Tales of the New World

Maury Maverick: A Portrait

2012-02-08T00:00:00.000-05:00

SINCE Maury Maverick comes from one of the most famous families in the history of the West, and from the heart of the Texas cow country as well, his personal appearance, the first time you see him, is apt to be something of a surprise. Without anticipating a Tom Mix or a William S. Hart or the currently popular singing cowboy Mr. Dick Foran, one might justifiably expect a Maverick—of the Texas Mavericks—not to be on the chubby side. That's the side he's on, however, big-boned and full-cheeked, with a curving waistline that is beginning to crease over his belt. His waistline does not disturb him (though it disturbs his wife) for he is convinced that by the time this session of Congress is over it will have diminished considerably. This seems reasonable enough because he has already lost seventeen pounds, without benefit of any exercise whatsoever. He works, as any of his colleagues will tell you, like a horse—a brewery horse: one of those Percherons that used to pull the shined-up wagon in the Fourth of July parade.

There is much about him that suggests a Percheron: that feeling of rugged, untiring energy, for instance. He works on an average of from twelve to fourteen hours a day—and, as if his congressional duties were not enough, he is constantly taking on other jobs. Right now he is writing a book, suffering all the pangs of authorship. He pecks on his typewriter until one or two o'clock in the morning and, seeing him on the floor of the House the next day, or leading a conference in his office, you wonder how he manages to keep going.

Since most Representatives look like small-town lawyers, druggists, bookkeepers (and many of them are), it means nothing to say that Maverick does not look like a Congressman. It may be said, however—which is not to be said of most of his companions—that Washington has not brushed off on him at all. Back in San Antonio he used to be a lumberman and it is harder to stop acting like a lumberman than it is to start acting like a Congressman. This combination of accidents—being a lumberman in the cow country—has given him more than his share of bluffness, the immediate impression he gives of being what Broadway calls a "right" guy, has made him one of the best vote-getters in Texas—especially among the Mexicans. Maverick calls them, almost sentimentally, "my Mexicans": and they, not so sentimentally, talk about him as "our Maverick." If Maverick knows who his friends are, he also knows his enemies. He gives them no quarter, but neither does he hate them. "Of course the Country Club crowd and the oil crowd are against me" he says. "Why shouldn't they be against me? They'd be fools if they weren't. I'm against them."

Maverick moves clumsily, and walks with an uncertain, almost rolling gait, but this is the result of a laminectomy that he likes to call one of the most sensational operations in the history of American surgery. It also left him with a seven-inch scar that runs down from the base of his skull. His eleven-year-old daughter, Terrilita, says he is very proud of it. The laminectomy, which is an operation on the spinal cord, had to be performed because of the riddling Maverick's body took when he was commanding a company in the Argonne. He came back from France with the scars of eight different wounds, one of them a hole in his shoulder big enough to put your fist in, three medals, a few pieces of shrapnel that he still carries around, and a bitter, relentless, impassioned hatred of war. He also remembers the way war smells, and the grotesque postures of the violently slain, and a friend who was haunted by the ghosts of five bayoneted Germans until he went mad. He knows the forces that operate to make wars, and the class that profits by war, but his pacificism, fundamentally, is more of an emotional than an intellectual conviction.

As much as he hates war, he hates fascism even more. He sees in fascism the end of all social and human dignity and insists it must not happen here. He would not, however, involve the United States in any alien anti-fascist crusade. He thinks it would be easy to sell this country another war to save something—perhaps Democracy again—and thus involve us in a new European conflict. He thinks that if we get into another war, for whatever reason, we will risk the danger of domestic fascism. "If European civilization has to end it has to end," he says. "I know many people will criticize me for feeling the way I do, but I don't think it's our job to save Europe. Our job is to save the United States."

When Maverick talks about something in which he is interested, like neutrality, he becomes very intense. He talks, it might be added, a great deal. He is a good talker, with an easy command of profanity, and talks at you, directly, instead of just in your general direction the way most people do. His speech is full of slang and Americanisms, which he uses without any mental quotation marks, and he is scornful of the borrowed words and phrases that clutter up the radical vocabulary. One of his best stories is about what happened when Rex Tugwell tried to explain a few things about the New Deal to a crowd of Westerners.

"Rex kept using all those big words—he kept talking about nodules—and just by looking at the crowd I could tell he wasn't getting over. Rex had a lot to say and it was a good speech. The only trouble was that nobody understood it. By God, I didn't understand it myself!"

Maverick interjects many questions into his conversations, which must be answered, and it is quite possible that this is his way of making sure your attention does not stray. He listens almost as well as he talks but if you play his game and ask him questions, he is likely to take the bone of conversation into his own teeth and run off with it again.

He talks a great deal about his ancestors. Washington is noted for its inhabitants who have ancestors—it is surprising how many minor politicians were born in log cabins of parents who were direct descendants of George Washington, Lighthorse Harry Lee and Thomas Jefferson—but Maverick can play this game with the best of them. He seems to have a corner on most of the lesser heroes in American history.

Maury's famous grandfather, old Sam Maverick, one of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence and the man who gave the word "maverick" its dictionary meaning, is only one of them. Also included in his genealogy, among various others, are the explorers Lewis and Clark, and the historic Judge Lynch whose abuses of authority gave rise to the expression "lynch law." Unlike most people with ancestors, however, Maverick sets them up merely to shoot them down. He takes considerable pleasure, for instance, in pointing out that the first Lynch to come to his country (the father of the Judge) was sold on his arrival to the highest bidder as an indentured servant. Ancestors, he contends, are a lot of bunk. "They were people just like us," he says. "They came here because of economic pressure back home. People go abroad to see where their ancestors came from and some guide shows them a castle where an old lord lived. They think their ancestor was the lord. He wasn't. Their ancestor was the guy who took a potshot at the lord and had to get out of the country."

His connection with the original Judge Lynch is interesting because he is the only Southern Congressman to go on record as favoring the passage of the federal anti-lynching law. His position is extremely simple. "I want that law passed because I don't want Negroes to get lynched." There was much comment in the press when he first declared himself in favor of the bill, but so far he has not received a single letter of complaint. He has, on the contrary, received numerous expressions of approval—most or which, it is to be happily noted, came from people in the South. Whether his lead will be followed by other Southern Representatives and Senators is questionable, but, dropping the role of informal biographer for a moment, I would like to call the above facts to their attention. Being honorable and decent, gentlemen, may not cost you as many votes as you think.

Maverick was born in San Antonio and likes to have it understood that he isn't one those Congressmen who were born in log cabins. "I was born in a rock house—a big rock house." He is forty-one years old and was the eleventh and youngest child of Albert and Jane Maverick. It is possible that from his mother (recently, at the age of seventy-two, she began painting) Maverick gets his interest—somewhat astonishing in a Congressman—in art and letters. It might be pointed out, for the benefit of the cynical who are used to politicians who develop peculiar interests as soon as they get into the papers, that Maverick has been collecting examples of Mexican art, and reading voluminously, since his lumberman days.

Mexico, I think, has been more important in shaping Maverick's political philosophy than anything else. San Antonio is one of those cities, New Orleans is another, where exiled South and Central American revolutionaries—particularly the Mexican ones—used to come, and perhaps still come, to organize and finance new revolutions. As a boy in San Antonio, Maverick used to see these Mexicans—small dark men, generally, very polite, yet always intense and mysterious—conversing on the benches in the square or walking shoulder to shoulder in the hot yellow sunlight. Then they would disappear, the Mexican quarters would be full of rumors, a few days later a new revolution would break out below the Rio Grande. The revolution would fail or succeed and the dark mysterious men with their perfect manners would either return to San Antonio, if they were still alive, or else be heard of as the leaders of a new Mexican government. The idea of governmental change, even of revolution, is therefore not new or strange to Maverick. He grew up with it. It is the core of all his political beliefs.

Putting Maverick into any particular political frame is almost impossible. He simply won't fit. He believes that a large number of key industries should be owned by the government, but he is not a socialist. Smeared as a Red during the last campaign, he is anything but a communist. He disagrees with the communist concept of government and thinks, furthermore, that communism is alien both to temperament and psychology of the American people. He would probably have to be listed, if any listing is necessary, as a left progressive—following, in a general way, the line established by the elder LaFollette and Senator George Norris: whom he considers, incidentally, the greatest living American.

"The most important change in our national life" he says, "is the difference with which men have come to regard private property. The average American is beginning to realize that only by the protection of certain common rights—in politics and in the general national resources—can he hope to retain his civil liberty and his own property.

"We have to work out our own destiny and we have to work it out in our own way. There are a lot of things that have to be done and we have to do them. We can't look to Europe for any solution. It's simply up to us."

He has a knack for putting things simply and the way he states his political philosophy is this, in five short words:

"Let's do what it takes."

Hamilton Basso, The New Republic, April 21, 1937

Maverick's Advice to New Congressmen

2012-02-07T20:47:00.000-05:00

Maury Maverick was a member of the Texas delegation in the 74th and 75th Congresses, 1935-39; he was Mayor of San Antonio for the two years following that; then a director of the War Production Board, 1941- 43; then head of the Small War Plants Corporation, 1943-47. He is the author of In Blood and Ink and A Maverick American. Discussing Maverick's right to advise new congressmen, Charles A. Henderson, of the Atwater Kent Foundation, formerly a special assistant in the WPB, said: "I have known Maury twenty years and doubt that any man in America is better qualified to advise new congressmen. Stentorian of voice, subtle as a brass band, courageous, sincere and frank, he has haunted phonies and fence-straddlers throughout his public career. Those who don't like him certainly respect his patriotism, guts and brilliance. Smart Washington newcomers will listen to him."

DEAR NEW REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATORS:

All of a sudden you are an IMPORTANT PERSON. So start with this: Accept and understand your grave responsibility. Take it seriously—but keep your sense of humor. DON'T TAKE A BACK SEAT.

Remember—Washington is filled with good people with brains: Some other people are clever and smart, too, and will try to slow you down.

Do Your Job

Here are some essential things to do.

1. Learn the floor and debate rules. Get three "Jefferson's Manuals" (Rules of House). Also get the Senate Rules. One for your office, one for home (demand they be tabbed) and a little one for your back pocket. Organize classes. Learn those rules, learn hot to get up and speak for five minutes. Worlds have been moved in those five minutes.

2. Meet the doorkeepers, various committee clerks, the sergeant at arms. They are efficient, all good people and helpful. These people won't double-cross you, irrespective of party.

3. In your first speech, wait thirty minutes, then go ask for it from the reporter. Or have it sent to your office. Correct it. Put subheads in it, so it will be read. Get shorter sentences. Make shorter paragraphs. Get white space. Ask also for print proof if you want it, which will be sent to your home that night. Get a Government Printing Office style manual.

4. Go over to the Library of Congress. It has the most beautiful interior in the world. Also, the greatest and richest treasury of knowledge. Work those people to death. They like it. They will do research for you over the phone, and deliver books to you, marked right where you want them.

5. Get a map of D. C. and around. Drive your own car in other sections than the Northwest. Drive through the Negro and white slums.

6. On Sundays, shut off your phone—or better, go sightseeing: to Mount Vernon, Monticello, Gettysburg, Baltimore. In town, see St. Gaudens' "Grief" at Rock Creek Cemetery; the Lincoln Monument; the Washington National Cathedral (Wilson's Tomb); the Franciscans' Catacombs; the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (at the National Catholic University). Above all, see the museums, the Capitol itself, the art galleries, Folger's Library (Shakespeare), and go walking at Haines Point by the Potomac.

Week days: Go at midnight to the GPO, the greatest and most spectacular printing office on earth. Visit the Bureau of Engraving, the Pure Food and Drug Division Laboratory, and the Agricultural Experiment Station at Beltsville.

7. Get the White House to have two congressional meetings at the White House, very soon and after supper. First for all new congressmen. Another for new Democratic congressmen only, with Rayburn, McCormack and Forand. Do not draft the President to play the piano—let him play, if he volunteers. But ask him to talk informally. Ask him what he wants done. Do not be talked out of these meetings.

Some More Rules

No catchwords. The worst sin a congressman can commit is to solve his own inhibitions or fears by adopting catchwords. Catchwords are used by people who are afraid to make solutions, or to make excuses, or to intimidate the other fellow.

The word is recuse. Sure—observe party discipline. (Sam Rayburn is a fine man: tell him your troubles), but watch that seniority system, the party caucus and the Rules Committee. Go along with the party when you can, fight inside for progress. If you go to a caucus, and they try to hogtie you on something too strong to gulp down, recuse yourself. When the caucus is over, just walk up, and sign a slip. "I recuse"; you have that right. To recuse is to refuse to follow, to reject, except to, to challenge; it's there for your protection.

They will beat you over the head with the stuffed clubs of polite extremes. Also impolite extremes, if they think they can scare you. For instance, if you want to enforce the Anti-Trust Act, as you should, you will be told you are ruining business. The Bigs will get the Littles to wire you. And it is certain that your hometown paper will attack you, for almost everything, except for getting the New Post Office. (You will be called a STATESMAN when you fill the pork barrel.) But remember, when the papers and the Chamber of Commerce and the NAM bite you, they were not for you in the first place.

Don't seek a bad press, but don't be afraid, and don't give in. Be friendly with newspapers and reporters, even the Chicago Tribune, but don't let them chouse you around.

Stand for Something

Health. Vote for the National Health Bill and for national health insurance, in spite of hell, high water and the windy Dr. Fishbein. The docs will spend $10 million to flood you down with the biggest, meanest and dirtiest lobby fight ever put on Congress. The old family physician who brought you into this melancholy globe will weep over you and look at you pained-like. The County Medical Society will send you smug, threatening and insinuating resolutions. Tell them all to go to hell.

Housing. The housing will cost little in appropriations. Vote it; the money will come back, EVERY CENT, as it has in the HOLC, the FHA and the low-cost projects. All that was a good investment for business and the banks. NOT ONE THIN DIME HAS BEEN LOST BY THE GOVERNMENT ON HOUSING.

Controls. Controls are inevitable or we Chinafy ourselves. The condition of inflation is much worse than when you were elected. Much stronger measures are needed now.

Unload those generals. They never got beat in an election, or were lied about, or persecuted, or humiliated, like Lincoln, two Roosevelts, Jackson, Jefferson, and you. Blow that dusty House and Senate bugle for assembly back to the barracks. Generals have no understanding of civil life, human forces. They have absolutely no business in civil posts.

Beat communism with progress. What secures peace? Armies? Treaties? Denunciation of communism and Russia? No; it's a matter of groceries; global economics. Fight for world trade, for the industrialization of the world. Money by billions, and arms, for corruption will never save this world. No country appreciates being given that kind of money.

Representative, Senator, listen: In the long run, no nation is going to control this human race. Not us, not Russia. Not the British Empire. Human beings are human beings the world over. We are not going to be able to sit in complacency or fear; we can't even control Santo Domingo.

Congress and the world have got to stop babbling symbols. When people eat and work, they do not fight.

Don't be a committee slave.

Now remember, you are going into a hard life, but with a chance to fill your own soul with glory.

They will tell you not to rock the boat (Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln did). You will be stashed out on a committee like a Dutch tulip bulb in the dark with little pebbles around you. You are supposed to stay quiet in that darkness for many springs, and when you emerge to blossom, you may be droopy and blind, too old to see or too tired to want to. You will be unctuously told that if you work hard, keep your mouth shut, "do your committee work" and answer letters—that is to say, if you are a grinning, hand-shaking dummy—you will be reelected continuously and some day be a committee chairman and even wear striped pants, in which you would not dare show up at home. Yes, you will be a chairman and, by then, a dodo, an intellectually dead keewee. You will get a pension all right, and when you die you will be promptly forgotten.

This is true: The people of the United States voted against Wall Street and the Communists. But don't be led off the track by somebody feeding you labels of any kind. Certain old-timers and young demagogues will rise to prove everything new or corrective is communism. The C of C, the NAM, 86 percent of the newspapers, will oppose everything. And because of the recent punkin drammer, they will try to divert you and make a punkin chaser out of you instead of a progressive, fighting legislator. Old-time American liberalism and progressivism is not communism—it is just the opposite: never forget that.

For a quarter-century, I have seen young handsome men, full of ideals, spring into Washington. I have seen many slink away, heavy of soul, fat of head, lazy, sick, stupid, traitors to the people who sent them there. I have seen others stay to lobby for the special interests whom they originally fought against in Congress and which they now serve like dull, political eunuchs in the harem of a pasha.

The pressure on you to follow in their footsteps will be great.

Everything you do that is new or that inconveniences anybody will bring self-righteous criticism, pious warnings. Often when you act as a true statesman you will be ridiculed and thought a fool. Many times they will try to work through your wife and kids, holding out the bribe of better clothes, a better home, better schools, protection against the unending sense of insecurity for your family that will haunt you. But don't give in. Do what you think is right.

You face what Joseph Conrad tried to write about, that is, being alone. But if you can feel and see beyond the fake forest built around you by newspapers, selfish people and special interests, the world is with you. Not to be dramatic, but two billion frightened and suffering people are depending on you, and their hearts are beating with you. Stay with them.

Maury Maverick, The New Republic, January 17, 1949

The Next Four Years

2012-02-06T01:00:00.012-05:00

I: In Congress

This is the first of a series of articles on various aspects of the next four years in American life. The other contributors are: Secretary Henry A. Wallace, Under-secretary Rexford G. Tugwell, Morris L. Cooke, John L. Lewis, Dr. Arthur E. Morgan, Professor Thomas Reed Powell, Bruce Bliven and George Soule.—THE EDITORS.

In a cloudburst of votes, the people washed away "Jeffersonian" Democrats, assorted big shots, newspapers, in a deluge of hilarious bitterness—and when the sun rose bright and shiny, there was Franklin D. Roosevelt, sitting on top of the world.

The press, having reached the lowest level of degradation in national history, was thoroughly repudiated; history may record that it will never regain its prestige, that its political functions will pass to the radio. To stupid, bare-faced lies, gross intimidation and the pay-envelope fraud, the people gave one long razzberry. Even the Lords du Pont, who set about to purify all America, got knocked on their ears in their own barony, by their own retainers. Verily, the people used the "American system" to show what they thought, and in an American way.

It was the greatest revolution in our political history—even William Allen White said it showed a changed attitude toward government and very sagely referred to the fact that the people wanted the American Constitution's general-welfare clause considered. Too, the people gave a tip to the Supreme Court.

Of course, everyone knows why Congress is overwhelmingly Democratic: Roosevelt. But the real complexion of the next Congress is important, for there are all shades of Democrats. As for conservatives, there are plenty, and statistics are not necessary to prove it. Let us check the liberals and progressives. First, the loss of four is very serious. They are Sisson (D), friend of education and foe of Red-baiters, and Marcantonio (R), first-class fighting man for the underdog, both of New York; and Driscoll (D) of Pennsylvania, who exposed the telegram fraud of the utility holding companies. Moran (D) of Maine will not return either, as he did not offer for reelection.

But all the other House liberals have returned, stronger. For instance, Wearin and Biermann from Iowa, also Eicher, a clear, able thinker who has won after a bitter fight from the utilities and reactionary elements. The Farmer-Laborites have increased their numbers from three to five, the new ones being Tiegan and Johnson, both Minnesota and said to be good liberals. All of the Wisconsin progressives will be back, with accumulated experience and greater prestige. Magnuson (takes Zioncheck's seat). Coffee and Leavey, three new ones, come with the solidly liberal Democratic delegation from the cantankerous state of Washington. They rate 100-percent, except one, who suffers from a violent case of Townsenditis, the others having only mild cases, Connecticut sends Alfred N. Phillips (D), a successful business man, said to have courage and brains—Legionnaire—and friend of civil liberties. He will be heard from. With him comes W. J. Fitzgerald, in a nearby district, a laborite, long champion of better hours and wages and enemy of sweatshops. An ardent New Dealer, who, it is said, really understands Jefferson, and cracked the Byrd machine wide open, is Hamilton, a ray of light for Virginia, Ross Collins, Mississippi, hated by the military reactionaries, will be back after staying out one term, and will be as vocal as ever. Comes also Frank P. Havenner of California, intelligent advocate of public ownership and former secretary to Hiram Johnson. In the election the ladies did well: five made it, four of them serving last session, the new one being Mrs. Nan Wood Honeyman (D), Oregon, friend of Mrs. Roosevelt, grandmother, proponent of social legislation and considered liberal, A good sign of the intelligence of the people who forgot chivalry and good manners to a lady, was the defeat of Mrs. Kahn (R) of San Francisco, able, popular—and thoroughly militaristic and reactionary.

In the House the Republicans have dropped from their already meager 104 to 89—clean out of sight. They are dead, dead, dead. There are no members in the Party who form any opposition whatever; neither individually nor as a group have they the slightest thought of any program, or of anything but superficial criticism of acts and forces they do not understand. This is unfortunate. Hollister (R), Taft law partner, who followed Nick Longworth, is beaten—he was an intelligent conservative who fought like a man. He is really the only one worth mentioning. The others, like Chester Bolton, head of the Republican congressional committee, an amiable reactionary from Cleveland, were soundly defeated, and deservedly.

In the Senate the enemies of the New Deal were all defeated. New Senators, former Representatives, are Gillette (D) (specialty, peace) of Iowa, Lee (D) (specialty, New Deal) of Oklahoma, Lundeen (F-L) (specialty, social security) of Minnesota, and all on the progressive side. The loss of Costigan of Colorado is a tragic one. Some say the new Republican Senator from Massachusetts, Cabot Lodge, may be some opposition, although his main stock in trade is advocacy of the tariff and down with the Japs.

A comparison of the two houses shows both have gained in members with progressive tendencies. The organization, or lack of organization, in the Senate affords better opportunities to progressives because of smaller membership, longer tenure of office and the absence of restrictive rules. In the House the rules are so strict, the membership so large, that the situation is much worse for the liberals.

For a decade the House has been losing prestige. For the past two sessions, the House committees have jammed through bills in a day or two without adequate debate—to be sent to the Senate for consideration lasting into months. If the House is to regain its diminished prestige, it must assert its equality with the Senate, debate—and the liberals or progressives must fight together for legislation.

With the great majority vaguely New Deal but having every political slant of the compass, a definite program is of course subject to question. It is said also that the American people have no economic philosophy, no well considered aims, and that, therefore, this unwieldy majority will break into wandering factions and nothing will be accomplished.

Some say the election was no mandate to Congress at all. But since the people gave Roosevelt full power of attorney, and elected his congressmen, this in itself is a mandate to get the job done as it was started. The American people simply expect the President to “do what it takes.” Crying over the all-sacred Constitution and the flag leaves the voter unmoved. So I would say that out of the welter of the campaign the voter has commanded: Keep up the New Deal, we want the government to assume social responsibility; go ahead—now, F.D., and you, Mr. Congressman, we elected you, go to it—the Supreme Court is all right, but we elected you, not them.

The citizen may not understand the niceties of the Supreme Court legalistic historical mumbo-jumbo; he does know, however, that he wants representative government, and does not want this destroyed by cold and unsympathetic power. He may not even know that the Constitution provides not once, but twice, for the general welfare, but he thinks, quite rightly, “what the hell is government for, anyway; ain’t it for everybody?”

He also knows that he is entitled to a living constitution, and will refuse to accept a dead one. He wants a living body of fundamental law, not a meaningless skeleton of bones through which rattle empty and insincere phrases.

Neither the President nor Congress has any disrespect for the Supreme Court. But it would be nice indeed if the Supreme Court would get together and read over the Constitution—just as a family has prayer meetings at which it reads the original prayer book and not the selected sermons and homilies of a dead preacher. If the Court can be induced to read the original Constitution—not their selected decisions—they will find, all written in the Constitution itself, the provision and duty of Congress to provide for the general welfare; more, they would see this is a right under the Constitution of the people. There is no reason why the Court cannot be whispered a gentle hint from the people, just as it is proper for them to demand fair dealing from their elected representatives, the President, the Vice President, the Governors and the rest of the public officials who serve in a democracy.

There have been many disputes among the various branches of government in our history; it is nothing new. There may be, in the next four years, some violent disputes; some amendments submitted. Or possibly the Court will have the family reading of the Constitution, and accidentally run into the general-welfare clause, written in black and white—and act accordingly; in which case no amendments will be necessary.

Your average American has also figured something else, and that must be considered in the next four years of Congress. It is, that business should have the same function as government, or vice versa—to furnish a way of life, a job. He does not care whether he works for the telephone company or the Post Office; the one that gives him the security and carries out its function in the better way—that is the group, public or private, that should have the function.

This means another mandate to Congress. The T.V.A., Boulder Dam, similar enterprises and other public projects, federal aid of various kinds, the labor-relations and social-security acts—these have been accepted just as the army and the Post Office, and must continue—on a larger scale. Also, many pieces of legislation expire soon after Congress convenes—stabilization, devaluation powers, neutrality, C.C.C., Resettlement, R.F.C., reciprocal tariffs. They, in general, must be continued. The purely technical job of legislation will be a hard one—so hard, in fact, that the next session will probably be the longest in history.

There are some “musts” for the President, too. He must be as liberal and progressive as he talks. The President and Congress now face the problems of recovery, and he must meet, and Congress must meet, these problems—which are just as difficult as those of the depression.

If the graphs go up, the American people should go up, too, and not be left underneath like new American pariahs. In the depression Roosevelt gave the people human sympathy, and preserved the established order; in recovery, and the continuation of the established order, the people will not be satisfied with mere existence. With business recovery there must be human recovery.

What has been done or attempted by the Roosevelt administration has been accepted, and is, therefore, routine. Whether it represents an “economic system” that will finally settle our troubles I do not discuss, although I think not. For unemployment is still with us, and this is the single, outstanding issue. A continuing unemployment census should have been instituted a generation ago—the fact that it has not been done is a disgrace to both parties. People are beginning to believe that the old-time politics is on the way out, and the new-time economics is on the way in. In any event, no one can offer any immediate solution of the unemployment problem or a ready-made economic system. It seems to me that what Congress should do, and the people should do, is to go on with the formerly extraordinarily, bitterly contested issues as ordinary, settled practices, reorganize for efficiency, move up a notch and attempt to analyze some basic principles upon which legislation may be enacted in the next four years.

For the people must be considered as of the land, and not merely as of laws, man made and out of date. There must be fundamental objectives to save this land; for that is the way we live. Food, health, clothing, shelter, water, trees, and what we call “life and liberty” are included. I shall divide them as follows: (1) The protection of civil liberties; (2) conservation; (3) housing; (4) land tenancy; (5) food and chemical preparations; (6) peace.

CIVIL LIBERTIES

With the rising incline of business, coupled with the tenseness of the international situation, the preservation of civil liberties will be more difficult than ever. Certain “patriotic” organizations, some unconsciously influenced by ship-builders, the steel interests and the intelligence (espionage) department of the navy, will put heavy pressure on Congress for all kind of bizarre—and dangerous—legislation. Similar bills nearly passed in the last session.

The Red scare has been defeated dozens of times, but organizations, school boards, legislatures go on with all kinds of foolish “investigations.”

It is important for all to understand that the basis of democracy is that there is no limit to the freedom of speech. Any overt act, however slight, is covered by dozens of laws. An unpatriotic anarchist has as much right to talk nonsense in the most violent manner, as a highly patriotic, 100-percent American munitions maker—or, for that matter, President Angell of Yale.

Liberals and conservatives alike should take the offensive for the Bill of Rights. Bob La Follette Jr. already has a committee doing intelligent and aggressive work on that subject.

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES

Conservation of our natural resources—the drama of forests, rivers and the soil—suddenly took the imagination of the American people about two years ago. Roosevelt was the drum major; he gave conservation every possible encouragement. By executive order he created the National Resources Board. In 1934 the Board made a comprehensive report which resulted in broader public understanding. The Soil Conservation Service was created by Congress in 1935. And now through Washington, state planning boards, forestry and conservation associations, the American people indicate a desire for a general plan of conservation. It must contemplate great drainage areas, big rivers and little waters, dust storms, minerals, gas and oil; climates and different conditions; and the effect upon the earth of roads, bridges, cities, sewer plants and all artificial additions made by society.

In the conservation legislation already adopted and generally accepted in the country, Congress had recognized the direct responsibility of the federal government to protect the basic soil resources. The Soil Conservation Service has made only a beginning, but enough of one to show what is necessary, and what can be done. Indian pueblos, the Tennessee Valley, numerous districts over the United States which in the past looked as if they were destroyed for all time, are being rehabilitated. The work indicates clearly that it can be projected in the future on a comprehensive scale. Congress in the next four years must enact permanent legislation and make adequate appropriations. This is essential to our national existence.

HOUSING

Closely connected with conservation is housing. From eight to ten million families live in houses shockingly inadequate, which should be destroyed in the interest of public health and safety—and rebuilt. Check-ups by government departments have shattered a lot of rosy dreams about the “American standard of living”; unthinkable living quarters, city and country slum areas not believed to exist, have been found.

Statistics only wear one out, but they show that in slums disease is from two to five times as great as in decent housing. Not only that, but they are expensive: Cleveland’s slum area paid in $225,000 and it cost $2,000,000 to keep it up. Net loss: around $1,750,000 annually. This is true in varying proportions of very city in America.

Private speculative building never has erected and cannot now erect new dwellings of good standards at a cost that most city dwellers can afford to pay. Its opportunity is in the higher income levels.

Why not then, through the federal Treasury, subsidize housing? The return will be in better families, better health—and in better business and taxes. Senator Wagner passed his bill in the Senate last year—there is substantial sentiment for it now in the House. Secretary Ickes has already built fifty projects of low-cost housing and has the training and experience to do the job. The prospects for housing and its benefits, including employment, are good for the next four years.

LAND TENANCY

Tied in with the problem of conservation and housing is land tenancy. In the South, tenant farming, in a rapidly deteriorating soil, is the lot of 46 to 70 percent of the agricultural population. But it is no longer confined to the South. It is growing all over the United States. Fifty percent of the farmers, and probably more, in Iowa are now tenants—Illinois 44 percent, South Dakota 49, Senator Norris’ Nebraska also 49—all these Middle and Northwestern states running anywhere from 29 to 50 percent. To meet this situation the Bankhead-Jones bill was introduced two years ago.

What shall we do, buy land for tenants, and start them out spic and span? Just turn them loose with a title—and a big mortgage? No, there must be, in these changing trends of government, restrictions as to cropping, requirements in conservation and prohibitions as to the selling or mortgaging of the land. Coöperatives must be encouraged; a permanent land policy will be necessary.

The President, and both Houses, favor the legislation. Therefore, the problem is to write the bill. The Bankhead-Jones bill provided for a $50,000,000 corporation; bond authorization, $300,000,000 (nowhere near enough); purchase of land and equipment. Such legislation may at least begin to attack the problem.

FOOD AND CHEMICAL PREPARATIONS

Food and prepared chemicals obviously bear directly on the health and lives of a people. Old Doc Wiley realized this thirty years ago, and got the Pure Food and Drug Law. It was the greatest advance for public health the American people had ever made. However, the law is inadequate—it was inadequate at the time, because of jokers in the bill, for it only narrowly defines and prohibits offenses that are difficult to prosecute and convict.

Concerning drugs, the law only enjoins honesty on labels, and is silent on advertising; there is no control of radio or printed matter. Hence, any fraud can be perpetrated with advertising if the fraudulent representations are left off the label itself. Dangerous contraceptives, poisonous cosmetics—causing suffering, deformities, blindness, sometimes death—are on the market. As written, the law largely nullifies the government’s efforts to ban fake cancer, diabetes and tuberculosis “cures.” The bottles of drugs do not even require a warning statement of the dangers in self-treatment.

Drugs dangerous to health under ordinary conditions should be outlawed. The good features of the old law should be maintained, with adequate control over food, drugs and cosmetics, curative devices, “slenderizers” and medicines advertised as contraceptives. The great increase in the past few years of processed, canned and packaged foods, going into every home in America, must be considered. This is especially true with a growing population.

In the new legislation false and dishonest advertising must be prohibited. Certain factories must have public-health corrections through the banning of insanitary practices. The jokers must be eliminated. The penalties must be certain and, in some cases, severe. Next year a fair and practical bill will be introduced by Representative Virgil Chapman of Kentucky, and very likely effective legislation will be enacted.

PEACE

Paramount in the duty of Congress is keeping this country out of war. In the last session, following the Senate Munitions Committee and considerable agitation by members of Congress, some progress has been made in the adoption of effective neutrality legislation.

We all know the President hates war—so does Congress, and so does everybody else. The duty is to show that hatred by staying out of it. Entering the League of Nations now is out of the question. That world civilization may be destroyed is no compelling reason to join the League, the World Court or any other international organization, because we can hardly save civilization by getting ourselves destroyed too. The League is subject to old-world animosities, the injustices of the Versailles Treaty, and the status quo set up by it; there is secret diplomacy and dealing of cards under the table. With conditions as they are today, we simply cannot work with the League of Nations.

To stay out of war we must do two things: first maintain economic (sell to neither side), military and political neutrality; second, extend reciprocal trade treaties, encourage the breaking down of tariff barriers, promote international economic understandings, keep our soldiers at home. By an unselfish neutrality policy this nation may accomplish a great deal for the cause of peace.

COöPERATION WITH ADMINISTRATIVE BRANCH

Important if the big job to be done is the cooperation of the administrative branch with Congress. In the first four years this branch hardly got to know Congress or its members in either House—they stayed at their end of Pennsylvania Avenue and the legislative branch stayed at theirs; times were hectic and both were too busy. In the past four years the brain-trusters have been kicked around so much they are now about human—and the Congress will now be more tolerant. Hence, by cooperation and a little collaboration, the government can do a much better job.

Here now, we march on another four years. There is no reason why every branch of the government, the courts—and the Supreme Court—should not observe the change that has taken place in our lives, and not only discuss, but protect the general welfare provided in our Constitution, the American Constitution.

Maury Maverick, The New Republic, November 25, 1936

American Prisons Go to War

2012-02-05T21:53:00.008-05:00

BLOOD PLASMA for our soldiers, sailors and marines, enough money eked out of miserably microscopic earnings for bonds to buy three giant bombers, war production of weapons, supplies and food on a large scale, now come from convicts in state prisons, reformatories and prison farms.

Without exaggeration, three things can be said of this: first, it is one of the most substantial accomplishments in the history of America. Second, it offers one of the greatest opportunities for the future of America. But third, if these prison gains are not solidified and sustained, it may lead, with the outbreak of peace, to one of the most tragic failures of our civilization.

This is the story of how prisoners of our society, deprived of their liberty by conviction of crime, are making patient and heroic efforts for the liberty of mankind from within prison walls. And they are doing this in a society that is either largely hostile to them or oblivious to their existence.

This article is mainly concerned with state prisons and is based on my experience over the last year and a half in the Prison Industries Branch of the War Production Board. The enormous advance for our state prisons has received the support of all groups—labor, political, business and agricultural. But it must be borne in mind that this opportunity came only because of the war. Also, it came despite hundreds of restrictive state laws and several federal laws which—for the time being—have been suspended only. If they go back into effect, the prisons will be deeper dungeons of stupid brutality than ever before.

After Pearl Harbor, gigantic quantities of goods, weapons and food were needed and there could be no limit to the goals of production. Since practically every state prison was low in industrial production and all of them capable of some diversified production, with no objection by labor or capital, and the military market in need of everything, the state prisons got the contracts and went to work. These prisons met the specifications and sold at decent, reasonable prices.

In the last war, nothing was done by the state prisons (except one tiny shoe-repair contract by New Jersey). Now every state prison in the Union produces war materials. For a period of approximately a year, the figure has reached $14,000,000. This production is all the more remarkable because it has been achieved by prisoners working longer hours—some up to 72 hours per week, with night shifts, and all voluntarily, with new production-line methods difficult to establish. In all this, there has been but one definite incentive—patriotism. This $14,000,000 production is in addition to the $21,000,000 of goods for state use annually produced in prisons.

Some of the articles produced industrially are: navy shirts (3,200,000); British boiler suits; blankets (complete process from shearing sheep to weaving and dyeing.); osnaburg for camouflage; all types of bunks and furniture; assault boats; tool boxes and chests; trunk bodies; submarine fuse boxes; submarine nets; bomb noses; bomb racks and many other military supplies.

The prison farms of America produced goods to a value of $23,908,000 in 1942, an increase of about $5,500,000 over the previous year; meat production rose from 9,000,000 pounds to 18,000,000. Over 5,000,000 gallons of fruit and vegetable were produced. The year 1943 will show great gains over 1942.

My belief is that agricultural and meat products can be brought up to $100,000,000 production per annum with some relatively inexpensive increase in acreage, plus scientific management. All this can be used without harm to labor or capital, and with benefit to all taxpayers. More, it will 'bring sufficient and varied diet to inmates, with consequently better morale and health.

Now let's look at the military record. Ninety percent of all prisoners have relatives in the service. As a result, from the beginning they clamored to get into uniform themselves. The traditional attitude of many against the induction into the armed services of a man with a court or prison record was overcome by the Secretary of War's request for an amendment to the Selective Service Act.

A procedure was set up by the War Department and the Selective Service System to screen out types of prisoners unfit for service, such as the sex pervert, the drug addict, the chronic alcoholic and the habitual offender. Special Selective Service Boards have been set up in all prisons, federal and state, and now, worthwhile, acceptable inmates are going into military service, although not enough of them. I predict that those accepted will make as good soldiers as their brothers on the outside: so far, the records bear me out.

The prisoners also actually clamor to give their blood for our combat troops, and insist on giving as much as the Red Cross will take. I know of one state prison of 2,000 inmates, located in a county with a population of 400,000, where the prisoners have given more blood than the nearly half-million free, well fed Americans on the outside. And they did so voluntarily.

The Prison Industries Branch of the War Production Board consulted the state wardens about prisoners helping in bond drives—but we were worried because men only get from five to fifteen cents per day, and in many prisons, absolutely nothing. We figured that the maximum of bonds that prisoners could buy out of their mosquito-like earnings, would be $250,000 or enough for one big bomber.

The amount jumped to $400,000 in the first week. Within three weeks; it reached $800,000; at the end the drive it totaled $968,000—enough for three extra big bombers. Federal prisoners were rightfully angry at not being included in the "Buy a Bomber" drive; had they been, with their much greater earning capacity, the amount might have been tripled.

Numerous prisoners have volunteered to act as "guinea pigs" in the cause of science. Many have been made seriously ill. One has actually died acting in this sacrifice for science—for which, being pronounced well dead, he received a pardon couched in the most extravagant terms of praise. Other prisoners have covered manpower shortages of various kinds by working on railroads, farms and forests; thousands have done so on their honor, without being under lock-up or guard; there have been no escapes or attempts to escape.

All of these prison gains represent great assets for society. In the past quarter-century most prisons were an outright financial drain on the people and constantly turned out prisoners whom they had curdled into permanent criminals, further to plague society. Now prisons are on the road to self-support, which adds up to self-respect and means that prisoners will be released better men than when they went in. These gains must not be lost when the war ends.

Morally, a prisoner, like any other human being, is entitled to work. Indeed, he is sentenced to "hard labor." He is also entitled to good food, a clean bed, recreation and medical attention. Since he must work, it should be productive and educative labor, and not of the humiliating type which breeds only hate, and then vomits him out penniless and friendless onto the concrete sidewalk of society to renew his criminal career. While in prison he should have the opportunity of regaining or maintaining his health, which, in a great majority of cases, is defective at the time of admission.

Of course, prison labor should not be "contracted out" as in the old days, to the detriment of free labor; there should be no "dumping" of products; and labor should generally be guaranteed against all of the old abuses of the past. But certainly no segment of our society should object to products being used for state needs; for sale and trade to other states, the government and Lend-Lease or relief.

It must always be remembered that around 98 percent of all prisoners return to society.

And now it's time that we think in terms of a concrete program to preserve the gains made during war, and to go forward in the future. I offer ten points for a post-war plan for prisons:

I. All of us must realize that prisons and prison life have a direct effect on the whole of society, morally, physically, economically, socially, politically and financially,

2. Get the "politicians" in on this. Nothing can be accomplished unless the public officials and lawmakers are included. The smug-mugs might as well realize this.

3. Establish the merit system for employees, and not necessarily a hide-bound civil service to freeze-in stupid incompetents or persons not suited to prison-work careers. This will require informed public opinion.

4. Train prison officers. This must be done just as in the FBI, the army and the navy and as in all intelligent systems of public service. Obviously, training schools must be established.

5. Try to keep people out of prison. This is better than bellowing prosecutors' and hard-boiled judges' ignoring humanity and trying to "make records" on the letter of the law. It will necessitate a pre-trial examination to see if a defendant might be adjusted to society by probation. All this requires an informed community to back up thoughtful judges and prosecuting attorneys, well trained psychiatrists and common-sense social workers.

6. Study criminal-trial procedures. See that codes don't jam a man into jail without sound reason for conviction. "Habitual criminal" laws based on technicalities and the mere number of conviction, such as the so-called Baumes laws, are flat failures. There are, of course, habitual criminals, perverts and others, who must be restrained permanently.

7. Keep up prison agricultural and industrial production and the chance to work. This, in order to make institutions pay-as-you-go and save the taxpayers' money. It is helpful in the rehabilitation of inmates. There should be diversified farming and industrial production, for state use first, with any surplus to be disposed of with adequate guarantees that it will not jeopardize the rights or position of free labor.

8. Pay wages to prisoners, however small. (Several states do not pay; the average payment is from 5 to 15 cents a day; federal prisons pay from 50 cents to $1.50, also overtime and double time.) "Wages should be paid so that the prisons will be part of our American system, and to keep up morale of the inmates. Families have been, and may be, kept together this way. Have the inmate save for the day he gets out, and as in Minnesota and a very few other states, have money allotted, as it is in the army, to his dependents.

9. Have different kinds of confinement; abolish stripes and the rule of "silence" altogether. Out of a thousand men, including murderers and robbers, only about a hundred need to be closely confined. There should be honor farms, cottages, prisons without walls, and various other types of confinement which have proved effective during the past quarter-century.

10. Help the men after they get out. At the very best, those who are discharged will be booted around enough. They will need help in meeting inevitable and cruel discouragements on the outside.

All of these points apply to all types of prison— federal, state and local. I have not emphasized the federal system because it needs much less help.

The political situation that exists in regard to the state prisons is particularly unfortunate. Unlike the federal system, many of the state systems are in politics, but have no strong political backing, as does the federal system. The state systems also get a larger proportion of criminals of the toughest type and have fewer facilities for their confinement. State systems are broken up not only into the 48 states, but into the 130 personalities of the various wardens. Salaries are low, and at present there are no training programs for supervisory personnel except in New Jersey.

States also have the further drawback of the restrictive laws. I keep emphasizing this because unless they are amended or repealed nothing can be accomplished. Therefore repeal agitation must begin now.

The remedy for state politics and restrictive laws is not merely to throw up our hands and speak somberly (and slightingly) of "the politicians," thus piously washing our hands of responsibility. Rather, we should get all public officials in on the plan. The truth is that a better prison system, nonpartisan in administration, is good politics.

As to our several thousand jails and lock-ups—grammar schools of crime—they are worse than any state prison or chain gang. As a local official for six years, I saw how brutalizing and degrading they were. An overwhelming majority of American jails are simply terrible; and to use inelegant, but quite correct words, jail reform lies like a dead buzzard over America. Go see for yourself—but see it all.

Fortunately, many states are coming to life on the prison problem. Governor Arnall of Georgia is really starting something fine; he has abolished stripes and chain gangs; he is giving every encouragement to developing a better system. Over the country, state wardens, governors, legislators, social workers and people generally are giving the matter some attention.

And we must prepare: When the global cauldron of death and war cracks, 25,000,000 war workers and 10,000,000 war veterans will spill out on America, as hundreds of millions will over the world. In America there will be, as all know, a period of confusion and readjustment, with resentments, restlessness and uncertainty. There will be criss-cross migrations, and the social problem of crime will be enormous. After all wars, jails and prisons refill and become overcrowded. The time to prevent such a tragedy is now.

Chambers of Commerce, labor unions, professors, everyone, now have post-war plans. All this is encouraging. But included in all these plans must be provision for an intelligent treatment of delinquency, whether adult or juvenile.

The gains prisons made during the war upgrade rather than degrade this country. We must prepare now, and make up our minds now, both liberal and conservatives, that after the war we will not fall back into the maudlin hatreds and mawkish meanness of the "Crime Wave" and Baumes Era of the twenties and thirties.

Maury Maverick, The New Republic, November 22, 1943

Let Us Defend Ourselves - America and Civilization Can Be Saved

2012-02-04T19:40:00.016-05:00

By Maury Maverick, Mayor of San Antonio, Texas

Delivered at the Coliseum in Chicago, Illinois, on September 18, 1940, before the Committee for Aiding the Allies

FRIENDS and Fellow Americans: Last night, down in Texas by the Mexican border, down by the Gulf of Mexico in San Antonio, which city is the greatest military center in the New World, I made a talk for peace, and economic and military cooperation of the people of the Western Hemisphere. Present were many Latin Americans—officers of Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and numerous other countries. I flew here by aeroplane, a mighty mechanized giant, and here I am in this Coliseum a thousand and more miles away by traveling a few hours.

At our meeting last night there was a feeling of deep tenseness, for everyone knew that all of us who love civilization face the dreadful prospect of losing the gains of centuries, if we falter. I will not talk in circles; the hour is not merely dramatic but cruelly and immediately dangerous: hell-fire and screaming death are slashing down on the city of London this very hour. The war is at our door, do not for one moment doubt it. And do not for one moment doubt it either, that the same is not possible for Chicago—with bombs dropping on this very Coliseum, for if war comes, all America may have to bear what England is bearing.

First of all, let me say that I was once, or was once classified as an "isolationist"—one of these people who say or believe that America can save itself by isolating itself from world affairs. Well, my friends, I am no longer an isolationist, if I ever was one, for when the Germans took Norway, Belgium, Holland, inoffensive, neutral countries, I knew then we are in the world, and can't get out of it. We live in a sea of totalitarian states, and we must be interested in the security of the world, in order to have security for ourselves.

Indeed, my fellow Americans, we can no longer afford to pass off this European war by superficial speech. We can no longer stop a war, nor prevent the loss of our liberties by demagogic phrases on how we love peace and will not "send our sons to foreign shores." Certainly we love peace, certainly we do not want to send our sons to foreign shores. War is not in our hearts—peace is in our hearts, and of course, we want our boys to stay at home and we will do all we can to keep them there.

But we know that the totalitarian powers—and principally the Nazis under Mr. Hitler—offer us, as they do all the world, total death. Death of self-respect, honor, Liberty. We choose not to accept what has been offered us. We might as well come to the grim realization that not next week, but now, England faces a hideous war of no quarter—that she faces the total death of her Constitution, hence, all her liberty, property, and way of life. And the courage of the people of England, particularly London, is one of the greatest chapters in the world's history—but call England hold out wholly with her own resources?

The answer is No but let us see what the world situation means to us Americans. Let us analyze what America should do, if anything, and why.

First of all, forgetting England for a while, every true American admits we should defend this nation. How best to do it? That is the thing. The best way is to keep war from these shores. And certainly we know as everyone knows, that if England is defeated that we will be next on Mr. Hitler's list. Some hope this is not true, but let us be prepared for the worst, and prevent the possible or probable from happening. Certainly we know, even if England is defeated and we bank on the vain hope we will not be attacked, that Canada and the islands and South America will be subject to attack. Will we permit that? No! We cannot and will not permit it.

Therefore, in the name of America and common sense, and for selfish reasons if for no other, let us aid England. But also, in the name of civilization, in the name of decency and fair play, let us lend a helping hand to that great democratic nation.

Let us clearly understand our similar interests with England. What are our connections, both from the viewpoint of our institutions and our very economic existence?

First of all, our Constitution came from England.

Indeed, the British Constitution is OUR Constitution. Back in England a thousand years ago men were learning self-government, and there grew what was known as "the Constitution" In 1215 at Runnymede the barons forced the execution of the Magna Carta by King John. Then came the Petition of Rights, the Bill of Rights; and throughout English history there were numerous reaffirmations by British kings of the Constitutional rights of British citizens, and all this, plus the common law, became, in the hearts and souls of British people "the Constitution."

With that constitution still in their hearts, our ancestors came to the great continent of America. The Constitution was nurtured and developed. And when we separated from England, we did so not because we didn't have a constitution, but because we had one, and the King and Parliament violated it. But England finally learned her lesson—and it can be said that the constitutional principles of our two nations have always been the same, and that we have a common heritage.

Indeed, the British Constitution, the American Constitution, have flowing from them a great spirit—the Spirit of Liberty. Therefore, we can fairly say that the hope of the world lies in the preservation of that Trinity—the British Constitution, the American Constitution, and the Spirit of Liberty.

Thus for England we have a close and kindred feeling; we feel the spirit of LIBERTY, and appreciate her democratic institutions. We know she is no menace to us, and that the Germany of Hitler's is.

AND WE SHALL NOT PERMIT THESE SPARKS OF LIBERTY TO BE WIPED FROM THIS EARTH.

Now let us briefly review, as the professors say, our economic relation to England and the Allies—which means, in plain terms, how we are going to get our groceries, keep our jobs, maintain the value of our insurance policies and savings, and also have freedom.

Not long ago I told how my wife had seen me in prayer. She thanked me for praying for our son, who like other boys, may be drawn into this awful strife. Somewhat humorously I said, "I am sorry, sweetheart, but I was praying for the British Navy and the Bank of England."

I never thought the day would come when I would pray for the British Navy and the Bank of England.

But why did I do it?

The answer is that the British Navy stands between US and war, and probable destruction. And the Bank of England is the symbol of world finance and world trade, the pound sterling and the dollar. God save us from the mark, with the mark and all the world economy dictated from Berlin.

Indeed, our economic structure,—I mean, again, our groceries and our liberty,—are tied in with the investments of England, France, Norway, Holland, and Belgium, and with the democratic, or capitalistic ways of life. We are tied up with these interests all over the world—in China, the Philippines, the British colonies, Canada and other Dominions, the Dutch East Indies, India, Africa.

Oh, someone may say, but that is fighting for capitalism! So what? It means that our hands are clasped across the seas, and if the hand of the Allies is cut, so is ours.

But that is not all. All those countries are heavily interested in American business life right here in America. So also directly interested is all American labor, and the right to organize. If Hitler gets control, and finally defeats those countries, he will not only destroy us in all our foreign trade and investments, but will immediately attempt economic control within this country. The Dutch Shell, Mr. Hitler would say, and hundreds of millions of dollars in other business in this country, now belongs to Germany—so run it as I tell you, as I told Rumania. Now I, Hitler, own the stock in your great industries, which I stole from other nations; such stock as Standard Oil, General Motors, Ford, American Can, your steel plants in Chicago,—and run them as I tell you, abolish your unions, fire your managers, hire German managers, . . . as I, the Fuehrer, have already told the industries of Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, France, Belgium and Holland! Mr. Hitler will also say, abolish your unions, as I have everywhere else that I have put my foot.

Therefore, I say to you, that capital, and labor; the professions who want to be free, and every man, woman and child in America, must be interested in preserving the democratic nations, and therefore, FIRST of ALL interested in keeping England from being destroyed.

Do you want our country and its business and labor policies to be dictated from Berlin? No! No, I tell you.

I honestly believe as Ambassador Bullitt believes, that if England is destroyed, we will be attacked. I say this after mature thought, as a wounded soldier of the last war, and as one who served for four years on the Military Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives. As a soldier of the first World War, I say we are in a hundred times more danger now than then. But just say we are not attacked; certainly we don't want to become an economic colony of Hitler, with our standard of living and liberties lowered from Berlin to that of Chinese coolies.

In any event, WE MUST TAKE NO CHANCES. We therefore reluctantly face the real facts—and we swear tonight that we will not let ourselves face the total death of totalitarianism. We may be forced to partial death: but we will not sleep and then be destroyed as dumb, driven cattle, as other democracies have been. They who fling death from the skies, they who talk of the fury of the dictators, must know that democracy also has fury!

We must not forget that our ancestors who came here, whether German or Irish or Bohemian or Polish or English or Italian, or French,—came with a fighting spirit. They came to the cold coasts of New England, to our gentle shores of the Gulf Stream. They cut their way across the Appalachians, through the Alleghenies and on to conquer the Great Plains. They came with the rifle and the prayer book; they used their rifles for shooting, and used their prayer books in supplication to the Almighty God.

They trudged, with blood and sweat, across our vast continent. They pushed on over the hills of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. They came by Fort Dearborn here in Chicago, by the great lakes, over the prairies, down to Tennessee, down the Missouri, down the Mississippi, and into the great state of Texas, across the vast deserts of New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona into the cold Rockies to California till they saw the lashing waves of the Pacific!

And, always they carried in their hearts an unending devotion to constitutional government and the Spirit of Liberty!

Yes, they heard the shrill cry of empire, and marched to empire with cadenced steps; they hacked their way through forests, they struggled over barren wastes, and through floods and rain, and ice, and the burning heat. They won because they had FIGHT in their souls. When at night they drew their covered wagons in a circle, they knelt and thanked the Man who died on the Cross for deliverance—but being very practical, they kept their powder dry!

Therefore, let us build back in our hearts the spirit that made America—the aggressive spirit. Say to all those who would destroy our liberties that we will meet them with flame, attacking with the screaming death of modern mechanization. We will fill our skies with planes, and we will meet force with force.

Oh, they say, but WHY help England?

Well, we found a long time ago in the ranch country, that if you don't help your neighbors exterminate bandits and robbers, you will he exterminated yourself. An isolated ranch among robbers always gets robbed. One lone isolated ranchman, armed to the teeth, cannot hold out in a sea of robbers.

The same is true of a democratic nation—it cannot exist in a sea of totalitarian states. Isolation is just the bunk; we must live in this world by cooperation.

Listen! Listen! Civilization is on fire.

WE DO NOT WANT THE FIRE TO SPREAD.

No, we do not, and we should send the fire wagons to stop the fire.

But some cautious souls, cautious ones like those in the democracies of Europe who did not want to prepare, and only wanted to appease the dictators say we may get singed in stopping this fire. WELL THEN, let us be singed.

It is better, I say that we be singed with honor than to be totally burned and lynched with dishonor later.

Now I cry for one thing in America: Unity! Unity! If we do not achieve unity, our end has come.

One democratic nation after another has been destroyed by Nazi propaganda, by a lack of mechanized and efficient defense, by division of peoples—and then by sudden, horrifying but unified attack of Hitler with his mechanized forces.

Take the Nazi propaganda. Hitler has used the anti-Communist gag to keep our minds from his intrigue and mechanized military power; he has denounced Stalin and Russia; and by turning his Gilbert and Sullivan Opera into world tragedy, has joined with Stalin to destroy the civilization of the world.

We in democracies boo each other; we are wooed by the Nazis; and then when the attack comes we moo like cows, and are shot down like the wild buffalo that roamed the plains of the West—helpless cattle before a new, modern fighting force.

So let us be fooled by no one.

Oh—Yes—The President traded off fifty destroyers to England for those naval bases. Well, that was the best trade: that was ever made for this country. Let's make more trades like that. Let's send airplanes—how many?—five thousand of them now; more armament—whatever England and her Allies need; and let's extend credit, plenty of it, now—and thereby save the lives and liberty of America! But let us pause to take a very cool look at history. Let us control our bitter hearts and calmly appraise what history teaches, for history has a way of repeating itself in deadly monotony.

By what method do conquerors always destroy the liberties of the people? How do they gain new territories and enslave more people? By intrigue alone, or sweet words?

No—principally by organization, by superior armament—by mechanization—and among those who have accomplished it have been Cortez and Pizarro of Spain, Phillip and Alexander, many others, and—Hitler.

Spain sent her two great conquerors to the New World—Cortez and Pizarro. Cortez the conqueror of Mexico had altogether only six or seven hundred soldiers and defeated an army of two or three hundred thousand brave, but badly equipped soldiers, in a series of battles. He used intrigue, he had his Fifth Columns and he had his hired traitors, of course. But why did he win? Because he was well equipped. Because he had pieces of artillery, horses covered with iron mail like the tanks of today, and he used this armament not only to kill but to frighten the people and to strike terror in their hearts. A cultured people were enslaved for centuries, because they were not prepared. The same can happen to us.

Read Prescott's history on the conquest of Peru and Mexico.

In Peru certain leaders of the Incas according to Prescott, "discerned the stern and formidable prowess of modern weapons," and warned the people the Spaniards would destroy them. Pizarro, too, had his Fifth Column, his hired traitors and assassins; he issued high sounding titles like creating so many Nazi marshals; he worked his men into believing they were fighting the infidel.

The Incas were brave; they outnumbered the Spaniards by the tens of thousands. Indeed, Pizarro at the greatest battle had hardly a hundred and eighty men, defeating the countless thousands.

How was it done? Plus his other methods, it was by mechanization. He did the job just like Hitler. Reference is made to steel-clad horsemen, the tanks of that day, to modern arms and iron discipline; the flash of firearms and artillery—and last of all that the Incas were defeated because "their bodies were ill-clad and easily cut to pieces," just as the Poles, the Dutch, the Belgians, the French—and just as we will be unless we wake up.

And both Pizarro and Cortez, like Hitler, starved and killed the people, stole their gold, destroyed great cities, and then made slaves of all the people—-and they stayed slaves for centuries.

But there is another historical character whom we should all study, one who was not a dictator, but who warned dictators. He was Demosthenes, who loved Greek culture and beauty, as well as the constitutional life of the Greek people. He was not merely an orator as we thought in school, but one of the most thoughtful statesmen and greatest patriots of all history.

Phillip of Macedon, and later his son Alexander, grew in power. Demosthenes saw this; saw Phillip gradually destroying city after city, he saw his intrigue and saw his Fifth Columns in the various cities of Greece, Demosthenes compared Athens to an amateur boxer fighting a skilled pugilist.

The people of Athens and Greece were asleep. Demosthenes warned the people of the superior power of Phillip, his organization, his military tactics, and the use of mechanized force. Demosthenes was called a traitor by the people who were mislead by Phillip's Nazi propaganda; he was also derided by the Assembly or Congress, by cheap politicians.

But Demosthenes said, "Barbarian violence will someday break up the gracious and undefiled traditions of Hellenic life"—unless something was done. He further said, "Wherever a barbarian's hand offers wrong to any city of the Hellenic sisterhood it must be the arms of Athens which should first be stretched forth in the holy strength of Apollo."

My fellow Americans, this is a perfect parallel of world conditions today. Barbarian violence will surely break what we have of gracious and undefiled civilization, UNLESS WE ACT QUICKLY. And as he said that the arms of Athens should be stretched forth in the holy strength of Apollo, so I say that the same should be true of America.

Demosthenes did not place his argument merely on unselfish action or saving civilization just to be a savior. He said quite frankly that if Athens let the civilization of Greece be destroyed AROUND Athens, that Athens would be NEXT. He told them that Athens had long been suffering from the decay of public spirit. He demanded that the aggressive spirit be re-kindled. He denounced the feeble makeshifts of foreign policy. He warned Athens that the cause of freedom was everywhere her own.

But as we know, Greece was destroyed. They did not have sense enough in that democratic way of life to listen, and to unify. They did not have sense enough to see the on-reaching march of power of a dictator with organization and mechanized force, and they fell before it.

I repeat, we face the same situation today, and we had better come alive, and come quickly, or we will go the way of all peoples in all history who are not unified, who cannot see the menace of mechanized force, and who rely entirely on some other force—in our case England—to save our worthless and corrupt skins.

Yes, I have told you only a very few lessons of history. Let us take them to heart. And let us apply these lessons of history and compare them to the history of America.

While we were aggressive and bold we were strong and happy. Have We, like Athens, and the Greek cities of old become soft and corrupt? Now, therefore, let us take to our tents, to the sun, to hard work, to our mechanized chariots of steel and face the realization that hardship and misery lies ahead of us.

Let us swear to leave off this horrible doctrine of appeasement, of thinking that maybe if we lay down our arms, or refuse help to England, and lower our heads like the cattle going to slaughter in the Chicago stockyards, that Hitler will be nice and leave us alone! We have already helped England, let us help her more, and ENOUGH until it is enough to beat Hitler!

Let us stop this sickening nonsense of isolation, and realize full well we are in the world and cannot get out of it!

SO SURELY AS WE DO NOT REALIZE ALL OF THIS, SO SURELY WILL WE BE DESTROYED.

YES, AMERICA WILL BE DESTROYED, unless we take notice, AND ACT.

I am not pessimistic.

I am not hysterical.

I am merely telling the truth.

Tonight we need confidence, faith, and strength in our hearts.

Yes, Oh Lord, our souls are gripped and racked with pain tonight. Give us, oh God, freedom from the screaming death that has come from the skies in other countries. Look above you in the skies tonight! Look! Look! They are free now, and clear,—let us keep them so.

We love the ways of peace.

But we are not slaves, and REFUSE to be. We shall not bow our heads and be slain, nor permit our liberties to be taken away. Like the great German Luther, we singout in mighty national hymn, a mighty fortress is our God!

But in this praying, we also know that God himself said, that God helps those who help themselves, and we resolve it also, TO HELP OURSELVES.

We have but one course, either we sit still with crossed hands, and be destroyed, or rise with aggressive spirit, PREPARE, and be saved.

Therefore, let us defend ourselves.

And we will first defend ourselves by selling, giving, or aiding in whatever manner gets the job done, the Allied cause, principally England, who has her back to the wall fighting for the civilization that is dear to us. And second, we will do it by building our own defenses, ready for all who would invade or touch our shores—ready for continental defense, and to GO and GET them if necessary.

Yes, America, we must awaken. ALL of us must realize it, and we must be unified, we must stand shoulder to shoulder, we must look forward and have courage—if we do, and I know we will, America and civilization can be saved!

Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. VII, pp. 5-8

T.V.A. Faces the Future

2012-02-03T00:19:00.000-05:00

NOW THAT it has battled and builded and won, accomplishment is chalked up for the T.V.A. It has arrived, has taken its place, and will remain. Millions of little soldiers, the fastest on earth, la Grande Armee des Voltes, march forth on wires, wriggle into the homes of thousands and attack the job of cooking, keeping the family warm and lighting up the place.

The T.V.A. enters 1937 as an outstanding success of the administration. Honest conservatives who can add two and two are satisfied. Per-month gross generation power has jumped from 44,500,000 to 112,000,000 kilowatts. Where Wilson Dam had one grudging, monopolistic customer—the Commonwealth and Southern—the Authority now has some two dozen satisfied ones, including cooperatives and municipally owned lighting systems. Farmers constitute 62 percent of the ultimate consumers. For—and these words underestimate the situation—the T.V.A. and its national implications are colossal, stupendous, mighty, great. Let us take it up to date, therefore, and discuss its faults first. Here are four of them:

First: The atmosphere is—I cannot express myself exactly, since I am only a congressman, and therefore lack the cultural and scientific knowledge possessed by some of the T.V.A.'ers. But the air is somewhat rarefied, and I am sure I heard the swishing of long wings and saw Green Pastures and De Lawd (Morgan).

Second: Connected with this impersonal atmosphere is the matter of attitude, which is personal. It is, that all "politicians" have red tails and work in sordid surroundings just as T.V.A.'ers have wings and work in Green Pastures; these judgments to include their best political friends. In this they violently differ from the duPonts, for the duPonts sanctify all who agree with them. There are, however, certain similarities, in that they believe "the government should not meddle with business"—not, at least, with the T.V.A.

The personnel department, despising politics and politicians, is not altogether against a little internal politics. Woe be to him who applies for a job with the endorsement of a Congressman or Senator. The directors have little comprehension of the political mind; and the personnel department, wholly inexperienced in dealing with the politicos, writes unnecessarily sharp letters.

Third: "The Morgan-Lilienthal Feud." Leaving aside the trivialities, it seems that King Arthur Morgan of the Round Table wants all the Utility Knights, good and bad, public and private, to sit around and make goo-goo eyes at each other. Little Dave Lilienthal wants to slay the Power Goliath, and possibly to kick the whole table over.

Fourth: The office In Washington Is a detriment to the T.V.A. It is a poor contact office and its members, save the publicity department, should be emptied forthwith into the Potomac.

None of these specified weaknesses means that the T.V.A. is badly managed. Far from it; it is one of the best managed big businesses, public or private, in America. The personnel department has employed excellent men, but has insulted practically everyone that the U.S. mails could reach. Chair- man Arthur Morgan, David Lilienthal and Harcourt Morgan are personally incorruptible, anxious to serve the country, and very able. For the work in hand the engineers, foresters, soil experts, lawyers, skilled and common laborers of all kinds constitute a force equal, and probably superior, to any other such force in the history of America.

Stupidity—(and now I speak of mankind's and not the T.V.A.'s)—is the worst foe of human progress. For there are citizens who, having a general idea that the T.V.A. may lessen the value of a stock or bond, are willing to put in jeopardy the whole great program without further investigation. But if I am any judge of public opinion, the vast majority of the American people want the T.V.A.

Let us look at the Act, and review some of the results of the past three and a half years:

DAMS AND DAMS

The Act provides for dams to be built in the Tennessee River and its tributaries. From Paducah to Knoxville—648 river miles—a nine-foot channel for navigation is to be created. Storage dams in tributaries will hold back surplus water during heavy water periods and release that water when dry months come.

Building of dams has proceeded successfully; a study of the map will disclose the whole plan. They represent a coordinated system of flood control that actually works, of navigation now being used, but capable of great development. Army engineers, unbiased and non-political, believe that all this is not only feasible but essential. The dams are not just to sit there and wrestle with floods.

POWER

The dams will also furnish, and do furnish, power; and this is the focal point of the battle. For private business is always willing for the government to stop a flood—but when these flood waters are utilized for the purpose of paying for the dam by selling cheap service to the American people who built it, a cry goes up of interfering with "private business." In any event, the act reads "...to provide and operate facilities for the generation of electric energy in order to avoid the waste of water power, to transmit and market. . . ."

Electricity produced is now going into construction projects, municipalities and county cooperatives, and some to private power companies. The municipalities will soon number sixteen, cooperatives thirteen, and there are now five temporary connections. Power comes from Wilson (wartime) Dam. There is a 230-mile transmission line connecting it with Wheeler and Norris Dams, from which latter power is also produced. The T.V.A. is serving private industry; last year the Commonwealth and its subsidiaries bought $588,000 worth; Alabama now cries for more.

SOIL CONSERVATION

Soil conservation is here used in the sense of conserving natural resources—soil, water, trees and vegetation in general. This wide program has been evolved out of the part of the original Act which instructs the T.V.A. to improve and cheapen the production of fertilizers, and to provide demonstrations and tests in cooperation with government agencies and the public. This was because of the wartime nitrate plant at Muscle Shoals.

With this as a starter, and principally because of the knowledge of Dr. Harcourt Morgan (who was president of the University of Tennessee), the idea has been expanded. With a basic and thorough knowledge of the need for phosphorus, and the realization that it must be available to farmers if the land is not to be washed into the sea, an intelligently integrated program is under way.

The T.V.A. is making and experimenting in concentrated fertilizer from phosphate-bearing rock. The farmers of the country need 20,000,000 tons of this fertilizer each year. Only 2,000,000 are being used. Methods of the T.V.A. will lead to the wide development of other sources.

This use of fertilizer and the growth of cover crops work in with the protection of little waters. Water is slowed down and is clearer; this fits into the scheme of huge dams. Areas unfit for cultivation are being reforested with seedlings grown in three T.V.A. nurseries. C.C.C. boys treat eroded land. Land-grant colleges, the Department of Agriculture and the Resettlement Administration do their part. Finally, farmers individually and in clubs (collectively, my friend) are farming to save the soil, slow the water, prevent floods—and make better crops. This program makes the Seven State Valley look like a different place.

I have lately talked with workers of all kinds in the T.V.A. Many never worked on any similar project, being residents of eastern Tennessee; they take it almost as religion and consider themselves improved. Others who worked in great private projects point to the T.V.A.'s better housing, decent conditions, sanitation, educational and other opportunities. There are no accumulations of tear-gas bombs and private artillery; no strikes, no shutdowns, no trouble.

These all point to certain facts:

1. Power can be produced, transmitted and sold by the government as well as by private endeavor, just as letters can be transmitted, agricultural stations operated and armies and navies moved by the government. The T.V.A. is an ordinary endeavor of ordinary American people, conducted by themselves, in behalf of themselves.

2. Natural resources are the basis of our lives, whether we live in the city or in the country, and the T.V.A. has shown the way.

3. Good pay, efficient housing and decent treatment of labor keep the peace. In the great engineering works, unit costs have been cut and in many instances made cheaper than similar work under private auspices.

4. It is possible to develop a non-political civil service, based altogether on merit. This will build permanence and a high standard of efficiency.

5. Considered as a whole, the T.V.A. is not an "experiment." It is a part of American life; it is here; it will stay.

All these operations which I have tried to analyze are being conducted under the most difficult conditions. Fighting great odds against fifty-grand lawyers and unsympathetic courts, they battle on. Here and there the private utilities rush their crews like invading armies, to erect spite lines in order to have claim of prior occupancy, as miners did in the gold-rush days. To this threat the T.V.A. marches out its pioneers, to save a right-of-way in their own country, for their own people. This is a dramatic and rather thrilling phase.

But the battle is being won; you see dams, transmission lines, municipal utilities, better farming, stoves, electrical appliances, all as a practical part of normal human life. People begin to regard electricity—which comes from water—as quite as fundamental as the water itself. Just as in the development of rural towns in America, where first people had their own wells or hauled the water, but gradually developed municipal water systems—so now cities are doing the same with electricity and getting it from the big T.V.A. reservoir. The farmer insists that he be included too.

The program of the T.V.A, has brought to the people of this nation the consciousness that its essential benefits are obtainable by cooperative, or government, endeavor. Further, all this is becoming an actual part of the economic and legal set-up of the nation—to such an extent that schools, roads, water in cities, post offices are accepted as a part of everyday living. And should the T.V.A. be held by some court to be "unconstitutional" or "against the law," the people would feel just as if their other institutions were taken from them. It would be like telling them the roads and bridges were no longer theirs, that their children could not get an elementary education, that the army was to be sold to the Hessians, the navy to Lafitte—and that, as a matter of fact, the United States of America itself is void, unconstitutional, and must fold up.

Recently, believers in public ownership, ordinary citizens, have been having chills and fever over the T.V.A. "power pool." All is lost, they have said, and contracts have been or will be written which choke the life out of the T.V.A. or any similar enterprise. For those who care to relax, it is well to know that the meeting at the White House adopted no agreements, announced no policies. The flag of the T.V.A. is still flying and no one has sold out.

What is the consumer's interest in the case of the T.V.A.? It gave lower or better rates and better conditions. Moreover, the T.V.A. has made the only appreciable dent that has ever been made in the matter of rates charged for electricity. It did this, not by contract, not by "pooling," not by paper policies, but by getting out into the field with the only yardstick American business recognizes, the yardstick of competition.

Is this yardstick-in-action to be thrown overboard? How is the pool to fix rates to the consumer? If the private companies are to have the advantages in generation resulting from the government's huge hydro-electric investment, how are those advantages going to be passed along to the consumer, and nailed down so the courts won't later take them away?

Let the T.V.A. and similar enterprises tell the world that they stand: (1) for government ownership, and (2) for directing any pool in which the government might have any interest whatever. The T.V,A. would like to cooperate if it could, does not want to destroy any investment, but certainly does not like to be double-crossed.

There is no rush about getting into this power pool. Let us take our time, of which we will have plenty. In the meantime possibly the utilities will learn, as they did in Sweden, that the government is a force to be reckoned with—then we may wade in. For the T.V.A. has been established upon a rock, and nothing shall prevail against it.

Maury Maverick, The New Republic, November 18, 1936

War Built to Order

2012-02-02T21:51:00.000-05:00

CONGRESS has just launched this nation into the greatest naval race in history on the highly questionable grounds that three mystic numbers, conveniently separated by hyphens, mean your safety and mine.

To the beating of the tom-toms of 5-5-3. Congress has voted authorization to spend a billion and a half dollars on 46 new ships of war, and a full complement of auxiliary craft, which constitute the biggest chip the United States has ever placed on its shoulder.

This naval bill was put over in spite of serious protests of a substantial number of us in both houses, who believed that instead of spending billions that might lead the United States into trouble overseas we should spend millions on our shore defenses and more effectively insure our peace at home.

None of us opposed a sufficient Navy; we had already authorized more additional building than the yards could hold for several years to come. Indeed, in the latter part of January of this year, we had passed the biggest naval appropriation bill in peacetime history.

But a few weeks later, our admirals marched up to Capitol Hill and told us in mortician tones that Great Britain and Japan, particularly Japan, had turned heretic and upset the sacred 5-5-3 ratio. We must build! build! build! they cried.

This immediately raised the question, why this mumbo-jumbo of 5-5-3? Why? Why? Why?

In testimony before the House Naval Affairs Committee, our Lord Nelson- thinking admirals talked vaguely of coast lines, of zones of defense, of relative sea power, and muttered much about preventing one nation from attacking another.

The ratio, the admirals said, had been arrived at in the Washington conference of 1922. This was uttered in an air of finality, as though it were Holy Writ. It appeared that supermathematicians, nobody seems to know who, evolved the theory that for every five tons of battlecraft Great Britain and the United States built. Japan would be permitted to build three.

But, said the admirals, Japan had scrapped the treaty and was building beyond the ratio. Admiral Leahy frankly said that the Navy's only authority for such statements was an article from an Italian newspaper.

So we, the United States, should splurge in an orgy of wild building, to keep up with the alleged superactivity of the Japs!

Finally, after several days of five-five-threeing in solemn tones, it occurred to Congressman Brewster, a Republican, to ask what the 5-5-3 was all about. Admiral Leahy replied: "I believe that a very reasonable provision of naval defense for this country is to insure that the ratio will not go beyond the 5-5-3 ratio." But Brewster pounded on. He wanted to know. . . . Admiral Leahy said, sternly: "That has been accepted as the correct ratio."

That was supposed to be the final answer; the supermathematicians had figured it and the admirals said it was correct. Enough, enough. But Mr. Brewster finally asked about the reason for the ratio in reference to Japan, and why.

The committee waited for the final answer. The news reporters got their pencils poised. Admiral Leahy looked with some impatience on his audience.

"I do not know," he answered.

Then day after day, for four and a half weeks, the committee took page on page of testimony—three ponderous volumes of it!—as witness after witness knelt at the mystic altar of 5-5-3; but the abracadabra and rigmarole still went unexplained. Then the House solemnly talked of 5-5-3 for nearly ten days, the Senate for weeks—but it is still as much an unsolved mystery as it was the day Admiral Leahy said, "I do not know."

So why the ratio?

Well, it is all international-power politics, European and Oriental. It is getting into world grudges and world power barrels with a vim. Our 5-5 ally, England, must keep two or three ships in European waters, to watch Hitler and Mussolini, and the others in Oriental waters to ride herd on British Imperial interests. With our policy of keeping the whole Navy in the Pacific and the East coast unprotected, the British Empire, with our gratuitous aid, is at least safe in the Orient. But, from a sensible viewpoint of American national defense, it is an outrage on the intelligence of the American people.

What Good Are Battleships?

Battleships are as English as vodka is Russian. More, we think English when we think of battleships—even though by area, territory, we are altogether different from England. I have a high opinion of the English people, but a low opinion of battleships. However, I have assumed all along that the battleship is necessary, but that the naval expansion is wrong because it is just too much, and out of joint.

In this, I have good English authority. For the famous Inskip Report, two years ago, which suggested the Empire needed more battleships, admitted they were vulnerable and could be sunk by airplanes. But. the report added, the Empire had vast sea-distances not suitable to planes; more. Empire shipping and sea lanes must be protected. Somewhat later, England backed out of the Mediterranean with her hands up—because Mussolini had a mosquito fleet, plenty of airplanes to bomb British battleships, submarine mines, fire control, and submarines.

Since then, England has been building airplanes, sending her "missions" here to purchase more American planes because they cannot manufacture them fast enough for the Empire. But, in the United States, we get the honor of building battleships—and lag behind in the building of Army defense planes, and the provision of proper national defense.

Admitting the battleship has its function, it must nevertheless have its admitted limitations. Battleships do not attack well-defended coasts of strong nations; no battleships successfully attacked any of the belligerents' coasts during the World War. All naval authorities agree on this. So battleships are used by maritime nations against colonies, and poorly defended or barbaric countries—and that is the life- blood of the British Empire.

Go look at the globe.

The United States is a composite, single piece of real estate. And then look at the British Empire, scattered everywhere, right and left, all over the world, in every one of the Seven Seas.

Why, then, in the name of all that is sensible, must we match England's billions for sea power when, as I said before and will detail to you in later paragraphs, we can do the job for millions in our own back yard?

The Price of Egoism

The consequences of the United States playing the imperialistic game of battleships in every port are twofold, and have given many of my colleagues and myself deep concern.

First: to put it in plain Texas ranch English, if you keep your cow hands out of other people's pastures, and out of trouble-making saloons, you keep them out of shooting scrapes. In other words, if we play this game too long, we are going to get ourselves into a war.

Second: We are letting our already woefully weak military defenses on our own shores lapse into obsolescence and decay to pay for our naval follies and egoisms.

Would you believe, in view of all these billions hurled, and to be hurled, into the seas for overseas display, that we have altogether, in this entire nation, the grand total of only 56 antiaircraft guns?

To me a most astounding thing is that a vital area, containing our most populous centers and our most strategic industrial production, is wholly without protection from the fleet, and otherwise inadequately defended. There are five principal points in this area, and they lack the most vital necessities of national defense. They are Boston, Narragansett Bay and Long Island Sound (considered together). New York City, Delaware Bay and Chesapeake Bay.

All five of these points—and they should protect twenty million American people behind them—are deficient in long-range guns. Each and every one of them need antiaircraft guns, submarine mine equipment, and fire control (communications systems necessary for hitting the enemy), and above all else, airplanes.

Now, Boston and New York have some long-range guns—but Narragansett Bay and Long Island Sound have none. So I am going to describe the Narragansett-Long Island situation.

Our Vulnerable Seacoast

These points have a few 12-inch guns of very limited range. A battleship could get up in front of Fort Adams, which is at Newport, Rhode Island, and shell it without itself being in the range of the fort. Now mind you, not a gun in all this area has sufficient range—and like all others of the points, I must repeat for necessary emphasis, it is without necessary submarine equipment, fire control, and antiaircraft to be used against air or sea attack. This area needs to correct all the deficiencies I have mentioned, and further, to install sixteen-inch guns to out-range battleships of all types.

I think a full discussion of this particular area should be made, remembering the fact that these outer points are supposed to protect Buzzard's Bay, Narragansett Bay and all of Long Island and its background of 10,000,000 lives in metropolitan New York. This is the front door to Hudson River Valley and the back door to New York City. An enemy might accomplish Burgoyne's aim—to split the country in two; and today, to break this heavily populated industrial area from the rest of America. The War Department is constantly troubled over this.

Behind these points are hundreds of manufacturing establishments, the loss of which would seriously damage our national defense, to say nothing of civilian suffering on an unprecedented scale.

Among hundreds of other manufacturing enterprises we have there such establishments as cotton and woolen factories (civilian and military clothing) in Fall River. New Bedford and New London; a submarine base. New London; Springfield Arsenal; Colt, Winchester and Remington Arms factories; Pratt and Whitney, makers of airplane engines; Hamilton Standard Propeller Company; twenty-five per cent of the optical instruments and eighty per cent of inspection gauges come from this area.

Aviation—No Militarist's Dream

To tell the truth about the defenses of Chesapeake Bay in the most moderate manner is shocking. But the truth is, it would be possible for enemy battleships to steam up and shell Norfolk, Newport News and Baltimore; smaller craft and battle cruisers and even battleships could move on Richmond and our national capital. Enemy airplane carriers could also do a job on all these places.

Why?

On one side only of the Chesapeake, there are howitzers, with inadequate range, no fire control, no mines or cables or similar equipment of any kind. There should be sufficient 16-inch guns on both sides, with full equipment, plus AA guns and properly based fighting planes.

Every American knows the industrial, psychological and strategic importance of this area.

I do not anticipate that some enemy is going to steam up the Chesapeake and run us all out of the capital as the English did in 1814. However, the reason the British were able to do it was because the Chesapeake was not properly defended. For us to permit the present conditions, while we groan and strain over the building of battleships for overseas action, is beyond the realm of common sense and reason.

I think it only fair to say that the areas I have mentioned, that is, from North Carolina to Maine, are in the worst condition of any of our coasts. From North Carolina down past Florida the condition is fair, and can be improved by mobile AA guns and railroad artillery; the same is true of the Gulf Coast, which has further advantages of protective geography and some seacoast guns. As for the Pacific, it is in good shape, and is improving. On top of which, they have the whole fleet.

Now we come to a vital part of modern warfare—

In any picture of national defense, one must give complete consideration to the airplane just as certainly as traffic experts twenty years ago had to consider the effect of the automobile on the horse and buggy. Aviation is no longer a militarist's dream. It has made enormous advances. It concerns our own defense from the possibility of attack from planes cruising fro afar, and planes brought nearer by great airplane carriers. Also, we must consider the ability of our own airplanes to sink battleships—and of our own battleships getting sunk by enemy airplanes.

Not so long ago, I had some rather definite information of battleship sinkings, and knowing Army bomber developments, I suggested that recent reports showing the vulnerability of battleships had been suppressed. Although the vulnerability of the battleships was denied, the existence of the secret reports was not.

The only answers were some flag-waving statements that we should not let the enemy know our secrets. The admirals, emulating sea life, closed their mouths as tight as clams, and brand-new military locks clamped shut the lips of the Army officers. But tales could not be downed of battleships theoretically sunk out on the Pacific in war games, of Army planes that did the work. And there were stories of "battleship admirals"—old-timers sticking to their illusions of sea power and the invincibility of the battleship—and of "flying sea captains," younger fellows who see above the water, but do not talk because the battleship admirals sit on promotion boards and can deny promotion and can transfer a flying captain all the way to China if they please.

Flying officers of the Army, too, had been told to keep quiet—and they remembered General Billy Mitchell, who, though the brightest air officer in either the Army or the Navy, got the boot for telling the truth about the inadequacy of the air service.

One thing is sure: the inequalities, the chaos of naval demands, the mixture of objectives, the overlapping of jobs, must be settled, as things cannot go on as they are.

What is needed in this situation, it seems to me, is a broad, cool, coordinated view of national defense. At the present time we have in both the Senate and House a Naval Affairs Committee, Naval Appropriations, and Sub-Committee on War Appropriations—eight congressional committees in all—and the Departments of War and Navy, and no coordinating force.

Toward a Unified Defense

Under the War and Navy Departments, we have an aviation service for each; the Marine Corps under the Navy with its own Air Corps, and the Coast Guard—all of which constitutes a ouija board of conflicting interests. What can be done immediately to unify and coordinate this scattering and often contradictory line of fire in our national defense, and at the same time lay the groundwork for a permanent program?

First: The Joint (Army-Navy) Board (whoever heard of it?) ought to wake up. There must be some balance between Army needs and Navy needs, but I defy anyone to study the various and sundry fatted volumes of hearings on the Army and Navy bills and find a single piece of evidence for the co-ordination of the services or of national defense. This "Joint Board," composed of officers of the Army and Navy, meets, nobody seems to know where or when, and if conclusions are made, they are not final or conclusive unless approved by both the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy. Co-ordination of national defense demands action by this outfit at once.

Second, and much better, there ought to be established a single Department of National Defense, with two under-secretaries—one of the Army, another of the Navy; which means abolition of the Secretaries of War and Navy. In ordinary common sense, this is necessary for the elimination of overlapping features and conflicts of "missions"—all of which must now be settled by the President, whose overwhelming duties prevent a detailed study for unbiased decisions, and who may in any event be prejudiced in favor of one service as against another.

The morale-breaking, defense-weakening troubles of the present situation of contending, jealous military and naval forces could be eliminated by this Department of National Defense.

Third, and in connection with the foregoing, the Joint Board now, and the Department of National Defense when it is created, should, I think, tackle and then keep settled these specific problems:

(A) The relative necessity of the two departments in reference to the number of airplanes each needs. The present situation of the Navy having more planes than the Army is ridiculous. No aviation authorities believe that should be.

(Notwithstanding the accepted belief that the Army has more planes than the Navy, the fact is the Navy has the greater number — Army. 2.320 maximum; Navy, 3,000 minimum. In a Department of National Defense this condition, lopsided one way or the other, could be regulated, since the only consideration would be national defense.)

(B) The relations of seacoast defense by the establishment of emplaced guns. AA batteries, fire control and mines, as against the building of battleships and other warships.

Why Not a Disarmament Conference?

Fourth, aviation training should be established on a broad and comprehensive scale. This could be accomplished by converting the Army air-training center at San Antonio, Texas, into the United States Aeronautical Academy, on a parity with the naval and military academies at Annapolis and West Point. In addition, land-grant colleges should have aviation units just as they have other combat units. The National Guard Air Service should be greatly extended. Civil aviation, for war use when needed, should be encouraged.

Fifth, there should be an international disarmament conference. The only reason one has not been had so far is the stubborn refusal of the administration and State Department to consider it. The President and the State Department agree it's a grand idea—but we cannot have it "just now." The State Department, after having been subjected to severe criticism and having been asked by the Senate Naval Affairs Committee about our government initiating such a conference, replied austerely that the "convening of a conference that would become a platform for airing national grievances would merely exacerbate public opinion in the various countries and harm, rather than help, the cause of peace." Then, after more diplomatic run-around, they added "no practical results could come," ending with the astonishing news that "this government would welcome at any time international agreement upon practical measures for further limitation and reduction of naval armament."

In other words, the situation seems to be that if the rest of the world turns as pure as we are we might attend. It is generally conceded that the reason we don't initiate such a conference is because the British don't want to go into it with Japan with their conflicting interests in the Orient. But Japan has repeatedly stated she would attend such a conference.

Let us analyze this. The State Department worries about "exacerbating" public opinion at such a conference. Feeling that such a word must be awful, what could be more awful, or "exacerbating," than the continual debate on the subject, the continual denunciations in the halls of Congress and in the Press?

To Keep the Peace

For this country to throw its hands up, and continue this senseless naval race, in the meantime wasting billions and committing acts that get us nearer war, is criminal folly. Indeed, when there is such a race, based on "relative strength of navies," no one ever catches up; it keeps on and on until physical exhaustion, bankruptcy and war do catch up with the racers, of which our nation is one.

Here, certainly, is a job for the American people to tackle. They should not stand for this foolishness, and ought to demand an accounting.

The conclusions one may reach on these questions may all be different. But the facts that I have stated are facts in anybody's language, and in anybody's politics. The decisions to be made are with the voters, or the readers, and I put the questions up to them.

Do you think it wise to keep building battleships, always bigger and more expensive, while our fences are open at home?

Do you believe the psychology created by the establishment of a Department of National Defense, plus the efficiency from eliminating overlapping features, would improve the present system?

What do you think about airplanes— wouldn't it be a wise idea to give aviation proper encouragement, while we shake off some of our antiquated ideas of old-time heavy-armored battleships?

If we finally get the biggest Navy in the world, what are we going to do with it? Do you want it to police the world, and make the rest of the world behave?

Do you want the Navy for national defense, or for such policing?

I think it is reasonable to say that foreign affairs have become home affairs and your affairs. What is the American idea of foreign affairs? First, that we establish safety at home, which we haven't done. Next, we don't want any foreign outfit. Fascist. Free, Communist, European or Oriental, planting its flag in any part of the Americas. All right, let's agree to that: and also that no American nations will build forts against each other, or make war upon each other. That might be the beginning of a foreign policy; and if we managed to keep the peace for a few years, the rest of the world would grasp our good example, and take a hint.

Maury Maverick, Colliers, July 2, 1938

Front-Fighters in Congress

2012-02-01T14:57:00.000-05:00

A BILL to establish government ownership of the basic industries, banking and transportation would obtain between thirty and forty votes in the present House of Representatives. The men who would cast these votes, disbelievers in the existing economic order, form the true opposition to Roosevelt. Most of them feel they are men of destiny; they believe that, within the reasonably near future, they will be the majority, and form the government.

During the present session they have acquired the group name of mavericks, a name given them by Washington correspondents because Maury Maverick of Texas summoned their first meeting, last February, and, with Gerald J. Boileau of Wisconsin, drafted their manifesto. The temptation to give them a name meaning unbranded cattle was irresistible. However, some of the older members of the group, who were fighting for a changed social order when Maverick was a schoolboy, are not altogether pleased by it.

If the group possesses a leader, it is the ghost of Mayor LaGuardia of New York. The mavericks descend directly from the little band of congressional condottieri that LaGuardia led through the long, fat Coolidge years. At present LaGuardia would probably be the group's choice for third-party candidate for President, chiefly because he lives in New York and therefore is supposed to have the support of the labor unions of the East to a greater degree than, for example, Olson of Minnesota or Philip La Follette of Wisconsin. However, it is a question how much longer LaGuardia can continue to be Roosevelt's errand boy—as he apparently feels he must be in order to get funds for New York's unemployed—and still retain the group's confidence.

Among the members of the House group, the foremost figure probably is Ernest Lundeen of Minnesota. He was first elected to Congress in 1916. Follower of the elder La Follette and Representative Lindbergh, the aviator's father, he voted against America's entry into the World War. He was viciously assailed by the patriots of those days, threatened with violence and defeated for reelection in 1918. An experience of that sort either destroys a man or hardens his character to iron. Nothing now frightens Lundeen or can sway him.

Early in the session, Lundeen introduced the so-called workers' unemployment-insurance bill, endorsed by many Left groups. In effect, it would have guaranteed a minimum standard of living to industrial and agricultural workers, regardless of booms and depressions. No bill with such deeply cutting implications was ever before seriously considered by Congress. The contrast between the Lundeen bill and Roosevelt's faint-hearted unemployment-insurance measure, the Wagner-Lewis-Daughton bill, drove the House leadership into silence. No Roosevelt supporter dared attack the essentials of the Lundeen bill; on behalf of the administration measure Daughton could only say that it represented a first step, and could be strengthened later. The Lundeen bill received fifty-two votes. This is the highest vote against the traditional capitalist order yet polled.

Lundeen is a product of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor movement, which itself is the child of the Scandinavian labor and coöperative movements. The Scandinavian tradition helps to explain the placid conviction with which Farmer-Laborites attack the present order. That capitalism is not perfect is no new idea to them. It is something they learned from their parents and grandparents.

Maury Maverick is the inheritor of an equally strong tradition. Members of the Maverick family have had liberal sympathies, but for many generations the family, as such, has been part of the dominant, owning class. General Sam Maverick, the man who wouldn't bother to brand his calves, possessed a fabulous domain in Texas. The family to which Maverick's mother belongs, the Maury's of Virginia, were likewise great landowners and even more lordly than the Mavericks.

Maverick himself is one of the genuine heroes of the War, in which he was horribly wounded. He spent months in a military hospital and escaped death by an eyelash. His wounds have left him with a permanent stiffness of his upper body. He is a lawyer, and was president of the San Antonio Bar Association at twenty-three. He engaged in the lumber business, and made money at it. In 1929 he was one of a group that overthrew the San Antonio political machine and cleaned up the town.

He is the only Southerner, and only Democrat, in the House radical group, as well as the only one without a working-class or small-farmer background. A first-termer, without effort he has become one of the most conspicuous men in the House. His best job has been the exposure of the utility company intrigues against the T.V.A. He announced that an agent of the Alabama Power Company was occupying the office of Representative May of Kentucky, chief opponent of the T.V.A., and left May spluttering with ludicrous rage. At a committee hearing, he abruptly checked an attack on the T.V.A. by identifying a suspected power lobbyist in the audience and demanding that he be thrown out. Maverick is sponsor of a drastic neutrality bill, designed to keep us, as far as laws can do it, from being dragged into another European war. He had a large share in the fight to prevent the administration's measure against war profiteering, drafted by B. M. Baruch and General Johnson, from being jammed through the House without amendments—a fight in which the radical group won a clear victory.

Three members of the House radical group are important for their relative youth. These are Vito Marcantonio of New York, only thirty-three, Thomas R. Amlie of Wisconsin, thirty-eight, and Paul John Kvale of Minnesota, thirty-nine. All have a full generation of active political life ahead of them, during which they will presumably have a part in far-reaching events. Marcantonio represents LaGuardia's old Upper East Side district in New York. He lacks LaGuardia's exuberance, but he also lacks LaGuardia's moody, erratic quality. He is better grounded in economics than most of his colleagues, and has a contemptuous wit that makes him extremely effective on the House floor. In the debate on the rule under which the administration's social-security bill was to be voted on, Marcantonio informed Daughton: "You say you are giving us a wide-open rule; you are giving us a wide-open bag, and you have got this measure in it."

When the Wagner labor-disputes bill was debated, he proposed that it be extended to include agricultural workers, and gave a merciless description of the terror under which Arkansas sharecroppers are living. The Arkansas delegation, backed by the Democratic majority, retaliated with insults and threats of bodily harm, but Marcantonio persisted. Single-handed, he forced a debate on the recent kidnaping of Robert Minor, Communist leader, at Gallup, New Mexico. Last month Marcantonio and Lundeen, in a joint interview in New York, proposed the immediate formation of a national third party.

Amlie is a slow-moving, kindly giant, with something of the manner that Lincoln supposedly had in his earlier years. However, Amlie is better educated, and much more sophisticated, than Lincoln. He is more radical than the La Follettes, and probably represents the Wisconsin idea in its present-day form more accurately than they do. He is one of the directing spirits of the Farmer-Labor Political Federation, an organization of increasing influence intended to weld together the farmers of the Northwest and the organized workers of the East. Like Marcantonio, Amlie expects the formation of a new party. Kvale has inherited the seat of his father, O. J. Kvale, one of the Farmer-Labor champions. While both Amlie and Marcantonio are taking a largely independent line, Kvale is a loyal supporter of Governor Olson, with whose fortunes, for the immediate future, his own are linked.

Of the remaining members of the House group, George J. Schneider of Wisconsin stands out for the same quality of moral courage possessed by Lundeen. Boileau of Wisconsin is an able lawyer whose experience in practical affairs makes him extremely useful. The most entertaining figure, perhaps, is Usher L. Burdick of North Dakota, raised among the Sioux Indians, a friend of Sitting Bull and one of Minnesota University's great right-ends. Burdick's North Dakota colleague, William Lemke, once a strict believer in Non-Partisan League tenets, has now strayed, or appears to be straying, into the sheepfold of Father Coughlin.

The radicals' voting strength is too slender for them to hope to carry a program through into legislation. Their function is to serve as a ginger group. During the present session, this has been of great importance. Unquestionably the threat of the Lundeen bill helped to force action not only upon the administration's social-security bill, but upon all labor measures. The stringent House rules of procedure have hampered the radicals surprisingly little. They are always on the House floor, always ready to speak, and some of them, like Marcantonio, have a gift for making their case in a few scarifying sentences. The level of debate in the House this session has been extraordinarily high.

The most important thing about the group, however, is the fact of its existence. The Lundeen bill, and the manifesto drafted by Maverick and Boileau, represent a clean break with the past policies of the Democratic and Republican Parties. The principles that they express demand for their fulfilment the rise of a wholly new political movement, of which the House has constituted itself the advance guard and upon which they have individually staked their fortunes.

Jonathan Mitchell, The New Republic, June 19, 1935

Maury Maverick in San Antonio

2012-01-31T19:39:00.000-05:00

THERE IS ONE MAN, mayor of an American city, who is having a grand time. It is Maury Maverick down in San Antonio, Texas. Maury has lost none of his magnificent swagger. He is full of laughter, is eternally busy. He is like a man attempting to lift an entire city on his shoulders—carry it forward into something new.

I suspect there are many people in San Antonio who have no great fondness for Maury. They managed to beat him for reelection to Congress but it may well turn out that they will end by being glad he is back there at home, in his own city, among his own people. There is something very Texan about Maury. There is a Texas sweep to the man. He is Texas in a way I imagine that other Texan—Jack Garner—never was, never could be. Out there, where they know their Cactus Jack personally, they speak of him always with a sort of nervous tolerance, for, while Cactus Jack evidently has power, it isn't a broad, sweeping Texas kind of power. It seems to be the sort of power that comes from interest on the dollar invested, the mortgage-foreclosing sort of power.

As for San Antonio, it strikes a man, coming there, looking about, as just the typical American city. The city's magnificence is magnificent. Its squalor, like that in the poor quarters of so many American cities, is something to alarm and frighten you.

You come into the city by car, out of the far west, as I did, from Los Angeles and Tucson—so many millions and millions of acres to half-feed a steer, a few goats and sheep wandering over the barrenness—and there you are, on a flat rich plain, cotton growing up to your shoulders, vast pecan groves, vegetables of all sorts to be shipped north by the carload, the trainload.

The city is half Mexican; nearly all of the labor of that country is done by Mexicans. They are everywhere. As voters they have always been purchasable. Why not? If I had to live as most of them have to live, be paid for my labor as they have been paid, I'd sell anything.

As everyone knows who knows the South, Maury Maverick comes from a family of distinction. There are the Maurys of Virginia, the Mavericks of Texas. He must have gone through something any boy or young man from such a Southern family has necessarily to go through.

Are you going to ride on that, be what is called a Southern gentleman, stay up there on the heights? Knowing, as you must if you have a working brain at all, on what all the distinction you are holding onto rests?

Cheap labor, Negro and Mexican, pounded down and down, ignorance that has gone on for a century, "hill billies," Florida and Georgia "crackers," Mexican "greasers." One-party states—rotten bureaucracies built up, as they must be in any one-party state. The thing that, in the end, must kill all the totalitarian states, either in America or Europe, going on in our South. The nonsense always being carried on about the old South—that unlike the North and the Middle West it was not commercial. The Old South trying to hark back to the Greeks, to justify its "peculiar" institution. As though it didn't take money to buy Negro slaves. If slavery was not the very height of commercialism, what was it?

A young alive man like Maury Maverick, with his alert brain, realizing all that, not wanting to live on "family," be a stuffed shirt.

So this young man goes to Congress, gets there by buying the Mexican vote. There is no doubt of that. But he bought it in a new and legal way. The Mexicans down there were not classified as white men. They were classified as Negroes in the census and other records, federal and state. Maury forced the classification of the Mexicans as white men. That's the way he got them, bought them. He restored to them a little of their self-respect. If you ask me, I imagine they will keep voting for him till hell freezes. He's got them really bought.

A pretty interesting fact, I'd say, now when we are all trying so hard to square ourselves with the American nations to the south of us, wanting their markets, of course. But also, a little, wanting something else, even understanding, cultural understanding, wanting even to make some amends for brutalities of the past.

The Mexicans and the sympathetic natives sent Maury to Congress, as a Southern New Dealer. But when he came up for reelection the second time, the machine politicians and the special interests managed to gang up on him. They beat him.

I imagine it was the New Deal's fault. They had sent a representative of the National Labor Relations Board down there where the pecan-shellers, in the huge pecan industry, were getting an average of about $1.75 a week. . . . Mexican women trying to keep families going by prostitution. A mess, one of the ugliest messes in the U.S.A.

I was down there when that was going on, went to some of the hearings, heard some of the rich pecan kings speak of labor, Mexican labor, with sneering contempt.

"You can't do anything with that kind of cattle." The air full of that sort of feeling. At the same time the beauty spots of the city all relics of what an earlier Mexican civilization had built.

So they beat Maury for Congress. He was upsetting the apple cart. He was, they cried, a Red, a Communist. I imagine there was plenty of money spent. They got him. They thought they had him down for keeps. They figured that, because he was a New Dealer, he would probably get an appointment in Washington, or be sent, say, to some other country as an ambassador. And that would be O.K., too. He would be out of their hair.

But Maury didn't do it. He fooled them. He came home, put his name up for mayor in his own home city. He got into a real fight. He is one who doesn't mind a fight. He likes it.

And he won out. They used up all the ammunition they had, hit below the belt, yelled communism, but he beat them.

And there he was, right away, in trouble up to his eyes.

There had been a permit given for a Communist meeting, not by Maury but by his predecessor. Was he going to revoke it? Was he going to let them meet?

"Sure," said Maury.

"What about free speech?"

"Let 'em spout."

I am sure the man realized, as any man who knows his America must realize, that all this talk about a Communist danger in this country is just plain bunk. That the real reason for all this Red-baiting has its foundation in the fact that, in San Antonio for example, pecan-shellers are now getting $2.50 a day instead of $1.75 a week. That the U.S.A. is a deeply capitalistic country with just a bit of awakened consciousness that our underdogs have been made too underdog, that the real revolutionary danger is in the $1.75 a week, not in Earl Browder or Mike Gold.

So Maury said, "No, I'll not revoke the permit. Let 'em spout," and immediately crowds gathered in the street before the city hall.

They howled. They threw bricks. They threatened to hang Maury to a lamp post but he stood pat. He stood pat in the same way the Little Flower, LaGuardia, did about the Bund meeting in the Garden, in New York. Thinking, believing, that the best way to get the atmosphere cleared was to let them spout.

So that blew over and they tried to get Maury in another way. He had, they said, paid the poll tax for certain union members. It seems that it is against the law to pay another man's poll tax in Texas. In my own state, Virginia, where I live now, both of the old parties do it openly. The Byrd organization does it, and what there is of the Republican crowd does it. In our congressional district, I have been told, it costs a man around $30,000 to be elected to Congress. The money goes into paying up poll taxes. What else?

But in Texas, you can't. Down there they can send you to the penitentiary for doing it. But you can spend money to put on a campaign to get people to pay their own poll taxes.

Maury gave the money—$250—to the Garment Workers' Union, with its lawyer's consent.

The lawyer sold him down the river.

Maury says the union attorney wanted to dictate who should be chief of police in San Antonio.

Maury said, "No."

He said, "They elected me, not you, mayor of this town."

"Do your worst," he said, and the man apparently tried.

"Were you scared, Maury?"

"Hell, yes. I didn't think I'd look good in a cell. I wanted to do things in this town. I'm stuck on my town. I've got a hunch it can be the most beautiful, the most healthful city in America. I'm a Texan. I believe in Texas. I have plans. I want to work. I don't want to be in jail. Sure I was scared."

They didn't get him. He is working.

He said, "Listen, boy. I don't want to be a Huey Long or a Bilbo. I don't want to appeal to anything cheap. I'm no charlatan. I want to work, make this town what it can be. Sure they tried to get me. Maybe if I had been them I'd have done the same. They tried to get me but they failed. O.K.

"I'm not going to be revengeful. Yesterday was yesterday. What about doing one Texas town right? This is an empire, down here. I'm a native of a town I like and I want to make the world like it. And boy, am I going to make it a town!"

He seems to be doing it. He's young, isn't old and cynical, isn't tired. He got eleven millions from the U.S.A. while in Congress to tear out some seventy acres of the worst, the most terrible slums in America. He has driven the big-time gamblers out of his town. He says of the poor little prostitutes, "I'll make them keep off the streets but I'll not arrest and bilk them."

He takes you around, proudly, swaggeringly. He is carrying on the beautifying of the bank of the river that flows through the city. Has got all of the men he can find at work. The merchants, coming to realize that workers getting $1.75 a week are rotten customers, are going over to him.

There was an old Mexican town, called "La Villita," right in the heart of San Antonio—a few old houses, very simple and therefore beautifully built, within walking distance of all the big modern hotels. He is restoring that, making it a part of the new city of his dreams. He is working, half playing, full of energy, a real Texan, not wanting to be a stuffed shirt, not, it seems, revengeful for what they have tried to do to him, trying to keep his head.

He strikes me as American youth, at its best, a man with the courage and energy to try again in another American city what so many men have tried only to meet defeat. It seems to me our one hope—such American youth.

Sherwood Anderson, The New Republic, March 25, 1940

* * *
Maverick Bounces Back

WHEN MAURY MAVERICK was defeated for reelection to Congress last July his enemies felt they had cooked his political goose to an enduring brown. A conservative city, San Antonio had sent him to Congress not because he was a liberal, but in spite of his being a liberal. A great many people, however, who had voted for him because they liked him personally, had become afraid of his ideas, and wanted him out of office. Maverick himself wrote after the primary that the surprising thing was not that he had been defeated for reelection, but that he had ever been elected in the first place.

His enemies are now much less sure that they have finally disposed of Maury Maverick. For he is a candidate for mayor of San Antonio, and he appears likely to win the election on May 9.

The San Antonio city machine, which defeated Maverick last July, goes into the campaign badly split. All winter it was under severe fire, and as soon as it was obvious that Maverick would make a strong race, the machine leaders began scurrying for cover.

When the city commissioners cast Mayor C. K. Quin aside, the mayor put himself at the head of his own complete ticket. The commissioners attempted to form a complete ticket, too, but failed, and each commissioner is now struggling to save his own job. A third mayoralty candidate is Leroy Jeffers, who as an associate of Paul J. Kilday, Maverick's successor in Congress, has some claim to the remnants of the city machine. There are some minor candidates, but the race lies among Maverick, Quin and Jeffers. Since all three are strong candidates, the election will probably be decided by a plurality.

Maverick has a better chance than either Quin or Jeffers to get that plurality. He lost in July by only 493 votes out of 49,151, and many people who were afraid of Maverick in Congress are not afraid of Maverick in the city hall. He will have strong labor support, especially from the CIO. Federal office-holders will vote for him. The sheriff and some other county officials who were against him last July have announced their support. Besides, he has espoused the city-manager plan, which will appeal to many conservative voters who believe in the reform of the city government.

The Mexican vote will be important. Formerly it was bought and sold by the city machine like sacks of potatoes. But in the last few years the Mexicans, of whom there are 93,000 in San Antonio, or roughly 40 percent of the population, have become politically conscious. Last July they broke away from the city machine to vote in large numbers for Maverick. They will do so again on May 9. It is true that the Mexican vote is not entirely a political asset in San Antonio, where racial feeling is so bitter that some Anglo-Americans will vote against Maverick just because the Mexicans are voting for him. Nevertheless, the likelihood that 70 percent of the Mexicans will vote for Maverick is an important reason why he has a good chance to win.

Another reason is that Maverick is making an intelligent campaign. Like LaGuardia in New York City, he is hammering away at the idea that social theories play only a small role in city government. San Antonio, wearied of machine government, seems in a mood to listen. His opponents say that if he wins he won't stop at city hall long enough to warm the mayor's chair, but will be off to Washington at the first opportunity. Maverick replies that he is running for mayor, nothing else. Even so, the San Antonio city hall will not hold him forever.

Sherwood Anderson, The New Republic, May 10, 1939