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Published Every Saturday at 2420 Grant Street
[ OMAHA, NEBRASKA—PHONE HA. 0800
l Entered as Second Class Matter March 15. 1927
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God’s Will and Good Wages
A SIMPLE CHOICE
(by Bishop R. R. Wright, Jr., Council of Bishops,
A. M. EO
God always intended his people to work, and live
by “the sweat of their brows.”
He gave them a good earth to dwell in and told
them to bring out of it all that they needed for life
and health. Yet, from the beginning of time, most
people have suffered lack. But now at last we
learned the way of plenty through full production
and full employment. Today we can live in an eco
nomy of abundance if we will use wisely the great
resources of our land and the intelligence of our
people.
Unfortunately, the Negro people have always
been among the most poorly paid in America. They
still are. And with living costs still at war-time
peaks the burden on their paltry earnings is addit
ionally oppressive.
Must this continue? Must Negro and white
workers who have seen their income cut at least
30% since the war’s end, resign themselves and their
families to being ill fed, ill housed, ill clothed? The
answer is emphatically, no! That is why the Con
gress of Industrial Organizations—the CIO— is
conducting a great drive for substantial wage in
creases now, for a 65-75 cent minimum wage for all
workers in shops and plants, for full employment
and a permanent FEPC and abolition of the poll
tax.
Some people say the Church has no right to mix
in these affairs. I cannot agree. They forget that
the Bible teaches people to take their religion into
their daily lives. Religion calls for justice and fair
play. And the Bible says: “The laborer is worthy
of his hire.” The Church is called upon to stand
for these things no matter how great the opposition
may be.
Therefore, I firmly believe that the Negroes and
their churches should get behind this drive for sub
stantial wage increases now. It is the basic respon
sibility of the church to do what it can to ease the
burden of its people. By suporting these wage and
salary increases ,the church will be aiding its mem
bers to obtain some of the primary things that its
people must haev—food, clothing, shelter, a chance
to advance. Our people will have a “more abundant
life,” and it is our moral duty to suport every hon
orable effort that will bring this about.
Let no one say American industry is unable to
pay these better wages without raising prices. They
can afford it easily for their profits during the war
have been enormous. Corporation profits more
than doubled after taxes between 1939 and 1944,
from $4.2 billion to $9.9 billion and they have re
ceived additional aid from a sympathetic Congress
in the form of $30 billions in tax refunds.
Some employers have seen the light and are sup
porting labor’s demands. But the most powerful
segments of industry, the stubborn, reactionary
narrowly selfish employers who would keep us in
economic bondage by playing us off against white
workers through low wages, who would deny us the
right of advancement, are strongly opposing the
just demand of American working people. It is a
gainst this opposition that the CIO and its allied
forces are waging this drive.
Victory in this campaign can bring vast rewards
for all Americans. Full employment at good wag
es, security against unemployment and sickness and
Editorial: "While We Try To Rebuild”
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old age, comfortable modern homes in which to
raise our families, oportunit.v and justice and free
dom to enjoy first class citizenship which is the
right of every American, a land of hope and prom
ise in which the new atomic age can be a boon to all.
This is no Utopia. It can be ours if we will work
for it. We can have beautiful churches and money
to pay the preachers and carry on the Gospel’s
work. W ecan have beautiful playgrounds, fine
schools with well-trained teachers where our child
ren may learn to live well developed lives and to
use their creative abiities.
I repat, these things can be attained. True, there
have been and will continue to be obstacles. No
j fight is won without conquest of a foe. The
! strength of those who would keep our people from
! equal job oportunities, to chain us to low-paying,
menial, unskilled positions, is tremendous. But our
strength is tremendous, too, if we but use it wisely
and in concert wTith those groups who are proven
friends of our people.
Let the Negro Church join with the CIO in this
drive. Let us tell our friends, our relatives, our
community to rally all behind this great cause —
the cause which will prevent national depression
and national suicide and pave the way to increased
economic and social gains for our people.
OVERTONES
(BY AL HENINGBURG)
THE ATOMIC MENACE:
The time has come when western civilization must
make up its mind as to whether our best energies
are to be spent in attempts to destroy each other,
whether we shall give more attention to trying to
live together peaceably. Of course, there is no
such thing as the “mind” of western civilization.
Each nation has its own peculiar point of view, and
within each nation there are many conflicting pro
posals on every idea of importance. But the com
mon thread running through the entire fabric is
that of exploitation: the readiness of the strong to
enforce their will upon the weak. That thread
shows itself in every form of inter-course in our
world today. Individuals, nations, and even so
called councils of nations move toward each attempt
i ed settlement of a difficulty with the notion of self
ish gain predominating.
So thoroughly has this kind of thinking become a
. part of our lives that we know little less. What is
worse, we are unaware of just what is happening,
or of how we are affected. Under these conditions,
the man who is exploited comes to accept his fate
as a matter of course, and ceases all rebillious ac
tion. Accustomed all their lives to being victimiz
ed, they adapt themselves and their wav of life to.
this pattern, and thus make it possible for their tor
mentors to say with half-truth: “We understand
the Negro. We have no trouble with him.”
It seems childish at this stage of the game of ex
ploitation and deception for our statesmen to try to
arrive a at paper agreement which will shove back
I the menace represented i nthe atomic bomb. Now
we say that this nation will keen the secret until
the rest of the world shows a readiness to use it for
the good of mankind, and not for his destruction.
Wliat we do not see is that we cannot possibly be
come moral determinants for any nation until the
United States can furnish a reasonable good exam
ple of what we talk about. Anything else is talk,
simply stalling off the time when greed and science
combine to destroy us all.
YOUR LEISURE TIME:
A poll recently completed by the National Opin
ion Research Center of Denver shows that the great
er number of Americans spend their free time read
ing. Some develop hobbies of one kind or another,
and many others like music or the movies. For
low-income groups, and that means most of us, now
is the time to make plans for the wise use of an in
creasing amount of leisure time. Many of us won’t
have jobs at all, and for those who do work the mini
ber of free hours is likely to increase. If you and
your children think of spare time as an occasion to
spend a half dollar seeing a movie, or taking in
some other form of commercialized recreation, now
is the time to snap out of it. We need to call more
on our own resources, to develop more family-type
recreation, and perhaps to leam all over again the
fine art of living together.
A LAZY CHURCH:
Many church members in this country, and that
includes the ministers too, have grown fat and
heavy with spiritual laziness. They have built
beautiful structures, have made them warm and
comfortable, and then have allowed these religious
centers to become the reflection of all the bigotry
and the prejudice of the community. In some in
stances, the so-called “church people” furnish the
greatest block of resistance to any attempt to de
velop a society in which the tenets of Christianity
are given real consideration. The natural result
under such conditions is that when the world sud
denly comes smack up against the staggering pos
sibilities represented in the atomic bomb, the
church furnishes no great leadership, and few peo
ple even think of looking in that direction for an
answer. If these things are true, and they do seem
to be from this distance, to say we have a lazy
church is a masterpiece of understatement.
I WHEN LITTLE MEN FIGHT:
Look carefully into current circumstances under
which Negroes who are accepted as “leaders” of one
quality or another fight with other Negroes who
wear much the same label, and you find a battle a
mong the pygmies, while the giants look on and
laugh. Men who are doing things are both too big
and too busy to fight in this fashion, but little men
revel in this type of buffoonery.
Plain Talk...
(BY DAN GARDNER)
History is repeating itself and the turbulent, try
ing days of 1919 are finding their counterpart in
1945 when racial tensions are taut and heavily
weighed with dangerous potentialities. Old timers
recall the open hostility of whites towards blacks
after World War I; how Negroes were shot down on
the streets of small southern towns for even wear
ing th uniform they ay ore Avhen they Avere fighting
to “save Democracy from the Hun.”
The disgraceful iace rioting in Atlanta, Wash
ington, Chicago, Tulsa and elseAA'here has never been
livind down.
Before the Avar Negroes A\ere fed propaganda as
Avell as AYere all other Americans about A\-hat Kaiser
Bill was trying to do and how important it ayhs to
save the starving Annenians and the poor defense
less Belgians fro mthe terror that AYas being un
leashed upon them by the dastardly Hun.
They Avere led to believe that by gning their liv
es for this “white cause” theA~ ayouW imnroA’e, some
hoAv, the conditions under which they iivea here in
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[Weekly SAVINGS AND INTEREST ACCUMULATED
Savins* |n 1 Year_In 5 Year*_In 10 Years
$3.75 $195.00 $1,004.20 $2,163.45
6.25 325.00 1,674.16 3,607.54 J
12.50 650.00 3,348.95 * 7,217.20
18.75 975.00 5,024.24 10,828.74 jj
WASHINGTON, D. €.—War Finance officials said here that weekly
savings invested in Victory Bonds—$3.75 per week—for one yearw,ll
total enough to make a down payment on a home, The timetable shows
other small savings and their future values.
Today at the cessation of declared hostilities in
America. Their reward after the Armistice, was
wholesale terroorism, lynchings, burnings, intimid
ation, discrimination and Jim Crow at every hand.
World War II, much of the same situation exists.
The Negro’s condition hasn’t improved any too
much discernibly. In fact, it has deteriorated to
an alarming extent.
Where in World War I he had not the mass intel
ligence he has today, the pressure is of a different
sort. He is being overwhelmed by the new fantas
ies of white supremacy that are built up in his mind
by wide publicity given to the Atom Bomb, to Jet
Propulsion, to everything that points out the power
of he white man.
He reads in every daily paper and magazine, evi
dence that the white man is absolutely the greatest
being on earth and great care is stressed in relating
to him the plight of the Japanese who had the tem
erity to challenge the white man’s right to rule.
The propaganda is insidious.
Confronted with the actualities of his own plight
in which he is at the bottom rung of the ladder and
doomed to stay there under existing conditions, the
Negro can only stand by and take it.
Right now evidences of the age-old white man’s
attitude toward the Negro are croping up on every
side despite the claims of the liberals in the labor
movement, despite the claims of the star-gazers
who see a black Shangri-la in the midst of the living
hell and try to convince all of us that it isn’t that
bad. White students, egged on by reactionary
parents who, themselves are steeped in century-old
beliefs of white supremacy, are striking against
colored classmates attending the same schools with
them.
Negroes, themselves, contribute much to these
conditions by failure to control their own young
sters, allowing them to drift off early into lives of
crime or indolence. All these factors point up to
bad examples of Negro leadership which offers noth
ing for the masses to sink their teeth in and noth
ing of a concrete nature.
They are long on promises, short on results, and
as a result, we sink further into the mire of mental
and economic stagnation.
Right now little can be done to halt the wholesale
terrorism we face in the aftermath of the war be
yond a determination on the part of us all not to
take these things laying down. The militancy of
our demands must be translated into the actuality
of the steps we take. Unil then, surcease from mis
ery seems afar off.
Industrial Labor Relations...
(by George E. DeMar, Industrial Secy, N. Y. Urban
League for CNS)
Unemployment will reach eight million next year
is the prediction. In order to ease the strain, both
public and private housing projects have been plan
ned. In fact, the larger engineering firms are not
accepting anymore contracts for 1946. The work
which will have to be done will require the skills of
carpenters, plasterers, bricklayers, plumbers, elec
tricians, iron and steel workers and many others. It
is only reasonable that employment agencies, engin
eering companies and the trade unions functioning
in this field be contacted to ascertain whether or
not they will adhere to a program of fair employ
ment practices. In the event they do not many of
the people who are the “last hired and the first fir
ed” will suffer undue hardships.
In states that have anti-discrimination laws, the
persons who are likely to suffer certainly have a re
sponsibility. They must be vocal. They must
complain. New Y'orkers have been lax in this re
gard. The State Commission against discrimina
tion began operations last July 1. To date only 162
complaints have been filed or an average of 40 com
plaints a month. Workers should know when they
have been discriminated against and should hurry
to 124 East 28th St. and put the firm or union under
investigation. The Commission should not be
blamed for ineffectiveness, when the people affected
seem to lack an interest in pointing a finger at the
persons who would undermine our democracy.
In states that do not have fair employment prac
tices legislation, there is the responsibility to agit
ate for such laws. This may be done through any
community organization and please do not over
look the medium of the church. I recognize that
state laws should be buttressed by federal legisla
tion and that each Congressman should be written ,
weekly with reference to his position on such legis
lation. In a democracy we have the right to vote
i out of office the people who do not do as we think.
From the strength shown by the left wing groups in
the recent election, Congressmen and others in of
fice had better look to the job of giving the people
what they want.
Whether it is.building construction, or any other
work to be done full employment has been pledged,
fair employment has been promised and it is about
time that the Congress awoke to the demands of the
! people who elected them.