The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1931-09-07
On This Labor Day

the more serious problem of working at any
price and under any conditions.
The owners of industries are not faced
with the problem of meeting demands for
more wages but that of keeping their fac
tories operating at any wage.
The gaudy floats, the blare of bands, the
marching men are missing from the city
streets. Instead there are gatherings of
committees to discuss ways and means of
feeding the hungry during the coming win
ter, not because the country lacks for food
supplies but because those who need food
are unable to buy it.
The Equalization of this day as a holiday
came in recognition, forced through the
years by organized workers. of the fact that
labor is not commodity to be bought and
sold in a competitive market.
That conception of labor, still harbored
by few anti-social industrialists, is basically
the same as that of slave labor.
The black man of other years was sold
outright. To hire labor in a competitive
market is to buy man by piecemeal, with
the added advantage to the employer that
when the worker grows old and decrepit he
need not be fed or housed.
When the nation lost its last frontier and
agriculture became secondary to industry in
the number of workers, white men finally
forced the tardy recognition of their own
humanness.
1t took years to establish any semblance
of social and industrial justice. 1t took years
to obtain a workman's compensation act to
provide for the injured soldiers of industry.
1t took years to secure, in some states, an
old age pension act. Indiana still has a
Governor who took personal pride in read
ing his veto of that humane measure when
passed by the last legislature.
The crusade of that great statesman of
Indiana, Albert Beverage, for the abolition
of child labor from mines and factory is still
incomplete and in many states children are
still condemned to toll during the years they
should be storing up health and education.
The eight-hour day was another victory
established to protect the health of workers.
Today there is the more pressing problem
of enforcing much shorter day in order that
at all.
These victories of labor have been won
under manufacturing conditions that per-
mitted all men who wished to work to obtain
work. Idleness was made a crime on the
theory that every man could get job.
Mass production and invention of labor
saving machinery, without proper distribu-
ton of the products of the machine, have
created condition that this Labor day finds
millions of men and women out of work with
the prospect of more men being on bread
lines before the snow flies.
Yet all that is being done on national
scale is the formation of crew of evangelists
who propose to beg dollars from the rich that
the voorhees, may be fed. There is no real
effort to find the one solution for unemploy-
ment, which is work for all, under distribu-
ton Of the products of labor that will satisfy
not only needs but luXuries.
Two years ago, the Fraternal Order of
Eagles raised what then seemed to be a most
radical slogan that "it is the inaienable right
of every American citizen to work at a saw
ing wage" 1t does not sound radical today
to the man who has been in enforced idlenesS
for months with little hope for job for
months to come. 1t does not sound radical
to his wife or his children.
There is work for every one in this coun-
try and will always be work until every slum
is replaced by cottage, every home is
equipped with every modern convenience,
every household is well stocked with food,
every child has the very best of education.
This nation has the man power and the
machinery to produce these material means
of life. This nation has inexhaustible raw
materials. 1t has the best of scientific
knowledge.
A nation that has been able to put to-
gether the intricate parts of machines which
replace human labor should have the genius
to put together the men, the machine, the
materials and then distribute them to those
who create the finished products.
The solution may change some of our
present day conceptions of social justice.
But the solution does not lie in the direction
of wage reductions for the employed, further
reducing the total purchasing power of the
nation as q whole nor in the nermanent