A HEARTENING TREND
A Heartening Trend TWO recent declarations on foreign affairs by responsible labor organizations present heartening evidence of a courageous willingness to look beyond the mere blueprints for...
...These dividends, "The Outlook" pointed out in a previous issue, will not necessarily be cash payments...
...After all, we are being assured almost daily by the National Association of Manufacturers that every stray penny around the premises is being scooped up by those gun-totin' masked bandits from the Department of Internal Revenue...
...One would quite logically think that with such tremendous reserves being piled up for postwar contingencies that the stockholder is being left out in the cold and dividends are as scarce as they were back in the early '30s...
...The resolution called upon President Roosevelt to give them assurance that "the cause for which our men fight and die is freedom for them as well as all mankind and that the weapons we forge shall not be used to hold in subjugation the people of any land...
...Net working capital siphoned from war contracts at that time had reached $43,000,000,000, with the prospects of many more billions added to it at the present rate of profit taking...
...Labor must take the long view...
...Press and radio commentators could find no news worthy of mention in an analysis showing that the transfer of German territory to Poland (in compensation for Soviet aggrandizement at the expense of Poland), the destruction of German industries, and the reduction of the Reich to an agricultural state would endanger the entire peace settlement...
...Yet this resolution was almost totally ignored by the press of this country...
...Here, it seems to us, is a picture of airtight profiteering...
...The Outlook," the Wall Street publication of Standard and Poor's statistical agency, for October of this year proclaims: "Stockholders can look forward to a flood of dividend payments in December...
...Yet it is seriously contended by Beardsley Ruml's relief-for-the-rich movement that the future welfare of America rest* on the elimination of corporate taxes...
...Newspaper editors who are convinced that the deep economic and social dislocations which are the root of our problem can be solved by a liberal application of an international billy-club, have declared a 'msh-hush policy on other points of view...
...But the flood gates on dividends too are wide open, according to a recent report by the Department of Commerce...
...RECENTLY the Michigan unit of the United Automobile Workers—CIO, the largest unit in the biggest trade union in the world, passed a resolution at its state convention condemning imperialism in Asia...
...Covering only about 4,750 corporations and representing about 70 per cent of dividends paid, the Department's figures are as follows: 1941___________________$3,942,000,000 1942 __________________ $3,528,800,000 1943_________________ $3,535,500,000 1944 (nine months) _____ $2,486,300,000 It is significant that the first nine months of this year show a gain of about 3.5 per cent over a like period last year...
...Airtight Profiteering SOME weeks ago The Progressive called attention to the Securities and Exchange Commission report showing that war corporations are piling up unprecedented capital reserves...
...This mischievous nonsense is kept alive by the simple expedient of ignoring all developments which reveal a growing popular concern with the terms of the peace settlement itself, rather than with just the anatomy of a world "security" league...
...It must display statesmanship...
...Here indeed are two examples of labor statesmanship at its best...
...This statement assarted that "the labor movement cannot overlook" the dangers of a peace of revenge and dismemberment, "for what happens to the common people of Germany may ultimately determine what happens to the common people of other countries, including our own...
...To the stockholder, the stock dividend is preferable to a cash, payment from a tax standpoint, in that it is exempt from income taxes—a feature of special interest to holders in the upper surtax brackets," this guide for big money investors declares...
...Here is a willingness to take the long view, to make the fight, however slow and painful, for a peace settlement which gets at the very causes of war and does not stop with the mere establishment of instruments of force and suppression...
...But the raising of the basic problems of peace and causes of war by almost anyone or any Oi.ganization of prominence is certain to be shunted to the wastebasket or want-ad pages...
...They called attention to the fact that "Nehru, Azad, and many thousands of leaders and active members of the Indian National Congress are now languishing in jails in India because of their insistence upon the principles enunciated in the Atlantic Charter and in the declarations of Teheran, and that the Government of Great Britain, through its Prime Minister and Viceroy of India, has repeatedly insisted that it would not negotiate with representatives of the Indian people who demand independence...
...ANOTHER example of alert and forward-looking leadership in labor's ranks was the recent statement by the American Labor Conference on International Affairs warning against the imposition of a harsh, uneconomic peace settlement on conquered Germany...
...Record shattering profits are being piled up after taxes, working capital has hit an unprecedented high, and dividends are being declared in unparalleled amounts on a tax-dodging basis...
...Press and radio commentators have sought to peddle the fiction that questions of United'Nations policy toward subject peoples, small nations, imperialism, and boundaries, were being raised only by ''isolationists" and "obstructionists" bent on "embarrassing" the Administration and "dividing" the Allies...
...A Heartening Trend TWO recent declarations on foreign affairs by responsible labor organizations present heartening evidence of a courageous willingness to look beyond the mere blueprints for international police machinery to the basic need for a democratic, anti-imperialist peace settlement...
...It must not yield to the passion of the moment...
...Here was the voice of American working men, united in one of the most powerful organizations in the world—an organization whose support contributed to a great extent to the re-election of President Roosevelt—calling for urgently-needed action on one of the most dangerous threats to the future peace and security of the world...
...In it these workers pointed out the vital necessity of assuring the peoples of India, China, Burma, Malaya, Indo-China, and the East Indies that the winning of this war will result in their freedom...
...Let the Women's Uplift and Saturday Afternoon Matthew Arnold Club of Cattle Crossing, Wyo., declare for an international police force and it is definitely "news...
...The people of these Asiatic countries, the resolution read, are demanding "full and complete independence now, a demand which has every law of justice and morality on its side...
Vol. 8 • November 1944 • No. 48
