United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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finished, others were jumping up and down on the strip to tamp it down, and Weller’s scoop- pot had resumed its flight between the pail and the floor. Another strip was lowered next to the first onto the new layer of tar and the men be¬ gan again their overlapping motions, always moving in a crouch, running from the knees, squeezing speed out of throbbing muscles. And then it was finished. Purple cheeks and red eyes were drawn slowly away from the heat of the floor, the bent, strained backs were slowly straightened, and the men stood up. Then they stared, and blinked, and silently left the boxcar. The kid followed them to the tar shack, bouncing the end of the long iron rod on the concrete floor of the car shop. ❖ “That’s one hell, there.” “A-a-ah, Schmidty, yer always complainin’ about somethin’,” Weller bawled at the old man who had spoken. “Why, don’t you take no pride in your work. You’ve got the best job in the world, and you’re still crabbin’.” “Maybe best job in world for young fella, Weller, but not for old fella,” Schmidty said quietly. “Me, I an old man, Weller—you an’ me, we both old men. I like to go some place else, get better job, but too old, me. I gotta stay here, that’s all. But it’s one hell.” “You just ain’t got ambition, Schmidty,” Weller said. “I got the best job in the shops, and I’m satisfied. I got all you guys workin’ for me, and I’m set. I’m plenty satisfied.” “Like HELL you satisfied!” Schmidty sudden¬ ly shouted at him. “You say that cause you know you can’t go somewhere else, same’s me. You stuck, Weller. That’s why you pretend you so satisfied with your job, you stuck. That’s why you strut around like big boss instead of little worker. You stuck.” Weller stood silently with a face like hoar¬ frost. His eyes slowly moistened and his shoul¬ ders sagged. And then he sank onto a tool box. Schmidty was sorry he said it, and he mumbled something and left the tar shack, the rest of the crew following him. Weller sat on his tool box, staring out the door. Then he turned to the kid. “Don’t listen to him, kid ... he ... he don’t know nothin’, anyhow.” The kid nodded, and picked up a stick and poked at a piece of tar that had hardened on his boot. Ghost Town The winds of time have swept each corner hare In this forgotten city of the past; The sun beats down on empty streets, and everywhere Is silence—broken at last By twittering sparrows nesting in a glade And a rustling in the grass Of wild animals who pass Unafraid. —Wilda Reynolds. Page Eighteen

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He dipped the tar pot into the kiln and poured the boiling contents into a large pail Illustration by the author of boxcars. A red glow now and then traced the flight of a rivet from the pincers to the metal cup a car’s length away. The kid stumbled after Weller, squeezing the rod, stepping over cables, ducking under cables, peering through the darkness. “We’re here kid. Stop slow now . . . slow, slow . . . that does it. Now I’ll lift this pail up into the car and you’ll see how to lay a floor.” The kid pulled himself into the car. There was a small dust-covered light bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling. It swayed whenever anyone put his foot down and the car became a maze of moving shadow. The floor was covered with tar paper except for the two extremes of the car where work-horses and tools were laid out. The kid sat down on a work-horse and watched Weller and his crew as they brought in the long strips of flooring that the carpenters had just finished. Then Weller, with one motion, thrust the scoop-pot into the pail, brought it out full of oozing tar, emptied it on the tar paper, and thrust the scoop pot back into the pail, all the time running along the wall stooped over, leaving a solid strip of hot tar two feet wide along the length of the car. Three men picked up a strip of flooring and lowered it onto the tar. They shoved the edge tightly against the wall, and two men began to hammer in na ils with a short, chopping, wrist motion. Before they had Page Seventeen

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Russian Foreign Policy In The ’Twenties By AL MACKLING TN the period under observation, Russian foreign policy, guided by the professional Communist revolutionists, sought to enlarge the proletarian revolution throughout the world and yet maintain the hard won base of world proletarian revolution in Russia. Actually, ex¬ periences suffered in the years following the revolution (1917-1921) caused most emphasis to be placed on the defence of the isolated Com¬ munist country from further armed interven¬ tion by the Capitalist world powers about her. Revolution had come to Russia in October, 1917. It was not the proletarian revolution en¬ visaged by Marx. Rather, it was more of an agrarian revolution. The revolution was in gen¬ eral a spontaneous but divergent outpouring of discontent, manifested by the peasants, the soldiers, the small proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie against the corrupt feudalistic auto¬ cracy of the Tsarist regime. The Marxian revo¬ lutionaries including Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin had all at one time before the actual seizure of power and the wars of intervention, believed that the inevitable revolution in Russia should and would produce a bourgeoisie-democratic state in Russia and after a considerable period the proletarian revolution would take place. This followed the Marxian historic analysis: Feudalism—Capitalism—Communism. Trotsky was the first to deviate from purely Marxian theory when, as early as 1906, he fore¬ cast that the world revolution would begin in Russia but would survive only if a continuation of the revolution took place in Western Europe. Lenin and the Bolsheviks who assumed power in 1917 convinced themselves that the revolu¬ tion in Russia would not be just a transitory stage in the Marxian process but would be permanent and would grow with the help of the apparently imminent proletarian revolution in Germany, France and England. The Communist leaders of the revolution guided their party to power and the dictatorship Page of the proletariat in October, 1917, utilizing the chaotic political, economic and military situa¬ tion and the mass unrest of the oppressed classes in Russia. The new dictatorship of the proletariat was in reality the dictatorship of the proletariat, peasants, and soldiers by the Communist party, itself under the control of a small hard core of Marxian idealists headed by Lenin and Trotsky. This centralization of control was enhanced by the drastic measures necessarily taken to ward off defeat of the new government by the Capi¬ talist powers and their more dangerous allies within Russia itself. The leaders of the revolution in Russia, Lenin and Trotsky especially, were heralded not only as the leaders of the Russian revolution but were recognized as the leaders of a political party calling for world revolution. This dangerous doctrine frightened the imperial powers of the Western world and Japan; also, intervention in the internal struggle of Russia could bring handsome rewards through the seizure of valuable and strategic Russian terri¬ tories. The intervention failed mainly due to a lack of co-operation among the active supporters of intervention, war weariness and protests from the peoples in the Western countries and the surprising national ' support given to the new government by the people of Russia. When the last of the foreign powers had with¬ drawn their forces the Communist government led by Lenin controlled a poverty-stricken, war- ravaged and isolated country. The Communist government had capably led the new Red army to victory over the inter¬ ventionists but now it was faced with an almost insuperable task. The country was in a state of economic chaos, shorn of a good deal of terri¬ tory and Russian 1 speaking peoples and faced with hostile powers more than anxious to see her succumb through economic depression or external attack. 1- Ed Note: The term Russian here as elsewhere means the area and people over which suzerainty was exercised by the Empire of Tsar Nicholas II. Nineteen