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i u Issued Twice a Month P6ter«on,s Paper” VOLUME III. DUNN, N. C., AUGUST 1, 1935 Subscription Price $14)0 a Year NUMBER 44 MONROE’S BRILLIANT EDITOR “PASSES” THIS PAPER’S LEADING ARTICLE OF JULY 15 An Open Letter to the Editor of the State’s Voice In Response to His Invitation to Readers; Question to Be Answered Ii Why Poverty Increases as Fast as Progress (By R. F. BEASLEY.) Mr. Peterson, editor of The State’s Voice, Dear Sir: I see that when you ^turned loose your edi torial broadside in die last issue you invited any one who disagreed with you to write a piece dis proving any of the argument he found faulty. And in case any one found the argument satis fying he was invited to say so. You took a right hefty topic, 7,Lopping Off Branches of a Noxious Plant Not Enough; A' Discussion of the Eco nomic Principles'Justifying President Roosevelt’s Demand for Taxes on Large Incomes, Inherit ances and Gifts.” Any man who can plow a fur row through as big field as that and not get tan gled up before he gets to the end of the row deserves some commendation. And I am writing, not to dispute any part of your argument, but to commend your successful venture through the barbed wire entanglements. I once heard of a man who was very proud of having made a speech in which he said he had used words that nobody knew the meaning of. Your argument can have little meaning for about 99 out of one hundred, readers, but that isynot the fault of -the argument. It is due to the general Ihclc of ability few* ab stract reasoning. Pepple. yfho have time to. read it can not understand what yqu arfe driving at, and those who mi^t; jjpder^ipd wifi not take the time to study the difficulty that has ever been encountered by dios^ who triied to sift makes things and time when eye£y6<klyr khdws more, than any-^ body else we have a great deal of sound and furj£ which we call enlightenment but which is prin-' cipallv noise. The only compensation to a logical mind is that its owner feels a satisfaction in hav ing worked out something for himself that is sat isfying to himself. But, as some one said in a short story the other day about a man being a gentleman, that gets you nowhere. * * Your manufacturer, Mr. Barringer, who has decided that the burden of interest is the chief evil of the times, got a great truth by the tail, but you successfully showed him, I think, that the tail is of very little consequence unless the hide goes with it. I have a “subscriber and correspondent, who like Air. Barringer, insists that interest is the chief sin. But he never could convert me because I felt that lie was only pulling the tail of some thing much bigger and unless we could get hold of that it would not make much difference wheth-* er interest were! charged or not. I felt towards his argument just like I felt towards one you have made to me in my home on the occasion of your visits. (Your argument was about the volume of money and its rapidity of circulation. Something in it, but not much of great consequence taken separately. But now you see a much larger pic ture—the whole picture of society as it moves along from year to year, and not just a few indi viduals. * * ♦ 1 his inability to see society as a whole and not as a lot of individuals struggling against each other, is the chief weakness of the times, it seems to me, and especially of those who want to o ' something to correct some of the manifest wea noises. It is splitting us up in groups, each &f0UP striving as individuals strive now to get a ea 011 the shoulders of some other. f have 0 611 thought if it were possible to give every re everything he thought he wanted we would stm hove no general and wide improvement, ecause they would largely offset each other. Most peop e are incapable of abstract reasoning and. for * reason we have no leaders who become interes in going to the bottom of things and seeking i find out if there are not a few general and damental principles, which, if they could be oU. and applied, would wipe away ynost of our socia and economic difficulties lilce^the sun^scatters morning mists. But leadefs are not interested W.«i these because they cannot get-a*-following. The average man wants a Huey Long who will give him his share at once. And the man who tries to explain that Huey can’t do it no matter how loud he shouts, gets no hearing. He is then compelled to oppose Huey with Huey’s own weapons, and in the conflict the truth of the matter is never found out. For that reason nothing much can be done at once, but only a little step here now and one somewhere else some other time. But I hold that if we can make political democracy fool proof long enough it will in time and gradu ally stumble upon enough economic truth to revo lutionize society. That’s why I am for political democracy, for nothing else has ever worked and it is our only hope. I think we are stumbling for ward right well now. But it is an uphill business. Mr. Roosevelt heads in the right direction and, I believe, with great sincerity of purpose and devotion of heart, and. that he does not try too much and so that the plan of pensioning employes "out of sfy-v - ings. tends frustrate the very thing he wishes td| dope.' But anxX to desert him on thaf^account V • No: i' -■ ' . no#; get as larger an Acreage as hV wished; The* 'Townsend pension.people are’ prepacing to desert' trim because they don’t get $200 per month. You would expect people who think they stand to lose some of their privileges if a better state of . society were brought about would be against him. But the tragedy is thatj the greatest? desertions will, be among- those whom he is really hoping to help." ' '*; ak Ik A . There has been but one political philosopher in this country. who sought to brush away the trash and go to the bottom of things/ He saw that there was something in this state of society which w,e call; progress which inherently multi-. , plied 'poverty on the one hand while it engenders and solidifies great wealth on the other. So he called his great "work “ Progress and Poverty.” He stripped the fallacies from the old political economists and were he living today would strip them as well from the present ones. So powerful was his thesis that wholesale poverty increases pari passu with the introduction of all the bene ficent improvements and inventions and in spite of them, that his contention-arose to the plane of moral indictments against things as they were and are. And so precise was his reduction of the entanglements of the times to fundamental prin ciples, that fifty years ago he perfectly described the present depression which came long after he • was dead. So far as I know he was the first man to point out the fact that society cannot live m the future on what it produces in the present, nor in the present on what was produced in the years gone by. If a man would once get hold of that idea as ytm have done, he would be ready to be gin some real thinking. But alas, they will not do it, and the blind are the most vociferous leaders of the blind. But why poverty increases with prog ress is the question we have got to answer. You contribute much to the answer. * * * You say, “let all production stop this hour and rich America cannot live two years with any de cree of comfort. Yet there are probably hundreds of billions of dollars of existing currency and credits laid away, as WEALTH mind you . enough to feed and clothe the holders, for many, years provided that at all'times it be redeemable in real wealth.” That is true. And because we go on from year to year, the people who have man-., aged to get hold of the credits, which have come from a denial of consumption out of the present production, are able to take all that their credits represent out of future production. And that part ■ they take out of future production will have been produced not. by the present but by the future workers, who, in giving it up wifi receive as a whole no quid pro quo. As you say, what people save is not wealth, but credits with which they will take wealth from the future. It is now es teemed a virtue to save credits, as in life insurance. Yet this saving of credits chokes down produc tion in the present, so that labor, ready to pro- > duce more and more, cannot function. There is no demand for labor. The supply exceeds the de mand thpugh millions are without, the things they need. The other day the life insurance companies turned over to Mr. Kock,eteller rive million dollars because he had reached the age of expectancy, _ - This "mony was collected from the millions:, of . . policy .holders wbo^skimped to save and pay fheir This, ista^perfect example of the fact that *'** ;5s%e are at present operating a thing which may :ff e he good for an individual may become very bad ,f . for society as a whole. An individual is bound • tQjake insurance, because there iss no other meanak^ to. provide for the future. But when, all the production' of wealth in SV^ur; general: ideatS that we should jproduce - a plenty for this year’s needs and use it this year* and have a means of guaranteeing that while’We - are producing a plenty for- next year, every one will be provided for, is sound, I think. That the income taxes is the best present method of start ing is sound and if carried to the right extent, accompanied by old age pensions, and the em ployment^# the people by the government in holding up arid preserving the natural resources of the country, will go far on the road. If the people would, just stand by Mr. Roosevelt - on these propositions for the present, everything would take care of itself in time. But I look for them to' be shooed away by the Huey Loftgs, the old standpatters, the ignorant Democrats, and the others who are now in full cry on his heels. This question of why poverty increases in the presence of actual plenty ari’d potential abundance's has got to be answered or political democracy will bust all to pieces. You can’t put power into the hands of people and deny them bread with out an explosion. And because as yet our people do not turn to the disaster of physical violence, the obligation is heavy upon the' leaders to show : them the right way to exert their political power. This, obligation is not being met today, either through the ignorance of our leaders or through their lack of understanding of the terrible disas ter which awaits a failure to show them the lead. The moment that times began to get a little bet ter the complacency of the leaders began to re assert itself. We see the roads lined with new-au tomobiles and forget that there are still millions who do not have enough to eat for themselves and their families. That part-of.organized society which is well fixed seems to feel no obligation to give them jobs and many of its spokesmen are now lambasting the government for raising money to give them enough to keep soul and body together. Men who should be trying to solve the mam problem are wasting their breath in dribbling and warning against hair-brained measures which they choose to call socialism, communism, destruction of the constitution, and what not.-Give men like Mr, Hoover everything they, ask for and society would still be faced with-the dire, question of the increase in poverty with every new invention de signed to help - mankind. Such men are no. better fitted to. lead .to the light of day jthan the H uey ; Longs. They both lead into the ditcb» - 7- r' - ' ,.r i .'" ■■ I-,;- • ■ V ' - -• a.. Jr.. -w r
The State’s Voice (Dunn, N.C.)
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Aug. 1, 1935, edition 1
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