A Socialist View of the Week
The World We Live In A Socialist View of the Week A Quack Doctor Tre«ti Pimple* HERBERT HOOVER sang hit wm song at the National Republican Club on Monday night Not once in thi address did ho...
...It is Buffering from a basic disorder that produces pimples and Hoover, like a quack doctor, treats ths effects, not causes...
...Despite this fundamental fact the old coneepta of two hundred yeara ago aurvive In thit age of a complex capitalism...
...The speech was superficial...
...It recommends a retail sales tax of 1 per cent, a tax on tobacco products of 10 per cent, a 20 per cent tax on retail sale of soft drinks and patent medicines...
...The Earthquake Reaches Michigan QPENING his campaign in Dee ^ Moines, Iowa, laat June Herbert Hoover told the nation that an earthquake had run through forty nations...
...Rumor has it that Commander Gaston does not find the cash coming frost the fat boys aa in the eld days of the Ooolidge regime...
...The competent worker is fretted much in the same way aa the fe hie minded, the aged and the phyaictlly handicapped...
...Zingara's Crazy Act THK shots fired Wednesday at President-elect * Roosevelt' by an unbalanced man ia one of those tragic occurrences that in periods of scute and widespread distress have occasionally led to repression and reaction...
...Whether he hat peeked it with moth belle and stored it in the genet we da not know but we shall not be surprised if he drags it out again on some notable occasion...
...It would also lower income tax exemptions to the new Federal level...
...Fortunately, aa we go to preas, there la no indication of such sn aftermath...
...It appears that he is on the ground to save the nation from a wet inauguration week and is also planning an airplane tour of the country...
...Rising Tempo of The Farm Revolt THIS ia a black week in the nearly four years of depression...
...Wisconsin has enacted a bill giving courts the power to extend the redemption time on farm and homestead mortgages two years...
...Laat week a committee of the Socialist Party urged Governor Lehman' to increase the tax of one of the fattest cows in the state— the public utilities corporations—from one-half, of 1 per cent of their gross earnings to 4 per cent Will he act on it...
...Hugenberg, Nationalist leader, has said that he believed there would be "only one more election" in Germany...
...Whatever the name and whether the rebels are aware of It or not, it is a' blind striking at the fundamentals of the capitalist system and to give it intelligence and direction a Socialist objective ia necessary...
...Throughout the stricken Middle West It ie said that people are punled to give the farm revolt a name...
...They are not casusls and misfits...
...In the New York Crisis Sector JkJEARLY 650,000 human beings in * * New York City, most of them children, lack sufficient clothing and their suffering waa acute during the cold wave...
...A farm tax strike ia threatened in Indiana...
...THE UNEMPLOYED IS A CLASS DISTINCT FROM THE UNFORTUNATE HUMAN MISFITS THAT SOCIETY HAS IN EVERY AGE CAST UP AND AS WORK1.KSS HUMAN BEINGS DESIRING WORK THEY REQUIRE A DIFFERENT PROGRAM AND A DIFFERENT TREATMENT...
...He proposes to tap the immense reservoirs of "patriotism among our foreign-born population...
...It ia reported that this firm bad received a loan of 115,000,000 from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and yet thia transfusion of financial blood did not save It...
...In the twenty scenes of Elmer Rice's production of "We, The People," at the Empire Theatre, one gets an idea of what ia happening to the Uvea, hornet and families of the masses...
...More or less suited to the age of the ox-cart and the powdered wig, it is not adapted to modern capitalism...
...President Green is quoted as saying that the masses will not submit to it and that its realization would be "destructive to the labor movement and to even the present debased wage standards...
...However, they are treated aa paupers...
...Lawrence Todd, Federated Press correspondent in Washington, calls attention to another Gaston who is now sojourning in the hoosegow, Gaston B. Means, for defrauding a woman on the pretense that he would help her find the lost Lindbergh baby...
...Fears of Arbitrary Presidential Power INFLUENTIAL and reactionary Demo* cratic leadera at Washington favor vesting Roosevelt with arbitrary power when he becomes President...
...With Austria secretly playing Italy's game while outwardly endeavoring to placate France, Hitler's fate in Germany ia considered important in its effect upon the rest of Europe...
...We cannot trust ourselves to comment on these two items...
...We do not know...
...We do knew that Eaaley'a specialty Is to feed drugs to trade unions tad to save the republic from revolution...
...He declared that the banking clique and vested interests now actually determine what the masses shall eat and wear and that their aim is the "mailed fist" according to the formula of the Italian Fascists and German Junkers...
...They ere locked out of industry and if industry csnnot employ them industry should betr the hcavieat coat ef maintaining them...
...This is more likely to be the trend In this country than Fascism...
...Charity and poor relief and insufferable "smelling" committees continue...
...The Constitution really la the fundamental law of an "elective monarchy" and la admirably adapted to the purpose of vesting the President with vast powers...
...Like an acid sprayed upon a solid, the depression remorselessly eats away the tissues of social, economic and family life...
...The French were aroused a few weeks ago when it waa learned that 80,009 rifles and 200 machine guns had been sent from Italy through Austria to Hungary...
...Doctor Hoover has agreed to such transfusions for many fat corporate "persons" and yet many of them do not respond to the treatment That American capitalism ia more and more rotting •very day ia obvious to every intelligent human being and its decline brings nearer a revolutionary situation the outcome of which no one can foretell...
...The Detroit Stock Market closed and in New York bonds declined 1 to 6 points ind stocks from 1 to 4H- Nevada felt the shock on October II when the twelve banks of the Wingfield chain closed and they are still dosed...
...Edward P. McGrady of the A. F. of L. last week openly challenged this proposed grant of unusual powers which he correctly called a "modified dictator* ship...
...In Missouri a farmer turns hit 240 acres over to the county and goes to the poorhouse because he can live better there than on hia acres...
...Our readers will remember that we devoted the first page of our issue of January 14 to this mysterious gentleman...
...An item appearing by the side of the one announcing thia clothing shortage for children givea the formula showing how a family of five can be fed on $7,50 per week...
...On the other hand France beads the Little < Entente group that opposes revision...
...The farm revolt is only one phase of this rotting away of what only a few years ago waa regarded aa one of the most perfect economic structures in the world...
...I he public and private collection plate is pasted around for alms...
...In our sge it is a problem concerning millions of normal human beinga who have been locked out ef their placet of employment...
...The unemployed have invested their labor and skill in building and maintaining industry and to regsrd Hi.- jobless aa having no stske in it to csst them sdrift, to (rest them as paupers, la a crying ahame...
...Some call it revolution and creditors call it anarchy...
...Vas this to be a consultation over another »old drive againat "Reds...
...Aa a commodity, professional "patriotism" also feels the depression...
...Commander Gaston Appears at Capital *FHE pompous Edward Page Gaston, * commander of the New Vigilantes, turned up in Washington the other day...
...Because of this danger there ia talk of an emergency meeting of the heads of trade unions to plan protest demonstrations...
...Idaho ia considering a two year moratorium...
...The Struggle for Power in Germany /\NE effect of Hitler's rise in Germany ia to raise the hopes of the treaty revisionist bloc of states headed by Italy...
...The capitalist and hanking oligarchy Is also so supreme in this country that it isn't likely to make way for some Hitler demagogue leading uninformed masses who really do not know what they want but who would likely put capitaliam into a straight-jacket instead of abolishing it...
...Underlying it was the assumption that currencies, debts, reparations, exchange, tariffs and trade preferences and discriminations are responsible for the depression, He can see only pimples, not a fundamental organic disease...
...All this means loading the working and non-working masses with the coats of the miserable mismanagement of capitalist civilization...
...For* tunatdy, the forces of economic decay had been checked and he could then tell the complete story...
...It is a general practice not to j extend relief until the deprettion hat pauperized the applicant...
...This week the earthquake hit Michigan when a proclamation by Governor ('omstock closed 660 banks ia an eightday moratorium, tied up a billion and me-half dollars, and brought Federal, State and private action to the rescue...
...Away with thia policy ef treating Jebleea workers as though they were epileptics er week-minded 1 it la a standing Intuit to the tent of milliona who are Jebieea through no faalt ef their own...
...In Nebraska farmers in one section threaten social ostracism for those who benefit by foreclosures...
...World collapse was so imminent that he and his colleagues had kept the newa of the real situation from the masses...
...McGrady ia one of the most courageous and outspoken labor chiefs In this country...
...The whole capitalist system of production and exchange broke down and this basic collapse of production has its effects in demoralised exchange, tarifl wars, etc.- The system received a terrific shock in the World War, but 11 was a decade before it afflicted American capitalism...
...Their maintenance eheuld not be a matter of "tmeling" committee reports or of the whim of "hard-boiled" administrators ef relief...
...Regardless ef fundamental differences in social philosophy we express the views ef oar readers in aaying that we hope that Mayor Cermak will speedily recover, and we rejoice that this attack by an irrational msn brought no more serious consequences...
...We doubt it The utility magnates are of his class and a gentleman governor will think twice before offending other gentlemen living in the upper range of society...
...The sums spent for relief ere only a tiny frsction of the totsl wsge loss due to unemployment each yesr...
...Two Socialist members were assaulted, Paul Loebe, Socialist president, waa ousted from the chair, the Centrist members were dispersed, the Fascists saying they would not proceed under the direction of a "Marxist defamer...
...The idess associated with it were planted in New England and the southern colonies in the colonial period and however much they may have been modified their epirit still dominates the programs of unemployment relief...
...The heavy hand of reaction first fell upon the Berlin Socialist daily Vorwaerta and now it is the turn of the Communist daily Rote Fahne which, late last week, was suspended for two weeks...
...The result in the end it that the matses themselves bear two-thirds ef the burden of providing for their own human wreckage...
...The Merchants Association repeats its demand for a 20 per cent cut in the state's schoo) appropriation and at Albany the New York commission to revise tax lawa favors taxing all incomes of $10 a week or more...
...Ia the former age it waa pauperism, vagrancy, dependency, orphanage and insanity that concerned the public authorities...
...An Insult to the Jobless /\NR ef the abeminationa, probably the chief one, ^ ia unemployment relief is that the traditions ef the almshouse and the poorfarm, having their origin In the agricultural England of aeveral centuries ago, survive in an age ef mass production by power-driven machines...
...Whether mountebank or professional patrioteer, this gentleman may well be watched...
...There can he no doubt that the capitalist statesmen of the world in their policies relating to the items Hoover mentions have made ¦ bad situation worse but the idea that more intelligent policies in this field will necessarily bring recovery la nonsense...
...They crumble before the eyes of the audience and men, women and children are.buried in the debris...
...Todd writes that this Gaston was on his way to a confermce with Ralph Easley of the National Civic Federation When he was arrested...
...The World We Live In A Socialist View of the Week A Quack Doctor Tre«ti Pimple* HERBERT HOOVER sang hit wm song at the National Republican Club on Monday night Not once in thi address did ho par tribute to "rugged individualism" and we believe it i» the first time that he ignored it aince 1918...
...Illinois farmers now gather at sales and by group pressure halt foreclosures...
...They ahould automatically receive a portion of their former wages at their right out of an insurance fand created by Itw...
...They are not paupera requiring the conatant ministration of charity but human beings who are completely deprived of a stake in the civilisation which they helped to build...
...It was the threatened crash of a 96^0,000,000 chain bank, the Union Guardian Trust Co., that brought the action of the governor...
...The same is largely true of the state governments...
...Last week the Reichstag's committee for the defense of parliamentary rights adjourned because of Fascist violence and this, week Fascists brake it up...
...A Reichsbanner weekly also received the same treatment...
...That ia not all...
Vol. 15 • February 1933 • No. 7
