The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1932-07-04
BY I. AMTER.

HENRY FORD, the man who
A claims to have revolutionized
the auto industry, the man who
was going to get the boys out of
the trenches by Christmas, 1917,
by means of peace Ship" the
man who despite the closing down
of his big plants in the year 1891,
still earned" SIS million dollars in
profits, has a remedy for the econ-
omic crisis. Faced with the appall-
ing unemployment situation of IS
million unemployed, he proposes
the back-to- the-land movement.
Coming from the mouth of dema-
gogues, it is spreading in many states
of the country.
This Is nothing new. In England.
the late Labor Government thought
1t could also solve the unemploy-
ment situation by gathering toge-
ther hundreds of miners and tex
tile workers and giving to them
preliminary training" in Eng
land, and shipping them to
Canada. The British Labor Gov
eminent had made an agreement
with the Canadian government for
the parceling out of certain areas
to these farmers, and the advance
of a certain sum for the purchase
of machinery, etc. The miners and
textile workers remained short
time, and then demanded that the
Canadian government ship them
back to England.
Mr.. Selfridge, a "self-made" Amer
lean London merchant, in May of
this year, also saw the possibility
of adjusting the situation by
movement back to the land. He
declared, "that about 200, 900 miners
in Wales now unemployed would
never again be employed in the
mines, for the reason that there
Is already too much coal" He
stated further, with a state of
overproduction in almost every big
field of activity, we cannot reason
ably expect that, except for oc-
caSional bocms, there will ever be
work enough to go around in the
highly developed, intensely civilized
countries of the world. The big
cities are quite incapable of giving
work again to these unemployed"
Mr.. Selfridge forgot one fact: That
there has been no draught, no I'M
Reproduction of food supplies, but
on the contrary, an overproduction,
a Quitting of the markets, and
therefore the return of the workers
of the cities to the land who will
never again be employed, will mean
still greater production of food
supplies.
HENRY FORD, however, went fur
IL ther. He not only advocated
return of the workers to the land,
but he even set up a small jim
Crow colony in Michigan. What
is Henry Ford's idea? 1.-THE use
of the land is the best form of I'M
employment insurance" This is
lie in the face of it. With hun
dreds of thousands of farmers
leaving the farm with their fami-
lies for the cities because they can
not live; with farmers unable to
send their children to school for
lack of clothing, shoes, etc.; with
farmers being compelled to allow
their crops to rot in the field be-
cause they cannot find any markets
for them; with farmers in the South
who were forbidden in several
states to raise cotton for whole
year because of oversupply in the
market-this means not unemvaoy-
ment insurance, but stark st. va
ton for them.
In Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Neb-
raska, in entire counties of the
Dakotas, Minnesota and Montana,
according to Mauritz Ho1lgren,
There are thousands of grain
growers and hog raisers receiving
public charity. some of the
farmers are renters who are paving
no rent. The landlords do not dis
possess them as they find that pay