Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1064

Unfinished draft of letter to a newspaper editor from “just a plain farmer” asking about the New Deal

Fall 1933?

Original -> 1057

 

 

 

I am just a plain farmer and God knows I’m having a tough time of it. I know Mr. Roosevelt’s a good man and he’s doin’ all he can for us but it seems like everything turns out so bad I just get the jitters about everything that comes along until I actually get my hands on the money. For instance, look how the woods is all full of the CCC Boy Scouts fixin’ to raise a big crop of trees — and roads and dams and reservoirs and all kinds of public works. Seems like Mr. Roosevelt’s so busy raisin’ wages and prices and puttin’ down production he don’t get no time to think about the future, and him a young man too.

 

     Look at lumber how the price wasn’t up steady for twenty years and wages too ‘cause they cut and burnt a plenty of it and didn’t plant any new stands. What’s goin’ to happen to prices when this new lumber crop comes in? All the lumber and building businesses will be ruined by the over-supply. It won’t pay to cut it or to saw it. It’s the same with these new public works if we can’t find some other way to manage things.

    

     Seems to me if we’ve gotta have wars to keep down productions we ought to plan for these wars same as everything else. If we’d plan ‘em we could have ‘em regular and then they wouldn’t be so liable to get out of hand and do more destruction than is absolutely necessary. If we just put the pacifist traitors all in jail we could plan for a war every year or, say, every two or five years. We could lay out just how many men, women and children are to be killed, just what cities to demolish, what lands to lay waste and so forth. Of course this would call for a lot of international agreement and cooperation but every country has the same problems, so this would be easy and there’s never any lack of cooperation when the nations all try either for destruction or ..

 

                                          /Breaks off/