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I. A. A. RECORD— October, 1933 



The Issue In Unemployment 

 y'.p.y^' Relief ■ ■■^'-:,,■ 



"■ ' (Continued from page 8) '■-■'' 



little of the funds given any county 

 have been used in rural areas. 



The reference to subsidies is beside 

 the point. Farmers have been pay- 

 ing subsidies to the cities in support- 

 ing high protective tariffs on the 

 things they must buy, for a half cen- 

 tury. Only a small amount of ap- 

 propriations in the Hoover adminis- 

 tration came to Illinois. A substantial 

 part of the money lost in the price- 

 pegging program for wheat and cot- 

 ton went to speculators in the cities. 

 Most of the money loaned co-opera- 

 tives has been or will be repaid. ;; . . 

 The editor refers to current admin- 

 istration measures to give farmers 

 parity in their purchasing power. Is 

 it fair to refer to such measures as 

 providing subsidies for farmers? 

 When the farmer gets a dollar where 

 does it go? To town, to the cities of 

 course, for debts, taxes, and merchan- 

 dise to create more employment. Are 

 not such measures designed to benefit 

 urban residents equally by increasing 

 manufacturing, transportation, and 

 labor ? 



The editor completely ignores the 

 vital issue. That issue is this. Is it 

 fair for one-half of the people of the 

 state, concentrated in a single county 

 and largely in a single city, to con- 

 tinue to support their unemployed 

 chiefly at the expense of the rural 

 road system of Illinois? 



The vital issue is not whether the 

 poor and unemployed shall be fed. 

 The issue is, shall any community be 

 allowed to sidestep its responsibility 

 and duty to the full extent of its 

 ability? 



Shall any community be permitted 

 to wreck the rural road program 

 thereby shutting down employment in 

 order to spare its own taxpayers and 

 tax dodgers? 



On these issues, the Illinois Agri- 

 cultural Association is fighting for 

 the City of Decatur as well as for the 

 farmers of Macon county. 



Illinois Crop Yields 



Yields per acre in Illinois for 1933 

 as indicated by reports from farmers 

 up to Sept. 1 are estimated as fol- 

 lows: Corn 27^2 bu., oats 18% bu., 

 winter wheat 16 bu., barley 15 bu., 

 tame hay 1.15 tons. 



I * 



Illinois now has 86 modified accred- 

 ited counties in tuberculosis eradica- 

 tion, or 84.3 per cent of all counties 

 in the state. More than 2,000,000 cat- 

 tle are under supervision. ..,,.: 



Views From The Press 



; ;:'; Those Lantz Bills • 



GOV. HENRY HORNER admits 

 that a "serious" situation con- 

 fronts the state in the matter 

 of relief for the unemployed this win- 

 ter. Most of these are in Chicago. 

 The governor should have thought of 

 this when he vetoed the three Lantz 

 bills passed at the regular session of 

 the general assembly. These measures 

 would have permitted Chicago and 

 Cook county to levy a pauper tax to 

 take care of its own, just as down- 

 state is doing. But the governor 

 vetoed these bills and that's that. At 

 the time of the veto the federal gov- 

 ernment was pouring relief money in- 

 to Illinois and the sales tax bill had 

 been enacted. The latter was expected 

 to furnish something like $80,000,000 

 per year. Both have been disappoint- 

 ments. The federal government has 

 tightened up and announced that it 

 will furnish only $1 in relief funds for 

 every $3 furnished by the state itself. 

 The sales tax in its first month 

 brought in only $2,000,000 or at the 

 rate of $24,000,000 per year, and Chi- 

 cago has been averaging around five 

 million dollars expenditures monthly. 

 The governor admits a special session 

 of the legislature likely to furnish re- 

 lief. He most surely will urge an ex- 

 tension of the sales tax for relief pur- 

 poses after Jan. 1. It can be so used 

 only on a vote of the general assembly. 

 After the new year the sales tax be- 

 comes a replacement tax. Downstate 

 should answer Gov. Horner's plea for 

 an extension of the sales tax by re- 

 enactment of the vetoed Lantz bills 

 placing the burden of furnishing relief 

 on the metropolitan area. The unem- 

 ployed must be taken care of this 

 winter, but Chicago is not and has not 

 been meeting its responsibilities. Leg- 

 islative enactment should compel them 

 to. The coming special session before 

 the end of the year promises to be one 

 of the most important ever held by the 

 general assembly, and will probably 

 witness a tightening of the lines be- 

 tween the metropolitan area and down- 

 state particularly over relief matters. 

 — Peoria Star. 



THE OTHER SIDE 



Ungracious and Short-Sighted 



(From Decatur Herald) 



^^rr^HE ILLINOIS AGRICUL- 



I TURAL Association will go 



■*" before the special session of 



the legislature Oct. 3 with a program 



of tax legislation to enable Chicago 



and other municipalities to care for 



their unemployed this fall and winter, 

 at the same time protecting rural 

 areas from taxation for other than lo- 

 cal poor relief." 



So announces John Watson, director 

 of taxation for the Illinois Agricul- 

 tural Association. Mr. Watson has 

 worded his statement to make ifc sound 

 well. Most persons reading it in this 

 form will respond with an i\utomatic 

 "Yes, yes," without any critical effort 

 to examine its real meaning. Sup- 

 posing we put the thing in another 

 way, to show just what it does mean. 

 It would read like this: r: -,.,.; 



"The Illinois Agricultural Associa- 

 tion proposes to do everything in its 

 power to prevent any assistance 

 being given to men, women and chil- 

 dren who are threatened with starva- 

 tion this winter." 



Make no mistake, this is precisely 

 what it does mean, and if the Illinois 

 Agricultural Association goes ahead 

 with this announced program, exert- 

 ing the political power it has, there is 

 more than an even chance that freez- 

 ing and hunger will be the result for 

 the most helpless and innocent of the 

 needy. The stronger, of course, will 

 take care of themselves, although the 

 consequences may be more costly for 

 "rural areas" than Mr. Watson con- 

 templates. ,;,'.■ 



There will be no proposal before the 

 coming session of the legislature to 

 put a tax on farms in order to feed 

 people in cities. Probably there will 

 be a proposal to permit the use of 

 gasoline tax* funds to be used for this 

 purpose. It is this presumably that 

 Mr. Watson and his organization pro- 

 pose to fight. :' 

 The arguments have' been heard be- 

 fore. They run like this: "Farmers 

 pay a part of the gasoline tax — not a 

 large part, but some fraction of it. 

 This tax orginally was intended for 

 road building purposes, and it ought 

 to be used exclusively in building roads 

 past farms. If it is used for relief in 

 the cities, some gasoline tax money 

 paid by farmers will be spent to feed 

 people in towns. This is rank injus- 

 tice. Let the cities take care of their 

 own needy, as rural areas take care 

 of theirs." 



The answer to all this might be put 

 into one statement: When human be- 

 ings and neighbors are without food, 

 an extraordinary emergency exists 

 and it is necessary to feed them with 

 whatever fund can be found. It's no 

 time for debates about technicalities. 



If this humane principle is not 

 enough, the specific contentions can 

 be met one by one. It is true that 

 gasoline tax money was originally in- 

 tended for road building, but there is 

 no sacred commandment that compels 

 using it eternally for that one purpose. 



