STUDENTS IN KENTUCKY

The treatment of the student delegation which went to Kentucky last week to investigate the condition of the miners affords a striking example of the way in which the country allows itself to be victimized by a confusion of ideas. In this case practically all the parties concerned in the affair have permitted the essential matter to be beclogged with irrelevancies. The original group, led by Theodore Dreiser and Waldo Frank, raised a cloud of publicity which centered almost exclusively on themselves, and which in the case of Dreiser was of an exceptionally shabby character. The air of ineffective dilettantism which surrounds their adventures has gone far to discredit in the public eye the cause of the miners. It is doubtful if half the people who have read the press reports are aware of the industrial conditions under which the miners live, the underlying cause of the existing conditions.

That the student delegation was prejudiced on its entrance into Kentucky, is quite probable; most of its members already had formed opinions and were eager merely to gather evidence in support of them. But the charge of the county authorities that they are Communists is patently ridiculous, and quite beside the point. Regardless of their political convictions, they have an obvious right to investigate industrial conditions in any part of the country. The fatuous finger-wagging of the Kentucky authorities proves nothing except that Kentucky is a near-neighbor of Tennessee.