I just got back from the big city, where someone had passed on to me an old newspaper, the Colfax County (Nebraska) Press, from January 24, 1935.
This was during the height of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, and things weren't getting any better. People were actually staving, and there weren't any food stamps.
Also, this was about the time the New Dealers were proposing the federal government run everything.
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A Nebraska farm organization the other day adopted a resolution favoring the conscription of wealth in time of war.
If conscription of wealth should become a policy of Uncle Sam, about the second order issued after hostilities started, would put the farms in the hands of the government. Munitions factories would probably come first, but the source of food for our army and navy would be second in importance only to the plants manufacturing arms and ammunition.
The order would undoubtedly take into the service of the United States all farmers and farm workers. The owner of the farm probably would be designated as a corporal and put on the payroll at about $35 a month with perhaps an allowance for family expenses.
There would be a captain and a couple of lieutenants in the vicinity to see that the corporal farmer got his orders straight and carried them out, but the real authority would come from the higher-ups, majors, colonels, generals who would be in strict control of the production of food stuffs.
In the meantime, of course, the railroads would be taken over and the presidents made generals, and the workers sergeants, corporals, and buck privates, as described by National Commander Van Zandt in his address here the other night.
Garment factories and their staffs would go into the organization early, and finally we should all be cogs in a huge military machine, taking orders from gold-braided superiors with the authority of Uncle Sam's military arm behind them.
This is undoubtedly a fair and just way to call the whole country into service in time of war, but how much food the farmer would raise under these circumstances, how the clothing and boot and shoe factories would work in such a scheme is something else.
We would all do well to pray that we shall never have occasion to test such a conscription plan.
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Interestingly, in the same issue is a description of the state-mandated old-age pension law, where every Nebraskan between the ages of 21 and 50 was taxed fifty cents a year; those to get the pension would not be eligible for any other social services program.
Ah, a simpler world......
