"Letters to Joe".

• Position: THE 1930S FLASHBACK - Letter to the editor

February 18, 1939, Upton Sinclair

The question is, do we want a gradual and orderly change or a sudden and violent one? If we drift into the latter, we may not get what we want at all; we may get the loss of the liberties which today we enjoy but do not know how to share and preserve.

The forces of blind competition are wrecking the rest of the world before our eyes, and we are living in a fool's paradise if we think we can escape these forces--we, the most highly industrialized of the nations, and therefore the most involved in the collapse of the world debt structure.

We started far behind England in the race toward industrialization, but we are today like an express train which has overtaken and passed everything else on the line. Our rate of production is the highest in the world--and so is the rate at which our wealth is being...