A TORY TICKET?
Rubin, Morris H.
A Tory Ticket? An Editorial On Curious Conduct By Professing Liberals By MORRIS H. RUBIN (Editor of The Progressive) ADECISION of surpassing importance in shaping the- whole future of America is...
...How these vast quantities of supplies, land, and factories are disposed of will determine for the postwar period "who writes the ticket for America," as Bob La Follette has pointed out in The Progressive...
...Emerging from a conference with the President at the White House, Kaiser predicted that the President would issue an appeal soon to workers to stay on war jobs "in order that our fighting men may not be let down...
...The appointment by the Roosevelt Administration of scarcity-minded spokesmen for monopoly capitalism to the most important peacetime agency yet created by Congress could only destroy whatever faith in the future is felt by the workers, independent business men, and small farmers of America...
...For all its claims of progressivism, the Roosevelt Administration has played a thoroughly reactionary game thus far in dealing with this critical problem...
...As a result, PM took a more forthright position a few days later in an editorial which said to Mr...
...The second surrender to reaction was the appointment of William Clayton to administer the disposal of surplus war property under the Baruch-Han-cock report...
...You pledged yourself at Chicago to 60,000,000 jobs after the war...
...Hopes for a program of full production and full employment for postwar America would be mangled beyond recognition if monopoly-minded Tories were allowed to control the disposition of the Government's vast wartime holdings in land, factories, and supplies—all bought and paid for with the money of the people of the United States...
...You cannot accomplish that purpose if you hand them oyer to the Jesse Jones-Will Clayton crowd...
...This, then, is the background for the present strife in Washington over the character of the appointments contemplated by President Roosevelt...
...Victory For Big Business' James G. Patton, president of the National Farmers Union, bluntly characterized the report as "very disturbing to every liberal who worked for Roosevelt's reelection...
...Clayton, the world's biggest cotton broker, has been a backer of the thoroughly reactionary Associated Farmers of California, the labor-baiting mouthpiece for wealthy planters and packers, and the defunct and discredited Liberty League which fought the New Deal in the 1936 campaign...
...Workers will continue at their war jobs only if there is a faith in the future—a faith based not on campaign oratory, but on well fortified assurances, on careful planning for full production, on forward-looking policies by business itself, and on an expressed determination by the Government to underwrite full employment by providing useful, self-respecting employment on needed public projects for those who may not be needed in private enterprise...
...Progressive forces in the nation's capital, aware of the fact that the new Board could go a long way toward determining whether America is to'have an economy of abundance, full production, and full employment—or an economy dominated by monopoly bent on maintaining a system of contraction and scarcity—were profoundly disturbed when the news leaked put that the President was considering the appointment of Tory-minded associates of Jesse Jones and Will Clayton, Texas millionaires who have enjoyed great power in the Roosevelt Administration...
...9 issue in a dispatch from George L. Curtis, was a "bill which can be redeemed only if it is interpreted by persons who are sympathetic with the objectives of full production, lower prices, and an independent rather than a monopoly-controlled industry...
...Kaiser must know, as every thoughtful American knows, that we need more than "appeals...
...Roosevelt had decided to appoint Col...
...Roosevelt : "Your supporters are deeply disappointed by the report that you intend to place the new Surplus Property Board in the hands of close associates of Jesse Jones and Will Clayton...
...services is being endangered...
...But Mr...
...Spokesmen for organized labor, the National Farmers Union, and other liberal groups were shocked by the news, and they promptly lodged loud and bitter protests with the White House...
...Your most potent instrument for the achievement of that goal lies in the disposition of war plants and surpluses...
...Joseph P. Woodlock and Sam H. Husbands, pupils and associates of the Jesse Jones-Will Clayton ring of reactionaries in the Administration, and James Shepherd, a little known Los Angeles attorney...
...This attempt to make the President seem to be the victim of a reactionary plot could hardly have convinced even the staff of PM itself in view of the fact that Mr...
...Thus, I. F. Stone, PM's able Washington correspondent, turned in this fantastic lead for the first story on the planned appointment of Jones-Clayton underlings: "Qn the heels of a great progressive victory in last Tuesday's election, the most reactionary elements in the Administration are about to seize control of a key postwar agency...
...The result, as The Progressive explained in its Oct...
...An Editorial On Curious Conduct By Professing Liberals By MORRIS H. RUBIN (Editor of The Progressive) ADECISION of surpassing importance in shaping the- whole future of America is being made in Washington this week...
...Appointment of such a board, he said, "would represent a victory for big business interests which have just finished a bitter fight to prevent the reelection of the President...
...At first it pretended to believe that this was a reactionary trick being played on the President rather than by the President...
...It began by appointing Bernard Baruch and John S. Hancock, brokers with the Wall Street outlook, to draft the basic legislation...
...Countless thousands of war workers are frightened at the prospect of peace and the accompanying loss of jobs, and they are now hunting for employment with more permanence and security...
...There were reports at mid-week that the force of these protests had thrown a real scare into the inner councils of the Administration, and thera was some hope that the President would back down in the case of at least one and possibly two of the contemplated appointments...
...The New York newspaper, PM, which has been a slavish supporter of the Roosevelt Administration and all its works, struck hard at the President's plan to appoint a Tory board...
...Roosevelt could have considered at all making such appointments...
...Appointments of this character would all but wreck the hope of postwar expansion and abundance because, as The Progressive has pointed out before, the law these men would be charged with administering contains language that is so general and loopholes that are so , wide that the progressive principles on which it is based could be easily emasculated...
...Liberal Groups Protest The third disappointment to progressives came when the Roosevelt Administration made little or no effort to present a united front in behalf of a sound surplus property program when the issue was being debated in Congress...
...President Roosevelt was reported ready to appoint (and, in fact, may have made the appointments by the time this issue of The Progressive reaches its subscribers) the members of the all-powerful Surplus War Property Disposal Board...
...Nevertheless, progressive forces in the nation's capital, and especially those which had given the President unstinted support in the late campaign, were astounded at the fact that Mr...
...Well-informed correspondents, getting their cue from progressive-minded officials within the Administration, broke the story that Mr...
...Roosevelt alone has the power to make the appointments...
...Surrender To Reaction The surplus war property which the Board is empowered to dispose of runs into staggering totals—more than 100 billion dollars worth of supplies, materials, and equipment, about 10 million acres of land, and more than 15 billion dollars worth of factories in such key industries as iron and steel, chemicals, transportation, aluminum, machine tools, electrical equipment, aircraft, ship construction, petroleum products, and gas, light, heat, and power...
...Heart Of The Problem Here indeed is the heart of the problem...
...Last week Henry J. Kaiser, the great production genius of the war, warned that workers are leaving essential war jobs in such great numbers that production of vital items for the fighting...
Vol. 8 • November 1944 • No. 48
