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Show National Topics Interpreted : mllifllii by William Bruckart M. Washington. History shows that many years are required for the accomplishment ac-complishment of Realignment a transition in pol- of Voters ItIcs- Now alisn" meuts In party groups are seldom, if ever, brought about in the span of a lifetime. Yet, those alignments appear now to be very near, so near, in fact, that astute as-tute political observers of national politics are looking for a shakeup that will have been virtually completed com-pleted when the time arrives for another an-other national election. Because things move so slowly in political transitions, I believe we are generally prone to dismiss each little lit-tle incident as without particular significance. Nevertheless, each one counts, and in the aggregate, if we pause to collect them, the minor changes constitute the web and pattern pat-tern of a great movement. Hence, circumstances of the last few weeks necessarily must be weighed, for in those circumstances is seen that which may verily prove to be the beginning of the final stage in a national na-tional realignment of voters. And, as has been the case in some other political changes among voters In the United States, money is the focal fo-cal point, the center about which the whole thing revolves. There is developing, according to the best political Judgment available avail-able In Washington, a definite trend among party men and women toward affiliation with one party or the other solely on the basis of economic eco-nomic views of the party chosen. In other words, there are those who believe in attempting new things in government and in its relationship with commerce and Industry, and there are those who believe in allowing al-lowing private Initiative to lead the way and develop the changes as human nature demands. Roughly, the .two types like to describe themselves them-selves as "liberals and conservatives" conserva-tives" In accordance with the respective re-spective views set out above. So the political observers who study those things day after day and interpret their meaning are of the opinion that important changes are coming. The conclusions reached by many of these observers Is that perhaps as early as the national campaign of 193G, there will be shifts from Republican rolls to Democratic rolls, and shifts of others from Democratic Democrat-ic rolls to Republican rolls in sufficient suffi-cient numbers to have established one of the parties as distinctly liberal lib-eral and the other as distinctly conservative. con-servative. The Roosevelt campaign last year developed enormous shifts ; that is, it developed a transfer of voters from Republican ranks to those of the Democrats for permanent perma-nent residence. In pointing to the fact, I do not include the "protest" vote that went to the Roosevelt candidacy. can-didacy. Much of that will be back home in the Republican ranks if and when Mr. Roosevelt makes the race for President again. Excluding that protest vote, there were thousands who had checked the Republican ballots bal-lots heretofore who will never do so again. That brings me to the present situation, sit-uation, the circumstance that has come over the question of what sort of money we shall have. Mr. Roosevelt's Roose-velt's monetary policies have found favor In vast areas of the country and they have met with an objection as vehement and as bitter as peacetime peace-time views can be". The result of all this is an issue that has been so sharply drawn that a decision by the country cannot be avoided, barring bar-ring one thing. That one thing is a return to prosperity at a rate much faster than is possible to expect. When I said there would be partisans par-tisans leaving their old political haunts to ally May Shift themselves with Allegiance wlmt llad ,,ePn their opposition party, I cannot include such men as Alfred E. Smith, former governor of New York and 1928 Presidential candidate of the Democratic party. Nor can It be expecled that Senator Carter Glass of Virginia will desert the affiliation of his lifetime to turn Republican, even though both the former governor and the senator strongly espouse sound money. But they serve as illustrations of the point I am trying to make; If those two men were not so high up in party councils they might leave the party. Observers here contend that It Is quite possible that the La Follette group of Wisconsin and Its step-children In other stales and the Norris faction In Nebraska with Its kindred, kin-dred, the Brookhart group in Iowa and the Johnson Republicans of California, Cal-ifornia, among others, might logically log-ically be expected to transfer their allegiance to the liberal parly. They huve been Republicans only in part for some years, and Senator Norris Nor-ris campaigned for Roosevelt, as he did for Smith in 1928. While these factions and "wings" of the Republicans Repub-licans may be lnoke.il upon as available avail-able timber for Hie anticipated liberal lib-eral parly, there are a great many DemocralH who are I eniocra I s almost al-most solely because they hap:)enoil to have been horn, or located later. In a thoroughly Democratic Idea. They are conservative by birth and instinct and by judgment. It would seem to be a situation, therefore, in accordance with the way seasoned observers size it up, namely, that the Republican party eventually will be the completely conservative party and the Democratic Demo-cratic party will carry the banner-of banner-of the liberal thought of the country. coun-try. Pursuing this reasoning further, it is made to appear that eventually we may see the party divisions formulated sharply in accordance with the type of commerce and industry in-dustry in each section of the country. coun-try. For example, the manufacturing manufactur-ing cities of the East may be expected ex-pected to be hide-bound conservative conserva-tive as one extreme, while hard-driven hard-driven farm areas in the Middle West may as naturally be expected to go liberal, if not radically liberal. General Johnson, the national recovery re-covery administrator, burst out with a new threat the Johnson's other day, and Threat tne cnorus of chortles that It evoked leads me to believe he has moved out on the wrong foot. The general, once a hard-boiled cavalry officer who remains hard-boiled, says that the federal government is going to "police" business unless business polices itself under the codes of fair competition. All of which Is possible, of course, but In my wanderings around the capital city and in conversations with business busi-ness men from other parts of the country, I feel that the general would be biting off more than he can chew If he proceeds far on the program implied by his announcement. announce-ment. ' There can be no honest doubt that "chiseling," as Mr. Roosevelt describes de-scribes it, is taking place in almost every community to a greater or less extent. It is evident to anyone taking tak-ing the trouble to look about him. There are hundreds of businesses that have signed the code of fair competition with their fingers crossed. They knew it would be dangerous to refuse to sign and so they signed in order to get the famed "blue eagle" Insignia, but they had no intention of living up to their obligation. So, as I see the problem, perhaps General Johnson Is right in demanding demand-ing that business be policed. The weakness of his plan, however, is inherent in the scheme for controlling controll-ing business. Federal control necessarily neces-sarily means that the national government gov-ernment has to Inject itself Into the private affairs of all, and that is the sort of thing that led up to repeal of the Eighteenth amendment. Then, there Is another phase of the problem, a difficulty as applicable ap-plicable to prohibition as It Is In General Johnson's plan. Thousands of persons will be required for this policing job, just as thousands were used in prohibition enforcement. There will be as many, or more, "meddlesome matties" get into the Johnson police as were found In the prohibition police, and there will be some few straight-out crooks get jobs. The meddlesome individuals, either through fanaticism or through a misguided sense of duty, will stir up more fuss In a few minutes than they ought to stir up In a year. Crooks, If any get In, will "bleed" business which will be forced to pay for protection, exactly as occurred in the case of prohibition. Washington newspaper correspondents correspond-ents who devote their time to writing writ-ing of finnnclal Morgenthau affairs In the Backs Down treasury have lately come through a brisk, although brief, battle bat-tle with the new acting secretary, Henry Morgenthau, Jr. No sooner had Mr. Morgenthau, who Is only forty-two years old, been installed as acting secretary, than he sought to curb the rights of the correspondents correspond-ents by forbidding his subordinates to talk with the writers. It was censorship, cen-sorship, If ever censorship was attempted. at-tempted. The writers rose up In righteous wrnth and with an announcement an-nouncement that there would be no compromise on the principle. The bal tie lasted, as a matter of fact, only three days before the acting act-ing secretary called the correspondents correspond-ents to his office to Invite them to "agree" on a modification of his gng-rule. gng-rule. He was met with an absolute refusal to "agree" to any proposal unless that proposal contemplated freedom of the writers to seek and obtain factual Information that was a matter of record and properly available to the public. The new head of the treasury was In a tough spot and he yielded on all points which the writers demanded as their privilege, except that he requested they avoid seeking Information on treasury policies from the subordinate subor-dinate officials. Since the correspondents corre-spondents never have been willing to take information on the framing of policies from anyone in official life excepting those who decide questions of policy, namely, department depart-ment bonds, Hie writers felt they hail won, anil were satisfied. . WOMti'rn NewnpiiiMT Union. |