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About The Omaha guide. (Omaha, Neb.) 1927-19?? | View Entire Issue (Sept. 3, 1938)
THE OMAHA GUIDE Published Every Saturday at 2418-20 Grant St. Omaha, Nebraska Phone WEbster 1517 Entered as Second Class Matter March 15, 1927, at the Post Office at Omaha, Nebr., under Act of Congress of March 3, 1879. 'TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION $2.00 PER YEAR All News Copy of Chrurches and add Organi zations must be in our o#ice net later than 5:00 p. m. Monday for curren issue. All Adver tising Copy or Paid Articles not later than. Wednesday noon, preceeding date of issue, to insure publication. Race prejudice must go. The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man must prevail. These are the only principles whil will stand the acid test of good._ EDITORIALS THE iNEGRO AND THE NATION’S NUMBER ONE PROBLEM -oOo By A. Phillip Randolph, International President Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. — President Roosevelt has designat ed the South as the nation’s Number One Problem. Considering the extreme sensitiveness of the South, and the fact that the President must rely upon it very largely to control the next na tional Democratic Convention, and to a great extent to get NEW DEAL leg islation through the Congress, this was a courageous statement. Time out of mind, the South under the aegis of the bankrupt doctrine of states’ rights, has insisted that it be left alone in the handling of its various problems. The major reason for this position is that the South realizes that its big problem is the problem of race, and it is deter mined to brook no interference on this question. It ealizes that its treatment of the Negro people, following eman cipation from slavery in 1863 will not bear the white light of public opinion. Disfranchisement of the Negro people in flagrant violation of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and its enslavement of great masses of Ne gro workers on turpentine and lumber plantations in utter mullification of the 13th Amendment together with all forms of jim-crowism in the nature of segregation, vagrancy laws, vicious relis of the BLACK CODE, to say nothing of the national disgrace of the lynch terror and the mob law, and the notorious flounting of all civil rights and decency by the night riders and the KLU KLUX KLAN, place the South in a position of grave moral vulnerabili ty. It is a matter of common know ledge that millions of Negroes are caught within the sinister grip of the share crop and tenant farming, a form of feudalisw where the workers have the status of pre-capitalistic semi serfs. This is a travesty upon justice, a mockery of civilized life and an insult to the Bill of Rights and common sense. But the President did not touch upon these dejHcate and inflammable issues. The reason is clear. He is a po litician, a diplomat and a statesman. As a politician, he looks carefully to the maintenance of political fences so that the Democratic majority in Congress mav remain safe in order to insure the passage of his important weasures. Undqr our present party system, this strategy from the point of view of the leader of a great party, which must depend upon the “solid South” to no little extent is not without merit. As a diplomat, he knew that to raise the question of social justice for the Negro people in the south, would result in a volcanic eruption of racial hatred and bitterness of the most viri lent nature which would sweep over the land. In the pattern of a statesman, President Roosevelt is looking steadily toward the completion of his progres sive NEW DEAL legislative structure, the success of which can not fail to im prove the living status of Hack Ameri cans. 'Now, the question arises as to the wisdom of foregoing facing a basic human principle of social justice, in the form of the right of the Negro people to vote and ba secure from the ravages of the mid-night riding mob, as well as the persecution of the lynch judge, in order to secure favoable consideration for other constructive economic mea sures that will benefit the people of the south, including the Negro. This ques tion, the wide and far reaching impli cations of which are too intricate and complex to be answered with complete ness and finality in a brief editorial, will bob up ever and anon to plague the NEW DEAL champions . Our own opinion is that the great prestige and power of some President of the United States must be thrown into the balance against the nefarious terrorization oi oiacK Amercans below the Mason and Dixon Line. While it may not be propitious for President Roosevelt to take the bit in his mouth and deijy southern burbon political au tocracy at a time when he is seeking to secure the enactment of laws that are viciously fought by the Chambers of Commerce the National Manufacturer Association and all stripes of fascists, from Maine, to Florida, yet there is no person who has ever occupied the White House who can openly, positive ly and frankly demand that the South put its house in order by abolishing the lily-white! Democratic and Republican •Primaries, so that black Americans, wiho have fought and died and crim soned the battle fields of every war in which this nation has engaged from Bunker Hill to Flanders Field, than the matchless Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He has the moral and spiritual power to drive the Tillmans, Bleases, Varda nians and Bilbos into defeat and inno cuous obscuity. For how can anyone in America talk with any honestly about democracy in the face of the notorious rotten-borough system of the South, where colored Americans are counted in the population as a basis of the election of Southern Congressmen and yet de nied their constitutional right of suf frage. Yet, it may be that the President may some day strike out in righteous indignation against this horrible breach of political decency and demo cratic tradition. We probably must await his own decision with respect to the time of action. But we are certain as the night follows the day- that the South will never cease to be the na tion’s Number One Problem so long as one third of the population are treated as economic and political peons. The existence of such a condition of the Negro people Who have made an imperishible contribution in labor, ta lent, genius, ability, courage and blood to our great country, is cmt of harmony with the high idealism and practical policies of social, economic and poliical reform of vision, and the spirit of hu manitarian prophecy of our great Pre sident Franklin Roosevelt, who history will set down at the top of Washington Jefferson and Lincoln, great Presi dents though they were as a statesman of the people. And it is clear that he is not with out dis due need of courage. One needs must have courage and much courage, to attempt a revision in the number of judges of the well nigh ancient insti tution of the United States Supreme Court. He lost, but he certainly was not defeated in the attainment of the broad objective of his maneuver. Moreover, he denounced southern feudalists ro yalistists right in the heart of the souh. But while he is certainly friendly to the cause of Negro freedom and jus tice and has probably done more to ad vance this freedom and justice for the race than any other American Presi dent, »he has, nevertheless, remained silent on the question of the passage of Wagner Van Nuyis Gavagan Anti Lynching Bill and the abolition of dis franchisement of Negro citizens in the south. Of course, in the main, this is the Negros own problem. It is he who must bring sufficient pressure to bear out upon the Pesidelnt and the Congress to wipe out the evil of lynching and the menace of the grand father clause which curtails the right of the Negroes to vote. The President nor Congress will act without, pessure, and fifteen million Negroes, when organized, can exert a tremendous amount of pressure to secure proper economic political and civil consideration. But it is proper to add, in this con nection, that the attack upon the South at the nation’s Number One Problem by President Roosevelt with a view to effecing its reconstruction in terms of production and distribution, as well as general social improvement, is certain to benefit the Negro people of the South. However, it will be important and necessary for the Negroes them selves to see to it that they participate in the solution of this Number One Problem, as well as in the economic re construction of the South. Legislation may be passed w(hich is ever so benefi cient, but its purposes so far as the well being of the Negro people is con cerned, may be mullified by adminis tration. It is not less important to the Negro people to watch the administra tion. It is not less important to the Ne gro people to watch the administration of a law, than its enactment. No ones denies that the 14th Amendment was intended to guarantee the right to vote and other civil privileges to the Negro people^ But the effect of the Amend men is killed by interpretation and ad ministration. ^ * i. . Fundamentally, the south is back ward. Both black and white workers are in povery, because both are unor ganized. The South has more than a fourth of the total population of the nation but raises only one fifth of the country’s dairy products ,not enough for itself. The report of the National Emergency Council on the South, ap pointed by President Roosevelt, states definitely that the southern people need food, although the south has a variety of fertile soils, a mild climate, fine sejaports, navigable rivers, giood railroads, coal and iron and other mi nerals, two thirds of the nation’s oil, forljy per cent of its forests ideal fish ing and hunting. Yet the reports states that fat-back corn bread and molasses is the all too common diet of the great masses of the people, not black people alone, but white pe\ople, also. What is the trouble? The answer is the South has never been able to rise because it has been too busy keeping the Negro people down, and as the sage of Tuskegee, Booker Washington, said “You can not keep a man down in the ditch without staying down there with him.” Thus, not only are Negroes, the large majority of whom in the south are in dire poverty, but so are the whites. One Englishman traveling through the South made the cryptic remark that hs eyes behold, especially in Georgia, “peaches poverty and pines.” And Georgia typical of the oth er Southern states. What is the remedy? The remedy lies not only in the President’s recom mendation of certain economic mea sures of business, industrial and agri cultural reform, but fundamentally of organization into trade unions, tenant farmers’s organizatons, share coppers’ unions and cooperatives among con sumers and producers, of the black and white workers in the cities and on the farms. Not into separate jim-crow unions, but into the same unions. It is base to he reconstruction of the South that the fifteen million black people be made free citizens wth a right to vote in every election and to be voted for, even if federal troops must be station ed there to see that this simple act of justice be done. Have not federal troops been used for less noble pur poses? -oOo HOW BIG IS TOO BIG? Legislative, attemtps to limit the size of businesses, especially those en gaged in the merchandising field bring to the fore a question similar to “How far is up?" The hews question is, How big is too big? Is the grocery store to be kept by law'1, to the crossroads em porium size? Is its number of employes or its annual turnover, to be rigidly re stricted? It not, just what basis of computing size is to be used? Some of the lawmakers would des troy the chain stores, on the grounds that they are too widespread, too large and efficient, and do too much business. If that is true, what is to be done about department stores—some of which, though they operate but a single outlet do as much business as a chain with hundreds of stores and draw trade from the entire community and its en virons? Such questions as these inevitably appear when you attempt to make mere size the arbiter of commercial virtue. Any law defining the right and wrong sizes of industry is bound to be unsound law, in that it must be based upon the prejudices and opinions of in dividuals. A far soundex solution to the question of size is found in natural economic law. When a business be comes too big and unwieldy it likewise becomes wasteful and ineficient—and a smaller recompetitor promply steps in and takes its trade. There are difficul ties as well as advantages in size—as the fact that thousands of progres sive independqnt merchants have only met chain competition but have given it a merry race, proves. Halt industrial gowth by law and you halt progess. You establish a false standard that is destricutive of oppor tunity. To all inents and purposes’ you defraud the consumer.You shackle am bition and ability. And in the long run, evqryone loses. -0O0 NO GUESS WORK , The safety of life insurance, as an institution, has been provn in a hun dred economic storms. And that safety is guaranteed by two irrevocable prin ciples—the multiplication table and the law of mortality. A life insurance company knows almost to a nickel bow much it will have to pay out during any given fu ture period. Its charges and costs are edjusted accordingly And the money is there and ready when a contract fall due. Life insurance has survived the greatest war and the greatest depres sion in modern history with its co^'s flying.That is why more and mo"« tizens arc turning to it as a haven for savings.
