The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1933-01-16
BY ROBERT TALLEY
NEA Service Writer

NEA Service Writer
TN the fourth year of the de-
Il preston and with upward of
100000 persons unemployed,
Americas jobless are learning how
to live without money.
A modern civilization that pre-
sents the economic paradox of
poverty amidst plenty--of surplus
crops rotting on the farms and
hungry men in the citieS-is wit
Messing a return to the primitive
system of barter.
In a fast-groWing movement,
jobless throughout the nation are
organizing to swap their labor for
bread, to trade paoerhanging for
dentistry, auto repairs for shoes
and, in general, to exchange any
commodity for the necessities of
life which they have no money to
buy.
Latest estimates indicate that at
least 100000 persons in the
United States are now earning
sustenance in this manner. The
American Statistical Association,
meeting recently at Cincinnati,
was told by DR.. j. Douglas Brown
of Princeton university, that there
now are 140 separate barter eX-
changes operating in tWenty-nine
states, with 100000 persons in
California alone obtaining the ne
cessities of life by trading work
for goods. Even this list was
incomplete
Born of necessity and nurtured
by rugged Americanism that scorns
charity, these barter organiza-
tons Of the unemployed suddenly
have sprung up throughout the
nation, simultaneously but spon-
taneOusly.
All are similar but practically
none identical, each rejecting the
particular ideas of the commu-
nifty in which it arose.
Some use scrip as a substitute
for money, others prefer a sys-
tenn of credits; some pay goods in
proportion to the amount of work
contributed, others divide their
mutual earnings on the basis of
need alone.
TT is a system of strange con-
Il trasts, despite it's similarity of
purpose. In Dayton, O., a job
less railroad sWitchman has gath
cred around him in a dingy and
rickety old store building a group
of men and women who are bar
tering their labor in shoe repair
ing, dress making, wood cutting,
furniture repairing, for food.
In Salt Lake City typewriters
click and adding machines hum
in the busy headquarters of a
widespread cooperative organiza-
ton that swaps in immense
volume and boasts a tannery and
coal mine.
In Nyack, N. Y, a paperhanger
can zone recently did paper a
dentists office in return for his
Wife's bill; in Minneapolis, a
minister has printed 100000 in
scrip and is showing $1,000 job
less how to live by their labor
alone; in Omaha an Unemployed
Married Mems Council" does the
same.
In Seattle, 100000 persons are
linked in powerful exchange or
ganization; in California, jobleSs
workmen toll for near bankrupt
farmers and swap part of their
proceeds of vegetables to jobless
fishermen for fish.
In Waterloo, Ia, 165 jobless men
who received hogs for husking
corn didn't want to give juicy
pork chops to some and less de-
sirable cuts to others, so they
solved their problem by grinding,
the whole works into sausage.
IN New York, a newly-born
Il Emergency Exchange Associa-
tion,' backed by several eminent
economists is trying to link to-
gether all these widely scattered
labor-swapping, and commodity
swapping organizations.
Among the associations leaders
are DR.. Frank D. Graham, econo-
mist of Princeton university. Stu
art Chase, famed liberal econo-
mist; John Carmody, president of
the American Society of Indus
trial Engineers, and Leland Olds,
assistant chairman of the New
York State Power Authority. The
latter is the executive secretary.
In Yellow Springs, Ohio says
Olds, there is an unemployed
group that has machinery and
material for making cloth New
York has plenty of jobless and
poorly clad.
so it is proposed that Yellow
Springs send the cloth to York,
that New York will make it into
clothing, keep some for its labor
and send the rest Of the suits and
dresses back to Yellow Springs in
payment for the material. Not
dime would change hands.
Another example Twelve
carloads of potatoes have been Of
fered us from Maine, but We can't
pay the railroad freight on them.
What we may do, however. is
obtain a sailing schooner-which
costs almost nothing to operate
man it with unemployed sailors
and go up there after those pota-
toes ourselves"
A DMITTEDLY, the task Of
IA linking scattered barter ex-
changes from New York to Cali
fornia is going to be difficult.
These units have sprung up so
49,