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URVEY
JANUARY 1939
RAPHIC
MAGAZINE OF SOCIAL INTERPRETATION
The Inquiring Congressman
Investigating Committees, from Pujo to Dies
by Lindsay Rogers
The Mirage of Refugee Resettlement by David H. Popper Two articles on maritime labor in the U.S., with Mine camera studies
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A MAESTRO OF POWER
and responsive as the strings and brasses of a great orchestra, power moves beneath this man's finger tips. Electric power, varied at his will from the crashing force of ten thousand sledges to the delicate pianissimo that pares a hairbreadth from a piece of steel. And so, from the machine that obeys this man's bidding rolls forth the symphony of American industry — more goods for more people at less cost.
This man is typical of the millions of American workmen who, with the machines they direct, set the tempo of American industry. Today the mechanical power in the hands of each factory
worker is four times what it was 50 years ago. As a result, the amount that each worker can produce has more than doubled. And because he produces more, he has more.
That is why five out of six American families own radios, why four out of five have automo- biles, why one out of three owns an electric refrigerator. That is why America has today the highest standard of living the world has ever known. And General Electric scientists, engineers, and workmen, by applying electric power to the machines of industry, have done much to make this progress possible. Their efforts today are directed to the task of bring- ing about still higher living standards.
G-E research and engineering have saved the public from ten to one hundred dollars Jor every dollar
they have earned for General Electric
GENERAL HI ELECTRIC
Next Month
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PECIAL ISSUE
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And why not?
Its subject is the extent of the European crisis and the meaning of Munich to us Raymond Gn in the United States.
It will be edited by Raymond Gram Swing who was in London, Paris, Geneva and Prague in the days of grim decision and who has mustered a group of extraordinary contributors.
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SURVEY
GRAPHIC
Partial List of CONTRIBUTORS
Everett R. Clinchy
Arthur Feiler
Dorothy Ganfield Fisher
M. W. Fodor
Felix Frankfurter
Lewis Gannett
John Palmer Gavit
Oscar I. Janowsky
Alvin Johnson
Low
Marvin Lowenthal Archibald MacLeish John Ma'sefield Alpheus Thomas Mason Edgar Ansel Mowrer W. A. Neilson William E. Rappard R. W. Seton-Watson Abraham Revusky Bertrand Russell Raymond Gram Swing Dorothy Thompson Charles A. Thomson F. A. Voigt John Whittaker William L. White
SURVEY GRAPHIC, published monthly and copyrighted 1939 by SURVEY ASSOCIATES, Inc. Publication and Executive office, 112 East 19 Street, New York, N. Y. Price : this issue (January 1939 ; Vol. XXVIII, No. 1) 30 cts. ; $3 a year ; foreign postage, BO cts. extra ; Canadian 30 cts. Entered as second class matter January 28, 1938, at the post office at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Acceptance of mailing at a special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917; authorized Dec. 21, 1921.
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The people operate the tele' phone — about 300,000 of them in the Bell System.
The people own the telephone business. There are about 750,000 owners of Bell System securities.
All of this works together to give you the best telephone ser- vice in the world at the lowest possible cost.
The Gist of It
VOL. xxviii, No. 1
NO GOVERNMENTAL DEVICE HAS BEEN THE "^
subject of more recent public interest than JANUARY 1939 CONTENTS
the congressional inquiry. With Professoi - .
Rogers' article (page 5) the Survey Graphic
series on the anatomy of government takes Madonna of the Snowy Willow Tree .... PAINTING BY YUEH HAN CHAN PENG 4 a turn from the administrative to the legisla- tive department. Lindsay Rogers, professor The Inquiring Congressman LINDSAY ROGERS 5
of public law at Columbia University, has _ - , .
been frequently identified with local, state ™>ht sharing: The Joslyn Formula WILLIAM F. McDERMOTT 9
and federal government as special adviser. . • „!. „
With a journalistic talent strengthened by Amencans ShlP Out!. . LEWIS W. HINE AND GEORGE C. STONEY 13
newspaper experience while studying at Johns Maritime Labor Grows Up .. FRANK M KLEILER 18 Hopkins twenty years ago, he has written
many books and articles. Mirage of Refugee Resettlement DAVID H. POPPER 23
WILLIAM F. MCDERMOTT, WHO DESCRIBES Let's Abolish the County Jail
a unique Chicago venture in profit sharing JosEpH FuLUNG FlSHMAN AND VEE TERRYS PERLMAN 26
(page 9) is on the staff of the Chicago
Daily News. The Hopping Hop-Pickers— Pictographs PAUL H. LANDIS 28
LEW HINE, WELL KNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER, Rolling Stones Gather No Sympathy VICTOR WEYBRIGHT 29
whose work will be on special display in
New York in January, and George Stoney, Through Neighbors' Doorways:
writer, covered the waterfront for Surrey We Accept the Challenge JOHN PALMER GAVIT 31
Graphic. The result appears on page 13 et
seq. Their collaboration supplements the Letters and Life
article by Frank M. Kleiler, reporter, who Footnotes on Our Times. . LEON WHIPPLE 33 presents a comprehensive account of Amer- ica's maritime labor situation. (Page 18.) The Settlements Resolve 38
FROM THE VANTAGE POINT OF THE FOREIGN Southerners Write Their Own Prescription . . .GEORGE C. STONEY 42
Policy Association, David H. Popper unrolls
the map of the world to describe the areas Servants of the People
which have been mentioned in connection TTJ \f fk«. T>,,W u l»k c u v /ic
with the potential refugees from Europe. HILLIER KHIEGHBAUM
(Page 23.) <jj Survey Associates, Inc.
THE AUTHOR OF "CRUCIBLES OF CRIME," Joseph Fulling Fishman, needs no introduc- tion as a crusader against the antiquated jail system which exists to the shame of most of our counties and states. In collaboration with Miss Perlman he advocates the abolition of the county jail. (Page 26.)
AN OUTSTANDING SOCIOLOGIST OF THE WEST
Coast, Paul H. Landis has made many con- tributions to our knowledge of population movements in the United States. The charts on page 28 were prepared by him and Carl F. Reuss and Richard Wakefield, and pub- lished by the State College of Washington. In sequence to the Hop-Pickers, Victor Wey- bright, managing editor, gives a general pic- ture of the trend of internal migration and of the factors which now impede it, to the disadvantage of the nation. (Page 29.)
WE ARE INDEBTED TO LlLLIE M. PECK, SEC-
retary of the National Federation of Settle- ments, for the copy of the statement which was issued by their organization at a meet- ing of its governing body at the Henry Street Settlement in New York City, early in De- cember. (Page 38.)
BRINGING TO A CLOSE A SERIES OF BRIEF sketches of various federal civil servants whose continuous work through many administra- tions is not as widely known by the general public as it might be, Hillier H. Krieghbaum introduces Dr. Charles Armstrong of the U.S. Public Health Service. (Page 45.) Mr.
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IN OTHER PAGES OF THIS ISSUE APPEAR AN-
nouncements of our forthcoming special issue,
now under preparation by Raymond Gram Swing, guest editor, a score of contributors, and the Survey Graphic staff. Readers who wish extra copies of this special issue are requested to send in their orders promptly, to aid us in our arrangements with the printer.
urn
MADONNA OF THE SNOWY WILLOW TREE
by Yueh Han Chan Peng, an artist connected with the department of fine arts of the Catholic Uni- versity, Peiping. This pic- ture is among sixty-five sensitive paintings and carv- ings of contemporary Chris- tian art in Asia and Africa brought together in a new little book, "Each With His Own Brush," by Daniel Johnson Fleming (Friend- ship Press, New York). The author, professor of missions in Union Theo- logical Seminary, has made this unusual collection in order to cement bonds of fellowship and understand- ing between the devout of the eastern and the western worlds.
JANUARY 1939
VOL. XXVIII NO. 1
SURVEY GRAPHIC
The Inquiring Congressman
by LINDSAY ROGERS
As fact-finder and opinion-molder the Congressman or Sen- ator is at his most effective on an investigating committee. Pujo, Teapot Dome, Nye, Black, La Follette, Dies, TVA and Tem- porary Economic — all these inquiries except the Temporary Economic, which shares legislative laurels with administrative experts, follow an old tradition, uniquely American, mixed in method and result. Mr. Rogers' article is one of a Survey Graphic series on the Anatomy of Government.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO THE LATE PROFESSOR A. V. DICEY, whose name is still honored by students of political in- stitutions, lamented the fact that "political inventiveness has in general fallen far short of the originality displayed in other fields than politics by the citizens of progressive or civilized states." The United States, however, can boast of at least two political inventions — that is, of two devices which have no counterparts in foreign governmental systems.
One is the Presidential press conference which, in- vented by Woodrow Wilson, has been so adapted and im- proved by President Roosevelt that it produces news which in importance ofttimes rivals the news that results from congressional deliberations or even from the rela- tions of executive and legislature. The second invention is the congressional committee of investigation. This, to be sure, is nothing new. It has roots in sixteenth century England; the colonial legislatures set up committees to inquire into various matters, and the Congress at its sec- ond session asserted its prerogative of investigation. Since the war, however, congressional investigations have in- creased in number and importance. Nowhere else do in- vestigations by committees of the legislature constitute a major and customary instrumentality of the government.
In the United States within the last few weeks we have had the spectacle of these two inventions clashing with
each other. President Roosevelt used one of his press con- ferences as a pulpit from which he lashed out at the Dies Committee which, in its investigation of "un-American activities," has not paused to bother about what is rel- evant or to sift evidence from irresponsible hearsay, and which so timed its alleged revelations as to lay itself open to the suspicion of wishing to influence the recent elec- tions. Representative Dies lashed back at the President. The spectacle was not edifying and enabled critics of Mr. Roosevelt who had no sympathy with the Dies Commit- tee to complain that the executive was "impertinent" in interfering with what was none of his business.
Any foreign chief of the executive who was similarly aggrieved at the activities of a group of legislators would have had to vent his spleen in a speech to a public gath- ering or to the legislature because, as I have said, foreign systems have not evolved the press conference. But no foreign chief of the executive could have had occasion to inveigh against a legislative inquisition of all and sundry such as the Dies Committee has proved to be, because no other legislature gives a group of its members any such broad terms of reference. I refrain, for the moment, from suggesting whether in my opinion other governments without these devices are thereby fortunate or unfortunate. My subject is the place of the congressional committee of inquiry in the American governmental system.
The Intrepid Senators
GIVEN OUR FORM OF GOVERNMENT — THE SEPARATION OF THE executive and legislature — congressional committees of inquiry are absolutely necessary. The fact that, under a cabinet form of government, ministers must defend them- selves in the legislature results in parliamentary knowl- edge of and control over administrative policy that are far greater than congressional knowledge or control can be. As Woodrow Wilson wrote a half century ago: "Congress stands almost helplessly outside of the depart- ments" with the result that "hostile or designing officials can always hold it at arm's length by dexterous evasions and concealments." The only whip that Congress has is investigation. That whip must be used by committees. But Mr. Wilson went on to say that "even the special, irksome, ungracious investigations, which it [Congress] from time to time institutes in its spasmodic endeavors to dispel or confirm suspicions of malfeasance or of wanton corruption, do not afford it more than a glimpse of the inside of a small province of the federal administration." During the last two years of his Presidency, when the Democrats had lost control of Congress, Mr. Wilson had to submit to inquiries into many "small provinces" of his administration. Fifty-one congressional investigations were in progress at the same time.
Manifestly a party which controls one or both branches of Congress wishes to use the power of investigation to hamper and discredit an executive from the opposing party. But Congress declines to be incurious when the same party controls both the legislature and the execu- tive. It is thus that the inquisitorial power of the Senate
Fitzpatrick in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch It's Been Pumped Up Too Often
becomes more frequent and more formidable than that of the House of Representatives.
There party control is more rigid than it is in the Sen- ate. Representatives live in the shadow cast by the always imminent congressional election. Hence the majority party in the House is reluctant to probe for possibly em- barrassing disclosures. The result is that when the same party is in control in Congress and in the White House, investigations are frequently asked for in the House and refused, but are allowed by the Senate. That the Senate and not the more popular branch of Congress should be more important as the grand inquisitor is somewhat ironical. But in the Senate, bondage to leaders is far less prevalent than in the House; because there are few lim- itations on debate, the need for investigations can be clearly set forth; and if the party steam roller is brought out, the minority may have an effective defense in a fili- buster that can endanger the majority's legislative time table.
Thus, in the period which followed the conclusion of the war, with the exception of the Graham Committee that scrutinized military expenditures (at a cost of half a million dollars), Senate committees conducted prac- tically every important investigation. They inquired into charges of corruption in the Veterans' Bureau, the oil land leases, the Bureau of Internal Revenue and its tax refunds, Mr. Daugherty's conduct of the Department of Justice, the failure to prosecute the aluminum trust, and the internal workings of the Tariff Commission. Through its committees, the House investigated matters that were much lesa spectacular: the administration of the Stock Yards Control Act, the operations of the Ar- my Air Service and the Shipping Board. It was during die Harding administration that the Senate became the grand inquest of the nation and that congressional investigations were recognized as being a regular and high- ly important part of the governmental ma- chine.
When they probe into important issues and when they seem to be endeavoring to be- smirch executive officers, senatorial investi- gations may encounter bitter opposition and severe criticism. Complaints are made that committees throw out their dragnets blindly and pry into irrelevant and innocent mat- ters; that a wrong construction may be put on honest actions; that the course that in- vestigations follow is determined by the idiosyncrasies of individual Senators; that those Senators are more concerned with se- curing headlines in the newspapers than they are in uncovering abuses.
Above the Courts
OCCASIONALLY, WHAT A COMMITTEE AND ITS investigators do seems designed to escape any taint of legality. Thus, the committee headed by Mr. Justice (then Senator) Black, which was inquiring into "all lobbying activities and all efforts to influence, encourage, pro- mote or retard legislation, directly or indi- rectly, in connection with the so-called hold- ing company bill." The committee wanted to see all the telegrams that had been sent
-' wf^^&^^^^t^*
SURVEY GRAPHIC
to Washington by opponents of the legisla- tion. Unable to procure them from the com- panies, the committee persuaded the Federal Communications Commission to obtain the messages for it. In granting such a power to the commission under the Communications Act of 1934, Congress was of course doing nothing more than enabling the commission to obtain the information that might be nec- essary for the efficient performance of its duties and for the formulation of new legis- lation. It did not intend that the commis- sion would be the assistant of a Senate com- mittee. Nevertheless, agents of the commis- sion examined thousands of telegrams and handed many on to the Black Committee.
The United States court of appeals for the District of Columbia declared that such "a dragnet seizure of private telegraph mes- sages . . . whether made by persons profess- ing to act under color of authority from the government or by persons acting as individ- uals is a trespass which a court of equity has power to enjoin." The trespass was com- plete, however. The telegrams had been handed over to the Senate committee and the court refused to enjoin the committee from disclosing the contents of the messages. "The universal rule, so far as we know it, is that the legislative discretion in discharge of its constitutional functions, whether right- fully or wrongly exercised, is not a subject of judicial interference." The court sug- gested, however, that Congress was as "much the guardian of the liberties and welfare of the people as the courts" and indulged in the hope that "attention being called to the unlawful nature of the search, the Senate will not use its proceeds in disregard" of the rights of the individuals whose telegrams were in its possession.
Here the appeal to the court for relief was too late. Other Senate committees may act in such a fashion that appeals to the courts will be successful. Witnesses who refuse to testify can be punished for contumacy if the Senate committee has stayed within its terms of refer- ence.
Nevertheless, the protection that may be afforded by the U. S. courts is more theoretical than real. Senate investi- gations are public, and hostile and irresponsible cross- examiners can do considerable harm to individuals who must appear without the protection of counsel who can insist on an observance of the rules of evidence. The rem- edy, however, is not to hamper the investigations. As Professor Frankfurter once said: "The safeguards against abuse and folly are to be looked for in the forces of re- sponsibility which are operating from within Congress and are generated from without." If the alternatives are no inquiry at all or an inquiry that is abused, then the choice must be for the latter. If it is not, then there is no method by which Congress may perform its duties of seeing to it that the administration of law, which Lord Morley called the "keystone of all civilized government" is neither corrupt nor incompetent. As legislation becomes more and more complex, and those who execute it be- come more and more numerous, the keystone is a cap- stone and a foundation as well.
Herblock for NEA Service John Q. Public Follows the Headlines
The British System Is Different
UNDER A PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT, AS I HAVE said, the presence of the executive in the legislature per- mits something of a day to day supervision of admin- istration. Occasionally, however, there are matters that have to be inquired into by some special inquisitorial process. Thus, the Marconi scandal in Great Britain in 1912 — cabinet ministers were accused of speculating in the shares of a company which had relations with the gov- ernment— was investigated by a select committee of the House of Commons. When there was a leakage of budget information from the cabinet in 1936 and some who had thereby become forewarned insured themselves against an increase of taxes, the government set up a special tribunal to conduct the investigation. There followed the resignation of the indiscreet minister, Jimmy Thomas.
Last spring, when it was suggested that a member of the House of Commons might be liable to prosecution under the Official Secrets Act because of military infor- mation that was contained in a question that he asked in the House of Commons, the procedure was to set up a Select Committee on the Official Secrets Act. It proceeded with a minimum of publicity and investigated with "no strangers present." The reports of such committees are intended to ascertain whether there has been wrongdo- ing and who is responsible — not to secure publicity for their members. Occasionally the committees may divide on partisan lines, but the inquiries are not partisan. Since headlines are not sought for, there are few abuses such as those which have not been altogether unknown in the pro- cedure of congressional committees.
JANUARY 1939
Nudging Social Change
DURING MR. ROOSEVELT'S FIRST ADMINISTRATION THE INQUIS- itorial branch of the governmental machine was used tor a new purpose. One of my colleagues, M. Nelson McGea- ry, has made a detailed examination of congressional in- quiries from 1933 on. He points out that "for the first time since investigations were well publicized, a strong party majority, Presidentially led, was committed to a program of social change."
To an extent this was true of the first two years of the Wilson administration, and he used a congressional in- vestigation into the tariff lobby to facilitate the passage of the Underwood Tariff revision. But it is true to say that, at the request of Mr. Roosevelt, congressional lead- ers demonstrated in a large way "that investigations may serve as valuable aids to an administration." Governor Landon did not like this. He objected to congressional committees "out to get the critics" as distinguished from committees that were "out to get the crooks." This was more epigrammatic than profound. If an administration has a legislative program why is it not legitimate for it to use congressional inquiries as an aid in driving that program to the statute book?
Aiming for the Headlines
DURING MR. ROOSEVELT'S FIRST ADMINISTRATION THERE were fifty-one inquiries which could be thought of as in- tended to aid the administration. Some of them were of minor importance and got little publicity. But the in- vestigations into lobbying by public utilities had a good deal of attention paid to them. After committees had turned up details about amounts of money spent on the lobbying activities of public utility agents, the House of Representatives reversed itself on the so-called "death sentence clause" of the Holding Companies Act. Sim- ilarly, the inquiry into stock exchange practices was a potent influence in smoothing the way for the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
The banking investigation had begun before the ad- vent of the Roosevelt administration — in the days when there were so many cruel jokes about bankers. At the time, the investigation furthered the political career of Justice Ferdinand Pecora and will always be remembered because of the midget that climbed into J. P. Morgan's lap. This was showmanship of an order which the Dies Committee has not been able to equal. In comparison, its methods have been humdrum but public expectancy has been great. Thus there seemed no inherent probabil- ity in the rumor that one of the witnesses on "un-Ameri- can" activities was to be Sally Rand.
Some investigations are difficult to classify. That was the case, for example, with the Senate committee — the so- called Nye Committee— which inquired into the manu- facture and sale of arms and other munitions of war. Its record was extremely voluminous. It proposed a good deal of legislation. It went into the question of the re- sponsibility for the entrance of the United States into the war. It heard testimony on whether President Wilson had known of the secret treaties between the allies. One wit- ness secured large headlines for the committee here and abroad by charging that, as Prince of Wales, the then King of England— Edward VII— had been a salesman for British munition firms. Extremely useful work that the committee did was discounted in the public mind by the extravagant claims made as to the importance of dis-
closures and as to the existence of a munitions ring which brought on wars.
Mr. McGeary classifies some inquiries as for the pur- pose of exercising "'social leverage' through publicity." He instances inquiries into real estate, bond holders' re- organizations and the La Follette investigation into strikebreaking and industrial espionage. Some investigat- ing committees which are charged with highly important terms of reference show disappointing results. That, for example, was the case with the Wheeler Committee in- vestigating railway financing. It had the opportunity of producing a thoroughgoing scheme for a new federal policy toward the railroads. It did little. What will be the result of the TVA investigation remains to be seen. That committee has a two-fold task: of reporting on responsi- bility for the long continued battle within the TVA board; and of making policy recommendations.
From Findings to Statutes
SOME CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATIONS HAVE BEEN CONDUCTED
without a fanfare of trumpets and with few clicks of cameras. Thus the National Monetary Commission, which consisted of an equal number of Representatives and Senators, initiated the studies and engaged in the deliberations which in the end led to the Federal Reserve System. Such formulation of legislation is in Great Britain considered primarily a function of the executive. The cabinet takes responsibility for the creation of a royal commission, a committee, or a conference out of whose deliberations legislative proposals are expected to come. While these agencies are at work there is no desire to stir up public opinion. In fact the theory underlying them is that it is better to take the issue out of current political discussion for the time being, to inquire into it, and then to lay non-party proposals before the government and the public. The government will then decide on the ex- tent to which it will endeavor to have the proposals put on the statute book. With something of this thought in mind, Mr. Hoover appointed the Wickersham Commit- tee on Prohibition, but thereafter he made the fatal mis- take of being interested in the nature of its report.
The Temporary National Economic Committee which is now investigating monopolies seems to me of a differ- ent character. It includes representatives of the legislature and of the executive in equal numbers. It has half a mil- lion dollars to spend — far too much to be spent prudently in any reasonably short period. It may produce some- thing that is worthwhile, but if this happens, tributes will be paid to personnel rather than to the nature of the de- vice. Bagehot once said that the men of Massachusetts could have worked any constitution. Perhaps the men on the O'Mahoney Committee will be able to work an in- quiry under the joint control of Congress and the ex- ecutive. The start has been good. The publicizing has been designed to take the nation to school. But it will probably not be long before devils are produced for ex- coriation by a shocked public. In the end Congress will be given drafts of bills. Before that happens we shall probably learn something about the difficulties inherent in an inquiry which is based on responsibility that is di- vided and which will be influenced by allegiances that are not identical. Congressional inquisitions and inquiries are American political inventions that are of great im- portance but we have not yet learned how to use them to the best advantage.
SURVEY GRAPHIC
Profit Sharing: The Joslyn Formula
by WILLIAM F. McDERMOTT
This is the story of a profit sharing plan that has worked for nineteen years and in the words of its originator, "made capitalists out of workers" — as employes have participated with management in the progress of the Joslyn Company in Chicago.
TlM IS A WAREHOUSE TRUCKMAN. FOR NINETEEN YEARS
he has been handling supplies in the Chicago factory of the Joslyn Manufacturing and Supply Company, whose main products are electric light and power line equip- ment. Tim is on the threshhold of sixty, gray around the temples, but hale and hearty, and is counting the days un- til he can spend all his time on his three-acre "patch" beyond the city limits. Tim started on his way up by tucking away $1.50 weekly for fifty weeks each year, tell- ing the company to take it out of his weeekly pay envel- ope, which averaged $28 to $30 over the entire period. For the first eleven years the company, through the Joslyn profit sharing plan, matched Tim's dollar four to one; then the slump cut the company's share to nil for three years, because it operated at a loss, and to a fractional contribu- tion for three more. Lately it has come back to par.
Yet, in spite of the depression, Tim hasn't fared so badly. He has saved $1425 out of his wages which, with company contributions, compound interest and other in- crements, gives him a credit of $15,200. That's about $11 for every $1 he has put in. His earnings for nineteen years have totalled $28,500, so while he put by 5 percent of his pay, he gets back through the profit sharing plan 55 per- cent. He can invest it, if he wishes, in preferred stock of his company, which at 6 percent — it paid 7 percent for seventeen years, but now pays 6 — will yield him $912 a year, or $76 a month, income without touching the prin- cipal; or he can take the principal in monthly payments, with interest on the balance; or collect in a lump sum for his own investment purposes.
Another in the "graduating" class this year — composed
of those who have reached the retirement age of sixty- had been in it with Tim from the beginning. He saved $1730 before his death a few weeks ago. He was an electric truck driver and had earned an average of $150 a month. The profit sharing plan provided his widow with a check for $17,700,
A machinist who has been in the plan since 1923 has paid in $97 a year or less than $2 a week. His contributions amounting to $1452 have produced for him at the end of fifteen years a credit of $11,200. In 1935 his salary was $1621, but his profit sharing was $1223.
I recently met a woman who started twenty-two years ago with the Joslyn company as a typist at $7 a week. Last year she earned in salary and profit sharing $3600. In the plan for eighteen years, she paid in $390 in the first five years with a credit of $2305 at the end of the period. At the end of ten years she had paid in $914.50 and was credited with $6672. At the end of fifteen years she had contributed $1365 and had $9783 in her favor, while at the end of eighteen years she had paid $1703, and was "booked" with $14,465 credit.
A warehouseman who worked up to a plant superinten- dency has $31,500 to his credit in the profit sharing, as against $3140 he has contributed.
An executive with Joslyn, who got a chance job as an order clerk with the company eighteen years ago when he was twenty years old, has while working his way up won through the profit sharing a credit of $16,000. He will have when he retires in 1960 at the age of sixty, at the average rate of increment of past and present, a total of over $100,000!
A foreman soon to "check out" will receive $29,106, and
Profit Sharing: The Mixed General Picture
Profit sharing — what it is, how it works, its effect on employer- employe relations — is being investigated by a Senate sub- committee. The stated purpose of the study is to compile a record of experience "which may be consulted by employers who are interested in voluntarily establishing profit sharing plans"; and also to consider "what advisable contribution, if any" may be made by Congress to encourage industrial profit sharing. Among the outstanding plans which have been described to the committee by the industrial leaders responsible for them are those of the Procter and Gamble Company, of which this magazine carried the first full length report in "Ivorydale: A Payroll that Floats" (April 1930) ; Sears, Roebuck; Eastman Kodak; Westinghouse Electric; General Electric; American Rolling Mill; Northwestern States Portland Cement. Most of the employer witnesses hold
that profit sharing must be flexible. Many suggest that the government might grant special tax concessions, possibly reduction in social security taxes, to stimulate voluntary profit sharing. As background material, the committee has two recent studies. C. Canby Balderston of the Whatton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania found records of only 193 plans still active at the end of 1936. The National Industrial Conference Board study covers 161 plans, 50 of which were active and included about 178,000 workers. Of the abandoned plans, 32 percent were given up because of the adverse attitude of employes. William Green and John L. Lewis have vigorously expressed the desire of organized labor for profit sharing through the pay envelope rather than through "paternalistic" schemes launched and administered by management.
JANUARY 1939
another executive $36,278, through this company plan.
•
THE JOSLYN COMPANY HAD ITS PLAN IN OPERATION FOR eighteen years before the public found out anything about it. Then a financial editor, chancing in at a stockholders' meeting, heard the remarkable story and printed it. Since then 6000 corporations and individuals have asked for de- tails. Recently it has been classified by a group of indus- trial relations experts as among the very best of 165 profit sharing and pension systems minutely studied — the 165 being chosen out of 4000 now operated by various corporations throughout the country.
Dr. C. Canby Balderston, of the University of Pennsylvania, an outstanding authority on in- dustrial relations, wrote to M. L. Joslyn, president of the company, that "of the 165 American plans I have uncovered so far, yours appears to me as the one I would be most willing to bet on."
The Joslyn system provides that employes shall "chip in" 5 percent of their wages to the fund, and the company appro- priate 10 percent of its net profits to it. Up to a year or so ago, the requirement was only 5 percent, yet the company paid in for the seventeen years an average of 9 percent.
That resulted, in the long pros- perity stretch before the depres- sion, in $4 being contributed by the company to every $1 by an employe, which is the maximum payment the plan allows the company to make. During 1931, 1932 and 1933 the company lost money and contributed nothing; in 1934 and 1935 about dollar for dollar; in 1936, two for one, and in 1937 and 1938 four for one again.
An employe at the end of three years' service must join the plan or resign. That sounds like compulsion, but the company is frank about it. "If a man can't see the advan- tage for him in this plan, he isn't the kind of a man we want working for us," it says.
On the other hand, a board of five, three representing management and two the employes, governs labor rela- tions and a man cannot be discharged without the ap- proval of four out of five. That requires at least one of the two labor votes for a dismissal.
When an employe reaches sixty, or is disabled by acci- dent or ill health, he receives the entire amount to his credit. Provisions are liberal, so that a worker may retire at fifty or fifty-five if his health is not good. He will be regarded as disabled and receive the full amount. If he quits his job before being qualified for retirement, he re- ceives back all that he paid in, with half of what the com- pany deposited to his credit, and compound interest on both. The other half of the company contribution reverts to the fund for the benefit of the remaining members. The company receives nothing back at all. During the early years of an employe's membership, life insurance up
10
to $2000 is provided without cost to him, decreasing as his credit in the fund increases.
The average credit per member, from the oldest in the fund to those just entered, is approximately $2400. Near the end of 1938 the profit sharing fund had a balance of approximately one million dollars, with $126,000 invested in first mortgages, $700,000 in Joslyn Company preferred stock, and the balance in high grade bonds and other securities. The fund owns about one half the preferred stock of the company. The president of the company is
trustee of the fund, but it is controlled by a board of five, consisting of the trustee, two other officers of the company, and two employes elected by profit sharing members. During 1937, members contributed $31,- 200 to the fund, while the com- pany paid in $122,000. Most of the members are factory work- ers, 85 percent compared with white collar workers who make up 15 percent.
Earned income through the profit sharing plan's operation has compounded yearly at 8j4 percent. That is because the company's preferred stock until recently has paid 7 percent, and relinquishments, profits on in- vested bonds and other earn- ings have increased the income 1% percent.
Making Capitalists Out of Workers
Moffett Photo
M. L. Joslyn believes that any real partnership between
labor and capital is possible only when the worker
himself has a stake in the enterprise
THE PLAN IS APPROPRIATELY
named after its inventor and the founder and builder of the company. Mr. Joslyn, who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1896, was given a graduation present of $5000 with which to tour Europe. He stayed over there three months, spent $1600, and came back with the balance to go into business. That is the only capital he ever had besides what he earned.
The staid practice of law didn't appeal to him so he began to look around for some industrial activity to chal- lenge his energy and ideas. By chance he became a "doc- tor of sick business." Taking charge of one tottering concern, he made such a success of it that it gave him the impulse to tackle others. Within a year after graduation he was in eleven different kinds of business, including the ownership and operation of a telephone exchange.
It was the latter that proved the forerunner of the present business. Seeking to extend his telephone system, he bought a factory to manufacture the equipment with the speed he desired. When power lines began to develop, he saw an opportunity and seized it. He organized the Joslyn Manufacturing and Supply Company in 1902.
In the meantime, the young industrialist was seeking to work out his ideas to share his profits with his workers, going on the basis that you must get people to work with you and not for you. He held that if you want workers to defend capitalism, you must make capitalists out of them. He believed that the easiest pushover for the political
SURVEY GRAPHIC
crackpot— they had plenty of them in those days— is the toiler who looks forward to a penniless old age.
So for twenty years Joslyn tried one plan after another. He gave workmen stock certificates, which at the end of the year brought dividends equal with stock. But he found that not one in ten employes at the end of sixty days had a nickel of the extra money left. Most just blew it; some drank it up; very few used it to build for the future.
Then he tried cooperative grocery-buying. That fizzled out. The bonus system was next, but its benefits were transitory. He figured the average pension system was but "a crust thrown to an old dog in the corner." He then decided on a profit sharing plan that not only would rob old age of its terrors but actually make it so attractive financially that an employe would look forward happily to the time of his retirement.
Joslyn adopted a new business philosophy in the pro- cess. It has finally come to this, which he believes should be the objective of business. "Pay capital enough to keep it interested and ability enough to keep it functioning, then give the rest of the profits to the workers. Don't get labor at the cheapest price to give the stockholders the greatest dividends. Pay the stockholders a reasonable re- turn and let the employes have the bulk of the returns."
He planned that the profit sharing would be cumula- tive so that a man would think seriously before throw- ing up his job; and that it would be so remunerative that an employe would be relieved of all worries con- cerning the future, thus re- leasing energies for more efficient work.
His first rule was that profit sharing was not to be at the sacrifice of the wage scale. He pays and always has paid equal to the highest in the industry — often higher. The lowest wage paid un- skilled labor in the main plant is 61 cents an hour; in any of the branch plants 50 cents an hour. Up to fl.50 an hour is paid for skilled labor. The average pay of all employes in the plan is $1740 a year, or $145 a month.
When Labor Participates With Management
THE JOSLYN PLAN WAS LAUNCHED JANUARY 1, 1919, IN THE
Chemist in the testing and inspection laboratory
Making cross arms at the Franklin Park factory
JANUARY 1939
Factory workers in the Joslyn "pickling plant"
period of large labor turnover just after the war from which all industry suffered. At first it met with some doubt and suspicion that it was designed to offset low wages.
On that point Mr. Joslyn recently spoke as follows to a group of manufacturers:
We promptly announced that our wages would be as high always as those paid by our leading competitors, as they had been in the past. This wage integrity is an essential founda- tion for the plan, which would be a sham without it. At the end of three years all abnormal labor turnover was ended and efficiency increased so greatly that every foreman reported its increased value exceeded the cost of the plan. This profit result has continued ever since, so capital therefore has been satisfied.
We have produced better material at lower cost, our business has grown, and the plan has satisfied our public with improved products. Our executives have been satisfied, because we have not lost a manager, salesman or office man of any standing in the nineteen years. Coming to the question of labor reaction, we never have had one moment of labor trouble in the history of the plan.
IT'S STRICTLY A BUSINESS PROPOSITION, NOT A PHILANTHROPY,
Joslyn insists. He lists these efficiencies that the profit shar- ing plan has achieved for the corporation:
No strike, labor dispute or labor turnover problem.
Capital and labor antagonism eliminated.
Better production; employes work for themselves as well as for the company.
High morale and loyalty.
No loss of trained men to competitors.
Lower costs because of higher competency.
Class distinctions eliminated as all become partners in one enterprise for mutual profit.
"With a large percentage of our workers actually capi- talists," Mr. Joslyn says, "as they are under our plan, and others rapidly approaching that status, there is no soil for class hatred to grow in. This plan has given us men un- afraid of dependency in their old age, men with a steadily growing stake in the country and its institutions, defend- ers of capital because they have capital to defend. It gives us men steadily mounting the ladder of thrift year by year, forward-looking men, proud to make what they put their
11
hands to successful. We are convinced we have made more per dollar of investment than we could have made with- out the plan."
The Scope of the Plan
THE JOSLYN COMPANY'S MAIN PLANT AT CHICAGO EMPLOYS 650, 40 percent of whom are in the profit sharing plan. The others have not yet completed the three-years' service requisite for membership. The company has a steel mill at Ft. Wayne, Ind., and a plant at Franklin Park, 111., with employes in the profit sharing plan. Likewise a ware- house and factory at Kansas City. Then it has a number of subsidiaries and associated companies scattered through- out the country, some sharing in the plan, others not. The number of employes exceeds 2000. The company has been growing rapidly, so that many employes have not yet be- come eligible or voted on the plan, especially in plants recently acquired. These, and unskilled migrant work- ers, usually unmarried, reduce the number of participants to less than five hundred. But the percentage is bound to rise as time makes these new Joslyn employes eligible.
The Joslyn concern has outstanding 14,000 shares of pre- ferred stock of a par value of $100 each; and 150,000 shares of common stock of a market value of $40. The earned surplus, June 30, 1938, was $2,049,914.
The average annual profit of the company for the nine- teen years its profit sharing plan has been in operation has been 13.3 percent. Its net income for 1937 was 97 per- cent over that of 1936. The sales increase was 46 percent. • Sales for 1937 totalled $12,387,342, compared to $8,481,601 in 1936; 1937 net profit was $917,900, compared to $482,- 130 the year before. Even in the depressed summer of 1938 the company launched a $75,000 factory expansion.
No unique conditions mark the achievements, Mr. Jos- lyn said a few months ago in addressing the Illinois Manu- facturers' Association :
Is there anything in our business unusually favorable to the securing of such results? ... I think not. It is openly com- petitive. We have practically no patents or special privileges. We are paying 20 percent bonus to our profit sharers this year on wages fully up to our competitors', which means we are actually paying 20 percent more wages. How can we do this and compete after assuming the tremendous tax burdens and restrictions to which all business is subject? Increased efficency of production is the method. The success is verified by our balance sheet. Certainly our plan needn't frighten capi- tal. We do not think we have the only plan or the final, best shape in which to formulate it. The thing we do have is some- thing that has worked, and we offer our experience for others to build on, modify or improve as men continue to think clearly toward a better end.
The Joslyn plan isn't claimed to be a cure-all for indus- trial relations. It is as advanced and as generous a form of profit sharing as has proved practical to date. It has out- lasted a major boom and a major depression, and bears the
earmarks of permanency. It is not a pension scheme, but is far more ample in its old age provisions than the average pension plan.
It has no direct disability or sickness benefits, although it can be borrowed against to meet an emergency, and in case of permanent disability pays out in full. It has no un- employment insurance or dismissal compensation features so labeled, but it has the same effect fof anyone who has been in the plan any length of time. The actual working out of the plan has proved it to be a buffer against unem- ployment, because those in it were practically certain of jobs throughout the depression. Work at times was on a part time basis, but enough income was provided to keep employes self-sustaining, and at the same time profit shar- ing increments were preserved. When anyone did resign, his profit sharing paid the equivalent of unemployment insurance or dismissal compensation. Those who with- drew from the plan last year, other than by retirement or disability, received an average of $480.
Dr. Balderston points out that profit sharing has been revived with every business upturn for nearly a century. During the 1920s, employe stock ownership was hailed but the crash deflated it. Now profit sharing again has the spotlight, in spite of the fact that during recent years many of the most elaborate plans of major corporations have either failed or had to be bolstered up with addi- tional capital. Mr. Joslyn claims that few such failures would have occurred but for inherent weaknesses in the plans.
Profit sharing is discounted by some authorities as not containing enough of the provisions for solution of the problem of industrial relations. But it is recognized as an important stage in reaching a just and profitable relation- ship between capital and labor. Among the plans which have been recommended by experts are schemes with defi- nite benefits for each type of emergency — old age, death, disability and unemployment — with a trusted reserve in- vested in securities suitable for savings banks. Such plans, in turn, call for a definite division of net profits between employes and stockholders. Plans of this nature, of course, do not necessarily call for the employes' active participa- tion with management in the long range progress of the venture in which they are all working together; they may be described as perhaps more paternalistic and benevolent in achieving their purpose than the plan evolved by the Joslyn Company.
Mr. Joslyn believes that any profit sharing scheme super- imposed on labor without effort and responsibility on its part is worthless. He thinks it is a partnership enterprise, with management bearing the lion's share of the load. It is not a matter of beneficence, but of engineering. It can be made to succeed, but requires good technique as well as good intentions. Authorities agree that nineteen years of successful operation practically prove the point.
One of the branch plants of the Joslyn Manufacturing and Supply Company
12
SURVEY GRAPHIC
Americans Ship Out!
Photographs by
LEWIS W. HINE
With Text by
GEORGE C. STONEY
YOUNG, BRIGHT, RECKLESS, THE NEW SEAMEN ARE EXCHANGING
the old clipper ship adventure for the more dangerous one of trying to make the U.S. Merchant Marine worthy of its Yankee tradition.
The word "Yankee" no longer fully describes our mod- ern seamen. With all the Philippine, West Indian, Negro, Italian and Spanish blood in their veins it takes an all- inclusive word — they are "American." And what tradition they have is one of "crimp joints" and being "shanghaied," a dash of "IWW" on a lot of "hungry ships."
A depression, and a rank-and-file revolution against union hall "swivel chairs," who hired strong arm "goon squads" with shipowner money to prevent strikes, have given American seamen the beginnings of a new tradi- tion: one of militancy, the sitdown strike, an aristocracy of picket cardholders.
Steam and specialization of tasks have broken the old uniformity of sea face. A ship's personnel is divided into dozens of classifications and three distinct departments — deck, engine and steward — whose members have different occupational problems, physical make-ups, and mental at- titudes which often make them hostile to each other. The open deck attracts the adventurous. Boys from the hinter- lands carry on the dime novel tradition of romance and recklessness with a self-conscious swagger. Lean, husky fellows, fighters, younger and less "steady" than the others, yet from the "deck" have come the most dependable as well as the most militant and courageous leaders in the new seamen's organization movement.
"Down below" where the "black gang" works it is 120 degrees hot most of the time. Here are stolid, stout men, older, less colorful than the others and the least educated. The enginemen ride one ship longer than other seamen for they regard their work as a life trade. They are not so militant in unionism as the deck, but once a strike is called this bunch is as tough as any, and a lot more stubborn.
Bell hops, waiters, pantrymen, printers and stewardesses — yes, women in a seamen's union! Stewards don't know a rolling chock from a hawsehole, yet they form the largest of the three divisions of maritime labor. They live in the "glory hole" and seldom get back to talk with the rest of the crew, bunked in the fo'c'sle. Under a few chefs and highly trained head waiters are a body of unskilled or semi-skilled men. To the deck and enginemen they were just "finky stews" until two years ago. Then these ship servants, sleek but tough, proved they could man a picket line with the best of them. Different as they are, all work- men on American ships have in common a certain brash independence, a love of argument, and personal loneliness.
Lessons of democratic unionism come hard to these workers, saddled for so many years by a dictatorial one. They pull a "quickie" instead of trusting their new leaders to settle the "beef" with the port captain. Most seamen now know that refusing to take Negroes into the union makes scabs of them. Yet when they find race equality means sleeping in the same bunk-stack, as well as walking in the same picket line, a lot of them balk. Union meetings in which no man is denied the right to speak because of his political opinions brings into open conflict the large radical group and the conservatives. The air is salty with profanity; fist fights are frequent. When a meeting ends in what the newspapers report as a "riot," however, what usually happens is this: a few factionalists start scuffling and the rest join in, not because they favor one side or the other but because every seaman loves a good scrap.
Deckmen "sujie" the bulkhead, paint, man the boonu, bJ hatches. Modern sailors are little more than maintenance ill The men "below" move ships today. A deal of skill at needed to splice two-inch steel cable and rig the booms ji it. They must be jacks-of -all-trades and a little knowledgii mechanics is more useful to them than a lot about stars n tides. Six months at sea gives a deck hand the ratinii Ordinary Seaman. An "O.S." must serve three years, a a stiff craft examination and prove he can handle a life a by demonstration to get an Able Seaman's ticket. All I. used to be a joke. Now the laws requiring so many "A. on each ship are being enforced. The unions are glad, captains find few scabs who have three years' worth ofjjli charges.
The "black gang" isn't so black more, since oil burners have re| coalers. Firemen walk the alleywa tween giant boilers, adjusting the of oil and manipulating drafts to steam pressure uniform. Novices a six months' apprenticeship as W cleaning burners. Oilers (a Fire next step up) watch over the tu and the thousands of feet of oil, and circulating pipes that are coi a ship's belly.
Gardne
A steward resembles a hotel worker more than he does his professional ancestor, the sea cook. Tips make up most of his pay. Custom has regulated the amount of these so that his income depends more on the kind of "show" he gets from the "chief" — the number and class of state- rooms he is assigned — than on the qual- ity of his work. He works ten to four- teen hours a day, Sundays, holidays and port days. The turnover in this depart- ment is enormous.
urkhardt Photo
ver try living in a locker? Or taking a bath in a bucket? This is what lost seamen must do. Crowded a dozen to a room, put below the water ne or in the stern against the noisy steering gear; eating, sleeping, athing in the same compartment, American seamen have had, and any still have, the worst living quarters afloat.
Room to live! The quarters above accommodate two firemen on the S.S. Argentina, recently overhauled by the Maritime Commission. Money spent on crew space, it reasons, will be repaid in better work and a more stable personnel. The fact that most seamen have struck because of "conditions" rather than wages bears this out.
"Coffee time" — a ten minute rest period in each watch — is a union-born American sea custom many a sailor has risked his skull to guard. Ashore it's always "coffee time." Fast ship schedules give sea- men scarcely any free time in port. For a couple of days off they must "beach" — give up their jobs. Then come two or three months of living in two- bit hotels, playing cards in the union hall or hang- ing around waterfront saloons. Used to enforced routine on shipboard, it seems impossible for the Average seaman to live a normal shore life.
Job control, rotary shipping through a union hall dispatcher's cage, is a union member's greatest asset. Each one is given a numbered trip card when he quits ship and as that number rotates to the top of the shipping list he has his choice of jobs called in by the lines with which the union has contracts. Thus work is shared by the whole membership and port captains can no longer sell jobs to the highest tippers.
45 Broadway, the Maritime Commission's hiring hall, is picketed as a "fink hall" by union militants, for despite its sudden concern about ship conditions, it itill refuses to hire crews through the union.
Any brother may "take the deck" at union meetings — and almost all of then do. These are turbulent affairs that begin at seven and last until midnight Business is conducted in a democratic way. As in most young unions, participa
£f_ :_ . fl
Pugnacious, comradely, boys forever; unionism is a relig- ion to these new seamen, a picket card their passport
In port he is a beachcomber; afloat, the enforced regularity of living makes of him a capable worker
Curiosity seldom takes him beyond the American cafe in
f 1-1 1- iii I'm r\e-\rt Wit
0n0itiAtnp.fi
The number of college men who look for a future as well as adventure in American fo'c'sles is on the
on the increase
Maritime Labor Grows Up
by FRANK M. KLEILER
You have seen their faces on the preceding pages. Now read their story — what seamen and dockworkers want, their unions and their leaders, their employers, the part government is playing in their problems — as told by a journalist who has made a special study of the shipping industry.
FOR ANOTHER YEAR AT LEAST AMERICAN WATER-BORNE COM-
merce is promised relative freedom from the labor strife which in the last half decade has cost an appalling quan- tity of blood and dollars. In the West, Harry Bridges and other leaders of maritime unions have renewed their an- nual agreements with the Waterfront Employers Associ- ation. In the East, Joe Curran of the National Maritime Union is putting his signature on papers along with most of the important steamship operators in Atlantic and Gulf ports after getting an impressive membership vote in favor of ratifying passenger and freighter agreements. Inter- organizational disputes are still a menace, but elections conducted by the National Labor Relations Board are settling them with less difficulty than ever before.
It appears that maritime employer-employe relations are entering a new and perhaps more harmonious era. Yet the clash of interests which precipitated the bitter West Coast strikes in 1934 and 1936, and the "quickies" heckling the shipowners in almost every port are still present. The unions in recent negotiations staunchly defended the gains they had won previously by strikes, and the employers with equal stubbornness demanded guarantees against ex- pensive work stoppages. The conflict constituted a real crisis. Negotiations were completed, however, without a skull cracked or an eye blackened. Shippers, union offi- cials, common seamen and longshoremen are breathing a lot easier now that they are over.
The full significance of these recent developments may not yet be apparent. It depends upon how conscientiously the provisions of the agreements are applied. Unquestion- ably, however, the developments herald the arrival of genuine collective bargaining in an industry hitherto noto- rious for its labor strife. Labor relations in water transpor- tation are at last beginning to attain the long overdue ma- turity essential for peaceful and efficient operation.
Considering the vital public interest at stake in the maritime industry, this new level of reasonableness should have been attained years ago. The United States vessels in foreign and domestic service — employing between 200,000 and 400,000 officers, sailors, longshoremen, and other workers (no one knows the number more exactly) — be- long to the oldest and perhaps most indispensable industry in the country. As complex as it is old, the industry in- volves many different classes of work. Seamen bring cargo into port; longshoremen unload it; warehousemen pile it into temporary shelter; and teamsters eventually haul it away. Workers in any one of the four occupations can stop the flow of commerce. All are dependent upon suc- cessful management of the shipping lines.
But in spite of the industry's age and importance, the history of its financial affairs and of its labor relations is
18
melancholy. Water transportation has been in a condition of chronic ill-health ever since the Civil War, and the persistent efforts of the government to bolster up the mer- chant marine brpught little success. The messy conditions disclosed by the Black investigation of ocean mail con- tracts became a national scandal. It was proved that polit- ical spoilsmen were able to establish shipping companies with only a desk, a telephone and a few hundred dollars for the sole purpose of feeding at the subsidy trough.
Even today, the United States Maritime Commission is spending millions of dollars to keep American ships on the seas. Direct subsidies to construct modern vessels and to operate them on the high seas have long been accepted as inevitable for maintaining a merchant marine. Domes- tic shipping is in a more fortunate financial condition, but it cannot be called prosperous.
American vessels in foreign trade compete most disas- trously with ships under foreign flags which have lower labor costs. Foreign ships are barred from coastwise and intercoastal commerce, but here the American ships en- counter severe competition from railroads, motor carriers and air lines. The result is constant pressure to lower labor standards.
Partly because of unenlightened management policies and partly because of the poverty in the industry, the sail- ors went to Congress to improve their conditions. Led by Andrew Furuseth, president of the International Sea- men's Union, they launched a powerful lobbying move- ment in the 1880's which bore important fruits before the World War. With the aid of the late Senator Robert M. La Follette, they secured adoption of a bill which abolished imprisonment for desertion in safe harbor, granted seamen the right to demand half the wages earned and unpaid in ports of loading and discharging cargo, raised the stand- ards of living and food, established the nine-hour day while in port, protected wages from allotment to original creditors and established important safety regulations.
Even with these laws the merchant sailors' lot was not a happy one. Enforcement of the laws was desultory. The unions were slow and clumsy in exercising economic strength. The progress of land workers in the industry was also slow. Instead of pulling together, the teamsters and longshoremen fought each other for jurisdiction over the warehouse workers who constituted a "no man's land" between them.
The obstacles in the way of organizing the common seamen were discouraging. Not only was there the vigo- rous anti-union stand of the shipowners, company union- ism, discrimination and blacklisting, but also there was the practical difficulty of getting seafarers together often enough to form a union and keep it alive; voyages were
SURVEY GRAPHIC
long, and periods in the home port were short; there was also the traditional individualism and carelessness of the sailor. Even more significant has been the difficulty in getting continuous and level-headed leadership. To keep the organization together the leader of a seamen's union must stay ashore all the time, and when he remains ashore he is apt to lose close contact with conditions and men. Partly because of anti-union discrimination and partly because they are most interested in unionism, the radicals among seamen tend to be ashore longer than the conser- vative seamen. The radicals consequently are in a better position to control the union, and the union president must be one of them or must compromise with them.
These factors made the seamen's unions weak in num- bers and finances, and they rarely won a strike until re- cent years. The International Seamen's Union reached its greatest strength during the World War, but the increase in membership was clearly due to the expansion of the merchant marine. The collapse of overseas shipping after the war was accompanied by a decline of the ISU, capped by a crushing defeat in the 1921 strike. Thereafter dele- gates of the ISU were forbidden access to vessels of the Shipping Board or the Steamship Owners' Association.
From 1921 to 1934 the ISU was on the downgrade. Ex- penses of the organization reported in 1932 were $10,231 for the year, receipts only $7725. About 2 percent of the seamen eligible to membership were paying dues. The International Longshoremen's Association did not fare quite so badly. It was shattered on the West Coast by a prolonged strike in 1919, but vigorous organization tactics held the East Coast membership almost intact through- out the succeeding years.
The seamen never got an NRA code, but ISU delegates once more were allowed to board the ships on organiza- tion business. The seamen's unions have shared the pros- perity of other unions under the Wagner Act, growing in the labor upheaval of the times. The "growing pains," however, were severe. No more bitter labor wars were ever fought than those on the waterfronts from 1934 to 1937. Not only did insurgent unions clash with stubborn employers, but rival unions almost strangled each other.
Water Front Conflict
THE CONFLICT OF ALL THE FACTIONS REACHED ITS MOST SPEC-
tacular manifestations in San Francisco. The ILA had regained its strength by the end of 1933 and formed the spearhead of aggressive action. First it put the skids un- der the old Longshoremen's Association of San Francisco organized by gang bosses fourteen years earlier. Then it shouted demands which precipitated a general strike.
May 9, 1934, when this historic strike began, found both sides armed for war. Gates along the waterfront were closed and topped with barbed wire. Hundreds of strikebreakers were recruited. Pickets marched persist- ently under police surveillance. Intent upon crushing the ILA, employers were willing to risk the possible loss of a few million dollars while holding out against union demands.
Striking longshoremen were joined by other crafts in the maritime industry. Out of the struggle which fol- lowed finally came collective agreements, and peace seemed assured. But militant leadership had captured the rank and file and the unions were not satisfied to rest on their victories.
The longshoremen's international president, Joseph P.
Ryan, had negotiated an early agreement with employ- ers, but the West Coast membership led by Harry Bridges refused to recognize it. This breach was never healed. The Bridges' faction later became the International Long- shoremen's and Warehousemen's ^Jnion, a CIO affiliate which practically drove the ILA from the Pacific. The West Coast membership of the International Seamen's Union similarly broke with the national officers. With Bridges rose Harry Lundeberg, head of the Sailors Union of the Pacific. The up-and-at-'em tactics of this pair be- came popular, and they combined the leadership of al- most all the Pacific Coast unions into the Maritime Fed- eration of the Pacific which became a potent solidifying force until it was shattered by internal strife in 1938. When Bridges and Lundeberg parted company, Lunde- berg devoted his talents to organization work in opposi- tion to the CIO's maritime unions. Last October he got a charter from the AF of L and became president of the new Seafarers International Union of North America.
As usual in labor disputes, the most vigorous leaders in the '34 strike were accused of having communistic affili- ations. The charges struck a truly sore point in the mari- time labor movement. While no important union officers identify themselves with the Communist Party, many of the union members carry party cards. Bridges found him- self in the position of having to be sufficiently radical to keep his following and sufficiently conservative to stay in the country. Because he happened to have been born in Australia, Bridges was made the object of deportation proceedings, which are still pending. As the AF of L- CIO feud developed, the charges which the shipowners were hurling at Bridges were also hurled by the AF of L organizers. Members of Bridges' union and of the NMU, both affiliated with the CIO, were derisively called "corn- rats," and the AF of L Seamen's Union — or what was left of it — became the right wing of the maritime labor movement. Even the separation into two wings did not dispose of conflicting political philosophies, however, for .the conservatives in the NMU organized into a strong bloc which still is giving the national officers plenty of headaches.
After the 1934 settlements there was no important strike for two years, but the shipowners were exasperated by the sudden "quickies," some of which were directed against the employers and some of which resulted from the AF of L-CIO rivalry. In 1936, the shipowners and unions failed to agree on modifications of the agreements and arbitration awards which resulted from the '34 strike.
On October 27, the Maritime Federation unions an- nounced that their members had voted to strike, and two days later all shipping on the Pacific Coast came to a standstill. The strike lasted 98 days and directly involved more than 37,000 workers. In contrast to the '34 strike, however, there was no violence. Federal conciliators worked ceaselessly. During January 1937, the employers reached agreements with some of the unions, but these were not signed until satisfactory settlements had been made with all seven unions in the Maritime Federation on a coast-^/ide basis. The strikes were called off on Feb- ruary 4 after all agreements had been ratified by the union members.
As forged in 1934 and worked over again in 1936 and 1937, the agreements to be renewed annually each Sep- tember contained detailed rules, rates of pay, and work- ing conditions. The unlicensed sea-going personnel — rep-
JANUARY 1939
19
Lewis W. Hint Joseph Curran, president of the National Maritime Union
resented by the Sailors Union of the Pacific; the Pacific Coast Marine Firemen, Oilers, Watertenders, and Wi- pers' Association; and the Marine Cooks and Stewards' Association of the Pacific Coast — got agreements signed by 28 lines in the deep-sea and intercoastal trade and 37 lines in the coastwise or steam-schooner trade represented by the Shipowners' Association of the Pacific. They provided that union members were to be given preference in em- ployment and all men were to be hired through the union. They prohibited strikes and lockouts during the life of the agreements. Bi-partisan port committees were estab- lished to adjudicate disputes arising out of application of the agreements.
The licensed personnel — represented by the American Radio Telegraphists Association, the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association and the National Organization of Masters, Mates, and Pilots of America — made similar agreements, including seniority rules and clauses prohib- iting discrimination for union affiliation.
The longshoremen's agreement was somewhat differ- ent from those of the seafarers. It provided establishment of a bi-partisan labor relations committee in each port for handling disputes and operating hiring halls. The committees were empowered to name the hiring hall per- sonnel except the dispatcher, to be selected by the union. The union agreed to discipline members for misconduct or illegal stoppages of work. It was this set of agreements which was up for renewal a few months ago.
The developments in San Francisco are not identical with those in other seaports, but they are representative. Joe Curran is the eastern counterpart of Harry Bridges, and the experience of the two men has been somewhat
20
similar. While Bridges was rebelling against Joe Ryan of the ILA, Curran was rebelling against the "cautious" leadership of the ISU. Finally expelled from the ISU early in 1936, Curran took the rank and file into the CIO, where they organized the National Maritime Union. The ISU promptly dwindled.
Maritime strife in the East has been more sporadic than that in the West. None of the Atlantic or Gulf ports has witnessed such intensive strikes as those in San Fran- cisco. Threats and "quickies" have been the tools of Cur- ran, and he has called no prolonged battles. The results, however, are about the same. Agreements for maritime workers in the East represent the same progress as those represented in the West, and the issues are similar throughout the country.
What Maritime Labor Wants
IF TOLD IN TERMS OF UNION DEMANDS, THE STORY OF THE
marine workers' struggles is unvarying. West Coast orga- nizational alignments and tactics are different from those in the East, but the attitude of the men and the condi- tions against which they rebel are the same. All are seek- ing remedies for backward personnel policies in the mer- chant marine.
Unsatisfactory quarters for the crew bulk large as a source of friction in the industry. Despite considerable im- provement in recent years, the living conditions for sea- men are such that many of the workers can maintain health and self-respect only with extreme difficulty. On passenger vessels twenty or twenty-five men often occupy one room. The law establishes a ratio of 120 cubic feet of space per man, but the ships seldom do more than meet this minimum requirement. Failure of officers to enforce cleanliness, inadequate locker space for clothing, poor ven- tilation, and primitive lavatory accommodations are com- mon. Seamen have no privacy, and often the watches are arranged so that some must try to sleep while others in the same room are reading, talking or otherwise amus- ing themselves.
Hiring procedures for sea-going personnel are less cha- otic than they were fifty years ago when shanghai-ing was an everyday occurrence, but still they have not pro- gressed beyond the rudimentary stage. While other in- dustries have discovered that the selection of men is a specialized task requiring expert direction, few shipping companies have established an employment department. The master usually hires the deck employes, the chief engineer hires the engine room force, and the steward or chief cook hires his help. If bound by a union agreement, these officers call the union hall and the union agent sends the men first in line for the jobs. If there is no union- controlled hiring hall, the officers ask for men from the United States shipping commissioner or make desultory selections from the men who beg for jobs.
No statistics are available on labor turnover in the in- dustry, but it is known that the traditional custom of signing on seamen simply for the duration of a voyage makes turnover in the merchant marine unusually high and also decreases the incentive or opportunity to advance in skill. A regulation adopted last summer by the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation now permits the signing of shipping articles for periods instead of for sin- gle voyages, but still there appears to be no effort on the part of the lines to promote continuity of service.
The lack of intelligent planning in the employment pro-
SURVEY GRAPHIC
cedures is equalled by the lack of adequate provision for handling grievances. In the old days the men had to take what they got without protest, for any complaint might be construed as mutiny. If matters were sufficiently seri- ous, a delegation of men could call on the captain, but they had to protect themselves against anticipated unfair- ness by the strength and safety of numbers. Extremely rare was the captain or shipowner who provided adequate channels for handling grievances.
The days when a man could be clapped in irons for complaining about the food or jailed for jumping ship have been legislated out of existence, but the old mental attitude persists. Shipowners do not think in terms of ad- justing conditions to the desires of the men; they are more inclined to think in terms of enforcing discipline until the end of a voyage when those dissatisfied with the con- ditions can quit or be fired and new men persuaded to take their places.
Leading European maritime nations have provided old age and permanent invalidity pensions for seamen, and insurance for unemployment, accidents, and illness, while American seamen generally are covered only by work- men's compensation for accidents. Retirement pensions have been denied most officers -as well as unlicensed men. The Social Security Act does not cover officers or crew members. Few companies give seamen or longshoremen vacations with pay. A seaman gets treatment at marine hospitals maintained by the United States Public Health Service, but it is not a common practice to pay him wages during hospitalization.
Personnel problems in the longshore portion of the industry differ from the problems of personnel on ships at sea, but they are handled in an equally careless man- ner. Employment of longshoremen, for example, is an informal process. A stevedore boss stands on a platform, and the candidates for labor gather around. The boss picks them at random, while the men jostle each other for bet- ter positions. If a union contract prevails, only men with union cards can join the gang; otherwise the longshore- men's unions have not changed the hiring procedure, ex- cept on the West Coast where hiring halls with share-the- work systems are now in effect.
It is against this background of underdeveloped per- sonnel policies that the labor problems of American ship- ping must be studied. Disputes in other industries often arise solely out of inadequate wage rates, but it cannot be assumed that the maritime labor difficulties are due to low wages alone. Longshoremen, getting $1.05 per hour on general cargo in New York, have better hourly rates than comparable labor in other industries. Workers aboard ships probably are not as well off as longshoremen; their rates are $72.50 per month for able bodied seamen, $57.50 for ordinary seamen, and $52.50 for mess boys, plus food and lodging. American seamen nevertheless get consid- erably more than seamen sailing under foreign flags. The impetus for unionization is likely to be found not in the remuneration but in the shipping companies' failure to provide decent conditions and fair treatment.
Moreover, these same conditions help explain the pug- nacious character of the unions. The industry has created a process of selection by which only the roughest men can survive, and when they are rough in their economic bargaining tactics they are only acting according to the standards which the management has established for them. Shipowners are inclined to blame labor factionalism
JANUARY 1939
Wide World Harry Bridges, head of the Maritime Federation of the Pacific
and radicalism for their troubles, but these are effects radi- er than causes. It is not to be expected that men condi- tioned to insecurity and rude treatment will be polite and docile when they organize to deal collectively with their employers.
Government Takes a Hand
THE COMBINATION OF UNDERDEVELOPED PERSONNEL POLICIES
widi the militancy of the unions has constituted a peren- nial nuisance for the federal government. Almost every session of Congress since Furuseth started buttonholing the legislators back in the 1880's has had before it some important maritime labor legislation, but laws adopted never seemed adequate as remedies. Finally the labor problems were bundled together with the financial prob- lems of the industry and passed for solution to the United States Maritime Commission, created by the Merchant Marine Act of 1936.
Late in 1937 die Maritime Commission, dominated by Chairman Joseph P. Kennedy, now Ambassador to the Court of St. James, made its announcement that shipping is a "very sick industry." The diagnosis mentioned labor troubles as a principal ailment, and Congress was bom- barded widi proposals for new laws. The agitation for reform brought four significant developments in the pol- icy of the government:
Efforts have been intensified to improve conditions by establishing minimum wage and manning scales on subsi- dized ships;
Bigger and better quarters for crews are being built into vessels under construction;
Training schools for seamen are being established on Hoff-
21
man Island and Governor's Island, in New York harbor; A Maritime Labor Board has been appointed to introduce genuine collective bargaining to the industry.
Of these four developments, only the first two received the hearty applause of maritime labor, and it appears that the improved conditions on Maritime Commission ships were chiefly due to union publicity and pressure. The unions were suspicious of the proposals which led to crea- tion of the Maritime Labor Board. They were equally suspicious of the proposed training program.
Under the Merchant Marine Act, the Maritime Com- mission sets minimum wage and manning scales and has provided vacations for both licensed and unlicensed per- sonnel wherever it has authority to do so. On the new cargo ships constructed under subsidies, men are to be berthed three and four to a room and on passenger ves- sels not more than ten to a room; and better messrooms, improved heating, ventilation, insulated bulkheads, safety features and recreation rooms are provided. But the com- mission has authority to prescribe the conditions only on subsidized vessels, and when the commission reported to Congress only 155 ships in foreign commerce were re- ceiving subsidies.
There is still less reason for optimism concerning the schemes for training. Originally the commission envis- ioned the enlistment of youngsters between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three, with free schooling under di- rection of the Coast Guard. After completing the course, the apprentice seamen would be assigned to merchant ships operating under government subsidies and would be paid a fixed scale of wages. Fearful that the training program would only recruit strikebreakers and add to an already serious unemployment problem in the industry, the maritime unions promptly labeled the proposal a "union-busting plan" and vigorously opposed it. They finally got a compromise plan by which the schools will admit only unemployed men who have had at least two years' sea service.
Training was not the only source of friction between the unions and the Maritime Commission. The unions charged that the Sea Service Bureaus reopened by the com- mission in competition with union hiring halls discrimi- nate against union men. They also charge that union sea- men on Maritime Commission ships have been victims of discrimination and arbitrary action by skippers and other officers.
The greatest hopes for developing sound labor relations lie with the Maritime Labor Board. Unfortunately, how- ever, the board was conceived in a wave of sentiment for preventing strikes rather than for correcting the faulty management policies which cause the strikes. The board owes its existence to recommendations of the Maritime Commission for mediation under legislation similar to the Railway Labor Act. Apparently the commission as- sumed that the conditions which made mediation suc- cessful in the railway industry also were present in the shipping industry. The Railway Labor Act empowers the National Mediation Board to delay a strike pending con- ciliation and fact-finding proceedings. But while railway employes are highly organized and are covered by nearly 4000 collective agreements, maritime workers are not so well organized and have had little collective bargaining experience. The railways are rarely guilty of refusing to bargain collectively, but the anti-union attitudes of the shipping companies have been notorious. While the Rail-
22
way Labor Act was the product of a joint committee of railroad representatives and union officials, the proposed maritime mediation law was to be imposed on the work- ers against the will of their union leaders.
In recognition of all these dissimilarities, the proposals of the Maritime Commission were defeated. Modified rec- ommendations were incorporated in amendments to the Merchant Marine Act adopted in the closing days of Con- gress last June, however, and the Maritime Labor Board was appointed in July. The chairman is Robert W. Bruere, who headed the Cotton Textile National Industrial Rela- tions Board under the NRA, and later served as commis- sioner of conciliation of the Department of Labor. His associates are Louis Bloch and Claude Seehorn. Bloch has a long record as a research expert in maritime matters; for two years preceding his appointment to the Labor Board he was an economist for the Maritime Commis- sion. Seehorn, formerly a national vice-president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, has helped negotiate agreements under the Railway Labor Act.
Powers of the Maritime Labor Board are limited, and its plans are still in the process of formulation. Like the Conciliation Service in the Department of Labor, it is in- tended to mediate disputes between maritime employers and unions. The board has the further responsibility of developing a comprehensive plan for handling mari- time labor relations.
If the maritime unions continue the reasonable atti- tude displayed in their recent negotiations and if the union-fighting days of maritime employers are truly over, it is quite possible that the industry will be ripe for a me- diation system by 1941, when the legislation creating the Maritime Labor Board expires. In view of some of the outworn personnel policies still existing in the shipping business, however, the maritime unions may oppose any plan which might slacken their growth. Strikes are inevi- table, even desirable, in an industry which remains back- ward in labor policies. But to attempt to dispose of strikes without eliminating their causes would be futile. As the physician finds it necessary to deal with causes rather than with symptoms, so also must the Maritime Labor Board doctoring America's "very sick industry" endeavor to correct unhealthy management habits before it can hope to dispose of strikes. While the law does not em- power the board to tell maritime management how to handle personnel matters experience has shown that me- diation work to be effective must remedy the faulty prac- tices which cause labor disputes.
The Maritime Labor Board may be expected to recom- mend a permanent mediation system when it offers its comprehensive plan in 1941. It may also be expected, how- ever, that the present trend toward peaceful relations un- der voluntary agreements — indicated by the successful collective bargaining of the last few months— will invali- date a lot of the old arguments for restrictive legislation. If Bridges, Curran, et al, continue their new tactics, no longer can shipowners point to the strikeless railroad in- dustry and ask their men, "Why can't you boys be like that?" And if the shipowners continue to put their sig- natures on written agreements, no longer can the water- front agitators point to the 4000 labor contracts on the railroads and ask the same question of maritime employ- ers. Both sides apparently are outgrowing the name call- ing and roughouse years and are approaching the ma- turity of collective bargaining.
SURVEY GRAPHIC
Wide World
A glimpse of British Guiana in South America — suggested as a haven for large numbers of refugees. This area is no more adaptable today than it was in 1935 when a League of Nations mission reported unfavorably on its possibilities for a similar use
Mirage of Refugee Resettlement
by DAVID H. POPPER
There are no potential paradises in the world's still unoccupied spaces under consideration for refugee resettlement. According to this research expert for the Foreign Policy Association the governments involved have yet to come to grips with the difficulties inherent in the situation.
To JUDGE FROM THE 1938 CROP OF CONFERENCES, COMMIT-
tees, appeals and agitation, one might conclude that great things were being done for the unfortunate refugees of Germany who have no choice but flight or a living death in the land of their nativity. Such a deduction would be incorrect. Extract rhetoric, sympathy, and half-baked pro- posals from the record of the past year, and you have precious little left. You have a humane initiative by Presi- dent Roosevelt which resulted in a conference at Evian last July — a conference at which the United States, by agreeing to admit the maximum legal quota of 27,370 German refugees each year, made the only concrete com- mitment to the cause. You have a recent undertaking by Australia to shelter 15,000 emigres in the next three years. You have a very slight crack in the barriers surrounding Great Britain and its large colonial empire. You have a number of private organizations, Christian as well as Jew- ish, carrying on manful but now inadequate efforts to assist the unfortunate. And you have a continuation of the maddeningly slow exodus of the persecuted, speeded up a bit in the case of children to be cared for by private sources but still pitifully insufficient.
Meanwhile the small staff of the Intergovernmental Committee established at Evian labors away at plans for refugee resettlement. The problem it faces is a knotty one. By annexing Austria and Sudetenland the Third Reich has created more potential refugees than it has lost by emi- gration since it began its persecutions in 1933. Up to the present the number of political refugees who have left Germany is probably less than 200,000. There were 191,000
JANUARY 1939
Jews in Austria alone at the time of the Anschluss; and to these must be added hundreds of thousands of "non- Aryan" Christians, Roman Catholics, Monarchists, Czechs, democrats and Left-wingers throughout the Reich, whose lot is becoming progressively harder. Even assuming that the older generation is to be left behind, to subsist on a dole sent in by relatives and charitable organizations from abroad, at least 700,000 souls must find sanctuary and a chance to work in other lands. The best surveys indicate that half these individuals are Christian.
Confronted by this grim situation, those interested in saving the refugees from their tragic fate have desperately sought new outlets for the human tide of fugitives. With- out money — and the German Jewish population, at least, can contribute no funds — the tide is dammed up inside the refugee-producing states by the laws and regulations of every potential country of settlement. At the time of the Evian Conference it seemed obvious that none of these countries would risk antagonizing its unemployed by absorbing an additional urban labor force. Few of them are in the mood to permit the dilution of their national homogeneity by admitting sizeable masses of foreigners, different from the present population in blood, language and customs.
Yet the refugees must go somewhere. Since they cannot percolate into the thickly populated countries, their well- wishers are turning, naturally enough, to the unoccupied colonial areas of the world where pioneers may carve out new homes in the wilderness and build a wholesome com- munity life free of oppression. On the surface this is an
23
engaging vista allowing ample scope for the most grand- iloquent pipe-dreams. William Randolph Hearst mag- nanimously envisages a great Jewish nation comprising not only the former German African colonies but the Belgian Congo and the Portuguese African possessions as well. One group has discovered that Lower California is the promised land. Others suggest Central American territory, Madagascar, New Caledonia, or any one of a large num- ber of other dependencies. After all, nothing is easier than to give away, on paper, land which belongs to someone else. People seldom stop to ask why these areas have re- mained undeveloped.
As the foremost custodians of the world's colonial lands, the British bear the brunt of the demand that these vast unoccupied spaces be opened for settlement. When, on November 9 and 10, 1938, the latest anti-Jewish excesses took place in Germany, the pressure on London became well-nigh irresistible. Speaking in the House of Commons on November 21, Prime Minister Chamberlain met the critics of Britain's exclusionist policy with the first really definite statement of what the government might be will- ing to do. It would sponsor investigation of the possibili- ties for settlement in British Guiana and Tanganyika, and it would consider colonization on a smaller scale in North- ern Rhodesia, Nyasaland and Kenya (where an experi- mental scheme is about to get under way). There were no commitments in the speech; if not a single refugee ever reaches these territories, it will never be possible to accuse Mr. Chamberlain of bad faith. But that fact has not pre- vented some mass colonization enthusiasts from hailing the British offer as a godsend.
Guiana
THERE ARE NO POTENTIAL PARADISES IN THE AREA. WHICH THE British have so gingerly allocated for use by refugees. The Guiana "tract comprises at least 10,000 square miles— a territory approximately equal to Palestine or New Hampshire in size. The possibilities for settlement in a portion of this area were canvassed in 1935 by a League of Nations mission interested in finding a new home for the Assyrians of Iraq. The results were discouraging. First impressions on reaching the grasslands in the interior were relatively favorable as far as climate, water supply and health conditions were concerned. But communications and transport facilities were virtually non-existent. The soil appeared to be rather infertile. Cattle raising seemed to offer the best hope for subsistence, but because of ani- mal diseases and other factors even that was unremunera- tive. Worst of all, close settlement in farm villages would be difficult in grazing country, where wide open spaces and large properties must be the rule; and the loneliness of isolation is the most exacting of tests for colonists. Hence the League mission tentatively established the ca- pacity of the area involved at not more than 1000 families, and urged thorough agricultural training and establish- ment of a medical center before any Assyrians were sent to the colony.
While this report applied only to a fraction of the terri- tory now proposed for settlement, the objections raised in its pages still hold good. German refugees, with few ex- ceptions are no better fitted to tend livestock and manage tarms than the Assyrians, although they might well prove more adept in making the necessary climatic and occupa- tional adjustments. The tropical jungle lands which might e made available to refugees are not only largely unex-
24
FRENCH WEST AFRICA
ANGLO EGYPTIAN
SUDAN
UA
IT.) FREI SOW
a
ETHIOPIA '
trr.)
NIGERIA.
FRENCH EQUATORIAL IAPR.ICA THE) CAMEHOO^S
ANGOLA
PORTUGESE)
UNION OP
SOUTH AFRICA'
(BR.)
plored but presuma- bly infested with the normal quota of snakes, insects and diseases. Years of effort and experi- mentation and the expenditure of mil- lions in money must precede any large scale movement of refugees to Guiana, however beneficent Mr. Chamberlain's intentions.
Tanganyika
IN THE AFRICAN TER- ritories, too, the prospect of apprecia- ble colonization in the near future is remote. To settle the 50,000 acres of land which the British propose to make available in Tan- ganyika will be dif- ficult enough, what with the ravages of the tsetse fly and the problem of compet- ing with cheap na- tive labor now engaged on planta- tions. But the offer deserves scrutiny from another angle as well. In the first place, 50,000 acres is no more than 78 square miles — an absurdly minute area for what the Brit- ish euphemistically call "large scale" settlement. Second, it is significant that the authorities at London have chosen for this token colony not a portion of the British colonial empire proper, but a territory held by Britain as trustee under a League of Nations mandate. Before the war, Tanganyika was German East Africa; the Nazis have never relinquished their claim to it and are merely biding their time until — as they hope — it falls into their laps once more. One wonders why the British could not have found their 78 square miles of habitable territory in one of the African territories to which they have undisputed title. Could they have imagined that the existence of a Jewish population in Tanganyika would furnish an additional argument for not returning the conquered territory to its original owner? And can they believe that the Nazi authorities will permit German Jews to leave the Reich to settle in what may one 'day become German territory?
True, there are nearby colonies in which the British government holds out prospects for refugees. But these are "small scale" projects for assistance to emigres who will be numbered by the tens rather than the thousands.
Madagascar
IT IS ALSO REPORTED THAT THE FRENCH MIGHT BE DISPOSED TO
settle 10,000 refugees in their empire, presumably in Mada- gascar. Because this hoary proposal for settlement on the far-off isle is perennially revived, its mythical qualities
SURVEY GRAPHIC
At left, Africa, with black and shading inc South America, wi
should be punctured at once. A former governor -general has asserted his be- lief that the country is unsuitable for any considerable Euro- pe a n population. The fertility of the soil in the habitable highlands has been exhausted by bad native farming prac- tices; malaria, dys- entery and perni- cious anemia arc endemic; and the shortage of native plantation labor makes it as impossi- ble for refugees to become lords of the land as it is for them to become colonists. In 1927, a Japanese mission to Mada- gascar decided that conditions were un- suitable for mass im- migration , though their countrymen customarily make extremely hardy col- onists. Ten years later a Polish group,
doubtless influenced by wishful thinking, hazarded the opinion that 30,000 Jews might be settled on the island, but the Jewish members of that body did not concur in its findings.
Alaska
SECRETARY ICKES HAS HINTED THAT SOME COLONISTS MIGHT be accommodated in Alaska, where a population of only 60,000, half native and half European, is scattered over a stretch of almost 600,000 square miles. In certain sheltered valleys and coastal areas comprising perhaps one tenth of this territory, limited agricultural activities are possible. They cannot be commercially successful on a large scale, however, until a market is created by development of min- ing and industry within the territory itself. It is conceiv- able that several thousand trained young immigrants might practice subsistence farming, supplementing their income by raising foods now shipped in from the United States; processing fisheries products on. a year-round stabilized basis; and— if capital and skill became available— aid- ing in the establishment of a wood pulp and paper in- dustry.
It is significant that virtually all territories actively under consideration for mass settlement are situated in the tropics or along the Arctic fringe. Into temperate zone regions, where the physical adjustment would be relatively easy, refugees can only percolate by the process of slow infiltration. And in Palestine, where the pioneering has already been done and scores of thousands of enthusiastic Jews could be received at once, a state of rebellion, for
which the British are by no means blameless, is held to preclude immediate resumption of large scale immigration.
FAR
Courtesy N. Y. Herald Tribune
lere Britain suggests Jews be settled. At right, a indicated in black
THE PLAIN FACT IS THAT THE NATIONS HAVE THUS
shown little inclination to help the fugitives in the logical, inexpensive and easy way — by letting down the bars to permit entry to some of the better developed countries. Apparently it has been useless, thus far, to point out that every immigrant is a consumer as well as a producer; that he requires food, clothing and shelter which will be furnished by local labor; that history abounds in examples of fructifying migration movements which brought new industries, organizing ability and enterprise to growing countries or those threatened with stagnation or attack from abroad. For the present the democracies and the refu- gee-receiving nations have chosen the difficult road. They seem to prefer to settle refugees in inhospitable vacant territories on a mass agricultural basis. If we admit that they share in some degree the responsibility for the fate of the refugees — an admission humanitarians can scarcely refuse to make — then we must concede that these nations have thus far been almost criminally negligent in the arrangements they have made for resettlement.
For the existing blueprint schemes for colonization in Guiana, Tanganyika, Madagascar and elsewhere are no more than a mirage and a delusion. They simply do not meet the needs of the refugee community.
It will be years before large numbers of refugees can be moved to any of these areas. Virgin land, even if eco- nomically promising, needs roads, railways, schools, hos- pitals and police before it can be utilized. Modern pio- neering is expensive; the cost of land settlement runs from $2500 to $5000 per family. If a figure of $3500 is assumed, the cost of settling 100,000 families would be $350,000,000.
In any program for adequate action the most important task is to break down the barriers against infiltration into the temperate zone territories. In this field the South American nations appear to offer the best possibilities, and the British dominions should contribute their share. Yet, while progress may be made in this sphere, there is little prospect that infiltration alone will be sufficient. Mass colonization in a number of territories must be combined with it. Not exclusively, nor perhaps even mainly for the sake of the present refugees, but as nuclei for larger settle- ment schemes in the future, when 5,500,000 Jews in East- ern Europe and heaven knows how many other nationali- ties may be forced to flee from this overpopulated area.
What is really needed is a cooperative effort of the Evian Intergovernmental Committee and private agencies on the gigantic scale of the Hoover post-war relief work. By an internationally guaranteed loan at low interest rates (part of which may never be repaid) some such sum as $500,- 000,000 must be raised. It must be utilized under official supervision for sustaining life in temporary refuges, for agricultural retraining lasting for several years, for de- velopment of backward areas and for resettlement. More territory of the type we have been discussing must be made available. It will not be bonanza territory, to be sure, and life on it will be extremely hard. But it will be a life of self-respecting toil in a land without cruel persecution.
The odds against effective action on this scale are admit- tedly enormous. Yet unless we multiply our efforts and our sacrifice, refugee resettlement will be a grim failure, and hundreds of thousands who were dazzled by false hopes will be doomed to a miserable death.
JANUARY 1939
25
Let's Abolish the County Jail
by JOSEPH FULLING FISHMAN and VEE TERRYS PERLMAN
A million Americans a year go to jail — not counting prisoners sen- tenced to long term institutions for serious crimes. Not only should this number be reduced, say these authors, but they recommend a plan for abolishing the present county jail system itself.
THERE is NO HYPOCRISY IN THE UNIVERSALLY EXPRESSED DE- sire of Americans to reduce crime and its heavy cost. Yet most communities have a way — and it is the same way — of increasing effectively the spread of crime. To know how this is done you must become acquainted with a certain sinister institution in your midst.
Outwardly the building repels with its grimy, old and damp stone or brick walls. As we approach within fifteen or twenty feet a nauseatingly disagreeable odor meets us, and if we determinedly step inside we may be surprised to find the interior much darker than we had expected due to the barred windows being far dirtier inside than out.
In the center taking up most of the area is a built-in iron or steel cage, having grille work on all four sides and a solid top. Into the cage we go by a central metal door, which opens on a still darker corridor running straight back to the farther end. On either side of this corridor the space is divided into small cubicles inside which we peer to find that they are equipped with a couple of broad shelves made of criss-crossed strap iron, some disreputable looking blankets and miscellaneous trash. Grease and grit encrust the iron work; the walls and floor reek with a malodorous dampness, giving cordial welcome to battal- ions of bedbugs, roaches, lice and other vermin. An all- pervading foul effluvia, we may find, comes from the end of this corridor where are situated a few much neglected and broken down toilets, whose constant seepage has pene- trated and permeated the entire place.
A curious and saddening relic, you say, of the days be- fore the United States became famous for its excellent plumbing, heating, lighting, ventilating, exterminating and other hygienic devices. No, this is no relic, no museum piece. This pest hole does not stand unoccupied, a neglec- ted tombstone over the stupidity of yesterday. It is, with some notable exceptions, a typical house of confinement for twentieth century men, women, and children. It is the county jail.
Instead of human improvement, the force for human deterioration and consequent injury to the community in such institutions is appalling. In them are thrown helter-skelter young or old; sick or well; impressionable or hardened; normal or perverted; well-balanced or emo- tionally unstable; those of various degrees of positive in- telligence with the backward, the feeble minded, and the idiotic; and the sane or insane. Whether these miscellane- ous persons are convicted later and go to a longer term institution, whether they may be subsequently found inno- cent and released, or whether they are merely held as material witnesses, every person— with the exception of children in some states— who does not immediately make bail goes to the county jail and goes there first.
Of segregation there is usually only the barest whisper
26
— that of separating the men from the women. The major- ity of the prisoners, men and boys, hang around the "bull pen" (the corridor between the cells) all day long, and pass their time playing cards and talking about sex and crime. The absolute idleness and completely indecent sur- roundings enforce the physical and frequently promote the mental and moral decay of those even of superior stamina.
Seasoned criminals lose no opportunity to "convert" the non-criminal, and to make more determined disciples of crime those who have shown some susceptibility. Narcotic addicts persuade their companions of the quickness with which time passes when you "do your bit on a pill." Homosexuals make prey of younger or weaker inmates, and men otherwise normal are often warped by denial, coupled with constant temptation, into becoming homo- sexuals.
Medical facilities are generally of the scantiest. Bathing is not compulsory. In many places no hot water, soap or towels are available. Prisoners with contagious or infec- tious diseases are placed among the others. There is no disinfecting process of the prisoner or his clothing regard- less of how vermin-ridden he may be. Obviously a better place than such a county jail can scarcely be found for the development and dissemination of serious disease, especially tuberculosis. As for the venereal diseases in par- ticular, nothing is done. Old newspapers, crawling with vermin, frequently provide the sole mattress, since in about 95 percent of the jails of the country the only bedding furnished is that of blankets, which are used by prisoner after prisoner, clean and dirty, sick and well, often without being washed, until they fall to pieces.
And the men, milling listlessly around in county jails, are necessarily dominated by the toughest, the most vicious and most depraved characters among them. Necessarily, because the jailer, who is the local sheriff in most in- stances, usually looks upon his jail duties as incidental to some other occupation in which he is almost always en- gaged. He therefore spend as little time on the jail as pos- sible, and frequently connives at a secret and terrible practice by which the most brutal prisoners impose disci- pline upon the others.
Not even the most habitual of those who immediately cry "coddling" whenever the needs of prisoners are dis- cussed could claim that the food supplied in most of our jails is adequate to sustain health and morale. In the vast majority the food is poor; insufficient; served lukewarm or downright cold; revolting in its monotony; and lack- ing in balance.
In numerous places the jailer's general ill treatment of his charges is stimulated by the fee system of compensa- tion. This means that he is permitted to keep any money
SURVEY GRAPHIC
he can save out of that allotted for the feeding of the pris- oners. Naturally, few, if any, can resist the incentive to fill their pockets by keeping their wards on a starvation basis.
It should always be kept in mind that jail groups are not to any great extent isolated from the rest of society, but that their members are constantly streaming from and back into the surrounding communities. As against the sixty or seventy thousand persons who go to the longer term penal institutions each year, approximately a million go to the county jails. By way of illustration, one jail in Texas alone, that of Harris County, receives more inmates each year than all the longer term penal institutions in the en- tire state combined. Both because of the universal applica- tion of the county jail, and because the shock, fright and remorse often accompanying first imprisonment give the widest and most fruitful opportunity to save beginners already entangled with the law from a life of crime, the county jail is of primary and powerful significance. Yet in general the country appears to acquiesce in retaining the almost incredible, degrading county jail as the foundation of a penal structure whose first contribution to society should be the reduction of crime and criminals.
Up until about fifteen years ago interest in prisons and attempts at reform were concerned almost solely with peni- tentiaries and other long term penal institutions. With the exception of a few speeches since 1911 and occasional arti- cles within professional circles, the county jail was almost completely ignored; and its keystone significance and prev- alence were generally overlooked. At that time, how- ever, we wrote a book, "Crucibles of Crime," which estab- lished publicly that the county jail, as the earliest and most prolific breeder of crime and criminals, is the most im- portant of our penal institutions. The book gave names, places, specific conditions and occurrences with their un-
"Thirty Days in the Jug"
In July 1936, Survey Graphic published an article by Albert C. Wagner which recommended, as does the present article, the abolition of the county jail system and reduction of the number of confined misdemeanants by the program which Mr. Fishman has long suggested. For more than twenty-five years the system of local and indiscriminate lock-ups has been under attack in the publications of Survey Associates. From The Survey of twenty-seven years ago, reporting the National Conference of Charities and Cor- rection: "In the field of penology the abolition of the local jail and the substitution therefor of a state-owned and controlled jail is vying for attention with the subject of defective delinquency." Professional penologists have not yet overcome the public inertia, although in specific local- ities great improvements have been made. Several months ago, at a meeting of the American Prison Association, its jail committee was reorganized into the National Jail Asso- ciation, which invites everyone interested in the problem to associate with them in stimulating public interest where such interest is decidedly lacking. Our readers will recall previous material which we have published or referred to, especially by Winthrop D. Lane, first as our associate editor, then as an expert for the Wickersham Commission in 1931; by Louis N. Robinson in the report of the National Crime Commission in 1927; and others, besides the article referred to by Mr. Wagner, and the present dramatic presentation by authors whose work is well known to penologists and public alike.
necessary damage and cost to the community, in almost every state in the 'Union. It is mentioned here because it has had one lasting effect: after violent denials and attacks by many professional penologists and officials, it was found and publicly admitted that we had understated rather than overstated the case. Some state governments as a result instituted regular inspection services of the jails, and pen- ologists in general have adopted the viewpoint, fact and suggestions in the book as an established part of their regular outlook and reports. However, and this is the point, nothing has been done in this time to change the county jail system itself in the United States. It is true that in a comparatively few places some improvements have been made and some good new buildings erected, but even these are more than counterbalanced by the pro- gressive deterioration of the rest.
Take West Virginia, for instance. In practically all of them, there is the same old unwashed bedding; the usual army of vermin; the foul "night buckets" used for toilet purposes where no plumbing exists, the same leaky plumb- ing where it does; the overcrowding of all types of in- mates, innocent and guilty; the lack of fresh air, exercise, recreation or occupation of any kind; the same reckless exposure to serious diseases.
Take Missouri. There are approximately one hundred and fifteen county jails in this state. Fully 85 percent of them are not fit to house a self-respecting dog.
Take Kentucky. Outside of Louisville and one or two of the larger cities, the foul condition of the jails simply passes belief.
Taka South Carolina, Georgia, many other states of the South. Here the jails are almost uniformly loathsome. These conditions are not peculiar to the South, however. The majority if not all of the characteristics outlined exist in by far the greater number of county jails in Indiana, Nebraska and Kansas; in Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas; in Illinois, the Dakotas and Washington; in Iowa, Wiscon- sin and Montana, as well as in many others not mentioned here by name.
Some relief to the general dismalness of the American jail situation is to be had in parts of New England, in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where efforts are made to keep the physical condition of the jails as good as is compatible with the use of many outdated buildings.
MANY JUDGES AND OTHERS WHO ADMINISTER THE LAW HAVE no more conception of the kind of plague spots to which they send men, women — and often children — than has the average citizen. Before being made to realize the actual situation, people are prone to assume that it makes little difference under what conditions a prisoner lives, the com- monest comment being, "Well, if they weren't criminals, they wouldn't be there." However, even this statement is far from valid. In the first place, about half the jail popu- lation is not convicted but awaiting trial, and a large per- centage of these are subsequently found innocent. Yet many of them remain in jail for long periods of time — four, five, or six months being not at all uncommon. In the second place, a large proportion of those convicted do not properly belong in jail. They are to a great extent the unfortunate of this world rather than its criminal minded evildoers — vagrants, drunks, narcotic users, beggars, and others who may have committed some trifling offense.
The lack of purpose or sense in this system is further emphasized by the unevenness (Continued on page 39)
JANUARY 1939
27
READ
LIVE HERE
20.8 «to
How news of the hop season spreads to workers outside the Yakima valley
YEAR OF MANUFACTURE BEFORE 1927 827-1928 1929-1930 1931-1932
AFTER 1932
Jalopies of boom vintage, requiring constant repairs and maintenance, carry the transient families into — and out of — the hop country
THE HOPPING HOP-PICKERS
The hop industry of the Northwest (only hop industry in the nation) requires approximately 200,000 pickers each season — for about a month. Pickers must be rallied from the ranks of those who are willing to travel long distances for the prospect of two to four weeks' work at an average of $1.50 to #2 a day. Paul H. Landis, and his associates at the State College of Washington, Carl F. Reuss and Richard Wakefield, have been studying the problems of the hop and apple workers. The pictographs on this page are reprinted from one of their publications.
PERMANENT RESIDENCE
The ties that bind are few. 30% have no permanent residence and 40% don't vote
HEADS OF HOP WASHINGTON RURAL- FARM
AGE PICKING HOUSEHOLDS MALE POPULATION. 1930
- - — — • ooooo
25-34
45-54
55-64
OVER
Transiency calls the young and vigorous. (Hop- pickers are younger than the native males)
UNDER E1CHTH HEADS
FAMILY MEMBERS
Educational status of the hoppers. (But transient children do not match the schooling of their roving parents)
000
40.l°fo
SLACK FIGURES REPRESENT THOSE RECEIVING RELIEF
Reliefers are less mobile; of hop-pickers, the above chart show* how many single persons and families become dependant
Rolling Stones Gather No Sympathy
FROM COVERED WAGON TO JALOPY
FROM THE NUMBER OF ACCIDENTS INVOLVING TRESPASSES ON
railroad property, statisticians can estimate the trend of migration by unattached men in search of jobs. At times the number exceeds half a million. Counts of out-of-town license plates on jalopies that rattle over main highways in the West Coast states reveal tens of thousands of families a year from the Dust Bowl and the Cotton Country. Until the census next year, we shall have no accurate national calculation of the numbers of Americans who have left one state in search of opportunity in another. But this we do know — there are upward of a million citizens of the United States on the move or so recently settled that they are citizens of no state, of no township, of no city. They are our rolling stones, pioneers without a frontier.
The most disadvantaged group of all, die migratory agricultural workers, "starve that we may eat." They fol- low the truck and fruit crops through the cultivation and harvest season. The rungs of the agricultural ladder above them are broken. Earning from |100 to $500 a year, they can hardly ever become tenants or owners. They starve that we may drink our beer, too, as Paul H. Landis of the University of Washington and his associates have shown in their notable studies of the hop-pickers of the North- west. [See opposite page.] For a brief period each year thousands of them work at starvation wages in beet and western cotton fields. Many of them, left without a place in Dixieland by the tractor and the AAA program, have followed the only thing they know, the cotton latitude, westward, ever westward, till they have come up against the glorious climate and dubious hospitality of California and Arizona.
These obvious rural pilgrims are not the whole story of today's shifts in population. Every bus and day coach from the South, and from the drought areas, bear an anonymous contingent of refugees. You can spot them by their bundles and paper suitcases. From the old coal and steel centers, too, young and alert families escape, hoping to find an opportunity in the great vital areas of the com- mercial North and East.
It is a tragic paradox that most of these migrants are actually penalized for their spunk. Many of them would be more comfortable, for the time being, if they stayed home and went on relief. For, once they hit the highway, without a legal or a habitable residence behind them or ahead of them, they cross as many frontiers as if they were traveling through the independent Balkan states. At a time when nearly everyone imagines the United States more centralized and standardized than ever be- fore in history, the states and localities have actually made their boundaries real. American progress has in large part been made possible by the mobile nature of our popula- tion. The United States' conception of a federal republic has traditionally seemed to mean an enormous continen- tal area without a single barrier to trade, ideas or people. That conception is breaking down. In trade, regions and states have set up sectional protectionism, by taxes and legislation, equivalent to internal tariffs. Even more strik- ing, they have discouraged human mobility — in their di-
by VICTOR WEYBRIGHT
rection, at least. Unless you have money in your pocket, or a regular job, you are an unwelcome newcomer nearly everywhere. The federal-state employment service sel- dom, if ever, "clears" across state lines. You are prac- tically forced outside the normal institutions of public health, education and social welfare. In very few places will you find it possible to get on relief, and, if you do, the time on relief does not count in your favor toward acquiring settlement, or citizenship, in the state and county in which you find yourself.
SMALL COMMUNITIES, EVEN STATES, SHOULD NOT BE TOO harshly censured for their inhospitality to transients. Part time seasonal workers in crops or industries do create problems beyond the ability of local government to solve alone. Indeed, Florida and California have done more than most states in receiving the visitors who have swarmed over their borders in recent years. California has admitted around 100,000 drought refugees and migrat- ing workers a year. Most of them have been white fam- ilies, of native stock and of employable age. Like the immigrants of another generation, they have come look- ing for work and opportunity. When opportunities elude them, many of them become a relief problem: Those who follow the crops in the West Coast's industrialized agri- culture are frequently so hard used and underpaid that they also create a desperate problem in labor relations. The Farm Security Administration has investigated and, through demonstration projects, attempted to ameliorate the health and social adjustments of these rural transients. But since the ending of federal relief in 1935 the federal government has not borne its share.
Despite the dearth of accurate statistics, the transients — or, to be more accurate, the migrants — are not a nebulous problem. Their conditions have been studied with as much thoroughness as that of settled wage earners or re- lief clients. A variety of gifted sociological and research talent, from coast to coast, has been focused upon them.
Last March, when the Committee on Care of Transient and Homeless recommended a comprehensive federal transient program to the Senate Committee on Unem- ployment and Relief, it was able to quote from a number of studies that had been made of the abandoned federal program that existed from 1933 to 1935, and also from the then unreleased report of the Secretary of Labor, on the "Social and Economic Needs of Laborers Migrating Across State Lines." Quotations from these federal sources were amply reinforced by detailed reports from a num- ber of official studies by state departments of welfare. In addition, the Council of State Governments, through which the states join hands to deal with pressing com- mon problems, had surveyed the settlement laws pertain- ing to relief and recommended federal, state, interstate and local action.
The Committee on Care of Transient and Homeless has been a useful organization. Under the chairmanship of Dr. Ellen C. Potter, the committee has constantly striven to break away from previous negative approaches
29
to the subject of internal migration and not lose sight of the pertinent fact that migration is a positive factor in a dynamic society. Certainly present day migration de- mands a national policy as definite as the federal policy which encouraged and aided the settling of the West.
Such a national policy has been urged by every serious student of American population problems, including Carter Goodrich in his monumental work, "Migration and Economic Opportunity" [summarized in Survey Graphic June 1936]. But it is evidently difficult to per- suade Congressmen and Senators that migrants, most of whom are ineligible to vote because of continual travel or insufficient length of residence, are a part of their con- stituency for which they should feel any responsibility. Last year Representative Jerry Voorhis of California in- troduced a bill to amend the Social Security Act so that transients would be included in a special category. The bill died in the Ways and Means Committee, but will be reintroduced in the coming congressional session.
And the transients are still on every town's doorstep. If all of the organizations interested in people on the move were to join forces in publicizing the urgent challenge of the situation, it is possible that federal and state gov- ernments would respond. For, in addition to the statis- tical documentation, popular pamphlets and human in- terpretations of the plight of the footloose Americans have begun to pour from the press. Most of this literature indicates that the rootless or homeless, neglected family, in a community but not a part of it, is a breeding ground for crime, disease, ignorance or desperate radicalism. You can't expect people to camp like Gypsies, drink from dirty irrigation ditches, work for a dollar a day, and be fine upstanding citizens. You can't exclude people from the life and services of a city without their tending to be- come genuine outcasts.
The tragedy, of course, is that the churches and schools, the welfare agencies and medical services, and many pub- lic institutions, are as unacquainted with the folks in a transient labor group, city or rural, as they are with the normally solvent sojourners who stay at tourist cabins or, for that matter, hotels. They seldom meet them until they are in trouble, and then they consider them a nuisance.
If a local community makes life too attractive for mi- grants they simply extend an indirect invitation to them. New York State, for example, reimburses the local com- munities for relief funds expended on the non-settled. But no one state can be expected to carry a burden which is logically that of other states or the federal government.
Various proposals have been made for interstate co- operation, including agreements on uniform settlement requirements, administration of relief to non-residents at the expense of their home states, and so on. Most of these proposals imply competent state control over local administration of transient welfare and relief, a condi- tion now far from universal. The local communities have the greatest immediate stake in an attempt to solve the problem; they now must deal directly with stranded and wandering families and out-of-luck unattached men. But the main, the long range, responsibility is a federal one. Federal action— through grants-in-aid under which min- imum standards and type of state administration would be fixed— could go a long way toward assisting local com- munities to take care of their unsettled dependents. Whether this were achieved directly, or through an
30
amendment to the Social Security Act, it \vould solve the problem only for migrants in immediate need. But social workers and health officers, experts in the Departments of Labor and Agriculture, and particularly the staff of the Farm Security Administration, advocate a program that will do more than mere relief. Beyond aid to migrants in need there is a vast national obligation to assist in the health, education, employment service, rehabilitation and retraining not only of the migrants who have moved but of the thousands now on the verge of moving. From the depressed drought areas, cut-over timberland, and from the sections of the cotton country where multidudes of whites and Negroes alike are about to be "tractored out of a job," pilgrims will continue to strike out for more vital parts of the map.
SECRETARY OF LABOR PERKINS, IN HER PRELIMINARY REPORT to the Senate, called dramatic attention to findings of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and The Children's Bureau. But, in August, when this preliminary report was made public, it appeared in a bulky mimeographed form be- cause no funds were made available to complete and pub- lish it. Yet this long delayed document is veritably a log of America in process. It gives a reassuring picture of the courageous and ceaseless quest for work by laborers who are willing to venture into the unknown. Thousands of them prefer the pittance of seasonal jobs to sticking in a rut without any future for themselves and their chil- dren. The report reveals especially how inaccurate is the popular picture of transients as a horde of aimless bums. With the exception of the comparative handful of health seekers who search for a salubrious climate and the home- less elder men, the greatest number of migrants are every- day folks with families, most of them employable and willing to work. They are, for the most part, at the bot- tom of the economic ladder. Those who have become seasonal farm laborers in the West and in the East per- form an exceedingly important and essential task. Yet they are in the most imminent danger of becoming a caste of practically untouchable wanderers.
In addition to these seasonally productive workers, who perforce live on the move, there are the multidudes who aspire to settle down. It has been estimated that from two to six million southerners are eventually bound to leave the land. Most of them will cross state lines. Nearly half the population of the Dust Bowl is now dependent upon public funds to some extent; there is the grim chance that a few rainy years will stimulate thousands of optimists to move into the great plains again to try their luck.
These are realities that the United States must face. Obviously we can not afford to let our state lines "freeze" the population where it is, unproductively dammed up by regional legislation and prejudice. Localities, with de- fensive barriers, cannot be allowed unwittingly to "Bal- kanize" a nation that has built its cities and peopled its farms by the greatest mobility of population any nation has ever known. These realities are faced by the experts. The public must now face them too. And, above all, government officials and legislators, county, state and na- tional, must face them. Or else our vital American sys- tem will decay. Under one pretense or another, even the prosperous tourist will be examined at state lines. By that time it may be too late to recover the unity that was won, when a proud, provincial and unfortunate conception of state and regional superiority lost at Gettysburg.
SURVEY GRAPHIC
THROUGH NEIGHBORS' DOORWAYS
We Accept the Challenge
by JOHN PALMER GAVIT
ONE BRIEF POIGNANT SENTENCE IRRADIATES THE MURK, LIKE
a flash of distant lightning in a sticky smothering night. It is from a personal letter to me, received just now from a well-beloved friend in Germany. No, not a Jew — a real, 100 percent full-blooded "Aryan" German, by any strict- est test. Here it comes, tear-laden and as from between clenched teeth:
"Of the horrible things happening . . . bringing all those of Good Will in consternation, I am too ashamed to say anything."
And only yesterday a fine musician, neither German nor Jew but resident in Germany for the past five years and participating in what is left of German music, sadly shot to pieces under the musically-ignorant Nazi "purges," said to me:
"The real German musicians take all this Nazi stuff with many grains of salt. Oh, yes, they 'heil Hitler' and wear the Nazi buttons and all the rest of it; they could not live otherwise; but their tongues are in their cheeks, like those of thousands of other Germans."
Nobody could make me believe that the real German heart is in this shocking savagery, organized, directed, perpetrated by the minority of thugs and psychopaths temporarily in possession of the instrumentalities of gov- ernment. Allow and admit all you please for the tradition- ally congenital brutality of hard-boiled Prussianism. That is an actuality. In his currently-published memoirs* the famous pianist Paderewski who, as a Polish patriot himself and son of the like, has known suffering under despotism and knows Prussianism at firsthand, pays his respects to it:
... It is not anti-German that I am, but anti-Prussian; because all that now in Germany is so unpleasant, so brutal, so pre- sumptuous, so impertinent and so arrogant and so ruthless, is Prussian. It has been imposed upon Germany.
Highly significant in this regard is Paderewski's descrip- tion of the atmosphere of regimented, spiritually ossified Berlin; of its treatment of him as a despised Pole, result- ing in his refusal to play there ever again, although he was welcomed and happy in the freer atmosphere of South Germany.
This is nothing new about the Prussian temperament. It is interesting and most timely now to read what the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus wrote about these North Germans two thousand years ago in the first century after Christ, when as barbarians living in mud huts and caves they were for the first time coming into contact with civilization. I haven't space to quote, but you will find translation of his De Situ, Moribus et Populis Germaniae in volume 33 of the Harvard Classics (Voy- ages and Travels). You will note therein the poisonous idea that a family, a whole race, must love and hate as a unit, must bear punishment as a unit for the offenses of one individual; but the Germans did not invent that.
• THE PADEREWSKI MEMOIRS, by Itrnace Jan Paderewski and Mary Lawton. New York. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938. Illustrated; 404 pp. Price $3.75 postpaid of Survey Graphic.
There are many fine Old Testament precedents for it ... for example, read in the Book of Joshua (vii:17-26) what was done about the "sin" of one Achan, son of Carmi. And while we are looking into history and boiling with well- warranted indignation and horror over what these still uncouth barbarians are doing to the Jews, it were whole- some to check up on what our own American forefathers did during and after the American Revolution to the Tories and others loyal to the British Crown. The confis- cations, lynchings, mental, moral and physical tortures which "we" inflicted upon those poor wretches, sicken- ingly resemble what is being done to the German Jews today. This sort of thing is not peculiar to the Prussian; it seems to be indigenous in the human psychology. But, then, equally indigenous is the moral revolt of decency against it. Even in today's Germany.
NOBODY COULD MAKE ME BELIEVE THAT THE SPIRIT OF LIBERTY and democracy has been killed in Baden and Wiirttem- burg, those hotbeds of perennial revolt, whence in '48 and since we derived those great-souled Germans who have contributed so much to American life and culture. And Bavaria, overwhelmingly Catholic ... it were unimagi- nable that its devout and gentle people have lost their souls and accept with complacency the persecution of their church.
And what of the liberal and radical forces throughout the German Reich? In the May elections of 1928, the total vote of the Left was tremendous:
Social Democrats (152 Reichstag seats). . . . 9,120,000 Communists (54 seats) 3,240,000
Together, about 12,364,000
Approximately 42 percent of the total vote in all Ger- many. These people, and the spirit which impelled them, have not evaporated. To be sure, their conspicuous leaders have been murdered, shot or beaten to death, or immured in concentration camps, or are fugitives in other countries; but the mass of them is still extant in Germany, dumb or fearfully whispering in corners even though "heiling" with the crowd and voting "Ja!" in the only way Germans are allowed to vote. The lid is on, but underneath gathers the pressure. ... I haven't seen it, but I am credibly informed that the latest German airmail stamp illustrates the wings of German aviation enveloping the globe; in the back- ground the sun, disfigured by the Nazi swastika — in the West, a setting sun! There's a fitting verse in Robert W. Service's "The Land That God Forgot":
The lonely sunsets flare forlorn,
Down valleys dreadly desolate; The lonely mountains soar in scorn
As still as death, as stern as fate.
THE GOOSE-STEPPING, POLL-PARROTING, LITERALLY "KEPT"
press of Germany — and of Italy too; Germany especially at the moment — react to the rising uproar of indignation in America against the Nazi barbarities with a tu quoque, "You're as bad as we are"; vociferating about our lynch- ings, riots, racketeering, kidnapping, extortions under threats and torture, and what-have-you-else. Let us wel- come the challenge; noting the implied confession of guilty
JANUARY 1939
31
conscience in at least acknowledging that Germany is tarred with the same stick. But the difference is antipodal. Yes, we have these things; but we are heartily ashamed of them; they are not proudly, boastfully acknowledged methods and instrumentalities of government. Our police and courts do sometimes "railroad" innocent persons to jail, even to the gallows, as witness the Chicago Hay- market tragedy and the martyrdom of Tom Mooney; but we do not glory in it. We do have riots, but they are not fomented and organized and unleashed by the government itself, and when the police behave lawlessly as they often do they usually have the decency to deny or extenuate it, and there is at least the semblance of public protest.
As FOR INTERRACIAL RELATIONS, IN THEORY ANYWAY, AND IN
increasing measure, before the law in this country all men, regardless of race, are supposed to be equal. We have no class or race in America declared by law, as the Jews are in Germany, to have no rights whatever. We have our "ghettos." In the southern city where I chance to be living at this moment (as in all southern towns) the Negroes are confined as to residence to a certain section. After 9 o'clock at night none without emergency or other indubitable excuse may without challenge or even arrest be found "east of the railroad." Nevertheless relations between the races have improved immensely within my own brief period of winter visits to the South. Within the last few days in a neighboring town I have seen a public school building exclusively for Negroes which in all respects, of construction and facilities — yes, and of quality of teaching, too, exclusively by Negro teachers — compares more than favorably with innumerable schools in the North. How- ever, southern custom does confine Negroes in trains to abominable accommodations and exclude them from Pull- man cars, it is in defiance of the laws of the United States, and conditions even in that respect improve. Do not mis- understand me; I am farthest from condoning or white- washing the treatment of the Negro in any part of the United States; it has been and continues to be grossly unjust. My point is that on the whole, and absolutely so far as avowed policy and legislative action are concerned, interracial relations in the United States move and have moved steadily upward. We are ashamed of our past; our intent is to leave behind and so far as possible forget those Nazi-like behaviors which disgraced it. We are getting better, while Nazi Germany rushes gleefully "down the steep place," toward the Pit.
As REGARDS THE ATTITUDE OF THE CIVILIZED WORLD FROM
which for the moment Germany has seceded, the current persecutions of the Jews is not a new phenomenon; history is smeared with its like or worse. But never before was there so widespread a reaction of horror. Nor does it relate to the German victims alone. In respect of the Italian out- rage upon Ethiopia, the Japanese upon China, the Italian- German armed invasion of Spain, by the policies now pursuing under the present regimes the names of Italy, Japan and Germany bid fair to become, as that of Turkey did in the massacres of the Armenians, of Soviet Russia in the ruthless "liquidation" of the Kulaks, things of evil stench in the nostrils of humanity.
What a pattern these tyrants are setting for retaliation upon themselves when in the inevitable swing of the Pen- dulum positions are reversed. Persecuting those whose opinions or whose race are distasteful to me, I establish
32
approved precedent for them when their Day comes round. Macbeth said it:
. . . that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor; this even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice To our own lips.
Professing to defend the world against communism, these have outdone the worst that they charge against the communists. God save us from a choice between them!
THE IMPORTANCE OF STRAWS IN THE WIND LIES NOT IN THE
character of the straws so much as in what they tell about the direction and force of the wind, itself invisible. Ap- praise as you may the immediate value of such symptoms as the defeat of the present British government in several bye-elections of members of Parliament in dissent to the policy of "appeasement by surrender"; as the uncontra- dicted report that Anthony Eden will presently supplant Mr. Chamberlain as prime minister; as the consummation of the American-British trade agreement with its mutual tariff concessions; as the Pan-American conference about to assemble in Peru as these words are written ... all these things and many others support the belief that the world after all has not gone entirely mad; that conscience is not dead or diseased or muzzled everywhere.
With desire to awaken, inspire and inform that con- science, which grows more and more vocal as the tidings spread abroad of unconscionable outrage threatening de- struction of the most precious things in the human heri- tage, the editors of Survey Graphic have been at work for several months in preparation for the forthcoming special "Minorities Number" — probably that for February, fol- lowing this one. It is under the personal direction of Raymond Gram Swing, one of the most broadminded, judicious, deeply-informed of American foreign correspon- dents, who in this behalf was in London, Paris, Prague, Geneva in those dark days last September when the War Beast crouched over Europe; enlisting an incomparably brilliant and competent group of contributors, calculated both to illuminate the European situation and to ignite and inflame American realization of all that is at stake. I could not compile a list of writers more promising of in- formation, reflection, inspiration, for intelligent American readers — or any others for that matter — than these whom Swing has mustered. Some of the names at random, with- out reference to relative fame or weight: Edgar Ansel Mowrer, Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Robert W. Seton- Watson, William Allan Neilson, Bertrand Russell, William E. Rappard, Felix Frankfurter, Dorothy Thompson, Alvin Johnson, Oscar I. Janowsky, M. W. Fodor, F. A. Voigt, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Arthur Feiler. There will be a poem by John Masefield and a cartoon by the famous European cartoonist Low. Looking over the "scenario" without having seen any of the contributions, I think I await with most interest that promised by John Whittaker, discussing the moral disintegration of the majority which does the suppressing; the inevitable sequelae of decay, spiritual, social and economic, ensuing upon today's be- haviors. This is the form that Nemesis invariably takes. The forthcoming special issue of Survey Graphic is de- signed to help "America" to avoid this decadence — with all our sins to be entitled still to accept the challenge of these times.
SURVEY GRAPHIC
LETTERS AND LIFE
Footnotes on Our Times
by LEON WHIPPLE
A PURITAN IN BABYLON, by William Allen White. Macmillan. 460 pp. Price $3.50.
BEHIND THE BALLOTS, by James A. Farley. Harcourt, Brace. 392 pp. Price $3.
THE EDUCATION OF AN AMERICAN, by Mark Sullivan. Doubleday, Doran. 320 pp. Price $3.50.
GROUND UNDER OUR FEET, by Richard T. Ely. Macmillan. 330 pp. Price $3.
Prices postpaid of Survey Graphic THE ALARUMS AND RETREATS IN AMERICAN LIFE FROM 1900 TO
1939 (minus the war years) have centered around the bold enterprise of taking the symbol-figures, Liberty, Equality, Fra- ternity, off the courthouse pediment and putting them to work in the streets — Main and Wall and Maple. Our experiments should have taught us more than any other nation knows about what democracy is, how it works, and how it must be reformed to survive. Now democracy is under a world-wide attack: and we must defend both our symbol-figures and their creations.
We cannot defend what we cannot define; nor ally our democracy with any other save on common principles that we help determine, as a peer and not as a useful colony, restored to bondage by untutored idealism. We shall not demean democracy by negation as any mere antithesis to fascism or communism. The democracy we affirm is a spirit-in-itself, rooted in social necessity, enduring through crises by native strength, and offering the most successful human order men have conceived to let the free will and energy of the people enjoy all the modes of progress for their material welfare and spiritual satisfaction.
This dangerous challenge demands an arduous self-scrutiny, the minute exploration of every avenue toward a fresh and modern knowledge of our cause. The present modest contribu- tion is drawn from a late windfall of lives of politicians and publicists, men getting into focus, reporting on themselves and their times, crying "Ave atque Vale!" What can we learn from Coolidge and Farley, masters of politics? from Mark Sullivan, journalist-historian, and from Richard T. Ely, teacher of economics to statesmen and editors, author of the most most widely used text on the required subject of today's curriculum.
! I
POLITICS is NOT A PECULIAR OBSESSION OF DEMOCRACIES; IT is found wherever men trade in community prerogatives for power, in monarchy, authoritarian state, or Soviets. But votes, elections, and parties are our tools, and politics a yardstick that measures public good and evil. William Allen White on Coolidge, and James Farley on "the personal history of a politician" are postgraduate texts for this mysterious disci- pline. Try as Mr. White honestly does to present Calvin Cool- idge as a minor statesman, Vermont Puritan, symbol of an American era, in the end he creates the figure of a superb politician who had luck. In one of many brilliantly etched scenes, he sees Coolidge, leaving Washington, March 4, 1929 as "a competent, intelligent, hard-working politician, honest as his times would permit, courageous as the prod of circum- stances and a political habit of mind could make him." He was money-honest, a family man of deep loyalties, sentimental, virtuous, thrifty — "work and save was all he was ever sure about." Uncorrupted but uninterfering he sat in the White House of the Babylon years thinking the great Bull Market was an expression of the American ideal of work and save. This paradox in a sense pestered Mr. White into writing
a masterly sketch of politics and economics in our time. All his richness of style, his firsthand knowledge of men and events, his study of social backgrounds, his warmth and humanity, make a grand illuminating book. But he never re- solves the enigma of the little dour man, with his puckish humor some thought dumb, who was "brusque and mean and unwittingly cruel," and counted the hams in the White House larder
Page after page of Mr. White's wrestling to explain Coolidge offers a bonus of political wisdom — his penetrating study of the western Massachusetts "squirearchy" versus the eastern Brah- mins, the prosperity regime in Washington with Andrew Mellon as Coolidge's "bad angel," the intricacy of stock market and Federal Reserve policy, the President's bemused moral patriotism. But he seems to miss an explanation of Coolidge's dualism that is reenforced by Farley's story, and offers the main lesson of these books for the student of democracy. To practice politics on the grand scale means to become absorbed in a skilled profession that takes all a man's time, energy, and brains so that he simply cannot, being human, master the eco- nomic and social statecraft our age demands. He knows men, not measures; techniques, not social programs; how to elect governors, not how to govern. He becomes subdued to the material he lives, eats, dreams, until he can think only in political terms. Justice Taft wrote that Coolidge viewed the judiciary from a political angle.
Mr. Farley, happily, employed his great skill to elect a man he held in affectionate admiration, and who had a social phil- osophy, a program, and the nature of a governor. Mr. Farley himself found in the state a place as postmaster that benefited from his talents as a business executive. He writes a warm human chapter on his pride in its efficiency. In the other fields of government he lets the "Chief" decide, from loyalty if not from personal conviction. Mr. Coolidge in a sense elected him- self: he did not understand what needed understanding; he had to delegate; he was left as an institutional figure, a good man with faith in America, often courageous, mastered by his time as perhaps any man would have been mastered.
This thesis of the ruling passion is partial, of course; but read these rich distillations of experience — White's panorama of an age, Farley's sunlit chronicle of a politician's progress — and you must agree that politics is a jealous mistress, fascinat- ing beyond divorce. Read how Harry Daugherty, retired king- maker, sought an interview with Farley at Miami in 1934, to ask one question: "At what stage in the Chicago Convention did you enter into an agreement with the Garner forces?" The old general is still enthralled by a successor's strategy. Or Town-Clerk Farley delivering in person marriage licenses to bashful couples. Or Councilman Coolidge downing a con- scientious glass of beer, with "the boys." Or Louis Howe serv- ing the beloved Franklin from a sickbed. Politicians have no time to become statesmen, only to make them. That paradox may be the lesson. Democracy teaches in queer ways.
WE MAY STUDY ANOTHER PARADOX IN THE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF
Mark Sullivan and Richard Ely — that of the young insurgent who over the years becomes conservative. This is so familiar it must be a natural phenomenon of democracy, and one that can offer very useful services. We might almost be able, given certain coordinates of a man's nature, philosophy and environ- ment, to plot the curve of his change, with the purpose of understanding his views and profiting by his experience. The best of such characters certainly act as buffers against a too swift experimentation, and, having themselves shared in inno- vations, can serve as liaison officers between the generations. To create an atmosphere in which such cross-interpretation can flourish is a need in democracy.
JANUARY 1939
33
Mark Sullivan has a rare gift for evoking the past. He re- vealed it first in the volumes of "Our Times," and uses it here for a warm and intimate restoration of the very life of a boy who grew up in a big and poor Irish family in the Delaware Bay region of Pennsylvania in the 1880s. The first part of this book ranks with the very best of our genre studies of a van- ished rural America. The picture of this kindly scene and these brave and kindly folk is warm and tender and real. The scents, folklore, talk, Irish songs, schooldays are caught with a colorful simplicity of style that must delight those of like memories, perhaps arouse the envy of the young. This was the American way of life, a good way, and to conserve its image is a fine kind of conservatism. I guess Mark Sullivan feels that it is not he that has changed, but his America, and he is lonely and alarmed.
After the lad, clearly a charmer, wins an education by fam- ily sacrifice and hard toil, he twists a law training into jour- nalism, seeking for facts, and so goes from McClure's to Col- lier's, the story of which is his second motif. He sketches, S. S. McClure as the "first magazine genius of his time" and rightly; but presents Lincoln Steffens as an impressionist and poseur and so, I think, misjudges StefFs greatness. He recounts his own share, with Norman Hapgood and Robert Collier, in making Collier's into the edged spear of the Progressive move- ment— the fight on Cannon, the fight for Theodore Roosevelt — until death and mismanagement brought the bankers into control and sent Sullivan into other fields of journalism. He stops there, but happily with the promise of the later story, the curve of which toward conservatism should prove illumi- nating.
Professor Ely's reminiscences of his study in Germany, the foundation of Johns Hopkins, his teaching at Wisconsin, and his later studies in land economics, interspersed with his views on the teaching of his science, on civil service, and on public ownership do not quite make a complete autobiography or reveal his philosophy. They do offer meaty stuff on men and the progress toward the new realism in the study of economics. But this innovator in many fields, who had to defend himself publicly in Wisconsin against charges of being socialistic, tells why he has reversed his faith in municipal ownership. He charts his own curve of thinking, and that must interest the student of men in democracy. For to understand what we de- fend will fortify our courage.
Impulse to Power
RESIDENTIAL QUARTER, by Louis Aragon. Harcourt, Brace. 505 pp.
ALL THAT MATTERS, by Peter Mendelssohn. Holt. 371 pp. Price
$2.50.
WOLF AMONG WOLVES, by Hans Fallada. Putnam. 724 pp. Price $3. LITTLE STEEL, by Upton Sinclair. Farrar & Rinehart. 308 pp. Price
F.O.B. DETROIT, by Wessel Smitter. Harper. 340 pp. Price $2.50. MAN'S HOPE, by Andre Malraux. Random House. 511 pp. Price $2.50. Prices postpaid of Survey Graf hie
BERTRAND RUSSELL, IN HIS "NEW SOCIAL ANALYSIS," "POWER," describes the kind of mentality generated in the world by mechanical inventions which give to those who control them a certain god-like power. What Russell means by this "new mentality" could not be better illustrated than by the excerpt he quotes from Bruno Mussolini's account of his bombing expedition in Abyssinia. "We had to set fire to the wooded hills, to the fields and to the little villages. It was all most diverting. ... The bombs hardly touched the earth before they burst out into white smoke and an enormous flame and the dry grass began to burn. I thought of the animals; God, how they ran. . . . After the bomb-racks were emptied I began throwing bombs by hand. ... It was most amusing."
The novels which we are here considering are written by men who have not yet learned the "new mentality," and who are not amused by the scampering of those who live on wooded
34
hills and in little villages. If one accepts the axiom on which Russell bases his social analysis, that power is the fundamental concept in social science in the same sense that energy is the fundamental concept in physics, then one cannot but see in these novels a terrifying account of the effect of uncontrolled power on the lives of individuals. If "power like energy is continually passing from any one of its forms to any other," then what those novels reflect is the human suffering in- volved in the effort of our time to find new channels in which power might flow.
Louis ARAGON IN "RESIDENTIAL QUARTER" ATTEMPTS, IN SAVAGE and somewhat youthful terms, to cope with what Russell calls "traditional power." Disillusioned, petulant, gifted — him- self a dweller in "residential quarter" — Aragon offers this book as part of "a long work which I submit as a testimony of my life, from its early beginnings to this hour of struggle in which I do not feel myself distinct from the millions of Frenchmen who are demanding Bread, Peace and Liberty." One must then take his account of Edmond's and Armand's struggle to break away from a chauvinistic, property-minded father, and an hysterically religious mother as symbolic of his own violent repudiation of the traditions of pre-war France. As one closes the book one feels inclined to say to Aragon as a seasoned old Parisian bum, slouching on a park bench, said to Armand, "Nobody gives a damn, young man, whether you eat or don't eat."
As power based on accepted habits and traditions decays, says Russell, it gives way either to power based on a new belief, or else to what he calls "naked power," that is, "the kind that involves no acquiescence on the part of the subject." This is the sort of power which determines the lives of the people who move about in the novels of Peter Mendelssohn and Hans Fallada. Mendelssohn, an exile from Germany living in England, is one quarter Jew; his story is autobiog- raphical in the sense that the incidents (not the characters) are real incidents and truly historical. It is the story of what happened in Germany during the years 1930-1934, when the life of the journalist who tells the tale is torn apart by the persecution of Jews in Berlin. "All That Matters" is the title of the book, and "all that matters" is its meaning. In this sober account of unheroic people the helplessness of indi- viduals exposed to "naked power" is felt with unbearable poignancy.
"Wolf Among Wolves," by Hans Fallada, is a tale as cruel as its title. It, too, comes out of a Germany living through a period of terror. The power in this case, however, is eco- nomic; the dance of death which one watches in this 700- page novel is to the accompaniment of a wildly careering mark. In July 1923, the dollar is worth 414,000 marks; one day at noon it stands at 760,000 marks; from July 26 to August 8 the dollar rose to 4,860,000 marks. "Fate" is conceived by Fallada in terms of money. The number of gambling halls in Berlin were at that time "as the sands of the sea, just as everywhere there was heroin and cocaine, 'snow,' nude danc- ers, French champagne and American cigarettes, influenza, hunger, despair, fornication and crime." One watches the gradual disintegration of estates, listens to the rumors of up- risings and putsches, and realizes anew the meaning of "in- flation," and the forces behind inflation. "These things en- tered into men, became part of them, affected their sleeping and waking, their dreaming and drinking, their eating and living. A desperate position; every despairing individual be- having desperately. Confused, chaotic times." The hero's moral redemption on the farm, his final reconciliation with his mother and with Petra are unconvincing. What one re- members is the insanity which overtook city and country alike when money lost its moorings, and men and women wandered "lost in a lost age."
To pass from Fallada's complicated sense of shifting values, both monetary and moral, to Upton Sinclair's brisk and super-
SURVEY GRAPHIC
ficial study of how economic power is made effective in the Valleyville Steel Corporation is to realize that the peculiar suffering of Europe has not been felt in this country. The struggle of "Little Steel" to maintain the open shop after the United States Steel Corporation has joined the CIO, is put before the reader with all the clarity of a mind unconfused by a sense of temperamental differences in his characters. From the moment when Matt and Ernestine Joyce, "indus- trial counsellors," drive up the hill to the Mansion House of Walter Quayle, kindly, bewildered president of the works, to the time when Quayle eludes them all by running away, one is aware only of Upton Sinclair's good-humored journalistic mind. Just as the Joyces stand for "The American Way," of dealing with the labor movement, so Sinclair reflects "The American Way" of writing a novel — bright, swift-moving and unabashed — which inevitably ends in sentimentality; in this case Quayle sells out the business and escapes in a trailer to watch his emancipated daughter Jenny conduct strikes on the more fertile fields of Georgia.
WESSEL SMITTER, IN "F.O.B. DETROIT," AS AWARE AS UPTON Sinclair of the power of organized economic forces, makes an effort to break away from this surface technique. One cannot escape the impression that he has worked in an automobile assembly plant himself for he knows the feel of machinery, knows how a big untamed lumberman, like Russ, responds with a sense of pride to the huge levers, and how a city-bred factory hand like Benny can take the steady drive of the "line."
The story is told by Benny, who admires the independence of Russ. Weasel's attempt to catch the emotional rhythm of the characters in terms of their machines, rather than in terms of labor theory and strikes, is what one values in this direct account of everyday life by a man who knows the tensions under which men work.
"I call power revolutionary when it depends upon a large group united by a new creed, program or sentiment," says Russell. Andre Malraux, in his last account of a country at war, makes one understand something of the quality of soul which unites the Loyalists of Spain, and enables them year after year to hold on to hope, which is "gasping to survive, like a man who is throttled." To Malraux "Man's Hope" seems to rest in the peculiar self-forgetfulness which makes reckless sacrifices possible and even gay. Those who adhere to the new creed, says Russell, are different psychologically from mere adventurers, and what they accomplish is both "more important and more permanent."
This is a book about revolution, written at night in the midst of action by a man who is commander of the Loyalist Government's International Air Forces in Spain; it is a book about revolution by a man who, in the thick of collapsing buildings and the confusion of shotgun sniping on hot city streets, catches the meaning behind the event. There is no central character, there is no plot — we accept the necessary confusion and judge quickly in terms of the moment as we might were we on the scene, moving among the conflicts and sympathies of the anarchists, the agrarians, the Catholics, the communists and the socialists, who together form the gov- ernment front. Slowly out of this mob emerges a people's army, disciplined by the sheer necessity of action. "The peo- ple, leaderless and all but unarmed, could merely fight. . . ." As suffering brings forth the nobility latent in a face so, Malraux seems to say, revolution brings forth a new power in man, revolutionary power, which makes their accomplish- ments "different and more permanent."
But, as Russell reminds us, and as recent developments in Europe make very clear. "There is no hope for the world un- less power can be tamed." All of our six novelists express the terror and confusion of untamed power; none of them, with the possible exception of Malraux, is able to suggest how the "new mentality," born of machinery, might be humanized. Malraux's "hope" springs from an observation he made while
fighting with the- Loyalists in Spain: "Men who are joined together in a common hope, a common quest, have, like men whom love unites, access to regions they could never reach left to themselves." The bitter thought is that Hider's power is based on this same observation. Stelton, N. ]. CLARA MARBURG KIRK
Albion Asunder
PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND. A COMMENTAHY, by Harold J. Laski. Viking. 383 pp. Price $3.50 postpaid of Survey Graphic.
IN THIS MASTERLY DISCUSSION OF BRITISH POLITICS HAROLD
Laski brings all his rich store of practical experience and ob- servation to bear upon one central thesis. The division of English parties between those who believe in the traditional property system and those who do not has created a funda- mental conflict such as the parliamentary system of govern- ment is not able to cope with. He cites a number of times Lord Balfour's dictum that the whole British machinery "pre- supposes a people so fundamentally at one that they can safely afford to bicker." The issue of socialism has destroyed that fundamental oneness. In Laski's opinion the conserva- tive leaders know that, the Labor Party command does not. Throughout the volume, Laski shows how insoluble issues arise in a system which is built upon an either/or decision when the alternatives are mutually exclusive. But with that tender, somewhat self-complacent regard of Britishers for their own institutional traditions, he refuses to consider the possibility that a more loosely knit system, such as the Ameri- can, might in the present crisis be better. Indeed, he suggests several times that it is worse. He may be right; only experi- ence can tell. But that experience, to date, points to the oppo- site conclusion.
Mr. Laski's discussion is nevertheless highly illuminating throughout. There can be no doubt, e. g., that the tortuous path of British foreign policy since the war cannot be under- stood except in terms of this internal conflict. "The fact is," says Laski, "that since the war our foreign policy is largely unintelligible save as the expression of a determination to discourage all movements abroad which, seeking democratic emancipation, have been driven to recognize that the vested interests of property are the main obstacles in its path; and that discouragement has been enthusiastically welcomed by the propertied class of this country." Amen is all one can say to that. All in all a remarkable book. Harvard University C. J. FRIEDRICH
Whither Capitalism?
CAPITALISM IN CRISIS, by James Harvey Rogers. Yale University Press. 210 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of Survey Graphic.
PROFESSOR ROGERS is A MIDDLE-OF-THE-ROADER IN THE BEST sense of that term. He has no complacency about the perma- nence of capitalism, nor has he seemingly any notion that it is morally unassailable. What he is here concerned to do is to show what must be immediately done to keep it functioning so that even a minimum of essential production and distribu- tion can go on in the hope that more than a minimum can presently result from the system's operation.
His general conclusions will not sound extraordinary, but that is partly because he purposely does not develop their detailed implications. These conclusions are seven: (1) the necessity for a period of prosperity in the conventional sense; (2) low prices, only moderate profits and current spending of current saving; (3) public spending where private capital- goods spending fails; (4) public budgets balanced on a long term reckoning only; (5) restrictions on interstate and inter- national trade to be reduced; (6) a practical and relatively peaceful working alliance as among government, business and labor; and (7) adequate relief for the underprivileged.
These proposals hang together, they are reasonably con- sistent, the one with the other, they are in the main not wish- ful. They have a New Deal flavor without the anti-business
JANUARY 1939
35
animus of certain New Deal sentiment. They are a corrective to those current attitudes which are indifferent to the pros- pective values of a restoration of conventional prosperity be- cause it would be bought at too high a price. They are realis- tic in that they acknowledge that, by one formula or another, production must increase if there are to be more goods to distribute; and as it increases, there must be a wide disper- sion of purchasing power to absorb it.
Many questions remain unconsidered, of which perhaps the most serious is as to the outcomes of another boom era, if it be assumed that sooner or later one is on the way. Surely the crisis of today is as nothing to the stresses and strains that would be disclosed as another business crescendo reached its peak in the early 1940s. Also, whether the norms and stand- ards of capitalism can withstand the advances of scientific knowledge of productive potentialities in the face of produc- tion controlled to get a profitable price is a grave question. It is not here adequately faced.
But as a comment on the mutually contradictory remedial measures being proposed today, the book has real illumina- tion. Were its proposals adopted, there would certainly be a return of business confidence and an upswing of business activity. Query: whither would it lead? New Yor% ORDWAY TEAD
Facing the Pacific
THE FAR EASTERN POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES, by A. Whitney Griswold. Harcourt, Brace. 530 pp. Price $3.75 postpaid of Survey Graphic.
THE PRESENT SITUATION IN THE FAR EAST AND THE LARGELY
emotional interest with which the American public looks on it make Professor Griswold's sober and illuminating study an extremely important document. Starting with the annexation of the Philippines which had originated "in a mood of im- perialist expansion," the author examines every phase of the United States' Far Eastern policy, with a strong emphasis on the changing temperaments behind the diplomatic notes. With the help of hitherto unpublished letters and confidential mem- oranda, Mr. Griswold presents a refreshingly frank analysis of various administrations and their conceptions of the Far East. The jump from imperialist to dollar diplomacy to him is chiefly a matter of personalities — "Roosevelt had made a game of world politics, Taft made platitudes of foreign trade." Beyond this, the book opens new vistas with regard to Amer- ican participation in international affairs. The argument that the World War, which destroyed the Far Eastern balance of power, forced the United States into a situation where she had to resist Japan's expansionist tendencies, is convincingly presented.
The tragic tenor of a policy which was based upon the idea that our commercial and financial stake in the Far East would "soon" exceed that in Europe, comes to life in this book. The author shows that the most profitable trend of American investment has been toward Japan, not China, and that our combined interests in the Far Eastern countries make for a discrepancy between foreign policy and economic fact. He proves that American efforts in behalf of China's integrity have passed through several cycles, "all ending in failure," and his profound comments on the traditional Open Door are of particular interest in the light of the present dip- lomatic controversy between Washington and Tokyo.
The chief merit of the book is its evaluation of our Far Eastern policy in proportion to this country's foreign policy as a whole. Despite the fact that the author takes much care in presenting even seemingly unimportant details, the book has no dull passages. An extremely dynamic language and the author's keen sense for the dramatic element in history make the volume stimulating and interesting even to the non-spe- cialized reader. While professional diplomats and scholars may find material enough to bolster their background, the plain reader of the daily newspaper will find, in this book, a most valuable contribution toward his ability to follow the
36
headlines. Taking in diplomatic developments of 1938, the book is as up-to-date as it is historically correct. Among the many books which have attempted to shed light on the deli- cate relationship between this country and the nations of Eastern Asia, this work stands out as one of the most pro- found and valuable contributions. To Professor Griswold it secures a lasting place in the front row of American writers in this field. New Yorff ERNEST O. HAUSER
They Like America
MY AMERICA, by Louis Adamic. Harper. 669 pp. Price $3.75. GREEN WORLD'S, by Maurice Hindus. Doubleday, Doran. 359 pp. Price $3. Prices postpaid of Survey Graphic.
WlTH THE CANDOR AND APPRECIATION WHICH HAVE DISTIN-
guished his previous books about this elemental, ever-changing, continental nation, Louis Adamic writes a large book — perhaps too long, too random, but rich in the kind of observa- tion which most native sons lack. He has kept good company; and his records of long communion with the leaders of labor, education, publishing and politics are revealing documents. He sees the thrust of progress without fear, but with a good many reservations concerning the tactics of the communists who may precipitate reaction against a strong and wholesome evo- lutionary labor movement. This is his personal book, full of reveries and containing not a few preachments; it is at its best in reporting and characterization.
Maurice Hindus, in a magnificent autobiographical story devoted mainly to his youth on an upstate New York farm evokes a pleasant rural age that is past and gone. Revisiting the Russian village of his childhood, he wonders whether it and its people, raised out of the mud by revolution, do not indicate more promise than rural America for the future. Of course, upstate farms and villages slip back. And Russian villages improve. Reminding the reader that a nineteenth century pioneer individualist community on the prairie might have given rise to the same comparison, I recommend his book as a contribution to understanding. It is written with wisdom and sympathy, and is a forceful individual's plea for placing a high value upon the individual in the inevitable sweep of socialization. VICTOR WEYBRICHT
Selfish People Can't Be Free
PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, by Herbert Agar. Houghton, Mifflin. 387 pp. Price $3 postpaid of Survey Graphic.
JEFFERSON'S SOUL GOES MARCHING ON THROUGH THE PAGES OF this incisive and challenging survey of the hope — and its re- current frustrations — for a truly democratic America which the drafter of the Declaration of Independence bequeathed his countrymen. An informal history of the Democratic Party from Jefferson to (not through) Roosevelt, it is more than mere record. For Mr. Agar interprets events in terms of the most persistent motif in the political evolution of this country — the struggle between property and people, between special privilege and the democratic faith in equality of opportunity and status.
"Pursuit of Happiness" is a courageous and inspiriting and refreshing tract for the times. Courageous, for it faces the fundamental dilemma of our time — the contradiction of try- ing to build a Good Society on the foundations of mean ideals and thwarted human needs, in short, of Little Men. Inspirit- ing, because it portrays the ineradicable desire and determi- nation in the hearts of the men and women of the street, the market place, the factory, the farm, to attempt the achieve- ment of the hope. Refreshing, since Mr. Agar writes as he thinks, straight and hard, with a pen dipped in the caustic of an unafraid championing of the moral compulsions of the democratic faith and of a rare and forthright candor in re- porting their denial — in the present as in the past.
Mr. Agar makes a fresh appraisal of the Jeffersonian phil- osophy of democracy — in its social and economic, as well as its political phases. But this is only the starting point for a
SURVEY GRAPHIC
direct and unequivocal analysis of the present deficiencies and liabilities in the balance sheet of democratic institutions and practices in America. His insistence on the ethical basis of democracy strikes a note too infrequently emphasized in the current cacophony of political oratory and exegesis. "Democ- racy cannot be understood if it is pictured solely as a political or economic system. Underlying all else, democracy must be a moral code, or it will not be effective."
What Mr. Agar has done, and done brilliantly, is to im- plement these inferences from the context of ideals, programs, events of the past one hundred and fifty years of our history. It is required reading for everyone seriously concerned with the next ten years of America. Queens College PHILLIPS BRADLEY
Japan's National Faith
THE NATIONAL FAITH OF JAPAN, a STUDY IN MODERN SHINTO, by D. C. Holtom. Dutton. 325 pp. Price $3.75 postpaid of Survey Graphic.
THIS SCHOLARLY BOOK WILL SATISFY THE NEED OF A GROWING
number of readers for an authoritative history and description of Shintoism. The Japanese derive from Shinto the inspiration of their national ideals and loyalties, and these ideals underlie the policy of forceful expansion which for years has kept the Far East and the whole world in a state of anxiety. "No other great nation of the present shows a more vital dependence on priestly rituals and their concomitant beliefs than does mod- ern Japan." The Japanese government builds its system of education and indoctrination on loyalty to the Shinto shrines and to the great interests for which they stand. Shinto serves the purpose of integrating the national mind and glorifying the national destiny. Japan's main weakness, seen by a West- ern mind, is her effort to combine two incompatible things: a modern industrial system and a traditional feudal order; an educational program based upon scientific knowledge and an attempt to present mythology as history. How long can a sincere faith in the divine descent of the Emperor survive together with teachings of modern science? The author be- lieves that the worth of Shinto must depend on its ability to adjust itself to the demands of a true universalism. The reader of the book may doubt this ability. The book does not offer easy reading but it will be indispensable for everybody who wishes to study seriously the life and problems of Japan. The book is printed in Japan and it is well printed, the illus- trations will be of special interest to the general reader. Smith College HANS KOHN
In Dixieland They Take Their Stand
THE ATTACK ON LEVIATHAN — REGIONALISM AND NATIONALISM IN THK UNITED STATES, by Donald Davidson. University of North Caro- lina Press. 368 pp. Price $3 postpaid of Survey Graphic.
IN ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING OF THE CHAPTERS OF "THE
Attack on Leviathan," Mr. Davidson describes the efforts of Howard Odum and his circle at the University of North Car- olina to lay hold of the sociological Proteus, and get him to testify as to the future of the new Southern Regionalism. His- tory having seriously neglected sectionalism, sociology is con- fronted with numerous perplexities in giving it a fresh orien- tation, so that what was economically important and culturally significant in the past of the sections may be used in develop- ing an harmonious pluralism of the regions. Mr. Davidson foresees that much more than a mere cataloguing of the assets and liabilities of the South, for example, is necessary if the imperial Leviathan, which it has served as a colony since the Civil War, is to be checked in its progress and become a thoughtful beast. He is genuinely skeptical of the possibility of bringing about a unity of purpose among the regions of the nation by looking toward the federal government. That may simply turn out to be Leviathan with another pattern, without proper respect to cultural differences. He notes that the New Deal has not looked in the direction of the kindly and catho- lic Mr. Odum with a paternal eye.
Being a collection of essays, Mr. Davidson's book has a
diversity of its own, and sometimes it seems that the author has a tenuous hold upon the philosophic Proteus. But before the end he has succeeded in weighting the battle decidedly in favor of Turner's theory of dynamic sectionalism, as opposed to Beard's doctrine of historical unity.
"Last, there is the regionalism which is unselfconscious — which is so much in the normal course of life that it cannot be recognized as regionalism by the artist himself," says Mr. Davidson in discussing regionalism and the arts. "The less we have of insistence that the United States must become 'all one thing, or all the other," the more we shall have of this kind of regionalism: more, that is, of a really American art of such generally acknowledged variety and indigenous strength that the battle between regionalism and cosmopoli- tanism will no longer need to be fought."
Here, we think, the author has a firm hold upon Proteus. The sectionalism from which the South has suffered, really, has been fraught with cultural disabilities due to the economic caste and class system (especially with reference to the Negro) with which it carried on the cotton economy. If it can man- age unselfconsciously to forget the past as it turns toward a better balance between agriculture and industry, the new rc- gionalist may come to a flowering.
But it is apparent that it needs primarily the arts and skills of a new economics.
Richmond, Va.
WILLIAM SHANDS MEACHAM
Finance for the Little Fellow
CONSUMER CREDIT AND ITS USES, edited by Charles O. Hardy. Prentice Hall. 264 pp. Price $2.75 postpaid of Survey Graphic.
IN THE LAST THREE DECADES CONSUMER CREDIT HAS BECOME AN
important adjunct of national finance. The advent of the automobile and many other new types of durable and valu- able consumers' goods has coincided with an expansion of instalment debt into the billions of dollars.
Despite the amazing growth of the agencies which help the consumer to earlier possession of goods and those which ad- vance cash to tide him over periods of insufficient income, reliable information about them is either lacking altogether or is scattered in inaccessible periodicals.
This book brings together in simple, readable form what is reliably known about the more important consumer credit agencies.
It is the product of a number of able professors who form the advisory committee of the Consumer Credit Institute of America. Dr. Charles O. Hardy of The Brookings Institute edited the individual contributions into a unified whole so that the book can be used as a text in economics or social courses, or as a ready means for quick orientation in its special field.
The economist will be interested in the discussion of the effect of consumer credit on the long-run rate of formation of capital; and on the short-run effect on the business cycle. Dr. Hardy finds that consumer credit does compete with producer credit for the savings through which capital is accumulated to further economic progress, but the volume of consumer credit is so small a fraction of the volume of pro- duction credit that its effects are lost in the much larger changes caused by the latter.
The social worker and sociologist will find in this book the answer to many questions about the dangers and the values of these newer forms of consumer credit on the bor- rower himself, and to the complicated question of rates of charge with which so many social workers have difficulty. Dr. Hardy concludes that the consumer who is solvent and a good risk is entitled to credit facilities similar in kind to those which producers have enjoyed; but that state regulation and close supervision appear to be necessary to protect the borrower against various degrees of exploitation by the unscrupulous.
, N. J. R. NEIFELD
JANUARY 1939
37
The Settlements Resolve—
[At a meeting of the governing body of the National Federation of Settlements in New York December 4, 1938, the following statement was .issued. It is printed here because of its widespread and timely interest. THE EDITORS.]
OUR SETTLEMENT NEIGHBORHOODS RANGE FROM NEW ENGLAND
to the Pacific Coast, from the deep South to the belt of states along the Canadian border. They are cross-sections of our national life. Early and late we have tried to stand in our neighborhoods for civil rights, for tolerance and cooperation with all, for opportunity open to every race, religion and class. We feel those things are the test of a free people, not only in terms of American independence, but of American liberty.
Nazi terror and persecution strike at this whole way of life. The excesses in Europe this fall have made that clear as never before, in the persecution of liberals and social dem- ocrats, Catholics, Protestants, and overwhelmingly in the case of Jews. We hail the widespread recoil in every walk of life in the United States as one of the healthiest and most whole- some manifestations of the great traditions of our country.
We share in that recoil. Yet what we face is not a remote horror, but something that touches to the quick the America we know and believe in. It calls for more than denunciation, for turning feeling into action. This is true in our neigh- borhoods, in combating anti-Semitism, and in making our faith in democracy a positive force. It is true in the wider neighborhood of the nation and our policies toward the rest of the world.
For three years past, our settlements have opened their doors to refugees from Europe: Jewish, Catholic and Protes- tant. The settlement household is a natural stepping stone to American life. Our purpose is to expand this program throughout the country in the months ahead as one contribu- tion to the fulfillment of the old American right of asylum.
We commend the leadership of President Roosevelt and his special ambassador, Myron Taylor, in initiating the Evian Conference and proposing concerted action to relieve the ex- cruciating situation in which unnumbered men, women and children find themselves.
When these international plans are worked out, we plead that the United States will not fail to do a fair and gen- erous part, and that no narrow stickling at technicalities will stand in the way. American money gifts will count, but that is not enough. We can give people a fresh chance in life and what we give will be repaid many times over. Harried peo- ple, whose self-dependence here is assured, are now shut out by our quotas. We believe that without adding to our grave problems of unemployment we can do our share and that that share will be an impressive one. We cannot pass by on the other side of the road.
The weeks ahead are especially charged with that message peace and good will" which, set to work, has lifted up
: hearts of mankind in other periods of the world's his- tory when the forces of war and hate have had the whiphand We cannot believe that the foreign policy of the American people and their government is limited to two choices' the choice of war and the choice of doing nothing
Therefore, we line up heartily with the fifteen national
"T/p10115 ^'Ch ha,ve 'oined ^ the Committee for Con- certed Peace Efforts We subscribe to their proposal for amendmg the Neutrality Act, so that this country can de- termme the aggressor ,n case of war and can apply embargoes
y> ^0 kS Vktim- As
Un S t >K u Vm- s ls stan <h'
Umted States has become the chief munition heap and source
f war supplies for Japanese imperialism in carrying on its
war of conquest in China. With the Chinese people Amer- icans have been bound by ties of mutual effort, in the name of health, education and Christianity. Their struggle for de- mocracy has engaged our sympathies and friendship. As things stand, Japanese militarism has thrived on American indifference, on American cotton, American trucks and motor cars and airplanes; on American scrap iron.
MEETING HERE IN NEW YORK AT A TIME WHEN THE OLD Sixth Avenue Elevated is being torn down, we can wish that the tons of old metal shall not be exported to go into shells that will crash on Chinese cities and homes.
We favor the new and needed moves to strengthen peace and democracy in the western hemisphere, and believe that governmental activities on the part of the United States should be matched, not merely by overtures to trade with Spanish America, but with cultural and social cooperation.
Toward Spain itself, mother country in a sense of the whole new world, we call for an about-face on the part of American policy. We have played into the hands of a half- concealed Nazi and Fascist conquest by our embargo against shipments to Republican Spain. This has not been neutrality on our part. It has been desertion in a struggle for democracy. We urge President Roosevelt and Congress to lift that embargo. If there is any doubt about where to put it, we recommend that it be transferred to Hitler's Reich and kept there until at least the Nazi government agrees to let its per- secuted fugitives take their possessions with them as some foothold in starting life afresh under freedom.
Meanwhile, it is not necessary for American citizens to fold their hands until the government acts. We can press for these things. Individually also we can put on our own em- bargoes this holiday season. By refusing to buy Japanese and Nazi products we can throw our own weight in the scales against war and hate.
American settlements watch the whole round of life in our neighborhoods. In 1928, we first challenged public considera- tion of the mounting but as yet unrecognized problem of un- employment. So now, when employment is in turn making gains, we can bear witness to the overhang of unemployment and urge that relief measures be kept up. Let us not let the people down who now, as ten years ago, are caught by forces outside themselves and are stripped of all their reserves.
In these ten years, the United States has learned to set up unemployment insurance as a new protection against the hazard of joblessness. We have still to reckon with the equal hazard of sickness. Our federation appreciates the creative move made by the federal administration in putting a Na- tional Health Program before the public.
As our contribution to clear thinking, we initiated a first- hand study of "British Experience under Health Insurance with Medical Care." The findings of Dr. Douglass W. Orr and Jean Walker Orr are brought out this month by The Macmillan Company. Those findings explode old myths that British doctors are regimented, that there is not free choice betweeen physician and patient. Those findings give the meas- ure of a type of security against sickness that goes farther and works more fairly for doctor and patient alike than anything we have in this country. And those findings have the endorse- ment both of leaders in the British Medical Association and of leaders in the British trade unions.
Employment is the answer to unemployment; but employ- ment at sweated labor is no answer. We endorse the federal wage and hour act as a new and practical measure to prevent overwork and underpay and give a break to children. We urge the adoption of state laws that will make this government protection universal.
38
LET'S ABOLISH THE COUNTY JAIL
(Continued from page 27)
in penalties dished out by adjacent counties. For instance, in California it has been shown that jail sentences varied within a year from an average of 15 days in one county to 104 in another immediately adjoining. In still another, drunks re- ceived an average of 7 days in jail, while the same type of offender in an adjacent county got 59 days. Vagrants in one county were "sent up" for an average of 12 and in another for an average of 90 days. Thus punishment based solely on the type of offense forms a crazy quilt of inequality not only for persons living in different states, but for inhabitants of the same state.
Citizens, when they are once informed of the situation, strongly resent spending huge sums of money each year to create criminals, to make more drug addicts, to ignore and perpetuate disease, to push those already not sufficiently well balanced a little further off and to add to the helpless by dull- ing initiative and responsibility. In lectures to various groups and in conversations, the reaction of people resolves itself into two basic questions: What can be done about it? and, What can we do?
IN ANSWER TO THE FIRST QUESTION, THERE ARE TWO SORTS OF
changes which should and will be made if sanity is to take the place of destructive disorder in the early handling of those who come into contact with the law. One is the reduction of our jail population without danger to the public.
Many persons are sentenced to jail each year who have committed no crime in its real sense — that of injury to others or their property. They are the vast army of misfits, those who are the victims of their own bad habits, or those who are not personally equipped to come to grips successfully with a com- plex economic world. That even our present system does not regard the vast proportion of this flotsam and jetsam as a danger to the community is proved by the fact that alternate penalties or fine or jail sentences are imposed for most of their offenses. So that whether such persons are considered a menace to the community, who should be shut away from others for a time, depends only on whether they have sufficient cash to pay a fine at the moment they happen to be arrested.
Some proponents of the present system may advance the argument that even if these petty offenders are not a menace, their conduct is certainly anti-social and that a jail sentence may reform them. Anyone who thinks that a jail sentence in- stills even the tiniest drop of reform into them need only con- sider the number of times they are returned to the public keep. In practically every community in the United States it is found that more than 60 percent of these misdemeanants are \nown recidivists. How many of the remaining percent- age have drifted away to other counties so that no track could be kept of them is of course unknown. But it must be at least another 20 to 30 percent more. And they are arrested for the same kind of trivia not only one, two, three or four times, but often many more. In one community, for instance, out of a total of approximately 11,000 such petty offenders:
452 had served 5 terms
324 " 6 "
257 " " 7 "
183 " 8 "
130 " 9 "
102 " " 10 "
78 " "' 11 "
58 " " 12 "
43 '\ " 13 "
34 « - 14 "
32 " " 15 "
33 had served
22 "
18 "
17 "
17 "
8 "
14 "
12 "
7 "
6 " "
3 "
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 29
terms
Two had served 30, 31, 33 and 34 terms each, and so on up- (Continued on page 40)
HOWARD VINCENT O'BRIEN
in the Chicago Daily News says:
THE PROBLEM OF VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE, by Herman Schneider, was recommended to me by an eminent surgeon, who assured me that it was one of the best books he had ever read. Now I have read it, and I feel as the surgeon did.
"It is the first book I have read that seems to get at the root of vocational guidance. It is a book utterly free from bunk or quackery. It really does suggest how one may help youth to self- discovery.
"If you are an employer, troubled with labor problems; an educator, interested in the future of your charges; or a parent, with children who are uncertain of their course, I entreat you to read this book.
"If I were a dictator I'd collar you and make you read it!''
THE PROBLEM OF
VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE
By Herman Schneider
Dean of the College of Engineering, University of Cincinnati
$1.60 at All Bookstores, or from the Publisher F. A. STOKES CO., 443 Fourth Ave., NEW YORK
For ALL Survey Readers
LABOR LAWS IN ACTION
By John B. Andrews
How is our govern- ment enforcing its labor laws?
This is a question of vital concern to everyone today in view of the increasing amount of labor legislation going into effect under state and national control. For it becomes increasingly clear that labor taws are no better than the machin- ery that enforces them.
In this book a life-long authority and writer on labor law administration discusses all of the ramifications of making, administering and enforcing laws pertaining to labor. "... an excellent and much needed book ... no present or prospective members of government departments con- cerned with labor law should fail to read it. ... In making it available at this time, John B. Andrews has rendered a most valuable service. . . . " — FRANCES PERKINS in Survey Graphic. Price $3.00
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(In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY GRAPHIC,)
39
LET'S ABOLISH THE COUNTY JAIL
{Continued from page 39)
one having served 62, one 64, one 65, and one 72 terms. Indeed, it is not unknown for some of them to display such extraordinary celerity in getting in and out of jail that they serve four or five short terms in a single month. Obviously, jail sentences do not reform these people.
Who are the various kinds of so-called petty offenders who do not belong in jail? They are the chronic inebriates. Chron- ic drunkenness is a bad habit for which a real cure has not as yet been found. If drunks are not disturbing anyone, they should be let alone. If they are acting in such a way as to con- stitute a menace to themselves or anyone else, they should be taken home or to a local hospital.
They are the vagrants, real and technical. The fact that human beings may have little or no money and a poor or no regular home seems to be no reason to stigmatize them as criminals and keep throwing them in and out of jail at the public's expense.
They are the prostitutes. The Women's Prison Association of New York, which has dealt with prostitutes for more than eighty-five years, states that jail confinement does not change the woman's point of view and that when she is released she is confronted with exactly the same problems as before. Space does not permit us to present here more enlightened and bene- ficial methods of dealing with the prostitute.
They are the narcotic users, as distinguished from sellers. Imprisonment, even where so-called "cures" are given, does not rid them of their weakness for drugs. Contrary to gen- erally prevailing ideas, when addicts voluntarily take "cures," including large numbers who have themselves committed to jail for that purpose, it is often to get a fresh start so that they may take a smaller amount of the drug again, as they did in the beginning, in order to get the required "kick" at con- siderably less expense.
They are the homosexuals. We do not speak here of those guilty of some actual crime such as indecent exposure or im- pairing the morals of minors, but merely of that general class whose obvious stigmata and lack of resources render them the prey of the laws. Imprisonment of harmless homosexuals is a vicious practice. In any case, no homosexuals should be placed in an institution lacking facilities for segregation, as the active type finds in these places a fertile field for perverting others.
They are the non-support cases. The sentencing to jail of many men for non-support serves only to aggravate the prob- lem which it is supposed to solve. Most of these are cases for social adjustment. Only serious harm comes of branding the husband and father with a prison sentence and experience. Those who deliberately refuse to take care of their responsi- bilities should be placed in other institutions at productive labor, the proceeds to go to their families.
If, of course, any one of the types mentioned should com- mit a genuine offense, he should be prosecuted under the statute covering that offense.
Besides the above groups, a small army of persons is sent to jail each year to await trial for alleged violations too trivial even to justify their arrest. The sad fact is that police depart- ments frequently dissipate a large part of their precious time and effort which should be spent on tracking down real crimi- nals, in corralling the more or less helpless adrift.
Yet one of the underlying reasons why society continues to make the gesture of putting a number of people in and out of jail is the instinctive feeling that something ought to be done about them. It is very likely that even though convinced of the futility of sporadically imprisoning the helpless ones, so- ciety will nevertheless continue to feel that it ought to do something about them. In our opinion it should — by invest- ing in permanent studies what would be a small part of the
sum now spent uselessly — see what can be done by combined medical, psychological and other social resources to lift these people out of their current ruts when possible, and perhaps find some way of handling more wisely than here indicated those who are not susceptible to such change.
In addition to those persons who do not belong in jail at all, there are others who, while needing custodial care, should be sent directly to a more suitable institution and in no case to jail. They include juveniles; the seriously ill, or those suf- fering from progressive diseases like tuberculosis; and the patently insane, who are confined for weeks and even months awaiting insanity proceedings.
NOW WE COME TO THE JAIL INMATES WHOSE BEHAVIOR JUSTIFIES
arrest and possibly conviction. Even the number of these living in demoralizing idleness at the public's expense could be cut considerably without adding to public danger. For example, the fixing of bail has largely become an automatic process. The committing officer tends to fix bail mechanically between $100 and $500 for a misdemeanor, and $1000 or more for a felony. So far as many defendants are concerned, the judge might just as well fix it at a million, for they have either very small resources or none at all. Yet many of these defendants are trustworthy, and could with safety be released on their own recognizance after the proper investigation had estab- lished that fact. They are those who have their roots in the community; who live at home, or who support themselves, or who have a good school and work record, or who own property, or who otherwise have more to lose by leaving the jurisdiction than by remaining and standing trial. As things are at present, such persons are frequently held in jail for weeks or months awaiting trial.
Another way to cut jail populations is by the increased use of probation where warranted; and by this we mean real pro- bation, with competent personnel carrying reasonable case loads, so that frequent and adequate personal supervision of the probationer may be maintained. Experience proves that this type of probation saves much financial outlay, while effect- ing the community's most important aim, that of human sal- vage with its consequent reduction of crime.
A third means of safely leaving individuals to their own support, instead of the public's, lies in permitting them to pay their fines in installments — 50 cents at a time if necessary.
A fourth means lies in speeding up trials. That much can be accomplished thereby is proved by the fact that in some places citizens' committees, devoted to keeping an eye on the district attorney's office and asking embarrassing questions about undue delays, have reduced the time which defendants spend in jail by as much as two thirds, and sometimes more.
Still a fifth help could be had by making some change in the widespread powers to send people to jail. At present there may be two or three hundred persons in a single county with authority to commit to the county jail; and there is no supervision or review of their methods of exercising this power. It is therefore not unusual for the justice of the peace in a community of a few hundred to send a man to jail, where he may remain several months awaiting trial, only to be dis- missed by the county court's remark that he should never have been sent there in the first place.
From studying the groups which go to jail unnecessarily, and from talks with various judges, police and other law officers, it is our conservative estimate that by using the methods here outlined, the jail population in the United States could with safety be reduced at least from 35 to 50 percent! So much for the first of the two sorts of changes necessary in answer to the public's first question.
The second .sort of change is to abolish the county jail itself. Even though new institutions should be built in place of the decayed ones, the system of having a separate jail for each county would remain hopeless. Of varying sizes accord- ing to the local population, approximately 90 percent of them
40
must continue to be far too small to permit real segregation and other essential arrangements for medical equipment, work, exercise, recreation, education, and so on.
Furthermore, the county jail system presents a fine mesh so inevitably woven into local politics that the personnel, with rare exceptions, consists of political appointees who invariably look upon their jail duties as a perquisite incidental to other occupations. This could hardly be otherwise, since in many places the jail population shifts from three to four to twenty or twenty-five around court time, and then back again to five or six, or even no prisoners at all, after the term of court is over. These preponderant small and medium populations do not justify the community in paying for the services of trained prison workers who know their task to be a social problem.
The great improvement which needs urgently to be made is for each state to substitute for its swarm of miscellaneous county jail units a small number — possibly three, or four, or five, as required by geographical and density of population considerations — of state jails for the residue of offenders whom public safety demands be arrested and tried. These in- stitutions would not be county affairs in any sense. They would be erected by and remain entirely under the jurisdiction of the state. Since each would be a sufficiently large unit, they could of course be so planned and administered as to con- tribute as much as possible to the obliteration rather than the development of crime and criminals. Under such conditions the personnel should be strictly professional and under civil service.
These institutions would confine only those held for trial. In no case should they be used for the convicted; but, once convicted, a person should be sent to the type of institution suitable for his particular case. When the handling of crimi- nals can be wrested entirely from its present political entangle- ments there will be no more sentencing by judges, but instead, a board consisting of penologists, criminologists and repre- sentatives of the behavior sciences will decide in what type of institution the prisoner will be incarcerated, and what treatment he shall receive and how long. Pending that time, however, states could establish farms to supply healthy and productive labor for the convicted, sentenced to short terms.
IN ANSWER TO THE PUBLIC'S SECOND QUESTION: WHAT CAN Wg DO
about it? The answer, we think, is for groups in each county to organize for the reduction of their own jail population along the lines described: and at the same time for these groups to cooperate with each other in each state to persuade their legislature to do away with the county jails and establish in their places the state institutions suggested. Neither task will be easy because of the political character of the county jail system. Both those who dispense this patronage and those who receive it resent any attempt at interference. Enthusi- astic lay organizations guided and counseled by professionals, will, we believe, accomplish most in the shortest time.
In a survey of the situation made recently for an interested group, we pointed out that perhaps the best way to start the abolition of the county jail is to establish a sample "demon- stration clinic" in one or two counties of several states, show- ing how the jail populations can be reduced. A number of prominent persons in different • states welcomed heartily the making of this experiment in their localities, and promised cordial collaboration. With the decision of the interested group to devote itself to other problems, the carrying out of the project was dropped. It is suggested here that if money for undertaking such demonstrations cannot be raised by contri- bution, some foundation or other organization might finance them. It is effective to begin in this manner because the elimi- nation of considerable numbers of the county jail populations is comparatively easy, and the successful accomplishment of this part of the program will no doubt weigh heavily in any community's attempts to induce their legislatures to abolish that pestilential morass which is the county jail.
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41
Southerners Write Their Own Prescription
by GEORGE C. STONEY
THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY COUNCIL'S "REPORT ON ECONOMIC Conditions of the South" was merely a diagnosis. It suggested no remedies for the "nation's number one economic problem." So twelve hundred southerners from the thirteen southern states gathered in Birmingham, Ala., just before Thanksgiv- ing, to write their own prescription.
They were a southern crowd, all right; talk was thick as molasses. Although I had lived "up no'th" less than a year, th'ey