OCR Text |
Show SOUTH CACHE COURIER Benefits of Social Security Could Be Extended to v Farm Owners and Their Employees, Officials Say All Difficulties of Things I Never Knew About the White House: Truly a product of the melting pot Is the White House . . . Charles Pierre LEnfant, a Frenchman, chose the site . . . James Hoban, a Dublin Irishman, designed and built it . . . Whites and Negroes representing 11 different countries had a hand in its construction. It cost the govt just $50, the price of a gold medal, to have the White House designed . . . Congress sponsored a national contest for the design. Hoban won it . . . The prize was either the $50 medal or $500 in cash. Hoban patriotically chose the In his 42 years of subsemedal quent work in Washington, Hoban never designed another building. ... Administration Can Be Smoothed Out Wages today are high, and jobs plentiful, and there is a ready market for all farm produce and manufactured goods. Most people probably realize, however, that the present prosperity is a result of the war, and that a downturn is almost certain to come with peace. There may be no depression, at least not for several years, but the present very high level of activity is not likelyto be maintained. comes a But in any case, there time in everyones life when he has to slow down. Whatever stage the business cycle is in, those who are unable to work get no income. Everyone who has to make his own living must be somewhat concerned about the future. A very large group of wage and earners have found a partial salary George Washington, who helped answer to these troublesome quessupervise the construction of the tions. are the workers in priWhite House until the week of his vate They and commerce, those industry death, always referred to it as the in covered employment, Federal Palace or Mansion . . . to whom the e and survivors With typical modesty, which should insurance of the Social program to a some of the politicians be lesson act applies. These workers of our day, he never called the city Security are building up rights to monthly To of Washington by that name insurance payments when they grow him, whether in public or private, old and retire, and for their famiWashington was always the Federal lies, when death comes to the breadCity. winner. Others, not so fortunate, look The strike is neither new upon the group that has social insurnor novel It was tried way beck ance protection somewhat enviously. in 1800 by the crews working on the The Social Security board receives White House. They were ordered to many letters from the move out of the shacks on the White professional people, small busi- House grounds in which many lived with their families, so these unsightly structures could be razed . . . They refused because they had nowhere to move and staged the first sitdown strike in protest No one today can tell where the cornerstone of the White House is placed. Successive layers of white paint, from which the mansion gets its name, have effectively concealed it from sight and knowledge . . . Part of the money for building it came from lotteries. f i- old-ag- ... sit-do- ... ... Diplomats now consider WashIt ington the prize post wasnt so in the old days. Washington and particularly the site of the White House were considered so unhealthy the British govt decreed its representatives should be awarded additional It did pay for serving there not become the White House officially until Theodore Roosevelt moved In. He ordered that simple name engraved on his official letterheads after it had been almost completely rebuilt. ... The White House staff has never been known to betray an important secret . . . Woodrow Wilson, whose life is being dramatized on the screen by Darryl F. Zanuck under the title, Wilson, inadvertently made known his decision to declare war on Germany to at least two members of the White House staff, but not a word leaked out in advance of the official declaration . . . Some members of the staff also knew of his plans to wed Edith Bolling Galt well in advance of the event but kept the secret well. Gruff old Andrew Carnegie during his lifetime saw to it that the White House had plenty of Scotch, no matter who was President . . . Hed order it in kegs from Scotland and have it sent directly to Washington and the Chief Executive with his compliments . . . President Wilson, however, refused to accept ' the Scotch, and Carnegie discontinued the practice. Andrew Jackson, for sentimental reasons, turned the White House around by putting the formal entrance on the north side, facing Pennsylvania Avenue. He wanted to save his good friend, E. P. Blair, Blair had built his some steps. house on the opposite side of the avenue to be near the President, and Jackson reciprocated by putting the entrance that much closer for his boon friend. , Young and strong, this Maryland farmer shouldnt need retirement benefit payments for many years unless sickness or an accident should incapacitate him. But the time will come when he will be too old to work. During his good years, he should have a chance to accumulate a retirement fund through Social Security. His family too, should be protected under the survivors benefit provisions. Under present provisions, however, the farm family is excluded from the All packages and gifts sent to the White House go automatically to the White House garage 8 blocks away to be meticulously and scien- tifically examined against any attempt on the Chief Executives life .. . . The White House has undergone innumerable changes and modifications and has been completely rebuilt twice. Tradition and circumstances have given tle White House practically a living personality. It is constantly being quoted in the newspapers as the White House says I old-ag- old-ag- system. ness men, gas station operators, keepers, operators ef cleaning and pressing shops, of beauty parlors, and so on, wanting to know why they cant get old-ag- e protection. They pay premiums for their employees insurance, but themselves cannot build up rights to this discriminabenefits. Why tion? they ask. We have no more security than our employees. Few From Farmers. Very seldom among these letters is there one from the from a farmer. Yet farmers have fully as much reason to seek social insurance protection as others of The notion that the farmers are an independent and group is no longer true. It is a hangover from earlier times, when most farms were Today farmers are much more vulnerable. They have to buy more and sell more; operating costs are higher, and falling prices often mean serious losses. Then too, sections differ as to agricultural prosperity. North and are south, west and middle-wewidely unlike, while in each there are plenty of spots that present a quite different picture from the rest In 1939, the last year before the of the "war boom, nearly one-hafarm operators in the country had a gross annual money income yield (allowing for food consumed by the farm family). of less than $600; had less than $1,000, and 89 per cent had under $2,500. It is difficult for farm owners to save much out of these small cash incomes. Even a farmer with an average net income of $2,000 a year finds it hard to put much aside for old age or misfortune. The constant restaurant st The busiest phone in the White House is not the Presidents . . . The chief usher gets many more calls because of the innumerable duties and functions which fall to . . Petty pilferings are him higher at the White House than in any other official building in the world . . . Individuals high in public life have been known to filch knives, spoons and forks for souvenirs . . . Lesser fry will grab anything for the same purpose, even to snipping off tassels from draperies or cutting out pieces of tapestry from chairs. demands for maintenance of fertility, repairs, buying machinery and livestock, and so on, all require cash, and there is often little left at the years end to build up a retirement fund. Often, when the farm operator has to quit work, his family is in difficult straits, and may have to depend on public aid or charity. The tenant farmer and the farm laborer generally are in worse circumstances than the man who owns his land, once they have to quit working. With little or no savings, the tenant and the farm hand who cannot earn anything are soon hard up indeed. They and their families suffer humiliation and want. War Changes Things. The war, of course, has made a great difference in the farmers situation. The incomes of many are double, in some cases treble, what they were before. But the war and perhaps our present prosperity is temporary. Farm people were left out of the social insurance program not because they were thought to be already secure. The reason for excluding them was that in 1935 the program was new. and the administrative hurdles looked very high. But now the Social Security board e is convinced that and survivors insurance can be administered for farm people simply, at low cost, and without being unduly troublesome to them. What would it mean to farm operators and farm hands to have this insurance? It would mean the same protection it means already to those who are under the system. A couple of examples will illustrate e the protection and survivors insurance offers. Back in 1936, when Harry J. was nearly 60, he got himself a job with a construction company. After eight years, he wanted to stop working and retire to his small place in the country. He hadnt felt he could do so, however, because he wasnt sure he could earn a living from farming his few acres. Upon inquiry he found that his monthly retirement payment would be about $27, since he had earned an average of $100 a month. His wife, who was also past 65, would get half that much; so that would make the family income over $40 every month, sufficient for their needs. Widow Got $79 a Month. Mr. C. was a newspaper linotype machine operator and had always earned high wages. He hoped to give all five children a good education. The two elder ones were attending the university. Suddenly Mr. C, got pneumonia and died within a week. The widow was left with three children still at school and no income save what Mary and Jean could earn by leaving school and taking jobs. She went to the Social Security field office, thinking that perhaps there would be a small lump sum going to her, probably be no more than a couple of hundred dollars. She was amazed to learn that she was entitled to monthly payments for herself and the three younger children! She received lf two-thir- midwestern farmer smiles with satisfaction as he reads the figures on a check received for his produce. Agricultural income is now two to three times the 1939 level, but this happy situation wont last, economists twarn. Unless this middle-age- d man is fortunate, however, his savings will dwindle away, and .he will face old age without security. A e about $79 a month under the and survivors insurance program! Mrs. C. is one of 765,000 persons workers past 65, their aged wives, widows, and children and dependent parents who today are receiving monthly payments on account of e and Survivors insurance. To date the system has paid out nearly half a billion dollars. e The mechanics of and survivors insurance are simple. Every pay day every worker in a covered job pays, under present rates, 1 per cent of his wages as a premium on e his and survivors insurance. This is deducted from his pay by his employer, who pays an equal sum. Four times a year the employer sends both contributions in old-ag- old-ag- old-ag- old-ag- (Left) An elderly woman cashes her old age insurance check in a New York bank. Since February 1, 1940, persons over 65 are eligible to receive the benefits of Social Security payments, even though they have worked only a short time under the system and have contributed little to the fund. (Right) This New York couple was the first to apply for monthly payments to which they were entitled under the Social Security system. The checks began to flow out in 1940. Many men are able to work even in old age, like this sturdy Florida farmer. He knows, nevertheless, that he will have to quit in a few years, or maybe much sooner. If he could anticipate a regular flow of Social Security checks he could face the future with much less concern. to the federal government. Together with the money he sends a report of the amount of wages paid the worker, to be duly entered in his social security account in Baltimore, Md. On the basis of these wage records, the insurance benefits are figured. Farmers Could be Protected. Could the system be applied to farm people? Farmers are scattered over a very wide area. Could the premiums be collected without the costs of administration mounting unduly high, considering the small amounts paid in? And how would farmers figure out what their premiums ought to be, seeing that lots of them dont keep any books? The Social Security board is confident that the extension of the old-ag- e and survivors insurance system to farm people is now feasible. Ways have been devised to overcome the difficulties. As a basis for determining farm- ers social insurance premiums, the reports they are already making to the government for income tax and other purposes can be used. For the farmer who is not required to file income tax returns, would figure his income on the basis of the estimated market value of his services. In doing this he could guide himself by the wages received by his highest paid farm hand. If he employs no labor, the monthly wage rate for farm labor in his locality would serve. Farmers could pay their premiums at times most convenient for themselves. Some might find it convenient to pay a lump sum annually, and others might prefer to pay in four annual quarterly installments. farmers could pay their in social insurance premiums stamps if they chose. They would buy these currently and put them in a social security stamp book which could be turned in from time to time as payment toward their premiums. Collections Through Stamps. For farm help, the stamp method might be best, the board thinks. The farmer could buy social insurance stamps from any post office or rural letter carrier, and insert them in the stamp books furnished him by his workers when he paid their wages. Half the cost of the stamps would be deducted from the workers wages as his social security premium. When the workers book was full, or at the end of its period of validity, he would bring or mail it to any office of the board sq that it could be added to his record. With the stamp system the small" farmer would find it unnecessary to keep books or file reports about the wages of his paid help. On the large farm the stamp method could be used for temporary or casual workers not carried on the regular pay roll. Wages paid in the form of room and board and the like might be included in the workers total wage, and the value set on them could be based on data gathered and published from time to time by the department of agriculture. Farm people have every claim to and be included under the old-ag-e survivors insurance program. Their claim is all the stronger because many of them arp already partly under the system. In the wintertime, for farm or in other work, many farm people work in industry and pay premiums on social insurance. In a lifetime, their payments amount to substantial sums. And yet very few people ever get benefits because they dont work in covered employment long enough or often enough to qualify for the monthly payments. The inclusion ol farm people under the program would at once both rectify the injustice to these workers and plug a big gap in the social security program. Low-inco- Damp clothes well hung ironed, and a clean line clothes clean. Washington, D. C. LETTER TO A LONELY MOTHER To a lonely mother with a son on the beachhead in Normandy and another in the Aleutians: Dear Mrs. R.: I have your letter wondering why you should sacrifice the sons you so carefully taught not to hate or to hurt, on a bloody beachhead where every minute they must hate and hurt in order to survive. You say that you write and tell your sons that, after its over, life will be the same and well all be happy, but that, deep in your heart, you know it wont be, for there will be more wars and more bloodshed all over again. Naturally you would expect a hard-boile- d and cynical newspaper man, trained to look under rocks for all the seamy side ol official life, to agree with you that we will have more wars and that your boy on the Normandy beachhead is making his sacrifice in vain. But somehow or other, I dont agree. Somehow or other, I have a sneaking suspicion that things are not going to be so bad, and that we may be able to prevent your sons son from doing what his father had to do in Normandy. Maybe I am too much of an optimist, but it seems to me, looking back, that we made a lot of progress toward permanent peace between the last war and this. In the end, we failed. But there are a lot of things you do that fail the first time, or even several times, before you finally make the grade. Kelloggs Dream of Peace. One of these tries which failed was the Kellogg Treaty to outlaw war. Old Frank B. Kellogg, who wrote that treaty, was just an ordinary American citizen from Minnesota, not much different from the rest of us. He was Coolidges secretary of state, and not a very brilliant one. But he had one great dream to outlaw war. And he kept pecking away at it, and hammering the idea home on of the governments unwilling Europe, until the people of Europe were too strong for their governments, and they just had to sign the Kellogg Pact. I was with Kellogg when he sailed to Europe to sign his pact, stood with him in the Quai dOrsay in Paris when, with a great gold pen given him by the people of Le Havre (a city now under bombardment), he scratched his signature to the document which carried the hopes and prayers of millions. Of course, many of the diplomats who also used that golden pen on that hot August afternoon in 1928 had no sympathy with the hopes and ideals of the people they represented among them. Count Uchida, whose imperturbable face gave no hint that four years later he, as foreign minister of Japan, would be snapping his fingers at the treaty he had signed. Cynical newsmen watching the ceremony remarked that this would be another case of the League of Nations an instrument of peace devised by the United States but which the United States would abandon. There, however, they were wrong. Frank B. Kellogg, of course, was ahead of his time. But so were most of our great leaders Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln. The history of progress is a constant succession of men who are ahead of their time. Stimsons Fight Against War. However, it did not fail until it had been used and almost successfully by another man also ahead of his time, the man who succeeded Kellogg. Henry L. Stimson, secretary of state under Hoover, was one of the few men in high position who then saw clearly signs of approaching wars, and who figured that, if the world could head off the minor wars in the Chaco between Paraguay and Bolivia, in Siberia between Russia and China, and in Manchuria between Japan and China, then we could build up a machinery of peace strong enough W head off the major war which he knew was conning on the continent of Europe. His greatest effort was to mobilize the peace machinery of the world against Japan in Manchuria. And he almost made it. That he failed was due to an isolationist revolt inside his own Hoover cabinet, plus the undercutting of British imperialists who put their own selfish empire ahead of world peace. I was with Mr. Stimson during part of that trying time. I know how heroically he labored. Three times in all, he went to Europe determined to hew out new machinery for peace. MAIL BAG Capt. Dan T. Moore, Washington Thanks for the gentle reminder that spelled backwards is . . Pvt. Gordon Lange, Camp Grant, 111. Other names for General Donovans office of strategic services are: "Oh So Secret, Office of Synthetic Soldiers and "The Cloak and Dagger Club. Its job deals largely with highly secret intelligence, some of it behind the enemy lines. Tradition is that, to get in, you have to be a Republican, though a few lonely Democrats have been admitted. k? A splendid safeguard in the icme cabinet is to place pins wise through the corks of anuS ties which contain poison ! pricked finger will be noticed in the dark! 81 Frosting Glass may be easily by simply painting the ea! with white lead and oil. This a be painted on smooth, or givenl stipple effect by twisting th brush. When painting around switch plates or similar metal ju, sui faces, coat such surfaces m vaseline before beginning and ft will be easy to wipe off surpha splashes. ' If you are baking a number pies and the last one wont quite fit into the oven, place a small deep lid or tin cup in the available space and put your pie on it. raises the pie above the others thus alj may be baked at one time! saving considerable fuel. of MEXSANI SOOTHING MEDICATED POWOml Fish in Desert Water from wells 300 feet deep have brought fish to the surface the Sahara desert. It is presumed they have traveled through unde- of rground streams. MUTUAL Sum Ollw SYSTEM Kings HeraldstMalel Quartet FREE! Mb Bihle (MNtpMtfcm CMtw MUU jUNNt MAIUf SMNSMA fOTrUCUCSL KEUB XUTA XOVO KLO KVNTJ EDO EOT KOlf KSEI KOB , Newspaper logs Show Other ' BOX'S 5 MAOS ANGELES Stations 53.CAUF SNAPPY FACTS ABOUT RUBBER Latest government figures that 80 per cent of the nation's war workers travel to and from their war jobs by show automobile. Still an important reason why available tires have to bo distributed cau- tiously. B. F. Goodrich has created and is now beginning to produce an imsynthetic proved general-purpo- se rubber, the details of which must remain confidentia I until after the war. Introduction of a certain abundant natural material has developed a synthetic rubber that approaches natural rubber in characteristics during processing and has proven superior In large truck tires. BIGoodricIi GQUtDi ijlkr Invest in Liberty ft ft Buy War ft Bonds A Dab a Day keeps P.O. avay! (Underarm Perspiration Odor) YODOnO DEODORfMT CREflm - Isnt stiff or sticky! Soft spreads like face cream. is actually soothing! Use right after shaving will not irritate. haslight, pleasant seen t.No sickly smell to cling to fingers or clothing, will not spoil delicate fabrics. . Yet tests in the tropics made by nurse tryprove that Yodora protects under toe ing conditions. In tubes or fan, 10c, 25c, McKesson & Robbins, Inc , Bridgeport, Conn- - |