TIMELY TOPICS
THOMAS, NORMAN
By Norman Thomas TIMELY TOPICS Every week the presidential candidate pauses in his campaign to hammer out pithy comment on the anvil of Socialist philosophy and ripe experience. A Conspiracy...
...To put things bluntly, It is this lie on which the owning chum depends to make the sales tax conspiracy effective...
...And the total now is 41.4 per cent under the same perioain 1930...
...It has grown whiskers...
...Roosevelt is its man as much as Hoover and it was Democratic leaders in Congress who first proposed a general sales tax...
...They have had only poverty and pain, weekly government aid and despair...
...Franklin D. Roosevelt, "* with characteristic evasiveness, has managed to keep mum all these months on this vital question...
...When You Vote .Socialist When you vote the Socialist ticket you do more than vote for yourself and your dear ones...
...This is what your vote will get you, when you cast it for Socialism...
...But, some friend of Al Smith may say, as he did at Newark, the government cant tax non-existent incomes...
...You have had three years of that...
...Spread opportunity before the young and spare the old...
...On the Democratic side, such arch-enemies as Mr...
...Will it that our Government and the country serve our people in fullest measure...
...Why let either old party have another chance...
...Statistics worked out for me by my associate, Henry J. Rosner, conclusively show that this 68 per cent drop cannot be explained by income derived from other, sources than dividends...
...For them the • only votes that count for change of these bitter conditions are those marked for Socialism.-.' They feel you have it within your power to use the unbounded resources, the fertile fields and the industry of the land to bring forth happiness''for us and hope for them...
...I found it a matter of common report in Utah that Senator Reed Smoot, who is likely to lose in the Senatorial election, expects to crown his career by putting over the sales tax, in the lame duek session of Congress this winter...
...Going down hill, as you are now, conditions will be worse...
...Hoover and Mr...
...Only the Socialist Party would have industry run for the good of all...
...Alfred E. Smith, himself now deeply involved in big business, are equally enthusiastic for the sales tax...
...Hearst on the other by opposing the one love they have in common...
...Now contrast this figure: in the same year, income tax nayments had declined 68 per cent...
...To Block Evasion of Taxes KJOW, if we csn block evasion of the iucome tax, * ' and if we applied the British rates of taxation on incomes between $10,000 and $260,000 annually, a general sales tax, if levied on the basis heretofore suggested, would yield the Government between $800,000,000 and $1,000,000,000 annually...
...A Mad World...
...Gfve us the power of your votes to wage your battle in Washington this winter...
...Mr...
...Both Mr...
...It May Be Worse Conditions can be worse...
...Before this blast the old party oratory and optimism fades as quickly as its campaign bunting before the first rain...
...We suffer now, not from the .lack of investment capital, but from too much of it, which cannot find any ssfe nse...
...A whole new generation has come into being, many of whom never knew what it was to work, to be independent, to raise s family and to have pride and joy in living...
...It is nonsense to say that thus to tax incomes will cripple our economic life by curtailing either purchases or investments...
...Mills, who is alleged to be the brains of the administration, had come around to a sales tax, towards which for political reasons they had at first been coy, before Congress adjourned...
...Hunting for a job without luck snd lucky if one in the household was working enough to keep you all from hunger...
...Twin Parties and Plutocracy IN plain English, the effort to establish a sales * tax, instead of increasing income and inheritance taxes, is nnother proof that this government and both old parties belong to the group with incomes in excess of $10,000 a year...
...Hut stars trum amasnes uei cruel trick of Republican and Democratic candidates who see an "uptrend...
...Taxing the Unemployed PVEN the unemployed, so long as they can...
...The one wsy to stop this new infamy is to vote Socialist...
...Obviously, there has been wholesale evasion of Income taxes, much of which may be legal under the benevolent administration of Andrew Mellon and Ogden Mills, but all of which ought to be stopped...
...It would establish .the thirty-hour week for interstate commerce...
...A sales tax means that a tax is levied on the larger number of things that enter into general trade...
...This evasion cannot possibly be accounted for entirely by the escape of wealth into tax-exempt bonds, although this particular channel of escape should long ago have been blocked...
...The nation could only buy what it makes...
...Smith, at Newark, summed up the case for the sales tax by saying that the Federal government raised the income tax to balance the budget when the people had no income...
...Unless you send an army •>* Socialist votes to Waahington now, to change our tragic conditions yt the better, you will send an army of hungry men to Washington later on...
...Speaking on this world-wide depression the other day, Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank of England, went so far as to say that conditions "appear to me at this time as being outside the control of any man and any Government and any country...
...Here we can say that the sales tax will fall upon workers whose wages have already declined $20,000,000,000, or more than 60 per cent, since 1929...
...Meanwhile, in 1931, the total interest and dividend payments by domestic corporations was almost a billion dollars in excess of 1929...
...Here are the cold, deadly facts: Class I railroads in this country did 28.6 per cent less business in the first eight months of this year as against last year...
...In this world crisis the poor snd miserable in other lands cast their eyes across the wide ocean to see if your vote brings them nearer to you,' in work, in food, in common hope for a better day...
...In the case of 442 industrial stocks, 23 utilities and 26 Class I steam railroads, the Standard Statistics Corporation does show a loss of dividends in 1931, as compared with 1929, of 14 per cent...
...Meanwhile, I solemnly warn you that immediately after too many of you have thrown away your votes on the two old parties in this election, there will be launched in the press, over the radio, and in the halls of Congress an overwhelming campaign for the sales tax, a campaign that once more will justify old King Solomon's observation, "The destruction of the poor man is his poverty...
...WHAT will you bring home for your vote ? By casting your ballot for either the Republican or Democratic Party you are sure of four years more of depression...
...Capitalism cannot be saved anywhere...
...Only during the three years of the war was part of Britain's surplus of manpower buried in the trenches and munitions factories...
...A Conspiracy for the Sales Tax DKI1IN1) the personal rancor, the lust for office *¦* and the mock concern for the people which characterises this dull, moronic campaign between the two capitalist parties, there is what amounts to a conspiracy of silence between them, at the behest of their owners, to put the burden of a staggering deficit upon the shoulders of workers, employed and unemployed, by means of the ssles taxProof of this is mountain-high...
...Fed on false hopes for three years and given only empty promises now...
...You vote for even more than our own nation...
...Smith on the one hand or Mr...
...This is completely false...
...Norman thinks only of our present way of getting a living, by being given work only so long as employers can make a profit and bankers draw interest...
...A sales tax isn't exactly popular with the voting masses, but the Governor dares not alienate Mr...
...End the bitter struggle for br ad and the clash over commerce...
...The British tax rates, applied to the estimated American income of 1932, if honestly and efficiently enforced, should raise between 1,000,000,000 and $1,600,000,000 in additional revenue—this without any additional inheritance taxes, which should of course be levied...
...In Mr...
...pur*-* chase anything at all, are victims of this tax...
...Should you vote for either the Republicsn or Democratic Party, your ballot will brink home only four more years of trouble...
...Franklin Roosevelt Is Silent BJIKANWHILE, the Hon...
...Norman's own country, Great Britain, the depression has been present since before the war...
...Now the number of job hunters piles up from month to month, and the battalions of starvation are on the march...
...WIN WITH SOCIALISM...
...It has given birth to an army of unemployed which will eat it up, and swallows it in the making of another order where all work and enjoy—Socialism...
...It is a tax deliberately designed to permit the property-owning classes to unload their share of the tax , burden onto the backs of the workers...
...To that extent he is right...
...What a mad civil ixstion, which can breathe only when men who are brothers slaughter each other with shot and poison and plaguel And this you buy for your ballot traded with either the Republican or Democratic Party...
...Industry woaM run smoothly and sure...
...j Here is what you may expect to help bring home: Split the work and join in reaping its fruits...
...Now, the things that are thus taxed are precisely those th'ngs .which the average farmer, worker and1 professional men has to buy for his family...
...Which shall it be...
...It is the masses who make the purchases...
...By your massing of votes for Socialism you lead to win the world to plenty, to peace and to promise of the good life for all mankind: Have you not lost enough through the old political parties and the old industrial order...
...Usually the consumer not only pays the tax which reaches the government, but that tax pyramided with extra profit all the way from the manufacturer to the ultimate retailer...
...It could fix wages and prices so there is no profit for unnecessary "owners," and no interest for the giant banking rings...
...By Joseph E. Cohen Win A World With Your Vote...
...This group owns the newspapers and finances the capitalist parties...
...William Randolph Hearst, with whom Governor Roosevelt made a deal for the Presidency, and the Hon...
...That is what your ballot will get you...
...You vote for humanity everywhere...
...Congress could control goods shipped across State lines...
Vol. 14 • November 1932 • No. 19
