Show economic E C ac highlights t S tile years of the locust one of the most eventful decades in modern history has ended and ana tills nation enters a new decade during which unless all ail signs are w wrong rong its people must face and alid grapple with problems issues and ties of the far reaching character I 1 the will be known to the historians of the future as tile the years of one of the greatest and longest dep depressions depression naj this or any other nation ever experienced they will be known as aa years of experiments of trial and error of the weighing of our old values anil and our old traditions and they will be known years in which the democratic process was consistently attacked by some of those who called themselves its fri frienda endi ns as well as by those who wl were ro its frankly avowed enemies prom from the international point ot of view the tragic came to a cynically fitting end in that mat most ghastly and unnecessary of events ts a war which embraced much of it the world in nation after nation the arts of peace have of necessity been baen put aside to the end that war may be prosecuted to the utmost and war cles destroys troys more than men and materials and mach machines lues and economies economics and stat states es it destroys those essential liberties for which men have fought and died in hot hoi causes ever since the world ie know began it destroys those spiritual values which are tit it the root of a all a a artis isle cultural and humanitarian it lia has been truly said that in modern war there can ba no victors tere are only the vanquished it la Is an fron ironic te commentary on the times in which we live that those nation which are fighting ills war in the name of threatened damoc democracy acy have been forced to use the methods of tho the dictators in order to meet the enemy on its own totalitarian terms tema the greatest blessing which this nation possesses today is its physical remoteness from the conflict abroad that is a position enjoyed by no other of the worlds woolda major powers there Is profunda pro fund wisdom in the attitude of the great majority of tho american people who sa any Y in off ct we cau call keep out oi of war aud and we can keep butof out of war there Is no war party in this country no responsible sLa statesman urges our participation we canall feel a deep and abiding thankfulness that tills this Is so never before was if so tent that we americans keep keel our heads in order that we may also keep keel our liberties for should this country become involved in war democracy would vanish here as swiftly and as surely as it has haa vanished abroad turning to our own onvil internal problems our task Is great the ratifying gratifying improvement that has recently taken place throughout our economic structure must not he be allowed to tb blind us to the unpleasant truth that not one of athos those issues which we were forced to face at the start of depression has been solved I 1 most of them have become more complicated and difficult the national debt despite the heaviest tax load in our peacetime peace time history has nearly trebled in tile the past decade and will soon reach the alie present legal limit of the immense expenditures for relief continue even though business has much improved and unemployment has consequently been reduced the agricultural sit nation in spite of a lo 10 long aig series of extremely expensive farm relief measures meas remains tangled and unsatisfactory on top of that there is still a strong clique high in government whose attitude toward business can be described only as strongly inimical this Is the group which backs any and all measures designed to put government into tax subsidized competition with heavily taxed private wll tell stays awake nights thinking up now new ways of saddling business with restrictive laws and punitive class taxes encourages labor excesses to tile the fulland full and which does all in its power to prevent at stability lity and to keep chaos and uncertainty in the saddle it Is 14 it a continued on last PAW page economic economic highlights continued from page 1 remarkable tribute to the courage find and staying power ot at american business that it has managed to progress 16 gress as much as it has confronted with such handicaps summing up we have penty to do at home during the years that stretch ahead the current congress and those which follow have their work cut out for them but satisfactory results will be ba ed only if the people its as a whole are re awake and watchful are conscious of their needa are deeply aware of their amerlean heritage and way of life for iu in s of the unproven claims of extremists our only real progress has come from productive employing industry working under the american system of tree free enterprise which brought us from a minor power to it a world ria power in a century and a half here in america we have all that is needed to bring a greater prosperity than we nave have ever known the industries the men the resources but unless we maintain our basic liberties material blessings mean no nothing 1 |