World Cannot Remain Half Rich, Half Poor
World Cannot Remain Half Rich, Half Poor A New Zealander Looks at the Post-War World By Walter Nash IN ell current discussions of postwar problems, too issue on which attention is moat...
...The recommendations and reports adopted at Philadelphia if conscientiously acted upon will, I believe, contribute to an amazing extent towards the achievement of a new and better world organizstion...
...This law was ahead of public opinion and was repealed in two years...
...It sets out in simple yet forceful language the basic principles and the speeise objectives in the light of which all national and international policies must ia the future be determined...
...and the housewife who builds up a little private school in her own home owns the business as much as the seamstress owns her privste business...
...But if we face our postwar responsibilities with the same resolution, courage and will to wfn that we have shown during the war, it will at least be possible to avoid much of the suffering and chaos that characterized the transition from war to peace during those turbulent years of 1919 to 19S9...
...that accordingly, tha war against want must be carried on with unrelenting vigor within each nation as well as by continuous and concerted international effort...
...Insofar as national and international policies are guided by the principles and the proposals accepted at Philadelphia, the prospects of building a prosperous and enduring world order in the postwar years will be immeasurably enhanced...
...Houghton-Mifflin Co...
...but the able fight of Thaddeus Stevens, then a member of the lower house, defeated repeal...
...The fact which I wish to underline, because too often it tends to be overlooked or insufficiently stressed, is thst political arrangements, international machinery, economic controls of every kind can only hsve meaning to the common man when translated into terms that he can understand—food, housing, clothing, education, goodwill, and above all else the right to live and work in dignity and peace...
...This is as true and as relevant as when Lincoln said * 80 years ago...
...I It is questionable whether this extreme emphasis «n the military aspects of security, inevitable though It may be, is a wise approach to the broader problem...
...that poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere...
...If good will and words were all that hi needed, we should already have accomplished mir•*hjs...
...The real test will therefore lie in the extent to which individuals and nations face the naticnal and international social responsibilities they have accepted...
...Its significance rests too in the fact that the declaration has been adopted with a view to the inclusion of its principles in any general Peace Settlement, as a statement of the social and economic alms snd purposes of the United Nations...
...Most members who had voted for the law, refused to run, and those who did run were nearly all defeated...
...It expresses the belief that lasting peace can be established only if it ia based on social justice...
...In the Hotel Northern in Seattle I once happened to fall in to conversation with a seasoned Alaskan freighter who owned a string of dog teams and sleds...
...There can be no enduring peace while there is a denial of fundamental human rights—anywhere...
...Production today does not follow the law of supply and demand, nor is it determined by the profit motive...
...Unemployed labor, unused skill, underdeveloped resources, idle factories and machines, cannot be tolerated when the nation is at war...
...and not till4873 did all the districts vote to come into the public-school system...
...The big issue in the campaign of 1836 was the repeal of the school law...
...In its narrow sense, security may he interpreted as a guarantee against the risks of military aggression...
...It is foolish to imagine that goods enough for everybody cannot be produced in time of peace...
...If therefore we accept the objectives of the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms as amplified and more definitely set out in the new International labor Charter adopted last week at Philadelphia, it is futile to think in terms of any power combinations, unless we sre prepartd to plan even more boldly in terms of an expanding world economy in which the economic and social maladjustments that have in the past been the real source of imperialism and aggression are ruthlessly stamped out...
...From address before League for Industrial Democracy...
...At that time only 160,000 of the 400,000 children of school age in the state were in any kind of school...
...On present evidence, there Is, inside the resources of the known world, sufficient •f all the things necessary to ensure that everyone has the opportunity of living in freedom from want...
...the doctor or lawyer is his property...
...It is natural that people who have suffered so violently from direct miljury aggression should place physical security as the first goal to be attained in the postwar years...
...because ideas of future world organisation considered an this nsrrow basis sre to a large extent the result af wishful thinking...
...is sufficient in itself to justify the hopes of those who looked to this Conference for a practical lead...
...Only last June, at Hot Springs, Virginia, the United Nations Conference on Food and Agriculture brought to light the astonishing and disturbing fact that one half of the world's people have **Wr had enough to eat...
...That school is his property as much as the practice of...
...and a farmer threatened to shoot Henry Barnard, a prominent educator, for advocating such a "heresy...
...It is idle to imsgine that this freedom will come ¦etomatically...
...The churches were running their own schools...
...World Cannot Remain Half Rich, Half Poor A New Zealander Looks at the Post-War World By Walter Nash IN ell current discussions of postwar problems, too issue on which attention is moat concentrated ia that of security...
...The fsrmers were poor— lend poor—snd the tax question threw them against the free public school...
...They cannot be definitely classified...
...Today goods are being produced in staggering quantities because we hsve mobilized all our resources in pursuit Of one objective...
...This may mean the acceptance on the part of some of us of substantial sacrifices, perhaps of economic privilege, perhaps of political prestige...
...For this reason I believe that no more important decisions have been made by any international gathering of recent years than those which have been reached in the Session of the International Labor Conference over which I have had the privilege to preside during the past three weeks at Philadelphia...
...We must seek by every practicable means to ensure that those who are less fortunately situated are given the opportunities which' will enable them to lift their standards and to live fuller and freer and happier lives...
...With all *hs lessons of tha past to guide us, with the tremendous ¦¦teriaj resources that will be at our disposal, with ¦U the technical, scientific and engineering skill that *•* he drawn upon, the postwar world unfolds truly ¦¦axing possibilities of the better life...
...He exploded—went into the sir...
...And there was the dame school, a thousand of them, ten thousand of them...
...Facts in the foregoing largely from Education in the United States, by E. P. Cubberly...
...But who were the people who put up this strenuous opposition...
...The People's Business By Elihu Bowless By Elihu Bowles ii PRIVATE ENTERPRISE SCHOOLS TTHE Encyclopedia Britannlca states that, with * the single exception of chattel slavery, the fight for the adoption of the free public school system was the bitterest fight in American history...
...Our chat was going along pleasantly till I made the tragic blunder of remarking that it would be a fine thing for Alaska when Uncle Sam gets his rsilroad completed from Seward to Fairbanks...
...From a strictly military point of view, they cannot possibly, in the absence of adequate measures to deal with the fundamental causes from which msecurity springs in the first instance, ever succeed ia accomplishing what they are intended to accomplish...
...Spend it where ? In 1840 an irate member of the Rhode Island legislature declared that a tax for public schools could not be collected at the point of a bayonet...
...The monstrous petitions signed for repeal contained many names of men who had to sign by "making their mark," for they could not write their own names...
...should play in promoting an expanding world economy which will secure to sll human beings irrespective of race, creed, or sex, the right to pursue their lives in conditions of freedom and dignity, of economic security, and equal opportunity...
...In war the principles and procedures that ordinarily govern the production and supply of commodities no longer operate...
...and you think Uncle Sam should come in and destroy my business...
...In 1824 Pennsylvania passed a permissive school law, allowing districts to establish schools by majority vote, but providing that no child should attend free for more than three years...
...The transition from war economy to a peace economy and the multitude of problems attendant thereto, will tax the good-will, the energy, the knowledge, the skill, the imagination and inventive genius of all men end women of good will.| Those countries whose people ere privileged to enjoy relatively high living standards have a special responsibility to ensure that this tremendous process of transition and readjustment, national and international, is wisely planned and courageously carried through...
...When the legislature met, the Senate voted for repeal...
...In 1845 when half the children of school age in the state had never been in any kind of school, and one-third of the adult population could neither read nor write, the Kentucky legislature ordered the school fund bonds destroyed and the state's debts to the school funds repudiated...
...If the seeds of aggression are allowed to sprout within the economic and social fabric of any nation, than that nation in spite of any international police force, in spite of any collective economic sanctions, in spite of any power combination or other similar safeguard, will sooner or later be a menace to the peace and security of other nations...
...The above examples of fights over the introduction of free public schools are typical of contests in most of the states...
...He works hard, takes an interest in his pupils, and in five years has the best school in the country...
...The world cannot remain half slave and half free...
...Only a bare majority of the districts voted for the law...
...but words and ideas are not enough...
...The resources of the world have been utilized to an extent never before achieved...
...but among them there were three groups standing out prominently: school teachers, farmers, churches...
...and when the new absurdity of a public free school is mentioned, he goes into the air as the old Alaskan freighter did...
...In .1934 an optional law was passed binding only districts giving a majority for it...
...Insofar as it is possible to suggest that good can ever come out of evil, this war has at least demonstrated the amazing productive possibilities af every nation...
...It declares that freedom of expression and of association are essentia] to sustained progress...
...Because there can be no complete freedom—no complete security—while there Is want or the fear of want—anywhere...
...Now consider the parallel of the private enterprise school man and the old Alaskan freighter: "Professor" Wood comes to town at the invitation of the city council, which offers him s school room, rent free, if he will establish a school and get his pay by charging tuition...
...Only if these responsibilities are fully faced, ran real freedom and real security be attained...
...It is not sufficient merely to devise elaborate forms and procedures, however sound and practicable...
...Theirs is a major responsibility because high standards cannot be permanently secured in some countries if in other countries millions ¦pon millions of men and women are obliged to live en much lower standards under the shadow of insecurity, unemployment, poverty, ill-health, and disease...
...The whole change from private to public schools is an example of the breakdown of private enterprise and the coming of public enterprise...
...Security is a Tery broad concept, la the final analysis, security may be regarded as the over-all purpose to which the specific provisions and commitments of the Four Fredeoms and the Atlantic Charter are directed...
...It sets out in positive terms the role which the I.L.O...
...The unfolding of these possibilities, however, i« going to be long, slow, a painful process...
...If we believe the truth of this assertion then clearly we must get rid of poverty wherever it exists...
...This declaration will rank along with the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms as one of the great documents of our time...
...No date can be given as the birthday of the public school, since that fight continued for over two hundred years—private enterprise losing out little by little...
...But a peep into history will give some idea of the contest...
...We must work towards the discontinuance of widely varying living standards between one part of the world and another, between one section of the community and another...
...and economic interest threw them into the fight slongside private secular schools...
...In other words, the first and essential fact to establish is the fact that physical security is bound up inseparably with considerations of economic and social welfare...
...The adoption of the declaration concerning the aims of the I.L.O...
...In 1821 Maine passed a law requiring towns to spend not less than $40 per hundred inhabitants for schools...
...The importance of this declaration rests not merely in its content, but equally in the fact that it has been accepted unanimously by representatives of governments, of employers, and workers of forty-one nations meeting together at what may well turn out to be the most critical moment in the history of mankind...
...It is not difficult to affirm, for example, as the International Labor Office has affirmed, that poverty anywhere constitutes, a danger to prosperity everywhere...
...and when he came down, he wound up with this clincher: "Why, my dear Sir, I've bought eggs in Seattle for nine dollars a case and sold them in Fairbanks for thirty-seven...
Vol. 27 • May 1944 • No. 21
