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Show iThe New Deal Congressman Abe Murdock ! Just as a man never seems great , to his valet, so an epochal historical .event is seldom understood by those ! who experience it. To say tiiat these ! are times of depression, un.-mploy-jmcnt ami unjKiralleled human suffer-i suffer-i ing would be to state a universally known fact. But to say that a historical histor-ical era terminated and a new epoch of higher culture and more widespread wide-spread happine.-s began with the inauguration in-auguration of the "New Deal" would at fir.-t thought, seem to some to be exaggeration. But careful study ami careful observation of present trends will reveal the truth of that state- ment. I The industrial revolution marked the closing phase of mtin's struggle ! for existence against the power of nature. By the inventive genius of the race we rapidly brought out the mechanical means of supplying our physical needs. We multiplied the j productiveness of those engaged in ''supplying society with food a thou-' thou-' sand fold. Revolutionary devices in-1 in-1 troduced in the textile industries, 'solved the problem of clothing. Every field of human industry was fertilized fertiliz-ed by invention, and concomitantly ! we evolved adequate systems of transportation and communication. The factory system and its recent ally, serialization, transformed the 1 metropolitan districts into one uni-' uni-' versal workshop, which, night and day, poured forth a constant stream 1 of economic goods -while improved methods of agriculture made the rural districts, inexhaustible fields 1 and gardens of producing necessities and luxuries for mankind. Our markets were kept brimful of useful articles by the evergrowing output of industry. Granaries and workhouses became modern horns of plenty. A-jbundance A-jbundance marked the nations of the j earth abundance of the means for satisfying physical wants. And yet, if one looked closely at our economic fabric, one saw that it was built upon the foundation-, of human misery. The coal that kept us warm in winter was ripped from the earth by underpaid, undernourish-' undernourish-' led laborers. The factories that cloth-' cloth-' 'ed the prosperous ones were sweat-; sweat-; shops that operated on the blood of 1 slave-like women and children. The ' food that fattened us came from ' farmers struggling against unfair ! returns and debt. What seemed to be ''good times" was in fact, a concen-' concen-' trat-ion of wealth in the hands of a : fewths .gradual, almost imper-1 imper-1 centible impoverisment of the masses. I Our vaunted prosperity was the pros- perity of a privileged class. In the background there suffered the for-' for-' gotten men Ihe farmer, the laborer, the martyrs of progress. A few wise men read the "signs of the times" and knew that while we had solved the problem of satisfying our material needs, we had thus far failed to solve, or even troubled our brains with the problem of distributing distribut-ing our new found plenty equitabley among men. Although our wealth reached fantastic totals, the poor were still with us. Beggar and millionaire mil-lionaire banker rubbed shoulders in our city streets. Prodigal waste had its pitiable counterpart in starvatiqn. The speculator's unearned profit rep-i-esented another facet of the farmer's farm-er's mortgage. Our government, instituted in-stituted to promote the general welfare, wel-fare, had failed to protect the rights of the producer against the insatiate greed of the capitalist. (To be continued next week) |