14
The End-Product of Scarcity
By JU L IE N E L FE N B E IN
Editorial Director for Home Furnishings Newspapers
Chester Bowles o f the OPA told busi
ness paper editors recently that if our
country goes back to the 1940 level o f
production— which was a pretty high
level— we will have in our country 19
million unemployed.
It will be a disgrace to all the world
if our country cannot profitably pro
duce the merchandise of peace at the
same high level that we have profitably
produced the merchandise of death.
If we have 19 million unemployed in
our country after the war by going
back to a 1940 production level, all
those consumer surveys on postwar pur
chase we have been reading about can
be tossed in the waste basket.
"W hen a man has $70 a week take-
home pay and his wife and daughter
are working too, and he has money and
bonds in the bank, he and his wife an
swer a postwar questionnaire very opti
mistically. But if a man’s sole bread
winner and his take-home pay is $35 a
week, and on his way to work one
morning he passes a breadline two blocks
long or sees veterans selling apples, you
will get different answers when you
ask him to fill out a questionnaire as to
what he is going to buy.
A breadline of unemployed is the
yardstick o f an employed man’s secur
ity. H e looks at the breadline and says,
"There but for the grace o f God stand
I” and he may be darn well standing
in the breadline himself a few weeks
later if a doctrine o f scarcity is going
to be the philosophy of our country
rather than a doctrine of abundance.
Those in the fields of distribution
will have to sell and move more Ameri
can goods than ever before not only in
home markets but in foreign markets
and they will have to sell more foreign
goods than ever before in American
markets to achieve full employment of
all employables. Employment means
purchasing power for the merchandise
of peace. Unemployment and depres
sion are the end-products of a philos
ophy of scarcity; they fertilize the" field
for a third world war.
A ll department heads have been in
structed by the Colorado State Civil
Service Commission to "try , wherever
possible, to get a veteran for provisional
appointments which must be made dur
ing the period when merit examinations
are being suspended pending the return
of all overseas servicemen.”
Eugene Concrete Pipe
& Products Co.
P.O.BOX 947 - EUGENE, OREGON