MANNERS & MORALS: The Forgotten Art

Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art,

A good mouth-filling oath, and leave

“in sooth”

And such protest of pepper-gingerbread

To velvet guards and Sunday citizens.

—Shakespeare, Henry IV

Edna Ruggles did, in sooth, have a protest. She was fired by the Indianapolis Glove Co. at Marion, Ind. for uttering loud and profane reflections on the ancestry of her glove machine. Edna and her union (the A.F.L.’s International Glove Workers) protested to Louis Plost, Chicago trial examiner of the National Labor Relations Board. After due reflection, Examiner Plost last week handed down his decision:

“The day when a curse was designed and intended to call down the wrath of heaven upon any object, animate or inanimate, has happily passed. Today, the words of imprecation, cursing and blasphemy survive in our speech shorn of their real meaning.

“Time was when even the use of such ‘swear words’ devoid of blasphemous intent or meaning had a proper and respected place in our language. Their use was a great art, reaching its noblest . . . among men whose lives were bound to beasts of burden . . . the cavalry man, the artillery man, but most of all the mule skinner . . .

“But, alas, the coming of the gasoline engine has removed the living spur to expressive, non-blasphemous profanity until now only a pale substitute survives—the words are remembered but the music has been lost.”

As for Edna Ruggles, Plost decided, her “vulgar expressions . . . were not in any sense real blasphemy” and she should get her job back.