Montana labor news., 1935-01-10
This COCK-EYED
WORLD

WASHINGTON.-(FP)- Until the
budget is made up, everyone can play
around with billions of dollars. It's
great fun. There ARE billions OF dol
lars Of wealth in this country, in spite
Of five years of crisis. And there are
all sorts of good purposes to which
they could be put.
Millions Of workers are unemployed.
Tens of millions OF people are not get
ting enough OF the right food to eat,
are going threadbare in old clothes, are
living in dilapidated shanties or over
crowded tenements with hardly any
modern c%onveniences. Education could
use some of the billions available.
Then how about public health and re-
creation, and a thousand other such
things? Why, it seems that anyone
with an ounce Of sense could take all
the billions of wealth in America and
turn the country into a regular para
disc.
In Washington there are all sorts
of ambitious planners. Pres. Roose-
welt hasn't had his last word on the
budget, and they're still having a good
time singing billions about.
Harry L. Hopkins, federal relief adj
Illustrator, knows where he could use
8 or 9 billions, he is reported to have
told the president. He would form a
federal work relief corporation with
the idea Of eventually putting all the
unemployed Except the so-called I'M
employables) to work at something or
other for their relief money, instead
of getting direct relief. Hopkins would
spend his billions on lots of little houses
in the country where the jobless could
grow their own vegetables rural re-
Mobilization is the FERA name for
this), on Stun clearance in the cities
and a big program of low-cost housing.
Harold l.. Ickes, public works admin
i%strator, is another planner whose
mind moves in millions and his mag
nation in billions. All he wants is 5
billions. He'd spend a lot of it on much
the same things as Hopkins would, only
the two Harrys use different names
for the same thing, to show their in
dependence. Subsistence homesteads,
for instance, is the PWA name for
FERA's rural rehabilitation. Then be-
sides low-cost housing in the cities,
Ickes would spend some Of his billions
on grade-crossing elimination, rural
identification and highway work.
OF course, someone's always taking
the joy out Of life wen for billion
dollar planners. Ickes no sooner be-
came expansive on his plans, than a
lot Of real estate and building-money
people threw a fit. If the government
does all this, what's going to become
Of II sacred right to profit, what's
going to become Of private initiative,
they demanded to know. Why, people
will be thinking we aren't necessary F!
And when Ickes turned his right cheek
to capitalist accusers, indicating the
good his plan would do them in cutting
building wage rates, he only got a slap
on it from the left, from workers who
don't want their wages cut, even for
the sake OF such a grand and glorious
plan.
As for the little houses in the country
the farmers aren't enthusiastic about
having a lot Of people from the city
put to growing vegetables, hen-fruit
and cow-juice which they would other
wise buy from them. And that the sub
s~istence homesteaders aren't going to
be able to make a living by just grow
ing vegetables and taking in each
others washing, even the planners adj
NIT. They envisage a lot Of little in
dustries running after each clump of
cute little houses to get cheap vegeta-
ble-fed labor. And that's going to
make a lot of working people say it's
nothing but a roundabout way Of cut
ting their wages.
Then there are the kill-joys who