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INDOOR MINDS AND OUTDOOR MISERIES
A Preface to a Problem
Read ■’before The Carmel Eorum,
Carmel-by-the-Sea, California,
in October, 1936,
- by.
Eric H. Thomsen
Assistant Regional Director
of the Resettlement Administration
San Erancisco, California
LiBKAXY
liiivEKSSTY OF WASHINGIU.N
SEATTLE
DEFOSlTOPtY COPY
Introduction
The spectre which has haunted human i ty since the World War is IWSECUIIITY.
But whether you think of that as primarily political or economic, it has more often
than not been part and parcel of the lot of common folk and could not alone account
for the widespread unrest which is manifest today at home and abroad. What does
make humanity restless today is the growing knowledge that the basic things on which
human well-being depends, need no longer be left to chance. That is to say, slums
need not be; preventable disease need not be; even poverty need not be, not the
grinding, fiendish pauperism which reduces human beings to broken beasts. There is
no need today of anyone suffering from malnutrition when we can produce more than
enough to eat for everybody; there is no need of any one going naked or ill-clad
with more than enough for everybody to wear; there is no need today of any child
®choking to death with diphtheria; no need of any rickets and tuberculosis because of
i
obsolete tenements. With scientific knowledge to prevent it, there is no reason why
any child should die of scarlet fever nor, with insulin available, why the death
rate from diabetes should be rising — EXCEPT that people with money can buy the
results of modern medical skill, and people without money can not. We can grow
plenty of food, enough and to spare for every man, woman and child; and our
factories are gea,red to the production of all our needs in clothes, housing, equip¬
ment, transportation; bat again these necessities are all being supplied dependably
only to people with money. People without money may and do help raise all this food
and manufacture all these goods, bat they themselves cannot bay the things they make
and need, because they have not the money wherewith to pay for what they need. The
Dionne quintuplets, though born to almost sure death, are now, two years later, the
world1s spoiled darlings, healthy and happy because somehow all their needs have
been met and are daily being met. Millions of other children are daily being born,
and daily die, who never have a chance, not because there is not enough food to go
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around, not because they cannot "be clothed or decently housed or adequately eared
for - all their needs can nowadays also he met - hut they are neglected and in
distress because responsible people have not had the social intelligence to under¬
stand that we can produce enough, nor the moral courage to distribute what we
produce in such a manner that no one is deprived of his daily needs. Primarily
this is the condition which today provokes universal unrest.
Heed is no longer confined to city streets; need often stalks village
lanes and haunts prairie farms. Ten years ago when I first travelled across the
prairies I hardly ever came upon a doctor or nurse or dentist or mid-wife except in
the few city communities in which they clustered together for mutual protection in
more or less up-to-date clinics, available for those who could afford to pay, but of
little use to the many more who could not pay. I remember especially one big, raw-
boned, sun-tanned prairie farmer whom I asked what they did when sick. 11 That’s very
simple," he replied, somewhat grimly; "we either get well again or we die." And to
most of them it was probably just as simple as that. Don't let me give you the
impression that doctors are heartless brutes, or more mercenary than other people;
they are only under the necessity, as most of us are, of getting money wherewith to
buy what they need, in order that their families may live. But any system which
condemns a majority of its citizens to insecurity, sickness and destitution is not
a healthy system; it is a sick system, and out of it will never grow community
health in any form; with all our scientific skill we do not yet grow figs from
thistles; in fact, the system carries within itself the seed of its own inevitable
destruction. Let us look at it a little further.
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DO IE REALLY SUFFER FROM OVERPRODUCTION?
It has been said that we are in. trouble because we have produced too much.
But have we really ever produced too much, or even enough? Even when food produc¬
tion was at its highest, American farmers were producing seventy-seven billion
pounds of milk less than the American people needed for proper nourishment. Compared
with the national food requirements as estimated by the Department of Agriculture on
the basis of a modern balanced diet, we produced two billion, three hundred million
pounds less butter than we should, seven billion pounds of vegetables, twenty
!
billion pounds of fresh fruit, two billion pounds of fresh beef, two billion chickens
and thirteen billion eggs. What do you mean, overproduction? There can be no ques¬
tion of overproduction as long as millions go hungry, naked or homeless. We have
never produced enough; we have only found it impossible to sell at a profit all that
we have produced, because most people do not receive enough cash to buy what they
need. That is the dilemma of the profit economy: it must either make basic adjust-
ments within the system so as to bring about a mass distribution of income adequate
to sustain mass production, or it must be superseded by some system which will enable
the masses to obtain the basic necessities and comforts which are now potentially
available for all.
INDOOR MINDS AT VANIT! FAIR
The trouble is, of course, in part, that we have fallen heirs to the
social liabilities of those who in the past scramble! for personal wealth regardless
of social consequences. History, on the whole, affords us no great comfort. Our
justly glorified Declaration of Independence was written when there was still in
Congress a powerful group against revolution in any form, representing chiefly
Southern planter-ar.istocrats and Northern merchant-bankers, who when the time for
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action came abstained from voting. Strong commercial interests wished relief from
irksome taxes, "but not at the risk of anything which might disturb the generous
onward flow of profitable trade. "The rich, the powerful and their retainers among
the men of the professions, were bound to the Pederalists by a common interest in
property and a common fear of the masses ... laws were passed for the few at the
expense of the many ... many voters were excluded by their poverty." The situation
in Philadelphia, the national seat of government, was no better. "A veritable
Vanity Pair," (says Claude G. Bowers), "many were clever, some brilliant, most
skeptical of republics, idolators of money and distinctions, and few capable of
discriminating between anarchy and democracy."
How descriptive that last sentence is of those who yet have not ceased to
think of democracy as anarchy.' Yet such was the mental temper, such the social
atmosphere in the nation's capital when the fight was made to determine whether the
United States of America should be a democratic or an aristo-plutocratic common¬
wealth. If we glory in the ideal of a whole nation dedicated to the proposition
that all men are created free, and equally entitled to parsue the good life, let us
also remember that all of these years idealism has had to overcome not only the
antagonism of the privileged but the inertia of the rest of us. The present age is
no exception. The attitude of industry to the present Administration clearly indi-
cates that property and wealth do not intend today any more than their Colonial for-
bears did then intend, that industrial democracy shall ever triumph in this country.
"While groaning over the mad destiny of their country, they
were really sorry on account of the probable reduction of their
own incomes; fear of their own safety had taken hold of them,
and the mention of names which shall be remembered by posterity,
caused them to grind their teeth with rage."
That is not a newspaper review of the notorious Liberty League banquet in
Washington; it is the testimony of literature, as of history, that our problem is an
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old one. The passage is quoted from "Smoke", a hook written hy Turgenev in 1867.
In it he described Russia*s upper class, those of whom, fifty years later, Colonel
Raymond Rohhins of the American Relief in Russia said that they had gone the round
of their isolated and self-sufficient life, in sheltered wealth and careless gaiety,
with the silken curtains drawn across Windows through which they did not see the
ominous forces moving in the dark night of the common life of Russia. They had, he
said, the indoor mind. Their thoughts and imagination did not go out into the
terrible open spaces where the new forces of change were gathering.
The indoor mind is not in our American setting as carefree as was the
Russian leisure class of fifty years ago. The handwriting on the wall is too visible
for comfort; the sounds of the modern world too menacing for those who have ears and
hear. It is later than you think. Nevertheless, Struthers Bart from spending
summers on the coast of Maine with some of our American species of the indoor mind,
caustically hut wittily ohserves that if their nerve were equal to the wish they
would advertise for candidates for President of the United States in some such words
as these:
"WANTED: A BUTLER!"
"WANTED, for service in Washington, combination valet and butler.
White, Protestant, willing to learn, accustomed to taking orders.
Respectful manners more important than brains."
If democracy has nevertheless at intervals occupied a guest-room in our
national household, it has been because men like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Cleve¬
land, Roosevelt and Wilson refused to be flunkies to plutocracy and did not think
of the nation*s resources as an exclusive happy hunting ground for the privileged
few. The many who cannot afford the indoor mind still judge about the quality of
their President by what they know about the men who "gang up" on him.
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A quarter of a century after tlie Declaration of Independence, Liberty ms
still mobbed in America "with the zealous support of the Federal courts, to the .
applause of the Church." Powerful attempts were made to disfranchise all "paupers,
vagabonds and outlaws", and to place the voting power "in the hands to which it
belongs, the proprietofs of the country". "Paupers and vagahonds" referred, of
course, to the poor; "outlaws" delicately identified those whom even Mrs. Washington
ungraciously referred to as the "filthy democrats", those who, in Lincoln1s words,
believed in "government of the people, by the people and for the people", - the very
people whose leaders were then Jefferson and Madison. And don't you like the charm¬
ingly frank estimate of men of means in designating themselves the "proprietors of
the country.'" — the nation bought and paid for, as it were. Let those who care to
draw the modern parallels have their fun. The fact remains that in our national past/
which we are apt to think of as gloriously idealistic, idealism, like justice, ever
had to fight its way through to victory.
CATACLYSMIC EVENTS IN CONTEMPORARY HI STORY
I ha,ve gone to some length to picture this background because, as Reinhold
Niebuhr says, "confused and tormented by cataclysmic events in contemporary history,
the 'modern mind' faces the disintegration of its civilization in alternate moods of
fear and hope, of faith and despair." It is difficult to be complacent about life
today in America or anywhere else. Not that we have made more mistakes than the rest
of the world, but that we have packed them into such a comparatively brief span, not
yet removed from the violence of the frontier, that at present we sit as on a powder
barrel with the fuse burning. Mr. A. P. Giannini of the Bank of America, if he was
accurately quoted recently, understands this,
"The day of concentrated wealth in a few hands is past.
The people will no longer stand for a rule that makes the poor
poorer and the rich richer. We must realize that the rank and
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file is entitled to more than it has received or there will be
an uprising*. We don't want to go through the experience of
Spain and Prance."
Mr. Giannini's words are "news" because so different from the characteristic
attitude of men of great wealth. Consequently, while Mr. Giannini and a multitude
of other leaders in and out of the business world clearly read the signs of the
times, enough counter pressure is brought to bear by whatever means happen to be at
hand so that necessary, drastic changes in the system itself are slow in coming, per¬
haps too slow, for we are going through a chapter of "cataclysmic events in contempo¬
rary history", and the chapter is yet far from finished. Our best hope is that we
may in part yet write the rest of that chapter ourselves, if we will. A vital part
of it will have to concern itself with labor and in California especially with agri¬
cultural labor.
Sixty-five years ago California wa,s still mostly engaged in general farming
by white resident owner-operators drawn chiefly from our Eastern states and from
North European countries which also supplied most of the 16,231 farm laborers
recorded by the 1870 census. Irrigation farming began in San Joaquin Valley soon
after that, but it was not until the late eighties that the development of the
refrigerator car made it commercially profitable to raise California crops for
Eastern markets. The third necessary condition for successful factory methods in
California agriculture, beyond irrigation and refrigeration, was cheap labor. The
Chinese who had come in with the gold rush and the building of the railroads sup¬
plied such a source of cheap labor. By 1885 the State Bureau of Labor estimated
that seven-eighths of the agricultural laborers in California were Chinese. The pro-
ceedings of the California Bruit Growers' Convention (1907, p. 69) indicate in. summar;
why the growers were so fond of them:
"The Chinese when they were here were ideal. They w'ere
patient, plodding, and uncomplaining in the performance of
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the most menial service. They submitted to anything, never
violating a contract. The exclusion acts drove them out."
As a portrait of the perfect coolie type of labor this description is
valuable. However, the "ideal" source of cheap labor was dried up not so much by the
exclusion acts as by the unintelligent discrimination against the Chinese by both
employers and the labor unions which caused the California-born generations of
Chinese-Americans to prefer to settle in the cities or to cultivate the fields
themselves.
The Chinese were followed a generation ago by the Japanese of whom the
grower already quoted was not so fond:
"The Japanese now coming in are a tricky and cunning lot,
who break contracbs and become quite independent. They are not
organized into unions, but their clannishness seems to operate
as a union would. One trick is to contract work at a certain
price and then in the rush of harvest, threaten to strike unless
wages are raised."
The wages offered, $1.40 per day with board and $1.60 per day without
board, may not have been without influence on the determination of the Japanese to
strike. Nevertheless in general the large growers favored them, so much so that
when the anti-alien land laws were passed in 1913 they circumvented them: "the land
instead of being leased to the Japanese farmer directly, was leased to him via his
native-born child." (Migratory Labor in California, P. 23)
The next large alien importation into the field of California agricultural
labor was the Mexican. According to the 1930 census they were by far the largest
non-European immigrant population of California, 6.5$. Because Mexican peons could
stand the hot climate of central and southern California better and would accept wages
lower than other agricultural workers, they had for some time been encouraged to
enter in growing numbers. The records of the Commission of Immigration and Housing
indicate the following growth in the percentage of Mexicans found among the Labor
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Camp population of California:
1915
1920
1928
1933-34
28.9$
32.5$
For the past ten years Mexicans have heen the most important source of
agricultural labor in Southern California, and two-thirds of the growers use them.
This is especially true of the large growers, whether controlled hy absentee owners,
by powerful shipper-grower corporations or by resident owners.
There is also a number of Filipino s among the agricultural workers in
California, but in the first place they are young, male and single (whereas the
Mexicans come often with large families), and in the second place they have never
come into California in such large numbers. During the nineteen twenties only
31,092 Filipinos were admitted into California v/hich is probably less than one-third
the number of Mexicans admitted during the same period officially (84,030) and
unofficially. Moreover, while the Mexicans are often encouraged to remain, the Fili¬
pinos have increasingly been encouraged to leave, despite the fact that they have
been willing to accept lower wages than all others except, perhaps, the Mexicans.
It is the Mexican group which at present depresses the wages and living conditions
of native American labor more than any other group of agricultural workers in
California. The report of Governor Young's fact-finding committee ("Mexicans in
California", 1930) interestingly reveals that while the majority of small growers
(59$ of those with less than 20 acres) expressed their preference for white labor,
the great majority of the larger growers (83$ of those with more than 80 acres)
preferred non-European immigrants. In casual conversation the large growers still
frankly favor letting in Mexicans .by all means. When the question of placing Mexi¬
cans on a quota basis came up, two-thirds of the small farmers expressed themselves
for it, but 78$ of the large growers were against it.
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However, into this already complicated situation a new factor has lately
entered. Since the beginning of the depression in 1929, and especially since the
drought of 1933, thousands of fanilies have come out into California, especially from
Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona and Arkansas, in search of work. Tor the first time since
the industrialization of California agriculture a considerable supply of native white
American labor has thereby become available. The Commission of Immigration and
Housing estimated at the end of 1934 that with this change in the composition of
available labor, roughly fifty per cent of the labor camp population is native white
American, with about one-third Mexican and the balance made up of Filipinos (ll$),
Japanese (3%) and Chinese (3%). How to keep these native American drought refugees
from being forced into becoming the superfluous, wage-depressing over-supply of labor
which has been a traditional requirement of those who control and direct the factory
methods in California agriculture is one of the socio-economic problems of the
present. This is neither the time nor the place for a thorough discussion of this
problem. I can only call attention to the problem. My chief desire here this evening
is to present to you some of the characteristics of these recent ne\,vcomers in
California agriculture from such observations as we have been able to make, especially
in the Resettlement Administration Migratory Labor Camps, and to comment critically
but briefly on the working and living conditions which govern them.
The families who seek admission to our camps are almost entirely (98$)
native born, white American families who come to seek work, not relief. Most of them
hail from the Southwest, chiefly Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Arizona and California.
More than four-fifths have been farmers, landless tenants, share-croppers or farm
laborers; and even those who have more recently earned their living as carpenters,
painters, electricians or mechanics have almost invariably been born and raised in
the country. Many come single, but more arrive with their families. They travel
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by any old car and are usually willing to tackle any old jot) which promise s to cover
their needs. In our contacts with them we have found them on the whole sober and
industrious, untutored hut resourceful. Where many of us should fail, they make
good. They are often reticent, hut on closer acquaintance appear courteous, neigh¬
borly and deeply religious.
When given responsihility they prove themselves responsible. One of the
functions of our camps, for example, has been to create conditions which would
restore to these battered migrants a sense of their own worth, self-respect and
ability to help solve their own problems. As we are dealing with a group of native
Americans whose entire background and past experiences are close to our oldest
national heritage of mutual aid and local autonomy it was natural to assume that in
the management of the camps the largest possible measure of self-government should be
granted the campers. The governing body in camp, therefore, is the Campers* Committee
for which each camp unit elects a delegate subject to recall by a majority of two-
thirds of the constituents whom he represents. All camp problems of law and order,
disputes among individuals or groups, discipline, all controversial questions, are
handled by this group. As an experiment in functional democracy this procedure has
been strikingly successful; we have had no problem which could not be solved within
the group itself through what amounts for all practical purposes to their "town
council". Consequently, there has been no need for the intervention of the local
constabulary any more than for the provision of public relief. Many of these worthy
but poor citizens would settle as resident, property-owning, tax-paying citizens if
given a chance. As a matter of fact, several have done so.
However, such is the quality and capacity of the native American labor
which at present constitutes half of the migratory labor camp population. I should
not wonder if within the next dozen years or less the whole base of California
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agriculture will "be completely changed. The roads to coolie and peon lat>or are
closed, — from the Orient, partly "by the exclusion hills, partly "because of the new
regimes in China and the Philippines; and from Mexico by the provisions of their
democratic government for drastic social and economic reconstruction which promises
to make it increasingly attractive for Mexicans to remain in Mexico. Hence the
prospect is that California crops will soon be entirely harvested by native American
workers, mostly white, who will strive to obtain and maintain the American standard
of living and who will succeed. Por the good of the commonwealth let us hope that
these new agricultural workers will be welcomed into home-ownership as quickly and as
often as possible, to reduce both for themselves and the State, the problems involved
in labor migrations. Such a change from migratory aliens to resident native labor
will be no less basic than the change, half a century ago, to intensive agriculture,
supported by irrigation and refrigeration, for a recent study by the State Relief
Administration estimates that at present sixty per cent of the people engaged in
California agriculture are completely propertyless. "They are wage earners pure and
simple.11 That is to say, by introducing factory methods into agriculture, we have
developed a marginal population in rural life which suffers most of the limitations
and insecurities of a city proletariat. The trend is, of course, not confined to
California though it is particularly conspicuous here; nor do I mean to suggest that
factory methods in agriculture are necessarily undesirable. On the contrary, I think
that ultimately some crops will be found to lend themselves best to group farming by
machinery over vast areas; but I do want to suggest that to continue trends toward
extreme concentration of private ownership of land and equipment on a constantly
diminishing number of hands at the cost of depriving a growing number of agricultural
workers of even enough land for subsistence living, is to create and sustain circum-
stances which are no more conducive to social stability than they are to economic
progress
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The wages and living conditions of agricultural workers are depressed also
"by the constant cost of migration, ty the tendency of some large growers to solicit
an over-supply of labor, and ty the irregularity of employment. The State survey
states that "only an over-abundant and economically and socially depressed class of
latorers could te forced into migratory conditions."
Those who speak most readily about the crushing burden of wages in
California farming either overlook or forget that while it may be true that the
average expenditure for hired labor in California is $1433 per farm as against an
average of $363 for the country, it is also true that the chief reason for this is
the longer average work season of California as compared with the rest of the nation,
plus the greater value of crops, which means greater ability to pay. The number of
California farms with a crop output of $20,000 or over is nearly ten times as large
as the percentage for the rest of the country. And though wages may vaiy from $1.50
to $3.00 per day worked, or even on a piece work basis exceed that, such figures give
no indication of a migratory laborer1s income apart from some accurate knowledge of
the number of days worked. Fortunately we have come upon one field worker whose wife
has kept fairly complete records on the leaves of a calendar, showing the family
earnings and living expenses from the middle of December to the beginning of
September.
During the 261 days recorded, the husband worked 165 days and his wife 61
days. Ydiere their earnings were separately recorded, he averaged $3.35 per day and
she.averaged $2.96. The average family earnings were $4.67 per day worked and $2.73
per day for the whole period. The combined earnings of man and wife for 8-§- mon th s
were $772.01, equivalent to nearly $1100 for twelve months. This is, of course, more
than this particular family will actually earn, and it is considerably above the
average migratory workers’ income. The national Labor Helations Board study in
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Los Angeles County points out that the migratory worker can only find work for an
average of thirty weeks a year on the hasis of which the SERA computes his earnings
per year at around $360.00. Dr. Paul Taylor estimates the average annual income for
migratory workers at between $350 and $400. The State Relief Administration of
California, after careful study of numerous family situations, reports:
"In each of the last six years the largest number of .
agricultural workers had employment for only half the year.
In 1930, 18 per cent had steady work; in 1935, only 2 per
cent had no period of unemployment. The average yearly
earnings per family group, while only $381 in 1930, decline!
to $289 in 1935."
"Earnings from agriculture were not supporting laboring
families six years ago and the need for a relief subsidy has
steadily increased. A thoroughly bad situation is becoming
even worse."
According to the SRA #4 allowance, the average (4.5 person) family included
in their study needed in 1935 at least $780 a year, which would allow $36.08 for
food, $15.50 for rent and $4.50 for clothing per month. The Heller Committee for
Research in Social Economics of the University of California thinks of $1080 as the
amount needed even by a dependent family of five persons, basing the budget on
November, 1935, prices. As a matter of fact our extraordinary migrant already re-
ferred to only found it possible to spend $18.97 per month on food, $3.60 per month
for rent and $3,45 per month for clothing. Let any householder here present estimate
how inadequate these figures \rould be to maintain the "American Standard of Living"
in our own immediate families, and you will have a pretty good picture of one of the
chief problems in our present situation: the inability of the masses to purchase
what they need, resulting in the consequent inability of industry to maintain itself
steadily on a basis of mass production. If for the purposes of the present discussion
we were to accept our extraordinary migrant's $1100 as average, it would mean that
even under the most favorable circumstances now present, a migrant family reaches
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only half of the "well above $2000 per family" level of life which even such a con¬
servative source as the Brookings Institute now holds to be potentially within reach
of every family, based not only on our present needs as consumers but on our present
capacity to produce. The Brookings Institute finds the two difficulties in the way
of our realising this potential level of goods and services to be our arbitrarily
restricted outputs for the sake of greater profit and the basic maladjustment in the
distribution of the national income which is only a different way of saying that our
chief problems cannot be solved without drastic revision of our present profit
economy.
SOME TENTATIVE EINDINGS
Henry Thoreau wrote in his Journal: "I am sorry to think that you do not
get a man*s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed
with some bitterness." Now eighty years later it is, of course, still true that what
most offends us provokes our bitterest criticism. In trying to present to you what
I sincerely believe to be some of the truth about the conditions under which migra¬
tory laborers live and work, I am frank to admit that they have serious provoked me.
But believing as I do that these provoking circumstances are less the fault of any
group of greedy and selfish individuals than the consequences of an obsolete system,
I have tried to present the facts without bitterness.
Moreover, I have deliberately thought of this paper as a bare introduction
to an enormous subject. This is. a preface to a prodigious problem and does not pre¬
tend to any adequate consideration of the problem itself. Better men than I must
examine the problem thoroughly and urge upon you its inescapable logic. Meanwhile,
you will not esqoect me to present any final conclusions for your consideration.
However, lest I leave myself open to Stevenson*s charge against the fog-horn (that,
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while it proclaims the existence of a fog, it does nothing to dispel it), I should
like to call attention to a few tentative findings which suggest themselves:
(1) We cannot safely continue policies which inflict much unfair hardship
on a considerable number of our fellow citizens. We have tonight primarily considered
the needs of agricultural workers, but we must not overlook that our problem involves
all of us as consumers and many of us as growers and shippers. Our primary concern,
therefore, should be to obtain all the relevant facts involved in the situation in
order tha,t we may carefully and objectively study them with a, view to determining
not only what needs to be done but what at present can be done.
(2) In proceeding on some such fair-minded search after the facts, we may
discover that we both can and should demand that present rules and regulaticns
governing sanitary living should be enforced so that the Commission on Housing and
Immigration may be the helpful and effective arm of the State it was intended to be.
Por wherever crops are now raised with the grower*s profit the only aim, living and
working conditions are often intolerable and inexcusable.
(3) Just as bad working conditions prevail whenever profits are considered
more important than people, so poor, living conditions and malnutrition result from
inadequate wages. Any solvent enterprise should be expected, as a matter of course,
to pay wages which will maintain such a level of life as is now commonly recognized
as an American standard. "The older generation of living Americans," says John
Maynard Keynes, "accomplished a great task of solving the problem of how to produce
abundantly. But a not less difficult task remains — to discover how to distribute
to the poor and needy the fruits of this potential abundance."
(4) To tackle that second difficult task is to tackle among other things
the problem of how to stabilize the whole fruit and vegeta-ble inaustry at levels
which will afford both reasonable returns to growers and adequate wages to workers.
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; Whenever such, necessary changes loom la,rge, someone can "be depended on to bring up
the Constitution as if it were a scarecrow and not a technique whereby to enable the
machinery of the State to keep step with the changing needs of the people. We need
then to remember the observation of Mr. Justice Holmes that "the Constitution was not
designed to establish for all time any particular economic theory." Economic
theories, like all other theories, constantly change, and "the paramount right of
public neeessity" has constantly justified legislation which limited the rights'and
liberties of individuals.
(5) Meanwhile, when living or working conditions become sufficiently in¬
tolerable, labor disturbances often result, usually accompahied by gross violations
of civic rights. Wien those critical periods occur, as they do at intervals, we
should even more than at any other time jealously guard priceless civil liberties by
claiming them for all citisens alike, whether they be workers or growers,.or con-
sumers not directly engaged either in growing or tending fruits and vegetables. And
we must thus actively, and with constant, great determination, defend our heritage
of civil liberties or risk losing them for ourselves.
In thus setting out to produce social change by common consent let us not
be deflected by those who in any age seek chiefly to stay all changes and halt all
progress by inventing slogans and epithets wherewith to damn those whose views they
do not share and cannot otherwise answer. At present "communist" is a word with
which to close men*s minds to reason. Yet it is bandied around so easily as to lose
all meaning. Some years ago, to declare one*s self a Pacifist was to become self-
exiled from all respectable society. At the dawn of our democracy even Mrs. Washing¬
ton referrea contemptuously to the "filthy democrats", and time was when to be a
Puritan was to be under grave suspicion. If we must be labeled, we who think with
Teddy Roosevelt that this country won't be fit for any of us to live in until it is
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fit for all of us to live in, we who cannot peacefully enjoy our own comforts while
"forgotten" men and families are in desperate need though working; if we must he
labeled, I say, why not label us "Paritans", for we shall be in the true succession
of those early Americans of whom Sherman said that they were marked by dissatisfac¬
tion with the past, courage to break sharply with it, readiness to accept discipline
in order to attain a better life, and a serious desire to make that better life
prevail. At the very least, as a nation we must pitch our battles on that level to
be worthy of the pioneers whose kinship we claim and of whose courage and resource¬
fulness, we boast.