LaFollette Senate Probe Collects Big Business' Debt to U. S.
LaFollette Senate Probe Collects Big Business' Debt to U. S. Reveals Anti-Union Outfits' Failure Willi id r attut-c To Pay Taxes - Caramirtee to Present Report Urging C—fronloooJ Ufbtatios to...
...The...
...These earnings are high because the average rate for hop pinking in 1937 was 2 cents per pound compared with just over IVi cents in 1938...
...And during the anti-"red" hysterics of the A. Mitchell Palmer days, Maurer was vilified as few men have been vilified because he had done more than his share to establish labor's status as a community element to be heard, to be recognized, to be accorded the basic privileges of American citizenship...
...NEW HAVEN.—The two Socialist Senators, Audubon Secor and James Tait...
...With wage rates reduced, these migrants from the dust bowl have found it necessary, in order to live, to exploit their own children in hop picking on a commercial basis...
...The franc drops dizzily to more than fifty to the dollar...
...Tile National Metal Trades Association, one of the most vicious of anti-union employer groups, has been paying no income taxes, -on the ground that it is a "noti-proftt" organization...
...he had seen the E as ton Greys fire broadsides into unarmed strikers during the railroad riots of 1877...
...Today James Maurer is facing a picture appreciably different...
...When Roosevelt was inaugurated' the machine age itself was becoming an anachronism, the while from W29" forward" the new technics of power-age production had been linked -with an irresponsible...
...Then, a few abort days before Christmas, 1938, someone stack a rider on a finance bill reproducing more or less the terms of the original law voted in March, 1994, and, surprise of surprises, the rider went through the Chamber of Deputies with the indication that it was to become the law of the land as of February, IMS...
...Daily average earnings of 66 families were $5.11...
...there was a deep compulsion in him to lead men toward sterner loftier ways...
...Work frequently starts before sun-up, at 5 or 6 o'clock...
...the past fifty years, reflected the efforts of Americans who take the Declaration of Independence seriously to*"own their own country, and to build the better life of mind and spirit upon "the* basis Of economic security and political independence...
...They travel from place to place to earn a living, sometimes covering 5,000 to 10,000 miles a year in old jalopies...
...Usually there is a lay-over between early and late hops, and again the family must live on its reserve or go into debt...
...He bad guts...
...For he had brains...
...To learn at first-hand the problems of the "rubber tramps" and their children, a survey was made last fall in the Washington-Oregon hop areas...
...Minnesota barred out the Pinker-ten-Agency, and New York State barred the Railway Audit and Inspection Bureau, because of disclosures made by the Senate committee...
...Among the personalities in view who are favorably considered for that task, Herriot, who has a long parliamentary and governmental career behind him, is most qualified...
...The New York Commissioner of Licenses has summoned the Pinkerton and Burns agencies to hearings on similar charges, and probably will oast them from the -state also...
...Having learned by painful experience in other crops that unless they arrive early, they may not get a job, they come a week or ,two ahead of harvest time...
...They quit early in the spring to start the long trek fat* crop harvests...
...He had imagination...
...The whole family usually helps, and children 'as young as six and seven years of age, though they* may sleep an hour or two later, trail out to the fields and pick...
...and the reactionary onslaught against the NLRB will at the worst accomplish a manicure, not the evisceration hoped for by its more r^ckleos opponents...
...VTET what is perhaps preemi-* nently important about James Maurer's story is its proof that what we call "progress" in tht current labor scene is not a contemporary creation alone but rather the result of continuous striving of a long processional of men who, like Maurer, march always in the vanguard toward the rising sun...
...Rubber Tramps" Twelve-Hour Day for Children Picking Hops i IJOPS grown on thousands of rich acres in the WiHametj| * Valley, Oregon, and the Yakima Valley, Washington, reJ quire some 50,000 to fjOjOOO extra hands for* the harvest in August and September...
...Are yea a democratic aarieUet ? Then jeia She Oeeial t iWetrfftW Federation...
...That fact has been proved many ' Jjnjiii One example was the Tea--por-Dome probe, which eost lens...
...At that time, Maurer points out, "Labor was neither feared nor respected, hardly tolerated...
...WHEN James Maurer took his first job at Harbster's hardware factory in his home-town of Reading he was paid $1.00 for a 55-hour week...
...wield the balance of power in the Connecticut Senate and last week held up the organisation of the State Senate at the capitol in .Hartford for one-half boor by voting for their own candidate for Clerk of the Senate...
...Since pickers are paid by weight, they earn more by picking hops when dew is on them than when they are dried "but late m the afternoon...
...It is expected that the Socialists : wfll secure positions on the im-pertanfreetamittees of "Cities, and . gbriathti" (to- prevent the repiti-tkm of possible Waterbury scan-dais), (Finance and Roads" fre-¦aaneer- the Men lit Parkway i •eandal), '•Bridges and . Rivers," and possibly the "Judiciary Com- i mittee...
...A decree signed on September 16 of the same year makes the law effective as of January 1, 1925...
...The data, secured by examining the picking tickets, questioning adults and children, and taking recorded earnings of the few families who kept records, indicate a serious state of affairs...
...A study made in Yakima in r98T indicated that 62.3 per cent of tbt families interviewed made 1«M Chan $601 on all crops during tht previous year, and 37.6 per cent less than $401...
...civil liberties- investigation is bringing other valuable results, among them these: In a week or two the committee is aapeetod to present to Congress a report recommending detailed legislation to curb the labor spy and union boating methods disclosed by its probe...
...m—i m PssmmnM—" — mm * ^titAaasUM -AAMassLslA" ktfa ^ssov^mk Tr&m" Mff • jr*Sr» - Nrffrffj OS MtfVrvr Wl mWVn« Now of 72, forking a well-earned rest, he has writ-Ho kU hl**raply—a living record of Labor straggles during the post SO years...
...Their daily average earnings had dropped successively from $16 in 19S6 (at 1% cents per pound) to $12, $10 and last year less than $8 (at IVi cents per pound), a sum which the mto dust bowl migrants cannot bop* to equal...
...His volume forms a unique social document, indispensable to any student of American labor during the past half century...
...He owes that chance to a certain number of lucky circumstances, such as the necessity for the budget to be voted by the end of the year, the uncertainty of the Socialists as to their own line of conduct until the morning of December 27 when the special convention they held for expressly that purpose came to an end, and, last bat not least, the difficulty in finding a suitable successor capable of reuniting the liberal and radical forces and ready to accept the heavy charge of forming a new cabinet...
...Children over 10 years frequently pick a fall day of 10 to 12 hours, sometimes with naps or abort play periods and an hour or So out for lunch...
...On hops the head of a family averaged less than $2 per day, and other members of tbt family just over $1.50 per day...
...He therefore passed -through nearly all the radicalisms...
...A special mmlhegt ojrtf 4 rfWIrt ti ¦ i IJfcm* «? SXMO...
...Thus the association's income from this source must have- been about $56,000 a month, or over $600,000 a year...
...Two examples show how this is working oat...
...But up to the present, he has not said he would accept...
...He had seen the helotry of miners going down into pits where fire and explosion "vexed" management but not enough to stimulate it into installing safety devices...
...Bhmr—fa Tax Dodgors ' This week it was learned that the Senate Civil Liberties investigation, conducted by Senators Robert M. LaFollette, Jr., of Wisconsin, and "Elbert D. Thomas, of Utah, also is more than paying back the $150,000 it has eost so Stat...
...Labor's right to organize into unions of its own choice has been validated by the Supreme Court of the United States...
...fSVW men hove served the American Labor and Socialist r Movement as competently as James H. Maurer of Socialist-controlled Reading...
...Henceforth he was to "educate, exasperate" until a long list of crucially needed reforms kept piling up behind him...
...j Financiers Maintain Shaky ©aladier Gov't Budget "Balanced" on Paper—Opporfonrrres tor Tax Evasion by Wealthy Retained — Herriot looms os Successor to Premier or President Lebrnn...
...He reseated that...
...and from his teens be has been animated by a deep temperamental understanding Of tile plight of the non-privileged, a category to which he only perhaps technically belonged...
...To induce the very small ones, to pick, parents bribe them with promises of loHy-pops or ice cream, or occasionally threaten them with punishment...
...if a labor official dared to show his teeth he was either ignored or crushed with ridicule...
...For business men, first in his city, and later throughout Eastern Pennsylvania, boycotted his firm because Maurer wanted to know why...
...The boy orgirl of 12 to 1$, years who does not pick at least a basked of 45 to 50 pounds a day is considered either "no account/* or ill...
...April 4, 1926: A new government, Radical-Socialist, has, another law voted which permits tracing dividend and^interest payments...
...finance capitalism to plunge the nation into the black, bitter years of the post boom decade.* And during this interval James Maurer has been more than, an eyewitness to the changes which in ids own lifetime have transformed the hectic expanding ruthless industrialism of - the America of his youth into the first faint beginning of that more rational democratically planned economy implicit in the promise of the New Deal...
...His devotion to the Socialist credo cost him a flourishing steam-fitting business which he and his brother were conducting in Reading...
...March 24, 1924: A law is voted making it obligatory for banks and financial institutions to declare ell persons to whom they have paid dividends and interest coupons...
...Lebrun's term of office expires next May...
...It was found that once these migrants arrive in the hop districts, they either register through the State-Federal Employment Service offices or go job hunting at the hop yards...
...This horde of seasonal workers cannot be obtained locally...
...The capitalists are not so finicky about the application of the principle itself, except in so far as it serves as a! pretext to impose drastic "measures- of economy," as they are patriotically called, on the nation...
...All these children were reported as working a full day...
...Parliament's Calendar While the rider was shuttling between the Ghamber and 'the Senate, the financial chronicler of tiie Temp* wrote that "the principal interest (on the Stock Exchange) was directed to the amendment which tends to aejsaia the date of application of the dispositions relative to the control of hanking operations...
...Socialists Hold Deciding votes In Conn...
...Although the schools open Oaring the hop picking season, it is rarely that a child gets to school before the hops are lisi csstoe ¦ and often not in the succeeding months of apple, grape, prune, walnut and potato harvests Children go to school half a day during the winter in California and Arizona and pick cotton ti» other half...
...and must continue to feed many hungry mouths...
...The government is presided over by a Radical-Socialist named Daladier, who fixes by decree March 1st, 1934, the application of the hew law...
...He was a Populist, for a time...
...And in growing maturity he found himself a Socialist at the century's turn...
...They almost tripped him up on several occasions...
...oil, tires and repair...
...The effect upon the children of this restlessness bomtof^insecurity cannot be overdrawn...
...and bis memory of Hs essential unfairness propelled aim into tile Knights of Labor virtually as soon as he was able to read the Order's literature...
...France is the country of income-tax evasion par excellence, barring none, not seen the U.S.A...
...LflS business gone, he took up * * various jobs, but he kept on preaching...
...It is said that General Motors, alone, "fired 27 spy agencies as a result of the probe, and pot three former "G-Men" from the Department of Justice on Hs regular payroll to do its detective work...
...Tories Welcome Budgets The Socialists gave Daladier a hard fight all through the budget voting...
...he was at 68 nominated for the Governorship of Pennsylvania by the Socialist Party, the turbine was sending its waves of electrical energy even into the*"" farming district where his grandmother Moyer had used, candles dipped at home...
...But waiting costs money...
...One family was found of four workers, with 14 years' experience, who had kept records of earnings during the past four years...
...He was a pragmatist, too...
...Parliament bows to the supposed "will of the people" and decides that the law will become effective oh July 1st, 1934...
...And when in 1904 he attended the Socialist Convention in Chicago he found himself...
...The next day Daladier resigns, Doumergue is called in, and on February 9th the new government decrees that the .supplication of the law- is adjourned...
...Bt®m Me "It Can Be Done" A life Socialist Achievement By HERBERT HARRIS Author of "Amerioan I,abor" JWHEN James Maurer in 1873 was a small boy living for a ¦ while among his Plattdeutsch relatives in Berks County, Pa., the day of handicraft, of traveling tailors and tinkers who sold tinware on the side, had not yet vanished...
...Not that they needed any proof to show their confidence in Paul Reynaud, the French finance minister...
...F^o^rt^^or *^Pf oo^tIi They i«*e "re*Ly to go to any limit to prevent the application of measures intended to...
...Herriot resigns and his place is taken on Jsrfy 91st by Poincare...
...Hop poisoning, a skin inflammation, and sharp points on backs of leaves make hops feared and hated by most children...
...He was a crusader born...
...T*e sna-arsyWfaa press hps,giroo H rave notices...
...Bat when they are conducted by Progressives, they more than pay for themselves, not only hi bene-ficial results, but also in actujj dollars recovered from malefaetow ¦ by Uncle Sam...
...He was questing for a solution, -He was looking tor answers...
...The cabinet falls on some extraneous question and the new government hastens to suspend the application of the law, and on July 13, 1925, Parliament is invited to vote its repeal...
...Evade Taxes First of all, the budget which has been voted for 1939 is balanced, at least on paper...
...For $$ adults in Oregon and Washington for whom daily earnings could be obtained, the average was $1.82...
...H ko*heon pmblisbed by fbe Ran*School Press...
...By BEN PROTTEft PARIS.—Daladier is.still in the saddle...
...He Did It...
...Another was the jSenjSje banking: investigation, or *Pe?orajprobe,* 'of 1933, which led to* collection of millions of dollars in income taxes from Charles E. IfiteheH and other New York "financiers...
...Known as "rubber tramps," because of their dependence on rubber tires for transportation, they are creating a new generation of wanderers who, due to the nomadic habits being acquired today, will soon become a broken, restless, poorly educated and malnourished horde of outcasts without home or community ties...
...Then, on Jaly puts off the fatal day once # again to December Slat, 1935...
...problems which are still but partially solved...
...In the past, labor has been recruited from Indians from British Columbia, r Filipinos, Japanese and professional fruit tramps...
...His personal participation in labor upheavals and adjustments, his own search for a philosophy, his shrewd measurements of men and manners and movements bring a sentient warmth to the merely factual record of a past still merging with the present...
...The text already voted by the Chamber has eaased a visible disturbance on the Stock Exchange...
...because he refused to subscribe to the easy Panglossiar thesis that the America of his epoch was the best of all possible worlds He had already seen too much...
...Herriot is reported grooming himself for the presidency of the French Republic...
...Several hundred thousand migratory families are used for picking many crops on the West Coast...
...The outstanding quality of the 1939 budget is the pleasure it should give the capitalists...
...When that day comes around, She Parliament deckled to let the govsanmSnt decide, and as the government aster decided...
...HOURS LONG, ILLNESS RAMPANT •TPHEY have come perhaps hun-* dreds of miles, spent money for food...
...The Chrysler Corporation was forced to correct false reports it made to the Securities and Exchange Commission, in concealing large sums spent for industrial spies...
...It will take some quick tightrope walking and some fancy juggling with figures to keep from going down in the red before the year is out...
...Daladier under, stood much mare quickly...
...Their daily earnings averaged $1.09...
...Big Bill Looms ¦?an a huge income of that kind . be called "non-profit" ? Government . authorities are studying that ques-' tion, and may soon present a large taot bill to the association...
...The committee proved that Theodore R. Middleton, notorious sheriff of "Bloody Harlan" Comity, Kentucky, enriched himself by at least $100,000, bat paid bo tax on that income...
...control more efficiently their sources of income...
...Even without such legislation, -the investigation has driven many labor spy agencies out of business by giving them such unpleasant notoriety that employers dare not deal with them...
...f*0 see whether children eoa-* tributed materially to family earnings, the cases of 59 childrea were investigated...
...i#BBj $100,000 and recovered naval loil gnjarvii lands worth at least $371,000,000 and immense sums in income taxes...
...Now Middleton baa promised to pay not Only the taxes but the penalties for evading them...
...The Senate committee showed that this association 'famished about ^60 "stoo* pigeiaV to employers and collected $225 a -monCt ?or the services of each...
...He has been in the trenches for many long bard campaigns...
...His childhood -was hardly halcyon, though he managed to have en excitingly good time as budding impresario...
...The wealthy Frenchmen practice tax evasion on a wide scale...
...He believed that a faith should be a real fighting faith, not a bit of ribbon worn at a meeting once a month, down the street...
...The Senate did not dare threw the rider out bodily, so they voted it with an amendment fixing the date February 1st, 1940...
...Senate By JACK COOPERMAN Special to The New Leader...
...Moreover, the first steps toward social security as the claim of the worker upon the economy he has helped to maintain in his functional days have already been taken...
...for he had soon perceived that unionism alone could immediately improve the monetary and moral condition of those' who with mind or muscle or either or both worked for their daily bread...
...They want to conserve: that privilege...
...But that is of secondary importance...
...This time Mr...
...In 1910 he was elected to the Pennsylvania State Assembly where with all the pertinacity of his "Dutch" descent, he introduced and battled for the first old-age pension bill and otherwise sought to overcome the "disgrace" that even in 1911 the Keystone state had "no woman's labor law, no mothers' pensions, no workmen's compensation, and no factory or sanitary laws or regulations...
...In both Washington and Oregon children in large numbers wen found in the fields, sometimes $1 per cent of the picking crew being children under 16 years...
...And to Maurer such phenomena must especially underscore the axiom that today's commonplace was yesterday's program for "revolution," subversive, and violent...
...First the early hops are picked— this takes only 3 or 4 days or at most a week...
...LaFollette Senate Probe Collects Big Business' Debt to U. S. Reveals Anti-Union Outfits' Failure Willi id r attut-c To Pay Taxes - Caramirtee to Present Report Urging C—fronloooJ Ufbtatios to Curb Labor Spies and Union Busting...
...Certainly to the general reader this honest homespun unfolding of the life of a leader of labor should do much to humanize the problems of the American unionist...
...The jgrower usually gives them a cabin jor tent in the plot he has set aside as his camp, or allows them to pitch their o-wn tent—and wait...
...He has been a supporter of every progressive movement which, during •IT CAN BE DONE, by James Hudson Maurer...
...By ALBERT H. JENKINS , Jgtnkinpttm hmbor Correspondent When government investigations are nude by conservatives and reactionaries, they scMsf yield worthwhile results of fay kind...
...When in 1932...
...If Herriot does try his chance, it is -doubtful whether he will be able to overcome the traditional opposition of the Senators to anyone so far to the Left as he is...
...Rise of Daladier December 23, 1933: A third law is voted...
...He was a Single Taxer, for a time...
...Sand - School PresertS.OQ...
...Mr Daladier, in a hurry to leave for Corsica and Tunis, forced the -rider, as amended by the Senators, through the Chamber by posing the question of confidence...
...Unlike their Republican and Democratic colleagues, the Socialist Sena tore will use their posi- I tions to insure, so far as is .possible, the passage of social and > labor legislation...
...Many arrive penniless and must borrow from the grower or his commissary store or get relief from a local agency...
...And when in 1912 he was named president of the State Federation of Labor he used his post during sixteen terms to push and haul and cauterwaul social-minded measures through a legislature that too often was an appendage of Boies Pensrose and his heirs and assigns...
...His reported close relations with certain international financial groups are quite sufficient to have -assured in any event the success of the conversion loan recently placed in Holland and Switzerland...
...FAMILIES SEND THREE KIDS INTO FIELD Individual wages are so low that the head of a household, or even two adult members, frequently cannot earn enough to support the family (in the hop fields, families average three children...
...In one case, Daladier got through with a majority of seven votes, which was brought down on another occasion to exactly six...
...On February 6th, 1934, after two months' of minor rioting, a fascist putsch takes place...
...Seldom do families start the crop with any sizable cash reserve— more often, it was found, with debts for groceries hanging over their heads...
...From 10 days to 3 weeks are required for late hops...
...Three days later, August 3rd, the law is repealed...
...Since dust and drought came to the Middle-west, agricultural workers from that section have provided a labor supply far in excess of the needs of the growers, enabling them to buy harvest labor at their own price...
...Every time a government in-France has tried to do something towards that end, it either has had to back dawn very quickly or has - -been thrown out by violent means, if Below is a chronological table of events which throws a cartons sidelight on the contemporary French history and shews the grip the French financiers bare on the government...
...Frequently children of this age fill two or three baskets a day...
...He has been no arm-chair philo soy's who with much effort bestirs himself to fight for justice—at a cocktail party...
...What counts for the Walter" Lippmans of - France is that the principle of budget balancing should be respected...
Vol. 22 • January 1939 • No. 2
