Show what do we mean by america 4 by WILLIAM C UTLEY agns RE going ta hear plenty in the 1936 election cam about what america wants and what america needs these are phrases which roll off a political ora tor s tongue like peas off a boarding house knife k 6 A it takes all k ads of people to make a nat on left nearly 5 americans are er m nals but more than 4 are at large center probably are on the dole right only 46 persons have a mil ilon dollar income and before you and I 1 try to figure out which one of these spellbinders Is right about what america needs it might be well to know just what they re talking about when they say america certainly when they tell us that what will solve america americas s lem from the rock bound coast of maine to the shores of sunny califor nia la Is a tax on mustache cu cups P s or a return to multiple petticoats they are not talking about the land itself no elm tree ever started a corn com eunist meeting under its shade in the public park no mountain ever wrote a letter to the editor which began sir I 1 note not without some due alarm that things have come to a pretty pass when etc the land never needed anything until we start ed living on it lb when the stump speakers refer to america they mean us you and I 1 and those awful smiths or joneses or Czerwin skis who ran that unspeakable speakeasy below the tracks they mean society and what Is society in america there are some of us to decide what people need lets find out what kind of people they are the contrasts between class groups Is really as startling as that between individuals to begin at the very hot bot torn tom of our society there are according to J edgar hoover and the department of justice no less than 4 active criminals whose fingerprints are on file in washington A few thousand of these are conscienceless bold rascals who would slit their own grand moth er ers s throat for five bucks but the vast majority are only petty crooks who would steal the pennies out of a blind mans cup or put on dark glasses and pretend to be blind men themselves probably 20 are on the dole getting relief there is undoubtedly some overlapping oNer lapping between this and the first group three fourths of all the nation nations s families live on incomes of less than 2 a year and there are only 46 persons one in every 2 whose income Is 1000 a year 0 more go free roughly and purely for the purpose of comparison our society may be cleaved into two divisions admittedly arbitrary they are 75 per cent of the families on less than 2 income and the other 25 per cent some merely solvent some well todo to tc do and some wealthy in the larger group are approximate ly persons these include all but a few of the 4 criminals proving that crime does not pay only about are regarded as big shots public enemies by the depart ment of justice yet crime Is said to cost to 10 lo in america federal and state prisons and re forma tories in 1932 were entertaining only guests the number of persons in city and county jails is be lieveld to fluctuate around these totals leave more than brinit nals actually practicing their art living conditions of the great mass of on relief are certainly much below standard but these condl eions vary greatly with the geography of the country to people on relief in mississippi or arkansas the living standards of relief fam lies iles in chicago new york or one of the other larger cities would look pretty good the whole group Is equal in the condition that it has been parted from all able possessions research conducted by the reveals that 36 per cent of all the hous ing in the united states Is definitely substandard in some southern states where the share cropper and his ill lot are a familiar figure there are many cases of 10 or 12 persons living in shacks of one or two rooms relief standards are poor in 1930 any apartment in chicago which rented for less than 30 a month was likely to be tar far below standard with such a thing as a bath tub re carded as a luxury and with rooms having no outside window a common place yet at that time nearly one fourth of all abusing in chicago rent ed for less than 30 1 0 a month and nearly one tenth for less than 20 not all relief families live by such standards of course but those who dont don t are the exception rehabilitated farm families for example but it may be said that at best all relief liv ing Is subsistence living or less and that malnutrition Is common and starvation sometimes existent A large portion of the farm families of course fall into the class which have a yearly income of less than 2000 bince the farmer Is able to raise much of what he and his family eat this in come would be proportionately greater than the same income for a city family yet that would be speaking of the average in the class it must be re that individuals in each one of these class groups vary with abaz ing difference in the southern appa lachland lach lans even in the golden year 1929 there were 52 counties where the an nual income per farm person was less than and even this Is an aver age agel I 1 these people too must be con s dered when we speak of what amer lea ica needs yet they with their primi tive methods and manners belong to the eighteenth century more than to the twentieth more than 10 of the 49 gainfully employed persons in 1930 were employed in agriculture most of these fall below the 2 line in fact in only a lew few farm counties was income equal tp to that in industrial areas thirty million on farms some light may be thrown on the living status of the farmer today when it Is 11 cited that even in iowa 62 per cent cert of all the farmers are tenants the tenant farmer situation in the south with its desperate plight of the share cropper who lives at the very lowest ebb of subs stence standards has been widely cited of late when the political orator says we the people he includes whether he knows it or not 30 persons who are dependent upon farming for a hv liv ing how do these people live hie the facts fa acts may surprise you if the figures compounded by morris L cooke I 1 eid wid of the rural lion administration are correct of these people have derived little benefit from the inventions invention and the ad vances of science which are said to have so much bettered our living stand ards in recent years here is what he claims fo to have found out that 93 03 per cent of all persons who make their living from the soil soll have neither bath tub nor shover sho ver that 6 per cent are still lighting their homes with either basol ne or kerosene or less efficient means tt tf at 10 per cent of this figure either use candles or go without artificial light 7 that 73 per cent have to carry w water ater from wells or other sources of supply that 33 per cent use fireplaces in heating their homes these estimates seem to have been substantiated by another government bureau the whose research men say that between 75 and 80 per cent of all farm homes have no modern con sentences ces whatever it Is safe to sa say y that all of such homes fall below the 2 2000 income now we come to another group and in the transition it Is well to remind ourselves that there Is bound to be some duplication in segregating the various classes six kinds of workers the census bureau divides all work ers into six classes profess professional lonal per sons proprietors and managers clerks skilled workers and foremen semi skilled workers and unskilled workers at least the ansi llred and semiskilled workers come into the class of less than 2 income there were ere nearly 3 semi semiskilled skilled workers listed in the 1930 census but this figure has probably shrunk considerably since then because of the increase in ubern among the clerks and kindred work ers in 1930 there were 4 men and women most of whom were office workers and hovered just a little below the 2 mark most of them live in houses or flats of three to five rooms and some have a small car you dont really begin to get above the 2000 mark until you get into the skilled w workers 0 r 1 er S and fore men and even then it Is difficult to tell just how many are above the group which the depression has injured least Is that labeled proprietors and managers unskilled workers of course have buffe suffered re d most although not much more than the professional persons the great bulk of the 3 per sons whose income in 1933 was between 2 2500 and 5 comprises ebors and managers these folks on th the e whole live comfortably in the bet ter suburbs in houses that cost u up P an and d er e all built several years ago they have economized largely by limiting themselves to only one car cutting down on the number of ants and sending their children to the state universities instead of the more expensive private schools they and the r families are the great middle class figuring four to a family this class totals about persons of all the americans fil fit 1 ing n 9 inco income in e ta tax X returns ns on incomes of more than 2 2500 91 per cent were in the 2 to 5 class there were only persons or about families with incomes between and 10 certainly this would andl cate that the top class in regard to income the class making more than a bear ear constitutes a ver very ysmall small slice of the nation nations s population another group severely hit by the de has been the professional class doctors lawyers artists actors reporters and the like many of these in the past two or three years have dropped into the division below 2 2000 and many more are even boise off rel ef rolls include plenty of dentists doctors and artists teachers have suffered there are of course a fe v at the peak of each profession who have large incomes but the majority of artists authors actors and reporters have not A recent survey which was concerned principally with metropolitan pers bhele the wage scale Is higher than it Is on small town i apers tapers placed the average reporter reporters s salary at a little moie than 38 a week teachers who include men and women have hae had their pay checks badly cut when they get pay checks at all according to prof walter I 1 auten strauch of columbia un university hersity the in come of persons engaged in production has diminished far more rapidly than that of persons in service and d tive industries which latter he refers refer to as overhead he says that the cost of overhead increasing quickly in the last 15 years has been further speeded upward by the depression service and distributive workers in creased their income as a group per cent aiom 1917 to 1932 in 1917 actual producers num numbered berea in 1932 they had slipped to only 17 N hether employed or not their average yearly income was vias only for those employed it was neiti er of v v aich figures says dr Is sufficient to support an average family decently at the end of our study of the lation are the 46 persons whose in comes are more than 1000 a year they are to most of us who read news papers not a class but a group of in divi duals whose names are more or less familiar in headlines this then is america we have to remember the problems of all these vastly different classes when we e pon der with the orator over what anie ame lea ica needs 0 western New un on |