Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 12, Number 9, DeMotte, Jasper County, 8 January 1942 — Washington Digest [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Washington Digest

Farm Labor Situation Is Given Careful Study Government Devises Plan for 'Complete Utilization’ of Local Workers to Aid in Nation’s Food-for-Victory Campaign.

By BAUKHAGE

National Farm and Home Hour Commentator.

WNU Service, 1343 H Street. N-W, Washington, D. C. As the New Year starts, reports are beginning to come in to the Federal Security administration here from supervisors of farm '-placement, in the 48 states. These reports state just what the farmers in each state are going to* need in the way of labor this spring, and how these state supervisors who are on the ground studying the question, feel the problem ought to be met. Meanwhile, Washington has been dyking on a general program whose goal is the “complete utilization” of all local labor. This means that every conceivable reservoir of man-and-woman-power is to be tapped to make this good earth of ours yield its utmost for the food-for-victory campaign. Students, members of the CCC and the NYA and every other group, organized or unorganized, is to be called upon to keep the chow line going for democracy at arms. Nobody knows better than the folks who are out recruiting for the farm battalions that you can’t just push a man through the barn door or into a pasture and call him a farmer. It takes training and that is part of the master-plan which is now being worked out. But meanwhile there are a lot of people who have had farming experience who are available, skilled or semi-skilled. And then there are some jobs which don’t need skills, but do require mass employment for short periods. An Oregon Plan Take what happened out in Oregon this last fall for instance. Oregonians have already taken hold of this “farm placement” idea and made it work. Along Game the snap-bean crop and a drastic shortage of hands. They were found in every walk of life. It . meant temporary closing up of a lot of shops and businesses and other enterprises but they got the crop in and they didn’t paralyze the communities. It couldn’t have been done, though, with the best of will, if there hadn t been a sound plan behind it. The farmers now have two competitors for labor, the factory and military service. Industry has always offered higher wages. But present farm wages are up higher than they have been in 11 years. So the farm “hand can’t complain on that score. And the real patriot is the one who does what he can do best for Uncle Sam. Then there are still a lot of farmtrained workers who have drifted to to the cities where they have not secured employment or they have found themselves misfits. The United States employment agencies are going after these people and are going to lure them out of their fiats back into the fields. ’* 0 0 As a Nat on Went to Wcr As the new year begins and I look back at the notes I wrote down after that climactic Sunday when we received word that the Japanese had made their surprise attack on Hawaii, they seem very dull and drab. But some of the memories are very keen. This in spite of the fact that eYer since then a life has been running at such a rapid rate each day, each hour and frequently each minute, that it has been difficult to see anything but the very vivid present. I have a memory .of Sunday, of a brisk, sunny winter day. Then leisurely breakfast, the morning papers, the radio, the preparation to lose myself in the outdoors for a few hours—a walk which might have made me miss those first dramatic moments at the White House. But I stopped to chat with my father who lives near me. The phone rang while I paused, hat and coat already on. In the span of a few moments, I w r as standing with a half a dozen other reporters, hurriedly haled from their Sunday rest, in the office of Stephen Early in the Executive Wing of the White House. "First,” said Early very seriously, “are there any correspondents of German or Japanese newspapers here?” There w r ere not. He read us a few T details of the Hawaiian attack which he had just received from the President hastily pencilled

on a memo. The first announcements, which he had received at his home, he had phoned to the press associations and radio networks; and then he had hurried to the White House. As soon as Early’s brief announcement was oyer,-we rushed out of his office, across the lobby and into the press room where the press associations and the radio companies have private telephone lines to their local offices. A little later an NBC engineer had a microphone attached to one of our lines and I was able to make the first news broadcast ever sent from the White House. From then on I hardly left my chair, except for moments to relieve my assistant and one of the NBC newsmen, who were keeping in touch with the state department across the street and later interviewing members of the cabinet and congressional leaders at the front entrance of the White House. The White House press room is arranged to accommodate about a dozen men , who are regularly stationed there. Within a few hours after the first announcement of the Japanese attack it was jammed with 50 or more people—reporters, radio men,, messenger boys. The noise was so great that the microphone had to be stepped down to avoid catching the roar and confusion, and I was forced to speak in a low voice—this gave the effect of suppressed excitement which was greater than I really felt, although .the events were exciting enough. Outside the crowds were solemn, quiet. The sidewalk immediately iff front of the White House was roped off and the side streets were closed. The crowd edged as near as it could, peering at the lighted windows across the wide lawns. They could see nothing, but they were satisfied to watch. Only very late,- as they began to break up, did they begin to sing. Their emotions needed an outlet then. I watched America go to war seriously, but not as I had seen France and Germany go—sadly, resentfully and with a sullen and deadening apathy. * * * Washington’s Bridges And a Hobby Every time I cross one of Washington’s “beautiful bridges” these days my thoughts go back to u slim young man who was a sophomore in college when I graduated. He distinguished himself by winning the Julius Rosenwald medal for oratory —no mean achievement for a foreigner. And this young man was a foreigner. About a year ago he visited me. It was the first time I had seen him since college, and I never would have recognized the fat little man in glasses as the slim Jiuji Kasai, member of the Japanese diet. He put his arms about me and called me “dear college-mate.” It was quite touching. And he produced a real “Pooh-bah” bow as he presented a delicate little famto my wife. Then he disappeared for a long time and 1 didn't hear of him again until he turned up in Washington with a shower of good-will interviews in the local papers. Just before his wily colleague,. Mr. Kurusu., appeared on the scene to operate his famous shoe-string play, Kasai hurried back to Japan. Kasai was a great student of America, of Theodore Roosevelt. He was supposed to love America deeply. I have no doubt he admired us. He certainly went to great lengths to interpret this country to his own. I have no meqns of knowing what he really thought, but the point of this story is an incident which seems go utterly incredible that it is an excuse 1 for all misunderstanding of the Japanese. It is simply too good to be true and yet it is. Kasai, on his last visit, was calling at the house of a mutual friend in Washington who asked if he could do anything to make Mr. Kasai's visit more valuable: “Oh, yes,” Kasai replied, with his little eyes sparkling, behind .his glasses, “some time I should like to have you take me about in your car and point out some of your beautiful bridges in the capital. You see, my hobby is photography and I should like to take pictures of them.” So far the beautiful bridges are still here.