Meat Packers, Dairy Trust Create "Food Famine" to Wreck OPA
STOUT, JONATHAN
Meat Packers, Dairy Trust Create "Food Famine" to Wreck OPA Companies Curtail Production, Leader Charges By JONATHAN STOUT WASHINGTON, D. C. — Althoncr the total energies of fowrnmtBt-Wir U»cr...
...ia spirit, one's the sjtttm' image of the other...
...1 greatly honor and respect the intellectual honesty, candor, and courage which the book discloses...
...I believe the practical way through KMw**& situation," Smith said, "is am aanounee-- ment of supporting prices to, people who , work, aad produce meat, aad a freese of aM^ihsjsaU la tawLht of aracasanng snd Capital Comment Patrick Henry Makes A Speech-1943 Style By JONATHAN STOUT WASHINGTON, D. C—An open latter to pjtrick Henry...
...lac, 383 Madison Avenue, New York, N. Y. My deer Mr...
...The war is Jrtually begun...
...In the important Cincinnati meat-packing area, nine plants suspended business...
...The baseball game and the horse races were cancelled...
...Btmember bow your deathless words rang eam the House of Burgesses...
...The war is inevitable...
...Belle Isle, recreational arid swimtcenter in the Detroit River, was crowded, were jangled nerves, a few tiffs, a fist-on the bridge...
...Lyons: Yea have written a vary remarkable book...
...or Gerald Smith crackpot...
...JjSjay Im tarsias...
...All beef, veal and lamb packing plants ia the Greater Cincinnati area closed their doors on Friday and Saturday before the price rollback took effect...
...Why •tend we here idle...
...I know Bob Allen...
...JOSEPH E. DAVIES...
...In nearby Fort Caster, members of a Negro quartermaster's battalion tried to - obtain ammunition sad trucks at the Army post to go to Detroit "to assist their families...
...Third, leaitflitary political forces, clustering around old Ku Klux Klan and Black Legion elements...
...And who is to blatoil In part this black reactionary fringe gegjqhje note were hardly planned and organised affairs...
...Michigan Union Call For Labor Party After Alfange Appeal Following the appeal by Dean Alfange...
...j&HL ****** mm m ,«¦ #74 horsed around, feaa CCupU of years heirs you all united and faced the fact (hat Fight Means Fight and you ean't dock it by limply testing about it...
...W we were baas enough to desire it, it is sow too late to retire from the contest...
...Monday eight hew . pitched battle at a Negro apartment hotel, where police fired a thousand rounds af tear-gas tote the building as Negro snipers Ired ' from windows...
...In announcing suspension of bushiest George H. Bubel, secretary-manager of the Cleveland * Retail Meat Dealers Association, said: "Out meat dealers are just about at the end of their string...
...Forbid it, Almighty pod...
...Not the present administration alone " . . but the preceding ones, too...
...With Monday Ea nightmare of vicious street brutality...
...If these groups do not carry through a program of social reform, a new political party, representing the progressive interests of the common people, will have to be formed to do the job...
...Shall we s*ieer strength by irresolution and inaction...
...The battle, Sir, » not to the strong alone...
...But when shall we be stronger...
...The 10 per cent rollback on beef and mutton prices went into effect last Monday The concerted nature of the plot against the rollback was plainly evidenced when the large meat packers ceased buying livestock three to four dsys before the effective date of the rollback, and packing plants began to close down simultaneously all over the country...
...Behind the tragedy lay what...
...Sunday was hot...
...Democracy need not necessarily begin at home—hat it would he nice if it occasionally retained tCgjmy a visit Letter Exposes 'Mission to Moscow' A Page That Joseph Davies Forgot By MATTHEW LOW Joseph E. Davie*, ex-U.S...
...Jhc words are a little different this time, hat tke tune is still the same...
...One of them, Arthur Rehn, president of the William G. Rehns Sons Co., frankly admitted: * ^Hjre stopped slaughtering on June 17th and wfiTjnet reopen until given Federal aid.' ' At Fremont, Nebraska, approximately 30 Nebraska and Iowa livestock suppliers threatened a "beef, lamb and pork strike" unless the government revokes its rollback and subsidy programs...
...Yoa have written an extraordinary book...
...It bees me a memorable event ,b atofcttg* af the mighty nation yon and Bjeee aelpMah seaaa that practically every ¦fleni af lie Still goad today, lis years later...
...It was the fourth American city in a month to be torn by hatred, hysteria, and uncontrolled . mob movements...
...Let me tell you about tbt new wards...
...More than a thousand have been Injured, the substantial majority Negroes...
...Soldiers were ¦aad to the aid af a terrorised city with orders: "Lead year guns aad don't take aoytiting from anybody r Troops rolled into Cadillac Square, heart ef the city, to < euell riots spreading over a wide area...
...Haa any eaa dared to peat this pi seism T There is widespread hatred aad ignorance aad prejudice sbread in the land...
...Riots, strikes, price bungling, wiitteal economic ineqauli-ties are all part of IB same picture...
...Led by meat asjewm and the'dairr traal in a* nmuWy weU-plaaued aad eaa-certed plot, nrtsntoel war ptnttesrs la the feed parking, prirssslag...
...In teg-^ssu^a^ — htek htem...
...Apparently a white man's vwktBa wan again...
...I repeat, Sir, let it come...
...It is known as the King .Ranch and the county, which is named for it is King County...
...The police had been onesided jAf sjejiti and in their handling of the rfetss^^faW^AW Local 400, at the Highland Park plant, organised a bi-raeial flying aquad, whteh adeem affaativeiy and fairly handled iiieaay ,d»Mjm ) If LiacohVs CaaAdfar hsapid to make the Wack man frail Da^rait'a J*t|e *vil wsr reversed the eatisioa...
...In behalf of the defense, Louis Waldman introduced a letter from Ambassador Davies to Eugene Lyons...
...There is a just 6*0 who presides over the destinies of Nates, aad who will raise ap the Unorganized t* If ht oar battles with us...
...Negro factory absenteeism ranged from 80 to 90 per cent...
...I was so fascinated by it that I could not toy it down until bag ia the night aad, in fact, until I had read its trst 300 pages...
...It will make, not the opposition, bat Joseph E. Davies very sorry- It reveals names—his own, signed to a letter he dispatched from the U. S. Embassy in Moscow_and it corroborates The New Leader's charges that the current Warner Bros, film whitewash of the Stalin regime involved a political and moral hypocrisy of scandalous proportions...
...The broad factors are many...
...No such similar swift action shows any promise of being utilised against the strike of the meat packers aad dairy traat Despite the fact that it would be mechanically a much simpler Job for the government to take over and operate in the interests of the war effort tha slaughter houses of the meat packers aad tha creameries of the dairy trust, hath of which are much fewer in number than the seal mines aad which offer fewer coamlfrifiag of operation...
...Appeasers and Divisionists may cry Peace, Peace!—but there is no peace...
...Throughout the West," Kleberg said defiantly, "an increasing number of individuals are] buying and storing in freezers whole carcasses of beef, and these people are not comparable with the members of the old prohibition bootleg trade...
...Very truly yours...
...The government's maenminaaory way of dealing with the two strikes, as between the coal miners and the meat packers aad dairy traat, » being noted in labor circles hare with taut hps and tense tempers...
...It ig in vain, Sir, to extenuate the matter...
...It's the old fead since the dawa af time, the Tories versus tha Sons of liberty...
...Over-all democratic planning" is a nice theoretical phrase for NAM big-business propagandists to take potshots st When riots start stalking the streets of great American cities some people may begin to see it as an urgent human formula...
...The Fair Employment Practices Committee is a faint memory, and a bitter one...
...They're got them down ia a aew piece of tyranny called the CaaaaUy Anti-Lsbor Bill...
...Our brethren ere already under the Tory tyrant's heel...
...i*Because we're up against pretty mack the ' umt kind of thing yea went through hack ht 1776...
...The movie was a flagrant distortion of the text of the book, bat Ddvies gave unqualified approval to the HoHjrwood production preceding its release toAmerieaa audiences...
...There la a war sgainst Fascism...
...There is flagrant industrial discrimination...
...For quick reference, it's a hell of a lot like tke Fire Coercive Acta the Tories leaded on yea bays back ia 1774...
...Yon gam po thumb-twiddler when It came to doing Iggsathing about the Tories (who mast be pretty e)| (tuff to you by now...
...A huge black market in the nation's capital, practically in the shadow of Capitol Hill, was revealed by" OP A Enforcement Officer John L. Lsskey^^who has asked the District Attorney herd for a, series of indictments against wholesale: meat'packers in the District Allied with the meat packers in their strike against the national war effort are the large cattlereisers, who have joined with the packers in trying to blame the strike and black market operations on OPA...
...Civil War" in Detroit - Why...
...Arthur Garfield Hays, arguing Davis' suit for libel, challenged Lyons...
...In a public statement he advocated limitation of profits for meat processors and distributors, indicating the first major crack hi the Farm Bloc since 1838...
...Second, slum-ridden housing conditions and segregation in new eommsnife...
...There is Jim Crewiam ia the armed forces...
...I predict for it a greet saccses...
...The manager of the King Ranch is Robert J. Kleberg...
...29 are dead, all but four Negroes...
...Meat packers also have shut down scores of slaughter houses throughout the eosjBsry rather than comply with OPA prise ragutefhsas or cooperate with the government i effort to stem the dangerous inflation spiral through pay menu of subsidies to meat and butter produeert Food supplies far our Ightiag men an the war fronts are hi a fawaasdsaa) si%sjkksk>' arrordtaa a* mm "*•» Meat sfphat at tan War *m* Admhtiati salsa Tha Beard reported: •So critical haa the need for beef by the armed forces bsnsssi that mm ihsteUl asaamf say quantity down to' asm fall carcass of beef or veal.'* In the meanwhile, cattlemen reported that tha strike of the meat packers was building up a surplus of beef cattle left oa cattle raisers' hands which would reach 15.400.000 head before the end of the year...
...The consumer has points and money, bur we have no meat" Babel, who speaks for 650 Cleveland retail meat stores, charged that packers were deliberately refusing to slaughter up to their allowable quotas of cattle...
...aad farther oa the fraihnsaa %si elaeidation with which yea dag*Has aaV n slaetea of yew thought are most remarkable...
...Bat in most part the administration is to blame . . . the county, the city, the state, the federal administrations...
...I greatly honor and respect the intellectual honesty, candor, aad courage which the book discloses...
...They were arrested...
...Federal forces are strll guarding Detroit's battered Negro district...
...handling aad em-trihatiia trades were thai week engages) fen • gigantic nation-wide strike to break even those relatively feeble eferta made by the government to date to maintain seme aart of control ever prices...
...or Peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the Pfwe of chains and slavery...
...And there are sections of Detroit's East Side, where most of the city's 160,000 Negroes live, which look as if they had been blitxed...
...By CLARK RYAN Special to Thi N'kw Lxaiiex DETROIT, Mich.—Riotous violence, born of the anxieties of wartime psychologies and the stress of desperate economic maladjustments, struck Detroit this week...
...It was dated October 16, 1937, and was written from the U. S. Embassy in Moscow...
...Storefronts were smashed Smashed plate glass littered the skeaapiks The people were saHen, cowed, suspicious...
...The strike, which haa been tpreadnrj steadily far three weeks, this weak brought a near meat aad batter fsmton, threaghoe* the United States an srsenitlmi ia tbeee twa feed seaaarmhi was asanas s I slj ear...
...Aad while they were busy talking, the Tories wan busy putting the boots to the whole bunch of them...
...First, Jab discrimination...
...They ten us, Sir, that we are weak—unable to tope »#.h so formidable an adversary...
...And, boy, how we staid use your help today...
...He found the book "fascinating" and full of "insight," and confessed that "I found the greatest of interest and value in its pages...
...and .let «t come...
...Meat Packers, Dairy Trust Create "Food Famine" to Wreck OPA Companies Curtail Production, Leader Charges By JONATHAN STOUT WASHINGTON, D. C. — Althoncr the total energies of fowrnmtBt-Wir U»cr Board Congress and White House—were mobilised this week to -break the resistance of th« coal miner* and force them to go on paying IMS prices with 1941 wages, a mar* serious strike »r»:n»T the war effort aimed at starring the United States, our armed forces an the war fronts and...
...author ot Mission to Moscow, -with the harsh disillusionment of a Eugene Lyons, author of Assignmcni sn Utopia...
...ambassador to Soviet Russia, returned from his second visit to Josef Stalin last week to threaten the American liberal-labor critics of his "Mission to Moscow" movie...
...Apparently the No...
...and I foaad the keenest interest ia reactions to these extraordinary rendition* over here...
...in the fourth-largest American city, ly anarchy reigned...
...an June 11th...
...Aa in Beaumont, Mobile and Los Angeles, the police were helpless before the surge of crowds in the street, aaeeli to check the bloodshed, or to maintain any kind of "haw and order...
...That's tar present situation...
...The office of tha Michigan Chronicle, liberal Negro weekly, had anaa .wracked...
...to Hareourt Brace aad Company...
...American Labor Party candidate for Governor af New York, to Labor's Non-Partieat Leaf as af Wayne County, Detroit, MleMgaa...
...Why has there been no sari sea or systematic attempt to cleanse it educationally...
...More then 48 hours of ugly aad tragic rate rioting came to a close hare with v the declaration ef military rate aad the institution of army patrols...
...Your first chapter etetttsdag conditions in the Bast Sale ef Maw York aad the nstursl mental Tesrtiaao which these conditions induced commanded say sympathy aad ceeaplete Mijjsteii l|ig...
...Will it be the next J?ek, or the next year...
...Ford, General Motors and Chrysler have more and more directly to do with this race-riot tragedy than any Nasi agent...
...The American people winNhmve to meet -it with new political formulae...
...Beside, Sir, we shall ¦at fight oar battles alone...
...Will it be when we' are totally disarmed, and when a Fascist guard wit be stationed in every house...
...Personslly I found the greatest of interest and value in its pages...
...Besides, Sir, »• have no election until the end of 1*44...
...Sir, we are not weak, if we make a l*eper ass of those means which the God of "•two hath placed in our power...
...Narrow-minded industrial management can no more control the social problems with which it becomes confronted in an unprecedented total war situation like the present one than a mountaineer patriot can meet the lines of mechanised warfare...
...He darkly hinted that "a sensational story will break in two weeks which will make the opposition sorry...
...it is to the *%ilsnt, the active, the brave...
...It is being taker as further confirmation of one of labor's most deeply fait complaints, that as between the Labor and Big Business rose ia the war effort there is no equality of sacrifice, contribution or treatment by Congress and the Administratis...
...You have written a very remarkable book," Ambassador Davies wrote...
...The next wind that sweeps from Washington Will bring to our ears the «teh of those clinking chains...
...He insisted thst the court rale on this testimony on the grounds that Lyons was "not objective," but "biased' and "blinded by political prejudice...
...When will there he a beginning to a political warfare which will enlighten aa embattled people as to the everyday social implications of the ideals at stake...
...Themes K, Dewey of New Turk this week else joined tke attack oa the OPA price control effort and became a defender of the Big Business plotters against the success ef the war effort by charging at the Governors' Conference at Columbus...
...Ex-Ambassador Davies supervised the Warner Bros, film production of his book...
...The letter turned up as a fugitive piece of evidence attached to the voluminous trial testimony of the Jerome Davis-Benjamin Stoiberg < case...
...In the case of the coal mine strike, tha Administration found a swift answer in seisure of the coal mines...
...Mission to Moscow...
...You'll gsdsrstsnd it, because before your team all got hmdhtr * 1776, they were split up in a lot of little groups, each trying to talk faster than r tat next one...
...He stepped off the plane (sentimentally named "Mission to Moscow") and expressed shock at "the abuse the film was taking...
...How it all started, nobody could say...
...There ia no retreat bat ia submission and •Wy...
...In short, when it's date to fight, the time for arguments is over...
...Y „ And the Dairy Trust made sure this would happen, The New'Leader reported at the time, by sharply catting prices it paid the farmers two weeks before the Jane 1st rollback even went into effect That some Big Business interests are la-ginning to see the shaping of the handwriting on the wall as a result of Big Business newfound cockiness because ef the Tory majorities in Congress, is indicated by the warning issued his fellow factories-in-the-field industrialists this week by Earl C. Smith, major strategist of the* Farm Bloc and president of the super-duper farmers' Illinois Agricultural Association...
...It is s fine piece of writing...
...I know not what course others may take...
...Wall, that's exactly our headache now...
...The detail with which yon develop the chronological happenings which came across year vteage daring year years of reporting, the color which yon gsve it hi connection with the personalities yoa contacted, and the insight which is provided by the description of" personal relations here gave it a special interest to me...
...Ray Long, aad Roy Howard and the other men that yoa refer to...
...There will be stories and dope-theories about Hitler and his Fifth Column plot But it happens to be an American plot—a long-standing conspiracy against the Negro people, who have been oppressed, exploited, degraded...
...Haw much has been done to remedy ft...
...He promised, as one reporter quoted him, "to take the stump and reveal names...
...Earlier this week, Kleberg was quoted in the 'press as saying, he thought the term "black market" a misnomer, for the thousands of small slaughterers and customers who, he s seer tad, were determined not to be deprived ef beef artificially by OPA regulations...
...This correspondent saw ears overturned sad, set an fre hi the midst of traffic: Negroes dragged oat of antes and trolleys and beaten into unconsciousness...
...It contributed substantially to my perspective...
...calling for the organisation af a third party to Michigan, along the Rnas ef tha British Labor - Party, and after l uttfmessage with liberal and labor leaders aad representatives of working farmers of the State of Michigan, Labor's Nonpartisan League ef WayW.ftasMfe, adsnjflgri resolution calling for "the \assaaiiti establishment of aa Independent Party of Labor and Working Farmers in the State af U >chigan...
...s 10 o'clock curfew was announced...
...smasereby jlesBjeed aadaaasahed with lead-pipes...
...He contrasted the "forthrightness" and "open-mindedness" of a Joseph Davies...
...His series of critical articles, and his review in the America,* Mereary, were among the most substantial contributions of the liberal-labor democratic "opposition...
...O., that the scarcity of feed grata needed by dairy farmers was due to the low ceiling price OPA had set, with the result that com farmers are feeding the grain to their hogs instead ef placing it oa a price-ceiling corn market Dewey's lame effort to alibi the Dairy Trust's sabotage of batter production reset -counter to the recent admission by War Food Administrator Cheater Davis that the grata speculators have cornered the market and were refusing to sell until they got a price increase of five cento a bushel . Dewey's statement helped point up the similarity between the activities of the meat packers to defeat the beef and lamb price rollback of June 21 and the activities of the dairy trust to stop the butter price rollback on June 1. „ The New Leader reported in the issue Of May 29 the activities of John Brandt president of the giant Land o'Lekes Creameries and Dairy Trust spokesman, and his less-than-subtle threats that butter production would be curtailed if the price rollback went into effect "In every section of the country,*' The Jfew' Leader'story quoted Brandt as saying, "the line of dairy production will turn downward gad at a dangerously increasing pace unless the country recognises what ia happening before it is too late and brings about corrective measures...
...We, too, have «or little groups, each trying to outtalk the ethers—when they should be getting together tod roiling up their sleeves like they mean business...
...While this artificial famine was being produced by the strike of the meat packers, cattle raisers were facing the triple probteni of 1st hsv-ing to sell their steers, when that was possible st all, at ruinously reduced prices offered them by meat packers oa a take-ft-or-Msve-it basis, 2nd having to sink heavy additional sums into tha feeding of their stock beyond their normal time, and which will certainly force tha cattlemen to ask higher prices to recoup their losses, aad 8rd facing inevitable losses hi the deteriorated rah** of over-age steers unless the strike of tha packers is ended very soon...
...With assurances of my istum, I am...
...I am looking forward to masting you personally, far there are many things that you write of that I should like to have the benefit ef farther asoeaeatea with yoa upon...
...V...
...They are patriotic, but they are determined that they shall not go '{ Gov...
...I forget now what names all the little faasss on your team had, but ours are CIO, iFD «ad Railroad Brotherhoods...
...At one point in the sessions before the New York Supreme Court, Eugene Lyons-wes introduced to substantiate the Stoiberg charge that Professor Davis was "a Communist...
...Gerald L. K. Smith's propaganda still gate around, i [New Leader labor correspondent John Panser also reported from Detroit: "A more social outlook must ha adopted by our schools, unions, churches, and other civic organisations in order fto combat the problems of discrimination, segregation, and prejudice...
...The complete text of the letter follows: Embassy af the United States af America Moscow, UA8.8„ October Is, 1987...
...tailed ever M per cent by proa leering meal ' packers aad dairy traat, with the carve of ewrtailaaeat rising aad expected to reach a aew peak next weak...
...Eugene Lyons was one of the leading critics of the "totalitarian propaganda" and "fraudulent history" embodied in the Eremlirured screen version...
...The Sojourner Truth riots were a dmeet response to this problem...
...In Texas there is a cattle ranch so big it covers a whole county...
...One sensational story, herewith, is about to break...
...Is lite ap dear...
...Honored Sir: As you undoubtedly know, we ¦Ipa still proudly repeating that famous crack age made back in 1775...
...rot as for me, give me liberty or give me death !" ?¦ S.: If now, today, this week, each local "own of every national union were to elect, •PPoint, or pull straws to set up a full-time Political secretary assisted by a committee large •hough'to do the Job of seeing to it that aaph **rober of the local and his family actually ft to the polls on election day And until the elections of 1844 provide the opportunity to really use this machinery, that of action is the only practical means of «*»ing the present Tory gallop down to A *¦* or of stopping it dea* in its tracks.' For *•* is a ilangnage fhatJf*very poiitiiiaa aa -Washington's CspitorHwl understands...
...It contributed substantially to my perspective...
...Oar chains are forged...
...Figures available earlier this we*g shoved that the major meat packers of the country in their strike against the meat price rollback order and subsidy plan bad redaead their dally beef kill to 28.100 cattle, or lan than half of normal...
...1 U.S...
...Its occasion was Davies' reading of Assignment in Utopia, Lynns' documented indictment of the Stalinist regime as s cynical, totalitarian dictatorship over the Russian people...
...altaatisa anally got your goat and one day ht JaaadpfAm yea got ap in the Virginia teen* *E ggnasnee aad talked a lot of tares aeBp...
...Shell we acquire the means of effectual re-«>«anee by lying supinely on our backs, and esgging the delusive phantom of hope, until •or enemies shall have bound us hand and fcst...
...the theatres cleaed early...
...Toarteaa millions of Organized Labor, araed in the holy cause of liberty, and in •eeh a country as that which we possess, ere inyincible by any force which oar enemy ten send against us...
...Bageae Lyons...
...Somehow, a story got d—a Negro woman and child were slain on the Isle late that night...
...As a human document I find it fascinating...
...Ana while they've been busy chattering at each other, with one saying how we ought to do than and U» sther saying how we ought to do that, the Xsjgka have ganged up and slipped them the QmaB* Anti-Labor Bill...
...par hard-pressed Allies into submission to the War Profiteers has gene without challenge aad reU lively little notice...
...Sgd...
...Cleveland packing plants followed suit, aad Cleveland meat dealers voted to suspend business...
...the one that goes: -got ss for me, give me liberty or give sac dmtii:" You certainly were aa sggressive gay...
...V - the ajty was demoralized as beads were graphed and limbs brofefn...
...industrial center, heart of the national war production, was aa tha verge af a civil war...
...to get at the same thing And beeaase my team is the lineal descendant sf your team in spirit and purpose, and be- • cause you ant the words together so well back in 1775, do you mind if I repeat them here and now for the benefit of my team, with hardly half a dogaa words changed to allow for the manes of 168 years...
...is also a director of* the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association...
...Their deakmg may be heard ia every mine, mill ud factory...
...1 'The cynical attitude;of the meat packers was typified by Earl C. Gibbs, president of Earl C. Gibbs, Inc., Cleveland-livestock slaughter firm, who frankly confessed: '"Fifty per cent *6* the meat in the Cleveland market is black market meat in one way or another...
...I do not think I eoaid any anything more commendatory than that...
...What ia it that Appeassrs ^whrWhat would they have...
Vol. 26 • June 1943 • No. 26
