| Show 0 national topics interpreted by william bruckart washington D C are i becoming noisy again rather they have increased the deep vence silence amount of their noise 1 in recent weeks the on inflation volume has become ominous to washington observers who it seems are quite unable to make up tip their minds as to the amount of pressure the Inflation ts at element in the country can wield there Is propaganda there are inquiries about it and there are statements from those who think they carry some water on their shoulders all to the end that there ought to be inflation it Is well to recall at this point that president roosevelt Is the sole arbiter on the inflation question it was he to whom congress delegated the supreme authority to use any one or all of the several inflationary plans that were included in the now famous thomas amendment thus far president roosevelt has kept his own counsel he has kept an eye on the economic no lc structure and on the price levels and has not used the powers he has nor will he say whether he will or will not use them the result of his maneuvers has been to make the feel lie he Is just about abou ready tready but not quite to use some of the inflationary proposals and to make the sound money folks feel he be Is holding oft off from using those same powers by exerting every effort it Is a situation after all that Is not without humor for the uncertainty has kept all of them on their toes so to speak Is the president going to resort to inflation ask the and he will say yes ask the sound money group and they will say no ask the unbiased observer and he will say 1 I dont know so there you are As one of those observers here who try to see which way the wind Is blow ingmand what the reasons are behind trends and developments I 1 have been impressed by only one sign on the question of inflation to in recent weeks and that strangely enough was a statement from one who has been an but whose statement was adverse to the idea I 1 refer to the recent remark of secretary wallace of the department of agriculture ile he declared to newspaper correspondents on the occasion in question that a good many farmers felt improvement was not comins coming rapidly enough ne lie thought there was some merit in their claim but he added that things had been pretty sick and some time had to elapse in order to straighten them out some one inquired whether inflation could not be used to boost prices faster to which the secretary replied inflation would provide only temporary relief that does not seem to abe be the answer and that statement came as I 1 said before from one who all along has been an it was the first and only frank statement that has come from administration sources it may not have significance but I 1 am inclined to regard it as having a meaning ing inasmuch as sir mr wallace naturally it Is in close touch with the are president 1 I every day and sometimes several times a day would it not seem logical to suppose that there was just a little reflection of the presidents views in his agricultural secre observation mr roosevelt has repeatedly declared himself to be in favor 0 of sound money he ampha rumors spread sized it in his in augural address all ress by speculators he repented repeated it to congress and he has stated it in varying form and in various places cut but nevertheless sir mr roosevelt took an inflationary step when he withdrew government support tor for tile the dollar in international exchange by deelan declining ng to permit export of gold likewise the president announced his purpose of boosting commodity prices to the 1021 20 26 level that was the purpose of the embargo on gold exports prices have gone up only to about the 1909 10 leel lei el or still considerably short of the spot which sir mr roosevelt would like them to roach reach the iffla zionists have been figuratively pounding on the white house door and shouting to mr roosevelt to use his inflation powers some of them have been granted interviews they come out sm emlio smiling lio such was the case of senator smith south carolina democrat and chairman of the senate committee on agriculture ile he went to the white house and was received by tile the president ue lie come came out smiling broadly and talked long and loudly for a dozen or so newspaper correspondents spon dents of the need for inflation rut but somehow senator smith neglected to say that the chief executive was going to use the thomas amendment I 1 guess he be forgot about it senator thomas of oklahoma who led the fight for the amendment has issued a lot of statements about the necessity for using inflation ne he attacks every eiery one ode who disagrees with him about it but as near as I 1 can ascertain senator thomas has not been let in on the presidents secret so again there you arel arc I 1 but there Is another angle to this inflation propaganda and it has nasty aspects there have been and are now some folks who are using inflation talk to make profits out of their own speculation rumors tart start in new york or in boston or in Ch chicago Chic lengo ngo or in some other large city that the president Is r ready eady to inflate the currency the quotations on shares of stock up if the rumor rumo seems to come from any source near the president the promoters ot of the rumor take their profit and the market sags A few dull days pass and again the same stunt Is staged 0 0 william 11 II moran chief of the united states secret service told me the other day that bogus money counterfeiters counterfeit ers of 0 coin in bad limesand times Time sand ad currency ncy had been exceed exceedingly y active in the last several years roughly he be said the expansion of their operations had been found to be in I 1 inverse anverse ratio to the advance in business and employment thus again the operations of counterfeiters counterfeit ers seem to fully reflect economic conditions when there Is good business there Is ig little counterfeiting but when we have hard times we also have in anch ch counterfeiting chien ter felting according to chief morans records the chief of the united states secret service which actually Is a secret service in fact as well a as 9 1 in n name maintained to me however that there Is no need for the country to worry about the circulation of spurious coins and bills lie he said his operate operatives ves have done a wonderful job and that in no instance of record has a counterfeiter or his gang been able to carry on their business very long until their plant Is captured capture the bulk of the money they made has been confiscated in most cases before any large sums have been placed in circulation cut but using the activities of counter felters as a yardstick of business conditions dit ions the present depression has been the worst in american history chief morans records show that more counterfeits have been seized since 1929 than in any other period of the nations history of course it Is impossible to know exactly how much american people have been swindled by counterfeiters counterfeit ers but the amount of seizures spi has been so large that chief moran holds there actually has been only a minimum of loss to the people As proof of the work being done in checking the production and distribution of bogus bills and coins mr sio ito ran submitted figures showing that in 1931 arrests on counterfeiting charges numbered 1524 in 1932 the last full year for which figures are available arrests totaled 2139 but it was in the total of counterfeit coins and bills seized that the chief took much pride the record showed seizures of coins and bills which it if they were genuine lne would have been worth during 1931 and in 1932 in the figures for 1932 again chief moran said the activities of counter felters directly reflected hard bard times and lack of jobs it Is not dot at all strange the chief said that there should be more attempts at counterfeiting in hard bard times thir than when the country Is prosperous hundreds of men have been arrested on counterfeiting charges who we found had bad never engaged in criminal affairs of any kind before they were out of jobs however and while they were loafing around in cities they came into contact with UDder underworld word characters the professional counterfeiter lias has to have help and he be builds up his gang out of such individuals they were not the type to do such things it if they had not been desperate for money most of the bogus bills and coins are so crudely done that anyone familiar with money can how the queer detect them but ewry so often ofte Is s shoved some real expert gets into the counterfeiting game and develops a bill that Is most difficult to distinguish from the genuine lne these of course are the dangerous ones from the secret service standpoint it has happened also that those making the best reproductions of real currency usually have developed the most carefully laid plans for getting the money into circulation the ordinary practice Is for the counterfeiters counterfeit ers to sell the bills wholesale to underworld characters at a price so low that big profits tempt men to take the chance one instance was found in which the counterfeiter had sold worth of bills for the better the grade of work on the bills tile the higher the price demanded by the counterfeiter chief moran told me that several of the counterfeit gangs which his men had un uncovered coverN in the last several years had been organized on a scale comparable to a big business house they were found to have several unit uniti i for instance one gang had a plant where its plates were made it had bad a plant in another city where the printing in of the bogus bills was done and then it had bad a sales agency which was spread out to in several cities it took exceptional work on the part of the secret service operatives to run this one down chief moran koran admitted that much hot but few details of the secret service operatives work ever become known I 1 imagene those details would make a tale much more interesting te than any fiction action ever written but it Is a tradition of the secret service to keep its mouth shut 16 mi 1933 western newspaper Nw union |
