Detroit evening times., 1945-03-21
FAIR
ENOUGH
.tH-+
-ByWestbrook
PeeIer

IN HIS moist and martyristic
hour of self-sympathy at a
political demonstration in New
York, Henry Wallace said he
felt no bitterness, but that men
represented issues and that all
of us would have TO stand up
and be counted.
In approaching the subject of
employment after the war, Wal
lace adopted a trick of the New
Deal j logist which was
cribbed from Hitler in the first
place.
1t is the trick of tossing off
some fantastic proposition and
then assuming that its sound
ness has been conceded without
a contest by the other side.
Thus, some years ago, Presi-
dent Roosevelt referred to one
third of a nation ill-fed,
il-heused and ili-ciothed and
Immediately, because he had
said it, this dramatic concept of
more than forty million gaunt
and ragged hovel-dwellers be-
came, like the perfidy of the
Treaty of Versailles, a political
fetish, |
WALLACE cried TO his totaG-
w tartan friends in New
York, to whom he gave final
credit for Roosevelt's fourth
election, that "the one outstand-
ing issue in the campaign was
set forth by Roosevelt, 60,000,-
600 jobs"
Then, granting himself the
wisdom of this figure, he con-
tinued:
II repeatedly emphasized the
need for getting the 60,O00,000
jobs"
Later in the speech he men,
toned the 60,000.000 jobs for a
third time.
SO, by now. in certain pro-
portion of the public mind. the
| proposition is accepted that,
after the war 6/13thS of all our
people, almost half of us, must
have steady employment.
But Roosevelt and Wallace
surely are not in favor of child
labor, so he must cross the
children under 18 and thus raise
the proportion of adult, employ
able women whom they would
permanently remove from the
homes to work for wages, many
of them in defeminiZing sur
roundings and at masculine tasks
and in male garments.
We have a plan afoot. also, to
maintain a large army and navy
after the war. composed almost
entirely of able-bodied males. so.
again, up goes the proportion of
women in jobs.
IF WE include among those
L who will be unavailable for
these jobs the elders, above so
years, the prison population and
the unemployable invalidS, we
come to the point of finding so
million employed workers among
total Of probably no more than
80 million eligible, men and
women.
Without bitterness, but on the
basis of his wife's autobiogra-
ply, IL may be conceded that
Roosevelt is personally unfamil-
lar with the normal American
method Of establishing a home
when two young persons marry.
Normally, the husband gets
the job and provides the money
to establish the home, usually a
modest apartment or house.
The wife stays home. bears
the children, cares for them, in
structs them and makes sacri-
fees for them.
When the RooSevelts we're
married he was still a student,
and his mother bought them not
| only a town house but an elabo-
rate summer place, both COM
/ pletely furnished.
Thus subsidized, Mrs. Eleanor
Roosevelt was able 10 have her
family without having TO 60 TO
work for living
Wallace, also, came of a back
ground of wealth. so both he and
Roosevelt may be excused their
ignorance of the family eco
nomic problem of young Amer
leans who marry without money
or with only a few hundred
dollars for the furniture or a
down payment on frame house
in the suburbs.
IN THIS plan for sixty million
l. jobs these seems 10 be no pro-
vision for the preservation Of
the American home and Of the
integrity of the family unit.
1t appears 10 count on the
regular employment for wages
of the young wives and mothers
and to suggest either unfamil-
iarity with the customary way
or some idea. not yet revealed
that here, as in Russia. the
children should be mothered by
public agencies which, being
political. doubtless would teach
or, in the fashionable word of
the day, "indoctrinate' them
after the manner of the Com
munists and the NaZis.
!
THE Roosevelt-Wallace plan
Il appears to hold that hence
forth as many women as men
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