The New American Serfdom
MUNRO, DAVID A.
The New American Serfdom By David A. Munro Lot AJjt<MU.M *mU mm ¦¦rtliri hiexiaen fjwt. ttamj • **********.......A mm ring H .6sJ>e Caty V to* aee-Aha ego sad fired • •hot U be hoard ream* too...
...tilling one acre of can waa given its equivalent fraction, etc., etc...
...County Agents snd local governments to combine and conspire to prevent the perennially debt-ridden bottom class in the Old South from asing the opportunities sf war te get ont of the South for good...
...Production wss crippled...
...TlIE Pace Amendment was itself a compromise...
...The American eeenemic trend will have serieaa eeaseaaencea for the whale world, Profeoeer Myrdsl declared, adding that in tha United States foreign trade Is net expected to play aa Important part in maintaining employment...
...But, literally, they were farm workers from the three states of Jalisco, Miehoacan and Guanajuato—so you should turn the spotlight onto these three states to see a sample of the futile impasse of a Good Neighbor struggling in the toils of war's economic desperation...
...the care la to write mere and bigger checks...
...So a new Avila Comacho decree, applicable to this year, ordered that no workers would be taken fr in- the three states for work in the United States in 1044...
...They held demonstrations in the streets, particularly before the bull ring, transformed for th* duration into concentration headquarters for worker* being sent to the great limning states of the American far west...
...Unm of too allot haven't traveled •a fat* as the echoes ef tha *a*t Brad at ftirlnl-„, a nana¦ mm hirhtiiaaai ef iiiflls, tha reamrharirasna •I rupoeea ten fa* l—¦¦¦aid the tocaniesiee of saaisseaisatiaa Ba* the abet will net be stilled...
...A system of "farm units" lias bean set sp tor the guidance sf draft boards in de> tenanting tha tlsgt ii of essentiality...
...They were so overwhelmingly agrarians that, in the middle of the harvest last fall, the Mexicans suddenly decided they wanted to go home— to be technically in time to harvest their crops, in compliance with the law which gave them their plots and made it incumbent upen them to work them...
...In practice they merely let the old owner of the hacienda till their land on a sharecropper basis—while they, the agrarians, proposed to do nothing...
...Tlu thousands of workers who left for Mexico City to go to California to work were matched by other thoussnds who went to Mexico City hoping to be so recruited, and by yet more thousands who did nothing at home because the plentiful support from the wage-earner doing a tour of duty in California made it unnecessary...
...But the order, like all Mexican orders, was understood to be only as good as its enforcement...
...What Mexican would work for pesos when he could get dollars...
...Tha barkinc weapon fired by the irresponsible guard said te ths world that the handling of farm manpower by city politicians had descended to naked violence...
...It is also the reason that thia region has seen great activity in the direction of social experiments characteristic of the recent Mexican regimes...
...In the tightening sp, this spring, the required units were moved np from eight to 16 per man...
...Average peodaetioa per worker in the South has been carp eight, while in prospering Iowa the state draft sandals had used 24 as their loueiieascnt for ileferment Cram the start, while Illinois nrcd 20 and California 16...
...Both Texas and Georgia have passed special acts to prevent labor recruiting agents from operating in these states...
...B UT the gyrations ef tha southerners, walking a areearioas leans abovs th* WanilahM Palls, art fie I llll g te the seatertieas ef aahappy Marina which rasas to aa aeeaaath) a crisis seat month with tha first ballet aad tha Bint Meed...
...It is always important when desperate poverty faces desperate officialdom, and easeialdoas shoots...
...This charge was an exaggeration, but not a misstatement of fact The truth is that all kinds of easy American dollars—whether for farming:, road-building, dam-construction or straight political payoffs—were destroying the peso...
...Myrdal, waa ia also a member ef the Swedish Parliament, said that a general depression may he prevented temporarily by accumulated baying power, bat after a period ef six months to three years the situstiea weald mature into s crisis...
...is esentislly American...
...American politicians have...
...Thia year it took some trading, because the whole rest of the country, especially the agricultural and canning interests, wanted to avail ths ease Ives ef the vast pool of southern workers...
...The three states are top agricultural states That is the reason they were selected last year as the locale ef recruiting for farm laborers to fill s U. S. shortage...
...In terms of the Grand Tragedy of the Americas, they represent the helpless aspirations of the Common Man...
...They were poor braeero*— hungry workers from Mexico's great, distant agricultural states, men many of whom cannot read nor write...
...Speaking before the Swedish Society ef Eroae-mists after s recent trip here, Prof...
...For the balance of world economy It is calamitous that international trade la held to he OO relatively aaimpertsat...
...Economic collaboration heteween big America and little Mexico in the job of war is like a drinking bout between a man and a boy—it can only end with the little guy under the table...
...To correct the hopeless economy in the three agricultural states, Avila Comacho did, as reported above, issue the order banning from work in the United States the citizens of the aforementioned...
...In fact, the theorists of Washington (in unfortunate combination with practical politicians) are directly responsible for one experiment...
...But money waa plentiful...
...But the amendment has provided the green light of s Federal OK far draft boards, ration boards...
...Such social experiments were invented by well-meaning theorists in Mexico City, and certainly met with the approval of similar theorists in Washington...
...This was flouted, of course, and in practice, most of the workers who came north last year were these agrarians...
...But the Government of Mexico frowned on his, and issued a decree that no agrarians would be taken...
...But the situation has continued to deteriorate...
...Opposition politicians had a real issue...
...Now, the American side of this vicious compromise has not yet broken out into open violence—though there are indications that shooting is not fsr off...
...Thia didn't work out quite as planned...
...Again this year, as they did last, Mexican braceros streamed out of the three atates on their way to Mexico City, the first step on the road to the California farms...
...But the chief experiment was in ratting up the big estates, or haciendas, into^ small farms, or ejidos...
...But then this reporter discovered that there was an enormous difference in productivity in units of the different states and that thia made no difference wbetaeev...
...The quota system haa enabled the draft to -ut down tha rural unemployed hi Mississippi by a fixed percent— roughly the same as the eat the draft nasde in the rural washgnf he kwa...
...This baa meant tha* the states of high agncaHnrsi productivity have filed their draft quotas with high producers, ia terms of farm units, while the southern states filled theirs with low producers...
...They lead down the road to the crack-up, to where unlettered peasants from the hills face the tan fire of authority as the lesser of twe evils...
...The beneficiaries, called agrarians, became a new small-landowning class in Mexico...
...Yea will be rem laded that ear overwhelming expert to inflation-wracked China is freshly printed carreacy...
...The smarter ones went- to ntign-boring states, where they could conveniently fix up phony addresses that venal officials would allow to pass...
...It was then that recruiting began for work in the United States...
...And the Administration decisions since this year's repassage of the bill containing the Pace Amendment has nowhere given encouragement to those who seek to free the southern serf, while it has everywhere collaborated with the elements of oppression in this regard —particularly in the appointment of William C. Clayton to be head of the new Surplus War Property Administration, though this man, who heads Clayton A Anderson, tha great Texas cotton brokerage firm, is knows in Washington as the spearhead of the drive to protect the disgraceful cotton company of the South...
...The opposition press really had something...
...Aad In Mexico the politicians hsve stepped aa the gas ef opportunism until they have sll bat lost control...
...wfth Mexican politicians that whatever the ill...
...There were so many of these, and the danger to American crops of their leaving was so great, that President Avila Comacho had to issue a special decree, or easement, making it unnecessary for agrarians to bring in their own crops...
...After the shot was fired things began to happen rapidly in Mexico...
...Working for dollars was different...
...One story current in Washington is that the southerners traded backing for anti-subsidy measure, since the southern Democrat farmers do not fesr the Federal htterventioa that subsidies imply, while northern Republican farmers dread it However that may be, the essential rem premise was written into the law itself...
...in drafting...
...It was these whoso money and whose hopes ran out...
...It is true, of coarse, that there is no easy solution...
...It is that, whereas saethsia war hers are te be f rosea, previesea is made he the law for the War Food Adnuntttratiaa to inspect UMs.MHt sgricaltaral workers who sre natiaaala of ether countries ia this Hemisphere, L e. Mexicans, etc...
...Mexico witnessed the absurdity of braceros from the sticks buying luxuries in the city that their former employers, the landed aristocrats, could never afford.* Opposition papers blamed the entire spirallng inflation upon the laborers who had been sent to American farms...
...Workers not quite so smart went to Mexico City directly...
...Which could have been filled by southern labor...
...At this writing Mexicsn officialdom is about to issue a statement that the country is doing her share by reason of the inflation she hss suffered in sending workers to America...
...Bat, as incidental intelligence, it should be noted that recent actions by Selective Service relative to draft deferments for agricultural workers have in no way changed the picture...
...They were both unable and unwilling to go home...
...The New American Serfdom By David A. Munro Lot AJjt<MU.M *mU mm ¦¦rtliri hiexiaen fjwt...
...They had neither the tools nor the know-how to work their plots...
...But the factors in the conflict in Mexico City go beyond this traditional impasse between the police and the poor...
...This babble . . . this house of csrds . . . this unstable balance of political compromise piled on political compromise...
...They wanted to go...
...But meanwhile the National Union Farmer, organ of the Farmers Union, which operates in one area of the country's acute labor shortage, has printed a discreet nana—i mat at of tha formation of a new "underground" which has started a clandestine flow of workers out of Dixieland into the wheat fields...
...And an accident at the same time gave it another political windfall: an anonymous American Army spokesman criticized Mexico for failing to do her fair share as a United Nations partner The Mexican Depsrtment of Labor asked the American WFA te cease its hiring in Mexico City and take its operations to the country—but has since delayed application of the request until such time as the excess of workers milling in the streets shall be cleaned up...
...Southern planters who wanted to keep their surplus of workers, no matter bow unemployed and no matter how great the need for workers elsewhere in the country, instructed their stooges in Washington to trade anything for the amendment...
...The workers who were shot at were not the volatile political actionitta who have made trouble before in the streets of Mexico City...
...Those who should have been producing crops for the struggling Mexican economy, brought back unbelievable amounts of money instead—as much as $1,000 in cssh per man, which is to say, a fortune for rural Mexico...
...It also turned out that they had no desire whatever to work their plots...
...And its foundation lis the so-called Pace Amendment—introduced -by Congressman Stephen Pace of Georgia—which is the Dred Scott decision of the new American slavery The harm less wording of the Psee Amendment states that no agricultural worker may be transported at Federal expense eat of his county for work elsewhere without the authorization of the County Agent...
...The stage is set for a John Brown...
...It was at them that the guard fired...
...Let's look at the illusion to see the kind of bubble that was brought dawn by the single magie bullet...
...They have ordered the construction in the region by that politicians-contractor, Sam Hosoff, of a dam on one of the watercourses, to irrigate land now arid...
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...But the economy of the three states had deteriorated sharply under the impact of so many workers having left for the United States...
...And in the nation the same factor operated...
...Myrdal Warns of Coming Depression in U. S. PROFESSOR GUNNAR MYRDAL, noted Swedish economist snd sociologist, whose monumental iwe-volume study of the American Negro problem Ah AmxrUem IHUmmm waa recently published, warned ef hectic eeenemic developments in the United States after the war...
...The opposition press had begun to scream...
...Efforts hsve been msd* thrsagh international organization* to build np s defense against this world danger, hat from what I bar* seen of those negetUtieas, I am net too ceuJdeat that they will bring resells...
...Caring for one dairy cow waa figured at ana unit...
...In the three agricultural states this simple economic fart destroyed farming in 19431more completely than any swarm of locusts in history...
Vol. 27 • July 1944 • No. 30
