Show lea t I 1 ar washinton washington there has been much discussion lately concerning the liquidation qui dation of at the doz spending ens of new deal must stop emergency agencies it Is a discussion that Is timely because first mr roosevelt elt in his I 1 is plans for the forthcoming government over m t budget contemplates a shrinkage brilla ge in the vast outlays depre anted 1 in t the he emergency agencies and second it Is a matter of political import whether mr roosevelt Is reelected or whether there should be a republican succeed him in the white house douse in january 1937 somebody must clean up the wreckage of the alphabetical soup which Is what all of these various agencies eventually must become they cannot go on an end must be had to tile the expenditures and that will conclude the operations of these agencies and further something in the way of permanency for agencies that may be kept must be worked out it Is one of the real problems of government ern ment those who have been in washington any length of time recognize that it Is much easier to establish a government bureau and populate it with bureaucrats of a political hue than it Is to put an end to the agency and send the political patronage boys back home it Is really an old story to observers here and I 1 believe all of them recognize how bow difficult if not dangerous it Is going to be to dynamite the alphabetical agencies out of existence some of them undoubtedly have served and are serving a useful purpose undoubtedly some of them were needed long before sir mr roosevelt brought his new deal to washington instead of that fact making the wreck in ins job easier it enles boales the job more difficult it is very hard to convince plum pickers that their job Is a temporary one even though they were so informed when they were appointed it Is more difficult to convince that type of individual that their agency Is not all important or that it Is of less consequence than a neighboring agency bearing another set of alphabetical letters in addition the plum pickers have their patronage hackers backers at the capital the representatives and senators interested te in building up their heir own political machines back home naturally put people in the political jobs who ho will wiil be most helpful in assisting that hat particular representative or senator to be reelected elected re thus it becomes rather obvious that even if mr air roosevelt seriously tries to liquidate the various alphabetical bureaus boards commissions and administrations lie he has a man sized task on his hands if by chance a republican should be elected and mr air roosevelt retired to private life he too will find ahlm himself elf criticized cajoled and threatened when he seel seeks s to squeeze the water out of this structure known as government which was expanded so much in mr air Roosevel ts plans to meet the emergency frankly I 1 believe it will take the full four years of the next presidents president S term to unseat all of long the excess job hold hard task ers and d eliminate from the lie government all of the surplus alphabetical ngen agencies cles in ID the very nature of things it cannot be done more quickly the answer lies in the fact that those these agencies embark upon ambitious programs that cannot be halted tile the government becomes committed to certain propositions and except in war time most of them must be executed so however you examine the situation uncle sam Is well hooked booked to illustrate how difficult Is the job of getting rid of a government agency after it Is once established one need not cot go further than the late six or seven months have elapsed since the supreme court unanimously clipped the wings of the famed blue eagle that decision did the work of wrecking as completely as a bombs bombshell bell can wreck a boat when a direct hit bit Is scored but whether you realize it or not we still have in washington washing ton an organization of almost 2500 employees plo it Is true that number la Is probably only about one fourth of the total number on the NIIA pay roll when general crackdown crack down johnson was at the helm and guiding the light flight of tile the blue eagle but it was assumed et at least that the supreme court decision made payments for the nna NKA pay L roll illegal a at t the same time however it has happened that the administration has found money some place with which to pay this regiment of employees who as far as most observers in washington can ascertain have very little constructive work to do the organization has no official status except such as 88 Is given it by clr Roosevel ts various executive orders it has no authority anything it does or says has no more force than a zephyr yet thousands of dollars are being paid its workers on the first and fifteenth of every month arid and there Is s no sign that these payments will be ended soon r for or another example let us go back to the w days to in order to successfully america 8 part in the world war the government took over and oper operated the railroads A gigantic organization was built up here in washington and representatives of the railroad administration were scattered far and wide throughout the country commitments were made that continue even to this day credit in the form of 0 government loans was extended to the rail lines and several hundred million dollars of that amount remains uncollected to this day and with all offer after IS 18 years we still have a railroad administration operating in washington at government expense another wartime agency about which little Is heard but which still Is in existence Is the war finance corporation it floated bonds and made loans to private interests and those commitments have forced retention of tt a skeleton organization that probably must be continued for several years yet before the job of liquidation Is complete one could go on and on in illustrating how a government agency becomes a parasite on the government structure to remain long after its usefulness has ceased a burden on the taxpayers it Is hardly any wonder then with the knowledge of what has happened in the case of other governmental agencies that there Is a question of how long iong it will be before the present emergency alphabet can be eliminated it Is likewise a matter of concern what the total cost Is going to be before the mess Is finally eradicated we have had evidence lately of how efforts are initiated to maintain these agencies even when thumbs down they are legally dead on recently in washington there w was a a held a much ballyhooed ballyhoo ed meeting to which some three thousand representatives of business interests were in invited it was called by beor george ge L I 1 berry the top man in what Is left eft of the N RA structure the purpose was to find out what business wanted in the way of a revived business did not want revived and the meeting turned out to be a genuine flop there was nothing like three thousand reprise representatives nta in attendance and the meeting itself gave a good many persons the impression pres slon of being staged for the b benefit of the alie american federation of labor to which the old NIIA entered catered mr berry until lately the head of one of 0 the large union labor organizations did not convince business that it needed more governmental interference indeed it if business went away convinced of anything beyond the fact that mr berrys barrys meeting was a flop it left washington with a deep feeling that it did not want in any form nor did it want any other governmental agency messing around with its efforts to get back on its feet the circumstance illustrates better than anything I 1 know how parasitic agencies in the government seek to perpetuate themselves one must realize in considering such a condition that all of those employees obviously want to keep their jobs in the case of the attempted revival of the political factor Is important mr roosevelt said it will be remembered that when was organized it must be regarded ded as something thin of an experiment and that it if the experiment failed to work he w would be the first to say so ile he has not made that announcement yet for it Is c considered 0 n si if he admitted that the NT ta experiment failed to work he would be admitting defeat for one of his earlier pet projects right in the face of a presidential campaign politicians do not like to make admissions of this kind it will be recalled as well that after the supreme court held the business codes of to be business unconstitutional 1 and fights back the business codes were the vitals of he structure there mere was much pressure exerted on congress from the white house for reconstruction of some sort of a pro program ram to succeed business did not wa want n t I 1 it t any more then than it does now and it fought back while the le legislation on was pending the result was that congress con gres passed a law permitting lines of commerce and industry to organize and frame their own voluntary codes jurisdiction of these codes was placed in inthe the federal trade commission that agency was supposed to work in operation cooperation co with bus business iness and to exercise a judicial function in determining term ter mining loing when the codes were properly within existing laws against monopoly the trade commission in the last year has blossomed forth as a ra rather ther sound ad agency in its consultations with ith business and I 1 believe merits the respect which business generally has for it but with all of that respect and the knowledge that the trade commission tries to be fair only five lines of industry have presented codes of fair practice for commission approval the details of the futile attempt to breathe life back into the elie blue eagle have been related at this length to show what the future holds in tile the way of barnacles barnacled barn acles on our structure of government ern ment if we have many more the re result suit Is liable to be a cancer and a ca cancer acer thus tar far has proved incurable a 0 western newspaper union |