The guardian. [volume] (Boston, Mass.) 1901-1960, 1946-09-14
A SOCIALIST VIEW
by Eric Hass
Observation-Disclosures NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.
tcalvin's News service)

Regard the postwar world How does it shape up
with the postwar world you wanted? Are you bedazzed
by the chrome, the plastic thngamabobs the bright
coors? Do the motor thrill you? Are you gddy
the alleged prospects of iveyear boom Or do you
feel persistent sckenng sensation though somewhere
beneath the ground you your daily rounds there
delayed-action explosive? If you ARE unhappy and
apprehense you have lots of company Most people feel
as though they living in room with live cobra.
In the matter of race relations the optmist can add
up lot of socaled gains Colored fans aren't jim
in the beachers at the st. Louis ball parks anymore
They're voting primary elections in the South Here
and there the job ceiling is broken The moral pressure
of the age acting through antidiscrmnaon legislation,
forcing folks who practice discrimination to think up
the darndest excuses Now and then they stick their
necks out too far and get themselves hailed into court
We could probably fill a couple of columns listing the
so-caed gains of the coored other Disseminated
against mnortes. But when we've finished feel like
who has just described house which appears
to be habitable but which has the fatal shortening of
being built shifting sand Recent outbreaks of VIC
ence, the omnous resurgence of the Ku Klux Kan the
reelection of the vulgar representatives of vrulent
racisn-fhe Blbos and Talmadges-all this has served
remind thoughtful persons that the gains not abso
Lutte and that explosives exist here which capable of
blowing them to bits.
put down incontrovertble truth that freedom
for the of mankind be and beyond
the reach of prejudice and reaction until the
economically free. And we long way from being
economically free. We have the authority of the
US Government that than half the families in this
great and rich country have annual of less than
$1,000 Many of the families considerably less.
What happens to this mlionmass when the inev-
table bust comes?, What becomes of their freedom
when they thrust upon relief? And the BUST is com
ing. You know it and know it. It's in the capitalist
cards. dustrys working against the backlog of orders
today. But the time is coming when the slack will be
taken up and production will have to depend for market
on current income. That's when the big layofs will begin
1t won't with crushing blow, but with
series of blows like ball bouncing downstairs. The work
ers who laid off aren't very good customers. They
quit buying new pair of shoes every year. suit
as soon they're taken off the payros. So more shoe
makers are laid off, and tailors Unemployment
breeds unemployment
How you expect racerelaton gains to be secure
In society economically precarous this? How can
you hope for prejudice to die when mems hopes and plans
are periodically manged and torn by the anarchy of an
outmoded social system? wish of these 'ltte by
little" people, who Mortified when talk of Social
ism and organizing the working class and who claim to
be inchng along toward tolerable conditions wish
some of these people would tell how the capitalist
tenn can avert a smashup. Or how the inevitable smash
Up can fail to hur all society backward perhaps far
barbariSn.