THOMAS SAYS:
THOMAS, NORMAN
THOMAS SAYS: THEY REFUSE TO STARVE THE significance of the peaceful march of the veterans on Washington In search of Immediate payment of their bonus has not been enough discussed. There are...
...While most of these veterans are fine human material for Socialist educational work they are at the moment far more likely material for a Fascist revolution, with some radical features, than for any Socialist revolution...
...So it waa In Germany...
...Work should ado to the social wealth...
...Some of them find life in the Washington camps, poor as it is, better than life in the towns they left...
...A. L. Too often the convulsions of the oppressed and Suffering are replied to only with bayonets...
...So far as has been shown .there is not much in Davlla'a paat record to encourage such a hope, nor does my reading of history Inspire me with great faith la revolutions of what has thus far been the prevalent South American type...
...1. Congress must not adjourn without providing relief far the unemployed...
...U. S. AT FAULT...
...We are Interested in preventing chaos or wholesale starvation...
...They have not yet begun any serious economies...
...Yet Klein Is now convicted for taking illegal commissions from a favorite contractor for road supplies...
...In their fight they stiffened the backbone of the 'other men -In the Building Trades Council There Is a healthy move, ment on among the commercial artists to organize a nation-wide union...
...A public housing program would probably repay 88 per cent of the initial government expenditures over a period of years...
...A beginning might be made on roads because plans for roads are ready, but the main emphasis should be On housing, reforestation and the electrification of rural areas...
...It proves that American workers won't Indefinitely starve in order to help Hoover balance the budget...
...Now that the bonus has been defated, I think the army will gradually drift out of Washington, though some are likely to stay for a long time...
...They honestly believe that they are entitled to the bonus now, and apparently they are willing to have the bonus paid Indiscriminately to veterans whether or not they are out of work and no matter at what cost to a program of unemployment relief...
...A large share of the responsibility rests upon the governments of other nations who have driven the German people to the verge of despair, and among these the most guilty are the governments of France and of the United States...
...The bricklayers stood pat on the award of the arbitrators of a cur around 14 per cent, and they won...
...The day I visited the principal camp In spite of the fact that the men were soaked by repeated rains and had very inadequate shelter In sight of the capitol dome, their spirit was high, there waa no begging on the streets of Washington, the man did their own police work, and there waa no sign of drunkenness of any other disorder...
...The chief good of any large program of inflation would be wiping out the intolerable burden of debt...
...There are some very encouraging things about it...
...I do not...
...Is for these but the blackness of night ? William Morris, OUTLAW MACHINERY The Boston city council has adopted the order that mechanical excavators and steam and gasoline shovels bo barred in all future olty contracts until work has bean found for the unemployed...
...BUT the blame is not to be put" only upon* these leaders, nor only upon the German die-hard reactionaries who, half stupidly and half wickedly have played into their hands...
...It quite logically expresses the real nature of both these movements...
...Such fear has its uses...
...IFRANKLY confess that I am by no means so well versed in Chilean' affairs as a good many other Americans think they are...
...And such co-operation is not a mere parliamentary maneuver...
...The principles Socialist...
...Granting that the national government and the state government should do far more'than they are doing about unemployment, this failure of the Walker administration to act is one of its chief crimes...
...I hope that a great many of the army will turn their attention to arousing public sentiment for unemployment relief...
...ENCOURAGING SIGNS THERE are a few encouraging signs in the labor work...
...Their patriotism Is still a good deal on the order of 1917...
...We are not Interested In saving the Hoover administration...
...While I am hopeful that they are going to take up the matter of unemployment relief, a great many of them are still conscious of being veterans of the war against Germany than veterans of the war against poverty...
...BUILDING DECLINES jf -. Building permits In 50 Massachusetts municipalities in Mty ware 30.8 per cent lean than In April,and TIT per cent less than...
...FEAR HAS ITS USES ITOLD a great audience of the veterans that without closing my eyes I could see camps of the unemployed far more wretched than^ theirs, in the West Virginia coal fields, for instance...
...I know that those same comrades have been giving In their branches and giving to all kinds of special funds, and that they are going to keep on...
...1. The excuse...
...ipilKRK were good speeches at the Socialist dinner here in New York on June 18, and it was in all respects a fine gathering, but I think the real climax was the collection...
...Retail tailors with Jacob Panken as their counsel are putting up a magnificent fight against the domination of the cleaning and dyeing industry by an association of master cleaners with the sinister shadow of racketeering always in the picture...
...It may be that there is more of a real popular movement back of it than anything in the dispatches thus far has indicated...
...Hatred of democracy, glorification of brute force, willingness to provoke both civil and international war rather than to permit social progress through the ways of freedom and of peace, have been essential features of Bolshevism from the very start, and the parties of Mussolini and of Hitler have profited by the teaching* of Lenin and Trotsky...
...For three hundred men and women ,in such times as these, to give or pledge $1312, for the greater part of it in tens and fives and singles, seemed to me a thing to warm one's heart...
...Mayor Oermok of Chicago tells a Congressional committee bluntly that if it does not enable Chicago to .borrow money for unemployment relief before/Aug...
...That can better be done by a combination of moratoriums, debt refunding, and taxation, Including very heavy Income and inheritance taxation, and possibly a capital levy...
...For what and for whom hath the world's book been glided, When all...
...But that la a criticism not of them but of this tragic depression...
...Moreover, there is something hopefully significant for the future In the order these men have heretofore kept, the Ingenuity and discipline they displayed In setting up their camp and, perhaps most of all, in the fine racial solidarity between white and colored veterans...
...SOMETIMES we are tempted to think that it would be better for 6ur party if it did not conK tlnually call on Its members to glvn and give and give...
...One of them Is the new vigor of the A. F. of L. stand on unemployment relief, assuming that Edward McGrady spoke for the whole organization...
...i wish It may prove that all the benevolent professions of the new regime there are genuine...
...IIMMWS.ERRAJSD BOY AS If to add Insult to Injury Borough President Harvey, Jimmy Walker's Republican errand boy on the Board of Estimate, is now advocating economy by abolishing municipally maintained colleges...
...When a real program of inflation la begun without any proper control labor will be chasing prices with about the success of a boy chasing the tall of a flying kite...
...1, It will find itself compelled before very long to send Federal troops to Chicago...
...1 3. Congress must make an end of the bad business of trying to turn relief over to private agencies and of promising to lend money to private corporations in order to get them to employ for their own profit a few more workers...
...It proves that spontaneous action in still possible in America, for these men came without any particular organization, from the North and the South and the East and the West...
...4. Congress should treat this situation as It would tread an emergency of the magnitude of war...
...At times, no doubt: the everlasting cry for funds becomes irksome, and occasionally a newcomer may be repelled by it But on the whole, the effect la Just the reverse...
...And I know that for many of them the donation they made meant the deciding to postpone the purchase of a hat or a pair of shoes or something else that they really need...
...Indeed I waa so much impressed by what I saw that I wished all America could see it and see it Straight...
...But my confession of ignorance rightly debars me from predicting that the change which has taken place in Chile will turn out to be only a change of masters...
...AT LAUSANNE STRANGE ALLIANCES...
...At the present moment, when the results of the May elections have favored a new orientation of French foreign policy our statesmen at Washington, thinking only in terms of dollars/, look calmly on at a danger of European/war, and possibly of world war, which a little magnanimity on their part could turn aside...
...This is not the first time they have Joined hands, nor will it be the last...
...Yet the men who say that voted themselves a salary raise since the' depression began and another salary raise to their friends, the politicians...
...ABOUT CHILE IOBSERVE that the .Communists and the Fascists in the Prussian Landtag voted together the other day, to carry a resolution calling on Germany to withdraw from the League of Nations...
...It la fair to say that some credit goes to the Washington police department for the good sense it has this far shown in getting along with the men and leaving the policing of the men to themselves in the camvps...
...One more word...
...Nevertheless the situation has other and far leas encouraging features...
...Another is the victory of the building trades workers, for which credit is mostly due to the bricklayers, in the fight in New York against a 25 per cent or more cut in wages...
...More power to the real union...
...Relief must be given until adequate work can be started, but what we need is work...
...No money...
...worth mentioning...
...The wise are Instructed by reason, ordinary minds by experience, the aturJld by necessity, and brutes, bv Instinct —Cicero The singers have sung and the builders have bulldcd, The painters have fashioned their tales of delight...
...But bayonets can restore only peace due to terror and violence Imposed by despotism.—Mlrabeau...
...It is likely that whether we like It or not we shall come to some degree of Inflation Indeed I have repeatedly argued that controlled* inflation to restore, if possible, the price level at which outstanding loans to farmers were made is necessary...
...That's what we have been trying to persuade them to do...
...This Harvey is the man who appointed Irving Klein to a high office and called me all sorts of names when I drew attention to serious complaints against Klein...
...Wage and salary workers, however, need to be reminded that any promiscuous and Indiscriminate inflation is likely to send prices up very far ahead of wages, that the prosperity It seems to create will be feverish and illusory...
...As It once drafted men from all parts of the country so it must plan to give men employment equitably in all parts of the country...
...We should think in terms of billions not millions...
...Edward McGrady of the A. F. of L. bluntly told another Congressional hearing that the cry would be raised In Washington not to save the people but to save the government...
...At last the public Is beginning to wake up, part of it out of sheer fear of what may happen...
...are fighting for need to be clearly stated...
...MAYOR WALKER'S FAILURE -jskjEW YORK CITY has voted only half what ,tN the Director of Public Welfare said was necessary for unemployment relief till Aug...
...2. Some of the bills now,before Congress are better than others but no bill and no combination , of existing bills can provide adequate relief on proper principles...
...share that view...
...Amicus Most and Marx Lewis and the Washington comrades generally have done an excellent piece of work...
Vol. 13 • June 1932 • No. 26
