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Show adiutqtcti by JameS Preston The booming rearmament drive ,hows clearly in Washington that defense - minded Americans are takM steps which may deBtroy the very things they seek to protect. pro-tect. When you get right down to it, the United States Is preparing to resist two alien forms of govern- ment national socialism and communism. Under both of those two forms, the government is supreme su-preme and the individual of no importance, except as a servant of the government. Thus, free worship of God, freedom of speech, freedom of press, the right to go into business busi-ness for one's self all these are forbidden under Nazism and Communism. Com-munism. Religion, speech, press are all-Important. all-Important. But another freedom which does not exist in Nazi and Communist nations, is what we refer to in this country as private enterprise. That means the right of the individual citizen to open a grocery store or a filling station, to lay a pipe line or transport oil to do any of the hundreds of things which put them into business. busi-ness. Of course, these businesses are jubject to regulations to keep them from harming other people. They are, in fact, designed to help the people. But under Nazism, they are supposed to serve the state. What is happening under national na-tional defense is that groundwork it being laid in this country for government entrance on a vast scale into the business field. The people are anxious to arm. i Businessmen and industrialists r are anxious to help. So if they t find they have trouble under existing ex-isting economic conditions in rais-ing rais-ing the money to build new plants . and buy new machines, they turn to government agencies. There, money is available, But in most such cases, the government govern-ment holds ownership of the building or machinery. The question ques-tion is what government will do with it at the end of the emergency. emergen-cy. One of the highest War Department Depart-ment officials the other day told of an industrialist who agreed to use government funds to build an essential plant in the mid-West. "When he signed that contract, he dug the grave of his own business busi-ness and he knew it," this official of-ficial pessimistically added. What this War Department executive ex-ecutive was looking forward to was the day when the emergency will be over, but the new plant will still be available for use. He was assuming that "socially-minded" planners would object to letting let-ting the new plant stand idle. There's the story. The govern-' govern-' ment is going into business more and more. If it says in business after the emergency, then it will be business before long. And soon there may be no room for private enterprise. When that disappears, other basic rightB are not retained retain-ed long. A lot of talk is heard in Washington Wash-ington these days about the "potato "po-tato principle." The idea is that if a thousand farmers produce a million bushels of potatoes, a thousand claim checks will be issued is-sued to the thousand families who worked producing the potatoes. pota-toes. These claim checks would be redeemable in potatoes. As some Washington economists see it, this plan would be fine because be-cause it would do away with savings. sav-ings. The "planner" economists don't like savings. The tie-up between be-tween the "potato principle" and savings is this: If the thousand families used all their potato claim checks each year, everything would be fine. Potatoes would not pile up. But if they tried to save some for a rainy winter, then potatoes would rot. And farmers, who saw part of their crop rot this year, naturally natur-ally would not plant as many potatoes po-tatoes next year. The potato supply sup-ply gradually would decrease, The only way to make it work would be for every one of the thousand families to spend all their money (potato claim checks) every year. They couldn't save anything for a rainy day, or for old age. The planners don't mind , oecause tney say the government 5 is going to take care of every- body anyhow. . Ups and downs of a woman's $50,000,000 romance. Her hus-. hus-. band, who shot up like a rocket . from a ?20-per-week drug clerk, to multi-millionaire socialite un- der her guidance, dies broke on one of the downs. Read the sur-; sur-; prising story of a remarkable ca- reer in The American Weekly, the magazine distributed with next I week's Los Angeles Examiner. i adv. Though its closing was once announced, an-nounced, "Tobacco Road" continues contin-ues in the Broadway scene. And, thanks to the garment industry, Jimmy Walker has been revived in modern dress. |