Over in the next county the Methodists have a camp ground in a clump of woods near East Machias. They were in session there for about a week, and I went over on Saturday for the pièce de résistance—Dr. Francis E. Townsend (himself) of California. I had long wanted to see the author of America’s favorite plan, and there he was, plain as day, right under the GOD IS LOVE sign.
It was a peaceful spot, though it gave one a sultry, hemmed-in feeling, as hardwood dingles often do. There was a ticket booth, where I paid my quarter; and beyond was a lane opening out into the alfresco temple where about six hundred people were gathered to hear the good news. They were Methodist farmers and small-town merchants and their Methodist wives and children and dogs, Townsendites from Townsend Club Number One of East Machias, pilgrims from all over the State, honest, hopeful folks, their faces grooved with the extra lines that come from leading godly, toilsome lives. The men sat stiffly in the dark-blue suits that had carried them through weddings, funerals, and Fair days. In a big circle surrounding the temple were the cottages (seventy or eighty of them), little two-story frame shacks, set ten or a dozen feet apart, each with its front porch, its stuffy upstairs bedroom, and its smell from the kitchen. Beyond, in a nobler circle, were the backhouses, at the end of the tiny trails. The whole place, even with hymns rising through the leafy boughs, had the faintly disreputable air that pervades any woodland rendezvous where the buildings stand unoccupied for most of the year, attracting woodpeckers, sneak thieves, and lovers in season.
On the dais, behind some field flowers, sat the Doctor, patiently awaiting his time—a skinny, bespectacled little savior, with a big jaw, like the Tin Woodman. He had arrived by plane the night before at the Bangor airport a hundred miles away, and had driven over that morning for the meeting. As I sat down a voice was lifted in prayer, heads were bowed. The voice came from a loudspeaker suspended from the branch of an elm, and the speaker was talking pointedly of milk and honey. When he quit, Dr. Townsend’s henchman, a baldish fellow with a businesslike manner, took the stand and introduced the man who needed no introduction, Dr. Francis E. Townsend, of California, the world’s greatest humanitarian. We all rose and clapped. Children danced on the outskirts, dogs barked, and faces appeared in the windows of some of the nearest cottages. The Doctor held out his hands for silence. He stood quietly, looking round over the assemblage. And then, to the old folks with their troubled, expectant faces, he said, simply:
“I like you people very much.”
It was like a handclasp, a friendly arm placed round the shoulder. Instantly his listeners warmed, and smiled, and wriggled with sudden newfound comfort.
“I have come nearly four thousand miles to see you,” continued the Doctor. “You look like good Methodists, and I like that. I was raised in a Methodist family, so I know what it means.”
He spoke calmly, without any platform tricks, and he sounded as though this was the first time he had ever expounded Townsendism. In words of one syllable he unfolded the plan that he had conceived, the plan that he knew would work, the plan he promised to see enacted into law, so that all people might enjoy equally the good things of this life.
“The retirement of the elders is a matter of concern to the entire population.” Grizzly heads nodded assent. Old eyes shone with new light.
“In a nation possessed of our natural resources, with great masses of gold and money at our command, it is unthinkable that conditions such as exist today should be tolerated. There is something radically wrong with any political philosophy which permits this to exist. Now, then, how did it come about?”
Dr. Townsend explained how it had come about. Flies buzzed in the clearing. The sun pierced the branches overhead, struck down on the folding music stands of the musicians, gleamed on the bare thighs of young girls in shorts, strolling with their fellows outside the pale of economics. The world, on this hot Saturday afternoon, seemed very old and sad, very much in need of something. Maybe this Plan was it. I never heard a milder-mannered economist, nor one more fully convinced of the worth and wisdom of his proposal. I looked at the audience, at the faces. They were the faces of men and women reared on trouble, and now they wanted a few years of comfort on earth, and then to be received into the lap of the Lord. I think Dr. Townsend wanted this for them: I’m sure I did.
“Business is stymied,” murmured the Doctor. “Almost half the population is in dire want. Sixty millions of people cannot buy the products of industry.” The Doctor’s statistics were staggering and loose-jointed, but his tone was quietly authoritative. There could be small room for doubt.
He spoke disparagingly of the New Deal, and knocked all the alphabetical schemes for employing idle men. “Do you want to be taxed for these useless and futile activities?”
His audience shook their heads.
And all the while he spoke, the plan itself was unfolding—simply, logically. A child could have understood it. Levy a two per cent tax on the gross business of the country and divide the revenue among persons over sixty years of age, with the one stipulation that they spend the money ($200 a month) within a certain number of days.
“And mind you,” said the Doctor, with a good-natured grin, “we don’t care a rap what you spend it for!”
The old folks clapped their hands and winked at one another. They were already buying pretty things, these Methodists, were already paying off old cankerous debts.
“We want you to have new homes, new furniture, new shoes and clothes. We want you to travel and go places. You old folks have earned the right to loaf, and you’re going to do it luxuriously in the near future. The effect on business, when all this money is put into circulation, will be tremendous. Just let us have two billion dollars to distribute this month, and see what happens!”
The sound of the huge sum titivated the group; two billion dollars flashed across the clearing like a comet, trailing a wispy tail of excitement, longing, hope.
“It may even be three,” said the Doctor, thoughtfully, as though the possibility had just occurred to him. “America has the facilities, all we need is the sense to use them.”
He said he was reminded of a story in the old McGuffey’s Reader. The one about the ship flying a distress signal, and another ship came to its assistance. “Get us water!” shouted the captain. “We are perishing of thirst.”
“Dip up and drink, you fools!” answered the captain of the other ship. “You’re in the mouth of the Amazon River.”
“Friends,” said the good Doctor, “we are in the mouth of the Amazon River of Abundance. But we haven’t the sense to dip up and drink.”
It was a nice story and went well.
Suddenly the Doctor switched from words of promise to words of threat. Lightly, with bony fingers, he strummed the strings of terror. If we’re going to save this democracy of ours (he said), we shall have to begin soon. You’ve read about strikes in the great industrial centers; in a very brief time you will read of riots. And when rioting starts, it will be an easy matter for someone to seize the armed forces of the country and put them to his own use. This has happened in Europe. It can happen here.
The glade darkened ominously. Trees trembled in all their limbs. The ground, hard-packed under the Methodist heel, swam in the vile twilight of Fascist doom. Still the little Doctor’s voice droned on—calm, full of humility, devoid of theatrics. Just the simple facts, simply told.
And then the vexatious question of money to carry on with. The audience shifted, got a new grip on their seats with their behinds. The ancient ceremony of plate-passing was a familiar and holy rite that had to be gone through with. The Doctor carefully disclaimed any personal ambitions, financial or political. “I don’t want a fortune,” he said, confidentially. “I mean that. I don’t seek wealth. For one thing, it might ruin my fine son. But it does take money to educate people to a new idea. Give us a penny a day and we’ll educate the next Congress.”
A joke or two, to restore amiability, another poke at Uncle Sam, another mention of the need for funds to carry on with, and the speech was over.
It had been an impressive performance. Most speeches lack the sincerity the Doctor had given his; not many speeches are so simply made and pleasantly composed. It had been more like a conversation with an old friend. I had listened, sitting there near the musicians, with all the sympathy that within me lay, and (I trust) with an open mind. Even a middle-aged hack has his moments of wanting to see the world get along. After all, this was no time for cynicism; most of what Dr. Townsend had said, God knows, was true enough. If anybody could devise a system for distributing wealth more evenly, more power to him. One man’s guess was as good as another’s. Well, pretty nearly as good. I pocketed the few scribbled notes I had made and gave myself over to a mood of summer afternoon despondency and world decay.
The chairman rose and announced that the meeting would be thrown open to questions, but that the time was short, so please speak right up. It was at this point that Dr. Francis E. Townsend (of California) began quietly to come apart, like an inexpensive toy. The questions came slowly, and they were neither very numerous nor very penetrating. Nor was there any heckling spirit in the audience: people were with him, not against him. But in the face of inquiry, the Doctor’s whole manner changed. He had apparently been through this sort of thing before and was as wary as a squirrel. It spoiled his afternoon to be asked anything. Details of Townsendism were irksome in the extreme—he wanted to keep the Plan simple and beautiful, like young love before sex has reared its head. And now he was going to have to answer a lot of nasty old questions.
“How much would it cost to administer?” inquired a thrifty grandmother, rising to her feet.
The Doctor frowned. “Why, er,” he said. (This was the first “er” of the afternoon.) “Why, not a great deal. There’s nothing about it, that is, there’s no reason why it needs to cost much.” He then explained that it was just a matter of the Secretary of the Treasury making out forty-eight checks each month, one to each State. Surely that wouldn’t take much of the Secretary’s time. Then these big checks would be broken up by the individual State administrators, who would pay out the money to the people over sixty years of age who qualified. “We’re not going to have any administrative problems to speak of, at all,” said the Doctor, swallowing his spit. The little grandmother nodded and sat down.
“Can a person get the pension if they hold property?” inquired an old fellow who had suddenly remembered his home and his field of potatoes.
“Yes, certainly,” replied the Doctor, shifting from one foot to the other. “But we do have a stipulation; I mean, in our plan we are going to say that the money shall not go to anybody who has a gainful pursuit.” An uneasy look crossed the farmer’s face: very likely he was wondering whether his field of potatoes was gainful. Maybe his potato bugs would stand him in good stead at last. Things already didn’t look so simple.
“How much bookkeeping would it mean for a business man?” asked a weary capitalist.
“Bookkeeping?” repeated the Doctor vaguely. “Oh, I don’t think there will be any trouble about bookkeeping. It is so simple. Every business man just states what his gross is for the thirty-day period, and two per cent of it goes to pay the old people. In the Hawaiian Islands they already have a plan much like mine in operation. It works beautifully, and I was amazed, when I was there, at how few people it took to administer it. No, there’ll be no difficulty about bookkeeping.”
“How will the Townsend Plan affect foreign trade?” asked an elderly thinker on Large Affairs.
Dr. Townsend gave him a queer look—not exactly hateful, but the kind of look a parent sometimes gives a child on an off day.
“Foreign trade?” he replied, somewhat weakly. “Foreign trade? Why should we concern ourselves with foreign trade?” He stopped. But then he thought maybe he had given short measure on that one, so he told a story of a corn-flakes factory, and all the corn came from some foreign country. What kind of way was that—buying corn from foreigners?
Next question: “Would a person receiving the pension be allowed to use it to pay off a mortgage?”
Answer: “Yes. Pay your debts. Let’s set our government a good example!” (Applause.).
And now a gentleman down front—an apple-cheeked old customer with a twinkle: “Doctor, would buying a drink count as spending your money?”
“A drink?” echoed the Doctor. Then he put on a hearty manner. “Why, if anybody came to me and wanted to drink himself into an early grave with money from the fund, I’d say, ‘Go to it, old boy!’” There was a crackle of laughter, but the Doctor knew he was on slippery footing. “Don’t misunderstand me,” he put in. “Let’s not put too many restrictions on morality. The way to bring about temperance in this world is to bring up our young sons and daughters decently, and teach them the evils of abuse. [Applause.] And now, friends, I must go. It has been a most happy afternoon.”
The meeting broke up. Townsendites rose and started down the aisles to shake hands reverently with their chief. The chairman announced a take of eighty dollars and three cents. Life began to settle into its stride again. Pilgrims filed out of the pews and subsided in rocking chairs on the porches of the little houses. Red and white paper streamers, festooning the trees, trembled in the fitful air, and soft drinks began to flow at the booth beyond the Inner Circle. The Doctor, waylaid by a group of amateur photographers, posed in front of an American flag and then departed in a Dodge sedan for the airport—a cloud-draped Messiah, his dream packed away in a briefcase for the next performance. On the porch of a cottage called “Nest o’Rest” three old ladies rocked and rocked and rocked. And from a score of rusty stovepipes in the woods rose the first thick coils of smoke from the kitchen fires, where America’s housewives, never quite giving up, were laboriously preparing one more meal in the long, long procession. The vision of milk and honey, it comes and goes. But the odor of cooking goes on forever.