Preparing the Shot!
On Housing FOR PEA PPAY ROOSEVELT One In Six Depend On Relief, Says Hopkins SOCIALIST APPEAL May 21, 1938 um income equivalent to from 4, 000 to Socialist Appeal 5, 000 a year to every family!
Vol. II. No. 21. Saturday, May 21, 1938 The present Bill makes no provision Published every week by the for the unemployed; and a forty four hour week is not going to be such a great An Editorial SOCIALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASS at 116 University Place, New York, blessing to the millions of workers on Telephone: National Office: Algonquin 8547 ten to twenty hours part time.
The housing situation in the United States is a runWhen a starving man gets a crust, it ning sore and no serious measures are being taken to Subscriptions: 00 per year; 00 for months. Foreign: 50 per year. Bundle order is sensible for him to eat it; but his aim cure it. cents per copy. Single copies cents.
should be to get a full meal particularLet us look at some of the startling figures: All checks and money ovders should be made ly when the table is loaded with food.
Two weeks ago the United States Public Health Serout to the Socialist Appeal.
Let us take this Bill, put it under our vice estimated that about three million (3, 000, 000)
Entered as second class matter September 1, belts, and then go on toward a real urban families have fewer rooms in their homes than 1937 at the post office at New York, New York, Wages and Hours standard.
there are persons. That is, families of three persons under the Act of March 3, 1879.
The kind of Wages and Hours Bill that live in two room houses or flats; families of five MAX SHACHTMAN which labor should demand in this persons that live in four room or even three room Editor.
country should include at the very least houses. One million live in dwellings with more than HAROLD ROBERTS FRANK GRAVES the following features: one and one half times as many persons as there are Associate Editors. It would apply all industries and rooms and 700, 000 live in dwellings with at least twice STANLEY occupations without exception.
as many persons as there are rooms.
Business Manager. Its minimum must be at least as And naturally, as is the custom in our great Demohigh as the Government estimates of a SAN.
cracy, the Negro families, both in the North and in the The Wages and Hours Bill minimum adequate living wage: 30 a OTIONS South, live under the worst conditions.
week.
The victory of the Roosevelt yes man, 6, 000, 000 Homes Are Needed Claude Pepper, in the Florida primaries, Its maximum hours provision must 15 FOR PEACEN Last November, Roosevelt in his message to Congress has suddenly reminded large numbers be low enough to give jobs to all those of Congressmen of their social con displaced by technological advance: 30 said that from 600, 000 to 800, 000 dwelling units a year would be needed for the next five years.
sciences. The reminder becomes especialhours per week.
ly poignant when the Congressmen con4. If it is actually to aid in maintainThe American Public Health Association, however, template the billions of dollars which ing and raising the standard of living estimated that there is a need now of 6, 000, 000 new the new Relief Bill will give the Presof the masses, the minimum wage must homes, and it emphasized that they must be of low cost.
ident for irrigation purposes in next apply to all workers over the entire 52 Even the more modest figures of the conservative autumn electoral fields.
weeks of the year, whether they are emBrookings Institution say that there is a need of 4, 500, ployed, unemployed, or employed part000 houses by 1941, or 1, 125, 000 a year, while the NaThree days after Pepper triumph, time. Supplementary relief to bring tional Housing Commission raises the figure to 1, 503, hundreds of Representatives nearly weekly income up at least to the minimum 000 a year for the next two years.
trampled each other to death in their should operate automatically and imIn New York City, which only reflects conditions scramble to sign a petition to lift the mediately whenever regular employment throughout the country, there are more than half a Wages and Hours Bill out of the asphix slows up or stops. Only in this way will million families living in 64, 000 condemned, fire trap iated chamber of the Rules Committee, the bosses and not the workers carry tenements. Flames took a death toll of 33 persons in where it was being painlessly suffocated, the burden of unemployment; and only these traps in one year; 19 others died under the debris and on to the floor of the House.
in this way will a wages and hours bill of fallen structures; the annual disease toll is beyond The Bill has now a fair chance of pas actually protect the standard of living estimate.
sing, though its opponents in the Senate of the workers.
plan delays which might prevent com There is nothing either unreasonNew York Needs pletion at this Session.
able or utopian in these demands. They Last month, Commissioner of Housing and Building, are in fact extremely modest when comWithout apology, we reproduce this cartoon from the Daily Worker of three years Alfred Rheinstein, told the City Council Committee Whether or not it will go through depared with this country resources.
ago. Readers of that Stalinist sheet will note that then, in contrast to the present, that about one billion dollars would be needed to make pends in large measure on the strength proclamation of Roosevelt peaceful role was regarded by the Communist Party of the pressure brought by labor to de If labor fights for provisions of a substantial improvement in slum eliminition and the as grist to the imperialist war mill. It is not Roosevelt who has changed!
construction of new low cost housing.
mand favorable action.
this kind, and fights not primarily Former City Housing Authority chairman, Langdon through its fair weather friends in All sections of the labor movement do, Post said that figure was two modest by half two Congress and the White House but above and must, support the Bill. Inadequate all through its own direct organized billion dollars are required at the least. And this for as it may be, if it improves conditions New York City alone!
strength and its own class actions, it in even a single sweat shop, if it stimulWhat is being done about this situation?
will find itself no longer giving thanks ates even one move to wipe out subWithin the past four years the government has profor the crumbs, but getting its teeth into union standards, it will be that much to vided only 2, 318 low rent dwellings in New York. The the meat course.
the good.
immediate need is for 500, 000!
The new government plans are no great improveIt would, however, be either a profound Untouchables By DAVID COWLES with increasing clarity: either, vernment pays relief to the unment. Under the Wagner Steagall housing act, only mistake or shameless hypocrisy to mainpoverty and demoralization under employed by taking the money tain that this present Bill is a model of The new constitution of the Commun: Harry Hopkins, Works the present economic system from the workers in the form 5, 000 additional low rent apartments will be built with ist Party, which is to be adopted recently before a House Appro system that will ensure a decent middle class in the form of Progress Administrator, testined or a struggle for a new economic of sales taxes, etc. and from the its kind, or that any legislative measure in the next 4 years a drop in the bucket.
can solve the problem of guaranteeing unanimously at the forthcoming con priations sub committee that six livelihood and will permit human higher income taxes. It makes And bear in mind what Mayor LaGuardia has pointeconomic security for the workers. We vention of that organization, provides million families in the United dignity.
only half hearted gestures to tax ed out and what was pretty well known without him: that no party member shall have perStates are dependent on some leave such apologetics to the Stalinist the monopoly capitalists. At the The absolute top rent for the slum dwellers is 30 a form of public relief. These Problem Intensified sonal or political relationships with same time, the relief appropriaunion busters and the other Roosevelt month; and eighty percent of them can afford to pay families comprise 20, 000, 000 press agents.
Trotskyists, Lovestoneites or other only 20 or under.
persons and make up one sixth The numbers who face these tions cannot keep up with the known enemies of the party and the of the whole population. They alternatives grow as economie rapidly mounting unemployment The latest housing bill put through by the Roosevelt The present Bill provides, nominally, working class.
are doomed to unemployment and activity slumps down and unemMenace of Fascism New Deal is not, properly speaking, a house building for a twenty five cents an hour minimum bill. It is a financing bill. It provides that a government wage and a forty four hour maximum We can understand the disquietude of continues. According to the New of economic activity in 1937, there These conditions show that the corporation shall guarantee new mortgages on homes were still 9, 000, 000 whom private United States is in transition.
beweek, to be modified over a period of the Stalinist chieftains. They have been York Post Hopkins said and apartments, under certain conditions. It is a boon three years to a forty cents an hour wage, losing those members whom the mono lieved the present economic sys industry could not employ. The The workers and middle class are current depression has increased discontented because increasing tem could never entirely correct their number by more than 5, 000. taxes cut their purchasing power.
lithic party regime has not succeeded in the unemployment situation.
to the banks for the credit they extend on housingforty hour week. But even these miserfor it guarantees their loans.
able provisions apply to only a minority shielding from dangerous thoughts The number of unemployed is 000. Hundreds of thousands of The unemployed are discontented Moreover, the bulk of the homes and apartment provoked by the Moscow trials and the already unbearably large. The propriated from agriculture join for us decent living and because buildings erected under this bill, where they are not of workers. Only industries related to interstate commerce are affected.
party political renegacy.
Dozens of fields agriculture, fishing, But what a confession of bankruptcy to the present economic system production.
Most of them depend ists are dicontented because they relief to 2, 600, 000 now. But due whoose beindulistirial rimorkers permanent unemployment stares jerry built, inadequate ill planned, are beyond the reach of the vast majority of the home needing, slumdomestic service, etc. are specifically to write into the party constitution a rapidly that, according to Hop: part of their livelihood if not all at making them pay higher taxes upon government relief for a fear the half hearted gestures dwelling, high rent paying workers.
excepted; and general authority is grant decree quarantining the followers of ed to suspend the application of the Bill Earl Browder against outside ideologic jobs will have to be increased of it.
For Real Housing Program in the light of specific circumstances. al influences. to at least 3, 100, 000 in the com Their struggle for government they fight continuously to cut The only serious step that will bring us close to a ing winter. He estimated that aid has deep revolutionary sig. down relief to the unemployed, An 11. 00 a week minimum, when the solution of the scandalous housing problem is a truly The new constitution also provides the Federal government would nificance. If the aid is not given, on the one hand, and on the other Government own experts say that that only American citizens, or those who have to spend 3, 000, 000, 000 for their inability to live within to pass on to workers and middle large scale government building program. It must be 1500 to 1600 a year (about 30 a week) have declared their intention of becomits share of the year relief ex. the framework of the present class the cost of the decline of based on three points: sound construction, low rents, penditures.
economie system becomes vivid capitalism. To control the disis the minimum wage to make possible ing citizens, shall be eligible for party pangs of starvation and content which may burst and the payment of union wages to building workers.
health, let alone comfort and decent liv membership. Next we may hearing that Drop In The Bucket real with all the reality of death. any time against the present An absolute minimum, making possible a serious begining; and when the most competent tech only Aryans or those who have declarTheir struggle becomes not only economie system, which they ning, is for Congress to vote a Five Billion Dollar nicians estimate that the United States This sum barely seratches the a struggle against the govern control, they propare to intro Housing program with the five billion really to go ed their intention of becoming Aryans surface of the needs of the un ment which refuses to help them duce an efficient machine for sup towards building houses!
productive plant can today even without. will be admitted to this party of has employed. And so long as the live, but also a struggle against pressing the unemployed and the Where is the money to come from?
improvement provide a general minim been internationalists.
present economic system con the present economic system workers. This machine is called tinues, the plight of the unem which dooms them to poverty, fascism.
Why, from the plutocrats, of course!
ployed will grow increasingly demoralization and death.
The actions of the unemployed The Treasury Department report of tax returns reworse. This is because the workWill Cut Relief who want to fight fascism must ers can have wages, and the ceived up to the end of August 1937, shows that 61 inbe. 1) Strengthening the unpurchasing power which wages dividuals admitted taxable net incomes, after all conIf aid is given, it still does employed movement for more gives them, only if they are not ensure the permanence of jobs and greater relief. 3)
ceivable deductions, of one million dollars. 1, 000, 000)
Statement of the National Committee, SWP American capitalisme di declining see siven in inerensing amounts ance as a militant, independent people who live in slums there are 18, 196 persons in needed in production. However, the status quo. For the sid must maintaining the Workers Al or more in 1936. As against the 40, 000, 000 American its production is declining, and because of the increasing unem union of unemployed, free from the United States who reported a total net income for After discussing the Ludlow Amendment, and their line on this question. They must become employment. Moreover, to keep ployment. If the relief appro the control of the bosses, 1936 of almost two billion dollars. 1, 875, 783, 000. the policy adopted toward it by the Political the most militant advocates of a popular reup profits, capitalism introduces priations are not increased, the LaGuardia or Roosevelt AdminiCommittee, the April session of the National These are the incomes of the individual plutocrats.
ferendum on war.
government will resort to cut stration. 3) emphasizing They must seek to have more efficient machinery, and ting the relief that each unem. fighting unity of the unemployed They do not include the deductions which clever lawyers Committee of the Socialist Workers Party labor everywhere demand that the amendment this throws even more workers ployed person gets, came to the following conclusion: fix up for them. They do not include income from taxbe formulated to provide for a popular refestopping with the employed workers and Though the Political Committee and the par rendum on the undertaking of any war, be it year a half million youths come the distribution of clothes, and tenant farmers. 1) assimilating exempt securities. They do not include, above all, the ty press were correct in combatting the paci allegedly defensive or aggressive. and that out of school and look for em. that will spread the misery. fore the House Appropriations huge earnings of wealthy corporations.
fist illusions engendered by the sponsors of all citizens from the age of 18 upward, since ployment in industry. The three These actions will drive the un sub committee: The present Five billion dollars for housing would be a good the Ludlow Amendment and the treacherous from that age they are liable to military sersources combine to create a large employed to sit ins and struggles economic system cannot solve distinction between wars of aggression and beginning. It can easily be obtained. Roosevelt, Ickes, and ever growing army of un against the relief administration. the problems of the unemployed. Jackson all the New Dealers talk about the ecovice, have the right to vote in the referendum. employed. defense embodied in the Amendment, they They must take no responsibility for the failed to estimate rightly the genuinely pro pacifist illusions fostered in connection with The relief appropriation for ing amounts, it will still not allay manently the problems of un nomic royalists. Good! But how about putting the the unemployed will not solve the growing discontent. The go employment.
gressive character of the popular response to squeeze on these plutocrats? How about making them the amendment and in particular must con their problem nor save the status the project of a referendum on war, a response tinue to expose the bourgeois politicians, inquo. It is not intended to do the disgorge a small percentage of their fabulous profits based upon the legitimate distrust which the cluding Ludlow, LaFollette and Co. themselves, first and it cannot do the second.
masses feel toward the bourgeois government, some Action, instead of Fireside Chats, instead of who seek to exploit the honest anti war senti By Hopkins own admission, the their unwillingness to fight without protest in ment of the masses by introducing a bill in by any means provide the total funds alone will not words?
the threatening imperialist war, and their de Congress and then either dropping any serious sire for democratic control of their own destiny fight for it or so diluting and circumscribing increase in private employment NEXT WEEK which From this failure, the Political Committee it as to nullify the will and longings of the industry must be depended upon essential. Private drew the incorrect tactical conclusion of a (Continued from page 1) ploit the masses of China.
ERNEST ERBER Will Review masses. They must endeavor to extend the to give jobs. But private industry It is against this war that the negative position with respect to the AmendFELIX MORROW struggle beyond the confines of purely parlia cannot give jobs. On the conment itself and the general project of a popular REVOLUTION AND COUNTER REVOLUTION mentary debate, so that workers pressure may trary, it is declining sharply, its navy is absent engaged in a Paci pare in their own way. Not by referendum on war. Such a negative position be brought into play by means of organized profits are falling, and it is pas fic war.
supporting the war making cri.
IN SPAIN isolates the party from the progressive mass The word absent here as minals of imperialism through mass action. In this way, the party will not sing on the burden of its bankmovement aroused by the project, and tends Just Off The Press only be able to correct its tactical error, but ruptey to the workers by cutting, suredly means absent far out support to the principle of colto sterilize its active struggle against imperial also to deepen and solidify its connections with not increasing, employment; by over the Pacific, engaged in war lective security, but by their 50 ist war.
the genuine and progressive movement of the and by increasing speed up. The to decide which of the imperial which alone can frustrate the cutting, not increasing, wages with Japan. War for what? War own independent class action PIONEER PUBLISHERS The party and its press must therefore alter masses.
alternatives face the workers ist robbers shall enslave and ex war plans of imperialism.
100 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK, at On The Ludlow Amendment Aerial Might Over