UNITED STATES FUTURE

Taranaki Daily News, 27 January 1933, Page 5

UNITED STATES FUTURE

WILL THERE BE REVOLUTION’

HOOVER GROUP WARNING.

FUSING SOCIAL PURPOSES.

San Francisco, Jan. 4.

The President’s research committee on social trends, after three years’ study, repotted in New York that there “can be no assurance” that “violent revolution” in America can be averted "unless there cffn Hp a more impressive integration of social skills and fusing of social purposes than is revealed by recent trends.” The committee’s findings emphasised that the group did not wish ’“to assume an attitude of alarmist irresponsibility,” but added that it would be "highly negligent” to imminent perils in further advance of our heavy technical machinery over crumbling roads and shaking bridges.” “There are times,” the committee reported, “when silence Is not neutrality, but assent.” The research was financed by the Rockefeller Foundation, and more than 500 investigators throughout the country took part in it. The findings were published in two volumes of 1568 pages. The report covers a multitude of subjects from “happiness” to technology, divorce, birth control, graft, bootlegging and international relations. Near the end of the findings, the committee reports: “The alternative to constructive social initiative may conceivably be a prolongation , of a policy of 'drift* and; some readjustment as time goes on. More, definite alternatives, however, are urged by dictatorial systems in. which the factors of force and violence may loom large. In such cases the basic decisions are frankly imposed by power groups, and violence may subordinate technical intelligence in social advance. , “Unless there can be a more impressive integration of social skills and using of social purposes than is revealed by recent trends, there ca_ be no assurance that these alternatives, with their accompaniments of violent revolution, dark periods of repression and libertarian and democrator forms, and the proscription and loss of many useful elements in the present productive systern, can be averted.” / SIX-HOUR day. Among the committee’s were these: “A change in the distribution of income, which puts more purchasing power in the hands of wage earners, would enormously increase the market for many staples, and go far toward providing places for all competent workers, but for the near future we see little prospect for a rapid increase 'of wage disbursements above the 1929 level . . .

The six-hour day and a five-day week are methods of distributing the loss of jobs in less inequitable fashion . . A - solvent unemployment- fund would do much , to mitigate the distress which many now suffer before finding new openings ... An extension of old-age pensions to care for victims, of progress may bulk large in future discussions. ; ■ “People whose property is rendered valueless by new methods may in future demand compensation after some fashion. For example, investors in public utilities which have become unprofitable by reason of competition which they cannot meet, and which the State will not prevent, demand that the Government buy their holdings. One possibility is a further extension of the list of public utilities to intrude coal mining, and perhaps other industries.

“Unless there is a speeding up of social invention or a slowing down of mechanical inventions, grave maladjustments are certain to result . . . In this field (of government) the most disquieting developments have been those of the intrusion .of . the .graft system in thedom'aih of the .- Federal Government, especially in the form of bootlegging, but also touching the Cabinet in the Teapot Dome case, and the rise of racketeering in certain urban communities. The lower forms of collusion between the courts and crime, the intermediate types of job brokerage in judgeships, and the more refined manifestations-of judicial remissness are a challenge to our constructive statesmanship, and at times an occasion for profound despair.” LIVING STANDARD THREATENED. The American standard of living for the very near future may decline because of the lower wages caused by unemployment, possible slowness of business recovery, and the weakness of mass action by employees. Two great social organisations, the economic and governmental, “are growing at ,a rapid rate,” while two others, the Church and the family “have declined in social significance, although not in Munan value.” “Church and family have lost many of their regulatory influences over behaviour.” Government, like the family, has been backward in strengthening its social services to meet new conditions. The report also says: “A larger proportion of work by machines and a smaller proportion of human labour is to be expected in the future. There are indeed a few cases of wholly automatic factories. The depression has put employers under the severest pressure to devise more economic methods of production, which means in many cases the use of less labour to turn out a given volume of goods, at best, the problem of technological unemployment promises to remain grave in the years to. come. One hope for a solution is that inventions of new .products will increase more rapidly than the invention of lab-our-saving machines and methods to reduce it. Strikes have declined 80 per cent since the World War. The membership of American trade unions declined from 5,000,000 in 1920 to 3,300,000 in 1931. When other functions than membership are considered it is clear that the organisation of labour has not gone . forward as have other parts of the economic system.

“Americans have but scanty traditional equipment for amusing themselves gracefully and wholesomely. The data seems to show an increase in crime since the beginning of the century, but hardly a crime wave.” The members of the group presenting the report included many leaders of all ranges of American thought