Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-03-04
Idlensss and Communism.

yesterday members OF the senate us
cussed the question of unemployment
in the United States. One of the
speakers declared that the administra-
ton is concealing or misstating the
number of persons who are now out OF
work. One said that nothing had been
done by the administration to make
work for the jobless. One declared that
red scare" has been started by GER
tain interests to distract attention away
from the unemployment situation.
1t is rather an idle undertaking to
cite statistics on unemployment, be-
cause statistics cannot be habitat
is to say, accurate statistics. With all
the resources of the Department of
Labor it cannot reach the exact facts,
cannot enumerate the jobless. Short
of a Nationwide census it can only
approximate the total number by esti-
nation, based upon weekly returns
from typical industries or establish
mentS.
Nobody, in or out of the administra-
ton, has said that there is a normal
percentage of employment in this coun-
try. Nobody has claimed that there
Is no more than the normal degree Of
privation due to enforced idleness. The
administration officials have asserted
that the tide has turned and that there
are fewer men out of work now than
three months ago. They may be wrong
but their error is one of information,
not of design. For there is no point to
the making of deliberately false state
ments about the economic condition
of the country. To say that more men
are now at work than in December is
not to make more work for men. And
nobody knows that fact better than the
President or the Secretary of Labor or
the Secretary of Commerce.
About the red scare" which it has
been charged has been raised for
camoufage of a bad economic situa-
ton, just the same observation is per-
tinent. Mr.. Matthew Vol, an officer of
the American Federation of Labor, who
is accused of starting, as a means of
distracting public attention from the
high percentage Of unemployment, the
report of a proposed Communist dem
onstration in the United States day
after tomorrow, perhaps knows better
than administration officials, or even
than any member of the Senate, how
prevalent is idleness today in this
country. But to charge him with de-
liberately inventing tale of Commu-
mist agitations for the sake of drawing
a herring across the trail of the labor
statistician is altogether unwarranted.
It is just as absurd to deny the
pernicious activity of the Moscow-di-
rected Communists in this country as it
is to deny an unusual degree of unem-
ployment. There is nothing inconsis-
tent or illogical or improbable about
such a statement as that of Mr.. Vol,
to which exceptions are taken. Com
munists are unquestionably trying to
take advantage of the prevalence of
trouble, to incite demonstrations, to
make converts to the cause of radi-
calism. They have no remedy for idle
ness to propose other than the abolition
of what they call capitalism and the
institution of Communist state, such
as that which is being attempted in
Russia. This is their harvest time,
when the streets are filled with job
hunters, when bread lines are forming.
Let there be truce to such displays
of short-sighted partisanship. Let the
fact be frankly faced that there is
impending concentrated assault upon
the American system of government
by small but perniciously persistent
group Of deluded theorists. Even if
they are numerically an inf1nitestimal
minority they may make trouble. To
softpedal their activity, to deny their
existence or their purpose is to en-
courage them.