Askov American. [volume] (Askov, Pine County, Minn.) 1914-current, 1940-05-09

national representative. The senator
who voted against the Social Security
act, raped the administration meas
ure and added the Townsend Re-
covery Plan bill certainly is just as
good as any New Deal bill.
Senator Lundeen pointed out that
political persons have great respect
for great organizations. He urged
that Townsend supporters see to it
that the Railway Brotherhoods, Labor
Unions, Farm Organizations and Vet
Grams organizations join the Town
send ranks, asserting that the num-
Der OF unemployed had averaged
IL, 100000 a year for the past few
years.
The Senator, a Farmer-Laborite,
said jobs for the American people is
the greatest issue before the American
people today. Private business should
be given the first opportunity to give
men and women the jobs, he added,
but if private industry fails to do
this it is task for the government.
Every man has the divine right to
a job. We do not have much time
in which to go on with this unem-
ployment, he warned, and we want
the remedy to be in the American
way. We do not want our people
to become so desperate and hungry
that they will reach at foreign doc
trines.
So much for Senator Lundeen's
speech. l want to point out that in
the first place the Townsend pump
would never require any printing as
it would always be in first class work.
ing order and ample purchasing pow
er in the hands of the people, with
jobs for all, would always keep it
that way. In the second place, there
would be no continued budget deficits
under the Townsend Recovery plan.
The reverse would be the case and
the government would then have in
fact continued budget credits.
The Townsend Recovery plan for
raising money by a gross income
tax is not theory. 1t is in actual
operation with great success in the
state of Indiana and in Hawaii There
is great reservoir of as yet un-
tapped tax resources which our
statesmen and politicians do not seem
to be aware of in the form of gross
income taxes by which vast amounts
of money can be raised and which
yXnI11d ho u y,o1rnh 1occ
of raising money than the present
one of taxation on property and real
estate or in the floating of interest
bearing government bonds.
It can be done if the rank and file
of the people will take stand and
insist that the Townsend plan be
made into law. Banks will profit by
the passage of this act. Our elderly
people, through forced spending, will
cause business to increase by leaps
and bounds and through them banks
will very soon have their money, now
frozen, out among the people work.
ing at satisfactory profit If all these
now unemployed could 60 to work
at living wage, if our youths now
idle, had the opportunity to prepare
for the duties of citizenship that they
must soon assume, if the money now
paid out for charity and kindred re-
lief under the WPA plan could all
be changed, what blessing it would
be, if within few months with the
Townsend plan in operation, money
would be flowing into the channels
of trade, and elderly people saved
the humiliation of charity. Business
is bound to expand when everybody
eats and the farmer prospers.
When there is sufficient money in
circulation to meet the payments of
ever-increasing demand for better
housing, especially among the elders
who long since have been in sore
need of better accommodations, car
penters, painters, plumbers and cleo
trical workers will be busy as bees
in clover patch. Those men and
women who have sought vainly for
jobs in private industry these many
years-those farmers whose income
today is less than it was back in the
late tWenties when it was none too
good, those hundreds of thousands
of young men and women leaving
school who find it impossible to get
jobs and start careerS-all of these
will be little impressed by recita-
ton of statistics. The proof of the
pudding is in the eating and the
people have had plenty of that sort
of diet. But after all what do sta
tistics amount to in the face of con-
ditions that all the people and espe-
| cially farmers understand.
BENJAMIN E. VODRAZKA.