CONDITIONS IN U.S.A.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 September 1934, Page 9

CONDITIONS IN U.S.A.

POPULARITY OF PRESIDENT PLEA FOR UNIVERSAL SUPPORT. OPINIONS OF AN AMERICAN. LETTER TO TARANAKI FRIEND. Some pungent comments on the present state of affairs in the United States are made by an American business man in a letter to a friend in New Plymouth. “Here in America,” he says, “I would not say that things were worse. On the other hand, I cannot truthfully tell you that they are much better. The list of the unemployed is conservatively placed at about 7,000,000. New projects are under discussion or being started from day. to day, largely financed by Government loans or credits. There is considerable dissatisfaction expressed here and there with the proceedings. Rightly or wrongly, many people feel that immense sums of money are being diverted from their rightful channels and into the pockets of the politicians. “Nevertheless, among the rank and file I believe the popularity of .the President is unabated. Furthermore, the Opposition Party (Republican) seems to have no definite programme to offer to . the electorate, and no constructive criticisms to make. They cry ‘Wolf, Wolf,’ and tell you how much better off you would be under a Republican regime, but we had foUr years from 1928 to 1932 of Mr. Herbert Hoover and his policy of ‘Stand pat and do nothing.’ He told us that there should be a chicken in every dinner pail, two cars in each garage. .A ten per cent, increase in the popularity of the State of Mississippi he claimed was due to the beneficent influence of the Republican Party. Likewise, he said, poverty as far as it is humanly possible had forever been abolished in America. “Years ago my grandmother told me that fine feathers do not make fine birds. Mr. Hoover said that if his opponent was elected we should find grass growing in the street. The fine feathers have blown away, and instead of fine birds we find a scrawny scarecrow, and in place of grass growing in the street I can at this very moment as I look out of my window see thirty-five automobiles on one city block just waiting for the traffic lights to change. MEMORY SHORT-LIVED. “Unfortunately, the memory of the American public is short-lived. The mistakes of the Republican Party for the twelve-year period 1918 to 1932, are many and varied, and without any question a very generous portion of the troubles that have since fallen upon us are entirely due to their mal-administration. “I have not any doubt whatever that some of the criticisms now directed at the party in power are well-founded, and it would be truly un-American if tire reverse were true. The trouble is that when the Day of Reckoning comes we are quite apt to throw up our hands in amazement because a few million here or there have been diverted from the proper channels, and lose sight of the fact that what has been wrongfully used is only a drop in the bucket, by comparison with the hundreds of millions of dollars that had been expended in the public good. “‘To him that hath shall be given.’ In a materially minded world this is construed to apply to worldly goods, and sometimes indeed it seems to be true. Naturally a man who has been brought up On the old status of keeping what he got and .grabbing as much more, as he, could, does not want to give up any share of his estate or position. He goes ultra-conservative, and any project for redistribution is to. be condemned as radical and unsound!

“In season and out, for many years I have preached and talked that redistribution will come and must come either by the ballot or by the bullet. No system which allows one man, a group or a class to live in the highest luxury can endure, while the masses grovel in abject squalor. To paraphrase an old saying: ‘lf this be Socialism (treason), make the most of it.’ REITERATION OF A DREAM. “President Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ is nothing more or less than a reiteration of the American dream discussed by James Truslow Adams in “The Epic of America,’ and it is neither more or less than a re-statement of the Square Deal made famous twenty-five years ago by his illustrious namesake T.R. Truly as Milton says: ‘Long is the way and dark, that out of Hell leads up to light.’ Nevertheless I do believe that a new day is dawning, and while the period of adjustment may be painful to many and possibly may kill a few, yet a man isgoing to. be given the opportunity to share in the wealth that his work is creating, and in the evening of Ids life sit under his own vine and fig tree and not stand on a street corner, cap in hand, asking for alms or peddling matches. Sure enough, it will be years and possibly centuries working to its goal. There will be many shocks and dislocations along the way. But the way to begin is to commence, and if no start is made we shall ultimately have confusion twice confounded.

“Consequently if F.D.R. wants to blaze a new trail and once more renew hope in the hearts of men that the American dream can be turned into the American fact, then let men everywhere support him and be done with their petty selfish interests and destructive criticism and their insensate greed.”