"Here to Stay"

Many an alarmed adult considers Youth brash, bad-mannered, ignorant and Red. Some even think that Youth is organized like a labor union, that Youth is a Movement. Last week grown-ups who think these things were able to get themselves into quite a stew over the goings-on of the biggest and most conglomerate of youth organizations, the American Youth Congress. Hitchhiking, riding jalopies, trains, busses, 482 delegates, black & white, representing 299 local and national groups, assembled in College Camp, Wis. for A. Y. C.'s sixth annual convention.

Announced aim of A. Y. C. (attacked by the Dies Committee, spanked by Mr. Roosevelt, coddled by his wife) is to give Youth a chance to shoot its mouth off, draw attention to its problems. Chief concerns were unemployment, war and peace, civil liberties. Chief distraction was Communism, which has plagued A. Y. C. for long.

Consistently, A. Y. C. has refused to condemn Communism by name, or purge itself of Communist Party members or the Young Communist League. Its reason: to deny anyone a hearing is contrary to its creed. But a frequent charge against the Congress has been that an articulate and fast-stepping Communist minority has determined A. Y. C. policies, kept them lashed to the Communist Party line. One grown-up who is convinced that A. Y. C. is dominated by the Communists is ex-Heavyweight Champion Gene Tunney. In the attempt to get a "pro-American" bloc into the Congress, Mr. Tunney backed young Promotion Man Murray Plavner, who thought he could do it.

Mr. Plavner arrived at the Congress with about 65 followers. A. Y. C. officers claimed they had registered too late to be accredited delegates. Mr. Plavner wired Mr. Tunney for help. Cracked 29-year-old Joe Cadden, A. Y. C. executive secretary: "If Mr. Tunney wants to stage a comeback he better see Mike Jacobs." Mr. Tunney flew out, took a look, declined an invitation to address A. Y. C., left in a huff. The Plavner followers trailed behind, vowing they would start a Congress of their own.

Many a delegate who stayed was no better pleased with the way things went inside A. Y. C. Franklin Kramer, from the All-Campus Peace Federation of the University of Wisconsin, tried to get the Congress to denounce the suppression of civil liberties in Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, the invasion of Finland. Not a chance. Complained Mr. Kramer: "I'd like to see a little deviation from the Communist Party line. . . . We never can attack the sacred cow of Russia or of Communism."

At week's end A. Y. C., far from attacking these sacred cows, had given them plenty of fodder. Max Weiss, of the Young Communist League, had recited the new Communist Party line: The people of the U. S. must collaborate with the Soviet Union to stop Hitler. A. Y. C. had endorsed Chairman Jack McMichael ("American young people want to be sure that ... we will not be asked to defend America against Hitler by Hitlerizing America"). After much bickering, A. Y. C. went on record against "excessive armaments," compulsory military training, intervention in South America or the Far East, registration of aliens, lending any material aid to England. It also took a stand for home defense and "strict neutrality." It announced that the major threat to the U. S. was the Administration's failure to solve unemployment, especially unemployment among youths. Still arguing, the well-organized youths--many disgruntled, many perplexed--climbed into their jalopies and went home.

Too late to be of any use to the delegates came some good advice.at week's end from the American Youth Commission (chairman: scholarly, 65-year-old Industrialist Owen D. Young). Youth, counseled the Commission, should show good manners, refrain from spitting in its elders' eye. The Commission particularly stressed one point: that comprehensive organizations should honestly represent their membership.

For vexed adults, the Commission had a sage word: Youth organizations are worthwhile, and "here to stay." Normal young people will hunt for solutions to "our admittedly unsolved social problems." It is destructive, un-American to deny the right of free expression. ". . . Persecution of young intellectual radicals is in itself a childish procedure. If dictatorship comes to the U. S., it will not be as the result of propaganda but of "economic paralysis, uncontrolled monopoly, unemployment and poverty."

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