DISPEL THE DARKNESS!
By Ruth Taylor
Confucius said: “It is better to light one small
candle than to curse the darkness.”
In our impatience with injustice, with discrimin
ation, we too often forget that everything cannot
be accomplished at once, that it is better to have a
little light than no light at all. And that no one
ever brought light out of darkness by cursing—how
ever satisfying it may be at the moment.
The thing t odo when darkness confronts us is to
stand still and consider just what is the darkness?
Is it a black wall in front of us? There is seldom a
wall without a gate in it somewhere. Or is it a
darkness of spirit that will vanish with the appli
cation of light?
What is the taper we have to light? Is it a talent,
a skill, or a willingness to work well? Whatever it
is, we have within ourselves the power to bring
light into the darkness.
John eKndrick Bangs carried out Confucius’
thought in humorous vein when he said:
I never seen a night
So dark there wasn’t light
Somewhere about if I took care
To strike a match and find out where.
Don’t curse the darkness. It certainly isn’t,
pleasant—particularly when it is the darkness of
sorrow, of depression, of loss, of ignorance. Stand
still and light your taper. By its most feeble flick
ering, you may see the way into the sunlight. And
if the sunlight does not lie beyond, you can make of
the taper a torch by which the darkness will be dis
pelled.
Don’t expect life to work like an electric light
switch. We are so used to mechanical devices that
we sometimes substitute them for our heads — or
for our hands and feet. Tapers carried high by
each and every one of us will light the world. But
we each have to bear our own light. And if we
do that well—we will be too busy and happy to
curse our neighbor for the darkness.
The Murrays, Thomases, Dalrymples, et al., are
getting “militant.” Reluctantly, and with a weatli
er eye out for opportunity to compromise, they have
quit sitting on the keg. Had they dallied much
longer, the keg would have blown up anyway, in
which case a lot of labor leaders would have been
blown right out of their cushy jobs. Even now sus
picion is rife among rank and file workers, partic
ularly in the United Auto Workers, that their in
ternational officers are only going through the mo
tions of being “militant.”
The current wave of strikes, “wildcat” and ’‘au
thorized”, in progress and brewing, is the purest
manifestation of irrepressible class struggle. The
demand of the auto worker for a 30 per cent pay
boost, and similar demands in other industries, are
demands by labor for a larger share of labors pro
duct. As such, they bring into bold relief the focal
point of the class straggle.
The widely touted “New Charter for Labor and
Management,” signed under klieg lights in Wash
ington last March, is kaput. It wouldn’t work for
the simple reason that it is futile to cry “Peace!
Peace!” where there is no peace. Capitealism has
dividd society into two distinct classes, one of which
owns all that is worth owning, the other owning
nothing but its power to labor. Their interests are
antagonistic and irreconcilable for the reason that
if one increases its share *of labor’s product the
other’s is reduced. It’s like cutting an apple in
halves. Make one half larger and the other half is
smaller. This is the nub of the class struggle. It
cannot be overleaped by rhetoric nor explained a
way nor suppressed by treaties of peace. It is a
palpitating reality that, ever and anon, plunges
society into the convulsion of industrial war.
We face what may be the weightiest struggles in
which the American workers have yet engaged. Be
cause of the tremendous numerical increase of Ne
gro workers in industry, it will be their first oppor
tunity to play a major role in a capital-labor con
flict. Employers will, of course, try to drive a
wedge between Negroes and whites. But where
the two stand shoulder to shoulder and mingle on
the picket line, such attempts have small chance of
success. The solidarity a bona fide strike evokes
does to prejudice what D. D. T. does to vermin.
No more than white workers should Negroes have
j The Omaha Guide \
. A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ^ i
[ Published Every Saturday at 2f20 Grant Street
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L Entered as Second Class Matter March 15. 1927 •
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Editorial: "The Reality of 1945”
—■ “ uiyjuw .
MIMVTIRE “OIL FIELD”
FORETELLS FITURE
Pittsburgh, Pa^—Physicist H. G.
Botset of Gulf Reasearch Laborator
ies, plans oil production on thej
“Electrolytic Model Oil field" he
invented. The device, which dupli
cates actual oil field operations on
a laboratory scale, will substant
ially increase the world's usable
oil resources. The "Model” can fore
tell results of various production
methods in given oil fields up to
20 years in the future, assuring
more scientific advance planning
and a greater percentage of oil re
covery. The young lady assistant
holds a tray of minature “oil wells”
f
"bilbo, v. i"
The New Yorker, irre
verent magazine of interna
tional fame, suggests a new
word for the English lan
guage. The next edition of
Noah Webster’s master
piece would have this entry
^ if the New Yorker’s sugges
tion is followed:
“bilbo, verb, intransitive—
to appeal to the basest in
stincts of human nature
through lies, defamation,
prejudice, venom, and vic
ious ignorance.”
We got the words quis
ling, fagin, lynch, boycott,
filibuster, maverick, gerry
mander, and other terms of
reproach the same way.
Read The Greater
OMAHA GUIDE
illusions about the outcome of these strike struggl
es. They have been going on since the beginning
*of the industrial system and, whether the workers
win their demands, lose them, or settle on a com
promise, they face essentially the same conditions
after the strike as before. The capitalist remain
capitalists and the wage workers, wage workers.
The question might be asked then: Why do work
ers strike ? The great working class champion
Karl Marx, once asked this question rhetorically.
And he answered it by saying that if workers didn’t
strike, they they abandoned their attempts at mak
ing the best of occasional chances to win temporary
eimprovement, “they would be degraded to one lev
el mass of broken wretches past salvation. .Bv cow
ardly giving way in their eevry-day conflict' with
capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves
for the initiating of any larger movement.” But
Marx did not forget to caution the workers against
exaggerating to themselves the ultimate working
of these every-day struggles. “They ought not to
forget that they are fighting with effects, but not
with the causes of those effects; that they are re
tarding the downward movement, but not changing
its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not]
curing the malady.” It was in the same address;
that Marx uttered the amous words:
“Instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s
wages for a fair day’s work!” the workers ought to
inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watch
word, “Abolition of the wages system!”
This much is certain: The coflict, of which the
preset spate of strikes is a manifestation, will go on
until the wages system is abolished. I, for one, do
not doubt that ultimately it will be abolished be
cause the alternative is deep, corroding poverty,
universal misery and recurring war. Meanwhile,
the rebellious spirit now being evinced by the Am
erican workers is an earnest that slavery shall not
prevail.
WASHINGTON R. F. D.
VI ASHINGTON, D.C.—OPA is locked in a death
grip with manufacturing and retail business assoc
iations over the issue of reconversion pricing. The
view is gaining headway here that the whole Price
Control Act may be allowed to die a natural death
when the current enabling legislation expires next
June 30.
Authorities close to the subject feel that the only
thing that can prevent price control from dying on
the vine is for the Administration to come forward
this fall with a limited program of price control
for operation until the dangers of postwar inflation
are completely passed.
The immediate issue is this: OPA’s general recon
version pricing formula permits manufacturers to
allow for prewar manufacturing costs, plus a slight
increase for higher costs of labor and materials,
plus a prewar profit margin.
OPA thinks this formula, in most cases, will
make reconversion costs about comparable with
those of 1942. But should they run higher than
1942 retail costs, distributors and retailer are asked
to absorb the difference.
Both manufacturing and retail associations are
fighting the reconversion formula, though the con
troversy over the cost absorption policy is especial
ly bitter. The retailers charge that this policy al
ready ‘‘has gone about as far as it can go,” and de
clared it is impossible for them to recommend “a
practicable, reasonable, and economic pricing pro
gram" under the President’s recent hold the price
line order.
Advocates of continuing limited price control
feel that the issue is directly relatd to the question
of mass consumption, necessary to full production
and full employment, in the postwar period. They
claim that taking all the brakes off prices until the
dangers of inflation have been skirted will result
1 automatically in a contraction of markets, and a
curb on employment and production.
OPA is expecting its major support to come from
consumer, farm, and labor groups. fThe reason is
that the prices of most of the things which fanners,
workers, and all consumers have to buy are expect
ed to go the highest and stay high longest if price
control is killed.
Less widely publicized than some of the “big lea
gue” testimony on the Wagner-Murray- Patman
full employment bill was that of Clarence Avilsen,
chairman of the Republic Drill and Tool Co., of
Chicago, which denoted a significant trend in busi
ness organiaztion. Said Mr. Avildsen:
“I am appearing before this committee not only
because I am a businessman, but because I am a
member of a committee which is now engaged in or
ganizing a new businessmen’s association to be
known as the New Council of American Business.
“This new organization will be composed of lib
eral and progressive businessmen who feel that the
public policies generally sponsored by the U. S.
Chamber of Commerce and the National Associat
ion of Manufacturers are not as liberal and progres
sive as they should be.”
Avildsen is first-year president of the Council,
Morris S. Rosenthal, vice-president and general
manager of a large New York manufacturing and
importing firm, is executive vice-preside* it. “Trust
Buster” Thurman Arnold, formerly with the De
partment of Justice, is the organization’s general
counsel, and Howard J. McMurray, former Wiscon
sin Congressman, is its executive director.
Your son, husband or sweetheart may be dis
charged from the armed forces much sooner than
could have been expected a few weeks ago.
The Army plans to reduce its size from the pres
ent 8,050,000 to 2,500,000 by next July 1. Rate of
discharges will be stepped up from 250,000 in Sept
ember to a peak of 672,000 a month in January,
Discharge points will be reduced from 85 to 80, and
no veteran with 60 or more points will be sent over
seas.
Navy plans to release nearly 2,900,000 men in the
next 12 months, cutting down to a force of 500,000
enlisted personnel and 50,000 officers. The Navy
discharge point system, under fire in Washington,
also will be changed within two months to allow
credit for overseas service.
The World Abroad
NEW YORK, N. Y.—In three widely separated
parts of the world the problems of United States
foreign policy have emerged more clearly.
China. The questionmark which has long stood
behind the Soviet attitude toward China’s internal
problems lias now been removed. The Soviet Un
ion will cooperate with the Central Government of
Chiang Kai-shek. It will not fish in the troubled
waters of the Chungking-Yenan dispute.
Publication of the texts of the Russo-Chinese
Treaty of Alliance and of the supplementary agree
ments recently signed at Moscow clearly evidence
the Russian position. So far as Russia is concern
ed, China will not be permitted to become another
Spain.
Will Britain and the United States adopt a sim
ilar hands-off attitude toward China’s internal
promem?
The Russo-Chinese Treaty puts an end' to Japan
ese hopes of starting trouble between these two
countries. But, if Britain or the United States
should interevene in China, Japan’s hopes of dis
sension among Britain, the United States and the
Soviet Union might still be realized.
The Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse Tung is
now in Chungking negotiating with Chiang Kai
shek. Upon the outcome of these discussions will
hinge the unification of China. Upon the attitude
of United States Ambassador Hurley may largely
depend the attitude of the Generalissimo. All the
cards are now in Chiang’s hands. He can afford to
deal geenrously with the Chinese Communists. He
can afford to recognize their contribution to victory
He can afford to make it possible for them to join
in a democratic government of national unity. If
our Ambassador exerts his influence in that direc
tion, China may not only avoid civil strife but be
come a bulwark of future peace in Asia.
Latin America. Nelson Rockefeller ,the chief
sponsor for admitting the fascist Government of
Argentina to membership in the United Nations,
has resigned as Assistant Secretary of State for
Latin American Affairs. His place is to be taken
by Ambassador Spruille Braden, an uncompromis
ing foe of fascisim and appeasement. Whereas Mr
Rockefeller’s policies tended1 to place “Hemisphere
Solidarity” ahead of all other considerations, in
cluding United Nations unity, Mr. Braden can be
counted upon to carry out Cordell Hull’s belief
that “free governments and fascist governments
cannot exist together in this world.”
Ambassador Braden has made it clear that he be
lieves that the present Farrell-Peron Government
of Argentina does not represent the Argentina peo
ple, and that, if the people were given a chance to
assert themselves, a democratic regime would be
the result.
Europe. General Be Gaulle’s visit to this coun
try and British anxiety over the sudden termin
ation of Len Lease both served to highlight this
country’s interest in European rehabilitation.
The problems of the liberated countries, such as
France, are very different from those of Britain.
Both problems must be solved, if there is to be any
hope of maintaining full production and employ
ment in this country.
France has suffered far less than Britain, so far
as her intrinsic long-run economic position is con
cerned. She has contracted no external debt to
speak of. Her war expenditures have been relat
ively small. She is normally very nearly self-suff
icient.
Of course, France has suffered much deeper
psychological wounds than Britain. She has been
defeated and plundered. Right now she is suffer
ing from lack of coal, machinery, transportation,
and most of all from lack of food. She badly needs
immediate help to get on her feet, but, once on her
feet, she can stand alone.
Britain, on the othr hand, has gravely comprom
ised her basic economic position. She has depleted
her wealth in fighting the war. She has lost a
large part of her export ttrade by concentrating her
industries on war production and living off Lend
Lease. She has piled up a huge debt and will have
to borrow more. She must not only rebuild at
home, while still living on short rations; she must
recapture her world markets in order to live.
Our foreign policy makers face the difficult prob
lem of finding the means to help bring about the re
covery in Europe, which is essential to our own
prosperity and to the maintenance of peace, with
out causing Uncle Sam to be Santa Claus now and
Uncle Shylock later.
VICTORY FUND AND COMMUNITY CHEST
