TIMELY TOPICS

...The country still waits to see how the Administration will reconcile the policy of reducing acreage, driving hundreds of thousands of tenant farmers off the land, while it pushes reclamation projects and tries to put the unemployed on the land which by no possibility can provide the standard of living which we must have in city and country alike if we are to continue in a machine age without collapse...

...It may increase employment, but even that is not certain in view of the possibility, especially in heavy industries, of pushing still further technological changes such as thos...

...And to cap the climax a jury in the San Joachim Valley has cooly acquitted farmers who shot in cold blood unarmed cotton pickers who were attending an open-air strike meeting...

...That doesn't mean that we have no right to criticise the Administration for specific acts or to urge specific measures...

...Even the Administration ought to consent to holding it up while we find out just how much the makers of various airplanes and all forms of war supplies are robbing us under a plea to our patriotism and how much they are doing to provoke the dangers against which they bid us arm...

...The worst thing about the Administration is its big Army and Navy program...

...Wallace is that economic internationalism to benefit the workers must be far more than national tariff bargaining such as Roosevelt wants power to carry on...

...It knows no law and no country but profit In France it actually aided Hitler to promote its own business, and America is today helping to arm Japan...

...Moor.ey is still in jail...

...A conservative business magazine like "Fortune" tells a ghastly story of the most Infamous business on earth...

...Roosevelt has done better than we bad a right to expect a Democratic president to do under capitalism...

...One may criticise this or that act of the Adminiaration or its failure to act, but one is no realist at all who fails to realise that Mr...

...Even "at home, Mr...

...Some Socialists made the mistake of blaming Hoover personally too much and capitalism too little...

...3. Senator Wagner introduced a bill to abolish company unions, which in good, but so phrased that it may establish compulsory arbitration which the experience of the Kansas Industrial Court showed was bad...

...There is no successful contradicting of his case, especially as he has developed it in his now famous pamphlet, "America Must Choose...

...Its increasingly serious failure shown even by General Johnson's wholly inaccurate figures, the powerful criticism directed against it from the left, the strength developed by the 80-hour bill in the House, and the probable concern of the President over the fate of his own program led to several important developments: 1. The President, very belatedly, has given the Labor Board some power to enforce its decisions...

...He almost doubled the A. F. of L. figures on unemployment, he added 500,000 to Frances Perkins' figures, and he attributes all reemployment to NRA, although a lot of it took place before there was any NRA...

...4. At last representatives of the consumers got around to presenting a powerful argument against the price fixing which under guise of preventing cutthroat competition has become common under the codes—a price fixing, be it noted, by industrial leaders in their own interest...

...But what can we expect of a Democratic Congress which excludes Negro employees of the government from eating in the Capitol restaurant T Above all things at the moment we should demand the adoption of Senator Nye's resolution for investigating the greed and sinister war-making activities of the Armament Trust...

...which I was recently told have made 50,000 men superfluous in the Akron rubber industry even when it is going full blast No one who has seen anything of the workings of regional labor boards and the national board can believe that even the passage of Senator Wagner's bill plus the President's new ruling will end chiseling...

...In general I agree with the thoughtful criticism of the Wagner bill adopted by the National Committee of the Continental Congress...

...PreNazi Germany had cartels and labor codes giving labor far more than labor has yet been offered in Washington...

...To Aid the Austrians I HOPE Socialists throughout the country will ' follow the example of New York in giving for Austrian relief, and of Milwaukee, Chicago, Baltimore, and other cities, which I have visited, In putting over our all-Important Socialist United Drive Fund with a bang...

...When Donald Richberg tells the world that the choice is NRA or dictatorship, he is talking through Ins h a t General Johnson's use of figures is a scandal...

...Wallace's own effort to plan crop reduction, and yet protect landlordism and the general caaos wnica ins pront system Has brought to agriculture, is anything bat a success...

...Wallace to declare plainly what he is going to do for those most miserable of Americans, the share-croppers, about whose condition I have repeatedly complained...

...I still wait for Mr...

...California /CALIFORNIA is bound to be first in that which disgraces any American tradition of liberty...

...Witnesa the naked children of the cotton share cropper no longer allowed to raise cotton, and the lack of enough milk for health in the cities at a time when the Agricultural Administration is discussing killing cows the way it did the pigs last winter...

...It is the worst sort- of tactics to repeat that mistake with regard to Roosevelt The history of capitalism under two such different men as Hoover and Roosevelt strengthens our case against the whole system...

...Two Important Measures AMONG the measures to be pushed, which tha *"* Administration . is apparently not pushing, ought to be the Tugwell Food and Drug Bill which has already been made somewhat toothless in Congress, and the Federal A nt.i Lynching Bill...

...Those who sow the wind have no right to complain when they reap the whirlwind...

...Unless we can raise this $50,000 fund we ought to quit talking and crawl in our holes...

...Wallace is right...

...The wrong sort of government under this new sort of set-up could use the bill and the codes to put labor in a strait-jacket Tinkering with NRA f J O W far we are likely to be from getting pros* * perity by tinkering with NRA was well shown by the most philosophical member of the Administration, Secretary Wallace, when he said that we must either develop a sound economic internationalism or an expensive economic isolation or some planned compromise between the two or else we would be caught by real inflation or a collapse worse than the collapse of 1932...

...Germany didn't get prosperity and did get fascism...

...What Socialists can and should say to Mr...

...A blanket ten per cent reduction in hours with a corresponding increase in wages is not scientific planning and it certainly is not adequate to labor's needs, especially as it contains no provision at all for increasing what the average worker will g e t On the contrary, he will have less real purchasing power because of the certainty of a rising cost of living and the possibility of great inflation...

...Rolph, the eulogist of lynching, is still Governor...

...It Involves international planning for the benefit of the workers and not of owners and speculators...

...2. The President has declared in general for shorter hours and higher w a g e s which General Johnson has interpreted by declaring in favor of a ten per cent slash in hours and a corresponding increase in pay for industries, or at any rate for the principal industries under the codes...

...The Socialists Were Right f\N the whole the chief results of the Adminis^ 11«turn's energetic first year is to underscore the Socialists' statement that capitalism cannot save itself...

...NRA and Capitalism KIOW all this will probably do some good, b u t all * • of it together and more to boot cannot and will not solve the problem of successfully marrying plan to the supremacy of the profit system...