A Real Program to Provide Work And Wealth for All the Workers
Cohen, Joseph E.
By Joseph E. Cohen A Real Program to Provide Work And Wealth for All the Workers The 30-Hour Week Is a Good Start, But by No Means Enough—A Three-Point Program. the general thirty-hour workweek...
...What is being mentioned is the adoption of minimum wage laws...
...1 b".d been rebor...
...But the essential argument in favor of u minimum wage is that it be at least a living wage...
...I ran back to California and opened the books...
...22, 1910, he died...
...The greatest of all architects, Sir Christopher Wren, had carved on the facade of St...
...And Jack London might have written, "If you would learn about me, read my books...
...Sharing work is better than having part of the people toil too much while others have no jobs ai all...
...A "new deal" waa promised to a land almost crazed for a change, and the ones who made that promise were empowered by an election that amounted to a revolution in its decision for a change...
...And he ended, , is en its way...
...W. M. F. Behold...
...And this is solid ground upon which the public can put its feet...
...Now we find ourselves under a practical dictatorship, albeit a benevolent one, with a liberal-minded President ttiul three or four socially-minded college professors forming a sort of executive committee for the promulgation of edicts and acts...
...And best of all, read the "Iron Heel" if you want a warning against a brutal-benevolent Capitalism of a form that we now know as Fascism—something utterly undreamed of in Jack's lifetime, but today a Coring Hitler nightmare...
...Those who have taken an unfair part of the wealth created should pay...
...He was a Soc...
...How did it come about ? That, too, is written in his books...
...Ed.] All of the poems have appeared in this column at one time or another, and my many readings through the last few years have impelled me to collect them under the heading "Rhapsodies in Red, Songs for the Social Revolution...
...Then the aim must be to bring work and wealth for all . "Anti-War" Meet Was Communist Maneuver MONTEVIDEO.—The Communists opened their Anti-War Congress here...
...We do know that when revolutions occur certain shadows forecast the event...
...As for the unfortunates—well, it was just too bad about them, but Ja:!: ''idn' ,Worry about them "Without having read Carlyle or Kipling I formulated a gospel of work which put theirs into the shade...
...He drank too much...
...Temporarily, say we, temporarily...
...the general thirty-hour workweek it is intended to make it possible for everybody to go (o work...
...It would take far ire space thai: is available for these sketches even to give an outline of Ja.k Lon on's literary career...
...And should Roosevelt and his quadumvirate fail short of Socialism by a few miles or so, at least be it said to his eternal credit, and, to the wisdom of his intellectual helpmates, that they have broken virgin ground for the building of the ultimate temple...
...In this direction, again, the general public is borrowing an idea from the trades unions, whose negotiations establish the minimum wages at which the members are allowed to be hired...
...But the Government is not proposing a share-the-wealtlt plan...
...A radical snid, "Remove this enemy...
...Not s shot was heard, not a funeral note...
...And on Nov...
...That is where it belongs...
...But, after all, Jack's principal adventures were struggles with his own soul, and he tells the story of his victory and defeat in his greatest novel, possibly one of the greatest of all American novels, "Martin Eden...
...Sure, sure . . . the private ownership of industry, and the wage system under private management, and the rest is left undisturbed...
...By this time, Jack had come to the conch 'on that he was Some thine...
...Especially are these offered to put an end to sweat-shop pay in shops where women and minors are employed...
...The whole w to be found in and Other Essays...
...He became morbid...
...Actually it will not result just that way...
...Should wealth be accumulating among the few instead of the many, the Government must step in and shift the balance by taxation so that there is no letup in industry...
...I do not remember which ones I opened first...
...The final conflict is still far off...
...Later on, as the wheels of industry keep turning and money is spent to buy more goods, other numbers of workers would be drawn in and good times restored...
...By S. A. DeWitt MONKEYS BALKED ¦ UREAMED a monkey said: "From now on, Fellow...
...And then came his adventuring in London ("People of the Abyss"), war corresponding in Korea and Manchuria, ranching in California ("Valley of the Moon"), and voyaging in Hawaii, the South Sea Islands and Australia ("The Terrible Solomons" and many other stories and several books), and finally his cruise with Charrninn London on the Smirk ("Cruise of the Snark...
...Then he came E a s t and saW The Pit...
...He was b u r n ! , r h'*nself out...
...We don't wish you any hard luck, Sam, but here's hoping you'll get writer's cramp...
...Wages and prices have to be fixed so all have enough to live up to what they are entitled from th» wealth produced under the best methods...
...He wrote the first—and to this day the most important—American book on ^oboing...
...Read "Revolution...
...But it stabilizes by reducing everybody to the one dead level...
...At i in the Klondike B<h gold, but findwas to net him bags of the finest ; fir the stories B nudi fame atd sry than he ever twenty six he was author of a best-selling novel of the North—"The Daughter of the Snows"—and after that he entered high school, and then he did a year in the University of California...
...They had solicited funds ostensibly for this pacifist move, but in reality for purposes of propaganda in behalf of their party...
...12, neisco, the son of turner and trapper...
...Right now raising the tax rate on hoarded billions of idle money in the big banks would put into circulation what could bring about a fairer distribution...
...All preparations were made in advance toward the end of turning the congress into an anti-Socialist gathering, as was evidenced by the language of the invitations addressed to some of the locals of the Socialist Party, urging them to cut loose and break away from their "bosses...
...Remember we used to say on the stump, "Socialism may come in spite of us, just because it must come in the nature of events...
...But three-quarters of a pretzel will do, say we, over that last glass of beer...
...Instead of the thirteen million of unemployed promptly getting jobs, only about half that number are to find positions...
...Concerning further d e t a i ls deponent sayeth not, though he may hint that some of his plethoric national patriotism leaked out of the bottom of his soul somewhere —at least, since that experience he fir da that he cares more for men and women 'ind lit tie -hildren than imagi- " b o u n d a ry lines...
...When that day of struggle comes, lot us hope for the sake of our cause, that It shall not endure for long...
...It does not attack the more important fact that because there is no money to spend among the bulk of the people they stopped buying and that stopped production...
...and there are some pr pie who believe it was suicide...
...When last mentioned the President called them the moneychangers...
...So much for the business end of the announcement, except : that Jesse the Imperturbable sells it at the Rand Book I Store for two bits, and the business office of this paper offers | it as a premium for subscriptions...
...all these have passed or...
...i, but not renamed and I was running around to find out what manner of thing I was...
...I was already It, whatever It was, and by the Rooks I discovered that It was s Sociali s t" That was all—except that there followed over twenty years of matchless services to Socialism Jack never soft-pedaled his ideals —rather, he flaunted them...
...Every banana that yellows, And every nut that ripen* belongs to me...
...all these proposals have a familiar ring, if not in full tone, as we would like it...
...His boyhood is written in "Tales of the Fish Patrol...
...Three measures together go to make the one plan...
...The gathering of thi> die-hard clan of capitalism will come...
...His stories commanded huge prices from Hearst...
...He was a Villiant writer, vivid, colorful and glamorous...
...I When it did begin to be felt the 'number of those affected who are' I in abject want mounted, and now | i we are required to spend huge sums of public funds for the barest relief...
...Paul's Cathedral, "If you would see my monument, look about you...
...as over the ramparts" things have been hurried...
...He was a great interpreter of the American scene...
...Jack became too popular...
...And found himself slipping into it...
...Well, comrades, what's happening these dizzy days is giving a lot of us sensitive observers the queer feeling that we may be living right through the transitional period of just such a remarkable scene in history...
...own the fruit of the tree," "Only a man could be so idiotic . . . Unsound . . . absurd . . . despotic...
...He had returned from his seven months' voyage in the 60-ton sealer you read about in "The Sea Wolf," and had set out gaily in "Kelley's Army," the western division of Coxey's Army, with the rank of Lieutenant, although he was but IK...
...The work of the country has to be divided among all who Cfin work...
...But he was arrested as a vagrant, "nabbed by a fee-hunting constable, sentenced out of hand to thirty days' imprisonment for having no fixed abode and no visible means of support, carted down country to Buffalo, registered at the Erie County penitentiary, had my bead clipped and my budding mustache shaved, was dressed in convict stripes"—and for thirty days treated like a desperate criminal— all for adventuring...
...his Klondike cx|ieriences in "The Call of the Wild" nil countless other stories and many novels...
...Government figures are at hand ¦ to show what income is needed to provide a family with a decent standard of living, That suin should be the minimum wage...
...But Jack has written his own life in his books...
...Then he swore he would climb out of The Pit if it killed him...
...A scant four years ago 1 announced through a poem the advent of Burt DeWitt into thu uncertain life...
...For if all these mountains of endeavor labor only to bring forth a mouse of actual accomplishment for our ultimate goal, at least precedent has been established on how a Socialist administration can go the full route without riot, bloodshed or armed Insurrection...
...Only as they arc really balanced can industry keep going even...
...Actually that wage has been se ' cured, in the past, only among the | highly skilled and well-organized I trades...
...What with proposals socially to plan and limit production, cut hours to employ unemployed labor, take the grip of moneylenders from off the small home-owners, liberalise credit, practically nationalizing the banking business, unemployment relief, and a program for the farmers...
...Whatever the hard-pan reviewers may say about this book, no less u critic than my son David has pronounced it to be "swelh...
...He tells of his adventures as a tramp with other tramps in tho part of the country in which "I battered the drag and slammed back gates with them, or shivered with them in box cars and city parks, listening to their stories...
...The end was sad...
...in sudden succession...
...read "The War of the Classes...
...The breakdown of the financial structure, the deflating of the banking gods, the general rottenness of capitalist politics, government run by depraved politicians, almost universal destitution among the masses, and nothing but darkness ahead for a way out...
...But Jack was also a Socialist...
...they it wss almost...
...Their minions ere still strong and they have real power as yet...
...And all the time democracy has been going through the motions of potential performance...
...It is an unimportant detail, anyway...
...jjn...
...So far they have gone right along the road of our own Socialist "immediate demands" program...
...Necessity is the mother of unconvention...
...his hoboing in "The Road...
...i earn a living at ddling newspapers of Oakland...
...Today allow me the privilege of proclaiming to the debt-harassed world the entrance of "Rhapsodies in Red," published under the imprimatur of the Rand School Press, in a proletarian edition to sell at twenty-five cents per copy...
...And keep our jungle free I" MlXVIIXC KltKHh...
...To adventure like a man and fight like a man, and do a man's work (even for boy's pay) tar— were things that reached right in and gripped hold of me...
...And even with so-called high wages among those1 in the unions, • the purchasing power of the public , I has been so low that wealth con! tinued to fall into the hands of the j very few of the capitalist class at I such a rapid rate that shutdown I of industry was bound to come...
...NoHcreTwishing you a part of the joy in reading what I have experienced in writing for the workers through the years...
...It was a joyous adventure, until he crossed the Mississippi, and went it alone...
...A Book ot Verse Is Born...
...And if one can find honor in his own country, then $fi something of a somebody...
...pre that Jack had ,f Oakland, Cel., i attracted nationThere have been „ho brought so i publicity to the ism...
...He bought a great ranch at Glen Ellen, Cal...
...It aims at the general good...
...Too Much nnd Too Utile Here, again, gome few of the people have most of the wealth, while most of the people have too little...
...He was young and h e a l t hy and he lusted f o r l i f e. "Wherefore, I called the game as I s a w it, p l a y e d , or thought I saw R played, a very proper game lor Mr.N...
...At ii oyster pirate on waters of San At seventeen he tailor on a sealer, was a hobo...
...77»ig a Revolution That We Haw In the Name of the New Deal...
...his seafaring life in "The Sea Wolf...
...the sort of virile ry move was good ife wss a romance i Born on Jan...
...He had sung the song of individualism with all his heart...
...Wall Street has been kicked out of powerful places and off the gold standard, the blessed Constitution has been usurped in a dozen paragraphs regarding the Inviolability of private property under emergency acts, and many old shibboleths have been choked to s gurgle...
...I had dropped down from the proletariat into what sociologists love to call the 'submerged tenth,' and I was startled...
...With that, it is our Government which is the agency for bringing about the proper adjustment between work and wealth...
...f profiles tck London I ear hands...
...For we have much work to do...
...He loved that ranch, and he admitted that he sold, his apul for it, turning out unutterable tripe to get money to enlarge the ranch, build more buildin -" buy more acre:i and more animals...
...He gave us a vista of many new worlds—the soft, perfumed, palm-waving coral isles of the South Sea, the tossing waves of the Pacific, the depths of the degradation of London's slums, the awful iron cold of the North...
...His first book, "Son of the Wolf," appeared in 1900...
...The rest of the population I has been out of luck...
...A limited Park Avenue edition in brilliant red cloth of one hundred and fifty copies at one dollar a copy awaits those who still can withdraw that tremendous sum from their savings accounts...
...This latter means of procuring the book involves my I promise to autograph each volume for subscribers...
...ilist—but he did not know it...
...Where the Depression Belongs But we have not begun to charge industry with the cost of the depression...
...A NEW child and a new book are events in any columniit'e " dreary existence...
...And while I listened my brain began to work...
...However short of the expected it may turn out, at least something worthwhile is being attempted...
...x What is wrong at the core of the idea is that it goes after work alone...
Vol. 15 • April 1933 • No. 16
