PROFIT PATRIOTS

Profit Patriots REP. B. J. GEHRMANN, Wisconsin Progressive, scored a bull's eye last week with his proposal to investigate the activities of lobbyists who have swarmed into the nation's capital to...

...Wickard's statement is more than talk and his association more than a paper organization...
...The Administration's present policy of beckoning farmers into the same kind of artificial boom which existed during the last war makes it all the more imperative that some sensible planning for the day of reckoning be started now...
...There may be a distinction between riding labor leaders out of town on a rail, as the Navy Department proposes, and throwing them into concentration camps, as the Nazis did, but only ex-liberals apologizing for the interventionist company they're keeping could find it...
...I am in thoroughgoing accord," he said...
...Gehr-mann has so aptly christened them, are men whose former connections with the government give them ready access to Washington bigwigs whose aid is invaluable in obtaining favorable consideration for war contracts...
...Meanwhile, selfish business interests which smell a chance to make a quick killing in the temporary boom have been urging farmers who live on the Prairie to cease their resistance to the project...
...The St...
...West is, of course, only one of many "profit patriots" who have attached themselves to the multi-billion dollar defense program at a time when the American people are straining every fibre to meet the challenge of the present emergency...
...Louis Post-Dispatch carried the following report of his reply: "Beck said the displaced farmers, although they received fair prices for their land, were not able to buy equally good farms in adjacent counties for the same price...
...Their 1940 Yearbook, "Farmers In A Changing World," is replete with data showing how the runaway boom of the last World War demoralized and impoverished the nation's agriculture for two tragic decades...
...For the most part the desperate need for long-range planning has been lost in the shuffle of frenzied interventionism in Washington...
...That is why we hope Mr...
...That is why Father Urban Baer, who knows and understands and works with farmers, can say with perfect assurance in an article in this week's issue of The Progressive that "the farmer has his misgivings about the artificial makeshifts, which in the long run, will do both him and his country more harm than good...
...They have been telling the farmers that the government will pay generously for their land, and with the money they receive they can buy other farms to work...
...The fees which these brokers command, and which ultimately find their way into the price the public pays for armaments, frequently reach staggering amounts...
...Wickard's reminder that planning for post-war readjustment "is part of the defense effort itself" ought to be framed and placed on the President's desk and the desks of all members of Congress...
...Planning for this kind of future is part of the defense effort itself.'-' That a great deal of planning and a great deal of courage will be needed to meet the enormous problems which a return to a peacetime economy will create has been perfectly obvious for a long time to the non-political experts in the Department of Agriculture...
...The dislocation, he said, had intensified the seriousness of 'forcing poor people onto poor land, and the gathering of the good land into large commercialized farms...
...Labor-Baiting, Nazi-Style THE MOST VICIOUS type of labor-baiting, Nazi-style, has now received the endorsement of one of the highest officials in the Roosevelt Administration—Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox —whose heart does a daily bleeding act for the oppressed peoples everywhere else in the world...
...For instance: Last week Charles West, former Undersecretary of the Interior to Harold Ickes, marched into a New York court and launched action to recover $700,000 which he claimed represented the commission the Empire Ordnance Corporation agreed to.pay him for negotiating $70,000,000 worth of war orders with the federal government...
...He was summoned last week to testify before the Tolan Congressional Committee investigating defense labor migration...
...Perhaps the best reply to this type of come-on was made by a government official, P. G. Peck, regional director of the Farm Security Administration...
...More and more the crusade to wipe out Hitlerism abroad takes on the trappings of Hitlerism at home...
...Sound And Sensible WHEN HE ISN'T occupied with war promotional activities, Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard can make a lot of sense...
...Last week he was in a sound and sensible mood when he announced formulation of plans to help prevent an agricultural collapse in the "post-war period...
...Last week Admiral William H. P. Blandy, head of the Naval Ordnance Bureau, denounced labor leaders who approve strikes as "traitors to their country," and urged the public to "ride them out of town on a rail, as if they were wearing swastikas on their sleeves...
...More and more the crusade to establish the Four Freedoms "everywhere in the world" is leading the United States up blind alleys of intolerance and suppression...
...It has been offered a choice of many sites in the state where the soil is far less rich and fruitful than it is in the Sauk section of the Wisconsin River Valley, but it has turned them down for the curious reason that it needed rich topsoil to camouflage the landscape...
...Powder Plant Come-On THE WAR DEPARTMENT has thus far refused to budge in its determination to build a $65,000,000 powder plant on the fertile acres of Wisconsin's Sauk Prairie...
...B. J. GEHRMANN, Wisconsin Progressive, scored a bull's eye last week with his proposal to investigate the activities of lobbyists who have swarmed into the nation's capital to act was "defense brokers" between big business seeking contracts and the government procurement departments...
...Many of these "profit patriots," as Rep...
...Asked to repudiate this Fascist attempt to arouse the public to violence, Knox refused...
...l "If we plan soundly and courageously," he said in announcing creation of a nation-wide organization to grapple with the problem, "if we enlist the help of the greatest number of people in making these plans, we can build an economy which will offer everybody a fair chance for work and security...
...The Committee questioned him regarding the effect of forced removal of farm families to make way for defense industries in Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri...

Vol. 5 • December 1941 • No. 49


 
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