THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Pattern for Progress Dear Sirs: In connection with Mr. Justice Douglas' most excellent suggestion for providing Americnn capital for great irrigation and power projects as a...
...The exodus of inhabitants leaving empty houses was no different from that of any ghost town of the West...
...Robert E. Mathews Professor of Law, Ohio State University...
...I can't understand why it hasn't at least a million subscribers...
...Alfred Baker Lewis New York, N. Y. EDITOR'S NOTE: The lead editorial in September dealt with current rather than past policies...
...We spent large sums on UNRRA to relieve distress, and that should help to preserve peace...
...For instance, Mr...
...anti-Semitism is growing...
...Sen...
...In fact, two of Russia's satellites accepted until Russia ordered them to do otherwise...
...In view of our record of constructive economic aid for foreign countries, and our demonstrated willingness to talk things over with the Russians, it surely is neither fair nor accurate to say that we rely solely on arms...
...Bennie Hudson Co-Publisher of Lake Elsinore Valley Sun Elsinore, Calif...
...All this on cost-plus...
...Regarding Gen...
...So he didn't like us...
...Never Better Dear Sirs: I have read The Progressive for 33 years, but I don't think it was ever better than it is today...
...Schwartz, who to my horror I see is teaching history at Harvard...
...Refreshing Dear Sirs: Recent issues of The Progressive have been splendid...
...We have just made a $190,000,000 gift and loan of wheat to India, although the ruler of that nation is defying the UN in the Kashmir dispute by refusing to submit the matter for arbitration, and is so pro-Russia that he denounced the Japanese peace treaty because it takes the Bonin Islands and Okinawa from Japan, but not because it takes from Japan for Russia Southern Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands...
...He should have told us not merely of the billions spent annually on the Marshall Plan, but that the offer of such aid originally included Russia and her satellites...
...Douglas never heard of the millions of migrant farmers in this country, moving from place to place, practically outcasts, living with their families in shacks not fit for human habitation, underpaid, their children denied the eduoation that is supposed to be the due of every child in this country...
...Hudson {or a copy of the Committee's report with a view to carrying at least some of it, but Mr...
...R. C. English Westtown, Pa...
...We are spending fairly substantial sums on propaganda, and have made many vigorous efforts to get our message behind the Iron Curtain...
...Did not your editorial writer ever hear of the Marshall Plan...
...He needs no proof or facts to hurl accusations at unprotected individuals...
...Roberta Hodgson Santa Barbara, Calif...
...From 1942 until well into 1944 there was in effect a so-called "inter-departmental memorandum" between the State Department, the Co-ordinator of Inter-American Affairs, and the Board of Economic Warfare...
...It came from my coat pocket, in which reposed a six-page, typewritten report of his and Jane's amazing record since 1924, fresh from the flies of the House un-American Activities Committee, air mailed to me two days before by a cousin who is a U. S. Senator...
...We are spending substantial sums to bring foreign students here for technical and other education and have offered to exchange students with the Russian bloc countries...
...It's refreshing to have this slant amidst such uncritical endorsement of national policy...
...If there are interested readers of The Progressive who would care to help develop this idea, I would be glad to hear...
...Managerial Morals Dear Sirs: A word of moderation is due on the interpretation W. McNeil Lowry applies to the data on corruption in business and government in his article, "Ethics and Cost Plus," in the September issue...
...Lowry's remarks on the "cost-plus" contract brings to mind my experience in the last war...
...EDITOR'S NOTE: The Progressive rushed an air-special request to Mr...
...If," he says, "a TVA is built, American capital will largely build it...
...Jungian Partisans Dear Sirs: As a deeply interested, non-professional student of Jungian psychology, it has long seemed to me that a publication written expressly lor and by non-professional Jungian partisans would be welcome and serve in lieu of work-study groups for widely-scattered students...
...McCarthy seems to have adopted the techniques perfected by the Nazis and the Communists...
...Are these people any better off than those in Asia who cultivate a piece of ground owned by another which yields them only a bare subsistence...
...I suggest it as a supplement to the positive contribution so wisely proposed by Mr...
...Unfortunately in many respects it is worse now...
...Of course UNRRA and the Marshall Plan made a great contribution, and The Progressive enthusiastically supported them both, but they belong to the past...
...I don't believe a paper like yours has any obligation to offer the lunatic fringe a printed voice...
...There were only some 25 of us in a plant of 10,000, but the work was both satisfying and productive because the management supported it—indeed, demanded it...
...McCarthy's disgrace is all the greater because of the fact that he was himself accused of malfeasance in office while a Wisconsin judge and was detected in the act of evading tax payments and resorting to immunity in libeling those who disagree with him...
...Alfred Chapin Rogers Chester Springs, Pa...
...My particular work was primarily cost production: "methods of engineering...
...Interestingly, I had an opportunity in 1944 to suggest improved methods to a subcontractor, running a 15-man welding and machine shop...
...Unfair Editorial Dear Sirs: I do not understand how you can make such a statement as the one in your lead editorial in the September issue that "our government is so completely dedicated to the proposition that only supreme military power will preserve peace that it can brook no interference with its primary goal...
...Every legitimate expense was reimbursed...
...Lunatic Fringe Dear Sirs: I frequently like parts of your magazine, but I am not going to renew my subscription...
...formerly in charge: labor standards program, B.E.W...
...It's very simple: We didn't like him and what we believe he stands for...
...The main reason is Milton Mayer...
...Mrs...
...Characteristically these included obligations to: (1) Comply with local labor laws, (2) pay locally prevailing wages for comparable work, (3) provide and maintain adequate safeguards against accidents, (4) furnish adequate shelter, water, sanitation, and medical treatment, and (5) if necessary provide an adequate food supply at reasonable cost...
...Childish Twaddle Dear Sirs: What a chuckle we Elsinore residents did get out of Milton Mayer's childish twaddle about our community ("The Lake," August issue...
...M. E. Eastman San Pedro, Calif...
...We, therefore, can attach conditions to it—conditions similar to the ones that settled our own West and that prevented for all time the ancient problem of landlordism from haunting this nation...
...The same methods and the same drive for continuous improvement found in competitive private industry were at work here...
...Ghost at Elsinore Dear Sirs: What an awful article, "The Lake," by Milton Mayer in August Progressive...
...For example, in nine months the man-hours per unit on one item were reduced from 5.9 to 2.0...
...We never even started to rearm in earnest until aggression in Korea by forces supplied largely with Russian equipment made crystal clear the willingness of the Communist bloc to resort to arms without any preliminary discussion whatever...
...The China Story Dear Sirs: In his extraordinary review of Freda Ut-ley's book, The China Story, Benjamin Schwartz seems to believe that China was lost by the wave of a wand as a magician makes a rabbit appear or disappear...
...Schwartz's interpretation...
...So far this is still the exception rather than the rule in the smaller communities of California...
...Today, the emphasis on European aid is almost wholly military...
...another, in mid-war the company took over management of an adjacent depot from Army Ordnance, and increased the tons handled per man-day from 1.4 at that time to 14.3 less than two years later...
...Wedemeyer's testimony, the latter always qualified his answers and only the general tone might seem to imply that the general did not believe lack of ammunition was the only cause of the downfall of the Kuomintang regime...
...This is completely contrary to the facts...
...The "bold, new program'' has petered out to a $35,000,000 whisper, or less than one-tenth of one per cent of the money we're pouring into rearmament...
...Stewart Rowe Cincinnati, O. McCarthy's Disgrace Dear Sirs: Wisconsin's Joseph McCarthy is a dangerous un-American person who has been attacking the very foundations of the American system...
...Moreover, it has given tangible assurance that a great democracy is genuinely and affirmatively interested in the plight of other human beings...
...A few in South America contained provisions for the construction of improvements in housing, and conditions of health and sanitation, to be paid for jointly by the producer and our own government, and to be administered by a bi-national public health personnel...
...But we must remember they exist here in America also to a dangerous degree, and must be abolished...
...A. A. Berle has pointed out that the great corporations are developing into a new kind of institution, with the perpetuation of the institution becoming an end in itself...
...Peter Slizewski Spokane, Wash...
...I was a major in OSS in China in 1945...
...McCarthyism has now become a word to describe methods of defamation by lying, libeling, and character assassination...
...Over 900 foreign procurement contracts were executed with some type of such "labor clause...
...Landlordism Here Too Dear Sirs: Justice William O. Douglas in his article in the August issue of The Progressive, advocates the construction of TVA's in Asia...
...Hudson {ailed to reply in the three weeks that followed...
...With continuing moral, political, and economic pressure from the liberal elements of the public, there is hope that the more enlightened attitude will, in the long run, predominate...
...All Too True Dear Sirs: The tale of Elsinore by Milton Mayer, in the August issue, is all too true...
...and F.E.A...
...That horrible, fishy smell...
...E. T. Becker West Palm Beach, Fla...
...Justice Douglas' most excellent suggestion for providing Americnn capital for great irrigation and power projects as a means of "saving the world from communism," let me invite attention to the precedent of a project in our own recent foreign policy...
...After the usual combination of reactionary Dixiecrats and reactionary Republicans mangled the proposal, we are still spending substantial sums for this purpose and will continue to do so year after year in all probability...
...George E. Martindale Albuquerque, N. Mex...
...Douglas that we must stop relying on the military to do our thinking and planning for us, for it represents greed for wealth and power and has no relation to freedom f»r mankind from poverty and the fear of poverty...
...This established the policy of including in all foreign procurement contracts certain provisions as to the labor standards to be observed by the producer...
...The Progressive has also given militant support to Point Four—more perhaps than its creators...
...His reply: "Why should I bother to change things...
...This seems to me somewhat different from Mr...
...Was he trying to be funny or just asinine...
...I wonder has Mr...
...I'm making plenty as it is now...
...Enrico Molnar San Jacinto, Calif...
...Truth is, Lake Elsinore simply "dried up," as have many lakes in Southern California in the drouth of the last 10 years...
...This change is nowhere more striking than in the attitudes of the more enlightened managers of the great industrial empires...
...The thought of reducing the cost to the taxpayer never occurred to this free-enterpriser...
...In the minds of most, the questions today are those of the proper degree of social responsibility, while in 1928, say, there was no question that "every man for himself" was almost universally assumed to be the only way of life...
...The Administration's request for economic aid, modest enough to begin with, has been slashed by a Congress so blind and bitterly partisan that it plays into Communist hands by withholding urgently needed economic aid to democratic forces in the world...
...The sad, unfortunate, deplorable series of events and circumstances do not seem to be comprehensible to Mr...
...The sooner we rid ourselves of the two greatest enslavers, militarism and poverty, the sooner will we have a peaceful and prosperous world...
...In spite of periodic exposes, the long-term trend appears favorable...
...This concerns the place of the great quasi-public corporations which dominate our economic life...
...The incantations of the high priests of the status quo notwithstanding, the past 25 years have shown a steady growth in the feeling of community responsibility for individual welfare...
...Has he never heard of "wetbacks" and how these Mexican workers are inspired to enter the United States illegally by the glowing promises of agents for the large-scale growers...
...How can a man who closes his mind to facts which do not suit his prejudices possibly be allowed to teach...
...With this change, the managers are developing a new sense of public responsibility, competing with the old simple drive for power...
...in other words, the small entrepreneur who has become the darling of the liberals...
...Here then is a pattern for economic and physical betterment of backward peoples that has already proved its feasibility...
...He was very wrong about one thing, however...
...I agree with Mr...
...You wouldn't, of course, print it...
...See "Hunger and the Wetbacks" in the August Progressive...
...Maria Folino Weld Watertown, Mass...
...It didn't come from the drying lake...
...Under the Administrations original foreign aid measure there would have been available to develop the foundations of freedom against Communist penetration only one dime for every $34)00 we are spending on armaments —and even that's been slashed beyond recognition...
...Our Administration has proposed Point Four aid to provide medical and technical education for the inhabitants of undeveloped areas in order to raise their standards of health, productivity, and living...
...I worked for one of these giant corporations which operated a war plant on a cost-plus-fixed-fee basis...
...President Truman's letter transmitting the Congressional Resolution of Friendship to the Russian People is only the latest example...
Vol. 15 • October 1951 • No. 10
