Salt Lake Telegram | 1934-06-30 | Page 4 | Master or Servant

MASTER 1 OR SERVANT ANT TP PRESENT tendencies continue the whole I r A face of American Americ n politics polities promises to be e changed almost beyond recognition not simply imply in jn the matter of a new alignment of the two national part parties es but rather with the mechanics of government especially of local government Our conception of the duty which an officeholder officeholder officeholder office office- holder owes to the public as contrasted with his duty to his party may at last be brought up to o date You can get getan an understanding of the need for change by considering the proposal recently recent recent- ly Iy advanced for forstate state factories in North N Dakota scheme propounded by Senator Lynn Frazier Republican and anti A. A C. C Townley organizer organizer organizer or or- of the nonpartisan league asks P W A for a loan of to finance a chain of state factories 75 factories 75 in all to make woolen cloth clothing shoes linseed oil oH flour and andt BO t on The idea is that these factories would pro- pro provide provide vide Tide work for the states state's unemployed ed help supplement the income of farmers and turn the states state's raw materials into manufactured articles Leave aside for the moment the tho question of whether such an experiment in Socialism Socialism So So- is wise vise and consider what pressure the scheme would put on the traditional politics politics- ridden government of the average American merican state P W A officials will not consider making such loans unless they are convinced that there will be efficient and rigidly honest administration administration administration ad ad- ministration within the state And nd it also is recalled that officials of the C W V A ousted G Governor vernor William Langer of North Dakota as st state te C W A administrator because of alleged political collections from C W IV A workers A AI I stunt t of this kind in other words simply I would not work at all aU unless the tile state govI government gov gOY er were r run run with far more s sense nse o of pub pub- p and lud far a less t thought t for p po I T advantage than we find nowadays in inthe inthe inthe the ordinary state government The point of all this is not that politics needs reforming so that this country can make the shift from private enterprise to govern govern- own owned ment-owned d and directed business Even in these days daTs of strange upheavals in political economic and social thinking it is difficult to contemplate America abandoning tradition so completely completely-at at least not in the time of any man now living What politics needs though is an overhauling that will make it at east kast sufficiently respectable that groups of citizens will not be aggravated and provoked to espouse such astounding theories as a matter of self It is desperation in the face of or bald and open inefficiency and corruption in ill politics that leads society to organize to protect itself from what should be a wholesome force obedient to and expressive of its will Society should be the master not the servant of its political system