RADICALS: Unemployed

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Last week jobless hundreds, led by Reds, paraded to the City Hall, demanded municipal relief from Mayor Stump. They asked that everybody in town be given $15 per week plus $2 per week per dependent plus free rent, free gas, free electricity. Funds, they thought, might be raised by a local tax on incomes of $5.000 and up. Mayor Stump ushered the leaders into his office, where they harangued him thus: ". . . You who call yourself a Socialist, must realize the workers are creators of all commodities and yet the workers are starving."

Suavely the Mayor replied: "I'll tell you boys nobody is more in sympathy with you than the Mayor and Council of Reading. We're no novices. We know what Capitalism does to the workers and hope that Capitalism will be overthrown. . . . We've kept men on we'd ordinarily lay off. I've organized Unemployment relief and it's doing a darned good job. But . . . you don't know the law, that's all. How can we tax the rich? If I could, I would. . . . Show me a starving worker. I'd dig down into my own pocket to prevent it. Your Communist sheet, the Daily Worker, has been doing a lot of lying. . . ."

The best Mayor Stump could offer the Reds was the use of the municipal auditorium where they gathered to denounce him.