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THE PEOPLE'S VOICE Published weekly by The People's Voice Publishing Co. at 1206 Lockey Street, Helena, Montana Phone 26-J P. O. Box 838 Entered as Second Class Matter December 7. 1939 at the Post Office at Helena, Montana, under the Act of March 3. 1879. CO., HELENA. MONT. CO-OP PUBLISHING H. S. BRUCE, Managing Editor Subscription Price: $2.00 Year; Trial Subscription: Five Months $1-00 No Commercial Advertising except from Co-operative Business Institu institutions accepted. Rates on application. Prospects With President Roosevelt favoring the establishment of centralized authorities for the development of all major rivers in the United States, the outlook for the creation of a Missouri Valley Authority is encouraging. The influence of a Presi dent on congress may be said to be far more effective at the beginning of a new term than, say, in the last year or two when the members of congress are scanning the horizon for advantages from possible new political alignments. There are, of course, certain groups in congress, who for another will fight the MVA proposals to the They will invoke every method fair and unfair Crippling amendments, shrewdly drawn one reason or bitter end. and rule to defeat it. and camouflaged will be introduced and every endeavor made to provide loopholes for "on the fence" members of the con to remain there and occupy a position inoffensive to degree to both sides of the controversy. So far in the present session, the MVA proponents led by Senator Murray appear to have more than held their own. to the understanding and progressive people of Montana A flood of letters gress some It is up to back our senator to the limit in this fight, and telegrams supporting the MVA should be directed to the senator from individuals and organizations. He should have daily reminders that he is not fighting alone; that the people of the state are back of him to the limit; that they realize he is fighting their battle for a better future. F ree Enterprise Just what is this "free enterprise" that the leaders of our Do they mean free capitalist economy talk so much about? dom without restraint for individuals or groups of individuals to exploit their fellow men and the nation's resources for their personal advantage? Do they mean freedom from all re straints to employ for their personal gain, every new discovery, which might add something to a fuller life for all of the people; to restrain full production of it in order to promote its scarcity and make possible a reason for charging the public extortionate prices for the product? to work with similar groups in other countries in licensing and price-fixing agreements to accomplish this excessive price and profit gouging in the international markets? Do they mean that individuals and groups shall have the right to completely ignore the public's interest? At what point, according to their concepts, does free enterprise become anarchy? We'd like to have the line of demarkation established. Do they mean the right for a group Monopoly On the federal statutes there is a law against restraint of trade; the law restraining monopolistic practices in price fixing and other things opposed to the public interest. But the law apparently does not cover other and just as damaging forms and practices of monopoly. For instance, in this state, the Montana Power Company for all all of the waters of the Missouri river. It has made an effort to establish these priority rights in the federal courts and failed. Why should any group be free to take such action which is so completely contrary to the pubic interest without impug nation? The fact that a federal law has been written, mak ing it unlawful for combinations of capital and industry to take certain action deemed contrary to public interest indicates that the danger of monopolies is recognized. It would seem reasonable then, that a further step should be taken, prohibit ing any action which might lead to conditions adverse to the public interest. The public's interests should be the criterion for the standing of any action in the courts or elsewhere. Now that the Montana Power Company has failed in the federal courts to legalize its claims to the waters of the Mis souri river, it is the opinion of thinking people in the state that the company will make an effort to obtain legal approval in the state's courts. It is our opinion that as the court is presently constituted, it will not undertake such action. How ever, fairly authentic reports of certain activities being carried on by officials of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company and the Montana Power Company, lead to the conclusion that they are laying ground-work for efforts to secure one or more changes in the personnel of the Montana supreme court in the not too distant future. Whether or not they succeed will prob ably determine the company's action; whether or not they will make an effort to legalize their once attempted expropriation of this natural resource. Danger r It is safe to predict that it is going to require all the vigilance and all the ability of the liberal, independent and progressive members of the forthcoming Montana legislative assembly to prevent the passage into law of measures contrary to the public interests but favorable to the interests of the corporations and other privileged groups. More than likely, there will be introduced more innocuous appearing bills with as well concealed jokers in them as the crafty minds of high-powered corporation attorneys can de vise and only the most careful scrutiny and study can disclose. It is fortunate that among the members whose principal con cern will be the best interests of the people of the state as a whole, there will be some qualified by training to evaluate these measures and discover their real intent. It appears certain that a concerted effort will be made to place the state on record, for instance, against the proposals for a Missouri Valley Authority, and this can only be defeated by a decisive stand against such action by the people of the state, made clear to their representatives in the assembly. It is also possible, that efforts will be made to in some way pass legislation collaborating with the program of the National Tax Equality Association, the big business organization having for its prime motive the injury and possible destruction of the co-operative movement in the country. In previous sessions various measures have been intro educed, innocent enough appearing, but having for their pur pose the reduction of taxes now levied against certain large and powerful groups. It will be recalled that one of those measures, cleverly drawn and presented by an influential mem ber of the house would have had the effect of reducing mate rially the taxes on the Western Life Insurance Company, and in the last session relief from taxes on banks was sought in a measure which failed to become law. We may look for many similar attempts in the coming session. It was recognized by the last legislative assembly that conditions at the State Hospital at Warm Springs were sorely in need of remedying. A joint committee of the two houses reported that proper food and housing and care was not being provided for the unfortunate, mentally ill citizens confined in the institution. But the assembly apparently disregarded the report and while a small increase in the appropriation for the hospital was made, it was still inadequate to provide for pa tients as they obviously should be provided for if the insti tution should carry out a program of healing rather than to be a place for incarceration of mentally afflicted until mercifully released by death. We hope that the people of the state realize the import ance of "keeping their eye" on the forthcoming legisative assembly. A Legislative Program We believe that there are certain definite legislative pro posals in the interest of all of the people of the state which the people in all counties should call to the attention of their elected representatives. These have been discussed by or ganized groups in the state and we list them below: 1. That the Montana legislative assembly of 1945, adopt and forward to the United States congress, a joint memorial, urging the congress to enact legislation for the creation of a Missouri Valley Authority as proposed in the bill introduced by Sen. James E. Murray. It is our conviction that only by such regional plan of development, can bickering and jealousy between govern ment agencies be eliminated and progress in the devélop ment of our water resources be attained ; that only by the adoption of a regional development plan can full utiliza tion of our water resources for irrigation, power naviga tion, recreational facilities and for control of floods which each year bring disaster to the lower section of the Mis souri valley, be accomplished; that only by the adoption of a Missouri Valley Authority, can the monopoly control of our state water resources be broken, and our resources developed for the greatest benefit to the people of Mon tana and the industrial development of the state be as sured; that the establishment of a Missouri Valley Author ity for the development of this great water resource, with out any abridgment of the interests of other states within the Missouri river basin, will bring to Montana, new pop ulation, establishment of new industries; great new oppor tunities for employment and a fuller life for all of the people of the state. State Hospital 2. A demand for a thorough investigation by the Montana legislative assembly in 1945 of the State Hospital for the Insane, at Warm Springs; that more medical care, better housing and food be provided by adequate appro priations. A committee of the 1943 legislative assembly, in its report to the assembly, pictured conditions obtaining at this state institution which constituted an indictment of the ordinary humaneness of the citizens of the state. Failure of that legislative assembly to make provision for the remedying of the conditions found to exist then, and the failure of the governor to insist upon such provisions, places them in the position of considering the saving of some money as more important than the comfort and wel fare, and indeed the lives, of the unfortunates confined in the institution. This must not happen again. Old Age Pensions 3. The passage of legislation which will insure our aged citizens, security and comfort in the declining years of their lives. Montana was the first state to have an "Old Age Pension" law and now finds itself at the bottom of the list of all states in the amount of pensions paid. Our aged citizens have earned security by their services to society during their working years. To grant this security is not charity; it is the acknowledgment and payment of a debt owed by society. Social Security 4. Action by the 1945 legislative assembly in the form of a joint memorial to the congress for the speedy enactment of the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill, with its broad provisions for social security. It is our contention that every citizen of this, the richest country in the world, should never want for med ical care, adequate housing and food. Pending the enact ment of federal legislation assuring this, it must be the responsibility of the state to provide for it. Occupational Diseases 5. That the 1945 legislative assembly, make all oc cupational diseases such as silicosis, compensable under the provisions under which the Industrial Accident Board operates. The totally inadequate compensation now paid by the Public Welfare to sufferers from silicosis is a disgrace, not alleviated by the fact that with customary political chi canery, the Anaconda Copper Mining Company through its influence, succeeded in placing the burden of compen sation on the general public instead of upon itself where it obviously belonged. Department of Labor 6. Legislation for the creation of a separate depart ment of labor with adequate appropriation for efficient functioning. Montana is at the bottom of the list of states, provid ing for protection of the interests of its laboring people. The Liquor Monopoly 7. That the 1945 legislative assembly, make a thor ough investigation of the state's liquor monopoly and make such amendments to the law as will provide greater assurance of business-like administration of this service to the people of the state. Under an interpretation of the law by a decision of the majority of the court to which Associate Justices Adair and Erickson dissented, the State Liquor Control Board now is in effect functioning as a private business using state funds. This condition is not conducive to adminis tration for the good of the general public. Other Measures We are living in rapidly changing times. We do not bind ourselves to support of only the measures outlined above. We shall support any measure which is designed to advance the public good. f FROM EDITORIAL COLUMNS 1 U _-,- Ö States' Rights and States' Responsibilities That hardy perennial of American debate, the question of states' rights, promises to flourish this season, enriched by some new conceptions of the needs of the people. Wendell Willkie, in his series of articles prior to the Re publican convention, cautioned against fighting "behind an out moded mask of states' rights or in conjunction with those who OPINIONS OF READERS Publications of communications under this heading, does not Imply that The Voice agrees or disagrees with the opinions expressed. Letters sub mitted for this department should be brief and the subject matter dis cussed to some degree at least, objectively. Anonymous letters will re ceive no consideration for publication. Names will be withheld on request. THE GOVERNMENT WAR PLANTS LIABILITY OR ASSET Will the thirty billion dollars worth of the nations war plants be a post war headache or can some sensible way of their post war disposition be arrived at? This is a vital problem and deserves a careful analysis. There are three different ways they can be utilized or disposed of. 1. The nation could convert them to peacetime production in full-time employment, creating an abundance for all, which, of course, is out con sidering our present system of pri vate enterprise. 2. They could be turned over, on credit, to unions or co-operatives for them to operate, which is not likely to happen with the larger plants even if some of the smaller plants are turned over that way. 3. The government could scrap them or turn them over to the big corporations at a nominal figure, for them to operate or destroy in the business-as-usual method, which is most likely what will happen. For information on Labor, Agriculture and Political issues subscribe to The Voice. $2.00 per year. The People's Voice, Box 838, Helena, Mont. use that mask to prevent social and political advance, or those others who, by pretense of concern for the rights of the states, really seek to weaken the federal government." We rise, at this point, to call attention to the fact that the shield which carries the slogan "Rights" on one side, carries the word "Responsibilities" on the other. As a yardstick for measuring how far the states have gone and how much remains to be done in bulwarking against ex ploitation and its threat not only to the health and welfare, but also to the purchasing power, of the American public, let us consider four necessary statutes; state minimum wage laws; an 8-hour day and a 48-hour weekly limit on women's hours; equal pay for equal work for men and women, and a minimum age of 16 for children leaving school to go to work. No one of these laws is written into the code books of all 48 states. At present the tally by states stands as follows: States with States without 26 22 Minimum wage law for women . Eight-hour day and 48-hour week for women in manufacturing . Equal pay for equal work for men and women. Minimum age of 16 for leaving school to go to work . In spite of all the postwar planning that is being done, it can be expected that the transition from a war to a peace economy will be accompanied by a critical amount of unem ployment. Still fresh in the memory of America are the evils of a period of unemployment. The bidding of hundreds of workers for a single job inevitably leads to wage cutting, often below health subsistence. The least skilled workers are laid off. They take jobs as porters, dishwashers, messengers, waitresses, accelerating the trend toward lower wages in these occupa tions. The standard of living is reduced and the demand for the output of the factories is decreased, adding afresh to the roll of the unemployed and involving the entire citizenry in the downward spiral. One way to alleviate the problem is to set a bottom below which wages cannot fall. 36 12 43 5 12 36 The legislature that passes a mini mum wage law not only throws a life preserver to the marginal workers but it erects a breakwater for the average citizen when economic storms attack our wage structure. In other words, our wheels can keep turning only if workers can keep spending. and Ends Where Protection Begin In this postwar period approximately 21 1/2 million work will have the protection of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act which will prevent their wages being cut below 40 cents Cl'S an hour. An income of $16 for a 40-hour week is hardly luxury maintenance, but it would have been a bonanza to millions in the last depression when people grabbed at jobs paying 15 cents an hour and even less, tected workers are those in occupations in interstate commerce. It is estimated that an additional 3 V 2 million workers not covered by this federal law are protected by state minimum wage laws. BUT, and this must be our focal point, an estimated 14, 000,000 additional workers, four times those now under state minimum wage laws, are unprotected. Because their work does not lie in the field of interstate commerce, they must de pend on state legislation unless and until the federal consti tution is amended to permit the whole minimum wage level to become a federal responsibility. As yet only 26, or slightly than half the states in the Union, have any minimum The statutes of two of these, Connecticut and New The others apply to women These federally-pro more wage law. York, apply to men and women, only, or to women and minors. To those who are convinced that all labor is living off the fat of the land in these days of much publicized high wages and should be laying by enough to tide over a depression, at tention is called to the fact that thousands of people in the United States are now working for less than 40 cents an hour _many for less than 30 cents.—National Consumers League Bulletin. Pipelines of Thought Ui. In considering what we are fighting to preserve in our democracy, may I ask your courteous attention while I quote from a recent issue of the "Co-operator": "At the convention of the American Newspaper Guild, Mr. Morris L. Ernst, well-known civil liberties lawyer, sub mitted the following information : " that about 30 people or 'It is my considered corporations own all or dominate the pipelines of thought to the American people. " 'The movie field is dominated by five companies and The five companies own theaters which take three satellites, in 70 per cent of the box offices of America. " 'There are 900 radio stations. Four networks dominate Seventy per cent of the income of one of the big net works comes from 60 advertisers, and 50 per cent of the income Three hun them. of another network comes from 10 big advertisers, dred stations in America are dominated by newspapers, and in 120 cities the only newspaper also owns the only radio station. " 'In the newspaper field, the number of daily papers has shrunk from 2,400 in 1910 to less than 2,000 in 1940, when by normal growth the present number should be nearer 5,400. (Mr. Ernst could have added that 60 chains control two-fifths of the daily circulation and one one-half the Sunday circula tion of the country.) . , " 'That the mind-making apparatus is being concentrated into monopoly-minded hands is obvious from the difficulty abor has to get a hearing on the air and by the battle which co-op eratives waged to buy time.' " As a typical American family there are many times when of these modes of recreation for stimulation we turn to one only to be affronted by the fare we have to accept. Perhaps it would be as well to pause and ask ourselves, as we enter another winter of war, if we are nurturing in our daily lives the seeds of that same fascism for which we are sacrificing our children?—Mrs. William Hamilton, Brunswick, Maine, in the Christian Science Monitor. Its a new problem confronting the United States on account of Its enor mous magnitude and the effect it will have on reconversion, business situa tion, labor and the coming post war unemployment crisis. Reconversion, full time employment and the disposi tion of the nation's war plants are so closely correlated that unless they are properly handled we stand a chance to face the biggest panic of all time. If this panic is allowed to develop, possibly one-third of the national wealth will switch over to the over flowing coffers of those who own most of it now. Under a more advanced social or der the situation would present no problem at all and the plants would be turned into an actual asset, now they are loaded with explosive dyna mite and no telling what social up heaval they may cause, find some sensible way to put them to work building up devastated Eur ope and Asia we may weather the storm without any social unrest but its a ticklish proposition. We could write off the plants as a total loss and still get by if we develop some TVAs but the mighty Power Trusts are going to put up a terrible fight there too, so it seems like we are in Could we some nasty, we ever faced, there to. A. E. ANDERSON. Butte, Mont., Nov, 1944. Inside the Axis— (Continned from Pnge One) of different colors to distinguish among various groups. "A blue circle," the paper said, "was used for the 'anti-social' group, red marked the 'political unreliable,' while those not belonging to either classi fication bore a green circle." V - - CRIPPLES FOR THE FRONT Under orders issued by Gen. Wil helm Keitel, head of the supreme com mand of the German array, men with deformities a,nd chronic ailments are now being assigned to' military labor service and wounded men are being returned to the front post-haste in an attempt to utilize every bit of avail able German manpower. Last December 7 the chief of the Wehrmacht medical service. Dr. Hand loser, set up three classifications for conscriptees: "fit for combat duty," "fit for limited combat duty" and "fit for labor duty." Declaring that the "fuehrer demands that every able bodied man shall do combat duty as soon and as long as his condition al lows," Dr. Handloser ordered his med ical officers "to dispense with scruples that may have been justified in differ ent circumstances and so to allocate all men without false leniency." This order was immediately fol lowed upon Dec. 18 by a decree issued by Keitel, who clarified Handloser's proclamation by declaring that "many soldiers will be sent to the fighting front who under the old classifications would have been rejected as unfit and sent back." Keitel explained the new classifications as follows: a. Soldiers with defects listed in Tables A and B would be sent to the front without question. Those defects include obesity, skin complaints, slightly subnormal intelligence, slight ly faulty hearing or sight. b. Soldiers with defects listed in Table L would be sent to the front "on the largest possible scale." These defects include excessive obesity, chronic skin diseases, diabetes, "slight feeble-mindleness," serious faults of speech, deformities of the spine and ribs, kidney diseases, vari cose veins, bow-legs, knock-knees, one leg shorter than the other. Keitel declared that the worst cases could be classified as "fit for limited com bat duty." c. Soldiers with defects listed in Table U would generally be classified as "fit for labor service," with the worst cases in this group rejected completely. The defects in Table U, all of a serious nature, include bad skin diseases, incurable growths, dis eases of the blood and chronic gout, pronounced feeble-mindedness, deaf ness and dumbness, deformities that hamper normal movements. The Keitel decree abolished the old classifications "fit for garrison duty in the field" and "fit for garrison duty in the homeland." Furthermore, it declared that "all soldiers in military hospitals who feel that they are fit for service again are expected to ap ply of their own accord for discharge from their hospital." After this decree, the German high command issued another order, which provided that soldiers classified as "fit for limited combat duty" were to be re-examined and classified as "fit for con^bat duty" under the strictest standards for remaining in the old category. V - - PICTURE OF VIENNA Recent neutral press dispatches have pictured Vienna as a crowded, jittery and disease ridden city, over run by refugees, fearful of the Soviet advance and plagued by epidemic. "The authorities in Vienna have been forced to take all possible meas ures to check a flood of epidemic dis eases," the Stockholm Tidningen re ported. "All epidemic hospitals and barracks are already crowded, and people suffering from these diseases can on longer be kept isolated from the others. The worst rabies epidem ic in the memory of man exists in Vienna." The Tidningen reported that, on top of bombed-out refugees that had previously arrived from Germany, a new wave of refugees was streaming from Hungary and the Balkans, said that fortification workers were being vaccinated against typhus and cholera, and added that nazi officials were sending their families back to Germany. Meanwhile, the Swiss newspaper Volksrecht reported that the Soviet advance in Hungary had increased the tempo of fortification construc tion in Vienna. "Every child realizes and fears that Vienna might become a theater of war," the Zurich newspaper said, "and, even worse, might disappear from the face of the earth." Viennese are chafing at the crowded conditions brought about by the in (Continued on Page Three) It f