An Open Letter to the President

To the Editor:

Six or seven years ago I wrote an article, the Permanent Crisis, in which I predicted the continuance of our problem of unemployment. This article was submitted to more than a dozen of our leading magazines - but to no purpose. Another attempt is here made to put this problem and its solution before the public.

Dear Mr. President:

It is nearly three years since I had the pleasure of spending two hours in your home in Hyde Park, discussing with you the problems which confront our people. I ventured a prediction as to what our situation would be at the end of three years; and I now recall it to you, from notes which I made at the time.

Just prior to our talk I had been chosen at the California primaries as the Democratic Party's candidate for governor. For a year I had been telling the people of the state that the problem of unemployment was to be considered as permanent under our present system; that in so-called "good times" we would have ten million idle workers to support, making, with their families, about one fifth of our population; and that in the next depression this number would be doubled.

To you I said: "Mr. President, you now have twenty five million persons to care for, and in one way or another you will have to spend at least three billions a year to do it." You replied that you were told you would have to spend five billions a year to bring back prosperity. I continued: "Let us assume that you spend this for three years. That is fifteen billions you have to borrow from Wall Street. If you give this money to the unemployed, they will spend it for food, clothing, and shelter, and it will come back to Wall Street; and at the end of the three years we shall be exactly where we were before - except that we shall be that much deeper in debt."

I ventured to suggest a different course, as follows:

"Spend the fifteen billions as a capital investment for the unemployed. Buy land and machinery, so that they may go to work again and produce for themselves the food, clothing, and shelter they will need - not merely for the next three years but from now on. This amount is fifteen hundred dollars per unemployed worker, and our self-help co-operatives in California have proved that with this much capital co-operative groups of men and women can make themselves independent."

I went on to mention the demoralizing effects of charity, whether public or private. I argued that in setting up co-operative groups under government supervision you would be making a start at democracy in industry, training the workers in self-government and preparing a refuge for the larger hosts of unemployed who are bound to be created by the further mechanization of industry.

At the close of our discussion you stated that, not later than October 25 of that year, it was your intention to make a radio talk in favor of production for use for the unemployed. The date was seven weeks distant, and I waited for the time to pass. It did so; and on October 23 you made a radio talk on unemployment -- but it was a call for more private charity. What caused you to change your mind I do not know; but I am forced to call it one of the major tragedies of our time.

The fifteen billion has been spent and the unemployed have had food, clothing, and shelter of a sort. Those who make and sell these things have made profits, and now have them in the Wall Street banks, ready to be lent to you again. But the unemployed have nothing; and there are very nearly as many of them as on the day we talked. Estimates differ -- you have not permitted a census to be taken, to give us the exact knowledge. Some say nine millions, some say ten; but for practical purposes the problem remains as it was.

The statement that you have spent five billions a year on the unemployed requires elucidation. Business Week estimates relief expenditures at $10,700,000,000 in three years. Fortune estimates $12,444,000,000 in three years and eight months. This includes PWA, WPA, and the CCC camps. Harry Hopkins' figures on local-relief expenditures show that they run about $600,000,000 a year. In addition, bonus payments, shipping subsidies, silver purchases, various kinds of aid to farmers, loans on homes and to banks, a part of which the government will not get back. For purposes of this discussion it does not matter who got the money; the point is that the government poured it out to individuals who spent it, and this served to revive trade and keep the profit system going. Later on this money will have to be taken out of the pockets of the taxpayers -- unless the system is to admit bankruptcy.

The fact that you have put so-called "direct relief" back on the local authorities makes it difficult to estimate the total amount. Ten million unemployed workers means, with their families, twenty-five million persons; and five billions per year is only two hundred dollars per person. When any part of this problem is put off on states, counties, and cities, the appearance of the federal budget is helped, but the burden upon the taxpayer is not reduced by a single penny.

I do not wish, Mr. President, to lend aid to your reactionary opponents. I am convinced of your good intentions, and I appreciate what has been done in the Tennessee Valley and other power projects, and in the labors of the CCC boys. But, apart from these, your administration has expended a great deal of money and effort with very inadequate results. You have made forward-looking speeches by which the people have been uplifted. But they cannot eat speeches, nor wear them on their backs; the rain and the cold cannot be kept off with fine sentiments, nor can taxes and debts be paid with idealism. We are heading toward another collapse, compared to which that of 1929-33 will seem mild indeed.

There are signs that you now realize this danger. You have bowed before your conservative critics to the extent of trying to balance the budget. Our government starts to economize and retrench - with the certainty that every reduction of expenditure will throw new persons on to local relief! In city after city I read that funds are exhausted and the unemployed are existing from day to day. Back to the Hoover era!

But industry is booming, especially war manufacturers; Wall Street is happy, having what it calls prosperity again. The basic fact can be stated in one sentence: that under your administration wages have increased 10 percent, while the cost of living has increased twenty or thirty percent and profits have increased fifty percent. One need learn no more in order to write the word failure across the story of your efforts and to predict that they must end in disaster.

The Supreme Court has thrown out many of your favorite measures, and now you demand the reforming of the Court. I am one who regards the Supreme Court's outlawing of measures of Congress as pure usurpation, and nothing would please me more than to see that power abolished. But I am only one of fifty million American voters, and a majority of them have been taught a reverence for the Supreme Court. Congress is deadlocked over the issue and several precious months have been wasted.

I said to you in 1934, and I now say again, that in this crisis wisdom suggests that you should find some method of procedure which the Supreme Court cannot outlaw; and, so far as I know, the only such method is that of production for use for the unemployed. You have made many grants to self-help co-operatives, and these have met with no judicial opposition. I cannot imagine any ground upon which a court could forbid you to give unemployed workers the means of producing what they themselves are going to consume. Why not take this easy way?

By this method you will establish a new system enabling one fifth of our population to free themselves from dependence upon the fluctuations of the market. This system will train its workers and leaders; and if, as I foresee, the profit system continues to freeze out more and more of its employees, they will have a place to go, a way to exist without becoming burdens on the backs of the taxpayers. So, and only so, can we make the transition to a planned economy without the violence and loss of liberty which we have seen in other lands.

I do not know how many more years you have in which to make unsuccessful experiments. I do not know how much more of the taxpayers' money you will be permitted to spend upon blind groping in a maze. I do know that there is a limit, set by inexorable economic forces. The breakdown of the profit economy has brought the nations of Europe to the edge of another Armageddon. I do not know when they will slide in, or how soon thereafter they will drag us in; but I know that the present system is crumbling, and is dragging more and more of our people to ruin and despair. They will not, they cannot stand it forever. They will revolt, or attempt to revolt, and you will be called upon to put them down - a task which I know you will not relish.

I ask you, Mr. President, for how many years must a condition of mass unemployment continue before we recognize it as chronic? The condition is now nearly eight years old. If we agree that it costs two hundred dollars per year to keep a destitute American alive, we have spent forty billions of dollars upon our twenty-five million unemployed and their dependents. If we assume that a worker, using American tools and technique, will produce a thousand dollars of value per year -- surely a moderate estimate -- our ten million unemployed workers might have had eighty billions of wealth. A writer gropes in vain for words to give any idea of the mass of human misery and waste represented by such figures. Heavy indeed was the burden assumed by those persons who persuaded you to change your mind in 1934!

In the name of the twenty-five million, I ask you, Mr. President, to change your mind again.

The End