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About The Omaha guide. (Omaha, Neb.) 1927-19?? | View Entire Issue (March 23, 1946)
( The Omaha Guide I I ^ A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER JL- 1 I Published Every Saturday at 2)20 Grant Street OMAHA, NEBRASKA—PHONE HA- 0800 Entered as Second Class Matter March 15. 1927 at the Post Office at Oaiaha, Nebraska, under Act of Congress of March 3, 1879. C* C* GallowiPublisher and Acting Editor All News Copy of Churches and all organiz ations must be in our office not later than 1:00 p. m. Monday for current issue. All Advertising Copy on Paid Articles, not later than Wednesday noon, proceeding date of issue, to insure public ation* SUBSCRIPTION RATE IN OMAHA 1 ONE YEAR . $3.0ul SIX MONTHS .$1.75l THREE MONTHS .$i.2s| SUBSCRIPTION RATE OUT OF TOWN & ONE YEAR . $3.50 j SIX MONTHS . $*-OOi National Advertising Representatives— 1 INTERSTATE UNITED NEWSPAPERS, In,4 545 Fifth Avenue, New York City, Fhone:— , MUrray Hill 2-5452, Ray Pick, Manager. 1 Editorial: World Choas. W ■; W ^ ^ *m Consider These Thoughts in Your Thinking The boy next door has come home. He's whist ling up the street again. He’s wearing flashy neckties and romping with his dog. He’s getting a civilian job and his uniform is in moth balls. He’s through with war. It’s all over. He’s home! But some of the boys next door aren't home, never will come home. Some will spend the rest of their lives in hospitals or return with their youthful vigor spent. For the boys who did come home, those who can whistle and play with the dog. the American Red Cross rejoices with the nation. The Red Cross, with the nation. under Americans who have sacrificed their strength to the com mon cause. As a great peacetime organization which went to war when other peace-loving American civilians did. the Reel Cross will follow through toward victory and devote itself greatly to the welfare of hospitalized * and home-coming veterans; it will continue to offer services to the men and women still in uniform, and those who will serve in the armies of occupation. It will be able to concentrate now on acts of peacetime mercy, on relief for war-caused suf fering the world over. This is your Red Cross, your opportunity to welcome home the boy next door, the boy in your home, by buying a share in the broad responsibilities of this post-war work in the world we all have sought through bloody years of battle. Consider these thoughts in your thinking about the an nual Red Cross campaign for funds which is now going on throughout this month of March in this community. This community did not shirk its duties ever during war time; it will not shirk during the initial days of our new peace. This newspaper, The Omaha Guide, community and civic leaders and organizations—EVERYONE—will consid er it an honor to carry a full load in the insurement of suc cess of the continued work of the Red Cross. Omaha and Douglas County will do their sliart—and more. Released by Calvin's Sew* Service Hang on tight, folks. I want to read you t:ie preamble to the Employment Bill of 1946 as it was passed hy Con gress and signed by the President. Got a good grip? Here goes: ‘•1 he Congress hereby declares that it is the continuing policy and responsibility of tbe federal government to use all practicable means eonsistent with its needs anti obligations and other essential considerations of national policy, with the assistance and cooper ation of industry, agriculture, labor and s:a:e and local governments, to coordinate and utilize all its plans, functions and resources for the purpose of creating and maintaining, in a manner calcu lated to foster and promote free competitive en terprise and the general welfare, conditions un der which there will be afforded useful employ ment opportunities, including seif-employment, for those able, willing and seeking to work, and to promote maximum employment, production and purchasing power.*’ Anyone still with me? Congratulations! Now-, 1*11 tell you what this verbose monstrosity means. Or. rather. 1*1! let Senator Barkley tell you what it means. After the bill bad been watered down in the Senate, Senator iiarkiev de scribed it thus: “It now guarantees everybody out of work the right to seek a job if he can find one. In other words, if it is con venient for the Government to help him it will do so.” And Senator Barkley WASN’T trying to be funny. ell. what did you expect? This is the capitalist system friend. It*s the system in which labor is merchandise, in the same category as cotton and tobacco. The workers sell their labor power and the capitalists buy it. Like any other buyer, the capitalist looks for a bargain when he goes to the labor market. And the more workers there are looking for jobs, the better bargain he can get. That s the reason the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce said: “He feel that private competitive capitalism requires a floatnig number of unemployed.” Unemployment has the same effcet on the price of labor power (wages) as a surplus of hogs has on the price of pork. And the lower the wages, all the higher are the profits. Also, when a few million workers are beating the bricks, employers can be more choosy in their hiring. During wartime, when the demand for labor was high and the sup workers. Negroes, oldsters, and others on the shelf. With a return to capitalist ’’normalcy’" they can dust their pre judices off again. Now. I don t believe any “full employment” bill would deny capitalism ”a floating number of unemploved.*" The economic laws inherent in capitalism would take care of that. But that isn’t the question here. The question here i ——mmmt Your REDCROSSl 11946 FUND CAMPAIGN) is that a lot of Capitalists thought it MIGHT ORK. sc hey put the pressure on Congress to pass the innocuous legislation quoted above. To don the robes of prophecy for a moment, this is how 1 think the Employment Act of 1946 will pan out. When the postwar boomlet ends and the pent-up demand for goods is worked off. unemployment will soar. The gov ernment. under the new law, is authorized to forecast this development and to make proopsals for heading :t off. But what proposals can it make? Only one that has any mean tical difference the new law can possibly make is to have public works projects ready for the emergency, «nstead of, as in the past, launching a makeshift program after unem ployment reaches a critical stage. Last year (July 31.), the Philadelphia Record printed an editorial in which it described the then pending measure as “A Bill to Keep Socialism Out of the United States.” It alism work. Well, this new law isn't going to make capit alism work. It isn't going to head off Socialism either. Because, sooner or later, the American workers are going to weary of this starve-awhile, eat-awhile capitalise game and build a society in which there are jobs for all. Oh, yes. The Employment Act of 1946 does create “full employment for three people: They are the Presid ent's advisers and will each get §15.000 a year. The Understanding of Service by RI TH TAYLOR One night I was talking ttf a man who served ;n the last war. He was on his favorite theme of universal service and said, ou know, I really think I learned more in the army than I did any other way. I believe it was because I met so many men from all walks of life. I learned how to be a good lawver. I learned to have* understanding for other people.” ^ hen I talk in Service Clubs, I bring this up. Some proud father always has his son in uniform with him and the boy and ask if he hasn't learned in service what I mean. All but once these boys have said, “Yes—I've learned to know other people. I'll never be the same again." One blushing youngster in his teens added: “I found out they are just like me underneath.'’ The exception—oh. he didn't like anything or anybody. Fortunately, that day there were two servicemen—and the other expressed himself very forcibly on what he'd learned of understanding. They learned not toleration—but tolerance. I'm not one of those who is afraid of the veterans. I think they've learned—no matter what group they’ve come from—to understand each other. And that understanding will be carried wit hthem into peace time pursuits. Ine woritl will never be as small to them again. There is a very fine series of advertisements put out by the Arrow Manufacturing Company containing actual let ters from men who were in service. I quote from one by | Lt. Johnny Hayden. Jr. “Tolerance is finding out that the fellow from Iowa has as keen a humor as the Broadway boy; that the fellow from the South can fight just as well as the lad from Minnesota; seeing a Catholic chaplain handle the spiritual needs for Moe Goldberg from Brooklyn and hearing the slight Irish brogue whispering words of condolence in Hebrew ; listen ing to a chaplain of the Baptist faith leading a Hall Mary on Sunday because the priest was unable to arrive in time for Mass—that's not talking tolerance, that's living It I’’ Our boys have learned to understand each oilier fight ing together. Can we do less working together? Plain Talk... (BY DAN GARDNER) MISSISSIPPI NEGROES SPEAK THEIR PIECE RIGHT IN THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI . - .-v- | The spark of freedom has apparently at Jong last touch-1 ed off a lire in Mississippi. Negroes have been more or less vociferous in most of the southern states about their rights, but not in Mississippi. The state that leads the na tion in ignorance, enforced peonage, reaction and anti-A merican pogroms, is the state in which the majoritv Negro population has been kept in abject submission and silence by the cohorts of Bilbo. Rankin and Eastland. Now, in a statewide mass meeting sponsored by the Mis sissippi Education Council, the worm has seemed to turn. The Council met to petition the Mississippi legislature now in session for better schools, better pay for Negro teachers, nine-months schools, consolidated rural schools, bus trans portation. a state university for Negroes wit hail tlie neces sary departments and other things. If you know Mississippi, you also know that no Negro raises his voice too loud unless he is openly inviting des truction or bodily harm. In the past, Negro Mississippians have been heard vocally in prayer meetings, church con ventions, in oratorical contests and whatnot, but seldom in making open demands on the entrenched white minority. ! ook at some of these “whereases” embodied in :he resolu tions making up the petition: i “Whereas the Negro is a eitizen of the State of Mississip-1 pi. and therefore a citizen of the United States; “Whereas, the Negro has always striven to do his full duty as a citizen, both in peace and in war. to protect and defend this nation; “V hereas. under the constitution of this country, all cit izens are entitled to equal benefits from and protection of. the law of the land; “V hereas. the Negro citizens of Mississippi art- too often denied the equal protection of the law of this state; “V hereas. the Negroes of Mississippi receive only one tenth of the educational benefits accorded whites, and even less, in many instances; “Whereas, the Negroes do 80 percent of the Tarm work in Mississippi, but less than five percent of the agricultural high schools of Mississippi are devoted to the training of Negro youth hereas. there is an agricultural high school in prac tically every county in this state for whites, but only about three agricultural high schools in Mississippi for Negroes; “VI hereas. the Negro and white population in Mississip pi is about equal (the Council seems to be ‘leaning’ a bit here to establish some point: Mississippi’s Negroes out number the whites, the ratio being about 5^2 to 4-D.-G.) yet more than SI00 has been invested in Mississippi for higher educational facilities for whites to every SI that has been invested by this state for higher education of Negroes: white teachers are paid about three times as much as Negro teachers, and in some parts of the state, four times as much though Mississippi was called upon to send a Negro soldier to the war every time a white soldier was sent; Negro school terms are much shorter than the terms for whites, and worthwhile rural Negro school houses as a rule, non-exist ent.” Warming up to the subject, the Council went on record as demanding full justice in^ the courts of Mississippi; re peal of the poll tax law and all other “impedmenst to a fair untrammeled expression of the will of the people.” e are citizens of Mississippi,” the petition states. “We love her clay hills and fertile valleys, but her discriminat ory record in the matter of the races has not been such as to make hundreds of thousands of Mississippians justly proud of many of Mississippi's laws, nor the way they are only too often discriminatorily administered. As a result, Mississippi is much the loser. Mississippi stands to lose several hundred thousand of her good Negro citizens with • in the next few years and why? Simply becau:: they feel that they can better their condition in some other states. If this is true, then there is something wrong with Mississippi. V hy wait for the courts to be asked to come inio these mat ters? U ouldn't it be infinitely better for the state itself to handle such things.?” Mississippi policy over the years has been based on ignor ance and its results. A favored few whites, rolling in ill gotten gains from the labor of unpaid millions of blacks, shuttle hack and forth between the beaches of Florida, Vir ginia and California, leisurely loafing their lives away while an underprivileged people is held in complete bondage on I pain of death, while elected' officials thumb their noses at decency, respect of their fellow man and at die world, de fying one and all to do something about it. The only way the chains can be struck from the ankles of the imprisoned black Mississippian is for him to take the first step. Those outside of Mississippi—despite brave talk and much gesticulation, are rarely th^ ones to go into the Bilbo stronghold and beard the devil himself. But they will join in and fight the battle step by step If they are convinced that now at long last, the Negro Mississippian is awakening and is saying and doing things for himself. The Common Defense (bv Rev. Williana C. Kernan) AGAINST ALL TYRANNY To those who read history, it is not difficult to find out why our forefathers laid such heavy stress on freedom and stood like flint, immovable, against tyranny. They knew what human misery tyranny had caused. In The Reformation Settlement, MacColl says of the reign of Queen Elizabeth: “The spirit of toleration was not know in those days. The party that was up invariably perscuted the party that was down, and there was not mucli to choose between them Cooper, successively Bishop of Lincoln and Winchester, urged on Walsingham the policy of forcing all Roman Catholics to receive the Sacrament in the Estab lished Church or go to prison On another occasion he proposed to the Privy Council that some 200 Roman Cath olics, 'lustie men, strong and well able to labor' should be transported into penal servitude, while the feeble, who re mained behind, should be ‘put in some fears, probably by means of a rack.’ Some Baptist preachers were also put to death in Elizabeth's reign, and Jewell decTares in his Apology that ‘we not only condemn the old heretics and pronounce them impious and lost, and detest them to" the gates of Hell, but even if they anywhere break forth and show themselves, we restrain them severely and serious -ly with lawful and civil punishments,' the slake included.” This—and vastly more—is what Washington knew when he said that the Government of the United Stares **glves to bigotry no sanction''—what Jefferson knew when he swore “eternal enmity . against every form of tyranny over the human mind”—when we must know in our generation when we see tyranny making its bill again for domination over the life and conscience of man. Our strength in this battle will be found in God—our comfort in the solidarity wit liwhirh we march forward. For it is impossible for Americans—any American—regard less of race or creed, to sit idly by in the belief that pur veyors of racial, religious, and class hate and disunity did not mean THEM. lioever attacks one minorrty group attacks all groups. The people must be made to under stand this. Industrial Labor Relations (by Georgp DeMar for CIS'S) With John L. ewis' return to the American Federation of Labor, it is well to review the objectives of the CIO. in A merican industry. “The Congress of Industrial Organiz ations today is the only ajor labor organization in the world that supports our American type of economy in the real sense. We believe in the right to own private property be cause it arises from the natural law. We beiieve capital ism is a logical development of the private property sys tem. However, we have two complaints. We maintain: (I) that too many people have been denied or have been limited in their right to own private property; and (2) we believe that the development called capitalism has been grossly abused and used as an instrument by a few against the many,” says James B. Carey, Secretary-treasurer of the CIO. ’ , . , , . * - % I It is obvious the CIO. seeks a more equitable distribu tion of the proceeds of industry. Every person able to and willing to work has a work contribution to make. The opportunity to trade this work contribution for die things one needs for himself and family is the American way. Year-round full employment and adequate wages are the basis of all CIO. objectives. CIO. programs are not concerned with its membership alone but are designed for all working people. This is to the best interest of the CIO. It believes that it cannot gain more for its membership unless all the people are benfited If people cannot buy, business cannot sell. This is true, not only in foreign trade, but also in domestic trade. And American business must face the fact that its welfare is in ple do not prosper, then business will not prosper. If dark-skinned people do not prosper, light-skinned people will not prosper. In the vast industrial empire that is America, there is room for men and women of all races and colors to obtain a fair days work at a fair day’s pay so that the wheels of industry will turn. This is not contrary to free enterprise and our American economy. fine Quality-Personalized PRINTING CARDS, LETTER HEADS, PERSONAL STATIONERY, HAND BILLS — ANYTHING PRINTABLE... JUST CALL HA-0800 or better still Come to 2420 Grant Street »
