Show 0 0 at national topics interpreted by william bruckart press building nuil ding D C washington A good many per sons in washington still are arguing the point whether that president roose conference velt and secretary roper of the de apartment part ment of commerce made a mistake in arranging for the so called conference of nearly a thou sand small business men the conference that turned into a near not 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 came out of that confer ence a score or more of becom ions and some of them were the very recommendations which mr roosevelt wanted from busi busl ness interests it is a new vehicle on which bureaucrats and advisers can ride but before I 1 attempt an analysis of the results that may flow from the conference a review of the meeting itself should be recorded the business men widely publicized as being small and independent fellows were convened in the corn com merce department auditorium it had all of the earmarks of a session for which a program had been drawn up here in washington it appeared to be cut and dried no sooner had the session convened however than things began to hap pen since there were nearly a thou sand individuals there were nearly one thousand different views and the individuals sought in various davs to express themselves the result of the first days day s meetings can be described therefore as nil unless you want to consider the biot the necessity for physically ejecting some of the members who became violent in their objections as a result it was a session in which shouts were heard about hand picked chairman and log rolling and you cant can t dictate to me with the first day s session a flop machinery somehow was set in mo tion for the second day so that a recurrence of the not riot would be avoided the conference was brok en up into group or sectional meet ings it was hinted that big things could be expected from these in the shape of concrete recommendations well we observers found instead that the big conference not riot of the little business men had been broken up into some ten or twelve smaller conference riots just as an exam pie one session was so uproarious uproar ous 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 conference yet be lieve it or not there were becom ions made by those nearly one thousand business men depre small businesses of the country they were duly present ed to president roosevelt who sent out word to the newspaper corre spon dents afterward that some of of those recommendations were in deed 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 es cablish a procedure to encourage and facilitate loans to small busi ness it recalled to me that there has been much talk among ad danced thinkers in the adminis tra tion that the government should have an agency to make loans to small businesses it was discussed in these columns recently edly it was just a coincidence that this recommendation should come from the small business men while the advisers to the president were considering it included in the recommendations however were proposals for the ad 1 ministration to do 1 borne some are several things that pleased thus far have not had adminis tra tion backing one of these was a recommendation that 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 have been that even the 12 chairmen who car ned ried the recommendations to the white house meeting with the pres ident performed a miracle but there is no denying that the item was included and quite a few mem bers of the democratic party in congress were glad to see it so the conference has been held and its work and eff efforts orts to solve the depression problems are spread on the first pages of newspapers the results in this direction would seem to justify mr roosevelt s recent intimations that the business men do not know what they want such a view would be correct it if the con ference itself had been re presenta tive true the delegates came from all sections of the country true all excepting a very few were of the type known as small business r men nen but it must not be overlooked that the conference was planned invitations agitations extended and program written from washington I 1 think it is quite unlikely that men would be invited without somebody in the ad ministration having knowledge of their general attitude toward the new deal there actually may be something to the charge charie 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 after effects one can hear many observations some say that the bulk of the small busi ness men went away from washing ton nursing a grudge others add that many of the delegates went back home with a sour idea of gov eminent conferences and therefore with a willingness to ridicule the administration and still others hold the conviction that the very concu sion that came from the meeting provided mr roosevelt with the horrible example that he wants in his criticism of business leadership it seems to me there is ground for each of these three conclusions time alone will disclose the ulti alti mate effects mr roosevelt may utilize the recommendations in a fireside chat or a message to con gress some of his advisers may bear down on the lack of agreement and understanding among business men or the whole thing may be treated very seriously and an at tempt made to convince the country that the administration is being guided by what it believes the busi ness interests want as shown in the recommendations of the conference the treasury laid some stress on announcement the other day that it will begin a series treasury of borrowings late to borrow this month that likely will be the last borrowings by the federal gov in this generation it was stated that between and millions will be borrowed dur ing the next several months but that june tax payments and suase quent collections will provide mon ey for current needs that is to say there will be no need for new money which is money borrowed out of the money market or banks it has not been made clear how the treasury will accomplish the objective of cessation of borrowing at this time president roosevelt has predicted that there will be a deficit of about one billion dollars in the next fiscal year A treasury deficit can mean only one thing namely that the amount of income is less than the amount of the ex 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 going to be terminated the treasury has been doing it for a long long time I 1 think it is about nine years that the treasury has faced a deficit each year and there has been new money borrowed to pay the bills those borrowings ranged anywhere from half a bil lion during 1930 to more than four billions in 1933 and 1934 the Treas treasury s announcement ex alamed that the treasury would re ceide more than one billion dollars for 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 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 is no violation of law in that course because the law says the social se carity funds must be invested in government bonds the borrowing from social cecur ity funds calls attention to adoth er phase of gov another finance phase those funds come from payroll taxes they are taxes paid by the workers as well as by the employer it has occurred to me therefore that unless the government governments s reve nue can be made to balance its ex tures sometime in the future workers 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 be lieve it is a probability that these payroll taxes are going to bear more heavily on the workers of the future than they do today there seems little doubt that the social security dream is here to stay unworkable as it is there will be no politician with sufficient courage ever to tell the voters of his constituency that the social se carity act will fail some of the advanced thinkers among the new dealers have had spasms when remarks like that were made in their presence the real spasms however will develop when the pub he lie is given a clear understanding of what that law does to a civilize civi liza tion when it is shown by opera tion that the ideal of protection takes much more out of the pockets of those who are supposed to benefit than they ever can get back 0 1 west newspaper acer union |