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Show NEWS BEHIND THE NEWS Written for The Telegram By Ray Tucker WASHINGTON- The interstate commerce commission, which was supposed to be the supreme court of the railroads, has become the special target of some of President Presi-dent Koosevelfs new deaU-rs. Its recent flat increase of railroad arles relit the fire of White House anffer. The I. C. C.'s critics contend that it needs new. vigorous blood. Most of the present members are old. and have fallen into the bureaucratic habit of clinging to their chairs rather than attacking new problems. They have failed utterly to submit to congress a railroad reorganization plan, as proposed many years ago. They have dodged and ducked almost every controversial question. When-, requested to study the freight rate structure some months ago. one publicly esteemed es-teemed member dismissed the suggestion with the remark: "Oh. I'm too old to take that on now." His colleagues agreed with him. Mr. KocMievelt can reinvigorate the commission if the next session passes his government reorganization reorganiza-tion measure. Otherwise, sine, their terms are fixed, he ran pep them up only by forcing a resignation resig-nation and appointing a snappy young fellow of the Joe Kennedy type. That's his ac. in the hoi. at the moment. Henry L. Morgenthnu Jr. Is In the politicians' doghouse right now. Rightly or wrongly, the secretary secre-tary of the treasury is blamed as the cabinet member chiefly responsible re-sponsible for Mr. Roosevelt's special spe-cial session call. The more politically polit-ically minded men in the official household argued against it. insisting in-sisting that the boys and girls on Capitol hill would return in a stormy mood and endanger the president's program. They urged that h. try his chances with th. regular January session. But Mr. Mnrgenthau outtalked them. Mr. Morgenthau's attitude assumes as-sumes special significance in view of demands for revision of the capital gains and undistributed surplus taxes. Although the treasury treas-ury hopes that congress itself will sponsor a movement for relaxation relaxa-tion of these levies, the treasury chief s demand for an early meeting meet-ing of the legislators indicates that he favors a radical change. President Roosevelt's pet bill for creation of seven T V A s has infuriated' in-furiated' western legislators who have studied it closely. Written by two men who never traveled I beyond the Mississippi river until last year, it neglects to mention the problem so vital to th. west ; water rights. I'nder the present measure the I federal government would assume ! all supervision over national resources re-sources in these seven areas, including in-cluding water. But it so happens, as In the case of Boulder dum's flow, that western states have en- tcred into compacts assuring them a plentiful supply of water for farming grazing, etc. How they would fare under th. proposed federal layout is problematical, and they have already begun to denounce the measure. Without water their constituents would b. as helpless as a one-armed paper-hanger paper-hanger suffering from th. itch. This measure, together with several pieces of legislation which affront the south antilynching. compulsory cotton control and v.'Rges-and-hours threatens to create a powerful anti-Roosevelt bloc of southern and western members. In the past these groups have usually backed F. D. R.'s legislative proposals. But now they may run off the reservation, line up with antagonistic, eastern conservafives the John O'Connor O'Con-nor type and pulverize the presidential pres-idential program. Year ago E. K. Burlew was within an inch of losing his job as career chief clerk and top sergeant of the interior department. depart-ment. Th. president was sore at him because Mrs. Koosevelt thought sh. had caught him in the act of scuttling several resettlement reset-tlement projects. Today Mr. Burlew, despite suspicion sus-picion that he's an old dealer, is tops at the Whit. House, and th. story of his Horatio Alger comeback come-back supplies a sidelight on Mr. Relieve It. At the Inst session, congress gave F. D. R. th. power to weed out P W A projects and select those which should b. completed. com-pleted. Horatio Hackett. then assistant as-sistant P W A administrator, made th. mistake of sending th. whol. batch of proposals to th. Whit. House. He also informed local politico, that th. decision rested .with th. president. Naturally, Nat-urally, that blunder transferred th. political heat from Administrator Adminis-trator Hackett to th. president. So Mr. Hackett was allowed to resign. Mr. Burlew. however. Is a master mas-ter of red tape: in fact, he helped to invent it. Now. when a mayor or congressman chases down a pending federal grant for a sewer or school, the White House shoves him off on Mr. Burlew. He assumes as-sumes all blame for devious delays, de-lays, he nbsolves the president of all responsibility, and makes everybody ev-erybody happy. He's a much nicer man for the president than Mr. Hackett was. The treasury and SEC have recently been furnished with confidential con-fidential but startlinc; information informa-tion on the savage character of taxes as they affect legitimat. investors. A prominent Washingtonian a former G. O. P. official owns two classes of stock which must be disposed of to wind up an estate. One is selling for about 30 (it went to JlOs during th. boom I, but if he unloads the few thousand, shares he holds on a "thin" market, he will knock down th. price, probably to 20. Th. estate will suffer. He also holds another stock which is presently selling at a high price. But if h. disposes of it, he must pay almost all the profits to Uncle Sam in the form of taxes. Th. estate will get nothing. So he's sitting tight and praying pray-ing for repeal or amendment of existing tax laws. He's also staying stay-ing out of th. market and investment in-vestment field and contributing to th. Wall Street crisis. If h. could liquidate the estate without forfeiting it to Uncle Sam, he would probably reinvest his money in other issues now going begging. beg-ging. He'd b. a spender instead of a conservator. Luckily, it looks as if Messrs. Roosevelt and Mor-genthau Mor-genthau get the point. President Roosevelt's private plan for promoting son James spikes the suggestion that F. D. R. is scheming to build up a Roosevelt dynasty. The president originally intended intend-ed to make "Jimmle" a clerk instead in-stead of a full-time secretary with a 10.000 salary. He thought that congress end the pohticos might resent such a rapid rise as th. boy's friends contemplated. For weeks the president refused to listen to suggestions that "Jim-mic" "Jim-mic" ought to be started off in a big way for fear that a minor position would strip him of prestige. pres-tige. Th. pro-James champion was his supposed rival Secretary 1 "Steve" Early. Copyright. 1837, for Th. Tribune |