FASHIONABLE CRITICISM
Fashionable Criticism IT SEEMS like only yesterday that The Progressive was being accused of "rocking the boat," "dividing the liberals," and "playing politics" because it dared expose the...
...Churchill's determination to have his friend elected for a fourth term is shared by many Britons...
...The 10-year prison terms and the $10,000-fines decreed for each of the three Schmeller brothers came at a time when the public's faith in some of our federal courts had sunk to a dangerously low level...
...Now that the deed is done, there are many ready to put their shoulder to the job of closing the door...
...The Progressive, we repeat, was called some pretty ugly names becayse it raised its voice more than three years ago while the horse was being stolen...
...They hope, in this new offensive, to create a no-man's land where no responsible police power can reach them...
...William Benton, vice president of the University of Chicago, revealed last week after returning from a trip to England that the defeat of Mr...
...This trend has become so pronounced, in fact, that last week a Wall Street lawyer and former utility magnate, Wendell Willkie by name, was able to denounce the New Deal as reactionary without setting the whole country to roaring with laughter...
...Anti-trust actions are now pending against 198 of these companies and the Department of Justice is presently conducting investigations which may result in further indictments for monopoly practices designed to keep fire insurance rates at their present exorbitant levels...
...Philip Murray, president of the CIO, has clung to the Administration with more hope and patience than any other top-ranking labor leader, but last week he, too, showed his impatience when he charged that labor was not getting a square deal from the White House and Congress...
...The people have seen all too much of the delicate wrist slapping which passes as punishment for that corporate crime which is separated from treason by only the slimmest of technicalities...
...Fashionable Criticism IT SEEMS like only yesterday that The Progressive was being accused of "rocking the boat," "dividing the liberals," and "playing politics" because it dared expose the rightward drift of the Roosevelt Administration and warn that the liberal principles of the New Deal were being sacrificed in favor of political expediency and participation in global power politics...
...Murray's counterpart in organized agriculture, James G. Patton, the able president of the National Farmers Union, has supported the President almost without reservation up to now, but he, too, seems disillusioned...
...The liberal movement is being blamed for the government's failure to function properly in wartime, but actually there are not enough liberals left in the Administration to man the main stations of government...
...Judge Freed's example and his words characterizing the acts as an "unconscionable crime against the United States and all of its people" reflect the judicial attitude necessary to restore public confidence in the courts and put an end to the fantastic business of endangering the lives of American boys in order to speed production and fatten profits...
...It is significant to note that six months after their indictment by a federal grand jury, the 198 companies "voluntarily" reduced their rates to save property owners an estimated $3,000,000 a year...
...Roosevelt in the White House when the peace terms are written...
...Deserving Popularity IT MAY BE worth noting, in connection with the comments above, that the Roosevelt Administration has partly compensated for its loss of support among the ranks-of organized labor and small farmers by picking up the vote of the country club set...
...The plea of the new lobby is that this type of regulation belongs exclusively to the states...
...Their purpose is clear...
...An Insolent Demand THE HIGH-POWERED fire insurance lobby, as Frank Hanighen, The Progressive's Washington correspondent, reported last week, has invaded the national capital with a half-million dollar slush fund, bent on obtaining exemption of insurance companies from the anti-trust laws...
...This is an old saw whose ring is familiar to all who have watched the Southern Tories use it to hack federal efforts to abolish the poll tax...
...Now, however, criticism of the Roosevelt Administration on these grounds has become quite fashionable, and individuals and publications which used to reserve their harshest epithets for The Progressive now use that kind of language in blistering the Administration...
...Roosevelt would be considered a national calamity—in Britain...
...The fact is that the insurance companies have so tangled the state regulatory bodies in litigation that effective local control is extremely difficult...
...In a remarkable interview with the United Press, Patton said that "the Roosevelt Administration started out as a New Deal, but now has taken on all the aspects of an old deal canned up in a different way...
...They would thus realize their aim of returning to the old days of the freebooter whose scorn for the rights of the policyholder was responsible for the present system of regulation...
...The AFL convention refused to consider a resolution calling for support of the President, and the United Automobile Workers'(CIO), the lusty child of the New Deal's former pro-labor policy, revealed that it would support the Administration only if it set-Med down to an "aggressive effort" to achieve a "sound and progressive program"—which it shows no signs of doing...
...Late as they are, they are urgently needed to prevent the further destruction of progressive principles by those who profess to be liberals...
...Roosevelt out of loyalty to Winston Churchill, their grand old Tory, who wants Mr...
...It's About Time!' THERE IS PROBABLY no better way to sum up the average American's reaction to the penalties recently imposed on three former officials of the National Bronze and Aluminum Company for delivering defective war equipment to the government than to say, "It's about time...
...Unless Congress is ready to grant the insurance companies a license to practice anarchy it will deal with this insolent demand in the summary way which it deserves...
...As Eliot Janeway reported for Fortune Magazine in an article previously quoted in The Progressive, the nation's upper crust is preparing to vote for Mr...
...More significant, however, is the coolness with which organized labor, long the backbone of the Roosevelt Administration's support, contemplates the prospect of a fourth term...
Vol. 7 • October 1943 • No. 43
