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Show WEEKLY REIT'S ANALYSIS BY JOSEPH W. LaBl?iE Little Taxpayer Not Relieved By Current Revision Program; Higher Levies Seen Next Year (EDITOR'S NOTE When opinions are expressed in these columns, they are those of the news analyst and not necessarily of this newspaper.) Released by Western Newspaper Union. ' TAXATION: Relief? In retrenching 1939, many states have cut their budgets and many a congressman has preached economy. econ-omy. But John Public has yet to see his taxes cut; indeed, the mill-run mill-run U. S. investor holding tax exempt securities will be lucky if such exemptions are not outlawed next year. Reasons for neglecting John Public are: (1) his taxes cannot can-not be cut without adding to Big Business' burden; (2) Big Business, far from accepting such a burden, has good reason to protest its present pres-ent tax status. The only apparent solution, federal economy, will go by the boards this year as U. S. expenditures for 1939-40 top the 1938-39 1938-39 budget by approximately $1,000,000,000. Four probable points of the current cur-rent session's tax revision program are: (1) re-enactment of "nuisance" "nui-sance" levies expiring June 30; (2) repeal of the undistributed profits tax and substitution of a flat 18 per cent levy on corporations with incomes in-comes above $25,000 a year; (3) deduction de-duction of net business losses from I j ' ( ky: ' bi - C Ohio's experimenting, badly pestered pes-tered legislature has passed 82 relief re-lief bills since January, 1931, yet still has trouble. C Monthly food grants for relief vary greatly with the states' afflu-ency, afflu-ency, including: Atlanta, Ga., $6.70 per month; New York, $30.97; Mississippi, Mis-sissippi, $2.91; California, $30.97; Arkansas, Ar-kansas, $4.82. This startling picture of U. S. relief re-lief conditions was offered the house appropriations sub-committee as it began considering a $1,477,000,000 budgetary request for 1939-40. The report came from the American Association As-sociation of Relief Workers, which reviewed conditions in 35 states and two territories (Hawaii and Puerto Rico). Principal recommendation was that federal grants-in-aid to states be continued as the only means of achieving a uniform and adequate system in a nation where reliefers would otherwise prosper or starve depending on their state's wealth. AGRICULTURE: Cotton Conference Forgotten fact by most critics of the New Deal's agriculture program is that international wheat and cotton cot-ton production has raised tremendously tremen-dously the past 15 years, closing the door against export of surpluses without expensive government subsidies. sub-sidies. Though regulated production produces a vicious artificial circle which upsets all natural commodity commod-ity price levels, the blunt facts are that even with restricted planting in the U. S., 1938 world wheat production pro-duction set a new record of approximately approx-imately 4,479,000,000 bushels, while U. S. cotton exports are currently at their lowest level in 60 years. One possible solution is a worldwide world-wide co-operative scheme. Already underway are negotiations for a formal wheat conference at London to draft an international agreement authorizing export quotas and eliminating price-cutting tactics facilitated by government subsidies. With 14,000,000 bales of old American Ameri-can cotton on hand when the current cur-rent harvest starts, and with the price to growers at 8.50 cents a bale compared with the agriculture department's de-partment's "fair price" estimate of 15.6 cents, a world-wide cotton agreement is also in the offing. Next September 5 representatives of 10 cotton-producing nations will meet in Washington for an "exploratory" conference which may pave the way for export quotas. Co-operating nations: na-tions: Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, India, Mexico, Peru, Sudan, Soviet Russia, France and Great Britain, the latter two for their cotton exporting ex-porting colonies. Significantly absent ab-sent from the list is Japan, whose new cotton plantations in China are wiping out another big U. S. export ex-port market. ASIA: Mongol Buffers Puppet buffer states are handy weapons for nations which want .to fight without going to war. Other nations use them for "shock" purposes, pur-poses, to bear the brunt of an attack at-tack which might otherwise hit close to home. For 15 years both Japan and Russia have used the once-glorious once-glorious Mongols of Genghis Kahn SENATOR CLARK CAA was flying too high. ARMY: Recruits Not since the World war has Uncle Sam gone out of his way to solicit new blood for the army. Regional Re-gional recruiting officers took what came their way, yet had no trouble maintaining a small peacetime force. Now underway is a high-pressure campaign to recruit or re-enlist 115,000 men during the next 12 months, necessitated by replacement replace-ment and expansion needs of the air corps and other branches of the service. Weapons include 18 recruiting stations sta-tions on wheels, slogans, posters, motion pictures and the radio. Biggest Big-gest problem: To reach boys in the country as well as in cities, since better as well as more men are the prime objective. Largest single expansion is a prospective increase of 25,180 men in the air corps, 17,000 of whom the army hopes will have a high school education to qualify them for aviation mechanic posts. BUSINESS: M iddleman Favorite butt of pro-chain store and pro-co-operative movements has been the wholesaler, who in popular notion is excess baggage in the U. S. distribution system. If the middleman middle-man could be eliminated, many believe, be-lieve, a bar of soap or pound of coffee cof-fee would cost John Public substantially substan-tially less. To test this theory. New York's Twentieth Century Fund broke down the $38,500,000,000 which U. S. consumers con-sumers paid in distribution costs for their merchandise during the peak year in 1929. Individual figures and percentages of the distribution cost: Wholesalers .. (18) $ 7,000,000,000 Retailers (33) 12,600,000,000 Manufacturers (24) 9,100,000,000 Transportation (23) 8,800,000,000 Miscellaneous ( 2) 1,000,000,000 Basic conclusions wer" that wholesalers whole-salers did not earn excessive profits in 1929 (groceries, 1.3 per cent; confectioneries, con-fectioneries, 2.2 per cent; dry goods, 2.7 per cent), and that they remain an essential link in the distribution machine. NAVY: Statistics Significant and fearsome is a U. S. peacetime naval construction program pro-gram bigger than any in history. With a $773,000,000 building appropriation appro-priation on its hands, with 74 vessels ves-sels already underway, and with 23 new contracts about to be let, the fleet's current status is something like this: Type ot In com- Under con- Appropri-Vessel Appropri-Vessel mission struction ated for Battleships 15 6 2 Heavy Cruisers 17 1 n Light Cruisers 17 6 .2 Aircraft Carriers 5 2 .0 Destroyers ....218 35 '.'.8 Submarines ...87 12 8 Auxiliary 107 12 "!!3 Primary emphasis in the new program pro-gram will be on capital ships, 15 such battlewagons already being in service. On the way are two more, the 35,000-ton North Carolina and Washington. About to be started are the South Dakota, Indiana, Massachusetts Massa-chusetts and Alabama. Two more, 45,000-tonners and larger than anything any-thing afloat, will be started under current appropriations. None of the eight battleships will be ready before be-fore 1945 or 1946. profits of three future years instead of one year, as at present, and (4) revaluation of capital stock every year instead of every three years. Probable net result:1 Mere reshuffling reshuf-fling of Big Business' burden and maintenance of present federal expenditures, ex-penditures, a situation which today brings complaints like the following: Anent Taxes. To the American Petroleum institute, Standard Oil of Indiana reported it employed 30,000 people in 1938, meanwhile paying $97,485,205 in taxes. This was enough to pay 48,742 U. S. employees em-ployees a salary of $2,000 each. Standard Oil's complaint: "A business busi-ness operated by . . . 30,000 workers work-ers is called upon to support even more persons performing functions of government." Anent Expenditures. Democratic Hopeful Bennett Champ Clark, middle-grounder, claims the one-year-old Civil Aeronautics authority already al-ready has a payroll exceeding the 52-year-old Interstate Commerce commission, which regulates the nation's na-tion's entire railroad system. Furthermore, Fur-thermore, to drive home his plea for retrenchment. Senator Clark found CAA has more employees drawing federal pay than are employed em-ployed by all the U. S. commercial airlines which it regulates. RELIEF: Recommendation C. At Indianapolis a "Mr. Stinger," ' his wife and nine children live in three rooms of an old butcher shop, so rat-infested he and a two-year-old baby have been bitten. Although ill, "Mr. Stinger" must stay awake nights to shoo off the rats. C In 254 Texas counties reliefers get no aid other than federal surplus sur-plus commodities, and in one state food grants are one-fifth the minimum mini-mum standard food budget prescribed pre-scribed by the U. S. department of agriculture. 3RUSS CONTTOUj3r?yj LAKE BOR, :::: CENTER OF v:: jrtt j TROUBLE. '. :;::MONq6LiA;S;;;;;:;;;::v:' RUSSIAN-JAP CLASH They'll risk other peoples' borders. as buffers against the Jap-Russ war which has actually been waging in Asia for the past seven years." Under Un-der Soviet tutorship has grown the Outer Mongolian republic; under Japan a puppet ruler leads Inner Mongolia. A sample of how such buffer nations na-tions can work was reported recently re-cently from Tokyo. In the Lake Bor region south of Manchuli, Japanese Jap-anese troops reported 1,000 Soviet-trained Soviet-trained Outer Mongolian soldiers charged Jap-Manchukuoan positions while 200 Russian fighting planes soared overhead. Always victorious victori-ous (by her own reports) Japan claimed 42 of the Soviet planes were downed. Still unnoticed as it has been since 1932, the Russian-Japanese war has probably reached an even more serious se-rious stage than last year's Chang-kufeng Chang-kufeng hill incident. Reason: Activity Ac-tivity centers on the Mongt-lian frontiers. fron-tiers. Eoih Japs and Russians dislike dis-like to risk direct border incidents of their own. but will be less squeamish aboul locking horns in Mongolia. |
