Freedom Begins at Home

With a solemn bow to the Atlantic Charter, which "respects the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live," the U.S. Government resolved last week that home rule begins in your own backyard.

Poverty-struck and overpopulated Puerto Rico, stepchild among U.S. territories, was chosen as the first backyard for experimental freedom. Governor Rexford Guy Tugwell proposed that Puerto Ricans be given the right to elect their own governor. Franklin Roosevelt quickly stepped up to announce that he liked the idea. If Congress changes the Organic Act of 1917, self-government will go into effect in Puerto Rico in 1944 or as soon thereafter as the war ends.

The chief U.S. proponent of Puerto Rican home rule has been curly-haired, idealistic Governor Tugwell, onetime Brain Truster. Last week, as reports circulated that he would resign before home rule arrives to give way to a President-appointed native chief executive, Reformer Tugwell was in Washington pleading for more food for the 1,869,245 Puerto Ricans. Despite the temporary boom caused by military expansion, the island is still desperately poor. Many of its children are underfed, much of its population (31.1%) is illiterate. The wages of the jibaros who work the sugar plantations are woefully low. Both U.S. and native politicos knew that self-government might gladden the hearts of the people but it would not solve their economic woes.

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