The Coming New Prosperity in America (1932)

From the December 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shorter Hours: More Work: Lower Pay
Uncouth indeed is the hurricane that blows nobody good! Out of the great depression, at last it looks as if a little breeze might cool the brows of our poor capitalists here in the U.S.A. Profits have been nowhere near what they ought to be, dividends falling off, taxes going up, prices going down; and you wouldn’t believe the amount of political grafting that has been going on at their expense! The tariff hasn’t been acting right, crops have been exasperatingly abundant, so that agricultural prices are, as Mr. Hoover says, “hideously low.” Even the Boll-Weevil proved disloyal by failing to destroy enough cotton, thus increasing unemployment among the brokers on the cotton exchange. Of course, wages did slip down a bit, here and there, pretty much all over; but still, you couldn't exactly say things were like they used to be in “normal” times. No, indeed!

But, maybe, happy days will come again. If our masters had to shell out to keep a lot of charities going, they also learned through these same charities just what a small amount the workers can be made to exist on, without in the least losing their love for the wage-system. The knowledge is to be applied in a manner to profit the owners of wealth and the means of production thereof.

We are to have the shorter working week, whose virtues have been sung so long by trade unions and reform bodies, amongst which may be mentioned the so-called Socialist Party of America, the Communist Party, and the Industrial Union groups. The chorus was that the five-day week and the six-hour day is the cure for unemployment. Much noise was made, and vast statistics gathered, to show the benefits to workers and to capitalists as well. At St. Louis, in May, 1927, the Order of Railroad Telegraphers put it to the bosses neatly in a resolution which started thus: —

  “Whereas, It is a demonstrable fact that a shorter work week is conducive to a more intensive production without an undue strain on the worker . . .” (Italics mine).

You see, after all, the capitalists have political power and own the industries. So it was very necessary to sell the idea to them. A thoughtful worker could see the point at once. The capitalists, having great minds, capable of pondering all these things, thought more slowly.

Now, the capitalists long ago resigned themselves to having a considerable number of jobless workers around, even in the busiest times. It helped them keep wages down somewhere near the food, clothing and shelter level. But when the number of out-of-works gets up around a dozen millions, as it is now, you can't blame even a capitalist for losing his patience. So much idle labour-power costs a lot of money, it is a nuisance, and a menace to private property. As Mr. Gibson says (Wall Street Journal, October 17th, 1932): —

   "Corporations and business firms which support unemployment relief funds may be insuring themselves against a semi-permanent government system of relief with resultant taxes over a long period of years, and also may be averting social unrest spelling business disaster . . "(italics mine).

The Interstate Commerce Commission refuses to allow the New York Telephone Co. to charge to operating expense $75,000 which they gave to the City's 1931 fund for the jobless, even though the Company pointed out that “in the absence of unemployment relief the general effect of the business depression might have been worse and riots or other disturbances might have injured the company's property " (Business Week, NY., October 12th).

Anyway, we are now in the midst of the "national share-the-work campaign," which is the new name of the shorter work-week movement. Directing the campaign are such sterling toilers for humanity as Walter C. Teagle, President, Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, who hopes to report, “before winter, if possible," "that several million unemployed have been put back to work." Mr. Teagle's company adopted the five-day week some time back, and now the Socony-Vacuum Corporation states that, as from November 1st, “operations of the company will be placed on a five-day week, with a corresponding reduction in pay " (italics mine). (See Wall Street Journal, October 10th.)

Other work spreaders who are urging the idea on their fellow-capitalists are Alfred P. Sloan, President of General Motors; Fred. H. Ecker, President of the Metropolitan Life Insurance .Co.; Paul W. Litchfield, of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.; L. C. Walker, President of the Shaw-Walker Co.; J. H. Rand, Chairman of Remington-Rand; and the whole manoeuvre is sponsored officially by our great engineering President, Herbert Hoover.

Of course, somebody would bring up some difficulties in the way of the plan. The National Industrial Conference Board made public a survey of 1,500 employers, with the discouraging remark:

  “While, of course, the figures here given are averages that do not exclude individual cases with longer hours, it is none the less a striking fact that only four of the industries named provide an average of more than forty hours per week. By contrast, as many as eight industries have reached so low an ebb of activity that they cannot provide so much as thirty hours a week." (Times, N.Y., October 14th, 1932.)

They gave further figures, which are here arranged for convenience of the reader (same source): —

Foundries and machine shops were working only 27.4 hours, and—

“Other principal industries ranged between 30 and 40 hours."

The above was the state of affairs in August. Ordinary persons, like workers, might wonder how the five-day week and the six-hour day can be introduced in industries which aren't working even that long, and how this can put the unemployed back to work. But, shucks! this will simply make the job-spreading more interesting. It will be no puzzle at all for the great men. Maybe, we will get a three-day week out of it—"with corresponding reductions in pay"! The masters are not going to forget the lessons learned from their charity organisations. What they hope to achieve by this proposal is as follows: —

1. They would save millions in charity donations. The amount they had to tear themselves loose from last winter was agonizing, and already the (N.Y.) State Temporary Relief Administration estimates that $10,000,000 monthly will be needed for relief of unemployed the coming winter (in New York alone) and— “The estimate did not include funds to be raised privately . . ." (New York Times, October 18th, 1932).
2. The dole system would be staved off. (Voluntary giving has staved off permanent government relief, which would raise taxes. See above quote from Wall Street Journal.)
3. The workers will be more rested, therefore able to carry on “more intensive production" while working. This conclusion is amply supported by data compiled by the National Industrial Conference Board. Rival crews, or shifts, could be made up, and the friendly (!) rivalry between them will surely bring out some new high points in productivity.
4. We are assured that workers do not have to eat such large amounts as was formerly thought necessary; if they will only adopt the "scientific" menus being compiled for them by our dieticians, they can yield more energy with much less food. In Fayette County, Pennsylvania, it has been shown that a family of five can survive on one dollar per week! A working-class family, of course; a capitalist family needs a bit more. Another thing: the doctors have for years pooh-poohed the advocates of fasting and dieting as a disease cure, but in the present emergency even the medicine men are going to face their duty and lay bare the facts. It seems they have been fooling us all the time about fasting. Dr. W. A. Evans, who conducts a daily column in the Daily Nexus (U.S.A.), assures us (October 20th) that: —"A normal man should be able to go without food for nearly two months.”

This is not the first or only statement of the kind from orthodox sources, and more can be expected in the struggle to keep hungry workers from worrying about pork chops. Very useful when wages are about to be reduced.

To be sure, the sharpened competition which will be the life of trade with the coming of shorter weeks and days, will make necessary the introduction of more improved methods and machinery. The Wall Street Journal (October 14th) quotes "Iron Age"; —

   "The substitution of more efficient machine tools will eventually take place on a large scale.” 

The same issue quotes Walter P. Chrysler: —

  "Our Plymouth plant has been completely reorganised to take full advantage of the tremendous advances that have been made in machine tool design and manufacturing methods during the past few years.”

If the process is going on already, just wait till it gets going in earnest! The outcome, of course, will be the more rapid glutting of markets, with even worse unemployment than before; meanwhile, terrific increase of exploitation of those in work.

This will be the "New Prosperity.” The next depression will surely be a humdinger! Would it be out of place, fellow-workers, to remind you that this is the wages-system, capitalism; and that Socialism is a practicable alternative ?

Scott Frampton,

Workers' Socialist Party of U.S.A. 

A Challenge to the Socialist Party of America. (1933)

From the March 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

[As our American comrades, the Workers’ Socialist Party, have no journal of their own, they have asked us to publish the following statement. We are willing to allow reasonable space for a reply by the Socialist Party of America.— Ed. Comm.]

In every capitalist country there are organisations that call themselves Socialist and claim to stand in the interests of the working class, while their activity consists in misrepresenting Socialist teachings, distorting Marxism, and generally seeking to keep the workers’ attention focussed on any or everything but their real interest, the attainment of Socialism. The Labour Party in England is an example; their would-be imitator in the United States, the so-called Socialist Party of America, is another, amongst many others. Innumerable instances have been quoted in the Socialist Standard giving evidence of the unsound and treacherous nature of these Parties. Below is presented a further example of how such organisations make their sly attacks on the Socialist movement, and how they hedge and evade when brought to task by Socialists.

James Oneal, editor of The New Leader (New York), an official publication of the Socialist Party of America, wrote an article in his paper in which he misrepresented the Workers’ Socialist Party; whose Executive Committee thereupon sent a reply (appended below) asking for publication in The New Leader. We considered this to be no extraordinary request, more especially in the light of the following occurrence:

A news item recently appeared in the New York World-Telegram, which is an open supporter of capitalism, telling of internal controversy in the S.P. of A., pointing out a split between two of their “leaders” and their respective factions over their trade union policy. One of their members wrote to the capitalist sheet, setting forth his claim that the reporter had erred. Incidentally, this letter, signed by another S.P. of A. “leader,” Julius Gerber, contains the admission:

   "The Socialist Party permits its members the widest latitude of opinion and expression, and Mr. Thomas, differing with the majority, not only of the national executive committee but of the membership of the party, has a right to hold and express his opinion.”

We submit that the sentence quoted bears out in full all that we claimed against the S.P. of A. in our letter to The New Leader. The New York World-Telegram printed Gerber’s letter within five days. We thought the “Socialist” paper, which claims to be interested in all the problems of the working class, would show at least as much courtesy.

Our letter to The New Leader follows: —

Letter of the Workers' Socialist Party to the Socialist Party of America.To the Editor, January 13th, 1933. 

New Leader,                             7E, 15th Street,
New York, N.Y.

          Dear Sir,

   Under instructions from the Executive Committee of the Workers’ Socialist Party, I am sending you the enclosed letter, which concerns itself with an article, signed by yourself, which appeared in the New Leader of January 7th, 1933.
  In our estimation, your article contained an error, which should be corrected through the same medium in which it was made. Therefore, as a matter of courtesy to us—and the facts—will you please publish the enclosed in the New Leader at your earliest opportunity?
                                           Yours truly,
                                               (Signed) Scott Frampton,
                                                              National Secretary.

"To the Editor, New Leader, 7, E. 15th St.,
                                              New York, N.Y.

“Dear Sir:
   
       “Mr. James Oneal’s musical number, ‘The Chorus of Chaos,’ in the New Leader of January 7th, 1933, very carelessly includes the Workers’ Socialist Party in a list of what Oneal designates as Socialist organisations. The accurate heading for his inventory is ‘Organisations that advocate use of the ballot.' Only one of the groups listed can successfully maintain its claim to be Socialist: that is the Workers' Socialist Party. The others may bear labels, but it can be easily demonstrated —by a Socialist—that they are all not only not Socialist, but anti-Socialist and anti-working-class. It is worthy of note that Oneal considers his own Party, the so-called Socialist Party of America, a member of the Chorus of Chaos. The Workers’ Socialist Party declines the nomination, and maintains itself to be the only Socialist Party in the United States.
 
   “Says Mr. Oneal, anent the groups listed by him, ‘ . . . let them endeavour to formulate a fundamental programme and philosophy and they will find some difficulties,' the inference being that none of the groups have a fundamental programme. The Workers’ Socialist Party refusing to be included, this inference is correct for the remaining organisations.

   
     “Mr. Oneal writes : 'If we could get representatives of the whole twenty groups into an orchestra, what a symphony this amalgam of communism, syndicalism, parlour bolshevism, socialism, impossibilism, opportunism, liberalism, progressiveness, intellectualism, technocracy, radicalism and agrarianism would be! ’ Why the 'If’ ?

   
     “Let us give ear to Mr. Hillquit for a moment. He felt it necessary lately to call upon the ‘Socialist Party of America’ to 'determine fundamental questions of Socialist principles . . .' (The American Socialist Quarterly, April, 1932). After a third of a century of its existence he admits his Party does not yet know the fundamental principles of Socialism. Says he (same place) 'It must appear before the people with a clear-cut, convincing and aggressive programme and a consistent and harmonious social arid political philosophy. And it is on this point that our Party is somewhat weak.'

   
   “On this point, as well as on fundamentals, the Workers' Socialist—Party is clear and Socialist. It holds—

 
   " 'That society as at present constituted is based upon the ownership of the means of living (i.e., land, factories, railroads, etc.) by the capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement of the working class by whose labour alone all wealth is produced. That in society, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a class struggle, between those who possess but do not produce and those who produce but do not possess. That this antagonism can be abolished only by the emancipation of the working class from the domination of the master class by the conversion into the common property of society of the means of production and distribution, and their democratic control by the whole people.' Furthermore, there is no confusion of the issue by a clutter of prescriptions of social paragoric reform ‘demands.' Of course, the clear-cut Socialist programme does not attract non-Socialist support. Mr. Hillquit knows this.

 
  "Hillquit had this in mind at the New York City convention of his Party, January 16th and 17th, 1932, when he was voicing his opposition to the proposal to restore the reference to the class struggle to the application card. ‘He felt that 75 per cent. of new members signing the blank would not know what the class struggle meant.' (New Leader, February 6th, 1932.) Evidence is at hand that they would be unable to find its meaning, after signing, within the 'Socialist' Party of America. At their convention in May, 1932, Hillquit explained this in part, as follows:

   
   " 'There is opposition to me because I represent working classes, Marxian Socialism as against three other trends which have appeared in our party,' Mr. Hillquit declared. 'One of these trends is the militant group, a well-meaning, immature movement that will eventually settle down but is at yet untamed and dangerous. Then there is the movement of extreme opportunism, appealing to intellectuals and college men. Then, thirdly, there is the practical, 'get-something- to-day’ school of socialism; get control of a city and show the people a good sewer system as an achievement. That is not my type of socialism, and to-day all these factions are in unholy alliance against me.’ (Herald-Tribune, May 24th, 1932.)

   "Thus a 'leader’ agonised. In contrast, the Workers’ Socialist Party declares that the emancipation of the working class 'must be the work of the working class itself.' But then, we are not a member of Mr. Oneal's orchestra.

   "At this same convention (see report quoted) 'Charges of Ku-Klukism in the party, anti-Semitism and sectional bitterness were hurled by supporters of Mr. Hillquit in more than three hours of furious debate. Mayor Hoan’s backers pleaded for a party more popular and practical, one not fashioned along the lines of doctrinaire Marxism.’ j

   "The Workers* Socialist Party declares that '. . . the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex.' But then we are not angling for politically ignorant votes for Milwaukee, office-holders.

   "We could go on almost indefinitely, covering the whole history of the 'Socialist' Party of America, showing that its aim is not socialism, that it is not made up of Socialists—in fact, a Socialist would not even apply for admission. The New Leader columnist, S. A. de Witt, put it nicely: 'And we simply just cannot go on much further along the line of opportunistic social reform, and still keep our identity as Socialists.' (New Leader, Aug. 30th, 1930.) 'Identity as Socialists,' indeed! amongst a pack of pedlars of every imaginable half-baked quack nostrum, from early Christianity, through advocacy of the capital levy, and to 'controlled' inflation, pleading to help the capitalist dunderheads to monkey with the currency, and weeping to the workers what a whacking they will suffer if the inflation does take place! (Thomas’s column in the New Leader, June 25th, 1932.) Out of their own mouths they stand condemned of having no claim to call themselves Socialist. They are the 'orchestra' that Mr. Oneal suggests; but that they make a symphony playing all those old, worn-out reform tunes of capitalist composition— really, that would be carrying the simile a little too far.

   "On the other hand, Mr. Oneal could easily have informed himself of the fundamental programme of the Workers’ Socialist Party; it appears in the form of a brief, but sufficient, Object and Declaration of Principles,  on every piece of literature that Party distributes. He can find it on the back cover page of the Socialist Standard, to be had at the Rand School bookstore. We have quoted it, in part, above. This programme is the one clear note that Mr. Oneal's unmusical (that is, un-Socialist) ear failed to distinguish above the clash and clatter of his Chaotic Chorus, the so-called Socialist Party of America."

The Executive Committee.

Workers Socialist Party of the United States.

The Socialist Party of America Refuses Publication

In the New Leader of January 21st appeared this reply: —

  We have received from Scott Frampton, national Secretary of the Workers’ Socialist Party, nearly five pages disagreeing with the item in the New Leader of January 7th, entitled “The Chorus of Chaos.” The letter presents the case for the Workers’Socialist Party, which “maintains itself to be the only Socialist Party in the United States.”
  We have a high respect for the devotion of this group to education in fundamentals of Socialist philosophy, but we submit that the sentence we quote above justifies the caption we gave to our item. The claim of the Workers’ Socialist Party is the claim of the S.L.P., the Socialist Party, the Communists and others, and these mutually conflicting claims constitute a “chorus of chaos.” The letter of Comrade Frampton enumerates the reasons for the claim his party makes.
  We have no desire to open our columns to a general debate between the organisations we mentioned regarding the respective claims of each. Our statement was a general one. It did not single out the Workers’ Socialist Party, nor did it exclude the Socialist Party.
   If there is to be a debate on this theme, the New Leader is content to call attention to the theme, but not to provide the forum for discussing the merits of the various organisations.

Their last paragraph can only mean that they are ‘content' to attack the Workers' Socialist Party, but refuse to discuss the matter. The reason for this is dear. There are workers, now members of the S.P. of A., who are honestly and sincerely anxious to find out about Socialism. The leaders dare not face a discussion in their press with Socialists; they know how easily we can demonstrate their anti-Socialist character, and that they, would lose members as a result. They also know that the ‘claim of the Workers' Socialist Party' is NOT 'the claim of the S.L.P.' S.P. of A., etc. The S.P. of A. is the result of a split in the S.L.P., more than thirty years ago, because of that party’s unsound, un-Socialist make-up, its 'chorus of chaos.’ The ‘Communist' Party is the result of a split in the S.P. of A. for the same reason. And the 'chorus of chaos' is not made up of  'these mutually conflicting claims,' but is exactly what we showed it is in our letter to the New Leader.

To say that the Workers' Socialist Party was not singled out is weak. The inclusion of Socialists in with a mess of anti-Socialists is nothing else but 'singling out’; it is an attack. This same New Leader, of January 21st, claims editorially, that ‘ . . . this evident desire for thorough knowledge of Socialist principles is welcome.’ We insist that if they mean welcome to the S.P. of A. ‘ leaders,' then they would have taken up our challenge and thrashed the matter out for the benefit of all those workers who read the New Leader. But evidently they are content to remain the anti-Socialist Party of America.

The National Executive Committee of the Workers' Socialist Party (U.S.A.), 

per Scott Frampton, Nat. Secretary