CHAPTER 2 California Here We Come! CONDITIONS IN THE LOS ANGELES dress industry had grown steadily worse in five months. Manufacturers generally were violating the state minimum wage of $16 a week for women, and the President's Reemployment Agreement, more often called the Blanket Code, in effect until a permanent Code of Fair Competition under the NRA could be agreed upon for the industry. An appallingly large labor turnover was deliberately fostered by the employers for their own benefit. Workers who showed any inclination to organize for selfprotection were promptly fired; and the blacklist operated relentlessly against those who dared protest. I got a close-up of this from local union leaders the morning after my arrival. Something drastic must be done within the next few weeks. The City of Angels then had about 150 dress factories, emplo...
Chapter VIII Plumbing the Depths; Keeping Watch; -- And Ward; The Law-and-Order Candidate; Poetry to Pros Plumbing the Depths Furtive sex was a flourishing industry at the end of the Macmillan era. I had a certain ingrained prudery and never paid for a prostitute in my life, even at the time I will relate after my long-term companions died and I only occasionally enjoyed the pleasures of sex. Maybe I sound puritanical, but it was not that. I knew one or two professionals well but I never availed myself of their services. One is always pestered by hustlers when one visits Paris, especially as a lone male, and when soliciting was accompanied by genuine pleas for cash -- "I've been ill and can't work" was the favorite -- I gave them the money and moved on. What disgusted me was the element of exploitation. Suddenly all around me there were, if not prostitutes, a rash of "pornbrokers' shops" as pornographic booksellers were called --...
To most Americans of the classes which consider themselves significant the war [World War II brought a sense of the sanctity of the State which, if they had had time to think about it, would have seemed a sudden and surprising alteration in their habits of thought. In times of peace, we usually ignore the State in favor of partisan political controversies, or personal struggles for office, or the pursuit of party policies. It is the Government rather than the State with which the politically minded are concerned. The State is reduced to a shadowy emblem which comes to consciousness only on occasions of patriotic holiday. Government is obviously composed of common and unsanctified men, and is thus a legitimate object of criticism and even co... (From : bopsecrets.org.)