The Howe Messenger (Howe, Tex.), Vol. 16, No. 14, Ed. 1 Friday, April 7, 1939 Page: 2 of 8
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: Howe Area Newspaper Collection and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the UNT Libraries.
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THE HOWE MESSENGER
Friday, April 7, f 1939
CCC at Crossroads on 6th Birthday;
A Iternatives: Militariz Death
Least Criticized of All
New Deal Units, Camps
Have Good Record
By JOSEPH W. LaBINE
Franklin Roosevelt had
been President only five days
before he called a select
group of youth leaders into
his office. By April 6, 1933—
exactly six years ago—the
Civilian- Conservation Corps
was created as one of the
first New Deal agencies.
Today, as some 250,000
youths in almost 1,500 camps
celebrate the sixth anniver-
sary of their benefaction, CCC
has hit rough waters. By the
time congress adjourns this
least criticized of all Roose-
velt agencies may either be sen-
tenced to death or changed into a
semi-military army of unemployed
youth.
CCC has done such a good job
that strong New Deal critics like
Henry Link, New York psychologist,
praises it in his “Return to Reli-
gion” and “Rediscovery of Man.”
In six years some 2,000,000 boys
have gone through its routine, one-
fourth of therq emerging to take
permanent private jobs. Some of
the rest re-enrolled.
Most Recruits Needy.
Here’s how CCC works: Its mem-
bership comes almost exclusively
from underprivileged homes—boys
who have left school, can’t get jobs
and need both moral and physical
‘training. They enroll and leave
the group every three months, so
there is a constant turnover. Last
October, for example, 59,000 new en-
rollees were accepted, averaging
18.6 years of age. (They must be
between 17 and 23).
CCC places these boys in camps,
gives them $30 a month of which
$22 must be sent home to needy par-
ents, and teaches them not only the
rudiments of hard work but a lot of
“extra-curricular” activities as
well. Reveille sounds at 6 a. m.
Breakfast comes at 6:20 and inspec-
tion at 7:15. By 7:30 they are on
the job, remaining until 4 p. m.
with the exception of an hour off
for lunch. From then until 10 p. m.
there is time for dinner, amuse-
ments and recreation. It isn’t a
hard life, nor is there very strict
supervision; certainly CCC enrollees
aren't nigh well ready for active
army duty, as Civilian Chief Robert
Fechner would have us believe.
The lads get vocational training
during evening hours. They learn
crafts like photography, radio, cab-
inetmaking, leather work, blue
printing and landscaping. But the
training apparently is not very effi-
cient because American labor un-
ions object to having craftsmen
turned out by CCC to the detriment
of their apprentice system.
Educational Accomplishments.
But craft or no craft, CCC does
good work. Last year 8,817 illiter-
ates learned to read and write, 3,517
finished grammar* grades, 634 fin-
ished high school and 13 got col-
lege diplomas. Almost all the youths
take school work, either by corre-
spondence or from part-time resi-
dence instructors.
If CCC enrollees range from 17 to
23 and come from underprivileged
homes, they rise from the very stra-
tum of youth responsible in 1937 for
13 per cent of our murders, 28 per
cent of our robbefies, 42 per cent
of our burglaries, 51 per cent of our
auto thieves and 21 per cent of our
sex criminals.
Youth camps are not a New Deal
invention. In 1930 California tried
*
II
i
is
fi
#■
Bruckart’s Washington Digest
Find Joker in Department of
Agriculture Appropriation Bill
It’s the Soon-to-Be-Famous Food Stamps and Here’s
How Advanced Thinkers Think It Will Work;
Billion Dollars Is All They Want.
By WILLIAM BRUCKART
WNU Service, National Press Bldg., Washington, D. C.
ABOVE—Silhouettes of
service, two CCC youths fight-
ing a forest fire. RIGHT—
l\ew enrollees leaving for
camp. There were 59,000 of
these young men accepted last
October but the current en-
rollment will be smaller be-
cause CCC is being forced to
retrench.
the scheme, doubtless getting the
idea from the English “hinksey dig-
gers” of whom Philosopher John
Ruskin said their two-mile road was
“the worst in three kingdoms.” By
1933 work camps had existed in at
least six European countries for an
average of 10 years; contrary to
popular belief, Germany had them
long before Hitler came to power.
Set Enviable Work Record.
What have they done constructive-
ly? As a sample of what CCC costs,
the current fiscal year’s appropria-
tion is $350,000,000, and the nation
should expect to get something tan-
gible in return. It has. CCC has
planted some 1,800,000,000 trees and
built 4,000 fire towers to protect
them. It has strung 75,000 miles of
telephone from lookout post to watch
tower. The country has 132,000 miles
of new roadway and 5,000,000 dams
to check erosion. There are count-
less new recreation centers and wild
life habitat has been safeguarded
to protect these innocents from the
ravages of civilization.
CCC has also provided an emer-
gency army. Its membership has
done yeoman service in fighting for-
est fires, rescue work, flood relief
and rehabilitation after disasters.
The Red Cross recalls how, in the
Mississippi-Ohio floods of January
and February, 1937, more than 22,-
000 enrollees, hundreds of reserve
officers and technical personnel
were rushed to danger points.
Whither CCC? In his budget mes-
sage last January the President rec-
ommended a slash of $120,000,000 in
the corps’ budget (from $350,000,000
to $230,000,000). This means camps
and personnel must be reduced,
camps from 1,500 to 1,200 and men
from 300,000 to 250,000. This reduc-
tion is already under way and the
April enrollment will be smaller
than usual. Worst of all, CCC will
die naturally on June 30, 1940, unless
extended.
Militarized Youth Camps?
Military minded congressmen are
already thinking about this, wonder-
ing if CCC can’t be retained and
made an integral part of our de-
fense program. This means adop-
tion of the plan proposed by.Ken-
tucky’s Rep. Andrew Jackson May,
which would provide for not less
than two, nor more than five hours
of military training for CCC en-
rollees each week. The immediate
result has been a protest, hot only
from anti-New Dealers but from
Hitler Inherits Low Birth Rate
In Czech Grab; V. S. Figures Up
rTTVTWTn A "POT TC i mt. ...... *
MINNEAPOLIS.—Without bache-
lor taxes, marriage subsidies, or
baby bonuses, the United States
J>irth rate has climbed to 17.9 and
approximate equality with Germa-
ny’s birth rate, which has fallen
steadily in recent years. Further-
more, Germany has now annexed
the two lowest birth rates in Eu-
rope, in Austria and Czechoslovakia,
probably pulling the present aver-
age for the whole German empire
to a point actually below the cur-
rent U. S. rate, according to a study
just completed by Northwestern Na-
tional Life Insurance company.
The German birth rate, in spite of
that government’s efforts to promote
marriage and production of chil-
dren, fell from 22.1 in 1921-25 to 18.8
in 1937. The 1938 figure is expected
to show a further decline, reflecting
the lowered marriage rate and the
economic straits of the German pop-
ulation. The Austrian birth rate
dropped from an average of 22.2 per
thousand of population in the 1921-25
period, to 12.8 for the year 1937;
the Czechoslovakian rate fell in the
same time from 27.1 to 13.3. The
birth rate in the United States de-
clined from 22.5 in the 1921-25 pe-
riod to a low of 16.5 in 1933, but
recovered to 17.0 in 1937 and then
jumped to 17.9 for the year of 1938,
the highest figure since 1931.
The Italian birth rate, in spite of
Mussolini’s many edicts, declined
from 29.7 in the 1921-25 period to
22.7 as of 1937, still considerably
above the U. S. rate. However, 110
out of every thousand Italian babies
born in 1937 died in their first year
of life, approximately twice the U.
S. infant mortality of 54.4 per thou-
sand. Germany’s infant mortality
figure is almost as favorable as that
of the United States, 64 per thou-
sand live births, but the Czecho-
slovakian rate is the highest in Eu-
rope 122, and the Austrian figure is
93 deaths per thousand.
Also without legislative promo-
tion, the U. S. marriage rate is the
highest in the world, averaging in
excess of 10 per thousand of popula-
tion per year for the past several
years. Meanwhile Germany’s mar-
riage rate had shrunk from 11.1 in
1934 to 9.1 in 1937; the Austrian
rate is 6.5 per thousand, the Czecho-
slovakian 8.3. The Italian rate is
8.6, having climbed from 6.7 in 1935.
Of the two major European de-
mocracies, the United Kingdom
shows a drop in birth rate from
20.4 for the 1921-25 period to 15.3 in
1937—which represents a halt in the
decline, as the rate for 1936 was
15.3 also. France’s birth rate de-
clined from 19.3 in the 1921-25 period
to 15 in 1936 and to 14.7 in 1937.
what are jokingly referred to as the
“tabbies”—pacifists.
You can paint a horrible picture
of this militarized CCC’s potentiali-
ties, if you let your imagination run
away. You can see several million
unemployed youths saved from hun-
ger and privation, who would rally
’round the banner of the man who’s
responsible for it. You can see a
political army, if you wish, armed,
trained and disciplined but feeling
greater loyalty to a political clique
than to the nation itself. But CCC’s
militarization can be safeguarded
against such evils.
Dangerous? Perhaps, but maybe
it’s even more dangerous to contem-
plate American youth’s fate without
some agency to keep idle minds out
of mischief. CCC’s 1936-39 budget
of $350,000,000 is far smaller than
our annual national crime bill,
which approximates $15,000,000,000.
Gossip Proves
Boon to Nazi
Propagandists
The highly efficient system that
keeps Nazi Germany’s hierarchy in-
formed on public opinion is merely
a magnification of over-the-fence
gossip. Under Propaganda Minister
Dr. Joseph Goebbels, who has fol-
lowed Adolf Hitler loyally from the
first, the Nazi government gets just
as accurate a cross section of pub-
lic opinion as the American public
gets from its polls.
It is Herr Goebbels’ job to weigh
this opinion, find it wanting and act
to remedy the situa-
tion. All told he has
2,000,000 government
employees serving
him daily as gossip
mongers, and be-
lf| yond these are the
f lift I storm troopers and
m «***#■ |
''-My ' other organizations
iph^' who consider it a
mjt * jmm sacred duty to keep
|jff higher-ups informed.
llllSO jMHow effective the
system is can be
Goebbels shown by the una-
nimity of pro-Hitler sentiment, which
rose from 98.79 per cent in 1936—
which Der Fuehrer occupied the
Rhineland—to 99.028 per cent when
he accomplished anschluss with Aus-
tria last year.
At the base of this information
system is the “block” leader whose
job is to care for approximately 50
German families. He preaches the
Nazi gospel, tries to convert the un-
believing and makes himself family
counsellor. There are some 400,000
of these block leaders, who have
little difficulty getting information
from apartment janitors, porters,
servants and “friends” of the fami-
lies he observes.
Block leaders are responsible to
“cell” leaders, of whom there are
70,000, each with about six blocks
under his supervision. Step by step
the information climbs upward un-
til it reaches Herr Goebbels, and
eventually Hitler himself.
Adding to this complex informa-
tion system are 767,000 of the labor
front, 50,000 political leaders, 290,-
000 concerned with the relief fund,
88,000 agricultural workers, 95,000
in the women’s auxiliary and sev-
eral miscellaneous groups.
© Western Newspaper Union. /
WASHINGTON.—It was not so
long ago—six or e*ight years, per-
haps—that the annual cost of the
department of agriculture to the
taxpayers of the country amounted
to something like $40,000,000. There
was some talk even in those days
about the drain upon the federal
treasury resulting from department
of agriculture operations. The to-
tals were questioned; many persons
wondered whether the politicians
were justified in voting that much
money to the department because
there was little to show in the way
of results. That is, congressmen
could show very little except the
packages of seeds sent out to their
districts.
It was in those days, however,
that the department of agriculture
was seeking to operate effectively.
Farming was not regarded by the
folks who used to run the depart-
ment as a subject for politics. The
departmental officials were going
about their business, rendering as-
sistance in the form of advice and
promoting better farming—when the
farmers asked for it.
I was reminded of those days re-
cently when the house appropria-
tions committee brought out for
consideration the appropriations bill
for the department of agriculture
for the fiscal year that begins next
July 1. A Rip Van Winkle who could
have slept through the last 10 years
Would have believed, truly, that he
was in another world. The new
money bill for the department con-
tains a total of more than $1,000,-
000,000. The measure, indeed, ranks
as the third largest appropriations
bill of this year when altogether
there is likely to be almost $10,000,-
.000,000 appropriated.
What Is Planned to Do
With a Billion Dollars
’ It is extremely difficult to realize
what a billion dollars is. That is,
it is difficult for me to understand
what it is. I can write the figures
glibly enough. But to comprehend
that sum of money, or a billion of
anything, is something almost out-
side the pale of human knowledge.
Yet that is what the department of
agriculture seeks this year, and here
is how that money is supposed to
be divided:
$429,560,000 for soil conservation
payments.
$250,000,000 for parity payments.
$191,000,000 for road building.
$21,462,000 for soil and moisture
conservation and operations.
$24,984,000 for the farm tenancy
program.
$7,175,000 for eradicating tubercu-
losis and Bang’s disease.
$6,996,570 for the weather bureau
and its services.
$4,978,000 for retiring submarginal
lands.
$1,631,000 for soil and moisture in-
vestigation. ,
$1,500,000 for wild life restoration.
$300,000 for co-operative farm for-
estry.
$250,000 for the water facilities
program.
There were some other odds and
ends embracing items of 20 or 40
or 90 thousand dollars, amounts so
small that men almost smirk be-
cause they have forgotten how to
speak in such limited numbers.
’ Then, and here is the joker which
is hidden away. I really should not
say “hidden” because no reference
is made in the agriculture bill lan-
guage. The joker is that there are
almost countless millions of other
dollars with which the department
can play around, including approxi-
mately $100,000,000 of money for use
in getting rid of farm surpluses.
That is the money from which Sec-
retary Wallace and his advanced
thinkers will draw funds for the
soon-to-be-famous food stamps.
The country got its belly full of
blue eagles before the NRA was
plowed under. But the undis-
tinguished, yet befitting, end that
came to the NRA blue eagle has
not deterred the advanced thinkers
from attempting something else that
is blue—a blue stamp for relief food.
Yes, relief workers will have the
same wages as before, but they will
receive free blue stamps with which
to buy surplus products for foods.
How Wallace’s Men Think
Blue Food Stamp Will Work
I must write a little bit about that
blue food stamp, about how the ad-
vanced thinkers think it will work,
before I report on the main depart-
ment of agriculture appropriation
bill.
It seems to be Secretary Wallace’s
idea of a more abundant life to des-
ignate certain farm products each
week as being “surplus” and to help
get them off of the glutted market
by making them available for relief
workers’ kitchens. The first trial
of the scheme will be limited to six
cities. In those areas, the relief
supervisors will be supplied with
books of blue stamps. They are
rather pretty stamps, too. Each
WPA worker will get a book of
stamps of a specified value. He
can take those stamps to his gro-
cery store and use them just like
they were quarters, or half dollars
or dollars. The groceryman will
take them and he will be paid hon-
est-to-goodness United States mon-
ey for them. Thus will the surplus
stocks of food products be reduced
and the remainder will bring better
prices. Or so say the advanced
thinkers.
When I read the explanation of
the program that was sent me by
one of Mr. Wallace’s publicity staff,
the first thing that struck me was
the extreme discrimination that will
result. It is easy to see. Take any
man who is trying to hold down a
private job. It may be paying him
only $50 a month, or about the same
as the relief worker gets. Natural-
ly, he would like to be making more
money. Who wouldn’t? But he sticks
on his job and stays off of relief.
Then, when he gets paid he goes to
the grocery store to buy some food.
He pays cash, and gets his food.
About the same moment a relief
worker walks in, orders the same
list of groceries, perhaps, and pays
for them out of a stamp book. It ap-
pears to me that the hard bitten
private worker is going to find little
solace in remaining on his job. It
strikes me he—and millions of oth-
ers—are going to be resentful of
such tactics.
See Possibility of Creating
A Lot of Bootleggers
There is another phase of the pic-
ture which was mentioned to me by
Representative Hope of Kansas, one
of the ranking members of the house
committee on agriculture. He sug-
gested that the blue stamps are go-
ing to create a lot of bootleggers.
For example: the relief workers are
not permitted to buy liquor with the
stamps. They won’t be redeemed
if they are used to buy anything
but food. However, Mr. Hope could
see no reason why a relief worker
couldn’t use the stamps to buy liq-
uor from a liquor store and the liq-
uor store owner might possibly be
a crook. It is possible, you know.
He might own a food store, too, or
he might have an understanding
with a food store owner who would
take the stamps at a few pennies
discount. What is to stop such pro-
cedure? It’s your guess.
The whole thing strikes me as be-
ing so silly as to defy one’s powers
of imagination. It is dealt with.here
at such length only because I re-
gard it as typical of a great many
things that are going on within the
department of agriculture for which
more than $1,000,000,000 is soon to
be appropriated for a year’s opera-
tions. The blue stamp scheme is
destined to fail, even as the plow-
ing under of crops and the slaugh-
tering of 6,000,000 pigs was doomed
a-bornin’ and as the limitation of
crop production was certain to flare
back on those who were sucked into
the maelstrom of nit wit plans.
Now, lest I be misunderstood, let
me restate with emphasis that there
is good work that the department
can do, and has been doing. Road
building appropriations, for in-
stance. Where would this country
be had there been no attempt to
build usable roads? Who can say
that eradication of tuberculosis and
Bang’s disease among live stock is
not a valuable aid to farmers?
Learn Beautiful Phrases
Bat at Rather High Cost
I am not prepared to say that the
wild life restoration program is
wholly bad. It seems probable that
the country ought to rebuild the
wild life stocks that have been wan-
tonly destroyed in the days when
people could go out and shoot ducks
or deer or what have you without
thought of the morrow. It is a pro-
gram for which considerable justi-
fication can be advanced.
But it is to be noted that most of
these items are small. Neither the
department of agriculture adminis-
tration nor the members of the
house and the senate have seen fit
to do more than maintain them. I
have seen the inmates of the Capi-
tol squirm and fuss and scowl about
some of them, while swallowing the
items reaching into hundreds of mil-
lions with the greatest of glee.
As I said, it was not so long'ago
that department of agriculture ap-
propriations were regarded as huge
if they totalled 40 millions. As far
as I can see, agriculture is no bet-
ter off today than it was in those
years. Of course, a very great
number of farmers have learned
that the beautiful phrases like “the
more abundant life” and such, are
meaningless. But I venture the as-
sertion that the education has been
rather expensive.
From all of these things it is
surely made to appear Jthat there
are some large Ethiopian gentlemen
in the wood pile. When the politi-
cians and the advanced thinkers
joined hands to manage agriculture,
just then federal expenses for the
department of agriculture began
zooming upward.
© Western Newspaper Union.
WHO’S
NEWS
THIS
WEEK
By LEMUEL F. PARTON
'^J’EW YORK.—There is an Anthony
Edenish flavor about the way
Undersecretary of State Sumner
Welles denounces Germany in the
„ absence of
Our Welles No Secretary Hull,
Flop in Poll of and there is an
Best Dressers Eaen,ish fla,v°r
about our Mr.
Welles himself. He is tall. He is lean.
He has a wee, precise mustache, and
why nobody has picked him in a
best-dressed poll is a mystery. His
long, big nose is perfectly cut, too,
and not a hair is out of place in the
thinning pompadour that roaches,
back from a domed forehead.
This is not, however, to hint
that the( undersecretary is any-
thing less than 100 per cent
American. He was horn in New
York City 46 years or so ago.
President Roosevelt’s own Gro-
ton and Harvard shaped him,
and he is at home in four or
five clubs that insist on looking
up candidates in the Doomsday
book of the Revolution of ’76.
His church, naturally, is the
Episcopal church, and his home
now is understandably in histor-
ic Maryland, where two sons
are no doubt also preparing for
Groton.
The diplomatic gauntlet that he-
ran to reach his present post ex-
tends back to 1915 and Tokyo. Be-
times he has been much in South
America. He has been first assist-
ant since 1937 to Secretary Hull
/^\NE of Carl Sandburg’s songs.
runs: “I have led a quiet
youth, careful of my morals; I
shall have an old age full of vice
. and quarrels.”"
Youth in Peace so it goes with
And Quiet; Nou) Walter Bren-
In Rum and Riot na“: makuinf
a distinguished
film career playing likable old rep-
robates. Hollywood pegs him as the
successor to Will Rogers, and four
Rogers pictures are being readied
for him.
He is a personable young man
of 40, but, in “Barbary Coast,”
“Kentucky,” and such earlier
films as “Smilin’ Guns” and
“The Lariat Kid,” he came
through handsomely as a tough
old-timer, and now that’s his
ticket. He likes it, and, living
these roles, becomes a sage,
homespun old codger given to
offhand, David Harum apho-
risms. I have heard of similar
occupational trends in Holly-
wood. He says he is growing
old happily.
He first upped himself as an old-
ster by lying about his ag^ to get
in the war. Gassed in France, he
lost all his teeth and got a rasp in.
his voice, which iffiso helped. He
raised pineapples in Guatemala,
made money, lost it in Los Angeles
real estate, and then crashed the
films. Born and reared in Swamp-
scott, Mass., he is a master of the
quaint western and southwestern
idiom.
YX7'HEN this writer was doing .a
short turn helping build the
Panama canal, he fell in with a
Jamaica Negro water boy, a sort of
r? f rn j „ GunSa Din °f *
r. J. I ay lor Mas squad of Parai-
Jamaica Boy’s so swampers.
Idea of Canal wh° wvas wor-
ried about the
canal being too narrow. In the
quaint lingo of the British-taught
island Negroes, he used to say:
“Yes bahs, ships grow hugely
in coming years and if some is
fighting ship it must go swiftly
and not fear other passing great
ship. Axing parding sir, we
Jamaica boys say canal need
great enlarging.”
Frank J. Taylor, president of the
American Merchant marine, returns
from the canal to New York with
the same idea. He says congress
should spend $300,000,000 to widen
the canal for both commercial and
national defense reasons. Mr. Tay-
lor’s career is Brooklyn’s favorite
“boy who made good” story—from
$1 a day to $35,000 a year, which is
the possibly vulgar epitome of such
careers in this day and age.
He was an orphan lad in a
Manhattan slum, at work at 12
as an apprentice at Robbins dry
dock in the Red Hook section
of Brooklyn. He rose in politics,
in the state assembly for 12
terms, sheriff, commissioner of
records, welfare commissioner
and comptroller of New York
City.
Retiring from the last office in
1937, he went to Florida, but the
steamship owners tracked him down
and burdened him with this $35,000
job. He fights government intrusion
on private enterprise, but says the
shipping interests will co-operate ef-
fectively with the United States
maritime commission.
© Consolidated News Features.
WNU Service.
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Bryant, Russell W. The Howe Messenger (Howe, Tex.), Vol. 16, No. 14, Ed. 1 Friday, April 7, 1939, newspaper, April 7, 1939; Howe, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth996164/m1/2/?q=%22%22~1: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .