JOTTINGS

DRAMATIZING THE PATERSON STRIKE

Seizing on the suggestion that some master of pageantry ought to give symbolic expression to the mass strike, a leader of the Paterson strike proposed that the silk workers should themselves present to the public the meaning of its chief incidents. Within a few days Madison Square Garden had been rented for June 7, and large committees, composed in no small degree of volunteers from the 10,000 silk strikers in New York city, were at work on the details of the arrangements.

A pageant of six episodes has been planned by John Reed, a magazine writer who was himself arrested on the Paterson picket line a few weeks ago.

The episodes, as interpreted by the pageant committee, divide themselves into two groups: the one representing the struggle of the strikers against economic and legal tyranny; the other, the democratic government of the strike by the workers.

Brief titles of the episodes are: The Mills Alive—The People Dead—The Strike; The Mills Dead—The People Alive—The Picket Line and Arrests; Forty Pickets before an Irresponsible Judge; The Strike Victim’s Funeral; The Striking Mothers Send their Children to Strike Mothers in New York; The Legislature of the Strikers in Helvetia Hall Passes the Eight Hour Law. The strike leaders, in this last scene, will give propaganda speeches addressed to the audience. Their speeches are to be the only monologues in the performance.

A thousand strikers will march from Paterson to New York to take part in the pageant. The music will be furnished by their mass singing and by their bands which now play at all large strike meetings. Both the actors and singers are being trained by John Reed.

CITY FATHERS TO FOREGATHER

At Binghamton on June 5-7 the mayors and other municipal officials of New York state are to hold their fourth annual conference. Each of the forty-eight mayors is to tell in five minutes what is the greatest problem of his city.

VACANT LOT GARDENING IN TORONTO

Toronto has joined the ranks of the cities in which there is an active vacant lot gardening movement. Over thirty parcels of vacant land in the business section of the city have been loaned to the Playgrounds Association and prepared for gardening by the Plowmen’s Association of York Township.

Early in this month the actual tilling began and the start of the new venture was celebrated by a dinner to the plowmen on the evening of that day. Seeds and implements have been promised so that the children will have everything necessary for successful gardening.

May 31, 1913