THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
. . .THE PEOPLE'S FORUM . . . Wall Street's Control Dear Sirs: A number of your correspondents have been urging the nationalization of our monetary system, by taking from the banking fraternity...
...But maybe I am wrong—could be—so I'll try another subscription and by the end will be convinced one way or the other...
...It further means that the present German Army, for the most part, is composed of veterans of our World War I, and all politically minded Germans who from the Russian Revolution have maintained a secret admiration for the Soviet leaders and the Soviet people...
...We want to destroy all monopolies...
...There has always been an army of unemployed in peacetime regardless of which party was in power...
...And can anyone deny that such editors are rare today and growing fewer...
...patronized the graduate students unmercifully...
...To secure proper legislation we must have a powerful political organization set\ip that will be able to get out into the field primary and election days and elect candidates pledged to their program regardless of their party affiliation...
...He was recognized as the greatest tragedian actor of the 19th Century, Shakespeare being his best medium...
...The harshest critics of the little truth we get these days get their poison both ways...
...At the beginning of each year he solemnly addressed .the new students, ventilating in a weary voice the pious platitudes of big business...
...9, page 517...
...All farm and labor organizations should establish a coordinated political action committee, which in turn will establish a permanent political action headquarters, appoint a keeper of records, elect district as well as township and ward leaders and appoint a sufficient number of precinct workers, men and women who can be depended upon to do their work loyally and faithfully...
...A political party that cannot achieve economic freedom for its own citizens and equality for its own minorities will not be able to solve parallel problems on an international scale...
...Has The Progressive been "sucked in" by the reactionary attempt to offer the public only two choices: military isolation or military world domination...
...30, 1940, in Boston...
...Wrong...
...G. Edward Lind Downey, 111...
...Ruth Pennley Dorchester, Mass...
...Watson, page 372...
...Over the entire school floated the senescent spirit of Nicholas Miraculous Butler...
...Perhaps you will let me stress a few passages that could give pause to those of your readers who, out of confused, propaganda-filled, and perhaps naturally intolerant minds, send in letters filled with carping and criticism, almost invariably undeserved...
...Stan Polomany New York, N. Y. Top And Bottom Dear Sirs: As far back as historical account goes, each nation has held to the top and the bottom...
...Max Hentschke Redlands, Calif...
...A religious fanatic, he exhibits less tolerance to those who disagree •with him than did ever Rev...
...The fact that Soviet commanders are reportedly incorporating trusted German prisoners as part of the Soviet military machine speaks volumes, if true, and clinches what I am here trying to get across...
...Lack of information and lack of truth definitely undermine our great democracy and Christian ideals...
...It is by the Park, west of the library...
...I think you have one swell person there...
...Van Loon in 1938 wrote an epilogue to his book and the last sentence of it impressed me...
...And most of them are now in the German Army...
...That reputation was wholly undeserved...
...The Kaiser was the first one and only one to make a declaration of war—this made everybody fr.om the start blame the war on Germany...
...I venture to say that most of your readers are satisfied that The Progressive manifests editorship of that tj'pe...
...These daily papers also expressed such a very clear anti-convention and anti-democratic attitude that one wonders how long it will be before the masses of people will be fooled into the dangerous "fascism" that may be just around the corner...
...George H. Shoaf Costa Mesa, Calif...
...Few people really understand the significance of this powerful special privilege: it is nothing less than exalting Mammon and its "golden calf" above the rights of the general public—or "common people" who are the victims of the exploitation that naturally follows rule by the bankers...
...But read what was done during the Cleveland - McKinley campaign of 1896: I quote from Tom Watson's Life And Times Of Andrew Jackson, who says that during the struggle against the National Bank, "Bid-die and his associates caused a panic, the purpose being to create a clamor against Jackson, a pressure which he could not resist...
...You are leading off in that battle and you are leading off bravely and well...
...This is your fight, so do your part by volunteering to help in ward and precinct work...
...We in America have a battle to fight right here at home...
...Wheeler in The Progressive of July 24: "The future organization of Europe could well be patterned after that of Switzerland —a nation originally made up of 25 little states with different nationalities, languages, traditions, customs, and religions, but united into a pacific and democratic union in the very heart of this boiling and exploding Europe...
...Barnes deserves a great deal of consideration and I am wondering whether the readers of The Progressive have fully interpreted the significance of the future vision...
...Why did its convention praise its 12-years New Deal rule and then kick out the Party's best New Dealer...
...The very picture itself proves the contrary...
...Or that new methods of control for the public benefit should be widely discussed, ratified, and established subject to orderly change in the light of the public good—in a word that an open, constitutional, civilian administration of overwhelmingly international matters might be progressive...
...Even Russia, the nation which claims to have achieved democracy, still continues the high incomes and the low incomes, with a scramble for positions that pay more for what is termed greater ability...
...Mayer...
...Avoiding such pronouncements, the Soviet leaders diplomatically have assured the German people that the Soviet Union does not desire to violate the integrity of the German nation, as such...
...What does that mean...
...There were millions of them...
...Even the 25,000 spectators echoed the American spirit of progress and freedom...
...Does it have a real postwar plan...
...This is a notable and timely book find nothing in it is more timely than its concluding paragraph which reads in part, "However it shall be, the truth must out...
...Also do not fail to support your local labor paper if one is published in your district...
...La Follette, Sr., about the Versailles peace at the end of the former war was most timely...
...We want taxation on the ability to pay and taxation on unearned wealth...
...Why have I been buying extra copies besides the one I receive as a subscriber through the mail...
...John F. Carlisle Columbus, O. Villard's New Book Dear Sirs: I look forward to a review in your pages of The Disappearing Daily, by Oswald Garrison Villard—one because of the many damaging facts it records...
...Its standards of teaching—at least in my field—were far below those of Harvard and Yale, and, though Harvard Yard and the halls of Eli were just as conservative, theirs was a healthy conservatism, whereas that of Columbia was torpid and musty . Will the war change this obsolete university...
...I hope other New Yorkers will be interested...
...Robert McCormick...
...Postwar problems can be met in a sound progressive way that will prevent another depression...
...This is the only way we can have full production and balance production and distribution...
...Praise For Barnes Dear Sirs: The recent article . by Harry Elmer Barnes entitled "Education, Religion, and the Arts of Leisure," sums up a good many factors that are extremely important to the future generations of America...
...The BURTONS By Brink Make A Better Peace Dear Sirs: The June 26 publication of the thoughts of Sen...
...Even in the postwar world we will not have "full employment" but we can have "full production," providing we do two things...
...I must say that I have come during these months to cherish this periodical...
...Alfred Kiefer Lackawanna, N. Y. Political Action Dear Sirs: Men and woman in the ranks of labor, the Farmers Union, and the great middle class have a great opportunity to secure desired as well as needed benefits in life this coming election...
...The objective is to elect to Congress men and women known to be progressive and liberal, regardless of their party affiliations...
...This element is completely absent from the compositions of Mr...
...This renders him at once furious...
...When you would faint, wane, and despair, remember that we are with you, behind you, and that we are adequately armed in the spirit for the roar of the battle which approaches...
...if not a weekly, then by pamphleteering...
...Dear Sirs: I do not like your attitude towards Roosevelt and Russia, and I think you are all wrong...
...AVilliam J. Dale San Francisco, Calif...
...So while Russia claims to have ousted capitalists, the same old capitalistic pattern prevails and seems to be growing stronger...
...I doubt it...
...As a young liberal Republican I doubt very much if this be true...
...Prof...
...We people of America are apt to become a little muddled, because when this country was young, poor, idealistic, and pioneering, there was a grand uproar toward a real democracy...
...If any one of them denies riding on the coattails of our more or less prostituted press, then he is the sort who, in all his spare time, sits with his ear glued to the radio...
...World Civilian Rule Dear Sirs: A recent editorial stated that the pages of The Progressive are open to writers of all points of view not opposed in any great degree to the editorial policy of the paper...
...No words could better describe the author of • The Disappearing Daily, himself an editor of the highest repute over a period of 40 years and, during the past 30 years at least to my personal knowledge, one of the most courageous and fine-spirited of all whose tongues have been heard in the marketplace...
...As one Forum letter writer said, and I agree, "I wish that The Progressive could be in every home...
...He spent most of his time in the palatial offices of the New York Life Insurance Company on Madison Avenue, of whose board of directors he was a potent member...
...Prior to Stalingrad he stated that "a whole generation of German dead now lie beneath Soviet battle fields...
...Read this article again and carefully observe what he says...
...They were represented to us as the views of the German people and the German government...
...Blanche Watson St...
...The moral is plain: Candidates supported by Wall Street (Democrats and GOP nominees alike) should never receive a vote from the working class whose labor was exploited, in ways strange and mysterious, to pay this $11,000,000 profit...
...Let's try to make it a fact...
...if not so, then by speech in the marketplace...
...The people have done the work and then have had to turn around and do the greater share of the buying in order to preserve an "upper" class in leisure and glory and power...
...In Every Home' Dear Sirs: I have been buying extra copies of The Progressive at a West 42nd Street, New York City newsstand...
...This is the "common sense" solution of the unemployment problem...
...This is a serious thought...
...Military commentators wonder why the Germans are retreating or are being driven back on the eastern front while maintaining their positions on the western front...
...The Democrat platform carries the exception...
...As personalities all but two or three were egregious ciphers...
...We must have our prophets of doom...
...The two bright lights of the Department of Comparative Literature (which it was my misfortune to attend) resigned as soon as they found something more interesting—and lucrative—to do...
...Has it never occurred to The Progressive that it might be a progressive move to dislodge the medieval diplomatic system from control of some of the matters of prime world concern...
...We want higher wages and less hours of labor...
...It will be well to keep Wallace as traveling representative of the United States under title of Assistant to the President...
...Lincoln died the next morning...
...J. Guy Causey Greensboro, N. C. * * * Solving Unemployment Dear Sirs: When candidate Thomas E. Dewey says that "the Democrats never solved the unemployment problem," and intimated they never will in peacetime, he forgot to mention that in all the years the Republicans were in power, even in prosperous times, they never solved the problem either...
...Barnes gives us an idea of the future and tells us what some of the international causes of the present society are and what is required for us to anticipate a greater future...
...William B. Lloyd, Jr...
...The American people will have to wake 1 up to the challenge and start doing something about it...
...That is inherent in the system and is what the big industrialists want, to keep down wages...
...See Franklin D, Roosevelt's Public Papers, Vol...
...I enrolled in the Graduate School of Arts and Philosophy, which in those days had a resplendent reputation...
...5) One is more than ever convinced that the press, the school, the radio, and other educational and social betterment institutions have failed in the great job of keeping the people properly and fully informed on all sides of great problems and questions...
...He attached no exception...
...The contract was drawn by Francis Lynde Stetson, Cleveland's former law-partner, (The firm of Cleveland & Stetson were attorneys for J. P. Morgan & Company), and under this contract Morgan and his pals divided a profit of $11,000,000, in less than a week...
...Rodell which to a slight degree poisons everything he writes...
...Questions For New Dealers Dear Sirs: Can the Democratic Party claim to be progressive in 1944...
...The Democratic Convention Dear Sirs: As a delegate to the National Democratic Convention held recently in Chicago I would like to point out a few of the many worthwhile impressions,I had of this great educational and historical event: (1) Among the 1,172 delegates from all sections of the country I found various types of common folks representing many occupations and classes of people as well as many great leaders in our Government fields...
...What Thomas Jefferson said about banks, you may be sure, was not published by the newspapers during the recent bi-centennial of Jefferson's birth...
...And that, I think, was what it always aspired to be under the reign of Nicholas Miraculous...
...3) The ever present hum of earnest and intelligent conversation presented a feeling that the convention was really making history in the great decisions that face all the people in this world of chaos...
...But after all the labor by the pioneering workers, 12 years ago found the majority of the people no better off financially, while 60 families practically owned and did have complete control of America—"the land of the free...
...The atmosphere was filled with the spirit of "win the war quickly and a lasting peace with the added freedoms that include security for all...
...Nicholas Miraculous operated the university by remote control...
...He starts his letter by declaring, "Edwin Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln...
...His brother, John Wilkes Booth, was born in 1839 and died in April 1865, having been shot in the back of the head by a soldier named Boston Corbett, a member of the posse that pursued Booth south of Washington, D. C, to the barn in which he had hid...
...Before considering this, it will be admitted that oil, gasoline, and other-materials essential for the war are rapidly vanishing in Germany, and that in the long run Germany is going to lose the war...
...It is highly important that a candidate committee thoroughly investigate the background of every political candidate and report their findings to the coordinated county political action committee, who in turn will notify their members of their findings and their suggestive endorsements...
...Harry Elmer Barnes is always talking about capitalism being something new...
...Second, we must retire the millions of American citizens of 60 years of age and over from industry on a "pay as you go" Federal annuity plan, thereby creating a national demand for goods and services to employ the balance of able-bodied men and women who want to work...
...When the Wall Street bankers, under the lead of J. P. Morgan, caused a panic 'to give the country an object lesson,' Cleveland fell into a pitiable state of blue funk...
...To secure these benefits in life we must secure proper legislation to cover them...
...William Sunday or Peter Cartwright...
...4) The misrepresentations we read in all the Chicago papers (except one) from day to day make one wonder how a democracy can long survive in our great misinformed and uninformed land of "freedom...
...I did j not attend the School of Journalism nor the School of Business, about whose ineffectuality I had been warned...
...What I mean by the word "liberal" is an individual who is trying to fight a bit harder than the rest of the people around him to make the ideals of freedom, equality, and orderly justice on which this country is based come true...
...I feel sorry for those who never see anything except that which is printed in the "daily dor-mants" with their uninteresting headlines of destruction and scandal...
...if not by a daily, then a weekly...
...Booth had shot Lincoln in the back of the head a few days before when Lincoln was sitting in a box in Ford's Theatre, watching a play, Our American Cousin...
...Villard's idea that a good ' newspaper should be an educative influence and above all should be forever concerned with spreading the truth, "let the chips fall where they may," could lead some of your contentious critics to look around for more reliable sources of information, and let their pens of protest rest until they are better informed and therefore less indignant and intolerant...
...And now the campus is an armed camp, without any pretense to intellectual distinction whatsoever...
...Anthony Netboy Bethesda, Md...
...The writings of one German general who was but little known in Germany were widely published in this country...
...More power to it in the coming critical years...
...As to F.D.R...
...Columbia was safe and sane — and indescribably mediocre and pretentious...
...Victory over reactionary forces' is ours, if we will work and not shirk our own responsibility in any future election...
...By all means, should Mr...
...Russell Egner Minneapolis, Minn...
...Because I wish others to enjoy good reading...
...Under a similar test, we saw President Cleveland's boasted 'backbone' turn to tallow in 1893...
...Stalin announced that 7,800.000 constituted the German casualty list...
...Ernie Crook Hamburg, la...
...John Erskine got a job in the Metropolitan Opera Company...
...His feeling that an ideal journal should "stimulate thinking," and his conclusion that restraint leads to the formulation of more reasonable opinions may suggest a similar deduction...
...THE PEOPLE'S FORUM . . . Wall Street's Control Dear Sirs: A number of your correspondents have been urging the nationalization of our monetary system, by taking from the banking fraternity the special privilege of issuing currency—a privilege which is certainly unconstitutional...
...The Versailles peace made a Hitler, and Hitler brought on this war, which is a "stop Hitler" war or World War II...
...Why have we never been given an article explaining how world administration of world affairs could be set up on a civilian rather than a military basis, in accordance with the philosophy of the founders of our American Constitution...
...To understand this let me briefly recall the situation of that time...
...Can the New Deal Party keep thousands of Negroes from voting and claim to be progressive...
...Reply To Barney Dear Sirs: E. C. Barney of Los Angeles, Calif., has a letter in the July 24 People's Forum, in which it clearly appears he is all mixed up...
...Back Home Again By Dodd Torpid Columbia Dear Sirs: McAlister Coleman's amusing recollections of his Columbia days stirs up interesting memories...
...saying, "Your boys are not going to be sent to fight in foreign wars," he said just that on Oct...
...4c Food For Thought Dear Sirs: _ Food for thought is the following by Sen...
...Let's show by ballots in the coming election that "we the people" still rule...
...A number of facts which were plain lies were reiterated in the press as proof that Germany had planned the war — writers would consider it their patriotic duty to call Germans "Huns" etc...
...But there is a tinge of bitterness in Prof...
...Now that is really new...
...To every reader will come the thought: How was it possible that such a nefarious, unjust peace could have been made...
...Nicholas Miraculous bellowed louder for war in 1940 and 1941 than most Anglophiles...
...Mary A. Black Grand Island, Neb...
...Our farm and labor leaders cannot assume this added responsibility...
...2) The general theme of the whole convention seemed to ring out the very definite progressive trend of the vast majority of the delegates...
...Today the old Appeal plant is in the hands of a commercial publisher named E. Haldeman-Julius, a rugged individualist and conservative of the first water with less social vision than William Randolph Hearst or Col...
...British and American leaders have announced that nothing short of Unconditional Surrender will satisfy...
...This has been the case, alas, with too many of the reviews that have come under my eye, all of them estimates which entirely overlooked such passages as deserved the highest and most generous praise...
...It was a punitive peace without any pretense of doing justice — promises given previously were ignored—the German delegates were called in to sign on the dotted line...
...They "proved" that Germany started the war to gain domination of the world...
...The professors were narrow pedants, about as stimulating in the lecture room as mud turtles...
...Mayer be shunted off to prison, keep publishing his writings and keep us posted of his life there...
...More people should take an active and studious part in the solution of our great national and international social, economic, and governmental problems now and in the future...
...One applauds, too, his assertion that behind an editor's intellectual gifts and above them, there needs to be "strong moral qualities to direct them...
...of Schools Pine City, Minn...
...These veterans, as I discovered on several trips to Germany between the two wars, despise British imperialism and American capitalism...
...Rev...
...First, we must have perfect cooperation between the Government and private enterprise...
...Truly Liberal Dear Sirs: Though at times I disagree strongly with the viewpoints expressed in The Progressive, it remains one of the truly liberal organs of the press...
...Edwin was born in 1833 and died in 1893...
...He said: I hope some day mankind will rid itself of its worst enemy: "a willful ignorance which is an abysmal cowardice...
...No society with a top and a bottom ever can be democratic...
...I wish every American could read them...
...In short, little art or philosophy was taught in the dreary buildings on Morningside Heights...
...We want longer vacations with pay...
...According to this formula American politics were made, and that led to the Versailles peace...
...We want money reform...
...Support this paper by sending in your subscription for one year...
...If you do not already have a coordinated farm and labor political action organization in your county today you should take immediate steps to establish a permanent political action set up from the rank and file of farm and labor groups...
...Arthur E. Gustafson County Supt...
...There was published the Appeal to Reason and in its columns wrote the nimblest wits of the nation...
...They should be a reminder to us to make a better peace after this war...
...Just what would happen if all the "lower" people were to rise to "higher" jobs, leaving the "lower" jobs undone, no one seems to know...
...Well manipulated puppets carried out his orders on Morningside Heights...
...We must have our destroyers: those who mercilessly ferret out the false and who then proceed to delight bloodily in smashing the same...
...La Follette, however, kept during this war hysteria his sense of honor and righteousness...
...Luther Kibler Newport News, Va...
...that what the Soviet Union most desires is the extinction of the Hitler fascist menace, and the establishment of a popular regime in Germany friendly to its neighbors to the east...
...Petersburg, Fla...
...It is up to the men and women of these great groups to volunteer their spare time to fulfill the duties necessary to form a permanent coordinated political action set up...
...They had an aloof, disdainful air...
...The progressive people should all help to keep our present skipper at the helm of our great ship of state...
...With hatred in their hearts for British imperialism and American capitalism and secretly cherishing admiration for the land of the Soviets, is it difficult to understand why the German soldiers fight so tenaciously in the west, while giving ground in the east...
...The word may be new, but as far back as kings have occupied thrones, upheld and backed by financiers, money has ruled...
...H. M. Ratlipf, Jr...
...Booth's body was buried below the floor of the Washington, D. C, jail and was later removed to the cemetery in Baltimore and buried in the Booth family lot...
...To Congressman William C. Oates, of Alabama, he cried in terror, 'My God, Oates, the bankers have got the countrv by the leg!' "Then followed the infamous midnight-conference with Morgan, who came to the White House demanding a bond-issue, and got it...
...Russia And Germany Dear Sirs: Few people care to read what they don't agree with, or what runs counter to their prejudices, and this applies to editors as well as to everybody else...
...The only thing that arouses the editor of the American Freeman from his conservative slumbers is for him to suspect that some fellow being is guilty of practicing the slightest degree of sobriety or self-control in his daily life...
...Ask yourself these questions if you are a liberal New Dealer: Why does a political party that claims to have a liberal record demand that its liberal leaders get out of office to please the old guard and the city machines...
...Once A Mecca Dear Sirs: How many of us old-timers remember when Girard, Kans., was the Mecca of social and economic idealism...
...This applies with emphasis to all Germans who before Hitler voted either the Socialist or Communist Party tickets...
...He ruled the university with an iron hand—and even now, when he is a very, very old man, he refuses to give up the sceptre and let a younger man take over...
...and among themselves fought bitterly for the choice academic plums...
...We Are With You' Dear Sirs: Recently I began receiving The Progressive as a gift from my mother who resides in Texas...
...The gold standard is the "tool" wherewith the people of America —and England—have been robbed of the products of their toil...
...I quote from memory, therefore the words are probably not quite correct...
...Carl Van Doren joined the editorial board of the Book of the Month Club...
...Chicago, 111...
...If a great catastrophe should sink into the bowels of the earth, Fort Knox in Kentucky, Washington, Wall Street, and London alone would "suffer" much for it...
...Milton Mayer is by far your most balanced, sane, and imaginative writer...
...It is a book that, given careful consideration, should lead to serious heart searching on the part of the average newspaper reader whose extraordinary gullibility these days permits him to reject little of the sensational and emotionally set forth news (so called...
...We all want our present Social Security Act revised so that we will secure a decent pension at a reasonable retirement age, and we want security against sickness and accident...
...Rockwood, Tenn...
...Hendrik van Loon, the author of the Story of Mankind, has a line, "For practical politics it does not matter so much what is the truth but what people think is the truth...
...Their courses put even the most intrepid students to sleep...
...Money at the top fosters class evil, keeping the people divided and all battling individually for physical existence, thus preventing cooperation and the big vision needed for the socialized state of mutual helpfulness...
...Please allow me to inquire, then, why we constant readers are almost never given an article favoring world organizations as one means of detecting, exposing, regulating, and/or eliminating harmful international cartels...
...Fred Rodell writes with force and verve, but he veers to the negativistic, destructionist side of the ledger...
...Harold E. Fackert Jersey City, N. J. * * * Enjoys Mayer Dear Sirs: I enjoy The Progressive very much, particularly Milton Mayer's articles...
...C. J. Hitchcock Kansas City, Mo...
...It means that the young snobs, those most fanatically fascist and who really hated the Soviet people and all things Soviet, are dead...
Vol. 8 • August 1944 • No. 34
