The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN Life Down on the Form I HAVE a lot of fanner rorreapond-I ents, I am not counting professional writers or agricultural experts. 1 know plenty of them that...
...It cannot be evaded and it cannot be solved merely by reconquest...
...Pierre gives me the key to the mystery...
...In the past the United States has often enough been guilty of crude and cruel exploitation of helpless peoples...
...In prewar days it numbered somewhat over 1,000,000 dues-paying members...
...I get my checks regularly and my dividend at the end of each year...
...The cows are brought in and the milker is set to work...
...In fact, the western democracies might as well accept the idea that a billion Asiatics are demanding and will continue to demand, even if they are crushed by the combined military might of the United Nations, either independence or a large measure of self-government...
...We are, in part, responsible for what is happening...
...Today they get up an hour later and as they go out the door of a kitchen which in many homes is heated with steam or hot water they snap a button and the whole place is flooded with electric light...
...At that meeting it would have been an easy matter for a Huey Long or any other sort of American Hitler to lead that group to destructive action...
...But they never let their political dumbness interfere with their economic sagacity...
...The other day 1 called on Burt Knoll, a neighbor who has always been in the forefront of the fight for a better life for the dairy farmers...
...Thousands of dairymen are now sending to market each morning a thousand pounds and up of mdk that haa been produced with the help of one hired man or with no hired help at alL Most of the farms are now equipped with milking machines and mechanical coolers...
...The United States cannot wash its hands of this problem...
...But it is difficult to persuade 200,000,000 people in Burma, Siam, ludo-China, Malaya, and other Asiatic colonies that they must go back to their prewar colonial status...
...Soekarno, for his part, refuses to open negotiations with representatives of the Netherlands but is willing to confer with United Nations spokesmen...
...DUTCH and French Imperialism, like that of Britain and the USA, is relatively enlightened and humanitarian when compared wjth that of Nazi Germany, Japan, and Communist Russia...
...During the next hour the farmer leisurely follows the milker by stripping each cow, which takes a minute or two, and in the meantime he is telling tall stories or figuring out how he can make some other job easier...
...H. A. Loge-mann, the Netherland Minister of Overseas Territories, in an address to the lower house of the Dutch Parliament which was evidently intended to be conciliatory...
...1 bring this so ject up now because I have just received a long and cheerful letter from Pierre DeNio...
...We cannot pursue a policy of relative, if belated, justice and enlightenment toward our own dependencies and simultaneously support imperialist powers in the assertion of domination...
...The machinery of the United Nations Organization will soon be in working order, li we insist on using it to bring peace and justice to the troubled Pacific anas, we shall at last I* taking positive action to prove that democracy means something to us...
...I am glad that Pierre saved us a recital of the bill of fare with which the jolly farmer is regaled when he returns to the modern kitchen from hi* frolicsome labors...
...A new machine is now on the market that harvests the corn, cuts it into ensilage and blows it into the truck box...
...We did it just last evening In a neighbor's barn...
...Burt answered something like this: 'Oh, 1 don't know anything much about it...
...He Is a straight, tall and brawny guy...
...All reports agree that the movement of Indonesians for control of their own country is as genuine as the wartime liberation movements in Europe, including that in Holland itself...
...Two men ran handle the job And the fine thing about this progresa in waya of farming i> thai the farmera are in a financial position to buy this new equipment "All the modern gadgets that contribute to pleasant and comfortable living are now being Installed in many farm home...
...President Truman's message to Congress recommending that the Puerto Ricans be permitted to determine their own status is sure to have similar repercussions everywhere...
...Democracy or White Domination for Asio...
...Today, owing to the right sort of New Deal legislation and the war, of course, farmers for the first time in their lives are having a little enjoyment At present farmers arc doing more work than ever with less help and with far greater ease...
...He is the York State man...
...Here is his story: "Back about 1932 the dairy farmers of the New York milk nhed were bankrupt and milk was bringing anywhere from 60 cent* to f1.25 for a hundred pound...
...In the old days filling the silo was a back-breaking job that kept- a man at it until frost...
...As a matter of fact, there was in those times snd in that region a.good deal of violence...
...To say that these farmers were against Roosevelt is to use paper to say what everybody knows...
...Are all agriculturalists as happy as these lords of the rattle on New York's thousand hills...
...This first over-all gathering of Social Democratic forces in liberated Germany gave proof of the party's success in the work of reorganization...
...They were not slow to take advantage of every chance which the Roosevelt Administration offered them...
...Peace in the Pacific depends on the solution of this problem...
...This is symptomatie of the protest that is sweeping liberal-labor forces elsewhere...
...To millions of oppressed people our action would come as the first sign of hope...
...There was chaos and anger and despair...
...They have been rebuilt into fine, modern homes...
...Protest is rising against the reconquest of their Asiatic Empires by the western powers...
...As they enter the barn door they snap another button and get more light...
...GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATS REORGANIZE FlRST reports of the convention of Social Democrats held at Hanover, in the British zone of Germany, October 5-7, contain interesting sidelights...
...Even that method is becoming obsolete...
...In those days I was chairman of a meeting up in Walton, ?. Y. There were 600 angry dairymen and their angrier wives...
...First of all is the strange fact that the 200 delegates were not allowed to meet in a united session...
...Now, with a tractor and a corn-binder, the whole thing can be finished in a couple of days...
...The reports delivered at Hanover showed that already the reorganized party has more than half that number and is now, without any doubt, the strongest political party in Germany...
...Perhaps my envy and regret could be reduced by a couple of letters from farmers in other parts of the country...
...If a neighbor happens to come in, they let the machine go on with the milking while they light up and have a smoke and a visit This isn't romance...
...The Lieutenant Governor of the Netherlands Indies, Van Mook, "refused to negotiate with native leaders of the revolt "until stability is restored," which means until the rebellion is crushed...
...The creamery in question is the cooperative at Rock Royal, N. Y., organized in 1936 to take care of a group of disguated faimers who had withdrawn from the dealers...
...1 know plenty of them that couldn't hold a plow straight or tell a heifer from a »tri ? 1 am referring to fellows who have made their living from the land...
...I haven't been up there since I got my last dividend check...
...There are three of them, especially, who send me letters that make me feel sad about my misspent life...
...That would have been contrary to the rule which keeps the activities of the four occupation zones separated...
...That kind of pay has enabled farmers to pay off their debts and have a little money left...
...the one who speaks for the husky chaps who send the milk and cream and cheese down to our tables...
...So I just make the milk, and that suits me down to the ground.' "There, boys and girls, is the answer to many of the ills of this man's world...
...Had a good time...
...I would like to get one, let us say, from a sharecropper in Mississippi or a farm-tenant in Arkansas...
...Cooperation works...
...Even our purely selfish interest in the development of markets should lead us to use our influence in favor of adjustments of the present conflicts on a basis which gives promise of permanence and an improved standard of living...
...I asked him how things were going up at the creamery...
...This protest is exploited by, but is not due to, Communist influence—just as the revolt of the people in these Dutch and French colonies is not the result of Communist or Japanese propaganda...
...One writes from Illinois, one from Ohio, and the third from upper New York State...
...Otto Grotewohl and two other German Social Democrats from Berlin were present as representatives of the Social Democratic Committee of Berlin, There were present also two members of the Social Democratic Committee-in-Kxile, now in London, Erich Ollenhauer and Fritz Heine...
...He scorns any dealings with Achmed Soekarno, leader of native insurgents, and takes for granted that no moves- can be made until the native rebels are put down by Allied troops...
...In his time he did one man's share in organizing the milk-producers of the state...
...Our position in the Pacific gives us the right to intervene in any situation which threatens the peace...
...The Indonesians compare their sad state and wonder why they have not been set on the road to education, democracy and independence...
...1 had to come to New York...
...It is then hauled to the barn and blown into the silo...
...The same note is sounded by Dr...
...Trucks hauling milk were shot up with high-powered rifles, milk was poured on the ground, property was destroyed and the politicians were scared to death...
...That would have been too much...
...The leading figure in the work of the convention was Dr...
...Or some farmer's wife might send me a note about the joys of living in one of these super-modern farmhouses...
...1 have been noticing during these last couple of years that while we city slickers have been groaning about prices and points and shortages, some of my farmer friend* have been growing morn plump and contented with every passing month...
...They banded themselves together and fought for what was rightfully theirs, a livelihood for their families and for themselves in return for their labor...
...And now, up here in my part of the country, there has been a big change...
...But our fair treatment of the Filipinos has set a new standard in the Orient...
...Does a machine do my work while I light up and bandy wisecracks with the neighbors...
...1 have lately been working as a carpenter in two different farm houses which were formerly old-fashioned and unhandy place...
...The belated and vague promise of future dominion status made by the Netherlands Government is not good enough...
...We hsve a dandy board of directors that is running things in fine shape...
...The farmers were being liquidated, and they were doing what starving people all over the world have always done and always will do...
...A strike by 19 Australians unions, with the support of five labor union councils representing 1,000,000 workers, upset the plan by which Dutch ships were to carry soldiers and armaments to join Montbatten's forces in Batavia on Oct...
...Kurt Schumacher, former Reichstag Deputy...
...The two moat important derisions' made were that the party will remain independent—it will not merge with the Communists—and that it will cooperate with all other democratic foi.es...
...In the old days farmers would get up at 4 a. m. and go out to the barn with a smoky lantern and milk by hand a couple of houra...
...So he knows their history...
...A farm home nowadays'can be, and often is, just aa efficient and bandy aa a city apartment Large refrigerators, well-equipped bathrooms, gas for cooking and heating plants in the basement are becoming standard equipment" And I had to leave the farm...
...4, to re-establish Dutch rule in Indonesia...
...They are getting $3.25 for 100 pounds of 3.5 milk, the base price, and with a premium of ten cents a point if it goes higher...
Vol. 28 • October 1945 • No. 42
