THE "BOY FRIEND" ON PARADE
THOMAS, NORMAN
THE "BOY FRIEND" ON PARADE Beer Cry Raised to Hide Scandals of Tammany Misrule By NORMAN THOMAS TTO THE PEOPLE OF NEW YORK: Close to a million of you are unemployed. The number is increasing and...
...His heart did not bleed for any home owners when after the depression had begun he voted enthusiastically for two separate salary grabs, one of which raised his own salary by $15,000 a year...
...The Mayor has told you that his heart bleeds for you but that he cannot help the poverty of his government...
...What does the city of Wall Street, Walker and Tammany do...
...Who cares...
...But its Mayor leads the march not for hread which he might help to give bat for beer which he cannot give...
...The New York City Honle Relief Bureau has recently dropped 20,000 from its roll...
...Yet this means a reduction of 8,000 family heads from the 20,000 once employed by the Emergency Work Bureau of the Gibson Committee...
...It is the first business of the City not as a mailer of charity but justice to help you...
...It is now aiding 4,903 family heads— twice as many as the funds now in the hand of the Gibson Committee actually provide for...
...We shall make a beginning when, we sec clearly that in starving America bread is more than beer I and work more than wise-cracks...
...Who cares ? The Mayor leads the Beer Parade...
...NewYork is a city of slums...
...Especially does his heart bleed for the small home owner who is likely to be driven onto the streets by heavier taxes...
...One third of our people still live in old law tenements, fire traps, in some of which more than a score of people have been cither killed or injured within the last month...
...namely, that James J. Walker well knows that this parade will«do more for Walker than for beer...
...This is New York, the richest city in the world...
...New York is a city of racketeers, a city of the third degree, a city where even justice goes to the man with the longest pocket book or the biggest pull...
...It gives you two and a half million dollars a month for the months of June and July although at the very lowest and most inadequate estimate to meet the most urgent needs six and a half million dollars a month are needed from the City of New York...
...Who cares ? The Boy Friend leads the Beer Parade I Make no mistake about it, when we socialists call your attention to these things we are by no means denying that legal beer would be infinitely better than the legalized hypocrisy of the present situation...
...New applications which had been coming in at the rate of from 900 to .1,200 a day have stopped completely...
...The Mayor leads the Beer Parade...
...Not only has the Mayor not done anything to save for the city the two and a half million dollar increases in high salaries which have Ik en voted sin* he took office...
...Even Walker and Wall Street will not want to tell you that the much advertised block-aid makes a difference...
...Socialist Vienna in the midst of her poverty is wiping out these slums, but not New York...
...He has also dune nothing at all to protect the interests of the workers...
...The average relief for a family has fallen from $7 a week to $3 a week...
...His heart did npt bleed for the small home owner when year after year he blithely refused repeated requests of the Socialists Party to consolidate offices and to clean out the administration from the hands of Tin Box politicians, each making his pile...
...In the case of the B. M. T. bus franchise alone the city could have easily got another 10 million dollars, and that would have immensely strengthened the City's financial credit and borrowing power...
...The number is increasing and the need is increasing far more rapidly with the exhaustion of savings...
...His whole idea of the economy which he says the bankers force on him has been to rescind or defer three hundred million dollars worth of public works which would have given full time employment to a hundred thousand men...
...He has rc|>eatedly ignored the socialist demand that the seven-day week on the bus lines and die subways be wiped out...
...That's only part of your ground for complaint, workers of New York...
...He has been an exceedingly useful showpiece and mouthpiece for the political and economic system behind him...
...We simply assert what no honest man can deny...
...His heart did not bleed for the small home owner when first in the Equitable Bus fiasco, next in the B. M- T. bus deal, and then in the Queens Bus franchises he fought tooth and nail to give these gold mines to private conqwnies controlled by his friends—don't forget that Jimmy's other name is "the boy friend"— although these companies offered less than half of what other companies offered and still less than the City could have got by insisting on its rights...
...When his usefulness is over he will be cast aside—already there are signs that the political rats are deserting his sinking ship —but the system will go on, not only in New York but in all America unless and until workers with hand and brain awake and organize their own cooperatives, their own unions, and, above all, their own political party...
...Another 30^000 registered for relief will not even be investiDrawngated...
...Neither "are we wasting our time by attacking one mail, our Playboy Mayor...
Vol. 13 • May 1932 • No. 20
