Home Photo Gallery Classroom Documents Mr. President:- In response to your sincere letter of inquiry to clergy of this country, in itself a mark of democracy's new era, I have talked with representative men of this district of the city and am incorporating their reactions in this letter. To begin with, building trades have taken on new life very decidedly, with corresponding benefit to carpenters, painters, etc., thus relieving unemployment. This is due to the Government loans in accord with the Housing Act. Carpenters are now busy. Business conditions are improving pro. tem.--better sales greater volume on railroads. The chief opposition to Administration reforms has been the chiseling of big business, the retirement of Republican capital, and the inadequate sense of responsibility on the part of highly influential employers. The new Social Security legislation enacted in felt to be greatly needed, right in principle, but difficult to work out in practical detail. Such legislation must be administered for the benefit of people at large, not of political office holders. Civil Service should run this social good works. The difficulty underlying all else is that the Government has not been planning for abundance. The most lavish relief measures, subsidies, and encouragement to small business, cannot offset this. Both the N.R.A. and A.A.A. have been based on an economy of scarcity. Though it is plain that your sincere wish is to increase purchasing power of the masses, it is felt that spending public money in huge sums will not serve as more than a temporary stimulant. Such colossal debt tends toward inflation in some form. The workers here in San Francisco feel that advance in prices has more than offset the increase in wages. Shorter hours with no increase of pay simply means that the working man is paying for re-employment. N.R.A., they feel, was a boon to employers. There is no sympathy amongst working men for a Supreme Court decision that the nation cannot take constructive strides in these times of fearful emergency. Congress should have power to make laws for the well being of the masses. The iniquity of the sales tax results in soaking the poor quite regardless of increased income and inheritance taxation--which can be evaded by the forming of family trusts. In short, The tendency here, amongst men that I contact, is to urge upon you to take more radical steps toward an economy of abundance,--braving the opposition of Big Business interests which are bound to crystallize into a Conservative-Republican Party of the immediate future. Big business will not reform itself and be good--because profits are not forthcoming that way. The growth of 'Cooperatives' hereabouts is significant. The fact that our great country can easily produce comfort for all, that its vast industrial plant can only be really active to capacity in that basis, is becoming widely known. At no distant time Government will have to deal with this new social sense. Sincerely and very respectfully yours,
Williston Merrick Ford, Rector
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