DUCKING THE ISSUES
Ducking The Issues THE rapid deterioration of inter-Allied relations since the secret conferences of the Big 3 at Yalta is cause for the gravest concern for all Americans, including those who, like...
...Tn 1935 REA was created...
...From 1935 to 1944 the number of electrified farms jumped from 743,954 to 2,557,247...
...REA has demonstrated that it can get electricity to the "stubborn" farmers by letting the farmers do it themselves...
...Not only is the method of our Allied leaders suspect, but their motives fail equally to stand the test of statesmanlike peacemaking...
...Anyone who frees himself from the make-believe world in which the radio commentators live and studies the hard facts as they are emerging from Washington, Moscow, and London, must recognize that Yalta raised more problems than it settled and that its widely ballyhooed "compromises" provide only a quicksand foundation for the structure of international cooperation and world peace for which all men everywhere yearn...
...More than $18,000,000 has been paid ahead of the dates the loans were due...
...in 1935, 10.9 had power...
...Hit-lerism and Fascism, and the wars they spawned, were the direct result of social and economic diseases—diseases which will not be ctSred by forming organizations or disputing over voting strength, but rather by a courageous determination to get at the basic maladjustments which torment the world, brought on this war, and if left unsolved, will give us World War III...
...In the 10 year period from 1925 to 1935, when there was no REA to "interfere" with rural electrification, the number of farms provided with electric service by the private utilities increased from 204,780 to 743,954...
...A report turned out by the Institute contains the breathless announcement that only about half the farms of the nation have been electrified...
...Each co-op is a self-liquidating project...
...The utilities were willing but the farmers were just too stubborn to meet their prices...
...The haggling over voting representation on the organization to enforce the peace may be alright after we have established the peace settlement to be enforced, but right now it serves only to obscure far more important and more fundamental issues...
...It can be argued that the slow rate of growth in the years prior to the creation of REA was not the fault of the utilities...
...How REA broke down this stubborn attitude of the farmers was recently illustrated in Ohio...
...The inference, of course, is that the Rural Electrification Administration has failed in its job, therefore it must be finished by the private utilities...
...Their purpose was conquest, self-aggrandizement, division of booty, and the enslavement of other peoples...
...Thus, from 1935 to 1944, 1,813,293 farms, never before electrified, were hooked up to the highlines...
...They are determined to maintain their empires, extend their spheres of influence, suppress the democratic aspirations of liberated peoples, and generally do as little as possible to get at the basic causes of war...
...NOW, more important than any of these developments, or all of them combined, is the simple, dominating fact that our leaders are going at the vital business of peacemaking in the wrong way...
...Of course they want peace, as we all do, but they seem totally unwilling to pay the price which peace demands...
...To consider for a moment REA's "failure," let's take a look at some of the Institute's own figures on extension of farm electrification in the United States...
...The Record Speaks THE Edison Electric Institute, a front organization for the private utilities, which suddenly and understandably changed its name from the National Electric Light Association about the time that its founder and moving spirit, Sam Insull, jogged off to Greece just ahead of the sheriff, has discovered the American farmer...
...This represented,a percentage increase of 10.9 in 1935 to 41.9 in 1944...
...In 1925, 3.2 per cent of the farms were electrified...
...By expanding REA in the postwar era, Congress can see to it that the more than 5 million farmers still without electricity will have the same opportunity...
...Consider for a moment the developments of the past week or two: Prime Minister Churchill has bluntly asserted that the imperial affairs of the British Empire are nobody's business but Britain's, and hence cannot be the subject of discussion at the San Francisco or any other conference...
...The most recent report shows that the co-ops are meeting the loans far ahead of due date...
...Well, the REA co-ops, contrary to the claims of the Institute, are borrowing Federal money no cheaper than private utilities are borrowing from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation...
...As Stuart Chase and Ernest L. Meyer point out so ably in their articles in this issue, our leaders are refusing to face up squarely to the deep-going social and economic issues whose solution alone can offer hope to a hungry and war-weary world...
...President Roosevelt has confessed that he subscribed to a secret deal at Yalta under which Russia and the United States are to have three votes apiece in the Assembly of the world security organization, and this despite the fact that these two nations, along with Britain, are to control absolutely the much more powerful wing of the organization—known as the Security Council...
...Hitler and Mussolini used to hold "international conferences" of that character, but their purpose was neither peace nor democracy...
...For one thing, it is too much to expect a democratic peace settlement to emerge from the back rooms of secret diplomacy, even if those back rooms are in a Persian castle in Teheran or a Tsarist palace in Yalta...
...One of the first things the co-ops did after taking over a private utility was to reduce the connection charge from $500 to $5, the normal co-op membership fee...
...And what, if anything, is the cost of this vitally needed program to the taxpayers...
...Ducking The Issues THE rapid deterioration of inter-Allied relations since the secret conferences of the Big 3 at Yalta is cause for the gravest concern for all Americans, including those who, like the editors of The Progressive, refused to be stampeded into wild-eyed acceptance of the Declaration of Crimea as holy writ...
...In the preceding 10 years, when there was no REA and the power trust had the field to itself, there was an increase of 539,174 farms electrified...
...Marshal Stalin has flouted his announced pledge to build a Polish regime more broadly and democratically based than the Made-in-Moscow Lublin government, and has now demanded that the puppet Polish regime be given full representation at San Francisco...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 15
