TIMELY TOPICS
By Norman Thomas TIMELY TOPICS Every week Norman Thomas writes in his pungent style his own comments upon the salient events of the moment Now Comes the Drive for the Sales Tax DRESIUENT...
...To prevent bootlegging of wheat under this law will be exceedingly difficult but ,perhaps, not impossible...
...No one would think of applying Such a method to his Individual business...
...We must wage the kind of fight that can be waged...
...Too Socialist Party Takes the Load TPHE Socialist Party of New York State is to be * applauded for its initiative in presenting s constructive program to the special session of the Legislature in which unemployment relief and elimination of waste in government are tied together...
...It proposes that millers, for instance, must pay a tax equivalent to the tariff, that is, 42 cents a bushel on wheat, to the government...
...These crises are crises of abundance, and' they will continue so long as hundreds and thousands of bosses are engaged in suicidal competition, producing goodi without regard to commercial demand...
...Hoover says about the sales tax is another matter...
...Industry can only be "regulated by socializing production...
...The demand would also be ascertained by official returns furnished by the various departments...
...If the British pound continues to go down, whatever damage may befall certain British interests, so far as foreign trade goes they Can take away a good deal of it from the United States because their goods will be cheaper in the world markets...
...The rest of their wheat must take its chance in the export market...
...Our much loved tariff—that is, much loved by probably a majority of Americans—may not be high enough to keep British goods out of the American market under these circumstances...
...Siegfried Lipshitz, editor of the New Yorker Volkszeitung anaAmerican correspondent for the Germsn Socialist press, will be the speaker st the next forum of 'M Women's Committee of the Rs»« School on Tuesday, December W, at 2:80 p.m...
...You do not have to go to Socialist sources to prove this...
...As capitalist debts go, these debts are owed...
...Among the guests will be Dr...
...and it is these who will bear the tax in order that the families with incomes of $10,000 and upwards may escape the degree of income and inheritance taxation which is the possible and logical alternative to the sales tax...
...The question is: can we afford to have them paid...
...The Allottment Plan IF our minds are made up to remain a high tariff * country—which is not a Socialist ideal—the farmers ought to be let in on the tariff subsidy...
...Every Socialist, every Socialist local in particular, should get into the fight...
...The Allottment Plan is such a device...
...Walter Peck, Elias Tartak, Algernon Lee and Dr...
...This central directing authority would be supplied by the Cooperative Commonwealth...
...France is likely to do what Britain does...
...Collective ownership of the great means of production and distribution Is the only way by which the present anarchy of production and distribution can be systematized...
...Not only will New York "campers" be present in large numbers, but nearby cities will be well represented...
...The Hunger Marchers "THE similarity of the two old parties has been * beautifully shown by events connected with the shocking treatment of the hunger marchers in Washington...
...TAMIMENT REUNION The grand ball room of the Hotel Pennsylvania will be the scene of a lively throng of the friends of Camp Tamiment when the annual reunion takes place Sunday, from 4 to 6 p. m. The popular orchestra of Gleb Yellin will furnish the dance music...
...We must smoke out Roosevelt, We must put every Congressman on record...
...Al Smith and William Randolph Hearst, who hate each other, are united in love of the sales tax, and to them jointly and severally President-elect Roosevelt owes an enormous debt...
...Even assuming that this difficulty is successfully met, an arbitrary and artificial pegging of the domestic price of wheat by a subsidy unaccompanied by other measures designed to cure the monstrous evils of farm tenancy and the extortions of processers and middlemen or to compensate unemployed city workers by some practicable form of relief may bring in its train as many evils as it seeks to cure...
...Dell, who was one of ths editors of the original Masses, has won renewed distinction with his latest novel, "Diana Stair," a novel dealing with labor and social conditions before the Civil War...
...By Charles H. Vail Produce for Use— Not for Profit ^yilEN we stop to consider the haphazard manner in which production proceeds, it is a wonder that our industrial mechanism runs as well as it does...
...Admission 60c...
...Lipshitz will »P«" on the "Significance of the tw...
...What Mr...
...The result Is stagnation...
...opment In the German Situation...
...Social ownership would transform this insanity called business Into a ssne and orderly production and distribution of wares...
...Just so long as each producer continues to act for himself without any knowledge of what his fellows are doing, demand and supply will never be adjusted...
...Then by proper taxation we can take care of the groups in America that are not forgiving their own debtors...
...He will get the benefit of the tax only on his allottment...
...The government will pay out the tax to farmers for such of their wheat as is used within the country...
...S It fulfills completely the predictions made by Socialists in the campaign that a tremendous drive would immediately be made to put over a tax which will fall almost entirely upon the mass of the people—upon the farmers and the workers, upon families with incomes of $3,000 or less...
...From Philadelphia a contingent of 300 will arrive by special train...
...9, at 8:30, on "Literature in the Machine Age...
...It is absurd to believe that the Democratic Party as a party will fight the sales tax...
...Production must cease until the equilibrium Is sgsin estsblished, when the whole tragic farce Is again repeated...
...If all orders came into one central office the demand would be known, and production could proceed accordingly...
...Yet let us face facta...
...If Debts Are Paid IT appears that Great Britain will pay her install * ment on the war debt not for any moral reason or because she thinks she owes it, but simply because she dare not set an example of default that other nations might follow toward her...
...This action of the local police of the District of Columbia could, of course, have been prevented by the outspoken demands of the leaders of both parties...
...It will cost us dear in bitterness which, whether reasonable, unreasonable, or partly reasonable, threaten international goodwill and peace...
...It is also announced that within a few weeks there will be a gala entertainment and dance...
...Lipshitz to Lecture Dr...
...We still insist that debts should be used to bring about reduction of armaments and a general return to some degree of sanity...
...We Socialists do not suggest that debts be used just to bargain about trade with individual nations...
...RAND SCHOOL NOTES Floyd Dell to Lecture-— Floyd Dell, author of "Love in the Machine Age," will lecture at the School Friday, Dec...
...The figures unblushingly printed show conclusively that the volume of purchases are made by families with incomes of less thun $3,000...
...Our present senseless and chaotic system of production cannot help creating, at stated periods, more goods than can be consumed...
...Actually, Speaker Garner—soon to become Vice-President—and VicePresident Curtis—soon to go back to Kansas—very easily forgot whatever political differences there are between them...
...It is a waste of ink and paper to discuss them further...
...Imagine our physical organism trying to do business on the competitive principle...
...They were treated instead as thugs and virtually imprisoned in an impoverished camp on the outskirts of Washington...
...It is precisely this which the Socialist Party must prevent...
...In every town and city where we have any strength at all we should organize all individuals and groups, especially farmer groups and labor groups, to protest to Congress against the imposition of this tax which is a last outrage upon the workers...
...The question remains unsettled...
...A lone violinist needs no director, he can start and stop at will, but an orchestra needs a director...
...The real initiative in a countrywide fight against a countrywide calamity must come from the federal government...
...They adopted about the same sort of surly attitude toward committees of the marchers...
...Probably what he is hoping at this moment is that this Congress will pass the sales tax so that the primary blnme of it will fall upon the Republican Party while the benefits of it go to groups in the higher income brackets, to which his party belongs almost as much as the Republican Party, will keep them satisfied when he takes office...
...Socialism would establish a central directing authority, a thing which Herbert Spencer says belongs to every highly developed organism...
...The fact that that march was undertaken at Communist initiative does not in the least affect the right of the marchers to be treated as human beings and American citizens entitled to the right of petition...
...It is the outstanding tragedy of this winter that neither President-elect Roosevelt nor any other of the major Democratic leaders has put employment relief to the forefront of demands to be made upon the present Congress...
...It will cost us dear in dollars and cents...
...They closed the Capital Plaza to a demonstration and only gave reluctant and belated permission for any sort of parade...
...By Norman Thomas TIMELY TOPICS Every week Norman Thomas writes in his pungent style his own comments upon the salient events of the moment Now Comes the Drive for the Sales Tax DRESIUENT HOOVER'S general opinions—fortu* nately for America—no longer matter very much...
...Imagine an orchestra in which each player started and stopped to suit his own taste...
...That way lie many perils...
...As an orchestra needs a director to mark the time and start the music, so our economic organism must have a central directing- authority If we would escape industrial anarchy...
...William Bohn...
...Not only is the sales tax unjust, but by its very nature it will make it harder to resume that volume of purchasing upon which even the most moderate recovery of legitimate industrial activity depends...
...Since they can't be helped by tariffs on wheat and other products which they export, some other plan must be devised...
...This tax they will, of course^ pass on to the bakers and they to the consumers, and if is likely to 65 multiplied „rri*i,he process of passing it on...
...He has carefully never expressed himself on the sales tax, which is characteristic of the sort of politician he is...
...Of course, measures will have to be taken to see that no farmer increases his wheat acreage...
...Two hearts that beat as one, and the best was a beat of fear and not of decent regard for their fellow men...
Vol. 14 • December 1932 • No. 24
