New York Editor Reveals Plan For Reemployment of Masses For Recovery - Gold Fields To Solve the Financial Crisis

In a special interview to the CRIMSON; Randolph Walker, widely known New York editor, outlined his "Grub Stake Plan" for National recovery and unemployment relief. Defining his position, he said: "I am going on the theory that America has solved the art or problem of distribution. The necessitates a medium of exchange of purchasing power placed in the hands of the buyer. The Grub Stake Plan," Mr. Walker went on, "is simply this: first, a grub stake...grub, a pick, a shovel and a pan... for prospectors and placer panners; then transport to placer regions, where it has already been shown that fifty cents a day or better is the average recovery of gold; finally food, which might well be distributed by the Commissary Departments of the army and navy." This primary program, Mr. Walker pointed out, should be augmented by a course of instruction for those interested in prospecting or placer mining. Such instruction is now being offered in Canada under the Grab State Bill but recently passed there, and has been given in a very desultory manner by certain Western states. If introduced here, he said, it should be handled under the coordinated direction of State and Federal Mining Bureaus and mining engineers.

The objects of the Grab State Plan, according to Mr. Walker, are manifold, and it is designed to attack the problems of the depression from more than one angle. "In the first place," he said, "the plan is intended to relieve unemployment through putting men to work in the gold fields. It should open up our vast gold resources through the grub staking of prospectors, and lead to the location of new dredging operations and the discovery of new lode mines. In the second place, it will put gold... purchasing power and a medium of exchange... directly into the hands of the buyer without taxing other industries. In the third place, it will replenish our gold reserve."

"Of Course," Mr. Walker went on, "you will ask me now if the plan is a practical one, suitable for immediate use. The only answer is to this is, 'Yes'. According to the estimates my agents send me there are now over two hundred thousand men and women who have resorted to this method of gaining a livelihood and who are getting by. The most conservative estimate of their recovery of gold is fifty cents a day."

Step Toward Employment

Mr. Walker also showed that the recent treasury order, permitting gold to be sold abroad at the world price, which was heralded as a boon to the mining companies, was also a step toward unemployment relief in that it increased by fifty percent the earnings of the small prospector and panner, who has hitherto been obliged to sell at twenty dollars announce while in Canada and other countries gold was bringing a premium as high as eighty-five percent. The small gold miner, however, is still harassed by the old law forcing him to divulge the source of his dust; this law, originally designed to allow the government to plan detective for large mining companies, now serves to lay the prospector open to the mercies of the sharpers, government snoopers, gold buyers and claim jumpers. Yet in spite of this hindrance and the many others which arise, thousands are making a living unaided from the gold fields.

Mr. Walker showed that his plan excels others now projected or in use in that it does not involve the production of a material already over-produced, and in that it permits a mental and physical freedom which other arrangements deny their beneficiaries. Where the men in the Reforestation Camps are cooped up unnaturally and are accomplishing little of value, the men who are to be grub-staked will be on their own as their ancestors were. "The depression of '49 was lifted by the discovery of gold in California," he said. "Where those miners suffered unfold hardships to attain their goal, modern searchers will be aided by improved transportation, which makes both labor and gold mobile. Furthermore, the fact that seventy percent of our metal miners, and ten thousand mining engineers are out of work, and twenty percent of our coal miners face starvation, points the way to a solution in which these men are sent to the work for which these men are sent to the work for which they are by training and tradition fitted."