Toledo union journal. [volume] (Toledo, Ohio) 1942-current, 1948-11-26
What's
New?
By EDWARD ]. DUCK, Assistant Director,
National Auto-Lite Department, UAW-CIO


National Auto-Lite Department, UAWCIO
If you've never heard Murray Lincoln Of
the Ohio Farm Bureau, it will perhaps be
difficult to imagine what the gentlemans
speeches are like. A group of us Journeyed to
Detroit last weekend to attend the Labor and
Coon Conference held at the AFL labor
temple there, and we were flabbergasted by
Lincolns address on Friday evening.
Here's guy who's regular walking al
manac. The only thing that holds him back
is time. He's got so much to say, about so many
different things, that you wish you could
listen to him for a week, instead of for an hour
or two.
Lincoln told the audience how the more
common material from which atomic energy
can be extracted could be used in such way
that mere handful of the stuff would trans
port an ocean liner across the Atlantic and
back He amazed us by stating that oil changes
are unnecessary-all you have to do is add oil
when you need it, he said, and we re suckers
if we believe anything else.
All this bunk about one gasoline being so
much better than the other, according to Lin
coln is just so much bunk. He explained how
the Farm Bureau and the big gasoline COM
panies negotiate trades of millions of gallons
of gas, with the big companies still selling the
advertised label.
In his pocket he had charges which will
soon be presented to the federal authorities
whereby it can be proved that utilities men
organized a company by selling stock to them
selves at fourteen cents share, then later
charged the public and the government more
than nine dollars per share for that very same
stock, crawling out from underneath it at an
extortionate profit You will soon be reading
about this, no doubt, described as a super
Teapot Dome" scandal.
The outstanding remark, perhaps, was that
most of the misery and misfortune which
befalls the common man is brought about
through the use of his own money. Lincoln
pointed out that unions keep their funds in
banks, which in turn that money against
them by working hand in glove with the most
monopolistic of corporations
"Someday the American worker will real
ize that the most effective way of bringing an
employer to terms is not through the strike
and the picket line" said Lincoln, but by
building a plant across the street from the
employer who is unfair, and paying the en-
ployees a living wage while selling the product
for less than he does. Then he'll really worry,
and thereu be no trouble getting him in line,
he added
Food for thought. The veteran cooperator
gave us all something to think about. When
we pool our nickels and dimes we can do great
things There are enough of us that we can be-
come mult-millionaire network in a short
time if we organize our money well as our
muscle.
IF only fifteen percent of an industry is
run on the cooperative basis it can control
prices he stated pointing to the victorious
record of the Ohio Farm Bureau and its ex-
perience in the insurance field, as well as its
record in protecting the individual farmer
from exploitation by huge interests
In the display featured at the conference
hall there was box of DUZ, next to a larger
box of Coop Soap Flakes. The sign read,
Coop Soap Flakes will do everything that
DUZ does, but it viii do it better. Besides,
compare the size and price.
part of the program included tour of
the new coop store which opened at Charles
and Conant street Friday. In the first two days
of operation that store crossed $7,759. While
this happened, three stores within a hundred
yards of the coop store were practically va
cant. On Friday evening at $50 there were
more clerks than customers in the chain store
supermarket next door.
Toledoans, wake up, for gosh sakes Whatt
are we all waiting for, anyway? There's i'm
mediate savings for all of our families if we
pitch in and own our own store Every unit in
Local H. every local union in CIO, AFL, and
the Independents, should donate dime per
member to the organizing drive, and subscribe
to preferred stock from their treasury at rate
of one dollar per member if they can afford it.
Those shops that have been contacted have
come through in the coop drive, but why
should ANY shop wait for a special invitation.
Support of the co-ops is UAW executive board
policy. Let's get moving, through the executive
shop committees and the departmental stew
ards. They, and only they, can make the or
ganiZation of consumer owned stores a quick
reality!