WHAT PRICE?
WHAT PRICE? It Costs Two Billion Dollars a Year to Publish the Capitalist Press That Fools the American Worker Into Supporting the Capitalist System THERE are in America nearly two thousand...
...Private initiative has failed to solve the housing problem...
...Because the press has succeeded in fooling the...
...of New York City could afford to live In steamheated apartments, and in the cases of these fortunate twelve per cent it was because there were grown-up children who were contributing their pay...
...In 1927, at the peak of our post-war prosperity period, the Literary Digest wanted to conduct an advertising survey to show the magazine's clients the 'extent of the market that exists in America for their products...
...The U. 8. Department of Agriculture In 1926 published a bulletin called "The Fanners' Standard of Living," based on a study of 2,886 selected, white farm families in eleven states, including three supposedly prosperous New England states...
...American working man Into believing this falsehood, the American working man has done less complaining and less fighting for his rights than the working man of any other country in the world...
...that la notably so of New York and some parts of Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St...
...These homes housed 100,000 employes and their families...
...It Costs Two Billion Dollars a Year to Publish the Capitalist Press That Fools the American Worker Into Supporting the Capitalist System THERE are in America nearly two thousand daily newspapers and hundreds of magazines that are circulated among the working people of the nation and more than two billion dollars are spent every year in producing them and bringing them to the eyea of their readers...
...In Kentucky and South Carolina, only three per cent of the farm houses had running water, only two per cent had bathrooms and only four per cent had electricity...
...Only America falls to face this problem...
...that is, fitted with a,part of the Improvements named...
...The New Leader plans a number of articles on this theme...
...That is the pathetic story of American housing—the worklngmen who build the houses cannot themselves afford decent homes —and two-thirds of the whole population of the country must get along without bath* rooms and steam-heat...
...Louis and other cities...
...A survey conducted by the writer for the New York Call, a Socialist dally newspaper, showed that In 1922 only 12 per cent of the bricklayer...
...About a fifth of the homes were partially modern...
...They help sell groceries, clothes, houses, automobiles and Ideas...
...Hopeless Derelicts and Beggars It is agreed, of course, that the depression has made millions of honest American workmen hopeless derelicts and beggars...
...A Pathetic Story Not even the men who build homes can afford to live in decent homes...
...Nor are the American farmers any better off than the American workmen...
...The press has therefore earned Its price...
...In addition to the conditions that are found in the alums of the old world cities, we in America "have conditions of land over-crowding, high buildings and lack of light and air that are quite unknown In Europe and Asia, in any part of the civilized world...
...In 1886, fully 47 years ago, thousands of old tenements were condemned as unfit for use, but more than half of them are still being used today...
...The Literary Digest chose as "the typical American community," neither too prosperous nor too poor, the city of Zanesvllle, Ohio, a ceramic and clay products centre with a population of 40,000...
...But here is what the Literary Digest found: Almost 40 per cent of the families in Zanesvllle had no baths and nearly SO per cent had no plumbing In their homes...
...We will go back to "the good old days" when the capitalist newspapers were publishing cartoons depicting the American workman being awakened in the morning by his butler and being waited for by his liveried chauffeur...
...It does pay to advertise...
...The reason the American working man cannot have a decent home lies in the fact that the building industry is not run for the purpose of creating good homes, but solely for the purpose of creating profits for the employers...
...These publications, with a very few exceptions, are owned by the employing class of America, and one of the most important aims of the publications Is to "sell" to the working people of the nation the idea that they are aa well off as they can hope to be...
...As long as houses are built primarily for profit, they will be built below what la regarded as a decent standard—without fur* nished heat, without adequate plumbing, lighting and ventilation...
...The Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1920 published a report on 423 company towns maintained by mining and textile companies to house their employes...
...that is, fitted with central heating and central lighting systems, running water, kitchen sink and bathroom (equipped with a stationary tub and bowl), Indoor toilet and sewage disposal...
...Read your own paper, published by workers and for workers for their emancipation...
...But we will not discuss the depression here...
...Worst Slums In World As for the large cities, says Mr...
...It does not matter that a house is not fit to live in—it will stand just so long as there is any money to be squeezed out of it...
...Socialists advocate destruction of all slums and construction of houses, not for private profit, but for the decent housing of the people, in accordance with standards of health and comfort...
...In a modern, civilized country, bouses that fall below a minimum standard of decency should not be permitted to stand and, of course, should no longer be built...
...The chief purpose of these publications is to sell something to the readers...
...In New York, investigators in 1901 found housing conditions so Intolerable that a new tenement house law was passed...
...The Socialist P a r t y would treat the problem in that light...
...The present manner In which mill ions of our people are housed constitutes a menace to the health a n d morals of our people...
...It Is a vast gambling Industry...
...Lawrence Veiller, secretary and director of the National Housing Commission and former secretary of the New York State Tenement House Commission, the American cities "have the worst slums In the civilized world...
...Decent bousing most be provided within the means of the people who e a r n their wages in shops, factories and on farms...
...Our two-billlon-dollar-a-year press Jbas been working hard to convince the American workingman that his standard of living, "the American standard of living," is the highest in the world...
...Almost three-fourths of the homes have none of the modern improvements mentioned above...
...The Department summarised its report as follows: "Slightly more than a twentieth of all the homer reporting were completely modern...
...Leifur Magnusson, who directed the Inquiry, reported: "Generally speaking, company towns are unsewered and without a piped water system for a large majority of the buildings...
...Now, the literary Digest would not have chosen Zanesvllle as an example unless it were sure that Zanesvllle Was at least as prosperous as the average American city...
...The two-Mltton-dollar-a-year A m e r i c an press has succeeded In making the American workman believe the lie t h a t he is better off than the workman of other countries...
...it has merely accumulated fortunes for the gamblers who speculate in housing...
...In recent years, England Germany, Austria, Holland—In fact, all countries that have strong Socialist Parties, have turned to the t a s k of eliminating their slums and giving the workmen decent homes a t low rentals...
...But the oldlaw tenement houses that were declared unfit for human beings in 1901 are still in use 31 years later—in fact, they house more than 1,500,000 people...
Vol. 13 • June 1932 • No. 26
