The Time Is Ripe for Ending The Joyride of the Railroads
Cohen, Joseph EL
By Joseph EL Cohen The Time Is Ripe for Ending The Joyride of the Railroads The Management of the Railroads Muffed Many an Opportunity in the Past—This Should Be Their Last Chance. ^^11 I.N...
...It's only a passing idea and I'll never mention it again," said Joe...
...A Railroad Administrator is placed by the government to keep on doctoring...
...Otherwise they don't bother me...
...i When the musket forever is silenced, And the cannon is cankered with rust...
...we would back capitalism instead of breaking its back if we followed your first idea," said Bill...
...Why haven't you seen these opportunities, bright boy...
...11 I.N the fish are biting best in the old creek no freckle-faced country boy is more unwilling to hoe the corn under the blazing sun than are some of the industries to adopt codes of fair competition for their conduct...
...That's largely true," said Bill...
...And that code should end the joyride of the bankers on the roads...
...There should be a joint code for transportation industries...
...Now that I am fast coming into this class myself —on a tin horn scale, of course— I wonder...
...Why is one crazier than the other...
...I guess I'm not smart enough," jaid Joe...
...As they amble along the hot, dusty pavements, which suck in the sun and throw it back in their faces, maybe they're wondering what will I happen when they will be without even the right to strike...
...Al another bool Frank R. Kt •THE Labor Day edition of The * New Leader will be an ideal one to sell on Labor's national holiday...
...You think that we should aiso look for the same stairway...
...Maybe that's what the tailors are brooding about and that's why they don't appreciate the tall green hedges and the snowy damask tablecloths and the gaily colored umbrellas...
...I "You didn't think of your class out thought only of a few who have used the workers' backs as stairs to climb into a bourgeois castle," Bill replied...
...That will be as near a special privilege as the bankers can get away with...
...Do they owe the landlord, the garage man, the telephone company...
...Many of us have been easy marks...
...It should mean the start of a new deal in transportation for labor...
...Does that fact interest you...
...JpeWouldClimbOverBacksl Of Workers, but Decides to Break Back of Capitalism f...
...But with everybody briskly stepping on the bandwagon, there's no time to think about such nonsense as psychological needs...
...We'll break the back of capitalism instead of trying to climb over the backs of our class...
...I don't doubt it in the least," said Bill, "but you are now i thinking not of getting rid of labor exploiters but becoming 1 an exploiter of the workers yourself...
...And to think that you want to climb over my back into a little niche of that waster's parasite heaven...
...we've been on the * picket lines many times...
...Instead they seem to be just about the nearest ripe for public control of any industry...
...I know a guy who one worked for a dollar a day He saved some money and invested in a city lot, paying fifty dollars for it Today it's worth $25,000 and he's on easy street...
...What's the matter now...
...Well, as I walk along—I'm still on Fifth Avenue—I come to the park and here the kids of the slums are splashing around in the fountain...
...I'm all dressed up in my ice-cream suit today...
...By this tin and biting t while it may I bohunk in tin tired all the above the be...
...The owner paid out $50 and now that original ^ sum has become $25,000 without him doing anything to create the extra values," Bill replied...
...The heirs of the old pirates receive the big accumulations without any useful effort at all...
...Will the lady throw some pennies...
...I can be seen eating at the cafeteria in the People's House and my credit will still be good...
...And I like kids...
...Well, it's true," said Bill...
...Think of the many chances workers let slip through their fingers," saii Joe...
...Not that I blame the res taurants...
...Claus, where A man who o thinks he's l How do pi main so innoc ever told thi mean how p kissing them to get elect...
...Or maybe, like me, they're just wondering how those people at the tables do it...
...WfUiN the Armies of Earth are disbanded, And their trappings are coated n>ith dust...
...Some day, who knows?, I'll be so down and out I'll eat at Longchamps...
...shouted Joe with enthusiasm...
...Attaboy," said Bill...
...And then think of the successors to the original players...
...And neither do the tailors...
...Fewer Systems Now the roads are being prodded to save their hides by consolidation into fewer systems...
...They couldn't get their own feet into their little panties...
...That is claimed to be the spirit of the Recovery Act...
...It doesn't seem to offer a poker player's chance to win the way you put it," said Joe...
...asked Joe...
...The men can tell the railroad executives not only that there should be a code...
...But isn't that original investment of fifty dollars legitimate...
...Certainly not," said Bill...
...Do you know that some millionaires like Daniel Drew, the first Vanderbilt and the late founder of the Duke fortune were so illiterate that they found it difficult to sign their own names to documents...
...But the roads could not see that...
...No, I never heard of that," said Joe witn surprise...
...let's not waste any time," and they returned to the shop of one mind...
...Instead they slowed up and let other forms of transportation pass them by...
...Joe, what have I done to deserve this...
...The big opportunities to become capitalists ire gone...
...It was an effort to make railroading a start toward industrial democracy, as the railroad Brotherhooods saw it...
...So is all exploitation of labor under capitalism," Bill 1 replied, "and so long as workers think of climbing over the ' backs of their fellows into an upper class the workers as a whole will be an exploited class...
...You're back in a bourge'oiu castle again and I thought you were safe on a . proletarian reservation...
...By Gertrude Weil Klein Tables on the Sidewalk, And a Busted 'TIIF.SE are the dog days and I'm feeling pretty low...
...If wages had kept pace with the increase in the price of that corner lot workers would be getting over $50 per day...
...Only there are tall green hedges to hide the customers from the tailors who swarm over lower Fifth Avenue, and the tailors from the customers...
...Years ago they put their ideas into a complete program...
...And dispel the miasmas of night...
...They do not want to dress up in a code...
...Write The New Leader, 7 E. 15th St., New York City, for special rates...
...Why can't others do the same...
...To foot the bill the railroads should not have been permitted to go to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation for money to pay bankers...
...In the days when the big stakes in industry were being gathered in mediocre men accumulated great fortunes...
...But there is bound to be one...
...That plan provided for the joint operation of the roads by representatives of the management, the men and the public...
...This may explain the reluctance of the railroads to come in out of the wet by sharing the umbrella of the recovery act...
...The government owns a first mortgage, which there is no chance of meeting...
...And then along comes Theodore Dreiser and blows his horn for a woman for Mayor and writes a letter to the editor about it You can imagine how hot and bothered he must be over the idea if he does that, because a famous author doesn't have to write letters to the editor...
...If we can be so rich in commodities, natural resources, machinery, etc., that we have to do without everything, why can't we be so poor that we have to eat in a swell dump...
...but my buddie never before brought out this golden calf for my approval...
...Slashing of service is deeper...
...Well, look at the men who have risen from poverty and obscurity and become famously rich," said Joe...
...I think I get your point," said Joe...
...Action to benefit the people is overdue...
...Muffed Opportunities Had they electrified their roads when they should, beat the 'bus, air service, pipe line and waterway, they might have been sitting pretty in their Pullmans...
...i "Well, I never thought of that," said Joe with a puzzled look...
...Bill inquired...
...The chances i we have missed are not chances to become exploiters but ehances to destroy exploitation," "Down with the wasters...
...Once the big opportunities were consolidated in giant organizations of capital, that was the end of the opportunities you mention...
...They should have gone to the bankers to return some of the money they took to put the roads flat on their backs...
...They come rushing over...
...The roads have been going places and seeing things...
...This cad in the days of his fathers would not have emerged from obscurity, but today falling heir to millions he, becomes the master of the lives of tens of thousands of viorkers...
...1 take my noon-day stroll along lower Fifth Avenue which has blossomed out with ritzy sidewalk restaurants ir the European manner...
...By this time I'm completely sunk, what with these banal but odious contrasts...
...He is a waster of values which we pile up in his lap...
...And the hundreds of thousands of jobless railroaders are getting recruits right along...
...They can tell them the kind of a code they should have...
...Worse than what this did to the roads is what it did to the men...
...I don't owe enough yet to havo to eat at Longchamps...
...Instead they saw government guarantee of earning, they boosted freight and passenger rates and, on top of that, they secured Reconstruction Finance Corporation money to keep the roads from sinking into the old creek and going down the Salt River...
...That's easy...
...The Big Stakes Are Gone "Y^S, even the swine game that attracted you belongs to * a past age, but the retainers of capitalism still point to that game and lure the workers to play it, although all the big stakes have already been gobbled up," Bill replied...
...ever read Dreiser read Meyers' "Hi American Foi are gobs of America...
...Or else it will be put under a code like the Plumb Plan—or straight government ownership...
...I'VE gone through strikes with you...
...Federal control of the roads during the war was mighty efficient...
...we've faced the cops in these struggles and we spent ono night in jail in the strike last year," saiu Bill...
...The heir to a big fortune may bs a lounge lizard, dull, stupid, and a fat lump of flesh...
...For the men there will have to be , a change...
...I'm sorry, Bill, but these times befuddle me," said Joe...
...They were shrewd enough to see opportunities and they took them...
...He can get money for anything he signs his name to...
...asked Bill...
...Do you doubt my statement...
...My mind flashes back to the lovely seashore colony where I spent last week, and to the children waited on hand and foot by their Frauleins, and how I felt like turning them over on their backsides—not the Frauleins—and walloping them, the whining brats...
...It should have' taught the roads how to keep on dry land...
...Instead of pay cuts the men should have had the six-hour day and higher wages, to increase their buying power...
...If they have not done more it is because the last ten years has taken it out of them But that was their own fault...
...Once I used to think that owing everybody large sums of money was in itself a sign of affluence...
...Where did the difference between that original $50 and the present $25,000 come from...
...By Autolycus ' "GAY what you will, the workers have only themselves to ^ blame for their sufferings," said Joe as he and Bill sat down for lunch...
...It's due to the normal increase in the value of real estate...
...y^A<7) that day shall bring joy to the Nations, And the glow of its generous light Shall invade the morasses of darkness...
...The good part of a ! million men who have been let out in the last decade will have to be I given jobs...
...Workers' Backs as a Stairway "CURB...
...The Plumb Plan It was the Plumb Plan...
...In any case the roads cannot be exempt...
...What's so crazy about it...
...Because strikes, in addition to their value as a weapon, also have a value as a psychological release, as an emotional expression...
...In several instances, to be sure, (competition is more imaginary | than real...
...Good...
...Atterbury, president of the Pennsylvania, suggests there should be two such systems because there happen to be two giant banking »----houses in this country...
...But it failed because the pupil preferred to go fishing...
...And the erasing of the anti-trust laws is a knockout blow for what competition is still limping along in the great industries...
...I, "Oh, I get your thought," Bill replied...
...asked Joe...
...I don't think the tailors add much joie de vivre to the .sidewalks o f New York...
...When the sivord and the helmet lie tarnished, 'Mid the rubbish of I'omp and Display, We shall 'wake to the glorious dawning Of the promised Millennial Day...
...Down With the Wasters...
...The roads should be brought into the court of public opinion and be made to show cause why railroaders should not be employed on railroads, as things are...
Vol. 16 • August 1933 • No. 6
