The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1934-02-23
True TO
Type
Senator Approves
Spending Money
for All
BY GILBERT SELDES

i CEkk1 CA0NJAy soy =
got into the Senate, but five
words spoken in the presence
Of that august body, as the
phrase used to go, put one Of
my favorite ideas into the Con-
gressional Record.
They were spoken by Senator
Bronson Cutting in the course
Of q speech on credit and fl
nance; you will find them be-
tween dashes, as follows: In
my judgment, the Government
is going to have to finance the
consumer as a consumer-rot
+ primarily as a tDorker-and it
is going to have to do it very
soon."
mot primarily as a worker"
that means, whether you and
I are at work or not, someone
will have to give us spending
money, because it is more i'm
portant for us to spend than
to work.
Some time last Summer I
noted here that the work pro-
visions Of the NRA might be adj
mirable in purpose, but were
certainly unimportant in COM
parison with the pay provisions.
II a laundry is compelled to
take on three new men (by
change in working hours and
to pay them whether it has
actual need of their labor or
not, it is not paying essentially
for work. And if it has no
money, and borrows indirectly
from the Government, the Gov
eminent is, in effect, supporting
the laborer, and if you want to
use the word "dole," you may.
BY the Sea!
The men screening the sands
at Coney Island are being paid
for work, although the work is
not urgently needed-let it go
and say that the work is not
needed at all. In other words,
they are being paid because the
Government wants them to
have money to spend; by spend
ing they improve the condition
of industry. It is all a tempo
rary measure and in a few
months industry will reabsorb
them all.
I doubt it. Somewhere I have
a set Of figures indicating that
the eight major crops raised in
the United States can be grown
on one-tenth the land now used,
and with about one-tenth the
labor.
As for our manufacturing, we
could probably make as many
things as we ever made with
less than one-tenth Of the man
power. We've got machines and
engineers.
Then what becomes of the
temporary dole? It goes on and
grows and presently becomes a
national dividend, with the gov
eminent compelled to support
its citizens-regardless of work.
Work a Crime
Work, in that noble day, will
be almost as great a privilege as
it is today, the only difference
being that the voorhees, will not
be allowed to starve. And the
man who insists on working,
when society cannot take what
he makes, will be considered a
criminal.
I know this is immoral, but I
am afraid it is practical. In a
clearing along the Ohio, in 1884,
there wasn't enough of anything
to go round-not enough food,
not enough skins for clothes, not
enough gunpowder, not enough
dried and sawed firewood. And
the man who wanted to sit by
and write a poem while his
brothers ploughed and dug and
chopped and hunted was a So
cial menace.
Today, if the experts aren't
all wrong together, there is too
much of nearly everything, es-
pecially of gunpowder. So the
morals of the situation have to
be reversed. The only man who
helps is the man who doesn't
work. And if we keep him alive,
all we can ask is that he spends
what we give him, to encourage
the others, and that his poetry