Show THE FOO FOG I 1 by cha charles rles michelson now that the senate has passed the bill giving the pres precedent dent power j to reorganize the executive depart ments of the government in order to make a creaky cumbersome machine workable it is a good time to weigh the sincerity of the opposition that has created such a aas over the matter for weeks now the gannett Ca linett committee its subsidiaries allies and affiliates have been cluttering up the malls mails with partisan literature pointing out that it the bill was passed the country was bound for ruin and that dictatorship was right around the corner telegrams by tens of thousands thoua anda rained on ohp I 1 senate beseeching those who were for or the bill to change their minds and save america from the terrible tate fate that threatened undoubtedly a considerable number of these telegrams were genuine but their volume and character was uncomfortably suggestive ot of the same kind of a wire storm when the utility bill was up that the deluge wai without effect indicates that the senators have learned something of 0 the method through which the wire snow no w storms are engineered job lot propaganda there was a senate d ot of the affair at the alm elmp of the utilities bill and it was waa revealed that seme of the utility companies or their agents simply took city directories telephone books and similar lists and tiled filed messages over the names so ao secured various telegraph agents that hundreds of messages were tiled filed and paid for by an individual a stranger lit in the city from which the message proceeded and of which the ostensible pretended signers were residents res identa there is no means ot of knowing just how many of the reorganization messages were on the level and how many or how few were takes the list ot of senators hailed as aa heroes engaged in a desperate effort to preserve the country from despotism makes interesting reading for or this reason six years ago prest edat hoover tried to get authority to remodel the patched up machine of government the bill introduced then provided that the president was waa authorized to tr anater the whole or any icart of any independent executive agency and or the unchong function un cHona a thereof thereat to the jurisdiction and control of an executive department part ment or another independent executive agency also to transfer the whole or any part of 0 an executive agency i in tl th the same fashion or lika to or redis kha ba functions vested in an any executive department or cir IP the tb ex agerkov age ager notes kot In included eluded in any executive department and finally thra bill then introduced colv this authority to president hoover stated that action oil the part of the president preside at under tinder this aut authority hortY hall be final unless congress by concurrent resolution shall disapprove it within itty days that I 1 4 substantially the language or of the present measure the significance lies leg in the tact that practical ly every senator who voted for the hoover bill in the senate irk in 32 and is still in the senate opposed the reorganization measure in 1938 the meaning of this la Is that most of 0 those who sought to prevent enactment of the reorganization measure were simply gunning for preal dent roosevelt in other words wh what t they tho thought ugilt was righteous for air hoover as president to exercise irk in the way of authority they now think is monstrous tor for mr roosevelt to have actually the bill has bas no political significance even though it was waa made a football of partisan polities politics during the present session of congress art ai a matter of tact fact an enormous lot of money would have been saved and a huge number of headaches would have been averted had some similar legislation been adopted way away back yonder when cleveland was president what blocked it usually was the jealousy of one department as against another and a lot of 0 intense lobbying by y those employees of the government or their chiefs who were willing that every department but their own should be reorganized and fought bitterly against the reorganization of ther their own establishment the d t f ference between that lobbying and the we have lust just wit me nce sealii that today the war was waged waged by forces outside of the government instead of by members of the government plenty more of the same As this is written the bill Is about to be sent to the house of 0 representatives there it will hava bave to run the same sort of gantlet as it ran rail in ill the senate there will be the same me barrage of telegrams the bame impassioned appeals to defend the country against dictatorship the same speeches on the radio and the same editorials in the antl anti ad ministration presa and unless I 1 miss say my guess the result will be just the same as it was la in the senate and then the country will settle settie down and nobody will think that we are going to be or Stalina ted or the liberty leaguers and the other organizations of that species will naturally find something else on which to arraign the president for the whole policy and principle of these enemies of the administration ta is that it must never be admitted that the tha president Is right or that ll 11 hd has any other motive in suggesting legislation than some dark and subtle purpose of scuttling the ship of state I 1 suppose that presently we shall hear that the senate is a rubber stamp body blackjacked black jacked into submission by brutal executive force in the estimation of the spokesmen opposed to the new deal congress Cong Tess Is always a rubber stamp when it approves a measure recommended by L Y the president and an aggregation ot of heroic patriotic and farseeing statesmen when it turns him down 1 pratt eyre is visiting here from I 1 his home in 1 salt lake C acty ty with it s sister sarah ann stevens and other relatives and friends |