Jim Farley's Man Friday-Or the Candidate Without a Profile
LORING, EDWARD
Jim Farley's Man Friday—Or the Candidate Without a Profile John Bennett Receives Main Backing From NY. Reaction by EDWARD LORING ONE spring afternoon in 1930, Governor " Franklin Delano Roosevelt...
...Jack Bennett was a cross-section of "the sidewalks of New York...
...He could make his predictions of victory when he was sure of the ALP support...
...Our most sinister enemy could do no more than try to create a deep division between the Executive and Legislative branches of the government...
...Already 150,000 of the families have repaid ? full...
...But the newspapers would have the consumer believe that the high prices are due to the prices paid the farmers for his products...
...The Big Farmers (the twenty-per cent who get eighty-per cent of the farm income) seek to profit by throwing the economic burden on the consumer...
...His most exciting moment during World War I was landing a stalled plane in the center of the Belmont Race Track...
...It regards as a farm any tract of not less than three acres upon which agricultural operations are carried on...
...The same situation also applies to the distribution of non-farm products...
...Behind the smokescreen thrown up by vested political «and economic interests the struggle narrows down to the question: Who is going to pay the costs of the war...
...In the words of the immortal Mr...
...Then how many farmers have we...
...94 per cent...
...which uses the propaganda to get larger appropriations and more power for that particular bureaucracy...
...Bennett knew Curran to be anti-semitic...
...It was brought to Bennett's attention by one of his closest friends, head of a large B'nai Brith lodge...
...I f /"VNCE again...
...Bennett joined up in 1917 but never saw active service...
...They have been sustained onlj by continued impoverishment of the operathq families and depletion of the farm plant, ? by subsidy...
...They may be called adequate...
...Operators of farms in the last class...
...Dooley, "Politics ain't beanbag...
...Furthermore, these families finally pay back 80 per cent of the money loaned to these...
...that the liberal voters in this state shall not be ignored...
...Before that they could take or leave this knowledge, and usually had to leave it...
...The present Battle of Inflation on our home front is largely a sham battle being fought between unscrupulous forces, with the welfare of 130 million Americans at stak...
...It is believed that the Christian Front circles in Brooklyn have not dared until this campaign to come out os much in the open...
...At the present, time we are being victimized by an unconscionable propaganda—"a war of nerves"—designed to scare the population out of its wits...
...He was like any other Brooklyn kid...
...Bat this time he doesn't have the ALP votes because he is against the New Deal...
...The formula goes as follows: 1942 income paid out will be $115 billion Taxes and savings will absorb 31 " Expendable income ---------- 84 Purchasable goods __________ 6J " Excess purchasing power____ 17 " Now, what is being put over on the country is that the $17 billion is in the hands of the lower income groups, and unless it is taken away from them we will have inflation...
...inflation issue has practically crowded * the War off the front-pages of our newspapers...
...the retailer's cost 33 cents...
...Generally speaking, farm labor is under-employed wherever th* gross income is less than from $800 to $1,000 a year...
...Th* ALP insisted on a New Deal candidate or else it would run an Independent campaign...
...The $75 figure includes lssHS on non-paid loans...
...We commonly say that there are from six to seven million farmers in the United States...
...Their annual labor requirement is high, hence they are not family farms...
...The morning after election he began shaking hands with the electorate...
...Bishop Malloy persistently refused to see the Jewish clerics...
...One fool-proof way to get inflation is to constantly talk about it...
...An effective system of rationing, priorities-control, and reasonable price-fixing, backed up by the voluntary cooperation of the general public, can and will prevent wild, uncontrolled inflation...
...Why did he fail to excoriate those in the Brook-, lyn machine who have stirred racial violence— though Bennett himself actually has not a single taint of anti-semitism...
...Effective assistance has been extended to farmers too impoverished to make profitable use of technical agricultural information, only in the last decade...
...Generally speaking, the entire farm plant...
...He thought he could buffalo the ALP into keeping silent and swallowing Bennett...
...These groups are supposed to have the residuary income which is producing the so-called inflationary gap...
...They produce commodities worth $10,000 or more a year and averaging $22,989 in value...
...We still do riot have over-all economic planning which atone, can give a proper balance to our wartime economy...
...The result is that the Army-Navy «f...
...Jack comes of a line of ward politicians, born "with a red flare in his hand...
...More serious than the other boys, he became a stenographer, passed a city civil service examination and was appointed to the Board of Estimate (final resting place of many a beer-barrel politician...
...TPO hundreds of thousands of voters Jack * Bennett is of the ouW sod, born in Brooklyn in what is known to the precinct officers as Red Hook...
...Farley and Bennett heard Democratic delegates and the balconies—packed with the same obstreperous persons who cheered Joe McWilliams and Fritz Kuhn—shout ribald anti-Jewish remarks at Gov...
...This propaganda emanates primarily from two sources: (1) the National Association of Manufacturers which uses the inflation scare to lessen the tax burden on corporations by shifting it to the lower-income groups (particularly to get approval for widespread sales taxes) and, (2) Henderson's...
...The total increase in the net h* comes of this group amounted to $182,?$??1...
...ficials are requisitioning goods and materials, without due consideration for the civilian population...
...Scare Talk7 on Inflation-Disrupts Wartime Economy By Irving B. Altman THE present fight to control inflation is being * fought on a false front...
...Another million more "farm operators" are too old or otherwise incapacitated to work well...
...What was the matter with farmers if they couldn't succeed with all that aid...
...They saw the Governor wince, yet continue to speak to a crowd which had insulted his religion...
...It would be interesting to know why the Army needs 600,000 typewriters (one for every ten in an army of six million...
...In the...
...UNLESS inflation is artificially stimulated by ^· selfish groups, this country can escape this danger during and after the war...
...The fact is that the great majority of our families cannot afford to pay the price-fixed rents, nor have they the income to buy available goods even on a rationed basis...
...If these people could be put to work efficiently, they could produce in 1943 at least 48 per cent of the milk increases required, 58 per cent of the pork and lard, 118 per cent of the eggs, 10 per cent of the soybeans, 18 per cent of the peanuts, 25 per cent of the sugar beets, 69 per cent of the canning tomatoes and 146 .per cent of the additional gardens...
...Farley thought he could bluff the ALP into his groove...
...These are the people who have too much money, so we are told...
...All these costs are piled up on top of the price paid.the farmer...
...The latest figures available concerning income are for the year 1941...
...The metropolitan press, friendly only to big-business interests, has contributed its all to confuse the general public on the question of inflation...
...How many people know that it costs more to distribute goods than to produce theml How many people know that it costs more than twice as much to get a bottle of milk delivered to your door than the price paid the dairy farmer for the fluid...
...They can usually be worked by a single family, labor is not wasted on them, the family makes a good living, and in 1939 they produced half the total value of all farm commidities...
...Genial Jim" "p ? ? I A L " Jim ^* Farley, the "master" politician, has long been touted as the man who called the political torn...
...annual deficits in net worth and their farm are inadequate...
...Yet Bennett appeared on the same platform with Curran to raise funds for Franco...
...Of course, we all want the military forces to have everything they need for the successful conduct of the war.- But it is difficult to see how the forces are strengthened by demands considerably out of line with actual or potential military needs...
...By the way, the "service charge" for delivering a bottle of milk to your door is 8 cents or more...
...and the National Association of Manufacturers are trying to create the impression, entirely unwarranted, that the real culprits upsetting the economic applecart are the farmers and workers...
...On summery days he would join the other lads in nude swimming off (he long dock at the tip of Red Hook...
...The National Association of Manufacturers, in the name of controlling inflation, seeks to throw the expense on the shoulders of the lowest income groups...
...A handy boy with a bat he soon found a place on the ball team of the Visitation Parish...
...Who counts the farms...
...One might almost dismiss them from consideration as far as Food for Freedom is concerned...
...Its count indicates that there are 6,100,000 such tracts in the United States...
...Then are added the costs of transportation and warehousing . Then come the wholesalers with their bookkeeping, selling costs, packing, grading, storage and profits...
...A veteran politician once told tne writer that Bennett has shaken the hand of everybody in the state except those who lived in hamlets populated by less than 75 persons...
...Inflation will present an even greater threat in the poet-war period...
...Miscellaneous costs take' up the other 2 cents...
...He has not stopped since...
...The average American family will be lucky to be able to buy all the meat the rationing system will allow, and the same is true of the other commodities which will be rationed...
...The volume of production on such a farm it small...
...They comprise the huge grott) who have gross incomes averaging $350...
...they average more than 200 days a year non-farm work...
...Something more than merely producing and disseminating knowledge about agriculture had to be done to aid bankrupt farmers...
...What must they have in order to do this...
...They have increased their net incomes frees $480 to $865 a year, or 80 per cent...
...This assumption is entirely false and all available figures on income prove the contrary...
...For what is there to write of the Democratic candidate for governor, the man who would inherit the mantle of Alfred E. Smith, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Herbert H. Lehman...
...In addition to his handshaking, Bennett has been a joiner...
...By the fall of 1930 Roosevelt was well on his way to the White House, having been , elected governor by the impressive vote of 1,770,432 to 1,045,341.'Jack Bennett, the tough kid with the night-school education from Red Hook, was Attorney General...
...It must not be overlooked that the civilian population produces the materials of war, and a weak home front will inevitably demoralize our military forces...
...Let's recognize it for the fraud it really is, deal with it effectively and concentrate our efforts on the winning of the war...
...Lend-Lease figures do not indicate that a very considerable volume of our supplies are going abroad—cretainly not enough to create serious shortages here at home...
...A profile of Bennett must be a profile of the Brooklyn political machine of Boss Kelly...
...Yet it has approximately 4,080 man-hoan available, on the average...
...Otherwise, Bennett is a Man Without a Profile—even as he is a man without a party today...
...have been astonishing...
...But more cool-headed observers, wise to publicity ways, point out that Farley has called his cards in New York state—when he had the backing of the American Labor Party...
...This is the probable reason why the War Production Board was unable to account for millions of tons of steel supposed to have been produced and yet not found available...
...Mead, despite, the opposition of the President of the United States and the Governor...
...Problem of Marginal Farmers Upsets Agricultural Planning By T. Swonn Harding [This i$ the first of two article* on "How Many Farmer* Have We, and How Many Do We Need...
...Since the campaign began, Farley and Bennett have conferred with the heads of the Diocese whose past coolness to the war effort and racial tolerance is a matter of record...
...Lehman...
...One answer to this question is that most of the aid reached only the fairly successful farmers until 1933, for they alone were financially able to take advantage of it...
...That is the plain meaning of the Alfahge candidacy.'And that's the lesson Jim Farley will learn...
...How many people know that the cost of distribution takes 59 cents of your dollar...
...It costs $75 entirely to rehabilitate SSS* a family as compared with a least $376 ? feer for mere relief...
...They wanted to protest against what they believed" to be incitement to violence by an admittedly anti-semitic priest...
...The result...
...Much could be written facetiously about Bennett and his ambitions, about his failure to take a position on important issues, his American Legion Babbitry, and cracker-barrel visits...
...Furthermore, a million so-called "farm operators" depend on their farms for employment to only a minor degree...
...DOTH.the...
...A TYPICAL two-mule Delta cotton farm pro-^* ducing cotton, corn, and some livestock requires only about 2.300 man-hours of laber ? year...
...They hs« canned 114 per cent more fruits and vegetsMit, have increased their production of milk fee home use 64 per cent and their meat...
...Most of the shortages now developing in this country are due to bad planning...
...Roosevelt, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, had occasion to contact and grow to like Bennett, aide to Assistant Secretary of War Stettinius...
...IACK BENNETT's political fortunes in the future will be the indicator of whether men willing to deal with Christian Front elements can succeed in New York politics...
...Why...
...Yet last year this very group had labeled Bennett an "Irish renegade" for urging support of the President's policy of sending lend-lease aid to Russia...
...But Bennett's campaign represents too serious an issue to be joked about...
...an' women, childhem, an' prohybitionists'd do well stay out iv it" Bennett knows his politics, if little else...
...Finally, we have the retailer with his bookkeeping, selling costs, advertising, profits, etc...
...Then there are 700,000 marginal farms with an output between $1,000 and $1,499...
...Reaction by EDWARD LORING ONE spring afternoon in 1930, Governor " Franklin Delano Roosevelt put another cigarette in the now internationally-famous holder, turned to Jim Farley and some other political advisors, and said: "Gentlemen, what'we need is a strong candidate for Attorney General, some Catholic, with a Protestant name, who can do some hard grassroots campaigning...
...Which do you think makes the greater profit out of the bottle of milk: The milk -distributor or the dairy farmer...
...IT is a matter of record that Bennett was * chairman of a pro-Franco meeting in September of 1936, at which Curran laid down a pro-fascist line...
...of these people have been worth only about 13,000 —land, buildings, implements, animals, sad machinery...
...After unclassified farms, farms re porting no gross income, tracts held by oper ators who work mostly off the farm, or whi are old or incapacitated are deducted, onlj 4,709,000 bona fide farmers are left...
...Several weeks ago a group of rabbis sought an audience with Bishop Malloy, head of the Brooklyn Diocese...
...The rosters of scores-of civic, fraternal and'patriotic organizations have John J. Bennett listed...
...This he has never done...
...Then, another thing—two million of the tracts regarded as farms by the Bureau of the Census averaged only 20 acres in size with 11 acres of harvested cropland...
...The agency concerned is the Bureau of the Census...
...The farmer sells to the processor who adds to the price paid the farmer his costs for bookkeeping, selling, promotion, advertising and profit...
...Better, more intelligent, planning would provide the military forces with more than adequate supplies, and at the same time maintain the civilian population in good condition...
...And the ALP intends that its wishes shall not be ignored in the future...
...Since Roosevelt still had some influence in Brooklyn then, John McCooey, Boss of die Borough, threw in Bennett's name...
...Of these about 2,717.000 belong to a low-income fjroa) and also are under-employed...
...But unless the present "<w-flation^lopaganda" ceases — and soon — no amount of legislation will be able to deal with the problem...
...In other words, we must write the number of farms' down to at most four million in the interests of accuracy...
...To start off, then, one-third of the so-called farms are what business would regard as bankrupt enterprises...
...There is nothing phony about that...
...the wholesaler's 18 cents;, transportation cost 23 cents...
...How accurate are those figures...
...averaging $1.222...
...Meanwhile the real culprits escape...
...While these tracts comprised one-third of all the "farms" reported by the Census, they included less than 4 per cent of our farm land, only 1 per cent of our harvested cropland, and only 10 per cent of all machinery and equipment...
...The Fronters feel they were responsible for his nomination over Sen...
...Simply because Bennett will not "cross" Edward Lodge Curran, professed Coughlinite, and other important clerical-politicians who control huge blocs of votes in Brooklyn "and Queens...
...Henderson is a good man, but the bureaucratic bug gets the beet of men, creating a thirst for power which is unquenchable...
...117HY is-it that so many farmers have had to be carried along on subsidies in recent years...
...The ALP has consistently played one role—its balance of power votes must go to the liberal man...
...An agricultural expert points out that "more than half the nation's productive agricultural manpower is located on the low-income farms...
...Every student of the history .of inflations knows that the factors which operate to create these economic upheavals are .partly economic and partly psychological...
...Tis a man's game...
...Important political and newspaper circles here—as well informed as any group of people anywhere in the state—feel that these Christian Front forces will be revitalized by a Bennett victory...
...These fi,gures show that 65 per cent of the family units (and single consumers) have incomes ranging under $2,000 a year, divided as follows (money plus in kind) : Under $500 16% $545 $87 annual deficit 500 to 1,000 19 % 994 20 1,000 to 1,500 164 1,452 55 " saving 1,500 to 2.Q00 14% 1,955 116 Sixty-seven per cent of the farm families have incomes less than $556 a year in money and kind, and the lowest farm group shows an annual deficit of $68 per family, while the top group saves $120...
...In other words, while we are urging industrj to highest efficiency, it is true to say that about half of our farm labor is and long has bee| under-employed...
...So it was Roosevelt and Lehman and LaGuardia who were backed by the ALP...
...James J. Farley, for whom Bennett deserted President Roosevelt, knew that by switching the Democratic convention to Brooklyn he was assured of a large Christian Front audience which would boo the proper sentiments and personalities...
...Whs) about the conventional figure of six or seWt million...
...past they have been content with fighting candidates they hated—witness the support they gave Dewey against Lehman in 1988...
...Of this number, 60,000 are large-scale enterprises which may well be regarded as farm factories...
...For instance, 343,001 such families recently completed at least ?? year as standard borrowers on FSA rehabilitation loans...
...Why did the Farm Security Administration have to be established to rescue, salvage, and rehabilitate some farmers who were so down and out they couldn't even subsist on subsidy...
...After all, the Federal Department of Agriculture has been trying to help farmers ever since 1862, and a wide variety of State agencies have also provided them with all sorts of assistance...
...He announced his candidate, John -Bennett, and said he would stick by him...
...They fail to inform the public that the actual profiteers, in peacetime and wartime, are the middlemen who stand between the producers and the consumers...
...Mr...
...F. D. R. recalled the tall, genial Irishman whom he had met in Washington during the, war...
...Approximately half of our farmers produce only 10 per cent of the farm products which reach the markets...
...But;the value of total annual production' on 1,966,000 of these is less than $400 and averages only $215...
...He played sandlot baseball, broke windows, got into running fights with marauding gangs from nearby tough spots and went to confession...
...The Farm Security Administrate has, through its loan policy, effected the ?» habilitation of many such farms, rendering them self-sufficient...
...Obviously, because the people who have excess purchasing power, those over $5,000 a year, even after high taxes, still retain five to ten times the purchasing power of the average American family...
...Next there are 1,310,000 farms on which the value of annual production ranges between $1,500 and $9,999, and averages $3,000...
...Politically speaking, that's how John J. Bennett was born, sired by the man to whom he is now attempting to administer a public beating by campaigning for election to the governorship of New York...
...Take agricultural products, for example...
...Very little, included in which will not be found any signs of philosophical attitudes, progressive trends, or leadership in formulation of policy...
...So far, about 900,000 farm families base responded in much this way to FSA lease...
...By urging the President to exercise, his wartime powers to control wages and prices, Henderson has, in fact, maneuvered Roosevelt into a very dangerous position...
...I repeat, the Army-Navy bureaucrats are requisitioning too much of the meat, food, and other supplies and are thus unnecessarily weakening the home front...
...The political and economic self-seekers would have us believe that our real enemies at home are the workers and small farmers...
...The labor of the farm family il required only part time to attend its single ??* and calf, its dozen pigs, and its four or five dozen hens...
...They are well manned,, well equipped, and efficient...
...Long ago he learned that the easiest path-to political suicide in Brooklyn was to "cross" certain Diocese leaders...
...They, therefore, had no collateral upon which to borrow...
...Then why ration goods...
...Among other things they must have credit and working capital...
...However, that will not wipe out the opportunity a Bennett, victory will afford the clerical-fascist movement in Brooklyn and Queens to point to the election and say to its followers, "THE DAY is here, follow us to new victories...
...Yet-Bennett was silent...
...Many were one-crop farmers she had no cows, no hogs, no poultry, and no vegetable garden...
...1,081,000 of the tracts counted as farms by the Bureau of Census did not report any farm implements of any value...
...The violence increased- and spread to the rest of the city...
...8 or 17 billion dollars (depending on whose estimates one takes) is purely statistical illusion cooked up by...
...A state coalition with progressive Democrats, a cilv coalition with progressive Republicans...
...Who sets up the definition of what constitutes a farm...
...The inflationary gap of either...
...These circles have unfortunately made this campaign a race, between Tom Dewey and the Brooklyn anti-British, anti-Jewish group which Bennett has not yet repudiated...
...Bennett may prove to be a popular, efficient and anti-fascist governor, owing allegiance to no one but Jim Farley, since neither of them can get to the White House...
...It has stuck by that pledge...
...Many of these farmers cannot feed themselves and are in fact under-employed...
...he insinuated that he could have White House backing...
...For some years now the Farm Security Administration has been making such loan* to farm families in this category...
...and allowing only $700 fa family living, which is barely sufficient at best But ?? half our four million so-called ftnm annual value of output ranges from $4M 1 $999, averages $647,' and provides insumcie* to give the family a non-emergency minima adequate living...
...Bennett has been New Deal, interventionist, pro-Roosevelt and mildly progressive...
...economists (who seem to be blinded by the fact that the government pays them twice as much as they received in their former positions, as school teachers...
...Later he found a job in the House of .Morgan, where he worked for Stettinius, a contact which served him well during the war...
...And certain political bureaucrats, of whom Leon Henderson is the outstanding example, see in the inflation issue the opportunity to feather their own nests...
...Another 1,734,000 of them did not even report a single horse or mule Not much agricultural production can be expected from such "farms...
...If credit is to be msde available to them, they must have what are essentially character loans based on their integrity and potential ability...
...Irr off-hours around election time he rang doorbells for the local political club, tooted a horn, in election auto parades, noisy relic of the pre-dimout era...
...Since it is estimated that an average farm family must have $560 cash a year: to provide it with an emergency minimum of food, clothing, shelter, and medical care, that is simply not enough...
...Is that boondoggling...
...Except at cotton-picking time, two months or so, the labor if less than half employed...
...These families have doubles' their production of food and other goods hw family use...
...The distribution dollar generally is divided as follows: the manufacturer's distribution cost is 24 cents...
...The Army-Navy thumb-rule seems to be to estimate needed supplies and when placing orders for same to multiply the estimates by some arbitrary figure, say ten...
...They feel Bennett, despite his personal sympathies, will be the prisoner of the very elements whose support he needs in Brooklyn and Queens for election...
...All through the years of depression these farmers required federal aid, just as did the urban unemployed...
...Yet Farley is not an anti-semite, nor opposed to a United Nations victory...
...Yet neither Bennett nor Farley stepped to the platform to quiet the very portion of the crowd they had come to Brooklyn to attract...
Vol. 25 • October 1942 • No. 43
