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Show Washington. There is an "era of I good feeling" going the rounds that is quite different Era of than anything we i Good Feeling have had since early in lt)29. It is being promoted with a great deal of enthusiasm and present results ; as well as indications justify the , iromotinn work that is gairg en : in the New LWi press agent circles., i This era of good Ceding is quiso ! an interest lbi:it from anoiin-r angle, namely, pihtics. It is tv.: '. j used by the politicians again to os- ; tabhsh President Roosevelt in li e i same situation as he found himself at the beginning of his first term in j the While House. I am afraid he : is being built up again as a super- ; man an;!, in politics, a superman j or his p; sition is hard to maintain m ! the pubisc minci. j Business also is indulging in this era of good feeling. Business always al-ways puis its best foot forward, just as lovers do. It wants to develop a spirit of good will on the part of tiie public and it wants to show its financial finan-cial backers how things are coming along all hunky-dory. There is nothing noth-ing wrong in the attitude. It is perfectly per-fectly logical and human and it is ! very interesting to see this wave of healthy feeling grow. The important, as well as the interesting, in-teresting, thing about this era of good feeling is that to the expert students it shows a gradual, if not conclusive, decline in depression conditions. It proves that things are on the up grade not that they i.re at the top yet, but that a momentum mo-mentum is being established which may carry the economic recovery to the top if the federal government govern-ment settles down and treats business busi-ness with fairness. As I said above, New Deal press agents are promoting this business recovery for all that it is worth. Naturally, they are attributing it to the re-election of Mr. Roosevelt as tl- basic factor in this upward surge of business. Thej are capitalizing cap-italizing it to the fullest because by so capitalizing it, the political party in power gers its due share of credit. There is no doubt that they will continue on this course because everyone likes to read or hear about : improved business conditions, resto- ration of dividend payments, in-i in-i creasing volume of traffic, any and all things that show the nation is i slowly but surely getting back on ! its economic feet. commerce and industry would take an upward swing. Then, he added ! with reference to some of the eco- j mimic students of the administra- j tion in power: "It will wear itself out and good times will come back again and every deggone professor and economic theorist in the world will try to claim credit for it." So, I think it can be said without equivocation that if an;-body or any- i thing is entitled to credit for the indicated recovery movement, we had better be fair and admit it was j a combination of circumstances, not j the least of which was the natural j law of supply and demand. It seems j utterly silly to me for any individu- als or groups of individuals to at- tempt to corral ail of the praise. j i Those who have access to the mar- I ket pages of the great metropolitan daily newspapers Wage must have been Increases impressed by the r a p i d lire a n-nouncements n-nouncements coming from big industrial in-dustrial corporations of wage increases, in-creases, bonuses for employees and melon cutting in the form of dividends divi-dends for the shareholders. They must have been impressed, likewise, like-wise, with the sharp rise in secur- . ity prices that obviously has re- , fleeted the expanded ousiness and increased earnings. A prosperous nation may not always al-ways be a happy one but there is a certain psychology about a prosper-oi prosper-oi : nation that makes it carefree. It is a psychology that makes the average man and woman forget to a large extent about the recent pinch of economic displacements and, as well, those same people are inclined to disregard ana give no consideration to the morrow. Let us look into those circumstances. circum-stances. When corporations or olher forms of business have reasonable years in their particular lines, early in the winter they begin tc see what the year's total will be. They can figure rather accurately what the returns will be in the last two months, say, after they have made their totals for the first ten months of the year. So, whenever they reach that stage in a reasonably successful year they can make their plans for distribution of the profits. Now, we have a tremendously high tax rate on corporation surpluses sur-pluses and we have rather high tax rates on incomes oi individu- While the New Dealers are shouting shout-ing from the housetops how Presi-! Presi-! dent Roosevelt has accomplished all i of these things, there comes a discordant dis-cordant note from business itself. Business leaders, just like politi- cians, want credit for whatever is accomplished, whether they are responsible re-sponsible or someone else. They do not care any more than politicians whether the credit properly is theirs. It is simply an exposition of the vain, glorious trait that seems to exist in nearly everyone. Business is seeking to show that it is pulling itself together, opening open-ing new factories, Whose raising wages, in the Credit sPite of New Deal policies with the handicaps that some of those policies poli-cies include. So, business is seeking seek-ing to counterbalance the politicians and the politicians, speaking als. Corporations and other busi- j nesses, therefore, start figuring how ! to do the best they can with the earnings of the year. Some of them determine that their employees j should share substantially in the i profits of their labors; others want ! to distribute as much of these earn- j ings as they may to their stock- ; holders because such a showing : creates a demand in the market for j their shares and such d demand is influential in establishment of the corporation's credit for borrowing money if it needs to borrow from the banks. In either event, corporation corpora-tion managements obviously give considerations to the tax the corporation corpo-ration would have to pay and I think it is not a matter of condem-nation condem-nation for them to turn over as much ! of their profit as they can to those interested in the business instead of to a government which wastes so much. To be perfectly fair, it must be said that the money now being dis- tributed either in dividends or in bonuses to workers or in wage increases in-creases was earned before the recent re-cent election. Its distribution, however, how-ever, is motivated largely on prospects pros-pects for the future. In other words, those responsible for these distributions distribu-tions of earnings feel that they can let that money out of their hands. They may not be distributing all of the sums available but the "era of good feeling" is accepted by all of them as indicating the chances for continued earnings are bright. . I have merely touched on the effect ef-fect of distribution of earnings among the holders How It of capital. It is i Works Out just as important to consider the effect of distribution of these earnings earn-ings on the laboring classes. Labor has been convinced under the American Amer-ican system for many years that it is entitled to some share of the profits prof-its from its products. Employers are taking that same view to a greater extent than anywhere else in the world. When labor gets bonuses bo-nuses or gets increases in its pay, there is a reaction among these through New Deal press statements, are trying to fortify their own position posi-tion as saviors of the country. Neither Nei-ther one is correct. Without doing too much debunking, I believe it ought to be said that President Roosevelt and his associates have executed some government policies that have been helpful to the business busi-ness structure. With equal frankness, frank-ness, it ought to be said that business busi-ness leaders have taken the bull by the horns and have proceeded to help materially in putting commerce and industry back on the right track again. Neither one ought to take too much credit. Some credit is due each but neither one nor both together is entitled to claim all of the credit for the recovery of business busi-ness that is now underway. The answer to the upward swing of business lies chiefly in the fact that the depression has worn itself cut. It would have worn. itself out just the same whether the administration admin-istration was New Deal or Republican. Repub-lican. It would have accomplished just as much in the way of expanded ex-panded buying power and increased production whether Mr. Rooseveit was re-elected or whether he had been defeated and Governor Landon cf Kansas had been elected at the end of the recent national campaign. cam-paign. I am reminded by this discussion rf a remark that the late Eugene Black made while he wa3 governor cf the Federal reserve board. On 1'iat occasion I asked him whether tin re were signs ef th.. end of the derresf.i- n. Kis reply was, ''noi .yet." He added, however, that tne depression would destroy itself as tviry other depression in hintory find done and that when this point c. xhuustion had been readied, 1 workers who have sound judgment i j that prompts them to do the best tocy can on their jobs. That is to say, they become contented workers work-ers and they are less susceptible , te the propaganda of radicals who sick to promote strikes and labor, disturbances to further ti e ends oi communism. That is a part of the era of good feeling as much as the added earning 01. corporations or the enthusiasm of politicians over victory. it) Western NcwsiKiiier Uuioa. |