Show OF released by western new apner union LUXURY OR LIBERTY ANSWER IS EASY IN ORDER that we may win the war in which we are engaged and so preserve our liberties we must forego the luxuries we nave learned to enjoy and to accept as necessities we can and must do without some things so that our armed forces may have guns tanks planes ships and all other esse essentials n of modern warfare our grandfathers and grandmothers lived without electricity or gas and some of them without kerosene jor lights our grandmothers most of them did not know the luxury of a washing machine they scrubbed the dirt from the family clothing on a washboard our grandmothers dried the apples from the family trees for the winter supply of fruit they dried the corn for a winter vegetable they used the well or a spring springhouse ho use or a deep dugout in lieu of ice for them the family provided the means of preparing food and the only heat the family knew for the cold of winter we too can and will go back to the primitive ways of our grandparents in order to provide our armed forces with the essentials of victory we can and will do without electricity gas kerosene washing machines refrigerators home furnaces canned fruits and vegetables and all the many other things that in these war times are considered luxuries but there were some other things our grandfathers and grandmothers did without that we too could dispense with as a means of providing war essentials in the days of our grandfathers and grandmothers or in fact as late as the days of our fathers and mothers there were not close to two million people on the federal governments civilian payrolls more than one and one third million connected only with civil activities of the government As late as 1913 the federal government collected as all taxes less than three quarters of a billion dollars in 1940 it collected as taxes for our civil activities we could do with the kind of government we had in 1913 and the approximately five billion dollars saved would go far toward supplying the war essentials for our armed forces even the two billions senator byrd and the brookings institution ution say we could save in the civil activities of the government would pay for thousands of planes and guns and tanks and ships 0 POLITICAL DICKERING ON A MILITARY MATTER congressman WADSWORTH of new york is proposing a permanent military training law for america ica which would put every american youth into a uniform for one year before he reaches his birthday from 1916 to 1919 an effort was made to enact just such a law congressman wadsworth was then senator wadsworth and as chairman of the military affairs committee of the senate favored the bill and urged its enactment I 1 know the details because I 1 was one of those responsible for the preparation of the bill and the effort to pass it in 1919 we could get it through gh congress as introduced by a republican member president wilson however told us he would veto it if passed unless it came to him as an administration measure and advised that the bill be withdrawn withdraw and a new one containing the same provisions be introduced as an administration measure by a democratic member that was done and then a republican senate and house would not pass it as a democratic administration measure such is the dog eat dog attitude of american politics our purpose in proposing such a lw lim was more to preclude the rise of cla class ss distinction in america than to train soldiers but had it passed america would have had not less thun than five million trained men eligible for immediate service when the japs struck at pearl il harbor arbor intense partisanship prevented that 0 A A DOES HE REALLY KNOW conditions CREATED BY or credited to the war will not really tighten up until after the elections said a congressman to me recently he is a republican congressman and may not know the details of the program just to illustrate of several thousand bills passed by congress within the past two years 19 w were ere introduced by republicans 0 0 a THOUGHTS OF BOYHOOD OVER THE YEARS since passing from the stage of a boy in iowa I 1 have often thought sympathetically of the boys in the towns and on the farms who must as I 1 did cut red elm logs into stove lengths before this coming winter is ove over r with its threatened shortage of it uel fuel oil 01 I 1 it i t is possible that many a city boy would welcome red elm logs and an old wood burner as a means of keeping warm buy war bonds |