There are forty or more branch boards operating under President Roosevelt's Recovery Administration which promise the people of the United States in so many words, "a New Deal". One branch devotes its time to the unemployed ice men, collecting statistics and opening factories so that the veterans of that industry may have work.
Another group encourages painters and writers by purchasing their "masterpieces" for use in governmental projects, that is, museums and libraries erected under the type of branch to aid unemployed American workmen.
In this age of "boards" it would mean a great deal to the 12,000,000 Negroes in this country, if the president saw fit to create a board designed to investigate and report on certain economic conditions that so greatly handicap one twelfth of American workmen.
The "board" upon investigation would hear of many relief cases in which Negroes are called only after all of the whites are employed, by these various government relief agencies. The "board" would ascertain the fact that hundreds of Negroes, who were employed before the advent of the "eagle" are now out of work, because they were told, after the appearance of this much heralded "blue bird" that $12.50 per week was too much money for a Negro when white men are out of work. This board would discover to its horror that in every industry, the white man's pay envelope equals just about three times that of the Negro workman, despite the fact that both of them put in the same number of hours and produce the same amount of labor.
This "board" would be even more surprised to learn that sugar, flour, milk and eggs, in fact all of the necessities of the life are sold to Negroes for the identical price that they are sold to other races, despite the fact that his income in 300 per cent less that the white workman.
This so-called "board", after careful investigation and a review of the collected facts would conclude that the present "deal" given to the American Negro is not so new after all, but is one that was shuffled and dealt around 1620 and has been played since that time with little revision in the rules.