The Butler County press. [volume] (Hamilton, Ohio) 1900-1946, 1931-09-04
THOSE RESPONSIBLE!

An earthquake or flood destroys q
small city, and the entire world takes
immediate interest. The Red Cross,
the navy and the airplanes rush doc
tors and supplies. The newspapers
carry graphic stories of the catas-
tropne. Tne human suffering is vivid
ly pictured.
An industrial earthquake has
thrown six or seven million Of wage
earners out of employment, and COM
PEELED many more to work part time.
The suffering created is widespread.
The savings which wage earners have
devoted years to accommodating, inde-
pendently- minded men and women are
forced to become subjects Of charity.
Homes are lost. Desperation takes
the place of contentment. The deaden-
ing fear of want, inability to secure
work, eats into the heart and minds
like an acid.
But there are large number for
tunately situated who look upon the
situation without much stirring of
the heart-strings. They say that
there always has been poverty; that
there always have been depressions;
that wage earners, knowing this,
should prepare themselves for future
depressions by saving a portion of
their wages. They tell the workers
that it is well-known fact that bust
ness runs in cycles; that what goes up
must come down, and that all we need
is patience and fortitude for the busi-
ness tide will soon rise and everyone
will be happy once more. They even
point out the lessons to be learned,
and impress upon us the necessity of
preparing when so-called prosperity
returns, so that we will be safe
guarded for the next depression which
is bound to come.
Earthquakes and floods come from
natural causes; they cannot be
avoided. But unemployment, particu-
larly in our country, is due princi-
pally to the unwisdom, the short
sightedness, and the greed of those
men who are known as the captains
of industry.
The major causes for unemploy-
ment at the present time are under
stood, and they are preventable.
If the business men or the govern
ment had it within their power to
prevent floods and earthquakes and
failed to do so, no words could be
found too strong to condemn them.
They would most properly be made
aware of public indignation, and they
would be promptly deposed from their
positionh of leadership. But public
condemnation is very mild when,
through the unsound, unsocial, un-
scientific, uneconomical and greedy
business policies applied by the cap
tains of industry and finance, millions
of workmen are thrown out of en-
ployment.
During the so-called period of pros
perity from 1923 to 1929, the national
wealth increased more rapidly than
ever before. The national annual in
come reached fabulous sums, yet
from the peak of this period in 1926
until the depression staggered US, the
total volume of wages paid in the
United States actually grew smaller,
so that the mass of the people were
less able to buy what was being pro-
duced in the spring of 1929 than they
were in the spring of 1926.
What happened was that the cap
tains of industry reaped inordinate
gains, they heaped up their profits,
they forgot or disregarded their obli-
cations in mad rush to accumulate
huge fortunes in a year or two. They
killed their own market by failing to
pay economically sound wages, and
now there are some of these captains,
particularly in the banking circles,
who seem determined that the wage
earners who have already suffered so
much because of an unsound distribu-
ton of the wealth produced, should
now be forced to bear an additional