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About The Omaha guide. (Omaha, Neb.) 1927-19?? | View Entire Issue (Sept. 16, 1939)
| EDITORIALS | Q THE OMAHA GUIDE Q Q TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION $2.50 Per Yr.^ X All News Copy of Churches and Organiz-x y ations must be in our office not later thany Q 5:00 p. m. Monday for current issue. AllQ a Advertising Copy or paid articles not later X U than Wednesday noon, preceeding date ofU Q issue, to insure publication. Q U Race prejudice must go. The Fatherhood 1) Q of God and the Brotherhood of Man must pre- Q X vail. These are the only principles which will X y stand the acid test of time. y X James H. Williams, James E. Seay, Linotype X y Operators and Pressmen y Q Paul Barnett, Foreman Q Q Published every Saturday at 2418.^0 Grant U Q Street, Omaha, Nebraska— Phone WE. 1517 Q X Entered a- 2nd Class Matter March 15, 1927X U at the Post Office at Omaha, Nebr., undery Q Act of Congress of Maich 3, 1879. (1 The Age of Statistics When the late Dr. B.'oker T. Washington was at the height of his powrei, he discovered that there was no reliable organization from which rec ords and statistics on the Negro could be obtained, and so he set up at Tus kegee Institute a Department of Re cords and Research, under the abh lea dership of Monroe N. W) trk. This or ganization did some fine pioneer work in publishing through the Negro Year Book and the press statistics of every sort on the Negro. Since Dr. Washington’s death the statistician has come into his own. There are a number of institutions, such as the Gallup Foundation which can, for a fee, supply statistics on al most any conceivable subject. And re seach wTork is part of almost every col lege and university. But in the case of the Negro, this work has been allowed to lag and is now largely confined to statistics on lynching and census fig ures. The Negro press, we believe ,ig bad ly in need of an independent organiza tion to make a study of its gains and losses in advertising and circulation to gather figures on the purchasing pow er of the Negro in various Realities, unemployment and the need for Negro workers in industrial center. There are any number of such organizations which supply such information to the daily press—the Audit Bureau of Cir culation, Standard Rate and Data Ser vice, schools of journalism, etc. but the Negro field in this respect has been neglected. We can think of several Negroes eminently equipped for this w))rk, such as Prof. Davis of Tuskegee, assistant to Dr. Work, and Charles E. Hall of years in the Census Department, but Washington, D. C., who was for many for i-Dme reason they have not consid red the Negro press a profitable field for their talents. A study of the Negro press as a whole, with emphasis on the territory they cover and the number of people they serve would be great value to advertising agencies and nat ional advertisers and could be sold to .. many newspapers who are ’•yng to sell the idea of advertising to L e people. And speaking <of schooh of jour nalism, we have often wondered why such institutions as Howard and Fisk do not have courses in journalism. Be sides work on the Negro newspapers, there are a number of civil service jobs available for trained newspaper work ers in city and state departments, which have to deal with the public. Schools of Journalism in the Negro col leges could do much of the research work so badly needed by the Negro press at this time. ■ r .w -0O0— “LAND OF THE NOBLE FREE” By LAYLE LANE The spectacle of all Europe tense-v. ly awaiting the moves of one man—a4* mediocre intellect wl|> through bom bastic oratory and unparalleled brutal- . ity has been able to <?jntrol the entire , German people—leaves one pretty de pressed. To think that one individual has within his [pwer the issue of war or peace makes one believe we are cen turies behind even the Roman era. In trying to determine what can be done to check Hitler, one is very apt to seize on the futile expedient of war, fj rgetting for the moment that the last war made a Hitler possible. The next war, if civilization survives it at all, is more likely to create more Hitlers than it will ever destroy. The dress re hearsal of 60,000 school children of London, practicing how to put on gas masks and to escape bombings, ought to make even the most hardetned pause to ask whether “Stop the Dict ators—Quarantine the Aggressors” is worth the life of even one of these little ones. What is most needed now is a fun damental examination of the causes of tension in Europe and what specif ic steps can be taken to relieve that tension. No better way of getting the people to understand the issues of war and peace is presented at the moment than consideration of the Ludlow a mendment. In 1938 Louis Ludlow- a member of Congress from Indiana, introduced the following amendment in the House of Representatives— “Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assem bled (two-thirds of each house con curring therein) that the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states: “Except in the event of an invasion of the United States, or its territorial possessions, and attack upon the citi zens residing therein, the authority of Congress to declare war shall not be come effective until confirmed by a majority of all votes cast thereon in a nationw ide crisis, may by concurrment resolution, refer the question of war or peace to the citizens of the states, the question to be voted being—“Shall the United States declare war on—?’ Con gress may otherwise by law provide for the enforcement of this section.” One hundred and eighty-eight rep resentatives openly declared them selves in favor of the amendment. So fearful was the President that the peo ple might approve such a measure that he used every bit of pressure he could to prevent even a discussion of the amendment on the floor. In 1939- even the Ludlow Referendum was changed to include a second exception—namely, attack of any non-American nation against any country in the western hemisphere,” the administration con tinued its opposition. Despite Mr. Roo sevelt's fine prorlouncements defend ing the democratic w?ay, his opposition to the use of the democratic method • •f tm on the question of war make one sus picious of his foreign policy. He is well aware that the American people vote “no” should any referendum be. . presented in the near future. This would not at all suit Mr. Roosevelt who wants a free hand to throw the re splurces of the United States into any conflict on the side of England and France. Three times the Gallup poll has in diated the American people feel that it’s their “inalienable right” to say whether this nation should go to war. The argument that such a referendum would tie the hands of the President and Secretary of State is to admit that these two already have too much pow - "' ..- 1 —■ er over our foreign poliioy. As the Keep America out of War Committee states, “It’s hypocrisy to talk about the superiority of democracy to dictator ship and then put the power in the hands of one man to put this nation of 130,000,000 into war. Today the Presi dent—any president—has the power. He makes certain claims while war is going on. He demands for Americans the right to trade as they please. He exacts for American citizens in war zones a degree of safety which the fed eral government does not guarantee them in dozens of gangster-ridden centers in the United States. He tries to play God and dictate terms tp des perate nations. Ilis terms may be right or wrong, but war-maddened bellige rents must accept them—or else.” A popular referendum on war is no panacea but it is certainly a means whereby people will st< p to ask, “Why should American buys be sent overseas to keep Germany from getting Danzig or part of the Polish corridor? A ref erendum will not only give an oppor tunity to the war mongers but als)j to those who understand that we can never get rid of war till we find a way to stop the exploitation of man by man. It’s perhaps tx> much to expect Thoma J. Watson former president of the International Chamber of Com merce- to accept that solution but as rented in the Times of August 29, he realizes (as every liberal and radical) that the causes are economic. Only eco nomic changes then will remove the present tension. According to Mr. Watson : “The underlying causes of the pre sent difficultie are economic malad justment. This has been proved by eco nomic research of the International Chamber of Commerce. Let us keep re peating the disasters effects cjf the last war: 10,000,000 soldiers and 13, 000,000 civilians killed; 2.,000,000 sold iers wounded; 10,000-000 people made refugees; 9,000,000 children made or phans and a cost in money of $338,000, 000,000. It must be remembered that economic and social conditions are far worse today than they were before the last war. This should show us that another world war would destroy civi lization as we understand it.” It is too bad te convention of the American Federation of Teachers did not realize that through a discussion of war and peace—or approval of the Ludlow Amendment would the Ameri can people be able to get at the funda mental economic problems which are now so obscured by troop movement and diplomatic exchange of notes. Tloo bad, too, that it did not realize that its slogan—education for democracy- de mocracy to support any measure which ' gives the people a greater share in de ciding important issues. Educators, more than any other group, have an obligation to make their actions con sonant with the policies they profess; so the convention Vote against the ref erendum was a repudiation of its own ~ must cherished slogan. Defense of democracy through eco nomic and social security, not through war* is the only sane path for America to take. • ’ -0O0 “CONTROL” SHOULD BE THE WATCHWORD OF THE NEGRO WORKER An interesting urvey on the part the Negro worker has played in the in dustrial life of America is contained in a new book, “Black Workers and the New Unions,” by Horace R. Cayton and George S. Mitchell and published L. ' * - ■ by the University of North Carolina Press- according to a review from the New York Times. The authors point out that many jobs, such as hotel work, barbering, etc., have been taken over by whites during the depression. On the other hand, they point out large gains made by Negroes in the trade un ion movement. But despite, these gains there re mains far too much discrimination in the trade un) n movement, such as the recent Tampa Shipyard Case, whieh William Green, head of the American Federation of Labor, has promisJ to investigate. We have no kick with th tee who argue the right of the work er to collective bargaining and wre Haw from time to time pointed out the de sirability of Negt> workers organiz ing. Wrhat we would like to point out at this time is that mere trade union membershi pis not in itself a panacea for the ills that affect the Negro work er. Centuries vf racial prejudice can not he eradicated by edict from the head of any organization. The only way to combat this prejudice is to not only join the unions but also place com petent i epresentatives on the govern ing boards of such organizations, and see to it that they fight racial preju dice wherever found. It’s only small com Lrt to organize Negro motion pic ture operators, for instance, and then limit them to work only in neighbor hoods where there are Negr3 movie houses. Or the limiting of Negro union musicians to work among their own p t pie. Such forms of discrimination can he broken up only by having an outspoken representative in the gov erning councils of the union. (Control, shhtild be the watchword in labor, just as it should be in all polit ical consideration of the race —-0O0 WHITE WORKERS ON NEGRO WRITERS PROJECT We had a visit last week from a member of the Federal Writers Pro ject of the WPA, who was in Harlem investigating charges of fraud in an election 10 years a*|o, He happened to be a Hebrew and when we expressed surprise that a white man should be as signed to a Negro project, he explain ed that there were a number of white writens working on such projects. It was explained to us that the project is being cut from a personnel of over 300 to about 118, which will include th* clerical staff. He was unable to give any f'gures on the percentage of Ne groes on the project or how many would remain after the drastic reduc tion. ■» ij, I . It seems to us that this is a clear case of discrimination when white wri .. ters are assigned to check on stories about Negroes and the Negroes are fired. The project, which has done some valuable research W'ork in pub lishing the New York Gude Book ser ies, has from the beginning given Ne groes assignments only as they affect their own people, and for that reason ' -seems unfair to give such assign ments to whites when there are Negro newspaper men available and willing to accept this work. An immediate investigation should be made of the proportion of Negroes dropped from the several “white col lar projects of the WPA and if it is found that a larger percentage of Ne groes are being fired than other racial j • groups, protest meetings and pressure should be brought to bear o nthe gov ernment to call a halt to this nefarious practice. * *«*£««’* ,