Just What Will the Recovery Act Do for Harassed America?
By Joseph E. Cohen Just What Will the Recovery Act Do for Harassed America? The Industrial Recovery Act Will Do as Much as the Workers Want to Make It Do—Who WiU Get the Benefits, However? we...
...Polish Jews are the scum of the earth...
...Where are the stricken consciences of American Jewry in this unspeakable instance...
...We shall not compromise or pause But flick you aside like chaff...
...Hours Would Fall As productivity improved, hours of labor would fall, so that everyone would continue employed...
...Where are the parades in protest, the mass meeting for denunciation, and the rest of the public clamorings for justice, in this palpable case of outrage...
...They cannot go back...
...Unfortunately, under capitalism, marital friction is increasing and the divorce returns are multiplying...
...we are on our way, it is just as well to know where we are going...
...So here we are, our grips packed and wondering where we really shall go under the Industrial Recovery act...
...Once the piece is carved, everybody can fall to, liave a fine meal and leave as a happy guest...
...And as long as the Jew is kept on the border line of starvation, his folks in other lands will continue to send in some measure of relief...
...To my experience there is just as much latent antiSemitism right here in these enlightened States as there is active and venomous persecution in Germany...
...hence wages would bound up and the population would get more of the good things of life as prices went down...
...A day will come when these two immense groups— the United States of America and the United States of Europe—will be seen placed in the presence of each other, extending the hand of fellowship across the ocean, exchanging their produce, their industries, their arts, their genius, clearing the earth peopling the desert, improving creation ander the eye of the Creates, and uniting for the good of all, these two irresistible and infinite powers the fraternity ei men and the wisiWrn of God.—Victor Hugo in 1849...
...That day all men shall stand Equal beneath the sun...
...This money is spent in Poland...
...Where are the rabbis, the leaders of powerful Jewish organizations, the Christian co-operators, the judges, the lawyers and the rest...
...The tremendous parades, protests and demonstrations against Hitlerism are financed and arranged by wealthy middle-class Jews in the interests of the several hundred thousand middle-class Jews of Germany...
...Those who believe there is a road back to the good old days of rampant capitalism may be left trimming the grass on their cemetery lots...
...The reaction of anti-Semitism in 11 it lei land among the Ku Klux Christians of our agricultural sections promises no good for the American Jewry...
...They should dare to lead...
...A Jew in Poland Is a lost soul...
...Recovery is a big word...
...Here we have been witnessing a persecution that has lasted for fifteen years, In which a whole people are being slowly strangled, and hardly a peep has been heard from the rich Jews of America...
...Kven his exit from this inferno of despair is hemmed in with impossible restrictions...
...These relatives send in some money for support...
...Annually, this money runs into hundreds of millions of American dollars...
...It is breaking into the horizon of America...
...But the millions of Polish ghetto people are forgotten...
...Bruno Fischer Our Latent Anti-Semitism TPIIK only value I find in the agitation against Hitler's * anti-Jewishism is that there is being brought to tha attention of the world's conscience that Jews are being persecuted actively for no other reason than their religion and race...
...He has a real llobson's choice...
...To the Polish administration there is some sort of disguised blessing for their fiscal troubles in this foulness...
...Or it can suggest that slowly and painfully the brakes will be able to hold against our going any further down hill...
...There have been fiendish contrivances for human tirrture conceived by bestial cunning during the dark ages, but none of them measure up to the official schemes for the p-rpetnation of the Jew's misery in Poland...
...An income out of inhuman suffering...
...Finally, it can mean that in place of the reckless and ruinous driving of the present owners of Industry, labor will Lake a firmer hold and steer us into a sane and satisfying social order...
...The class struggle nccxls no clearer example...
...Then there is the dream that c4i|niiili- 01 can be lifted out of the slump, the mud cleaned from its clothes, and set going again on a long and happy journey...
...The dogs lie, but they do not sleep...
...While We Protest Vile Hitlerite Atrocities How Does It Go in Poland...
...They must stop floundering about, poking for a shallow spot in the mud puddle...
...One day we shall shake off our old despair...
...So buying power of the masses could keep pace with production, and all would be merry as a wedding bell...
...We shall cease to thrust our might into your hands...
...That may be said to be the aim of the industrial recovery act...
...That day we shall not stoop for crumbs...
...This would outright yield more consumers' goods or leave bigger surpluses for a shrinking area of investment...
...By S. A. DeWHt Manifesto to the Fat Boys llfff...
...They can get nowhere so long as capitalism remains what it is...
...The Polish Jew's Misery POLISH officialdom looks down upon these unfortunates * as they wight upon a running sore on a dying beast...
...They should be clear enough as to what industrial recovery actually promises for them...
...But just what is in it...
...He dare not own property, he dare not enter the professions, the schools are quota-ed against him, and even legitimate business channels closed, except through proxy and subterfuge...
...As one who has awakened from a long sleep We shall shake off our drugged drowsiness, And we shall rise to our full height and power And think and move...
...Upon their vigor and vigilance depends real recovery...
...They are of the working rlass, poor, unlettered and unsung...
...the workers, one day shall not be humble...
...The road is closed...
...The big piece of the feast of powtr being set before President Roosevelt is the Industrial Recovery act...
...There have been laws against the Polish Jews in no wise less severe and discriminatory than those promulgated by Hitler for Germany...
...And only the workers of the world will clear that mess up...
...But what would be needed to reclaim our economic system and have it function for the good of the greatest number...
...One day we shall cease to grov»l be fun you Begging to sell our strength and brains For the crumbs you toss to us...
...There is no hope for Poland while the bourgeoisie rules...
...Instead of savage competition, bitter animosity, cruel crushing of the losers, and increasing exploitation of labor in field and factory, there would be combination, mutual aid and better order...
...Religious prejudice has its class angle no less than economic and social conditions...
...Here "the law of diminishing returns" would operate...
...A day will eome when a cannon ball will be exhibited In public museums, just as sn instrument of torture is now, and people will be amazed that such a thing could ever have been...
...With a sure knowledge of all thatcontrol of the existing forces of production can mean for them and for society, they must choose the road ahead...
...Of course, we cannot expect to draw out of the act anything we do not put into it...
...That same improved productivity would mean also the creation of more wealth...
...There has been a definite de-classing of that population which leaves it hopeless, impotent, and poverty-stricken to eternity...
...Without knowing just what is in it, many are taking it for granted that it all depends on the administrator...
...The first real move toward Fascism in America will bring it out with volcanic fury...
...One day we shall cease to toil away gray years To fatten you and your women and children...
...It may suppose that our economic system has shaken off another depression, and business will be as it used to be...
...In the meantime, not a protest is being heard about the treatment accorded the three million Jews in Poland...
...And they will do nothing about it...
...They are poor, drab, common people, German Jews have been bankers, professionals, rich shopkeepers and intellectual lights...
...Then, too, concentrating on the best plant equipment and means of production would curtail the part of the product of labor, needed for industrial expansion...
...Benefits Shared So far as labor is concerned, and so far as the majority of the people are involved, they will share in any possible benefit of the act only to the extent they share in the control...
...No one returning from the pales of Poland can ever forget the inexpressible misery that Alls the swampland and muddy lanes where they drudge out their miserable lives...
...These three million Jews have relatives in America...
...The rate of profit would dwindle...
...Again the class differences appear...
...To an increasing number this sounds like an entirely idle dream...
...The supposition is that capitalism can be controlled...
...Great Britain's Level This is the state to which Great Britain has sunk...
...What there may be, for too long a time perhaps, is the situation where many millions are either working few hours or none at all, and are underfed, strangling with worry and being trained to accept permanent charity...
Vol. 15 • June 1933 • No. 23
