An Open Letter to Senator David I. Waish

Dear Sir:

On Tuesday the ninth you came to the Harvard Democratic Club as a liberal Democrat and gave reasons why the present Republican regime should be brought to an end. As we do not feel, however, that the reasons you gave for this change were either clear or fully developed, we ask you to answer fully the following questions in order that liberals may see just where you and the Democratic Party stand.

1. You charged--correctly in our opinion--that the Republican Party was controlled by big business which has corrupted the government for the benefit of the favored few. The last Democratic president, who was elected in 1916 on the slogan. "He kept us out of the war" admitted in a speech at St. Louis, September, 1919, that a combination of manufacturers and big business men control the destinies of this nation. What foundation is there then for a belief that, should the Democratic Party be put into power, a Party which has now among its active supporters, John J. Raskob, of the General Motors; Owen D. Young of the General Electric; and William H. Woodin of the American Locomotive Company, big business will not continue its control of the government.

2. You also said that big business demands and gets, because of contributions to the Republican campaign fund, almost any tariff rate it wants. You charged that giving to the steel men, to use your example, a tariff of 25 per cent was robbery, but you added that you were ready to give 10 per cent., 15 per cent., 20 per cent., 22 per cent., 23 per cent., or even as high as 24 per cent. Economists are agreed that all protection, except to "infant" industries, means robbery and that the high American standard of wages is not due to tariff. How then, do you justify your willingness to concede as much as 96 per cent of the demands of the steel men? Is the steel industry an "infant" industry in this country?

3. Lastly, you read an editorial clipping which stated that Toronto, where the government owns the electric plants, supplies electricity at the rate of two cents per kilowatt hour; while in Alabama, electricity is produced in a government plant at less than two cents per kilowatt hour and then sold by this government plant for eight cents. Does not the Democratic program, of government ownership of the generating plants, with distribution by private companies mean that consumers will be forced--as they now are in Alabama--to pay an enormous profit to the distributing companies? Harvard Thomas-for-President Club,   Donald Thompson 1Dv., President.