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WHEN A V. S. SECRETARY OF WAR
WAS INSTRUCTED IN
Americanism
l$y Bernard G. Richards
The fiftieth anniversary of the
founding of the Poale Zion or
Labor Zionist Movement for the
rebuilding of Palestine was re
cently observed with large mass
meetings in New York and other
large cities and the occasion was
further commemorated by the pub
lication of a two volume history
of the movement issued in Yiddish
by the Yiddisher Kemfer. A num
ber of stalwart and picturesque
figures emerge out of these pages,
courageous spokesmen and daring
workers for the cause of Zion.
The observances recently held
also brought back many exciting
days before World War I when
one of the pioneers in the struggle,
Dr. Naehum Svrkin, distinguished
Yiddish writer, philosopher and
advocate of labor, stirred masses of
our people throughout the country
to intense enthusiasm with his
newspaper articles and lectures,
especially when he so fervently ad
vocated thi' objectives of America
and the Allies. Remembered par
ticularly will be an incident which
was told by himself and which re
lates to his voyage to Paris to at
tend the Peace Conference of Ver
sailles in 1919 as a delegate from
the American Jewish Congress, the
organization that then undertook
the task of championing Jewish
rights in Europe and the restora
tion of Palestine.
Dr. Syrkin, the gentle scholar,
travelled with another delegate
from the American Jewish Congress
to the Peace Conference and his
companion enjoyed similar fame
as labor leader, welfare worker
and orator.
The redoubtable Joseph Baron-
dess, an earlier arrival to the
United States was in fact the
pioneer organizer of labor in the
great needle industry of New York,
the man who rose from the sub
merged immigrants and pulled his
exploited and bewildered fellow-
workers out of the squalid sweat
shops into the daylight of modern
factories and better working con
ditions. So phenomenal was his rise
as a leader and so dramatic the
events leading up to the earliest
demonstrations, strikes and tri
umphs, that Edward King, English-
born writer, and a star reporter on
the old New York World found
in them the theme of a novel, per-
naps the first romance of the East
Side Ghetto published in the U-
nited States, ‘‘Joseph Zalmonah",
issued by Lee and Sheppard, Bos
ton, 1893. Zalmonah was no other
than Joseph Barondess and he and
his family and associates were but
thinly disguised by the Gentile
author who, fascinated by the sights
and sounds of an exotic settlement
in the midst of drab New York,
became a frequent visitor to the
labor leader’s home and the friend
and benefactor of his family. In
his later career as civic leader
and worker for many public causes
new honors came to Barondess and
the late Mayor J. Gaynor in 1910
appointed him member of the New
York Board of Education. (Reap
pointed by Mayor John Purroy
Mitchel 1 in 1914).
Dr.Syrkin had come here with a
European reputation as publicist,
essayist and lecturer, having match
ed wits with Israel Zangwill, Dr.
Max Nordau, Dr. Chaim Weitzmann,
and other spokesman of Israel at
international Zionist Congresses. He
was distinctly the intellectual, shy,
retiring type and sparing of words.
Barondess was palpably the emo
tionalist; enthusiastic, effusive,
flowing with utterance. Notwith
standing the contrast between
them, they were the staunchest
friends and rejoiced in traveling
together on a great humanitarian
mission, being part of a larger
delegation of ten persons that pro
ceeded abroad in several groups.
Though both men took part in
the episode that is here recorded,
Syrkin played the subordinate role
first as interlocutor, and then as
narrator who provided the climax
to the story.
They were erstwhile aliens whose
cradles had stood in far off Ukra
ine and Lithuania, who long felt so
strange here and during the trying
years of adjustment shared the
handicaps of all the hosts of A-
tnerica’s adopted sons; but their
eyes moistened as the great stream
er Aquitania pulled out of New
York’s harbor and they saw the
last vanishing peaks of the tower
ing structures that rimmed the
skyline of the metropolis. And it
was Barondess who was overcome
with sadness as his cherished
haunts and the scenes of his great
achievements were left behind. To
overcome the gloom which possess
ed him, he sought closer intercourse
with his companion and the streams
of conservation flowed more pro
fusely than ever. .
Naturally the two friends who
-A
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