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Show Dangers In Ihc Road To Recovery As the fcmtt depression of the thirties sinks into what we all devoutly hope will be its final coma, it is instructive to look back at the death-bed scones of former depressions and see how they compare with this one. By one way of looking at things, they are all much alike. In former limes, as now, the upward turn began before people realized it. Commodity prices began a slow but steady climb, security prices advanced, scattered factories began to put men back to work, people started buying things again and then, the first thing anyone knew, we were out of it and there v;.a a clear road ahead again. That seems to be very much the way things are working work-ing out now. But there are one or two differences, and they modify the whole picture in a way that it is impossible to ignore. In the first place,, no previous depression led to such far-reaching and drastic action by the federal government. We have never before had anything like the new farm bill, the industrial control bill, and so on. No previous depression forced us off the goid standard ; none ever caused so much power to.be given to the president. Secondly, the international situation is different. Never before did the climax of hard times in America coincide with such a near approach to chaos in international relations. rela-tions. The Lcndon conference, with all that it implies, is a new thing; the problems of disarmament, international debts, world peace and treaty revision give to our emergence emer-gence from this depression an entirely new face. Last of all, it is probably true that never before have we been so thoroughly disillusioned with our leaders, with our institutions and with ourselves. We have called in question the basic features of our national life. Radical as our recovery pr. gram may seem, it is mild as milk compared com-pared with what the great. mass of people will demand if recovery re-covery is delayed along the way. We are coming out of it in a different way than we did other times. To say that we shall presently go on in the old paths simply because "we have always recovered before" is to talk complete nonsense. Everything is profoundly different. Only by recognizing recogniz-ing the extent of the difference can we find our way safely through the next few critical years. |