The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1935-10-17

the mail, postmarked under recent
date, what purported to be a personal
letter from you. 1t was enclosed in an
official-looking envelope on one corner
Of which was printed White House,
Official Business On the other cor
ner was printed the eXhortation, Buy
United States Savings Bonds. Ask
Your Postmaster This is precisely
what l would not buy at present.
Nevertheless, l opened the letter.
Naturally I was highly honored until
I realized it was cheaply mimeograph-
ed and signed with rubber stamp.
In what you are pleased to call my
high calling as a reverend and dear
sir | have been familiar with this
shabby procedure for upwards of forty
years. My custom has been to consign
such things to the wastebasket. But
when you speak of my intimate daily
contact with people, generally, in the
community, that fatters me. Still
more you touch my pride when you
speak of my wise and sympathetic
understanding.
81 plead guilty to this latter. If you
had half the understanding 1 have of
the aforesaid people, you would hang
your head in shame at what you have
done to them. You and your admins
tration have utterly ruined them; so
that with relief and doles and pen
sions, all the piffling perquisities that
you are handing out, literally can
not get man to do days work. The
community is full of so-called unem-
ployed-until you try to employ them.
Then they simply will not work. Why
should they?
"You go on to speak of your new
social security legislation old age
pensions, unemployment insurance,
and those much-sobbed-over children
who are dragged in upon every occa-
sion. Oh, yes! And you want that pub
lie works program promoted. These
are all of them, precisely, things l do
not want, each for a different reason.
"You ask me, as further favor, to
write about conditions in my own COM
munity. They are doubtless not unlike
conditions in every other community,
county and state throughout the ma
ton. Conditions are bad, and the evil
has been brought about largely by
you and your maudlin encourage, your
college professor theorists, your time
serving political and other henchmen,
who have cluttered up the national
payroll. 1t is true and lamentable, that |
you have plunged the nation into bill
Ions of untold debt. This is bad. 1t is !
unspeakably bad and the debt is un-
payable. But that is not the worst. |
The infinitely worse result of your
procedure is the pauperizing of so
many people, the debauching of labor
and the plunging of so large meas
ure of the population into a lowdown |
state of Incidence from which they
will not recover. They will never again
during our lifetime, be able to, nor,
which is worse, want to go to work.
"You go on in the following para
graph in the manner of speech to
which we have become accustomed
over the radio, in soft-soap manner
and Uriah Heep method, to link to-
gether better spiritual and material
conditions for the American people,
1 submit this is nothing more than
special pleading when you address the
helpless clergy. Worse than that, it is
below the belt and playing pol
itics on the low plane with which you
have made US all familiar.
"You close by telling me what
touches my heart. You say you are
leaving on a short vacation. Thank
God for that! But when you tell me
you will be back in Washington in
few weeks and will deeply appreciate
my writing to you, l simply connot
deny you that little favor. You ask
my counsel and my help My counsel
is that you stay away from Washing
ton as long as possible. The only help
l can render you or the American peo-
pie or myself is to vote for the next
Republican candidate, who, by the
grace of God, shall be nominated"