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File: orig., 1942_owi_socialism
How To Explain New Deal Sacrifice
Intro: By Michael Johnathan McDonald
The New Deal profoundly demonstrated a sacrificial social
foundation in the United States of America and never mirrored the Great Society
or the general deindustrialization period that begun in the U.S. during the
1970s-1980s. Unions simply blamed the corporation’s greed and simply blamed the
Republican Party later in the 1980s as the reestablishment of racism and
European entitlement. A systematic deunionization by the Reganites became the
vocal battleground for New Deal victimization. As Capitalistic and Racist
greed, predicated upon a few whites controlling government, a political shift of
new white supremacy of the south, the New Left argues that social programs
diminished – resulting in colonies within the larger U.S. colony, mirroring U.S.
interventionism—predicated upon white dominance subjugating the decolonized
people back into global colonies within their New Imperialist colonies of set
dictators. The 1980s Tax Revolt became profoundly overt racism, and all hope for
American equal-economic multiculturalism appeared abolished. This is part of the
New Left’s official story-line of American history. Since the United States has
been predicated upon overt, covert, and legalistic-masked racism, it deserves to
be protested against until it fails, disappears and a new race or ethnicity that
is always more ethical and more moral take control of the government and bring
the United States of America to a perfect human rights’ record, economic
prosperity and foreign admiration. White New Left scholars argue this projection
could be achievable if the capitalists were diminished in the U.S. and a return
to the New Deal became reality.
Republicanism has always been based upon materialism as a mode of
progression in historicy. However, during the human rights movement of the “New
Left” in the 1960s, it mounted to an anti-U.S. ideology overseas. Foreign
markets have been the aim of U.S. secret overt and covert actions since its
founding. The United Nations has a list of U.S. interventions on their website
in chronological order. After 1947, and the National Security Act, the U.S.
government began systematically archiving their foreign exploits, be it revision
or fact. After Watergate, The Church Committee studied the Pentagon Papers,
revealing the U.S. secret government’s doings (about 7,000 pages) shocking many
Americans. While the New Left was advocating the secret government dealings
during the 1960s, the events of the 1970s brought the U.S. to world-wide
exposure to its ideology of imperialistic materialism – which from some foreign
perspectives was profoundly racist. It is here where the New Deal hope ended,
and not as the New Left scholars in high-academia intend was racist Republicans.
The U.S. Government simply no-longer could carry on New Imperialism without
social backlash both here and abroad.
Global Anti-American increased after the 1970s. As example,
overt “major” interventions were not conducted by the United States of American
government for a long period of time: Vietnam 1965-‘75 to Iraq 2003. It is here
we look to the period of U.S. economic decline and argue that the New Deal was
proscripted on New Imperialism of market access of domestic, but more
importantly, and foreign oversea markets. New Left scholars will never reveal
these implications of the U.S. historical process of the rise of the middle
class because their victimization would flounder and fall apart. It is possible
they do not understand.
In order for the New Left to rationalize the end of the New Deal,
the New Left’s real intentions to stop U.S. New Imperialism will blame U.S.
capitalists -- and the return to Americanization beginning in the later 1970s to
its current Administration. Yet, things in the U.S. ideological trajectory have
changed, in large part due to the New Left actually winning their case in point.
It was difficult, almost impossible, to argue the U.S. as a democracy while it
exploited markets and intervened in former colonized countries to establish new
governments before the Soviets beat them to it. U.S. intervention was predicated
upon establishing pro-U.S. dictators or governments of any sort that would open
up market access to New Deal unions within the United States of America. Unions
simply did not have the education to understand the proceedings. During the
1960s education revolution, more minorities and underprivileged became a part of
the University system opening new channels of critiques from otherwise ‘secret’
and privileged institutions. Once minorities at Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, U.C.
Berkeley, U.C.L.A., and Yale and Princeton began to find out in secret clubs and
classrooms that the U.S. would kill foreigners, argued as communists, so they
could set up market access – called democracies—these minorities led their own
revolution. This was the New Left’s moment in U.S. history to change the
government’s ideological commitment to foreign intervention.
The profound contradiction was that immorality brought economic
prosperity. The United States government went out and dominated the foreigners
while it set up markets for the American unions. This is what the secret
classrooms of America taught its elites who would rule America prior to the
1960s. When minorities realized this, they reacted in many different ways.
Revolution was mainly achieved from lower social forces grouping together to
overthrow the existing higher system. The streets that became emblazed during
the 1960s reflected the New Left’s origins and movement, as the bottom-up
phenomena reached into middle-class college students who became caught up in a
new revelation: a revelation was a new experience for the commoner, the
underprivileged the former peasant families now with access to higher education,
and new technological communication. Democracy was never based upon inclusionism
of all the races or ethnicities. With minority access to public and higher
education the revelation of secrets to world government structures created the
reaction for these newly initiated to overthrow the system that sought to
sustain a middle class. So who were these middle classes?
To understand the New Deal and its affects on the American way of
life, one must study the “inclusion” aspect on minorities in the 1950s and
1960s. Were blacks really included into the New Deal? The New Left scholars like
to revise history and tell one so; yet study after study illustrates that
American Apartheid has always existed since the New Deal sought to include
minorities other than European whites.
Simply economics was a result of the domestic New Left’s ideology
to end U.S. self-determination. Unions, therefore, could not keep the standard
of living as middle-class. In the 1970s, wages for the middle class, as general
population spread, were the highest in U.S. records as well as the world. When
Unions wanted to reevaluate, devaluate and bargain new wages structures, the New
Left blamed the Republicans for the economic downturn, when in fact it was the
New Left advocating human rights for the world, in which capitalism of the host
country (U.S.A.) had always been predicated on economic foreign dominance. The
victimization, not unlike the New Left’s victimization of advocating African
American agency, began to blame anti-government ideology as an excuse for ending
the high-wages of the middle class. However, a closer look reveals that the
middle class was downgraded based upon the U.S. government’s role of a more
humane and ethical foreign policy. The New Deal was not higher wages, more taxes
from those higher wages that created the middle class. It was a sacrifice of
higher standards of living that created the most distributed wealth
functionaries to reflect the greater good. In the 1980s, the greater good had no
mass-markets as the New Deal coalitions had during the 1950s-1960s. Simply after
Vietnam, the foreigners and their economic leadership vowed to restrict, to the
best of their ability (although it was difficult) to end American imperialism.
Since the New Left spear headed the Anti-U.S. imperialism, they ended their own
American dreams of a middle class lifestyle. Only the hippies, who dropped out
of society and began to live off the land and preach collectivism and
communalism, can be said not to be frauds in state – ideology. The College kinds
of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) began to understand later in
their lives that economics and high-lifestyles were correlative to economic
imperialism of a dominate U.S. presence overseas. By blaming the rich, and
focusing only on the Republicans for an anti-government ideology during the
1980s, the New Left failed to understand that there would never be the
opportunities with a human rights agenda again in the U.S.A.
The U.S. government can, if it wanted too, tax the few wealthy
people in America. However, economically speaking, how would that satisfy the
U.S. that is deindustrialized and based upon a service-side-supply economy?
Slavery had been abolished, and repressing minorities in the workplace was no
longer acceptable. The U.S. had made inroads into an ethical decision for the
U.S. as a state ideology. Working conditions and sacrifice of the past were no
longer tolerated by the New Left. What the citizens that went through the New
Deal had to contend with would never be tolerated in today’s U.S. economy. The
working conditions were poor, and work was considered backbreaking, dangerous,
and prone to life-sustaining injuries. Citizens did not have the purchase power
they had in the 1950s-1970s. The New Deal was built upon an ethic of sacrifice
of the whole of the citizenry of the United States of America.
The only solution was to decrease the standard of living for most
of the masses. The tax shift of Ronald Reagan was an attempt to reinvigorate
domestic industrialization. However, the New Left advocated for environmental
laws in the domestic sphere, and the U.S. could no longer exploit its own
resources. Both Democrats and Republicans and other political and non political
party citizens have become extraordinary wealthy as a result of anti-government
ideology. However, it is not the money that they possess that could solve the
solution, but market access to foreign markets that would solve and reverse the
downturn in middle-class lifestyles.
In fact both John Edwards, John Kerry, and also including George
Soros, and also adding into the list many Republicans and independents, could
empty their bank accounts how would that solve the financial dilemma of
foreigners refusing to any longer do business with eh U.S.A? The New Left
advocates that white repression of minorities is directly connected to
economics, and helps to explain why minorities had sought out the U.S. court
system and political systems for redress to their economic plight. This was
their way of redistributing the coveted wealth. What is not understood about the
original New Deal was the massive federal intervention that was in reality a
mass federal restriction of anyone that made any type of money that would put
them into the middle class bracket.
Simply the New Deal was directly connected to U.S. interventions,
the Marshall Plan, and domestic assistance. The success of the New Deal
coalition could not come about with isolationism. All of these systems worked in
tandem, and one could not run the economic engines that created the middle class
by deleting one of these few criteria. Blaming the Republicans is part of the
New Left’s victimology, their blaming the ‘other’ for their own advocating
actions. The Unions and the U.S. middle class were never ethical or moral. Most
unionists were never educated in higher statecraft to understand foreign market
exploitation. Most of them understood how to do their job well, get a paycheck,
and go to union rallies, how to protest, and live a lifestyle unprecedented in
world history.
Americans simply lived a lifestyle like kings and queens and most
voted democrat from 1950s-1970s who were connected to the New Deal coalition.
During the 1970s, economic analysis demonstrates this was the height of wages in
world history for the masses. Communism while it empirically had demonstrated
itself to be more moral, ethical and just, simply could not keep up with the
immoral exploitation of U.S. materialistic ideology. Unionists coveted
materialism the same as capitalists. That is to say the New Dealers coveted the
image as well as the prosperity of unionism they lived and perceived all around
them. During the 1940s and World War II, it was argued that isolationism of the
former Republican ideology did not contribute to American materialism. That was
the argument by the Democrats who viewed global intervention as a rise in global
superpowerdom for the United States of America. The Democrats, rightly so,
blamed the Republicans for not doing what it takes for prosperity and security
of the American Way. That shift resulted in the 1960s, a type of reverse. The
Republican would carry the load of spreading materialism and the Democrats fell
into victimization from their former ideology of ‘ doing what it takes in
foreign interventions.’ Democrats were willing to pay the price from World War
II till the 1960s, but that sacrifice—that paying the price was switched to the
Republican corner of the ideological argument by the mid-1960s and now the
Republicans had taken on a certain victimization by the late 1970s.
Moderate Republicans ended with Reagan, although some scholars
argued that these themes and prospects began with Barry Goldwater, but that is
circumspect to historicism. By the 1970s, the U.S. oil production peeked, and
the U.S. was consuming twenty-billions of barrels a year and only produced
eight-billion barrels. Therefore, industry production costs went up. That means
shipping, interstate transportation, and product production of oil substructs
dramatically increased. The Unionists wanted their wages to stay the same, and
in many cases protested for higher wages. Coupled with the oil crisis was
deindustrialization which the unionists blamed on a plot of corporations to
bring in replacement workers who brought down the minimum wages. However, as
production rose, so the effects of the New Left’s Anti-U.S. ideology have its
international consequences. The ideology of U.S. materialism, the New Left
argued, was about bombing and killing minorities in foreign lands to set up
their markets which then led to foreigners hating the U.S. and not doing
business with them. The New Right argued that if the U.S. did not intervene in
new government systems that Marxist predilections to the Soviet model would
result – cutting off market access anyway. With the New Left students advocating
a more just America, focusing on global human rights, global environment and
global deAmericanization, the New Right reacted for one last grasp to try to
keep the American Way alive by paying the price with continual covert
interventions as rationalization. This reaction continues till today. However,
the New Left would win, and as result the middle class would fall by its
proselytizing against the secret U.S. ideology of materialism. That brings us
back to the New Left’s scholars who argue that Republicans (who are actually the
ones paying the price now) are the cause for the world hating the U.S. so
therefore, not opening its markets to the U.S. The New Left is simply engaging
in victimization and cannot reconcile with its profound contradiction to
material wealth.
Simply taxing the few wealthy will not bring back the middle
class. The massive tax base that supported the New Deal programs was a result of
massive sacrifices of all American living below the means of a middle-class
lifestyle. Only a few leftist scholars actually advocate true socialism, as in
the communist systems that disallowed private property and controlled most of
the economic sectors. Most New Left scholars and professors advocate a
progressive tax base instead of a regressive tax base. However, they do not
understand the New Deal. The New Deal programs were closer to communist
controlled efforts by a massive central government of the economic spheres of
all citizens. This is what you will be reading below. The citizens of the U.S.
were heroes in that they sacrificed their lifestyles to form the foundations
that would become the middle class hedonism. By the 1980s most citizens were
living better than anyone during the New Deal had ever dreamed of or could
imagine. When the Unionists blamed the Republicans for the systematic de
unionization, they as mainly democrats were also advocating a more moral,
justice and human rights representation for the United States of America. It was
a profound contradiction that resulted in victimization and irrationality in
actions to fend-off the inevitable. (mjm)
New
Deal Prime Sources
Note of explanation: Office of War Information 1942
Much of
historiography notates examples of war economics as solutions to contemporary
economic crisis. What is missing in historiography is the demanded or guided
sacrifice of the people, be it promoted ideologically by a central force such as
government or demanded by the central force as necessary for self-preservation.
During WW II, President F.D. Roosevelt demanded self-sacrifice and a commitment
to collective economic rebuilding, ideologically argued through the framework of
“the war effort.” Under the auspices of the sacrifice, the United States of
American’s treasury expanded a result on limitations of profit of the citizenry
orchestrated by the government’s need for monetary distribution. – Michael
Johnathan McDonald, April 12, 2008.
This is for the web.
This is on economic Stabilization for the war effort.
For Release Week of December
15, 1942.
Office of War Information 1942
This is the first of a series of four articles on Economic Stabilization. The
series was prepared by the Office of War Information to explain, in simplest
terms, the government program for economic stability.[1]
The United States government is working to bring about economic stabilization
through a seven-part plan.
When we talk about economics, a lot of people stop listening. They think
economics is something that belongs to the colleges and the professors. That’s
wrong. It’s more wrong than ever, now that the country is at war. Economics
belongs to everybody. It belongs to every man that has a dime, every man that
has a want, every man that has a loaf of bread. A boy sells a toy for a nickel.
That’s economics. The boy spends the nickel for six pieces of candy. Economics.
We order a billion dollars worth of bombers. More economics.
Everybody 1owa what stabilization means. And economic stabilization is
just this: The boy gets six pieces of candy for his nickel today, tomorrow, next
month. We got as many bombers for our billion in January as we did last
March.
Well, suppose we haven’t got economic stabilization. What then?
Most likely: inflation.
Why?
There are 134 million people in the United States. All have appetites. Appetites
for food, of course. And appetites for clothes, homes, radios, for coats, kiddie
banks, silk stockings, and all those things that make life so conformable and so
American. But a fighting country can’t spare time, material or machines to make
most of those things. Half of our manufacturing today is making things for war.
In addition, we must help feed, clothe and equip our allies in Africa, Asia,
Australia and other places -- no matter who they are and where they are, The
First half of our why, then, is less material than we want.
Meanwhile, more Americans are working, at better wages, than ever before.
They have the power- -dollars -- to buy more than ever before. So the second
half of our why is more buying power.
Less goods, plus more buying power, produce inflation.[2]
People with more money than they have had before will bid up prices of scarce
articles.
That tendency produces
inflation. In gold-rush days hungry Alaskans with large bags of gold bid up the
price of ham and eggs to $50 a plate.
This up-bidding is only the beginning of inflation. As prices rise, workers
demand more pay. Manufacturers of goods bid up wages to get the men they need.
This increases as more men go into the armed forces. And to pay these wages,
manufacturers raise prices. Farmers, losing workers to the services and to the
manufacturers raise wages. They raise wages if they are sure they can get higher
prices. If they aren’t sure, they close their farms and go to work in factories.
That makes farm produce scarcer. The scarcer farm produce is, the higher prices
go.
History has a lesson here: in every period of inflation, wages have never
kept up with prices. And, of course, pension payments, insurance returns
and interest revenue remain where they were.
Inflation is a dizzy ride. No time to take it when there is a life-and-death war
on.
The government, therefore, wants economic stabilization. How it hopes to bring
that about is no secret. There are seven controls -- seven brakes on the
inflation roller-coaster. President Roosevelt explained them to Congress last
April 28. The seven main controls are:
1. Heavy taxation to pay war costs and reduce spending by every person.
2. Price ceilings for foods, goods and. rents.
3. Stabilization of wages and salaries.
4. Stabilization of agricultural prices.
5. Increased savings through buying of war bonds.
6. Rationing of scarce goods to insure fair distribution.
7. Discouragements of the use of credit or installment buying and the
encouragement of the payment of debt.
A program of heavy taxation has been approved by the Congress. The public is
buying war bonds. Ceilings have been put on prices of most articles, limitations
have been put on credit and installment buying and rationing is well under way.
By the President’s order of October 5, stabilization of wages and
salaries was begun. Wages and salaries were set at September 15 levels, with
provisions for adjustments in certain cases, and a ceiling of $25,000 put on
salaries.
Passing laws and making regulations may be enough in a dictatorship. But this is
a democracy [actually this is some type of representative republic, ruled by the
white race]. Those brakes will hold only if the people put weight and pressure
behind them. Subsequent articles will explain why.[3]
---------3m--------
Tomorrow: How wage stabilization works
-----------------
OFFICE OF WAR
INFORMATION
For Release Week of December 20
This is the second of four articles prepared by the Office of War Information to
explain in simple terms the government program for economic stabilization.
Of the seven points in the President’s program for economic stabilization, the
average person is most interested in the stabilization of wages and salaries.
It means that his wage or salary shall remain where it was on September 15 wit [
sic] certain exceptions. It means that no person shall receive a salary of more
than $25,000 a year after he or she pays Federal income taxes and obtains
certain allowances.
The theory behind it is simple. If prices stay where they are, and profits are
limited by heavier taxes, there is little need for higher wages.
The President’s order set those rules. Carrying them out is something else
again. Here is how it is being done.
The National War Labor Board is given the right to control all wages and all
salaries except those salaries paid to supervisory or professional employees not
represented by unions. All other salaried employees are under the jurisdiction
of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue.
The board cannot approve increases except where necessary to correct
maladjustments or inequalities, to eliminate substandards of living, to correct
gross inequities, or to aid in the effective prosecution of the war.
There are some exceptions.
A man who works in a small shop or business employing eight persons or less, for
example. His pay can be raised. Such raises won’t cause inflation.
Farm laborers, too, are not required to get approval.
But, for the most part, the board has the authority to say “yes” or “no”. In
most cases, it will say “no”.[4]
A man or woman can still get
ahead. A worker may be promoted to a better job, and, of course, from then
on receives the higher pay which goes with his job. That does not increase
the company’s expenses. They still pay the same wages as before for the better
job. There is just a new man in the job.
A man or woman can still earn a merit raise.
An employs can get a pay raise based on length of service.
If the company has a plan for granting bonuses for greater production, he has a
right to earn more money that way.
Apprentices or trainees will continue to get their usual raises.
If these raises are ones which the employer has been in the practice of
granting, he can go on making them without Board approval. They do not increase
his expenses or put more money in circulation.
It is the general wage increase that is curbed. The raise that creates greater
expenses and leads to higher prices and inflation.
There is a sound reason behind this whole wage and salary stabilization order.
Without it there would be no stopping inflation. The reason: there is a growing
shortage of manpower. Without control, here’s what would happen:
Industry, working at top speed trying to produce enough on time, wants more
workers. But there are few available. Most are already employed. There s one way
to get them, though. Pay more than the other employer does.
So wages are boosted. But the employer who loses the men needs them, too. So he
in turn boosts pay rates to get men. Workers come to him from other industries.
In self defense, the other industries raise wages.
At first, the workers might
think these higher wages were clear gain. But soon reactions would set in.
The payment of higher -sages naturally increases the east, of producing
something. Soon those production costs, if wage increases continued, would be
pressing the price at which the article sells. If the ceiling price were
enforced, the manufacturer would soon be producing at a loss and would face
bankruptcy.
The only way out for him
would be to sell at a higher price. But if he succeeds in getting his ceiling
price lifted, the cost to the merchant is increased and soon he, too, would face
the same situation. So he, too, would either be forced to go out of business or
raise prices. And this brings the price increase right back to the worker.
This would. happen to article after article until presently the lid would blow
off, and away would go prices--soaring higher and higher with wages unable to
keep up.
The worker would pay.
And in the war plants, the situation would be no bettor. The shifts of workers
from one plant to another in their pursuit of higher wages would disrupt
production and might cause us to lose the war.
To guard against this, wage stabilization had to be put into effect all the
people [collectivization]. It goes hand in hand with price ceilings, rationing
and is insure that the cost of living stays where it is.
The job of stabilizing wages--of determining what is fair
and just [socialism],isn’t--is a tough one [ the conflict between capitalism and
socialism/communism].
To do it [force
severe-socialism/almost economic communism], the War Labor Board is setting up
offices throughout the country.
If an employer wants to raise wages, he goes to the nearest of the 100 offices
of the Wage and Hour and Public Contracts Division of the Department of Labor.
This office may determine whether the salary or wage adjustment may be made
without approval. If board approval is needed, they refer the application to the
regional office of the board. The regional office then makes a ruling. The
employer may accept this ruling or appeal it to a regional panel composed of
representatives of labor, management and the public. They can even appeal that
decision to the board.
It is a democratic way of deciding. It is aimed at the protection of everyone.
That is what wage
stabilization means [Here severe-socialism is framed as ‘ a democratic way’].
Tomorrow - why control dates were chosen.[5]
OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION
For Release Week of December 20.
This is the third of four articles prepared by the Office of War Information to
explain in simple terms the government program for economic stabilization.
Everyone understands why the cost of living has to be controlled.
And it is clear that wages had to be stabilized so that costs of manufacturing
and farming--and therefore, prices--could be kept where they are.
But why was September 25 selected as the date for stabilizing wages? Why
not August 15? Or October 15?
The selection of September 15
was a logical choice.
Let’s see why.
It was in January, 1941 that wages and prices both started to climb. The
cost of living went up 15 per cent between then and April 27 when President
Roosevelt delivered his message against inflation and set the basis for
stabilization.
The Emergency Price Control program was introduced in May and stopped increases
in most of the basic costs of living.
Some things, however, were still unharnessed. Such foods as eggs, cheese,
butter, chickens, potatoes and flour--fan products--continued to rise in price,
And. rents, outside of certain defense areas, kept on climbing.
Until the prices of those things were brought under control, it would have been
unfair to stabilize wages [ a rational for capitalism]. And until wages were
held steady, it was not possible to control production costs. That is why the
early price ceilings were under constant pressure. It was even necessary to
raise some.
Finally, on October 2, the Congress gave the President power to stabilize the
previously uncontrolled living costs.
The President ordered these prices stabilized immediately at what they were on
September 15, whenever it was practical. Now, at last, ninety per cent of the
food used by the average household was sold at controlled prices. All rents were
stabilized. Even the basic costs production were under control- -all except
wages.
There remained one
more step that had to be made before we could fool sure that we had inflation
stopped, That step was stabilization of wages.
Most wages had been raised 15 per cent between January 15. 1941, and September
15, 1942. Up until September 15, 1942, wages had succeeded in keeping up with
prices.
Therefore, wages and
salaries were stabilized at the September 15 date, a date considered fair to
every one.
Suppose a man or woman work in a plant that has net increased its wages 15 per
cent since January 1941. Does stabilization mean that these wages will be frozen
where they are for the duration? Not at all. The National War Labor Beard has
adopted a policy under which it will consider increases in such situations. But
only by groups, bargaining units, companies or industries.
Under the beard’s policy, which was passed without dissenting votes by all
of its twelve members representing labor, industry and the public, increases
will be approved only in exceptional cases. Main exceptions will be wages or
salaries which are so out of line with pay for comparable jobs in a plant, an
industry or an area that they represent manifest injustices [Socialism/Communist
framing].
Any wage increases granted now might damage price ceilings. Therefore, if that
is likely, an employer must file notice with the Office of Price Administration
at the time that he applies for permission to raise wages.
Such a case would
require authority from the Director ef Economic Stabilization --James P. Byrnes,
who resigned from the United States Supreme Court to -bake this important
wartime job.
The placing of a $25,000 ceiling on net salaries, likewise, is important. It
will net help much in blocking inflation. But it does remove the opportunity for
an individual to profit from war by getting a huge salary and bonus. This
$25,000 ceiling is placed on salaries after Federal income taxes on earning as
well as specific allowances for meeting such debts as insurance payments have
been deducted.
Except in unusual cases, the $25,000 salary ceiling will stand. So will the
present wages of moot workers.
The salary and wage stabilization order assures everyone of fair treatment. The
boss cannot raise his own salary. Nor can the worker make more money except by
increasing his production or working up to a bettor job.
This gives equality of sacrifice a real moaning. It puts everyone in the war,
and every one must work, fight and sacrifice until victory is won.
Tomorrow- What economic stabilization means.[6]
OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION
For Release Week of December 20.
This is the last of four articles prepared by the Office of War Information to
explain in simple term the government program for economic stabilization.
Economic stabilization--the process of holding wages and prices steady--has been
put into action through President Roosevelt’s seven point program. Prices and
pay scales have been stabilized at the September 15 levels. Rationing is put
into effect when we run short of something. The tax levy is the highest in our
history [emphasis]. Installment buying has been cut down and private debts are
being paid off.
The law has been made and the machinery is at work.
The program to halt inflation is a fair one, and can be made to work, if---There
is a big IF.
--if every parson will do his or her part.
Neither laws nor Government agencies can make this program work successfully.
Only the understanding and full cooperation of all the people can insure
success.
Leaks are possible in this, as in any broad program. These leaks could be
widened until there is no chance for economic stabilization to work.
One of these leaks is likely to occur next year. As money becomes more plentiful
and stocks of goods dwindle, people are likely to start bidding against each
other.
Lets look at what is coming.
Billions of dollars worth of equipment will be produced this year for our armed
forces and our allies. It will go to the people in the form of wages, salaries,
payments for materials, services, etc.
The total amount that will be paid for goods and services, both in war and.
civilian production will total 125 billion.
People will have that money to pay taxes, to save and to spend.
But we will not produce 125 billion dollars worth of lamps, automobiles, rugs,
refrigerators, clothes, clocks and all the other things we would normally be
buying.
Many manufacturers who would
normally be producing them are making war equipment instead.
In short, only a small part of that 125 billion dollars can be spent for normal
things.
Federal and state taxes will take about 17 billion, cutting the total to 108
billion;
War bonds and other savings will probably cut it down 25 billion more. BUT,
that still leaves 83 billion.
Can we spend that money without causing price inflation?
Only 70 billion dollars worth of civilian goods will be produced.
Manufacturing of many non-war items ceased before last summer. Others are beir
[sic] stopped daily. It won’t be long before supplies in storage are gone. Than
there will be nothing to buy.
If people insist on spending, they will have to bid against each other for the
limited supply of things available. It will be a case of many persons wanting to
buy a few things. This will cause great pressure on ceiling prices. If it is
continued, the ceilings may bulge. If the prices do not go up, a ”black market”
will probably develop.
A “black market” is an illegal market in which unscrupulous persons sell the
limited supply of things people want at greatly increased, prices. Take
gasoline, for example. Those persons, disregarding the laws and caring little
for the effect of their actions might get an illegal supply of gasoline and then
sell it i1legally at high prices.
Such markets are obviously unfair [critique against capitalism]. A few profit
greatly at the expense of everyone else [socialism/communism rhetoric]. Laws and
programs are ignored and circumvented. Trouble and unrest spread [an empirical
fact observed in capitalism, and one of the main arguments against capitalism by
socialists/ communists]. Soon the whole program of fair treatment for all is out
of order. And war production will suffer as more and more workers cannot got
proper food, clothing and shelter.[7]
YEAR 1942 the year or
preparation
Office of War Information
The Office of War Information is directed, among other things, to facilitate the
development of an informed and intelligent understanding of the status and
progress of the war effort. Accordingly it may, from time to time, supplement
the current news with a review of the genera1 situation.
We are deep in what may be
the decisive year of the war. But 1942 will be the decisive year only if our
enemies do not succeed in inflicting crippling blows on our allies before the
year is out. Even if they fail in that, they will still take a lot of licking.
But if they should paralyze the striking power of Russia, or wear down the
endurance of China, or break the British power in the Middle East, the war will
be decided in some later year not now foreseen, and victory will be far more
costly.
It is not intended here to discuss the military situation except as it relates
to what the American people are doing about it. We always knew that for us, 1942
would be largely a year of preparation, and that our allies would have to do
most of the fighting during most of the year. Before we can do much of the
fighting we must move great numbers of men and vast masses of material over
enormous distances. This job, so far, has been done with entire success; but we
are going to have to keep on doing it, in increasing volume, until the war is
won. Meanwhile, compelled to spread out our naval forces far more widely, and
far more thinly, than could
have been foreseen, we have paid for the perfect protection given to our troop
convoys to Europe and the South Seas with heavy shipping losses off our own
coasts. During the first half of this year sinkings [sic] of merchant shipping
far exceeded new construction. The months of June and July showed a decided
improvement in ship— building, and in July the curve of submarine sinkings [sic]
the world over turned downward. We hope that this trend will continue, but
nobody can be sure; production of small vessels for the anti—submarine campaign
is still lagging, and in June was lees -then half of schedule. Even if
shipbuilding continues to rise and sinkings [sic] to decrease, we shall probably
be well into 1943 before we again have as much merchant shipping as we
had on December 7, 1941.
Meanwhile our allies have carried most of the load, and we have not given them
as much help as we had led them to expect. Partly this is not our fault, except
in such degree as the enemy’s victories may be our fault; the cutting of the
Burma Road made it harder to supply China and German activity on the route to
Murmansk makes it harder to supply Russia. But by and large, we have not been
producing war material to the maximum of available capacity, and have not been
getting that material to the fighting fronts in the time and in the volume that
will be needed to win.
We have done pretty well, but not well enough. Our forces in the Pacific, after
the initial disasters at Pearl Harbor and on the Philippine air fields, worked
heroica1ly at a heavy disadvantage, in numbers as well as in distance. The
wonder is not that we lose so much but that we held on to so much; but we did
lost [sic] plenty. The battle in the Coral Sea, the greater battle at Midway,
were brilliant victories against superior forces; but they were defensive
victories. We held the enemy on the twenty-yard line [American football
reference]and punted out of danger, but his goal posts are still a long way off
[cont….American football reference]. We held the central Pacific and reinforced
Australia; but he still holds the Philippines and the Dutch islands, and the
rubber that we need [‘rubber’ & ‘strategic’ the reason later the U.S. annexed
the Philippines, making it a colony].
At home, too, we have done pretty well but not well enough. Our production,
measured by our standards of a couple of years ago, is amazing; measured against
what we need to win, it is not yet enough. In June we fell slightly below
schedule in total military planes, in total combat planes, and in most of the
individual types; we made more planes than any other country in the world, but
we did not make as many as we said we were going to make. The same is true of
tanks, of most types of artillery, and of naval vessels- -particularly the small
craft needed to fight submarines.
We have made in the past two years a tremendous plant expansion. Now we have
more factories than, at the moment, we can use--not too many, perhaps, compared
to the ultimate need, but too many for the amount of raw materials at present
available. Faulty control of inventories and of flow of materials has
necessitated some temporary shutdowns. The war production drive is taking a new
turn, emphasizing materials until we get enough of them to keep all our
factories busy. Mistakes made [at] this time were perhaps unavoidable and will
not be made again, but their consequences will be with us for some time to come.
And the resolution not to repeat them must be backed up by an intensified effort
of the entire nation.
There is no doubt that the American people mean to win the war; but there is
doubt that all of us realize how hard we are going to have to work to win it
[This is the sacrifice]. The war is still a long way off, thanks to our good
luck and the stubborness [sic] of our allies; but it may not stay a long way off
unless we work at it harder than we are working now. Too many people seem to
feel that we are fighting this war out of a surplus---a surplus of
resources and productive capacity, a surplus of time. That is not true. We have
plenty of some resources; in others we are a have-not nation.[8]
Some of these are being supplied from abroad, at the peril of men’s lives; for
other we must find, or make, substitutes here at home. We must realize that and
put up with it. We should all like to believe for instance, that we are going to
have all the rubber we need, for pleasure driving as well as for military and
essential civilian uses. But there is no present prospect of that; if people
eagerly believe everybody who tells them that there is going to be plenty of
rubber, they are only fooling themselves, and helping the enemy.
We have great productive capacity; but conversion of that plant from peace-time
to war-time uses was a job that had to be learned, and could not be learned
without making mistakes. We cannot devote that plant primarily to war purposes
without greater sacrifices in convenience and comfort than we are making now;
and it must compete with the productive capacity of most of Europe, managed by
men who have organized it only for war purposes. As for time, it will never be
on our side till we use it better than the enemy does.
So far, our allies have done most of the fighting; our casualties have been only
about one in three thousand of the American people. But wars are not won by
production alone; they are won only by fighting battles with what you produce,
and winning some of those battles. It is probable that we shall also lose some
of them, and certain that we are not going to win without heavy losses of men.
We had better prepare ourselves for that, and learn to take it as our ancestors
took it. In a global war we cannot expect always to win everywhere; we may have
to learn to take local and temporary defeats as part of the price of ultimate
victory. Our ancestors could do that; if we can’t, we shall be unable to save
the independence they won f or us.
Our forces are being disposed as and where the military commanders believe hey
get the maximum of results according to the best professional judgment. In he
war, since December 7th, no strategical plan or operation calling for or using
American naval, land, or air forces has been adopted or carried out, except on
the commendation and with the approval of the top officers of the American army
and navy. Popular pressure for action on this front or that of the many possible
fronts can serve no useful purpose. When we cannot be strong and hit hard
everywhere, we must be able to hit hard where it counts most, even at the price
of leaving other areas inactive.
Ho could lose this war. We never have lost a war; but it has been remarked that
this means only that our ancestors never lost a war; and our ancestors were
never up against a war like this. It is a war against men with whom no honorable
peace is possible; in both Europe and Asia they were fighting it by other means
long fore the shooting started, and their record proves that they would continue
it by other means after the shooting stops, if they still had the power. It is a
total war, in which defeat by our enemies means destruction; the French learned
that there could be no honorable submission to Hitler. To win a total war we
must fight it totally, we are not yet fighting it that hard. We are fighting
fanatical men out for world domination, and we can beat them only if we want to
beat them as badly as they want to beat us. Many individual Americans have made
great sacrifices, but as a nation we are not yet more than ankle deep in the war
[e.g. still growing into a modern nation]. We can win it, if we realize that
winning it is the one vitally important thing in the world today; but we are not
winning it yet. We have done pretty well, but pretty well is not enough. Nothing
will be enough till we have won.[9]
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