tention will be focused on expanding the production of goods for mass consumption, on raising the standard of life for the working people by consistent and systematic reduction, on the cost of all goods, and on wide scale construction of all kinds of scientific research institutes."
Here, in the U.S.A., by contrast, price increases, inflation and taxes, make the recent gain of 181⁄2 cents an hour by the U.S. Steel workers but one round won in a continuous struggle. Like a squirrel in a cage, we have to run furiously in order to stand still in capitalist America, while the workers in a Socialist country calmly proceed to triple their living standards by 1965.
DID YOU EVER MEET A COMMUNIST?
Did you ever meet a Communist?
Maybe you're a Communist yourself and didn't know it. We were all in the same state once. Thousands of Americans are today. If we could sit down with you for a friendly chat we would soon discover how much we agree with each other. It happens every day—talking to taxi-drivers, soldiers on trains, women on busses—I seldom find them disagreeing on basic questions.
Maybe you're saying to yourself, "Nothing doing, sister, I'm no Communist! I'm only reading this because John asked me to. There's a lot of sense in it, but I'm no Communist!"
Well, at least you've met a Communist. That should help you recognize the mental poison of anti-Communism spewed out by Pegler, Hearst, Bilbo, Rankin, and Coughlin. Many good people allow these Red-baiters to frighten and confuse them. Their minds are influenced by misconceptions and downright lies spread by the Red-baiters—like the spy-scare cooked up by Drew Pearson lately. Suppose a British, French or Italian worker asked one of these people, like many of our soldiers were asked, about the American Communists. He would be rated politically illiterate if he shouted: "Agents of Moscow! Trying to overthrow our government! Let them go back where they came from!"
Incidentally, this would give the majority of our members a "See America trip" to the four corners of the United States from where they come.
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