Cecil A. Partee Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

well paying jobs but they had to do something. Most people felt an obligation
to care for themselves and that is in contradistinction to today, where most
people feel that the government sort of owes them a living. That's not only
the 20th ward, that's kind of all over the country. And that includes everybody,
including Chrysler Corporation, you know; that's welfare too, you know.
Q: What did you think of the Chrysler situation? 1s that . . ,
A: Well, it's not an easy kind of solution and I don't think anyone should just
flippantly say it's good or it's bad. I think it does suggest to us though
that, in a country where we operate on the laissez-faire system, where we
believe that every business should stand on its own two feet and they should
rise or fall on the basis of their own success or competence, it's sort of
fading. 1 think that we somehow feel that there are some other issues involved,
other than just the business fading. One of those issues, of course,
is that, if a business is permitted to go out of business for whatever reason,
there will be a large number of people discommoded, a large number of people
without employment. And we are quite concerned that we do not increase our
unemployment rolls and, for that reason, business gets more governmental help
for one reason or the other. But, you know, twenty years ago in this country
it would be unthinkable for a government to try to prop up a business, particularly
one in private enterprise.
Perhaps you know, government has always helped in other kinds of ways. You
take one of the most outstanding kinds of businesses now, though it's e
mutual, is rural electrification, REA. That came about back -in the 1930's
and 1940's when the major utility companies did not offer the kind of service
in the inner farm community that people felt ought to be extended. The telephone
line or the electric line may run right straight down the highway hut
they didn't get to that farm way over in the inner area off the main arteries,
People banded together and government lent the REA money at 2 percent so they
could build these additional kinds of service organizations to give electricity
to the inner farmer. Now they are very strong and very wealthy and,
perhaps in some instances, have forgotten that their start came from the
government who is still trying to help people who are depressed and underemployed
and without the means to help themselves, So the government has done
that all the time in those kinds of situations.
But that's a mutual, it's not privately owned. It's owned by all the farmers
involved in the area, Chrysler is a different kind of a situation because it
is privately owned by stockholders. It's a for-profit organization, whereas
RFA is supposed to be basically not-for-profit but for service. It's a
profitable business for those involved. So the government has always been
involved somehow in keeping things going and there's nothing new about that.
Q: Relating that situation back to your precinct committeeman time, was there
anything of that nature that went on in the precinct? Was there anything that
you worked for to get far the precinct people?
A: Well, those people who were looking for help in areas like jobs, we would
try to help them find them, whether they would be in government or in private