Four Ideas

There were four notable comments on Industry and Labor.

Baker on Velvet. Newton Diehl Baker, discussing technological Unemployment in Manhattan last fortnight, declared: "The advantages and gains which come from machinery have no right to be all velvet to industry unless they are velvet to society. Industry has no right to take till the gains that come from this rapid substitution of machine process for human hands without bearing a substantial part of the consequent dislocation of the human element which it causes."

Wages v. Dividends. Edward F. McGrady, A. F. of L.'s Washington lobbyist, argued in Philadelphia: "The wage earner has the same right to security of employment that the stockholder has to the security of dividend payments . . . Just as reserves are accumulated to secure dividends, there should also be guarantees that part of these reserves would be set aside to protect the worker in slack times. . . . Wage payments in industry in the first half of 1930 were below 1929 by $707,000,000 while dividend payments increased over 1929 by $350,000,000."

"This Silly Optimism." From his riverside Church pulpit in Manhattan, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick preached: "Individualism in the modern world is insanity. Optimism is a dangerous lie. If our businessmen were only realists, if they ceased this silly optimism, then the disastrous consequences of our present Pollyanna attitude might be averted. . . . We need the voice and spirit of Jeremiah. . . . If the business brains of this country were devoted to social problems rather than the making of money, economic life could readily be rescued from its inhumanity. . . . Unless we adapt our capitalistic society to the needs of the present age and adapt it to social planning and control,* some form of Communism will inevitably be thrust upon our children. Meanwhile verbal attacks on Communism will avail us nothing."

"Virtue of Idleness." Irishman George William Russell ("AE") declared in Manhattan: "I've a complaint against he U. S. It arises out of Longfellow's 'Psalm of Life.' That poem is drilled into every child. They never forget . . . the line 'let us then be up and doing' and America has been 'up and doing' ever since. That is the cause of all your economic problems. You are working people so hard that you have, naturally, overproduction. You should cultivate the adorable virtue of idleness. . . ."

* Dr. Dewey's phrase in his Third Party appeal to Senator Norris (see p. 12).

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