TIMELY TOPICS
THOMAS, NORMAN
By Norman Thomas TIMELY TOPICS Battle Creek, Michigan. It Isn't Socialist Legislation IT will be a mistake if Socialists regard recent legislation on the Stock Exchange or...
...Pratt and Mr...
...croppers off the land or to reduce them to the statm of agricultural labor without even such miserable protection as the share-croppers had in the matter of receiving rations...
...Mean while, I encouraged a local committee in Memphis, Tennessee, and Tyronza, Arkansas, headed by Dr...
...Recovery, what...
...2. Representatives of the share-croppers should be put on the enforcement authorities, and in this connection the Negro should be treated on an equal basis with the white share-cropper...
...Wallace WORKERS everywhere know something of the " plight of share-croppers of the South...
...What is significant is the way capitalist business howls against every attempt to make it honest even by its own standards...
...Brown report that consolidated gross income of their corporation for the calendar year increased 19,101,427 over 1932...
...J. A. Brown, Chairman of the Management Committee, <lisplay a pardonable pride, an almost smug satisfaction in rendering their Annual Report for 1933 to their stockholders for their meeting on May 31st...
...the Sinclair-Frazier bill for Government agricultural marketing corporations, and bills for a really adequate program of unemployment relief and public works...
...Brown will receive well-merited resolutions of thanks As an afterthought, apparently, there is a brief section on the last page of the text dealing with Employees...
...equable sharing of the kenents, or alleged benefits, of s reduction in acreage...
...In a disin- JRK*^^ -" / tegrating capitalism this ^ajj ^LjfeaV / may mean chiefly that the U jg...
...They would be far more appropriate if we already were leading an immense movement...
...Secretary: Following the charges that I made in public speeches last winter concerning certain effects of the Agricultural Adjustment Act upon the sharecroppers of the South, you asked Dr...
...in my own recommendations...
...It has been a good year, a satisfactory year...
...On the basis of the present program the reports before us emphasise these facts: 1. The contracts themselves have been too loosely drawn adequately to protect whatever rights tat share-croppers are assumed to have in an...
...It is, however, immensely pertinent to point out that the best you hope by your program is to restore the system of share-cropping to a little better basis...
...Recovery Gomes at Last to the Socony-Vacuum Stockholders JL|K HERBERT L. PRATT, Chairman of ihe Hoard of the Socony-Vacuum Company, and Mr...
...They are virtual slaves to the landtonl and to his Commissary, and thsMerrible rate of interest they pay on so-called advances is one of the chains which binds them...
...4. While the share-cropper who stays on the land in his old status may be as well off or a shadk better off than before there was a reduction in acreage, there is a virtually inevitable tendency, at shown in these reports, to drive a great many share...
...Bad as the share-croppers food is, and well designed as it is to breed pellaea, at least he did get something to eat at rue Cony missary...
...V funds for genuine housing ' km^ corporations set up by N„m,„ Thomas cities or states...
...It Isn't Socialist Legislation IT will be a mistake if Socialists regard recent legislation on the Stock Exchange or suggested legislation on housing as in any way Socialistic...
...The company had a surplus at the beginning of the year of $11,732,202.93, which has grown to $67,688,908.03 at the close of the year of blessed recovery...
...I am sure you will agree with me that it is a social tragedy of the first magnitude, a tragedy that must be repaired, that at* should be reducing a cotton crop when the men who raise it lack a decent supply of cotton for their families...
...I have now received from him a copy of his report...
...The number of employees in the United1 States alone at December 31, 1933, was 39,688 compared with 34,905 at the end of 1932...
...Bills We Should Favor TTHE sort of laws Socialists should fight for in the * present Congress are a genuine Federal AntiLynching law...
...I have sent the following letter to Secretary of Agriculture Wallace: » My dear Mr...
...Poor Fit* anal CmJUk A LL bills for the protection of legitimate investors under capitalism are necessarily bills to protect the poor fish from their cannibal relations or to impose an Emily Post code of etiquette on the way the big bad wolf eats the little pigs...
...William R. Amberson, Professor of Physiology at the University of Tennessee, to make a local ease study...
...3. You yourself on behalf of the share-cropper* should establish a method for going into court to enforce their rights as those rights are set forth in the contract...
...I am not sanguine, however, about subsistence farming as any kind of a solution of our problem...
...Witness the way the Tugwell Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics bill has.been mangled at the insistence of advertisers and newspapers...
...In general, I endorse the recommendations in the Amberson report which I have not already include...
...Pratt and Mr...
...The 4,783 added employees received $1,099,364, OR AN AVERAGE WAGE OF $229 A YEAR...
...He tries to present in concrete and vivid form what Socialists propose to do in rapid steps in order to give everybody abundance...
...Not as important as surpluses and amortization funds, but still, one must be human, must one not...
...government will hold the ^^^Ks^^hV^^^M bag The principal use of ^HS^ Z\l K the bills from our point ^^S^ W*^L^Lof view would be their ^ VC^^A possible effect in providing MJ...
...The result of this study is now in your hands...
...whose wages run around 60 to 75 cents a day whip they work...
...We will excuse Mr...
...Of course, the illustration of cooking the hare is inadequate because movements are not dead things for us to cook, but live things for Socialists to try to educate and lead...
...Back in 1928, I made the reasonable suggestion that if I were President I would at least make the findings of the Federal Bureau of Standards available to ordinary consumers for their protection in buying products, but I was told this would destroy business...
...If we go in for this sort of a platform we shall not Want to adopt resolutions which by their language or emphasis will defeat the effect of the platform...
...These things are directly our business and make directly for advance toward the cooperative commonwealth...
...This is not true of agricultural laborer...
...Brown for a slight error in arithmetic...
...Net profits, however, were $22,646,462, as compared with a mere $5,320,282 in 1932 and a deficit of $4,169,248 the previous year...
...The whole country ought to be aroused to the social significance of a situation where an average annual in* come not for a man but his whole family is nearer $260 than $300...
...Certainly there is nothing* in the Bank, head bill of itself to change the situation, and I respectfully inquire what you expect to do to champ it under the regulations you are empowered tt set up...
...My own suggestions for the immediate situation, which in no sense amount to a cure of an intolerable condition, would be as follows: ,; 1. The contracts should be far more strictly drawn for the protection of the share-cropper...
...Calvin B. Hoover to make an independent study...
...This, of course, nets Mr...
...4. It should be the policy of your Administration to encourage and not discourage, or permit local authorities to discourage, the fundamental right of organization...
...There are five printed pages of text explaining Use steady and gratifying progress of the SeconyVacuum Company, and unless justice and gratitude are quite dead, Mr...
...No wonder, pellagra and illiteracy abound...
...The share-croppers in no true serise aw free men...
...Whatever their ethical . anil practical merits, the> >*J^^^y_ are part of an attempt ' ^ to reform capitalism and FM prolong its life...
...The Board of Directors wishes to express appreciation and thanks to employees for their fine spirit of loyalty, courage and efficiency during these difficult times...
...I do not think much can be done until these share-croppers are encouraged to act like free men and citizens...
...Brown special solid platinum and enamel Blue Eagles...
...Pratt and Mr...
...a genuinaH&ill to outlaw company unions, which the Wagner bill in its present form is not...
...Employee relations embrace employment, education and training, accident prevention, medical service, employee representation, annuities and insurance, job analysis and salary standards...
...It seems to me that both reports confirm the charges I made...
...The 39,688 employees—including the increased number about whom the directors take such pride —received an average of $1,588 a year, or an average decrease of $176 a year...
...There is no sound agricultural progress in such a restoration and little hope for the million and a half farm families who now raise most of our cotton under this system...
...Domestic payrolls for 1933 totaled $60,984,758 compared with $59,885,404 in 1932...
...I go farther and say that I cannot imagine any farreaching cure of them under the capitalist system and our old concepts of landlordism...
...If conscientious laudlords also sometimes suffer, that is so much the, worse an indictment of their system...
...A Letter to Mr...
...2. The enforcement of these contracts is in the hands of local authorities recruited from the land, lord class or those sympathetic with it...
...Thus does capitalism condemn itself out of its own mouth...
...I grant that you and the AAA by no means created this situation...
...A good many of these plans forget the old-fashioned recipe for cooking a hare: first catch the hare...
...Witness the outcry against the Stock Exchange and Securities bills...
...a bill for unemployment insurance...
...A Platform for Socialism IT is interesting, and on the whole encouraging, to * learn by word of mouth and correspondence how many plans- and resolutions for Socialist activity our comrades have proposed...
...Some of them are not likely to help us get an immense movement...
...Pratt and Mr...
...I presume sharecroppers already driven off the land ought to be returned to it under some form of subsistence farming...
...My first and grave complaint is that the entire method of land tenure and operation is wrong, that some of the worst examples of landlordism in the world are to be found in the cotton country, and that it is idle to talk about prosperity for cotton farmers as long as these conditions of virtual peonage continue...
...For in- M/\ stance, the housing bills Wjm D do not set up housing cor- MkWWr- <¦ publicly owned, U wCjAjL «*?¦*?• f hut merely provide gov- ¦ Iw^B \^ I ernment financing of U II housing and real estate ^^¦Jg, lkY' f mortgages...
...Sincerely yours, NORMAN THOMAS...
...3. There is an obvious tendency for landlord...
...It is this approach to the problem which makes Paul Porter's draft of a Congressional Platform, published in the forthcoming World Tomorrow, so valuable and so suggestive...
...My experience convinces me that he has the proper approach and that his practical proposals are substantially sound, although the Convention may wisely modify and improve them after proper discussion...
...the increase in employees was not "over 6,000" but 4,783, or IS per ceat...
...Cooperation with federal and state governments and with the oil industry in carrying out the national recovery program is estimated to have added over 5,000 men to the payroll since July 1, 1933...
...further to embitter race relations and to weaken the share-croppers by dividing them through the way in which they reduce acreage and employ tenants...
...The 54,966 employees in 1932 received on an average $1,716 per year...
Vol. 17 • May 1934 • No. 20
