Inspiring Addresses at Great Garden Rally
Inspiring Addresses at Great Garden Rally Hillquit Calls for Big Socialist Vote as Only Significant Result of Tangled Election—Old Parties Bankrupt THE Socialists can justly claim that they have...
...Most of our working families live in houses that are positively indecent in a rich country like this...
...The Masters are planning to utilize this terrible crisis to beat down the standard of living of tho workers, and to destroy the organizations with which the workers have slowly, painfully and bitterly fought their way to something like human standards of.livIng...
...Go to the polling places and seek out the Socialist ticket Be blind to every other ticket, for they are the tickets of hunger and war, of insecurity and breadlines...
...we think that labor incomes are more Important Since working people don't get the full product of their labor anyhow, the cost of this unemployment compensstion should be borne not by workers, but by the employers and by the government The government's share should be raised from income and inheritance taxes, not just as a means of meeting tho bill, but deliberately in order to reduce the inequality between the rich and the poor...
...Thst Is the way AND THE ONLY WAY to do It HIT THAT THING HARDI VOTE THE SOCIALIST TICKET FROM TOP TO BOTTOM I...
...JT is related in one of the pos-' sibly mythical stories about Abraham Lincoln that when as a youth of 21 he was in New Orleans at the end of a long journey down the Mississippi as a raftsman he witnessed a slave auction for the first time...
...Whether true or not, the story has its aftermath moral...
...The way to that new world is vis the ballot box...
...Today we are face-to-face with other terrible THINGS...
...That means the government, and since the toad of unemployment relief is too big for the local governments, the federal government will have to help...
...We are face-to-face' with international policies that mean jealousies, hatreds, rivalries, competitive armaments,, back-breaking burdens to maintain colossal machinery of destruction, and that in themselves constitute the greatest possible danger of war—and a war that will be so terrible that by comparison the war of 1014-1918 will seem like a high-school football game I THAT THING is the SYSTEM...
...He is said to have gazed with honor upon the shocking scene as a lusty-lunged auctioneer pinched the flesh of a husky black wench, showed her good points and called for bids...
...The millions who faced the first weeks and months and years of distress with good humor and with the aid of their savings, of charity, of bitter "relief" and of their friends and relatives are beginning to become ugly...
...The time came, and by his very presence, by the soul that dwelt in his gangling body he faced THAT THING, and when the moment came to strike he hit it hard...
...We vote for ideas...
...a system that results in such absurd situations, has no right to survive...
...for Waldman and Solomon...
...There is more explosive force In the voting machine and the ballot box than in shiploads of TNT— and MORE EFFECTIVE IN DESTROYING EVIL THINGS...
...It will give* jobs to the largest number of people In which private capitalism has failed the worst...
...HIT THAT THING HARD...
...Those are the three mHin answers to the question of what the Socialist Party would do immediately about unemployment, but we also think that now would be a good time to reduce the number of unemployed by securing the sixhour day and the five-day week without a reduction in wages, by abolishing child labor, and by taking all the workers over sixty out of the factories, the offices, and the fields and giving them an oldage pension...
...Every evil we suffer from today, even the shabby and miserable corruption that disgraces New York and other cities under Democratic and Republican rule, can be traced DIRECTLY to the PROFIT SYSTEM...
...SUCH A VOTE IS A VOTE FOR THAT WHICH ENSLAVES AND TORTURES THE HUMAN RACE...
...When the hungry are being fed and while the public works program is under way, we Socialists want to get a nation-wide system of unemployment compensation Into operation...
...The time came when he read that great book, Hinton Rowan Helper's "Impending Crisis in the South," and he became an abiding foe of slavery as an institution...
...In selfdefense they must take the management ef the country into their •wa hands...
...We want Congress to appropriate five billion dollars for such public works...
...The Republocrats have talked a lot about public works, but as a matter of fact if you take federal, state, and local governments all together, they have been cutting down their improvement programs drastically during this depression, just like private capitalists...
...The people are the victims...
...The time came when the uncouth riverman became a rising young politician,' and then a political figure of great importance...
...We are face-to-face with the breakdown of Capitalism—which is not such a terrible calamity in itself—and with the breakdown of orderly forces of social life, which is...
...We do not vote alone for Thomas and Maurer...
...In the face of Herbert Hoover's unconvincing alibis, we have presented to the people of the United States an unanswerable and crushing indictment of the national government for its partisan support of the big business interests and its callous and criminal neglect of the starving masses...
...HIT IT HARDI • • * But with what weapons T The men in blue marched to the battlefields singing, "We are coming, Father Abraham, Three hundred thousand strong," and before the struggle was over the three hundred thousand became millions, arid a million men had died...
...They must take out the industries from private and speculative hands and reorganise them for the common good, for use, aot for profit and loot We demand jsr 1...
...Pounds shortsighted, narrow-minded corner groom- concept of "economy," we stress the paramount claims and needs of the vast human body that constitutes our city...
...Five billion for relief, five billion for public works, and several billion more for an unemployment compensation system and old-age i i p n s i o n s ! It all goes to working people, too, wl the standpoint all pure wan wrong with tl is that the enough parch the full prof then these ar that will hels If the cod workers a s great for the carry, then i will build in: society in wsi mother of uaa way to social onerative effor By William M. Feigenbaum Hit That Thing Hard...
...It is the BALLOT...
...THAT THING is CAPITALISM...
...A fire smouldered in his deep brooding eyes, and as he turned away, the story goes on to say, he said to a companion: "IF I EVER GET A CHANCE I WILL HIT THAT THING HARD...
...Breadlines are lengthening...
...You can't talk about public works and mean it without talking about clearing these cities of their disease-breeding slums, and building decent homes for working people as they have done in Socialist Vienna and as they are doing in Russia...
...We knew that he could not We knew that he and his party were part and parcel of the Unorganized and anarchistic system of private and competitive capitalism, which is bound to breed periodical crises and industrial paralyses with the grim certainty of death...
...Inspiring Addresses at Great Garden Rally Hillquit Calls for Big Socialist Vote as Only Significant Result of Tangled Election—Old Parties Bankrupt THE Socialists can justly claim that they have introduced the only serious and vital note in the campaign...
...of blackness and misery—of corruption and destitution...
...No One's Fault Unlike our Democratic opponents we do not blame Mr...
...Since It is society that has unemployed them by permitting this crazy economic system to continue, it is society that should pay the bill...
...A vote for Hoover OR FOR ROOSEVELT Is a vote for capitalism,' for the profit system, for hunger and insecurity ai.d for war...
...To us Socialists government is above all an instrument of human welfare...
...To the Republican and Democratic politicians the people are there to serve the government...
...WE VOTE FOR A NEW WORLD...
...J7VERY man has a right to a living for himself and his family...
...Industry is drying up...
...All of these things cost money...
...We do not vote for men...
...We did not take him seriously four years ago, when he promised to hold on tightly to the prosperity of the country...
...We are face-to-face with national policies that seek to "solve" the crisis by forcibly restoring prosperity to the exploiters on the shabby theory expounded by the thin, vinegary Cal Coolidge that when the masters have wealth and prosperity some of it is likely to trickle in benefits down to those who do the work of the world...
...We have a weapon today more powerful than arms, more explosive than dynamite, more dangerous to evil things than poison gas...
...The next thing we want to do is to put some punch in this talk about public works...
...When we Socialists are asked what we want to do about the ten or twelve million people who have not been permitted to earn a living, our first answer is that we want to feed and clothe and house them...
...Corporations protect property incomes by piling up reserves out of which dividends and interest sre paid even when the machinery stands Idle...
...To the nebulous platform and vague promises of Governor Roosevelt we oppose a clear, comprehensive and consistent program of economic rehabilitation and social regeneration...
...To as the government exists to serve the people...
...We want our economic system as s whole to protect labor incomes In the same way...
...when he became a humanitarian and gave up his opportunistic politics like a great statesman to face the issues that tore his country, when he embodied in his own awkward, angular, homely person the Idealism of a great people at death grips with a terrible evil...
...As against Colonel Lehman's belated nineteenth century liberalism we advance the new social claims of our own time and generation, the urgent, vital demands of the people for today and tomorrow...
...Hoover for the disastrous collapse of the economic life of the nation...
...If it could lay out ten times that much to get us killed in a rich man's Rugged Jim of die Labor Movement Stirs Vast Throng With Great Address, war, we dont think that five billion dollars is too much to keep us alive now...
...We place life above property, human happiness above business Interests...
...In contrast to Judge O'Brien's evasiveness, platitudes and trivialities, we emphasize the concrete and vital social problems of city government...
...Our system of government is so arranged that when one seeks to strike a blow at things that must be destroyed the way to do it Is to seek out an ARM and TORCH, or whatever the Socialist emblem hsppens to be, and to STRIKE THERE...
...The time came when his deeply human heart was touched and wrung by the shame of slavery...
...for Hillquit and the local candidstes...
...The ruling clssses who have directed the economic destinies of the Batlons have miserably failed, have revealed themselves as irresponsible and hopeless bunglers...
...It will take away some of the protection of the property incomes, but we don't mi id that...
...A Policeman's Club To them government is primarily an Institution for the protection of property rights and the preservation of class privileges and business interests, a glorified policeman sternly maintaining "law and order" and wielding a heavy club over the dissatisfied and rebellious...
...VOTE EVERY TORCH...
...e • ? HIT THAT THING HARDI What the world needs is MORAL INDIGNATION, something of the indignation that young Abe Lincoln felt when he turned with moist eyes from the New Orleans slave auction...
...If he is not allowed to earn it, he has a right to it anyway...
...We hold that the prime function of organized government in all its forms and departments is to secure to all members of the community an equal opportunity to work and to earn a decent existence, to give, them a chance to share in the joys and pleasures which a bountiful nature and an advanced state of culture and civilisation offer mankind in our days...
...i—^^-^^^^— i in........miiw ———i.................imm—waw———*f mmm~mm*smmim»*mm*~0SMmmimmmsjOm By James H. Maurer Socialism for the People...
...We can build roads and we can plant new forests, but the biggest business that we can build the quickest, is the housing business...
...There are no Jobs...
...It is the POWER OF UNITED ACTION...
...If private business won't employ people at a good wage, it is the duty of the government to expand business to give them employment...
...Instead of Mr...
...A system in which millions of men, Women and children go hungry and naked because we have accumulated too much food and clothing...
...Human rights and social welfare are to them private matters of secondary eonnideration having little place in the scheme of government...
Vol. 14 • November 1932 • No. 19
