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Show vVashington. There is an "era of good feeling" going the rounds that is quite different Era of than anything we Good Feeling have had since early in 1929. It is being promoted with a great deal of enthusiasm and present results as well as indications justify the promotion work that is going on in the New Deal press agent circles. This era of good feeling is quite an interesting thing from another angle, namely, politics. It is being used by the politicians again to establish es-tablish President Roosevelt in the same situation as he found himself at the beginning of his first term in the White House. I am afraid he is being built up again as a superman super-man and, in politics, a superman or his position is hard to maintain in the public mind. Business also is indulging in this era of good feeling. Business always al-ways puts its best foot forward, just as lovers do. It wants to develop a spirit of good will on the part of the public and it wants to show its financial finan-cial backers how things are coming along all hunky-dory. There is nothing noth-ing wrong in the attitude. It is perfectly per-fectly logical and human and it is very interesting to see this wave of healthy feeling grow. The important, as well as the interesting, in-teresting, thing about this era of good feeling is that to the expert students It shows a gradual, if not conclusive, decline in depression conditions. It proves that things are on the up grade not that they ere at the top yet, but that a momentum mo-mentum is being established which may carry the economic recovery to the top if the federal government govern-ment settles down and treats business busi-ness with fairness. As I said above, New Deal press agents are promoting this business recovery for all that it is worth. Naturally, they are attributing it to the re-election of Mr. Roosevelt as tr? basic factor in this upward surg of business. Thej are capitalizing cap-italizing it to the fullest because by so capitalizing it, the political party in power gets its due share of credit. There is no doubt that they will continue on this course because everyone likes to read or hear about improved business conditions, restoration resto-ration of dividend payments, increasing in-creasing volume of traffic, any and all tilings that show the nation is slowly but surely getting back on its economic feet While the New Dealers are shouting shout-ing from the housetops how President Presi-dent Roosevelt has accomplished all of these things, there comes a discordant dis-cordant note from business itself. Business leaders, just like politicians, politi-cians, want credit for whatever is accomplished, whether they are responsible re-sponsible or someone else. They do not care any more than politicians whether the credit properly is theirs. It is simply an exposition of the vain, glorious trait that seems to exist in nearly everyone. Business is seeking to show that it i3 pulling itself together, opening open-ing new factories, Whose raising wages, in the Credit spite of New Deal policies with the handicaps that some of those policies poli-cies include. So, business is seeking seek-ing to counterbalance the politicians and the politicians, speaking through New Deal press statements, are trying to fortify their own position posi-tion as saviors of the country. Neither Nei-ther one is correct Without doing too much debunking, I believe it ought to be said that President Roosevelt and his associates have executed some government policies that have been helpful to the business busi-ness structure. With equal frankness, frank-ness, it ought to be said that business busi-ness leaders have taken the bull by the horns and have proceeded to help materially in putting commerce and industry back on the right track again. Neither one ought to take too much credit. Some credit is due each but neither Dne nor both together is entitled to claim all of the credit for the recovery of business busi-ness that is now underway. The answer to the upward swing of business lies chiefly in the fact that the depression has worn itself out It would have worn itself out just the same whether the administration admin-istration was New Deal or Republican. Repub-lican. It would have accomplished just as much in the way of expanded ex-panded buying power and increased production whether Mr. Roosevelt was re-elected or whether he had been defeated and Governor Landon of Kansas had been elected at the end of the recent national campaign. cam-paign. I am reminded by this discussion of a remark that the late Eugene Black made while he was governor of the Federal reserve board. On that occasion I asked him whether there were signs of thx end of the depression. His reply was, "not yet." He added, however, that the depression would destroy Itself as irviry other depression in history had done and that when this point of. exhaustion had been reached, commerce and industry would take an upward swing. Then, he added with reference to some of the economic eco-nomic students of the administration administra-tion in power: "It will wear itself out and good times will come back again and every doggone professor and economic theorist in the world will try to claim credit for it." So, I think it can be said without equivocation that if anybody or anything any-thing is entitled to credit for the indicated recovery movement, we had better be fair and admit it was a combination of circumstances, not the least of which was the natural law of supply and demand. It seems utterly silly to me for any individuals individu-als or groups of individuals to attempt at-tempt to corral all of the praise. Those who have access to the market mar-ket pages of the great metropolitan daily newspapers Wage must have been Increases impressed by the rapid fire announcements an-nouncements coming from big industrial in-dustrial corporations of wage increases, in-creases, bonuses for employees and melon cutting in the form of dividends divi-dends for the shareholders. They must have been impressed, likewise, like-wise, with the sharp rise in security secur-ity prices that obviously has reflected re-flected the expanded ousiness and increased earnings. A prosperous nation may not always al-ways be a happy one but there is a certain psychology about a prosper-ot prosper-ot ; nation that makes it carefree. It is a psychology that makes the average man and woman forget to a large extent about the recent pinch of economic displacements and, as well, those same people are inclined to disregard and give no consideration to the morrow. Let us look into those circumstances. circum-stances. When corporations or other forms of business have reasonable years in their particular lines, early in the winter they begin to see what the year's total will be. They can figure rather accurately what the returns will be in the last two months, say, after they have made their totals for the first ten months of the year. So, whenever they reach that stage in a reasonably successful year they can make their plans for distribution of the profits. Now, we have a tremendously high tax rate on corporation surpluses sur-pluses and we have rather high tax- rates on incomes of individuals. individu-als. Corporations and other businesses, busi-nesses, therefore, start figuring how to do the best they can with the earnings of the year. Some of them determine that their employees should share substantially in the profits of their labors; others want to distribute as much of these earnings earn-ings as they may to their stockholders stock-holders because such a showing creates a demand in the market for their shares and such a demand is influential in establishment of the corporation's credit for borrowing money if it needs to borrow from the banks. In either event, corporation corpora-tion managements obviously give considerations to the tax the corporation corpo-ration would have to pay and I think it is not a matter of condemnation condem-nation for them to turn over as much of their profit as they can to those interested in the business instead of to a government which wastes so much. To be perfectly fair, it must be said that the money now being distributed dis-tributed either in dividends or in bonuses to workers or in wage increases in-creases was earned before the recent re-cent election. Its distribution, however, how-ever, is motivated largely on prospects pros-pects for the future. In other words, those responsible for these distributions distribu-tions of earnings feel that they can let that money out of their hands. They may not be distributing all of the sums available but the "era of good feeling" is accepted by all of them as indicating the chances for continued earnings are bright I have merely touched on the effect ef-fect of distribution of earnings among the holders How It of capital. It is Works Out iust as important to consider the effect of distribution of these earnings earn-ings on the laboring classes. Labor has been convinced under the American Amer-ican system for many years that it is entitled to some share of the profits prof-its from its products. Employers are taking that same view to a greater extent than anywhere else in the world. When labor gets bonuses bo-nuses or gets increases in its pay, there is a reaction among those workers who have sound judgment that prompts them to do the best they can on their jobs. That is to say, they become contented workers work-ers and they are less susceptible to the propaganda of radicals who seek to promote strikes and labor disturbances to further the ends ol communism. That is a part of the era of good feeling as much as the added earning oi corporations or the enthusiasm of politicians over victory. Western Newspaper Union. |