Evening star., 1936-10-31
Security Sales Resistance
Workers Resent Compulsion and Now New Deal
Must Sell Voters on Plan.

the New Deal lexicon. "You gotta" Is
the New Deals mandatory slogan.
One can understand the position Of
workers who resent this. One can
imagine men saying, in effect: II
want my salary; want all of it; I
don't want any held out on me; If
there Is any saving for old age to be
done, will do my own saving, and
whether I save 1t or spend It Is my
own business" In such an attitude
there Is Q spirit as old as America
itself. But that old American spirit is
not the spirit of the New Deal. In no
area OF its wide spreading controls
does the New Deal leave to the in
dividual much latitude to take 1t or
leave It," There was none In potato
control" nor in cotton control" nor
In tobacco CONTROL" there was little
or none In N. r. A.
True. in the pension systems of many
private corporations the worker is re-
quired to contribute. But between that
and the present Governments social
security plan. there is all the difference
between voluntary and compulsory.
When the worker goes to work for a
corporation having a pension plan, he
expects this requirement as part OF his
contract. He understands 1t, and in
nearly all cases is satisfied with 1t.
The present social security plan, how
ever, Is quite different.
After the worker and the EMPLOYER
have come together on the basis of a
given wage, an outsider, a thirty party,
the Government, comes in and arbi-
trarily requires that the employer take
out some Of the workers wage and
hand 1t over to the Government for
insurance.
No Exceptions Permitted.
There is, in the present plan. an
other example of compulsion. Many
private employers have for many years
had pension systems. some Of them
more satisfactory than the present
Government one. When the present
bill was before Congress a Senator-I
think it was Mr.. Clark of Missouri
proposed that where private corpora.
tions had satisfactory pension plans,
the Government plan should not oper-
ate. The New Dealers took the atti-
tude that there must be no such excep.
ton. The Government must do 1t all.
Everything must be uniform. Every
body must be regimented. Everything
must move toward the New Deal ideal.
the "totalitarian state" Recently I
have been told that some corporations.
while adopting the Government plan,
as they are compelled to, will neverthe-
less continue their old plans. or modi-
fications Of them, as supplements TO
the Government plan.
Almost everybody agrees that old
age insurance is desirable and prac-
ticable Nearly everybody agrees that
insurance against unemployment is de-
sirable, though some doubt whether it
Is practicable. But many authorities,
well equipped to be judges in this field,
think that the social security plan put
on the statute books by the New Deal
is seriously defective. They think the
fiscal and actuarial part of the plan
the billions Of workers money to be
piled up IN the United States Treasury
is unsound, dangerous and illusory.
Gov. Landon says it is "cruel hoax"
Many experts think there are better
ways. Gov. Landon has a way which
he thinks Is better. He agrees with the
principle of social security. But in his
Milwaukee speech of September rs,
which he devoted to this subject, he
riddled the New Deals plan, This was,
by the way, one of the clearest and
most thoughtful speeches made by any
one in this campaign.
(Copyrisht, 1850