Show 0 a 0 washington congress has just passed another relief appropriation for the current more afore year this like for relief the earlier vote of 0 funds was done at the request of the president the new sum is since the first appropriation for the current year was a billion and a half we now find that federal relief during the current fiscal year will have cost at least it may be added that the sum mentioned is in addition to local charity community chests etc and also that it has been or is being spent in a period five years after we were told that the nation was about to be remade under new deal ideals now it is a rather far cry from relief the care of the aged and infirm the destitute to the question of politics that is it appears only to be a great gap between those two phases of national life I 1 insist it is very close that there is no gap at all I 1 reach that conclusion because never before in history has there been such use of basic economics as in the last four or five years that is to say politicians have turned to questions of economics for their political buncombe and it ought to be added that when a politician tries to do something with fundamental questions just there begins a grand mess all of which brings us to the point of this discussion when president roosevelt went into the white house in march 1933 he was confronted with probably the most unfavorable conditions insofar as business conditions were concerned that any president ever has faced he called for a new deal in handling the situation and he obtained almost unanimous support indeed as we look back at that situation the support was too nearly unanimous he had no opposition to point out weaknesses of what was proposed by the responsible officials I 1 think I 1 recall having written at that time that a stronger opposition would have been good for the country some of the pitfalls would have been avoided I 1 am sure if congress had not been so subservient and if the president had not yielded so completely to the theories of advisers who had no practical experience the people of the nation were in a mood to listen to anyone they heard new phrases of what can and should be done the more abundant life the economic roya royalists listi the crushers of the poor and on and on but the trouble with the professor advisers was that they ignored or did not know of another side to the story in short they believed that human nature had changed overnight and that a nation could be managed or directed or ordered as an individual it has taken several years to reestablish establish re natural facts and natural laws but they seem now to be approaching that re establishment through the processes that normally must be followed in a nation as distinguished from an individual so what do we have I 1 think the answer is that we have an administration headed by a man who is the victim of the advisers he selected I 1 believe it can be said that politically president roosevelt is just as uncertain about where he is going as is the rank and file of citizens about where the nation is is going but he selected those advisers and for the most part continues to give them his confidence they are still on the job and in no better way vay has it been shown that they are utterly incapable of meeting national problems than is shown in the business of relief relief is more than just the care of those who must have help relief is a condition reflecting ting other conditions the president and his theorists therefore must be charged directly with having failed we have almost as many unemployed or under government aid as we had when mr roosevelt took office I 1 suppose someone will write to me asking what can be or what should be done need drastic about it antici antic remedy paling that query I 1 will attempt to answer now but I 1 want to illustrate it A friend of mine has been ill III for several years with an intestinal ailment physicians to the number of a dozen or more have studied the case finally the use of a drastic remedy a potent and almost poisonous drug was prescribed the doctor began by ordering the patient to take three drops only three at the start the dose was increased gradually in the last few weeks my friend has taken fifty drops ol of the drug each day there is no assurance that the ailment will be eliminated there can not be a determination for many months because the treatment is entirely new in medical annals thus far there has been no appreciable change in the patients condition but the point is after all that a professional man who has devoted years to the study of a science would not attempt to cure a basic condition without first providing opportunity for the human body to adjust itself to the new conditions now I 1 am somewhat old fashioned and hold to the belief that a whole nation of people after all will make progress if given the chance to do so I 1 further believe that their collective reasoning in the end will be right they can not however be turned inside out unless there has been some preparation for the ordeal and they can not take a dose which is poisonous in quantity y any more than my friend the individual could take it and live in making that statement I 1 must make clear my conviction that some of the new deal prescriptions were needed A few of them were badly needed on the other hand I 1 think it can be fairly asserted that a good many of them were never needed never were usable or workable they were poisons not intended by nature to be so administered to the national body we can go further it can be said that no individual who is iu ill can work efficiently if at all that is true of our economic life which includes business and business is everywhere from the smallest general store at the crossroads near my missouri birthplace to the gigantic marshall field company in chicago general motors in new york aluminum company in pittsburgh or hundreds of thousands of others business can not get going at its proper pace if it is ill the business of the country has something more than its own body however as a problem to constantly watch that general store that I 1 mentioned may not be much concerned about washington affairs but it feels the impact of things done at washington whether it recognizes them or not the larger concerns of course feel washington actions much more directly so in addition to the influence of M markets a r buying and selling of or among the general public business is influenced fluen ced by what is done here in in washington and that may be bad medicine or good medicine let us take just one or two examples of what I 1 mean one of the biblical proverbs of the new deal was the necessity for a law providing what the theorists were pleased to call social security that includes old age pensions new deal campaigners sang many beautiful songs about caring for the aged and certainly there are millions who have needed help when it came to practical application of the plan however the bays started looking for the necessary money thus arose the so called payroll tax for unemployment and old age pensions it sounded workable to many persons it was a thing for the future and there was not practical too much worry problem about the grobl problem of where those who were to pay the tax would get the money the time has arrived however where the beautiful theory is a perfectly enormous practical problem the first years take by the government amounts to so something over a billion dollars some of ii it almost half comes out of the pa pay envelopes of the workers the remainder comes out of the pockets of the employers it is turned over to washington and when money gets into government hands it becomes unproductive the result has been that in the last year there has been taken away from its owners more than a billion dollars that would have added at least a billion dollars to the buying power of the country if it had been left with the proper owners that is one of the big reasons for the roosevelt depression as distinguished from the hoover depression obtaining when the present administration took over the reins of government it was a dose of 50 drops when the country was able to stand only a few drops to get back to relief I 1 have argued in these columns many times that relief should be handled by the states and equally I 1 think the old age pension and unemployment benefits if they are to be used should be handled by the states my point is that professional reliever Rc liever hopkins here in washington can not know through any organization he may build what the facts are surrounding any of the thousands receiving help something that can be done is to eliminate about one third of this general money spending that is going on here in washington or out in the various states under direction from washington I 1 wish mr roose velt had stuck to his campaign promise of 1932 to cut federal expenses by 25 per cent the tragedy of this spending is that it saddles saddle debt on the younger folks and those yet unborn for several generations it has to end somewhere 0 western newspaper union |