Show M 0 national topics interpreted by william bruckart t 1 0 nat press D C washington changes in ant dent roosevelt s policies have been coming so fast changes lately that about come fast all I 1 am able to do this week is to re blew the situation I 1 have gath ered information and advice from many official sources in an earnest effort to understand what is happen ing but with all of that I 1 am quite incapable of what I 1 would regard as a complete analysis As the air pilot would report while flying through fog the visibility is zero the proper basis for a start therefore appears to be with decol lection that one of the cardinal poll cies cles of the roosevelt administration was control of agricultural pr prodoc doduc tion to accomplish higher prices another basic plank is the foreign trade policies under which cal trade treaties have been degoti abed with numerous foreign nations these two planks were designed to snake markets available for what we produce first through scarcity of quantity and secondly to lize the world exchange of goods on price levels which we in this coun try considered to be worth while various other legislative acts and white house announcements came into the picture also but we need not be concerned with them just now well the higher prices began to materialize ateria lize they came along to the e point where eight or ten months ego ago there was genuine evidence of a speculative boom mr roosevelt said aid recently in a statement to the press that the outlook on this cir comstance cum stance was a bit alarming sud denly however the depression set tied down on the country the pres ident took note of it after a time and announced that prices had to come down in order to encourage buying by the consumers that was in january of this year early in feb druary he told the press that there had to be higher prices to bring the country out of the depression subsequently it was on february 18 1 I believe he took another lion tion on the price question he said in a formal statement it is clear that in the present situation a moderate rise in the present price level is desirable and that this rise need not and should not extend to all prices so that now we are committed to a price rise on some commodities and present or even lower prices on some other commodities it is to be presumed because there is nothing to show a contrary view that all of the machinery of govern ment is to be used to bring about price rice rises in some commodities aut but not all of them 4 however to continue our review I 1 reported to you in december 1937 and have mentioned several times am since ce that there is a trust busting drive on that is as big and as broad as the famous big stick which theodore roosevelt used when he was president twenty nine cases against so called monopolies are pending now in federal courts and the federal trade commission has some others in process of tion the prosecutions range all the way from ladies half size dresses and against individuals who design styles through the list to aluminum company pany of america now while the trust drive has been on and some folks have been cruel enough to charge that the trust busting drive is to keep the folks from realizing we are in a de another thing has hap bened I 1 refer to the passage of the new farm aid legislation I 1 have not been able to understand the law but secretary wallace calls it one of god s blessings to the farm ers because he says that it will re duce or limit production and there by force a greater return to the farmers in mr roosevelt s state ment on the general price situation however he spoke of the new pro gram as follows our program seeks a balanced system of prices such as will pro mote balanced expansion in prodoc tion this is not a policy of restriction it is a policy of aban dance I 1 seem to recall some phrases of a few years back which described the plans as leading first to higher prices for agricultural products through scarcity 1 then there came the more abundant life and later balanced abundance I 1 as sume the I 1 balanced elpa expansion ision must represent something taken in between the other policies but I 1 frankly do not understand that is the reason why I 1 have attempted this report to you by way of a re view slitting aLit ting although admitting that much of the new program is too deep for me to analyze there trade are certain phases treaties of it which have been b e e n operative and from which results have be gun to show take the reciprocal trade treaties as an example I 1 came across some figures down at the department of commerce the other day and they were something of a revelation they showed that in 1937 this nation of ours was im 1 porting more agricultural commodities than it exported I 1 could not find when that condition had ob tamed before certainly there have been few times in our history when that has happened the department figures showed that the united states imported 18 per cent more commodities from the farms of the world than it ex ported from our farms further examination of those statistics reveals the disturbing fact that the bulk of those imports were things which our american farmers could have grown right at home I 1 can find no other reason for the condition than that the reciprocal trade trea ties which were to bring us pros penty have taken prosperity to 0 some other farmers the circumstance caused me to wonder then whether these trade treaties are not slowly grinding t the e american farmer into the dust I 1 have tried to find out how the new farm aid law which restricts pro further in the united states is going to help this situation ac hepting secretary wallace s state ment that it will result in higher prices for our farm products will it not by the same token make a greater difference between foreign prices and our own owna and if that be true is not it to be expected that there will be more imports of farm products from foreign lands my reasoning brings an answer of yes I 1 in each case and so I 1 cannot see where we are going to get balanced expansion out of those factors now as al smith used to say let us look at the record as it concerns the trust busting drive and its re lation to prices employment and the like I 1 simply have no patience at all with the big business groups that ignore or forget their response res bili ties to the public there is no excuse and can be no excuse for crushing any individual who is try ing to run a business of his own it is one thing however for a busi ness to have grown big because it serves its public well and quite an other thing for the same group to have attained its bigness through savage tactics that brings me to the recent con diction of the oil companies in a trial that was held trust at madison wis busting As far as I 1 have read the record in that case the basis of the charge by the government was that the oil companies had used a pricing tern tem which was fostered by the in famous a policy laid down by congress secretary ickes of the department of the interior now one of the loudest mouths in the chorus of bust the trusts insisted on the oil companies getting together he wrote letters to them to that effect of course the was held un constitutional but the decision was based on the question of congles dional authority to delegate powers to the executive officers it did not declare that congress had no right to grant privilege of agreement on prices for purposes of stabilization we might also look at some of the tactics employed by the govern ment robert H jackson who was the spearhead and spokesman for the trust busting drive lately has been promoted to the job of solicitor general of the united states mr jackson told a senate committee considering his nomination that he had picked the proper forum for the oil case he said the depart ment of justice would continue to do it they picked a new york court to hear the case against the aluminum company in order to get the proper kind of a jury as they did in the oil case the tactics used in the aluminum case seem to me to be almost rep for instance the gov had been anxious to set a date for the trial and the aluminum company counsel urged early ac tion the record of that day in court in new york revealed that when judge knox proposed a date early in april walter rice one of mr jackson s assistants admitted to the court that the government did not yet have enough evidence to prosecute this seems far afield from the price question I 1 wonder if it is so far off the subject As I 1 said earlier in this discussion legal action against anybody individual or corporation is destructive deamoral izing and expensive I 1 know noth ing about the merits of the oil case or the aluminum case or any of the others beyond what I 1 have picked up in the records on the other hand however it is plain for any one to see no price structure can be arranged for I 1 balanced sion if the federal government is going to decree one course of action for business with one hand and write an obituary for the same business with the other hand that is to say if the people are unable to know or understand what their government policies are it is quite likely that those same people will continue to ask each other 4 where are we going and what is the end going to be 0 western newspaper New paper union |