Montana labor news., 1938-04-14
PLAN WILL
SOLVE UNEMpL0Y-
MENT PROBLEM

Labor is the primary factor in the
production of all wealth, the creator
of value. The value of any COM
modify depends on the amount and
skill of the labor that enters into its
creation. It has been estimated by
competent authorities that 85 per
cent of the price of any commodity
is represented by labor; that is to
say that only Is per cent of any user
commodity is natural growth or
product; take any article you may
be familiar with and analyze it for
yourself, you will sec that this esti-
mate is not wrong.
Labor, like every other commodi-
ty, is subject to the law of supply
and demand; when the supply ex-
ceeds the demand the price goes
down, and when the demand exceeds
the supply the price goes up; at the
present time the supply exceeds the
demand to such a degree that the
government has been forced to create
an artificial demand, manufacture
jobs, PWA, WPA, ETC.; we have
about 10 million people unemployed;
the government has spent billions in
relief and public works to relieve
the situation and still the end is not
in sight, the Congress has just made
another appropriation of n and a
half billion for relief; the railroads,
the small business man, the big
business man, everyone wants as
sistance, pump printing is getting to
be the national pastime.
What is the cause of this unem-
ployment? The lack of buying
power; money and credit idle in the
bank vaults; concentration of wealth
in too few hands; the machine age,
machines taking the place of man
power,
Under our present system there
are millions of men and women idle
now who will never again have
steady employment; we are edu-
eating our youth of today and turn
ing them out of our schools and col
leges by the hundreds of thousands
without the remotest chance of en-
ployment; filling u CCC camps
with the flower of our young man
hood in order to keep them from a
life Of crime; Professor S~tudebaker
says we have 34a million young men
and women, graduates of our
schools and colleges, who have never
had a job and from present indica-
tons, never will.
David c. Coyle says, "Manufac-
turing methods have improved dur
ing the past depression to such an
extent that many hundreds of thou
sands of workers who have lost their
jobs because of the depression have
now been permanently displaced;
they will never return to their old
places in industry. No conceivable
expansion of demand can overcome
the accelerated rate at which manu-
featuring is dispensing with human
labor" What is the answer to that
one? Something must be done to
remove the surplus from the labor
market, and what is more fitting
than to remove the elders, those who
have served their time and who have
done their share in the upbuilding
of the country and the nation; not
by turning them out to die like an
old horse, nor by using DR.. Osler's
plan of eh~loroform, but by retiring
them with enough to keep them in
comfort and in doing this we will be
creating a prosperity for all.
After several years of study and
reading, covering the different
remedies for this condition from
Upton Sinclair's EPIC, through the
Utopianism, democracy and the
New Deal, we have not yet arrived
at the answer and all the time it
has been right at our doorstep, the
Townsend Plan. The others tell us
what is needed but not how to get
1t; this plan goes right to the root of
the matter and gives the real rene
dy; this plan will furnish employ
ment for all III unemployed, will
supply the buying power; will give
our elders the security and happi-
ness they have SO richly earned and
mill inr,,rn nnu.