Montana labor news., 1933-03-02
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EMERGENCY BOARD
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I&NnAAAuiA AAOAA 4 ~ OAN
adequacy of public relief, is increas-
ingly prevalent. Continuing bank fail
ures, with their consequent train of
human tragedies, add to the sum total
of bitterness of a population sick with
waiting and deferred hope for intelli-
gent economic and financial leader
ship. A student of history will find,
in many respects, a duplication of
these appalling conditions in the mis-
cry of the French people antedating
the French Revolution. The Bourbons
of France, like some of the modern
Bourbons in our own country, INDUCED
themselves in idle chatter and contin-
ued to believe in their own security,
notwithstanding the suffering and de-
graduation of the masses They paid
for their error and their inaction with
their heads.
The appalling social and political
problems arising from the present
emergency are Of a fundamentally eco
nomic concept. The restoration of or
der in our economic and industrial
household is primarily essential to any
intelligent disposition of the social and
political problems of the Nation. We
are victims of our W national short
sightedness, by failure in the halcyon
days of prosperity to in~telligently plan
for the future. A. horde Of small
time leaders in industry and finance,
like the freebooters of old, We'd with
each other, looted the purse of the
population, and diverted the proceeds
to their own interests. Now that the
day of adversely has come, these same
leaders are destitute of competent sug-
gestion to safeguard the present or
the future, and they expect the popu-
lation Of this country to remain quies-
cent while they utter ponderous plati-
tudes about balancing the budget, and
the necessity for further wage reduc-
tions. The very application of their
wage cutting fallacy further reduces
the national income to a point where
the population cannot sustain itself
and the national budget cannot remain
balanced. The balancing of the bud
get will not in itself place a teaspoon
full of milk in a hungry baby's stom-
ach, or remove the rags from its
mothers back 1t must be obvious to
any thoughtful person that the ma
tional budget can never be permanent
ly stabilized in the face Of ever-grow-
ing unemployment, shrinkage in bust
ness volume, mounting inability to pay
taxes, and consequent depreciation of
national income.
If Democracy and corporate partie-
ipation in industry are to survive in
America, labor must have an oppor-
tunity to exercise it's industrial rights
for the protection of itself and our
democratic and economic institutions.
An emergency now exists which is
more critical than would be the ease
if a fleet of a foreign power were at
this moment bombarding the defenses
of one of our major ports. The very
foundations Of democracy and integ-
rity Of American institutions is
threatened. Labor should be granted
the right of collective bargaining, with
representatives of it's W choosing,
in those major industries of the coun-
try where this right is now withheld.
In large areas of the coal, textile,
lumber and steel industries, workers
are denied the rights of collective bar
gaining and are treated more or less
as serfs, compelled to accept any wage,
no matter how inadequate, declared