Show bew 01 0 national topics interpreted by william williamo Wil liaro bruck national press 6 0 washington A good many per tons ions in washington still are arguing the point whether that president roose conference vt velt and secretary roper ot of the department part ment of commerce made a mistake in arranging tor for the sa so called conference of nearly a thousand small business men the conference that turned into a near riot provided plenty of publicity if that was what was planned but it was publicity of a distinctly bad sort from a political standpoint on the other hand some way some how there come came out of that conference I 1 a score or more of recommendations ions and some of them were the very recommendations which mr roosevelt wanted from business interests it Is a new vehicle on abich bureaucrats and advisers cnn ann ride but before I 1 attempt t an analysis of the tha results that may low flow from the conference a review of tho the meeting itself should be recorded the tha business men widely publicized as being small and independent fellows were convened in the com merce department auditorium it had all of the earmarks of a session for which a program had been drawn up here heie in washington it ii appeared to be cut and dried no sooner had the session convened however than things began to happen since there chere were nearly a thou sand band individuals there were nearly one thousand different views and the individuals sought in various ways to express themselves the result of the first days meetings con can be described therefore as nil unless you want to consider the riot the necessity for or physically ejecting some of the members who became violent in their objections as a result it was vas a session in which shouts were heard about handpicked hand picked chairman and log rolling and you cant dictate to me with the first days se session silona a flop machinery somehow was sit set in motion for the second day so that a recurrence of the riot would be avoided the conference was broken up into group or sectional meetings it was hinted that big things could be expected from these in the shape of concrete recommendations well we observers found instead that the tha big bid conferences conference riot ot the little business men had hadadeen abeen broken up into some ten or twelve smaller siri aHer conference riots just as an axam example one session was so uproarious uproar ous thai that it was found necessary to call in the building police and forcibly throw out one little business man who measured over six feet and weighed plenty those were the physical phases of the two day daiy conference yet be lieve it or not there were recommendations ions made by those nearly one thousand business men representing small businesses ot of the country they were duly presented to president rosevelt who sent out word to the newspaper correspondents spon dents afterward that tome some of those recommendations were indeed quite constructive I 1 shall not attempt to set them down here they would take more space than is available I 1 noted among them however one item that urged the government to establish a procedure to encourage and facilitate loans to io small business it recalled reca lied to me that there has been much talk among advanced thinkers in the administer adminis administration tr a that the government should have an agency to make loans to small emall businesses business eso it was wag discussed in these columns recently undoubtedly it was lust just a coincidence that this recommendation should come from the small business men while alle the advisers to the president were considering it included in the recommendations howver how vcr were proposals tor for the administration to do some are several things that pleased thus s far have not ot had administration bucking back ilig one of these was a recommendation that wago wage and hour regulatory legislation should be abandoned no one seems to know from whence that item came and it was variously reported as not having had the full support of the conference it may hove have been that even the 12 chairmen wh who ocar car tied the recommendations to tho the white house meeting with the president performed a miracle mirac lebut bui there is no denying that the item was included and few members of tho the democratic party in congress were glad to see IL it so the confer conference enco has been held and its work and efforts effort to solve the depression problems are spread on the first pages of newspapers the results in this direction would seem to justify mr Roosevel ts recent intimations that the business men do not know what they want such a view would be correct it if the conference itsell itself had been re presenta alv alve true the delegates came from all sections of the country true all excepting a very few were vere of the typo known as small business men but it must not no t be overlooked that the tha conference was planned invitations extended and program written from washington Washing tom I 1 think it Is ii quite unlikely that men would be invited without somebody inthe in the ad administration having knowledge of their general attitude toward the new deal there actually may be something to the charge that was variously hurled in the sessions that chairmen were hand picked and that there was a bit of log rolling done just a teeny bit of it concerning the aftereffects after effects one con can hear many observations some soma say that the bulk of the small business men went away from washington nursing a grudge others add that many of the delegates went back home with a sour idea of gov conferences and therefore with a willingness to ridicule the administration and still others hold the conviction that the very confusion that came from the meeting provided mr roosevelt with th tho horrible example that he wants 1 in his criticism of 0 business leadership it seems to me there Is ground tor for each of these three conclusions time alone will vill disclose the alti ulti mate effects mr roosevelt may utilize the recommend recommendations a eions in a fireside chat or a message to congress 7 some of his advisers adviser a m may ay bear down on oil the lack of agreement and understanding among business men or the whole thing may be treated very seriously and an attempt made to convince the country that the administration Is b being guided by what it believes the business interests want as shown in the recommendations of the conference 0 0 the treasury laid some stress on announcement the other day that it will begin a saries treasury of borrowings late to 0 o borrow this 3 month that likely will be the i last borrowings by the federal government in this generation it was stated that between and millions will be borrowed during the next several months but that june tax payments and subsequent 11 collections will provide money for current needs that la is to say there will be no need tor for new money which Is money borrowed out butof of the money market or b banks a S it his has not been made clear how the lie treasury will accomplish the objective of cessation of borrowing at this time president Roq roosevelt rodsevelt sevelt h ha a predicted that there alu Y be a d deficit ficle of about one billion dollars in tha the next hext fiscal yea year A treasury sury deficit can mean only one ona thing ng namely that the amount of income Is less than the amount of the expenditures tures something appears to be screwy in a circumstance where there Is a deficit of a billion and only a few hundred millions have to be borrowed however it may be accomplished it is hopeful to think that borrowings are goffig to be terminated the treasury has bas been doing it tor for a long long time I 1 think it la Is about nine years that the treasury has raced faced a deficit each year and there has been new money borrowed to pey pay the bills billi those borrowings ranged anywhere from half a billion during 1830 1930 than four billions in 1933 and 1034 1934 the Treas announcement explained that the treasury would receive more than one billion dollars dollar for tho the account of its trust funds during this year trust funds are segregated moneys such as the fund for payment of social security benefits well it strikes me ine as a bit unfair to say the treasury will not borrow any new money this year when it actually Is borrowing from the social security fund there thera is no violation of law in that course because the law says the social security faias must be invested in government bonds the borrowing from social godial security funds calls attention to adoth er cr phase of gov another finance fiance phase those funds como come from payroll taxes they alicy are taxes paid by the workers as well as by the employer it has occurred to me therefore that unless the governments reve nue can be made to balance its expenditures tures sometime in the future fut ure workers corkers will want to obtain payment under the provisions and there will be nothing but government bonds in the fund further there Is every possibility Indeed I 1 believe lle veIt it Is a probability that these payroll taxes are going to bear more heavily on the workers octh future than they do today there seems little doubt that tho social se security c urley dream is here to stay slay U unworkably as it Is there will be no politician with suM sufficient clent courage ever to tell tho the voters ot of his constituency that the s social ocial security act will tail fall some of the advanced thinkers among the new dealers have had spasms when remarks like that were made in their presence the real spasms I 1 however will develop when the pub lie ilc is given a clear understanding 0 of what that th ataw law does to a civilize civi liza tion lion when it is shown by operation that the ideal of protection takes much more out of the pockets of those who are supposed to benefit ihan han they ever can get 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