Susan Green Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
From Labor Action, Vol. 5 No. 26, 30 June 1941, pp. 2 & 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
These days every working-class housewife is plenty hot under the collar. Daily the dollar shrinks in value.
Before you leave the house you figure out what you expect to buy for your money, but when you arrive at the store you find the price once more a lap ahead of you. Right then and there you feel like rolling up your sleeves and fighting against this constant imposition on your right to live.
But here’s something that will not merely make you hot under the collar. It will burn you.
According to government statistics, the GENERAL average of prices has gone up 14 per cent since the war began – which is high enough. But the cost of farm products and textile goods – the very basic necessities of life – is as much as 23 per cent to 27 per cent higher.
Yet these are the very products of which there are unsold quantities “of unprecedented magnitude” according to the New York Times. The unsold surplus of grain alone would pile up to 600,000,000 bushels – a veritable mountain of potential food.
While you are biting your lips and paying profiteering prices, GOODS ARE STACKED UP IN THE WAREHOUSES – UNUSED!
And those things which have gone up most in price are the most plentiful and SHOULD BE THE CHEAPEST.
But the government is against the natural operation of supply and demand.
It pays the corn and cotton kings hundreds of millions of dollars to stack up their surplus stuff in warehouses. And it pegs prices at high levels TO NET GOOD PROFITS TO THE BLOATED MONOPOLISTS OF THE SOIL AND OF THE FRUITS OF THE SOIL.
Investigations have proved that the poor farmer and the exploited: sharecropper gets next to nothing out of this agricultural policy of the government. THE WORKING CLASS HOUSEWIFE IS PAYING 23 TO 27 PER CENT MORE FOR FOOD AND COTTON GOODS – SOLELY TO KEEP THE WEALTHY PROFITEERS OF AGRICULTURE IN THE STYLE TO WHICH THEY ARE ACCUSTOMED!
You are told that the surpluses are piling up because the export market for grain and cotton has been curtailed by the war and by competition from other countries.
You are told that if the huge surpluses accumulated were thrown en the open market, prices would fall so low that agriculture would be ruined and the price structure of the whole country would be upset.
But why should the working class housewife be concerned about the export market! IT IS WHERE THE CAPITALIST SELLS THE GOODS OF WHICH THE WORKERS ARE ROBBED because wages are falling below what the working, class produces.
Why should the working class housewife care about the export market? IT IS THE CAUSE OF THE BLOODY WAR NOW RAGING.
As for the ruin of the corn and cotton kings by the lowering of prices, the poor farmers, the sharecroppers and the workers have no tears for them or for any other gang of plundering capitalists!
The working-class housewife has no use for export markets, for high price structures, for government policies generous to the profiteers. FOR THE WORKING CLASS THESE ARE NO REASONS FOR PAYING 23 AND 27 PER CENT MORE FOR FOOD AND COTTON GOODS.
The workers want an abundance of the products of the land and of the factories!
The bosses of agriculture and industry and the boss-government give the workers CAPITALISTIC REASONS for not letting them have what they need!
Workers’ control of agriculture and industry under a workers’ government WILL DELIVER THE GOODS!
Susan Green Archive | Trotskyist Writers’ Index | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 19 August 2014