The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
Dear Editor,
We can't blame George Bush for our economic woes. Nor can we blame Congress. The problem is much deeper than that. We have never recovered from the Great Depression of the 1930's. World War II was a WPA project which put many people to work for the duration and gave birth to the military-industrial complex. We have never dealt with the hard-core unemployed.
France suffered the same economic woes over one hundred years ago. The people organized the Family Union (heads of families in each neighborhood) which pushed the idea that in order to have a strong nation there must be a breadwinner in each family. In the 1890s they agreed that the only way to have a full employment was to provide free education for all youth up to 21 years of age and to update all adult skills every two years. I was employed by the French government in 1962-1963 to update the skills of a group of social workers in Tours, France. I found that there were no dropouts in the schools; there was no "Department of Welfare;" and the prison population had been drastically reduced. It is against the law for an industry to lay off workers without providing up to two years in severance pay to cover cost of retraining for another job. Unemployment in France was under two percent.
We are an "adolescent" nation. It may take two generations before we catch up with France.
As a rich nation we believe that money will solve our economic woes. As a poor nation France was forced to take the road of prevention.
How much worse will our economic woes get before we wake up?
Sincerely yours,
Lillian M. Snyder