Ke Alakai o Hawaii, Volume IX, Number 29, 27 October 1936 — Vote The Straight Democratic Ticket!! Landon off On Wrong Foot -- Again! [ARTICLE]

Vote The Straight Democratic Ticket!!

Landon off On Wrong Foot -- Again!

Fron» the evidence at hand it would seem tliat the most extraordinary of Gov. Alf M. Landon's major eampaign speeches was his animated 3ssault upon the Social' Security Act at Milwaukee—of all places. Wisconsin was the first state in the union to legislate on that subject and her people were therefore less likely to overlook what Senator Robert M. La Follette called the governor's "attack upon an entirely imaginary law . . . invented to afford campaign argument." But, as in his Buffalo speech promssing "immediate repeal" of the corporation tax bill, and in his bitter opposition to insuranee of bank deposits, the governor made up in cunsistency what he lacked in consideration for the underprivileged of the nation. ' Doubtless there are heavy contributors to the Old Guard campalgn agam3t Presider>t Roosevelt who ean admire the governor's audacity, the brand he used in ing in his message to the Kansas Legislature in January, 1935, that he had reduced school expenses 40 per cent! They ean recall that while dozens of states were enacting legislation last year and early this year to enabie them to participate in the benefits of the naiiōnal Social Security, Act, the Kansas executive refused the urgēnt appeals of his own people to eall a special session for that purpose- Also that he pērsisted in waitirig until his nomination at Clfcveland "was out of the way" before assemb- ' ling his Legislature last Ju!y and restricting its activity to a submission of a proposed constitutiorial amendment. without recommeridatiori. "What Gov. Landon at Milwaukee was not old-age or unemployment insurance at all. By providing for a "pay-as-you-go program" he dispensed with the reserves essential to any form of insurance and advocated instead somethirī: akin to the old-fashioned burial society mutual assessment "insurance." This oversimplified s3 rstem gavē way to legal reserve fund insurance between 40 and 50 years ago. That kind of "insurance," even if the 48 states would be willing to follow such a pattern, would depend upon annual ineome to meet annual expenses. īt would surely go (iowii with the first depression. As beneficiaries I6st their jobs, the inīake would be depl«ted, with corresponding increase in expenße. Is it not significant that the governor pleaded a,t Buffalo so feelingly for the sanctity of reserves for corporations and could not even contemplate the creation of reserves for the aged and unemployed? Is this the "Amenean way" as understood by the Ēepuhliean candidate for President? % No wonder Gov. Landon's treatment of social secunty should have aroused such a storm of indignation aa to re..su.lt in the resignation of John G. Winant, three times Re-' publican governor of New Hampshire, from the ehaimian-; ship ,of the Nationa! Social Security Board, in order to ",participate against the Republican nominee." No wonder Leo Dopkin, chairman of the Maryland 01d-Age Pension Committee, was equallv disgusted. In announcing his purpose to take the stump, Ōopkin, appoiaitee of the Republican Governor Niee, declared: "For the first time in my life I have turned away from the national Republican ticket, because to enact unemployment *insurarice' as Landon proposes actually mean.s the shelving of unemployment insurance." And it is just as comprehensible that Gov. Landon should try to plaee the blame for his Milwaukee mistake on what hē toid the newspaper men at Topeka was a "report from the Twentieth Century Fimd, supported by the Foene Foundatiari." What the candidate used as a basis for his slurs on the national act was the bitterly partisan expression of a sing!'e individual, one of a number of research men who admitted to his employer that he had allowed the Repubncins to have it last January "with the express stipu!ation that it be treated as confidential." Where-upon the governor contributed to the discussion two more explanations. In the morning he said: "I did not receive it from any member of the staff or from any one connected in anv way with the Twenti*eth Century Fund research staff." That afternoon he added : "l'hen l were two reports and the one I tfflde public was not received in corifidence " Aiiyway, the "report" was never acted upon by the Twentieth Century Fund and it concluded with this summary: "The law shou!d credit as a real foundation on whieh a satisfactory structure of old-age security may eventually be built." No such conclusion liau been revealed by the governor at Milwaukee. The public will not long need to remember the frequency of the lament that Gov. Landon "has again been imposed upon" by some overaealous partisan ādviser. But ihe candidate's effort to w.reck the great Social Act and replace it with a dole ( in the form of a pmWe, i> noi apt to be forgotten during the next few weeka. '