OCR Text |
Show r NEWS BEHIND THE NEWS In terms of monetary practl- calitiea. The foreign ministers at the capital are talking the language of politicians seeking advantage for their own coun- i Written for The Telegram WASHINGTON The Roosevelt Roose-velt administration, notoriously sympathetic to the workingman, has girded for a showdown with organized labor both the CIO and AFL branches. It hopes to force pesos between the warring war-ring factions before- the 1940 election even If it has to knock their heads together. Thurmsn Arnold's threat to prosecute labor unions for alleged al-leged Illegal boycotts was fore- cast here several weeks ago. It was a natural sequence to Attorney At-torney General Murphy's Indictment Indict-ment of District of Columbia organisations associated with the AFL, and his prosecution of AFL carpenters on a more or less national scale. No Jurisdictional disputes, Mr. Murphy warned them, would be permitted . to keep men out of work, to tie up industry and retard recovery. He hoped, but In vain, that labor's la-bor's leaders would take the tip and unite forces. They didn't Therefore the Arnold ultimatum. ultima-tum. The line-up of public officials new criticising labor bosses not ' labor itself Is Impressive and prophetic. It includes George Norris and Florello La-Guardia. La-Guardia. coauthors of the workers' work-ers' magna charta the federal antl-iniunctlon act There la also Mr. Murphy, assailed by conservative interests as too tolerant a chief executive during dur-ing Michigan's sit-down strikes. By implication, at least. President Presi-dent Roosevelt and Secretary Perkins string along with them. Since the latter will have no haven in the 1940 election except ex-cept the Democratic party or so the administration people believe be-lieve Messrs. Green and Lewis will probably heed these friertd- By Ray Tucker tries. Mr. Welles' aim Is to tie the American nations into a single sin-gle monetary system, even if It necessitates giving them the best of the bargain and lending them fresh funds that might never be repaid. The upshot will probably be no definite improvement im-provement in politico-financial relations. The administration's decision to attempt a sharp reduction In government costs for the coming com-ing year was based on the financial finan-cial experts' close scrutiny of the new deal's four-year record in this field. War or no war. depression de-pression or recovery, the fiscal issue threatens the Democrats' control more seriously than any other. The four new deal sessions have appropriated a total of $66,216,356,113. Agriculture got $2,952,015,382. Supplies and relief re-lief ate up the amazing sum of $13,822,107,462. The army's shsre was $2,586,531,484, while the navy the president's favorite establishment benefited to the tune of $3,106,064,163, without Including an additional $1,300,-000.000 $1,300,-000.000 authorized but not spent Tremendous national defense ap-, ap-, propriations are forecast for the next session. The interest on the public debt carrying charges for past borrowingswill bor-rowingswill be $1,050,000,000 a year by next June, although Secretary Sec-retary Morgenthau boasts that the present rate of Interest is the lowest in history. That is more than the total cost of government gov-ernment operations before the World war and more than Uncle Sam collects in individual income taxes each year. Copyright, McClure Syndicate. ( IIIUIkMllClllB. The hemispheric solidarity so gaily hailed after the Panama City conference a few weeks ago is apparently disappearing under the test of political and" economic studies here and at Guatemala City. Sumner' Welles proved himself a true prophet when he opposed Henry Mor-gi'nthau's Mor-gi'nthau's Idea of an economic powwow in South America and a political session at the capital. capi-tal. Tha undersecretary of state advocated one grand get-together at Washington. ' At Guatemala City the governments' gov-ernments' realistic financial experts ex-perts advanced practical solutions solu-tions for meeting the exchange difficulties blockading trade among the Americas Their basic scheme Is establishment of a Bank of Pan-American Settlements, Settle-ments, with rearrangement of the exchange system so that one nation could sell to another without going through the rigmarole rig-marole of playing in terms of pounds or dollars. At Washington, Washing-ton, however, the diplomats and politicians back a system under which an entirely new hemispheric hemi-spheric monetary unit would be created and In which, probably. Uncle Sam would suffrr again. The dollar thereby might lose Its commercial strength. The explanation for the contradictory con-tradictory solutions Is obvious. Treasury strategists are thinking |