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Show fPI pi' if! Released by Western Newspaper Union. 'FREEDOM TO WORK' BIRTH OF AN IDEA WHAT AMERICA is fighting for Is presumed to be enunciated in the Atlantic Charter and expressed in President ' Roosevelt's Four Freedoms. Free-doms. The day following the first announcement of the four freedoms, free-doms, W. O. Hart, then the editor of the Orange (Calif.) Daily News, wrote and printed an editorial in which he insisted that to the four should be added a fifth, the freedom to work. The Orange Daily News is a small rural newspaper. It does not have a wide circulation. Comparatively few editors of other newspapers see it. The editor of a newspaper trade publication, Editor & Publisher, did see that editorial and reprinted it with credit to the Orange Daily News. That reprinting brought the editorial to the attention of thousands thou-sands of newspaper editors in all sections of the United States. Hundreds Hun-dreds of them reprinted it, some with credit to the News and some without. with-out. That little editorial in a rural newspaper had started an American crusade. W. O. Hart's pen is stilled now. He died in an airplane crash last December, but the idea he so promptly inaugurated goes marching march-ing on. Newspapers in all sections, periodicals of national circulation, radio commentators, are demanding for the American people a continuance continu-ance of the opportunity to work and to achieve. It is echoed from the platform and the pulpit. It is an insistence that the efforts of that coterie of theoretical bureaucrats, whose nurnnsp is in chnnffp mir American system, be frustrated. The American people want, and will have, the opportunity to exercise their individual initiative, the opportunity oppor-tunity to display their ability, to get ahead. They demand a continuance of the American free enterprise system sys-tem as the foundation on which is built the American way of life. It is a crusade started by an editorial edi-torial in a rural newspaper. It was but a pebble dropped into the ocean of American sentiment, but it has spread and has become a mighty wave that will sweep into oblivion those theoretical bureaucrats whose purpose was to make America over, to destroy our system of free enterprise, en-terprise, the foundation of our way of life. RURAL AMERICA AND CONGRESS UNITED STATES senators and representatives are at home, visiting visit-ing with the home folks, those people peo-ple who sent them to Washington to enact legislation for the nation. Just about 50 per cent of the representatives representa-tives are from rural districts. They are now talking with people of the towns and farms for they want to know if the home folks approve or disapprove of ceilings on farm products, prod-ucts, of subsidies to processors, of bonuses, rationing, of the general food policy. They want to know if their constituents prefer regulation regula-tion by executive decree or by laws enacted by congress. They will inquire in-quire into the attitude of the people on the question of the government in business and the reign of the bureaucrats. bu-reaucrats. These and many other subjects will be discussed, and the answers the representatives receive will be reflected in their actions in congress when it again assembles the middle of September. There is one thing the lawmakers will find among the rural people. That is a definite determination to fight the war to a conclusive, "unconditional "un-conditional surrender" end, regardless regard-less of what sacrifice they may be called upon to make. ECONOMIC PLANNERS OUR WASHINGTON PLANNERS attempt to tell us that our free enterprise en-terprise system has reached the end of its virility. They prophesy dire consequences unless the government takes over the direction of production produc-tion and distribution. They may be and I believe they are mistaken, as" was another economist of an earlier ear-lier day. He was Robert Thomas Malthus, a Cambridge university economist of 1880. He alarmed people peo-ple of England by his insistence that the British Isles could not support any greater population than they had. English "planners" proposed methods of regulating the birth rate in order that the population might not outgrow the number of jobs. A century later the British Isles had five times the population of 1800, living on a much higher standard. That is proof that economists can be wrong, and our economic plan-1 plan-1 ners may be of that kind. I think they are. GENERAL MacARTHUR is not advancing on Japan island by island, is-land, but group by group of islands. Even, that means a long road to Tokyo. WHILE A CONSIDERABLE number num-ber of college professors of varying shades of pink are striving to "make America over" to fit their ideas of what it should be, Dr. George S. Benson of Harding college at Searcy Sear-cy Ark., is doing a man-size job in an' effort to keep America as a land of freedom and opportunity. NAVAL GUN CREWS and naval radio operators are on board every American merchant ship. They share the same dangers encountered encoun-tered by the merchant crews, but receive only a small fraction of the wages and bonuses of the merchant seamen. Admiral King is not a Harry Bridges. FOUR MILLION government civilian ci-vilian employees mean at least e.ghl million votes. That is the handicar. the "outs" must overcome to be-come be-come the "ins." |
