Dissenting Zealots

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

Your communicant wishes to take issue with an editorial published yesterday entitled, "Carping Clerics" when it infers that much "beneficial social legislation has been written on the law books of the country during the last decade." I fail to find a single piece of "social legislation" in the last decade which has counteracted the evils of the reign of Big Business. The position of the small and middle-sized business man and the laborer has been steadily declining during the past decade. Big Business received its final enshrinement in the temple when it went down to Washington last year and wrote into the law-books monopolistic practices, thereby soliciting the government in its fight against the small business man, who, in many cases, because of greater efficiency, was able to cut into its profits. At the same time labor was tricked into accepting the codes through section 7A, which capital knew could never be enforced (although Roosevelt was sincere in thinking it could be). Its complete failure is per so not so serious, as is the fact that its failure has succeeded in intensifying the difference between employer and employee, which has been acknowledged since the time of Plato as being most dangerous to the welfare of any state.

Your editor then goes on: "If the church is to continue as a vital force in American life, it must extract the virtues from existing institutions and build a better future on them." This is indeed a dangerous doctrine, all the more so because of its prevalence among our leaders today. Your editor will recall that Jesus of Nazareth didn't attempt to "extract the virtues from existing institutions." Quite the contrary, he fought the two most powerful of these institutions with all the physical and intellectual force which he could command. These two institutions were the Money-changers and the Sacrificial Meat Trust. His fight against these institutions went so far that Jesus didn't even stop at using physical force against them, despite that fact that he generally condemned the use of such force.

Printed along with this editorial was a communication to the effect that Mr. Frankfurter had stated in a recent interview that the simple virtues of honesty and public devotion are not enough to unravel the tangled skein of social and economic complexities. While it is difficult to disagree with this statement, the important fact is that leaders of the state must AT LEAST have as a FIRST prerequisite "the virtues of honesty and public devotion." And it certainly is not an honest act to rob the banks of their gold, to issue an edict depriving a man of his gold (even if the gold standard IS ONLY psychological), to deny the obligation of contract, to tax the poor for their bread and meat, to assert in an inauguration speech that the Federal, State, and local tax burdens must be reduced, and then to advocate legislation which has had the exact opposite effect.

It is for these reasons that your communicant advocates a rereading of the Republic and the Bible, even if Plato and Jesus did not live to see mass production and the completing problems of a machine age. For truth--unlike the Roosevelt or the Hoover Administration--is eternal. V. H. Kramer '35.