Toledo union journal. [volume] (Toledo, Ohio) 1942-current, 1943-08-27
Your
Standard
Living
By Clayton Rusch, chairman
of the Food Price Control
Committee Local IL UAW-CIO

Committee Local IL UAW-CIO
MORE STRAW POLLS
This column has had occasion
in the past to point out that
straw polls, such as the Gallop
poll, are definitely not reliable
barometer of public opinion. If
there are any who still doubt
this fact they need only read the
report in The Toledo Blade for
Aug. % in which the good DR..
Gallop informs US that the ma
iority of the American people do
lot favor social reforms after
the war but prefer to have
things pretty much as they were
before the war.
Oh, yes! The American work
ers can hardly wait to have an
army of IL or Ia million unem-
ployed, at least half of those
with jobs, working only part
time, and an abundance of NAL
nutrition if not actual starvation
cases with the majority of the
workers attempting to maintain
. decent standard of living on a
weekly wage so small that such
an achievement is impossible.
Of course, we know the Ameri-
can workers want to return to
starvation in the midst of plenty
because the Gallop Poll says so.
Free speech and press permits
the capitalist papers to publish
such sentiments, but I'm afraid
DR.. Gallop allows his enthusiasm
to get the better of his judgment
if he really thinks the American
workers are stupid enough to
swallow such tripe as that.
CONGRESS
Yet, in way, purveyors Of
false information are not to be
too severely blamed for thinking
it possible to continue to fool the
majority of the public. For in
both houses of Congress there
sits nice fat majority Of repre-
sentatives of the employer class.
All the legislation that has been
sponsored by the present Con-
gress is directly in the interest
of the industrialists, while a
good share of it is openly and
viciously directed against the
welfare of those who labor for
a living. This despite the fact
that the workers of city and
farm constitute by far the vast
majority of the population.
This is not a hopeless situa-
ton, but it is one which cannot
go too long unrectified unless
we wish to lose all the economic
gains and the social reforms that
have been achieved in the last so
years.
LABOR AND THE ELECTIONS
To the charge that the present
social reforms leave much to be
desired, the answer is that the
Social Security program of the
UAW and the Postwar pro-
gram of the UAW takes cogni-
zance of this fact and suggests
a more sound and just economic
and social system than we now
have. For when these are enacted
we shall be able to realize the
equality of opportunity and the
civil liberties which were origi-
rally provided for in the United
States Constitution.
However, social conditions can
just as easily get worse instead
of better. Whether we have
postwar world of security, OPP
portunity and civil rights for
all, or whether we have things
pretty much as they were before
the war" only worse depends on
whether the workers learn to
vote in their own interests.
II we resolve to retire every
congressman who sabotages the
Presidents social reforms, to
send home every foe of labor,
and to elect to public office peo-
pie who will act in the interest
of the workers, we can really
have postwar world instead of
dreaming about il.