Montana labor news., 1934-10-25
SLOAN ANNOUNCES NEW PLAN
THE RELIEF BUSINESS
IS BOOMING

Ii one considers the government ap-
paratus under the New Deal as a bus
mess organization, it is apparent that
certain branches Of the business are
in the doldrums and that others are
picking up. The code-making business
is shutting down this week and the
heart has gone out of it, especially out
of the Labor Advisory Board and the
Consumers Advisory Board. The
bright young men who represent the
respective interests Of labor and OF
the consumer are just as bright and
just as right as they ever were, but
far less hopeful They still write ener-
getic memoranda for the record. Off
the record they tell anecdotes OF the
he SEE to me and | SEE to him variety,
valor in a vacuum, in other words, al
though they do their best and can com
fort themselves with occasional small
victories. Meanwhile, in a less rare
fled atmosphere, General Johnson ac-
cumulates new laurels as strike-break-
er, and the triumphant and unregen-
crate hosts of the publishers and ad-
vertasers mobilize their forces and whet
their knives lest anything real in the
way of consumer legislation come up
in the next Congress.
The state of the AAA is not much
better. 1t has suffered not merely from
the drought but from a general public
revulsion against the official program
of scarcity-promotion. When busin-
ess refuses to move the wheels of in
dustry or employ workers except at a
profit, that is just economies" or at
least good business" But when gov
eminent plows under the cotton and
slaughters the pregnant sows it is hard
to make people think it is good gov
eminent. The distinction is a bit tenu-
Gus, like that Of the Catholic church
between natural (safe period birth
control and the use Of contraceptives,
but it seems to have political import
ance at least.
So business is not so good in the
Agriculture and Commerce buildings.
One has to travel across the city to
the ancient office building that houses
the FERA in order to %recapture the
feeling Of busting conquest that char
acterized the earlier phase of the New
Deal. The relief business is boom
ing. Indeed, it might well be alleged
that the NRA, by facilitating mono
polistic rade-association controls and
by raising prices more than it has raised
wages or stimulated employment, has
helped to make business for the FERA,
whose customers, 100000 strong,
stand in line across the continent.
The directors of the FERA and OF
the FSRC Federal Surplus Relief
Corporation) see the job in the simplest
possible terms and attack it with gusto.
With an estimated relief load of at
least 4,500,000 families who are receiv-
ing an average monthly dole OF $l2,
the FERA sees an endless vista OF
consumers for the SURPRISES. And by
an Act of Cod - the drought - some
100000 head OF cattle have been toss
ed into the governments lap, so to
speak. Twelve dollars a month is about
one-tenth of the minimum subsistence
income for a family, as computed by
various government bureaus. 1t fol-
lows, as night the day, that the peo-
pie must be hungry. Secure in this
conviction, which not even the most
rabid tory politician is likely to chal-
lenge, the FERA is all for grabbing
everything it can lay its hands on in
the way of surplus commodities and
passing them out as supplementary re-
lief to these 100000 customers.
So far, so good. But the logic Of
the FSRC business cuts sharply across
the logic of private business, which
uns to the effect that an empty stom-
ach is no customer unless the owner
of the stomach can pay for what he
eats, and pay enough to include profits
all down the line from producer tc
retail dispenser. These millions O.
customers can't pay. They are whaf
the sage Professor Walter Pitkin call.
"extra-economic" men, women, anc
children. However, their hunger ant
their raggedness do establish pressures
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