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It Can’t Happen Here, Again; or Will It?
by John Galt
August 4, 2010
You awaken one morning to hear the news proclaiming great strides in the new economic expansion underway and how the administration’s programs are going to guarantee that we the American people will not suffer like some third world nation and no one will go to bed hungry as long as “the one” is the President. Last night’s dinner was a bonus as you were able to obtain some leftover ham with the bone still in to create a masterpiece ham and pea soup for dinner and breakfast in exchange for washing the owner’s car and helping to clean up the exterior of his restaurant from all the garbage the homeless and bums left behind foraging through his garbage containers for food. The thing that made you smile inside is that in fact you were one of those foraging but had the nerve to clean up as much as possible one day and approach the front door to offer to clean the mess up in exchange for a few dollars and a hand out.
You pick up the newspaper after a brief breakfast of leftover soup and read the headline:
Workers Arrested for Protesting Pay and Benefits-Over One Hundred Imprisoned, Several Dead
Upon reflection you think about what kind of ingrates those people are as even now you are barely eating and trying to scrape by doing odd jobs to supplement what meager handouts the government gives you. Your family who left you to move back in with her parents is not faring much better, but you are confident that your clever trick of changing the locks on your front door as you have done every morning for three months now at your modest one bedroom one bath flat to prevent the property manager from coming inside and stealing what little you own or attempting to blackmail you for the rent you are now three days late on. Fortunately today is the day you can head to the bank and withdraw the benefits deposited into your account by the government and at least pay him enough to buy you one more week until the next check arrives.
You head to the bank and fortunately are still able to withdraw the money and after raising another handful of cash panhandling on the side of the road and helping a local moving company unload some personal possessions seized via a lien placed on the goods by a bank and the I.R.S. for debts owed, you go home with a little bit more money and actually can buy a can of beer, two cans of meat, three eggs, and some fresh fruit plus still have enough to pay for your back rent owed plus the current week. As you stride to the door feeling more confident about the situation your change in fortunes change as you see all of your personal belongings in the hallway and a huge padlock latched on to the front door which was just installed.
You notice that your one possession that you feared losing more than anything, an old .38 Special Colt Officers Match that your late father gave you in his will was gone. You run down to the property manager’s office and start screaming obscenities as you kick and pound on the door yelling “You can not steal anything unless you have something in writing, if you don’t give me that gun back, I’m going to fix you” and other horrid, far worse threats. The voice behind the door replies back in a heavily accented voice, “I have a restraining order on you. I find no gun. If you lost it, you need to file a police report. If your stuff is not gone by morning, I throw it in dumpster you deadbeat!” After punching a few holes in the drywall on the way back up to your little now empty flat, you feel anger but a little bit better despite the circumstances because you have some money in your pocket at least and with the benefits extension, all you have to do is gather what you need, find a hotel and flop down for twenty-four hours until the extension monies are in your account. For one day at least, you do not have to stand in line at a church, potential employer, or government benefits office and can just relax where you know there will be hot water, electricity, and entertainment, all things you used to take for granted in this “new economy” the President promised would turn around.
You check into the hotel in not one of the greatest parts of town with at last your duffel bag and some of your clothes along with a few belongings that your former “neighbors and friends” did not pilfer and steal from you while you were out raising cash and trying to get by. The hotel cost you only thirty bucks for one night but considering the part of town you live in, you do not dare leave without taking your belongings with you and looking as poor as possible so the vampires do not feast on your meager lifestyle. The trip to the local liquor store is fraught with danger as there are many like you, homeless and desperate, yet few have money and would kill you for the few hundred dollars you have in your pocket rather than striving to earn a living after being promised hope for so long. As you depart the store and board the city bus, you notice two men following you out of the store as you bought a pint of rot gut booze, figuring you were homeless like them and heading to a flop house. After two years of struggling, you know the routine and decide to part with some of your cash you earned today and hope the food in your room does not spoil as there is no cooler and the little bit of ice on it will be melted if you are delayed much longer. You ask the bus driver to stop off of his route and run off the bus, flagging the taxi you see on the corner and tell him to get you away from the area as soon as possible, parting with an extra five bucks to get to your hotel to insure the potential thieves can not follow you.
You get back to your room intact, seventeen dollars lighter because you were terrified without your gun and kicking yourself because you left it at home, fearing being busted at a government office or employer with it more than it being stolen by a crooked landlord. As you finish the meal of canned ham and the two eggs you bought, you drop to your knees and pray to God, thanking him for giving you one more day and begging your father for forgiveness for losing a family heirloom. After taking the fist hot shower you’ve had in a month and washing your clothes in the sink using the hotel soap a horrible feeling hits you as you realize that among the belongings your neighbors stole was an antique picture frame that had your mother and father’s picture in it. The cursing that ensued from your mouth could not be watered down by the taste of the cheap liquor you purchased and after killing the bottle, you cried yourself to sleep listening to the depressing local radio station like some pathetic creature, knowing that you are not alone in this world, in this condition, but providing little comfort to what has happened to you during the past twenty-four hours. Revenge was not an option because you know, deep down in your heart, that survival comes first and vengeance was a luxury.
You wake up the next morning to enjoy the last egg in your possession and who cares if it was a bit warm because all of the ice melted in the bucket overnight. The leftover canned ham tasted great and the small bit of coffee you made by boiling some water on the dual burner cooker made up for the lack of a plan for today. The empty liquor bottle causes you to realize that you have overslept and wasted valuable time where you could be taking your benefit money out of the bank and finding work for the day. As you hurriedly get ready in your still damp, yet clean clothes, you pack everything up and stuff the still hot but cleaned up frying pans and aluminum plate in your duffel bag, hoping to renew the room for just one more night. As you hit the front desk the manager says that he can not hold the room as they are booked tonight but suggested a place four miles south of town with a kitchenette and other features. You thank him for giving you a crudely hand drawn map, grab your bag, and look for the bus to get to the bank as soon as you can before any restrictions on withdrawals are placed preventing you from getting your government benefit’s cash out of the system.
You arrive at the bank at 10:15 a.m. and there is a line of almost sixty people in front of you as the bank is opening late this morning for some unknown reason. The line got even longer behind you over the next hour plus as there seemed to be an air of panic again in the air and people were screaming to get inside and see the manager or a teller. After what seemed like forever in the humid summer heat, the doors finally opened but instead of the normal banks security guards there were police and what looked like state military officials guarding the doors. One of them stops you, pulls you to the side and demands you put your contents on the table before entering, much to the chagrin and moans of the line behind you. You turn around and yell “shut the hell up” as you dutifully unload everything on the folding table, displaying your life contents for a guard and a soldier to review. After what seemed like an hour but only a few minutes, the soldier says “Pack it up and move inside.” You shove everything back into the duffel bag, your entire life’s possessions and get into a new line where it seemed like the same sixty people were still in front of you but at least now you were in air conditioning and could stand in comfort.
You get annoyed after a half hour of listening to people threatening the tellers, officers arresting the more violent or those who appeared to threaten violence, and the smell of the others who have not bathed in weeks standing in line. The worst part is as you moved forward was the stench of soiled diapers piling up in the the garbage cans by the customer service desks in a normally reserved bank office and the obvious agitation it created as person after person walked up to the front aggravated by the situation, angered by the crude treatment, and furious at the guards who looked like gangsters hired to defend one of Al Capone’s hideouts. Finally, at twenty-four minutes after one o’clock you get to a teller window, present your credentials and ask to withdraw all but ten dollars from your account. The teller looks at you blankly and says “Sir, you need to go to the Recovery Officer at 637 Lime Street as your benefits have been declared expired. Your account has two dollars and thirteen cents in it.” Before you could react or say a word a guard walks up to you almost as if she had already signaled him, “Sir, follow me please.”
You decide to not make a scene but follow the guard to a side exit away from the mob who by now is more infuriated than ever, as you are. Innocently you ask “Does this lead to 627 Lime Street?” The guard snarls and opens the door responding sarcastically, “Eventually if you bums find the way!” and shoves you out the door causing you to stumble. As you turn around madder than a bull seeing red to open the door, it is locked and you realize your last two dollars and thirteen cents of your life have been stolen from you and there wasn’t anything you could do about it. You pick the duffel bag up, dust yourself off, and head to 627 Lime Street only to find a new line at the Office of Economic Recovery a new creation of the Recovery Act. At least here you were close to the front with only twenty-seven people in front of you, but that was outside, so who knows what it looks like inside.
You finally get inside to the main line and get assigned a Recovery Act officer who is an early thirty something clean cut female with short hair, glasses, and what appears to be a major attitude. You try to kill her with kindness as your preacher used to say and offer up a friendly greeting of “Good Afternoon Ms. Gowling, it is very nice to meet you.” She glares back at you and simply states the company line, “Identification, please. Benefits card, please. No idle chit-chat, I don’t have time for that.” You hand her your identification and she looks at the reports. She says to you as she hands your paperwork back to you, “I can’t help you, go to line nine for disposition, good day.”
You act like a beaten starving puppy, nod and take the paperwork and head to line nine. Thankfully you are only tenth in line there which makes you think that you are getting better service after being unemployed for two years or a special benefit. It is a time like this that you wish you had never sold your car to pay the rent and could just drive somewhere to escape this nonsense. After handing the paper work to the man with no name tag, you ask like a normal person, “Can I get your name please so I can address you properly?” The man looks up at you and slides the glasses down to the bridge of his nose and says “I am agent one, naught, seven and that will do.” Knowing that he holds your future in his hands he starts asking questions to you. “Sir,” he begins professionally, “how much money do you have?” I responded with my bank balance knowing that’s all he could trace, “Two dollars and thirteen cents sir.” He nodded and wrote it down. “Have you ever worked on a farm sir?” was his next question. You nod to the negative and became curious. “Are you physically capable of doing hard labor?” was the next question. “But of course,”you answered, “if it pays well enough, I’m totally capable of doing what it takes.”
You feel proud of your answer thinking this will lead to a job but reality sets in. “Good,” he replies, I have just the job for you. Do you mind relocating to Arkansas? I also must note that you owe seven hundred and twenty-six dollars and fourteen cents in back taxes so that is why you are at my desk. We need for you to clear that up and get back to work. If Arkansas is unacceptable, I do not know if the government can help you any longer.” You stared at him blankly and said “I guess I do not have much choice do I?” The agent smiled and said, “You always have a choice, we can help you or we can not. Thank you for deciding to realize the reality of the situation.”
You sign the paperwork presented and do not argue. A bus ticket is handed to you for the trip from down town Philadelphia to the boonies of Arkansas. The bus station is loaded with families and others who appear to be in as dire of straits as you are but you elect to remain to yourself fearing thieves and con artists are everywhere in our current society. After three transfers and twelve hours in Little Rock waiting on the bus to be repaired, you finally arrive in a small town in the middle of nowhere in Arkansas. A government employee greets you, takes the paperwork you were given, and assigns you to what is called the “work shack” where you will reside for the next ninety days during the probation period the agent in Philadelphia told you about.
You find your assigned dorm room where you meet your room mate who came from Ocala, Florida and listen to his sad yet similar story. The locker under your bed locks and instead of unpacking in front of him, you use your street smarts and throw your duffel bag inside of it, locking it and putting the key around your waist and under your underwear so if you fall asleep, someone trying to grab it would startle you into a sharp, alarmed state of mind. The locker was attached with a thick steel cable to your bed so it was doubtful that anyone would try to steal it, but in this current world despite uniformed security everywhere on the compound, you trust no one. The community counselor knocked on the door and stuck her head inside with a cheerful voice proclaiming “Hi guys! There’s a community assembly in two hours with snacks and drinks for everyone to review the rules and provide an orientation for the new arrivals like yourselves. Please meet us at the recreation hall then. Bye!” With that the young lady wearing a purple golf shirt ducked out of the room and as we both stuck our heads out the door, witnessed here knocking on a door several rooms down to provide the same happy greeting and invitation, which obviously everyone was expected to attend.
You arrive at the recreation hall with your room mate as scheduled and take a seat in the back of the room because you do not want to be glared at for not asking questions as your room mate suggested. “This guy is pretty street smart,” you think to yourself. As everyone settles into their seats, a young man asks everyone to rise for an invocation, something which shocks you until you realize that the words “God” and “Jesus” are never mentioned in the prayer, then again you figure it’s the way of this government so it is best to keep silent. The Colony Administrator, as he was introduced, steps up to the microphone and begins to speak: ” Welcome one and all to a new idea which should revolutionize America’s economy and bring us to a new future where you will be taught the ideas of becoming your own small business and learn the art of collective farming, which could and should reap great rewards for all of the participants. The only rules we ask you to obey are outlined in your hand book but the most important ones which I must emphasize are those prohibitions against firearm ownership, drug, and alcohol use. We also have a strict policy about using colony script only so if you have United States Federal Reserve currency in your possession, please report to the banking office at nine-o-clock tomorrow morning to swap those dollars out for the money you will be using during your residence, and I do mean hopefully long term residence, at our colony.”
You slink down in your seat in horror at the word “colony” because it is so foreign of a concept to you. The little bit of history you paid attention to in high school reminded you about the horrors of the Soviet Union and Chinese communist movements but certainly this could not be happening to you here now, could it? As you depart the assembly you watch others gather around a bulletin board and notice that your name is on the board marked “Special Farm Training, Unit 17″ which startles you because the closest you had ever been to a farm was a petting zoo. You notice the time to assemble there is nine-o-clock in the morning sharp but you knew darned well you were not going to be there as you had to be at the bank office to exchange your cash for script so you do not starve while you are there. After a nice warm dinner of vegetarian stew, whole wheat rolls, and fruit juice at the dining hall that evening, you laid your exhausted body down to sleep wondering what tomorrow would entail.
You awaken to the noise of your room mate at five-thirty in the morning getting his kit and heading down to the bathroom. He looks back at you and says “Don’t you have to be at a meeting this morning?” You tell him that you have a meeting after nine after you exchange your script and he tells you that you had best read your instruction manual and not miss a beat or they will come down on you hard. You shrug, set the alarm back to six-thirty and fall back asleep. After the alarm goes off, you grab your towel, your kit, some clothes, and head down to the showers to clean up and get ready for a long day. The cold shower woke you up as the earlier two groups used up all of the hot water which taught you an important lesson about sleeping in if you wanted a hot shower, but since it was going up to ninety-four degrees today cold water actually felt pretty good.
You head to the dining hall and show the door attendant your newly issued identification and some cash for entrance but he reminds you that script exchange is at nine and today would be the last day they will accept original U.S. currency. After a nice meal, you get put your dishes away and head towards the line at the colony’s community bank to exchange your currency for script so you could rush over and get to the meeting you were assigned to. The line was quite long with new arrivals but you do not mind and exchange the currency at a rate of two script dollars for every U.S. dollar and feel like you’ve made out like a bandit. The run over to the Agrarian Center was not that bad as the wagon wheel design of the community kept the key office and meeting halls all within eyesight of each other except for the storage sheds which were maintained in what was called the “secured” area of the compound.
You rush into the door twenty-five minutes late for the meeting and the Colonial Orientation Officer glares at you as you grab the packet with your name in it off of the table and sit down. “How nice of you to join us,” the officer yells out. Then he proceeds to return to an explanation of how the collective farming economic system works, how you can profit from the work you put in, and how the government will not impose income tax requirements on you as long as you remain a “productive” citizen within the colony. He re-emphasized the word “productive” several times as he reiterated that point during the orientation. As he spoke several others arrived, obviously from the currency exchange line, and each were singled out as You were. It was most embarrassing but the satisfaction of having the money in hand surpassed the humiliation this bureaucrat was dealing out. After the presentation was over, he reminded everyone that the details of the program were in your packet and asked those of us called “late birds” to remain after the meeting. He roundly criticized our first impression and said that if we had bothered to go to the information booth, we could have received a pass to go to the currency exchange early and that all special instructions for each of us would remain at that booth and we should check with the administrator their daily for messages or special instructions. He then dropped the bomb on us that we would not be paid for this day and to report to the kitchen to assist with clean up duties. “What a way to learn about farming,” I thought to myself, “I wonder what else we’ll learn this week.”
You finally are dismissed from kitchen duties at eleven o’clock that night and collapse in your bunk after eating a cold sandwich in the kitchen while scrubbing pots and pans. Your room mate looks at you as you stumble in and says “Missed a meeting, eh?” You nod yes and fall down on your bunk, this time remembering to set your alarm for four forty-five in the morning so you can get a hot shower for your aching body. The alarm clock startles you but you and your room mate grab your kits, towels, and some clothes and run for the showers in your flip flops knowing you will be first or at least close enough to get hot water. Unfortunately as you arrive the line had already formed and you were now twentieth in line and look at your room mate and tell him “Just like the government, lines twenty-four, seven.” He laughs but at least you are in better shape than the other eighty guys still sleeping in this morning.
You get your shower and head to the dining room at six o’clock when it opens, getting in line with the group looking forward to a hot breakfast. You actually took the time to read your packet and know that the breakfast will cost you three script dollars so that is all you carry with the rest locked up for safe keeping. After paying the door attendant and getting your meal coupon you wait for all of only ten minutes this time and get your meal of wheat toast, oatmeal, fresh fruit, scrambled powdered vegetarian eggs, and some sort of protein bar you have never seen before along with a cup of decaf coffee and water for your personal canteen jug. This startles you as you are starving and dying for real meat but beggars can not be choosers as this is the best you have had it in two years.
You finish your meal and head to the building with the sign that says “Rice Farm Agrarian Meeting Center” so you can learn just how to grow rice, harvest it and make money from it. Assistant Agriculture Instructor Wilma Jones, a striking young black lady with a degree from the Arkansas State and she reminded you of that every chance she got, began to explain how the four acres you were responsible for would yield enough crops for you to earn enough cash to pay back ten percent of any government debts owed and to pay your rent, expenses, plus purchase government savings bonds to survive on the colony as long as you desired. Once any and all debts owed to the Internal Revenue Service, Sallie Mae, or other agencies were paid back in full, you were free to leave or to sign up for the USDA farm lot lease to own purchase program. This sounded too good to be true, yet there had to be a catch beyond paying back your government debts. Little did you know that with price inflation being the rule of the day, it was almost impossible to ever pay them back or create your own subsistence farm for profit under the government program.
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Needless to say, the scenario presented above is fiction; or was it?
While reading a lot of new material for my future writings, I came across a documentary and drama film series on my Netflix selection called Our Daily Bread and Other Films of the Great Depression. The primary feature was a drama titled Our Daily Bread considered one of Hollywood’s most powerful movies of the “social conscious” movement where the ideas of collectives and vague references condemning capitalism were celebrated. One movie, a documentary produced by non other than the United States Department of Agriculture Department of Motion Pictures is what shook me again back into the reality of our current dire straits. If you can obtain a copy of “The New Frontier” you should watch it and begin to understand how propaganda functioned in the past and in our present era. FDR knew that the failures of his programs would be celebrated by his enemies in the remainder of capitalist America, so films like this were common and I am attempting to review as many as possible (and you should also) before they disappear into the dustbin of modern censorship.
The Roosevelt administration to many of the extreme Marxist movements did not do enough and despite the bull rush into the ideals espoused by Marx, it was not enough to satisfy the left wingers of that time. In fact, the lack of jobs growth, handouts from the government, and redistribution of wealth swelled the ranks of the United States Communist Party which had been working since the turn of the century openly and through the trade union movement to become a force in American politics. This little commentary of mine though was not a reflection of the expansion of the communist movement in America, nor the trade unions who aided them, or the corrupt Roosevelt administration; it was a reminder to all that if we do not stay as vigilant as possible, we could end up on one of those collective farms. This time, without any other options or the freedoms our Constitution guarantees.
So has the concept of a collective farm ever existed before on American soil, much like those designed under Stalin or Mao where urban citizens were shipped out to the rural communities to begin a colonized farming community?
Yes.
Remember this headline from the fictional story above:
Workers Arrested for Protesting Pay and Benefits-Over One Hundred Imprisoned, Several Dead
It was not fiction some 70 plus years ago. From Time Magazine on September 17, 1934:
So what is to say such a law applies to all “government offices, education facilities, religious buildings, and financial institutions” at a date in the very near future?
Nothing. At the actions by the State of Georgia were never allowed to come to light, much like the actions of the state during the crisis in New Orleans after Katrina obliterated much of New Orleans. There has never been a legal challenge, at least that I can find on record, to the actions taken, which in this author’s opinion clearly usurped the Constitution of the United States.
What if the American government decided to offer a program that was “optional” which translates into “take it or starve” where urban residents have exhausted their government welfare benefits and are “offered” a new chance to start over by becoming sharecroppers or subsistence farmers in rural areas far away from their homes?
In the 1930′s, a series of American communes were created by the Roosevelt administration under the suggestion of one Henry Hopkins, a very close friend to FDR and ultimately accused of being a spy by the media and an unconscious agent by a former KGB agent from the old Soviet Union(from the NY Times – A Soviet Agent? Harry Hopkins? October 28, 1990) When you look at the Rural Rehabilitation Program of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) the idea of creating colonies was not a fictional theory created by yours truly. It was a reality concocted by Harry L. Hopkins who convinced the Roosevelt administration to experiment with the idea by creating FERA homesteads in Dyess, AR; Pine Mountain Valley Resettlement Community, GA; Cherry Lake, FL; Palmer, AK; and ultimately where the New Pioneers propaganda documentary was filmed, Woodlake, TX.
During this documentary, urban citizens were “offered” the opportunity to start over in rural America basically sharecropping government managed agricultural communities where their earnings in the fields would help pay their rent for the fields, food, shelter, medical care and any other needs the commune provided. $500 million dollars was allocated for the FERA projects plus an additional $250 million designated for use by the states (National Association of Rural Rehabilitation Corporations, A Brief History) where 40 and 60 acre tracts were subdivided from huge farmland tracts purchased by the Federal government. Many of the purchases were from distressed properties owned by the banks and savings and loans with little hope of buyers to save those institutions from taking further losses. Forty-five states set up these early Government Sponsored Enterprises in the early years but only the colonies listed above were ever established and functioning.
Thus the importance of the movies I highlighted above and the inspiration for the research on this rather wordy, yet alarming piece. The first movie, the drama Our Daily Bread was an attempt to romanticize the idea of communal living in a rural agricultural setting. The heroes of the movie were united with different professions but the glory of the farming efforts ended in spotlight on a happy ending because everyone put their difference aside, no matter their former skills, to unite and compete the project of getting the corn planted and helping it survive a brutal drought. The premise followed similar efforts of Soviet film making in the 1920′s which glorified Lenin’s call for Russians to return to the soil and promoted the glory of the peasant workers in the field, ignoring the brutal reality behind the communist regime.
The last movie on the DVD I watched was a documentary called New Pioneers and was truly frightening as people were presented with a “new opportunity in the town of Woodlake, Texas a designed community run by “Colony Administrators” with “Colony Social Workers” helping the inhabitants with nutrition, medical supervision, education and farming techniques. This brings us back to our friend, Harry L. Hopkins, FDR’s good friend. I’m not accusing him of acting as a socialist or agent for the KGB, but does not the idea of communal farming colonies where urban citizens are shipped out and “taught” how to farm sound much like Stalin’s purges of the cities or Mao’s Great Leap Forward? While Mr. Hopkins might not have portrayed himself as an active communist or agent of the Soviet Union, but this program certainly has the signature of the type of actions a desperate Marxist regime would undertake, along with the propaganda films to “enlighten” the America public about the glories of a centralized planned commune.
Needless to say the programs were complete failures as The Nation magazine of all places warned about as highlighted in an article from January 9, 1937 titled Farm Tenacy: A Program:
August 4, 2010
You awaken one morning to hear the news proclaiming great strides in the new economic expansion underway and how the administration’s programs are going to guarantee that we the American people will not suffer like some third world nation and no one will go to bed hungry as long as “the one” is the President. Last night’s dinner was a bonus as you were able to obtain some leftover ham with the bone still in to create a masterpiece ham and pea soup for dinner and breakfast in exchange for washing the owner’s car and helping to clean up the exterior of his restaurant from all the garbage the homeless and bums left behind foraging through his garbage containers for food. The thing that made you smile inside is that in fact you were one of those foraging but had the nerve to clean up as much as possible one day and approach the front door to offer to clean the mess up in exchange for a few dollars and a hand out.
You pick up the newspaper after a brief breakfast of leftover soup and read the headline:
Workers Arrested for Protesting Pay and Benefits-Over One Hundred Imprisoned, Several Dead
Upon reflection you think about what kind of ingrates those people are as even now you are barely eating and trying to scrape by doing odd jobs to supplement what meager handouts the government gives you. Your family who left you to move back in with her parents is not faring much better, but you are confident that your clever trick of changing the locks on your front door as you have done every morning for three months now at your modest one bedroom one bath flat to prevent the property manager from coming inside and stealing what little you own or attempting to blackmail you for the rent you are now three days late on. Fortunately today is the day you can head to the bank and withdraw the benefits deposited into your account by the government and at least pay him enough to buy you one more week until the next check arrives.
You head to the bank and fortunately are still able to withdraw the money and after raising another handful of cash panhandling on the side of the road and helping a local moving company unload some personal possessions seized via a lien placed on the goods by a bank and the I.R.S. for debts owed, you go home with a little bit more money and actually can buy a can of beer, two cans of meat, three eggs, and some fresh fruit plus still have enough to pay for your back rent owed plus the current week. As you stride to the door feeling more confident about the situation your change in fortunes change as you see all of your personal belongings in the hallway and a huge padlock latched on to the front door which was just installed.
You notice that your one possession that you feared losing more than anything, an old .38 Special Colt Officers Match that your late father gave you in his will was gone. You run down to the property manager’s office and start screaming obscenities as you kick and pound on the door yelling “You can not steal anything unless you have something in writing, if you don’t give me that gun back, I’m going to fix you” and other horrid, far worse threats. The voice behind the door replies back in a heavily accented voice, “I have a restraining order on you. I find no gun. If you lost it, you need to file a police report. If your stuff is not gone by morning, I throw it in dumpster you deadbeat!” After punching a few holes in the drywall on the way back up to your little now empty flat, you feel anger but a little bit better despite the circumstances because you have some money in your pocket at least and with the benefits extension, all you have to do is gather what you need, find a hotel and flop down for twenty-four hours until the extension monies are in your account. For one day at least, you do not have to stand in line at a church, potential employer, or government benefits office and can just relax where you know there will be hot water, electricity, and entertainment, all things you used to take for granted in this “new economy” the President promised would turn around.
You check into the hotel in not one of the greatest parts of town with at last your duffel bag and some of your clothes along with a few belongings that your former “neighbors and friends” did not pilfer and steal from you while you were out raising cash and trying to get by. The hotel cost you only thirty bucks for one night but considering the part of town you live in, you do not dare leave without taking your belongings with you and looking as poor as possible so the vampires do not feast on your meager lifestyle. The trip to the local liquor store is fraught with danger as there are many like you, homeless and desperate, yet few have money and would kill you for the few hundred dollars you have in your pocket rather than striving to earn a living after being promised hope for so long. As you depart the store and board the city bus, you notice two men following you out of the store as you bought a pint of rot gut booze, figuring you were homeless like them and heading to a flop house. After two years of struggling, you know the routine and decide to part with some of your cash you earned today and hope the food in your room does not spoil as there is no cooler and the little bit of ice on it will be melted if you are delayed much longer. You ask the bus driver to stop off of his route and run off the bus, flagging the taxi you see on the corner and tell him to get you away from the area as soon as possible, parting with an extra five bucks to get to your hotel to insure the potential thieves can not follow you.
You get back to your room intact, seventeen dollars lighter because you were terrified without your gun and kicking yourself because you left it at home, fearing being busted at a government office or employer with it more than it being stolen by a crooked landlord. As you finish the meal of canned ham and the two eggs you bought, you drop to your knees and pray to God, thanking him for giving you one more day and begging your father for forgiveness for losing a family heirloom. After taking the fist hot shower you’ve had in a month and washing your clothes in the sink using the hotel soap a horrible feeling hits you as you realize that among the belongings your neighbors stole was an antique picture frame that had your mother and father’s picture in it. The cursing that ensued from your mouth could not be watered down by the taste of the cheap liquor you purchased and after killing the bottle, you cried yourself to sleep listening to the depressing local radio station like some pathetic creature, knowing that you are not alone in this world, in this condition, but providing little comfort to what has happened to you during the past twenty-four hours. Revenge was not an option because you know, deep down in your heart, that survival comes first and vengeance was a luxury.
You wake up the next morning to enjoy the last egg in your possession and who cares if it was a bit warm because all of the ice melted in the bucket overnight. The leftover canned ham tasted great and the small bit of coffee you made by boiling some water on the dual burner cooker made up for the lack of a plan for today. The empty liquor bottle causes you to realize that you have overslept and wasted valuable time where you could be taking your benefit money out of the bank and finding work for the day. As you hurriedly get ready in your still damp, yet clean clothes, you pack everything up and stuff the still hot but cleaned up frying pans and aluminum plate in your duffel bag, hoping to renew the room for just one more night. As you hit the front desk the manager says that he can not hold the room as they are booked tonight but suggested a place four miles south of town with a kitchenette and other features. You thank him for giving you a crudely hand drawn map, grab your bag, and look for the bus to get to the bank as soon as you can before any restrictions on withdrawals are placed preventing you from getting your government benefit’s cash out of the system.
You arrive at the bank at 10:15 a.m. and there is a line of almost sixty people in front of you as the bank is opening late this morning for some unknown reason. The line got even longer behind you over the next hour plus as there seemed to be an air of panic again in the air and people were screaming to get inside and see the manager or a teller. After what seemed like forever in the humid summer heat, the doors finally opened but instead of the normal banks security guards there were police and what looked like state military officials guarding the doors. One of them stops you, pulls you to the side and demands you put your contents on the table before entering, much to the chagrin and moans of the line behind you. You turn around and yell “shut the hell up” as you dutifully unload everything on the folding table, displaying your life contents for a guard and a soldier to review. After what seemed like an hour but only a few minutes, the soldier says “Pack it up and move inside.” You shove everything back into the duffel bag, your entire life’s possessions and get into a new line where it seemed like the same sixty people were still in front of you but at least now you were in air conditioning and could stand in comfort.
You get annoyed after a half hour of listening to people threatening the tellers, officers arresting the more violent or those who appeared to threaten violence, and the smell of the others who have not bathed in weeks standing in line. The worst part is as you moved forward was the stench of soiled diapers piling up in the the garbage cans by the customer service desks in a normally reserved bank office and the obvious agitation it created as person after person walked up to the front aggravated by the situation, angered by the crude treatment, and furious at the guards who looked like gangsters hired to defend one of Al Capone’s hideouts. Finally, at twenty-four minutes after one o’clock you get to a teller window, present your credentials and ask to withdraw all but ten dollars from your account. The teller looks at you blankly and says “Sir, you need to go to the Recovery Officer at 637 Lime Street as your benefits have been declared expired. Your account has two dollars and thirteen cents in it.” Before you could react or say a word a guard walks up to you almost as if she had already signaled him, “Sir, follow me please.”
You decide to not make a scene but follow the guard to a side exit away from the mob who by now is more infuriated than ever, as you are. Innocently you ask “Does this lead to 627 Lime Street?” The guard snarls and opens the door responding sarcastically, “Eventually if you bums find the way!” and shoves you out the door causing you to stumble. As you turn around madder than a bull seeing red to open the door, it is locked and you realize your last two dollars and thirteen cents of your life have been stolen from you and there wasn’t anything you could do about it. You pick the duffel bag up, dust yourself off, and head to 627 Lime Street only to find a new line at the Office of Economic Recovery a new creation of the Recovery Act. At least here you were close to the front with only twenty-seven people in front of you, but that was outside, so who knows what it looks like inside.
You finally get inside to the main line and get assigned a Recovery Act officer who is an early thirty something clean cut female with short hair, glasses, and what appears to be a major attitude. You try to kill her with kindness as your preacher used to say and offer up a friendly greeting of “Good Afternoon Ms. Gowling, it is very nice to meet you.” She glares back at you and simply states the company line, “Identification, please. Benefits card, please. No idle chit-chat, I don’t have time for that.” You hand her your identification and she looks at the reports. She says to you as she hands your paperwork back to you, “I can’t help you, go to line nine for disposition, good day.”
You act like a beaten starving puppy, nod and take the paperwork and head to line nine. Thankfully you are only tenth in line there which makes you think that you are getting better service after being unemployed for two years or a special benefit. It is a time like this that you wish you had never sold your car to pay the rent and could just drive somewhere to escape this nonsense. After handing the paper work to the man with no name tag, you ask like a normal person, “Can I get your name please so I can address you properly?” The man looks up at you and slides the glasses down to the bridge of his nose and says “I am agent one, naught, seven and that will do.” Knowing that he holds your future in his hands he starts asking questions to you. “Sir,” he begins professionally, “how much money do you have?” I responded with my bank balance knowing that’s all he could trace, “Two dollars and thirteen cents sir.” He nodded and wrote it down. “Have you ever worked on a farm sir?” was his next question. You nod to the negative and became curious. “Are you physically capable of doing hard labor?” was the next question. “But of course,”you answered, “if it pays well enough, I’m totally capable of doing what it takes.”
You feel proud of your answer thinking this will lead to a job but reality sets in. “Good,” he replies, I have just the job for you. Do you mind relocating to Arkansas? I also must note that you owe seven hundred and twenty-six dollars and fourteen cents in back taxes so that is why you are at my desk. We need for you to clear that up and get back to work. If Arkansas is unacceptable, I do not know if the government can help you any longer.” You stared at him blankly and said “I guess I do not have much choice do I?” The agent smiled and said, “You always have a choice, we can help you or we can not. Thank you for deciding to realize the reality of the situation.”
You sign the paperwork presented and do not argue. A bus ticket is handed to you for the trip from down town Philadelphia to the boonies of Arkansas. The bus station is loaded with families and others who appear to be in as dire of straits as you are but you elect to remain to yourself fearing thieves and con artists are everywhere in our current society. After three transfers and twelve hours in Little Rock waiting on the bus to be repaired, you finally arrive in a small town in the middle of nowhere in Arkansas. A government employee greets you, takes the paperwork you were given, and assigns you to what is called the “work shack” where you will reside for the next ninety days during the probation period the agent in Philadelphia told you about.
You find your assigned dorm room where you meet your room mate who came from Ocala, Florida and listen to his sad yet similar story. The locker under your bed locks and instead of unpacking in front of him, you use your street smarts and throw your duffel bag inside of it, locking it and putting the key around your waist and under your underwear so if you fall asleep, someone trying to grab it would startle you into a sharp, alarmed state of mind. The locker was attached with a thick steel cable to your bed so it was doubtful that anyone would try to steal it, but in this current world despite uniformed security everywhere on the compound, you trust no one. The community counselor knocked on the door and stuck her head inside with a cheerful voice proclaiming “Hi guys! There’s a community assembly in two hours with snacks and drinks for everyone to review the rules and provide an orientation for the new arrivals like yourselves. Please meet us at the recreation hall then. Bye!” With that the young lady wearing a purple golf shirt ducked out of the room and as we both stuck our heads out the door, witnessed here knocking on a door several rooms down to provide the same happy greeting and invitation, which obviously everyone was expected to attend.
You arrive at the recreation hall with your room mate as scheduled and take a seat in the back of the room because you do not want to be glared at for not asking questions as your room mate suggested. “This guy is pretty street smart,” you think to yourself. As everyone settles into their seats, a young man asks everyone to rise for an invocation, something which shocks you until you realize that the words “God” and “Jesus” are never mentioned in the prayer, then again you figure it’s the way of this government so it is best to keep silent. The Colony Administrator, as he was introduced, steps up to the microphone and begins to speak: ” Welcome one and all to a new idea which should revolutionize America’s economy and bring us to a new future where you will be taught the ideas of becoming your own small business and learn the art of collective farming, which could and should reap great rewards for all of the participants. The only rules we ask you to obey are outlined in your hand book but the most important ones which I must emphasize are those prohibitions against firearm ownership, drug, and alcohol use. We also have a strict policy about using colony script only so if you have United States Federal Reserve currency in your possession, please report to the banking office at nine-o-clock tomorrow morning to swap those dollars out for the money you will be using during your residence, and I do mean hopefully long term residence, at our colony.”
You slink down in your seat in horror at the word “colony” because it is so foreign of a concept to you. The little bit of history you paid attention to in high school reminded you about the horrors of the Soviet Union and Chinese communist movements but certainly this could not be happening to you here now, could it? As you depart the assembly you watch others gather around a bulletin board and notice that your name is on the board marked “Special Farm Training, Unit 17″ which startles you because the closest you had ever been to a farm was a petting zoo. You notice the time to assemble there is nine-o-clock in the morning sharp but you knew darned well you were not going to be there as you had to be at the bank office to exchange your cash for script so you do not starve while you are there. After a nice warm dinner of vegetarian stew, whole wheat rolls, and fruit juice at the dining hall that evening, you laid your exhausted body down to sleep wondering what tomorrow would entail.
You awaken to the noise of your room mate at five-thirty in the morning getting his kit and heading down to the bathroom. He looks back at you and says “Don’t you have to be at a meeting this morning?” You tell him that you have a meeting after nine after you exchange your script and he tells you that you had best read your instruction manual and not miss a beat or they will come down on you hard. You shrug, set the alarm back to six-thirty and fall back asleep. After the alarm goes off, you grab your towel, your kit, some clothes, and head down to the showers to clean up and get ready for a long day. The cold shower woke you up as the earlier two groups used up all of the hot water which taught you an important lesson about sleeping in if you wanted a hot shower, but since it was going up to ninety-four degrees today cold water actually felt pretty good.
You head to the dining hall and show the door attendant your newly issued identification and some cash for entrance but he reminds you that script exchange is at nine and today would be the last day they will accept original U.S. currency. After a nice meal, you get put your dishes away and head towards the line at the colony’s community bank to exchange your currency for script so you could rush over and get to the meeting you were assigned to. The line was quite long with new arrivals but you do not mind and exchange the currency at a rate of two script dollars for every U.S. dollar and feel like you’ve made out like a bandit. The run over to the Agrarian Center was not that bad as the wagon wheel design of the community kept the key office and meeting halls all within eyesight of each other except for the storage sheds which were maintained in what was called the “secured” area of the compound.
You rush into the door twenty-five minutes late for the meeting and the Colonial Orientation Officer glares at you as you grab the packet with your name in it off of the table and sit down. “How nice of you to join us,” the officer yells out. Then he proceeds to return to an explanation of how the collective farming economic system works, how you can profit from the work you put in, and how the government will not impose income tax requirements on you as long as you remain a “productive” citizen within the colony. He re-emphasized the word “productive” several times as he reiterated that point during the orientation. As he spoke several others arrived, obviously from the currency exchange line, and each were singled out as You were. It was most embarrassing but the satisfaction of having the money in hand surpassed the humiliation this bureaucrat was dealing out. After the presentation was over, he reminded everyone that the details of the program were in your packet and asked those of us called “late birds” to remain after the meeting. He roundly criticized our first impression and said that if we had bothered to go to the information booth, we could have received a pass to go to the currency exchange early and that all special instructions for each of us would remain at that booth and we should check with the administrator their daily for messages or special instructions. He then dropped the bomb on us that we would not be paid for this day and to report to the kitchen to assist with clean up duties. “What a way to learn about farming,” I thought to myself, “I wonder what else we’ll learn this week.”
You finally are dismissed from kitchen duties at eleven o’clock that night and collapse in your bunk after eating a cold sandwich in the kitchen while scrubbing pots and pans. Your room mate looks at you as you stumble in and says “Missed a meeting, eh?” You nod yes and fall down on your bunk, this time remembering to set your alarm for four forty-five in the morning so you can get a hot shower for your aching body. The alarm clock startles you but you and your room mate grab your kits, towels, and some clothes and run for the showers in your flip flops knowing you will be first or at least close enough to get hot water. Unfortunately as you arrive the line had already formed and you were now twentieth in line and look at your room mate and tell him “Just like the government, lines twenty-four, seven.” He laughs but at least you are in better shape than the other eighty guys still sleeping in this morning.
You get your shower and head to the dining room at six o’clock when it opens, getting in line with the group looking forward to a hot breakfast. You actually took the time to read your packet and know that the breakfast will cost you three script dollars so that is all you carry with the rest locked up for safe keeping. After paying the door attendant and getting your meal coupon you wait for all of only ten minutes this time and get your meal of wheat toast, oatmeal, fresh fruit, scrambled powdered vegetarian eggs, and some sort of protein bar you have never seen before along with a cup of decaf coffee and water for your personal canteen jug. This startles you as you are starving and dying for real meat but beggars can not be choosers as this is the best you have had it in two years.
You finish your meal and head to the building with the sign that says “Rice Farm Agrarian Meeting Center” so you can learn just how to grow rice, harvest it and make money from it. Assistant Agriculture Instructor Wilma Jones, a striking young black lady with a degree from the Arkansas State and she reminded you of that every chance she got, began to explain how the four acres you were responsible for would yield enough crops for you to earn enough cash to pay back ten percent of any government debts owed and to pay your rent, expenses, plus purchase government savings bonds to survive on the colony as long as you desired. Once any and all debts owed to the Internal Revenue Service, Sallie Mae, or other agencies were paid back in full, you were free to leave or to sign up for the USDA farm lot lease to own purchase program. This sounded too good to be true, yet there had to be a catch beyond paying back your government debts. Little did you know that with price inflation being the rule of the day, it was almost impossible to ever pay them back or create your own subsistence farm for profit under the government program.
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Needless to say, the scenario presented above is fiction; or was it?
While reading a lot of new material for my future writings, I came across a documentary and drama film series on my Netflix selection called Our Daily Bread and Other Films of the Great Depression. The primary feature was a drama titled Our Daily Bread considered one of Hollywood’s most powerful movies of the “social conscious” movement where the ideas of collectives and vague references condemning capitalism were celebrated. One movie, a documentary produced by non other than the United States Department of Agriculture Department of Motion Pictures is what shook me again back into the reality of our current dire straits. If you can obtain a copy of “The New Frontier” you should watch it and begin to understand how propaganda functioned in the past and in our present era. FDR knew that the failures of his programs would be celebrated by his enemies in the remainder of capitalist America, so films like this were common and I am attempting to review as many as possible (and you should also) before they disappear into the dustbin of modern censorship.
The Roosevelt administration to many of the extreme Marxist movements did not do enough and despite the bull rush into the ideals espoused by Marx, it was not enough to satisfy the left wingers of that time. In fact, the lack of jobs growth, handouts from the government, and redistribution of wealth swelled the ranks of the United States Communist Party which had been working since the turn of the century openly and through the trade union movement to become a force in American politics. This little commentary of mine though was not a reflection of the expansion of the communist movement in America, nor the trade unions who aided them, or the corrupt Roosevelt administration; it was a reminder to all that if we do not stay as vigilant as possible, we could end up on one of those collective farms. This time, without any other options or the freedoms our Constitution guarantees.
So has the concept of a collective farm ever existed before on American soil, much like those designed under Stalin or Mao where urban citizens were shipped out to the rural communities to begin a colonized farming community?
Yes.
Remember this headline from the fictional story above:
Workers Arrested for Protesting Pay and Benefits-Over One Hundred Imprisoned, Several Dead
It was not fiction some 70 plus years ago. From Time Magazine on September 17, 1934:
Many a skirmish had been required to net Leader Gorman this result. At Warren, R. I., 1,000 strikers stormed a mill after a policeman struck a union official. At Augusta, Ga., two Enterprise Mill pickets were wounded and one killed when a policeman, trampled by strikers, fired from the ground. At Bridgeport, Pa., strikers forced entrance to a mill, broke a woman’s leg. At Greenville, S. C. one man and four women were clubbed, kicked and mauled in scrimmages with deputies. At Fall River, Mass., Radical Ann Burlak. “The Red Flame,” was forbidden to hold a meeting. In New Bedford, Mass. 3,000 pickets attacked the main gate of the Firestone Tire Fabric plant, showered windows with stones, forced 600 workers to retreat into the mill for safety. At Trion, Ga. a deputy sheriff and a non-union man were killed in a battle between strikers and deputies.That’s right. Protesters were killed for going on strike. While I am no strong supporter of the union movement obviously, the part which I did object to is best illustrated in this little slice of history which receives little coverage from the “New Deal” thrill up the legs of liberal Marxist reporters today:
Martial Law Declaration
A Proclamation
Whereas: Under Article I, Section 8, paragraph 14 of the Constitution of the United States, it is provided that “Congress shall have the power and authority to provide for calling forth the Militia and execute the laws of the Union, to suppress insurrection and repel invasion, ” and
Whereas: In accordance with the above provision of the Federal Constitution, the Constitution of this State, Article No. 5, section No. 1, paragraph 11, provides, “The Governor shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the State, and of the Militia thereof, ” and….
Whereas: There now exists organized and open insurrection against the laws and Constitution of this State; and, such acts of violence and insurrection against the laws of the State are beyond the control of the Sheriffs and Civil officers of the counties affected, and….
Whereas: Insurrection, rebellion, rioting, and deeds of violence are being agitate, fermented, and incited by armies of insurrectionists imported and coming into the affected areas from other counties and other States….
Now, Therefore, I, Eugene Talmadge, Governor of the State of Georgia, do hereby under the authority of the Constitution and laws of the United States, and of this State, exercise the supreme executive power as Chief Executive of the State of Georgia, and do hereby declare martial law over all the territory embraced in-
An area including each and ever;y textile mill and manufactory of cotton and rayon products, also an area of five hundred feet distance from and around each and every direction; also an area including all highways and public roads in the State of Georgia, also all jails and prisons in which military prisoners and persons confined by the Military, operating under this proclamation are confined; also all camps, guard houses, military encampments, and other places where persons are confined in operating under this proclamation; also each and every constituted by drawing a circle around each military company, regiment, guard, and picket with a radius of five hundred feet, where they may be found, posted, or stationed, and when on the march or being transported….
The writ of Habeas Corpus is hereby suspended within all areas embraced in this proclamation and in any areas which may hereafter, by amendment, be put under martial law under this proclamation, as well as persons arrested by the military authorities…..
Done at the State Capitol, Atlanta, Georgia,
On this 14th day of September, 1934.
By the Governor of the State of Georgia,.
Eugene Talmadge
(from: the Executive Minutes, Georgia State Archives, September 14, 1934)
You are reading that correctly. The Democrat Governor of the state of Georgia, Eugene Talmadge, declared Martial Law and ordered people be arrested and detained by the military and a truly illegal suspension of the Constitution under the rights guaranteed under Habeas Corpus. Shortly after this proclamation, over one hundred “insurrectionists” also known as peaceful union protesters were arrested and confined within barbed wire encampments not far from the manufacturing facilities, thus breaking the back of the strikers and intimidating most of the state to succumb to the owners of the mills. This law was so broad based as cotton fields dotted most of the state at that time thus enabling law enforcement and the military to arrest people and question them at will, even if they had no business other than driving by a cotton farm, yet documentation about the abuses remains sparse due to the willful desire to suppress this black mark on Georgia’s history.So what is to say such a law applies to all “government offices, education facilities, religious buildings, and financial institutions” at a date in the very near future?
Nothing. At the actions by the State of Georgia were never allowed to come to light, much like the actions of the state during the crisis in New Orleans after Katrina obliterated much of New Orleans. There has never been a legal challenge, at least that I can find on record, to the actions taken, which in this author’s opinion clearly usurped the Constitution of the United States.
Yet “it can’t happen here.”
But it already has.
That is only one example though from the story. It is not that important though and fiction never becomes reality, right? That brings on the next question:What if the American government decided to offer a program that was “optional” which translates into “take it or starve” where urban residents have exhausted their government welfare benefits and are “offered” a new chance to start over by becoming sharecroppers or subsistence farmers in rural areas far away from their homes?
In the 1930′s, a series of American communes were created by the Roosevelt administration under the suggestion of one Henry Hopkins, a very close friend to FDR and ultimately accused of being a spy by the media and an unconscious agent by a former KGB agent from the old Soviet Union(from the NY Times – A Soviet Agent? Harry Hopkins? October 28, 1990) When you look at the Rural Rehabilitation Program of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) the idea of creating colonies was not a fictional theory created by yours truly. It was a reality concocted by Harry L. Hopkins who convinced the Roosevelt administration to experiment with the idea by creating FERA homesteads in Dyess, AR; Pine Mountain Valley Resettlement Community, GA; Cherry Lake, FL; Palmer, AK; and ultimately where the New Pioneers propaganda documentary was filmed, Woodlake, TX.
During this documentary, urban citizens were “offered” the opportunity to start over in rural America basically sharecropping government managed agricultural communities where their earnings in the fields would help pay their rent for the fields, food, shelter, medical care and any other needs the commune provided. $500 million dollars was allocated for the FERA projects plus an additional $250 million designated for use by the states (National Association of Rural Rehabilitation Corporations, A Brief History) where 40 and 60 acre tracts were subdivided from huge farmland tracts purchased by the Federal government. Many of the purchases were from distressed properties owned by the banks and savings and loans with little hope of buyers to save those institutions from taking further losses. Forty-five states set up these early Government Sponsored Enterprises in the early years but only the colonies listed above were ever established and functioning.
Thus the importance of the movies I highlighted above and the inspiration for the research on this rather wordy, yet alarming piece. The first movie, the drama Our Daily Bread was an attempt to romanticize the idea of communal living in a rural agricultural setting. The heroes of the movie were united with different professions but the glory of the farming efforts ended in spotlight on a happy ending because everyone put their difference aside, no matter their former skills, to unite and compete the project of getting the corn planted and helping it survive a brutal drought. The premise followed similar efforts of Soviet film making in the 1920′s which glorified Lenin’s call for Russians to return to the soil and promoted the glory of the peasant workers in the field, ignoring the brutal reality behind the communist regime.
The last movie on the DVD I watched was a documentary called New Pioneers and was truly frightening as people were presented with a “new opportunity in the town of Woodlake, Texas a designed community run by “Colony Administrators” with “Colony Social Workers” helping the inhabitants with nutrition, medical supervision, education and farming techniques. This brings us back to our friend, Harry L. Hopkins, FDR’s good friend. I’m not accusing him of acting as a socialist or agent for the KGB, but does not the idea of communal farming colonies where urban citizens are shipped out and “taught” how to farm sound much like Stalin’s purges of the cities or Mao’s Great Leap Forward? While Mr. Hopkins might not have portrayed himself as an active communist or agent of the Soviet Union, but this program certainly has the signature of the type of actions a desperate Marxist regime would undertake, along with the propaganda films to “enlighten” the America public about the glories of a centralized planned commune.
Needless to say the programs were complete failures as The Nation magazine of all places warned about as highlighted in an article from January 9, 1937 titled Farm Tenacy: A Program:
Men fail in the South not because they do not own land but because they are not competent farmers. They are incompetent because they are not physically well—a fact which presents immediate problems of hygiene and medical care. They are incompetent because they are ignorant, because they do not know how to farm or how to dispose of farm products—a fact which presents immediate problems in education, training, and organization.This could be considered a no-brainer but the elites believed that farming was a simplistic exercise and that many of the problems of failed farmers during the Dust Bowl era were the result of a lack of government management of agricultural affairs and a need for expanded supervision by Federal officials. The reality is that the government’s education efforts were met with very limited success and turning a salesman into a corn former as dramatized in Our Daily Bread was not as simple as shipping hundreds of people from Illinois to Arkansas or Georgia and handing them the keys to a tractor along with some books to read and bureaucrats to provide oversight. In modern times a computer programmer or webmaster would fare no better than the car salesmen and plumbers of the 1930′s did attempting to resuscitate dormant farmland.
Yet “it can’t happen here.”
But it already has.
Thus I present all of you with a warning. If you think your freedom of speech rights are protected, I ask you to reflect and learn about actions of the Wilson administration during and just after World War I plus the WPA and NRA activities under FDR. If you think your right to own firearms is an unlimited guarantee with protections from the second amendment, I ask you to review the actions of the local, state, and Federal government during the Hurricane Katrina crisis. If you think that you are free to own private investments or capital for profit, ask a Chrysler bondholder how much good the fifth amendment did for them. If you think the right to own private property and taking by the State is a guarantee to your protections, ask Susan Kelo how the fifth and fourteenth amendments helped her. Over and over again you hear the politicians and skeptics tell you that America could never become a totalitarian or Marxist state similar to the experiences of nations in Asia, Europe, and South America over the decades. Next time when they say that, simply smile, reply and say:Yet “it can happen here.”
But it already has.
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