to the man who works with his hands. But how ■ much simpler to take your everything in tho form of wages rather than have the Soviet take it for you I I confess to the shameful fact that I have, or did have, a clerk. He was a high school boy who had been getting a salary of 20 dollars a week. The other day he resigned, giving as his reason that the paperhandlers who roll the paper from truck to basement and from basement to the presses get 35 dollars a week; why grub in an office when one can draw down 35 dollars for rolling paper around with a-crowbar? Why, indeed? CROWBARS AS A FACTOR. But the point is that the. paperhandlers have solved the problem of getting their share without the aid of imported political machinery. No doubt in accomplishing this they used the crowbar, a simple, efficient, 'thoroughly American instrument; but we bourgeoisie have no crowbars. ' All proletariats seem to have them. My landlord says that he must raise the rent owing to the high prices of janitors and elevator men. The cook demands 45 dollars a month, and the man who. formerly worked around the place for 30 cents an hour now wants 4 dollars a day, whether he workß or not, rain, etc., being entirely at my risk. Everything to eat and wear is out of the reach of anyone except a member of the capitalist or, working classes. It is the same story from every direction. And it comes to this, that wo bourgeoisie can't live any longer, not because anyone is going to take the trouble to shoot us or hang us, but because we shall starve. NOT WORTH SKINNING. Nobody wants us ; we are not even, like the capitalist, v»orth skinning. It is a sad end of what was once considered a worthy level of existence. But shall wo go down and out without a struggle? There. must/bo quite a lot of us bourgeois. The whole strata lying (and lying prone as it happens) between the capitalists and the proletariat are tho bourgeoisie. Our oldfashioned census does not classify us, but deducting the manual workers and the capitalists from the total population leaves something like 35,000,000 persons. , I now and hereby call upon 35,000,000 to arouse themselves. There are more than 2,000,000 of us in New York City alone. Let us meet in Madison-square (not the Garden, for wo could not afford it). The proletariat' and capitalistic classes will stone us; the police will club us, but nevertheless let us utter a protest if it is our last prior to extinction. Let us at least have a decent funeral; to hear one's obituary is a novel even if painful experience. Of orators we shall have a plenty, since talk is still cheap. I will provide the soap boxes—it is al' I have left.