Show the me right way out EVENTS F VENTS of if the past two weeks have furnished additional reason for believing that the roosevelt administration is reexamining examining re some of its methods and its measure a more c critical eye for a long time the kopini opinion 10 n was widely held in washington and it is still strongly held in certain quarters that in order to achieve a recovery of business and thereby raise the standard of living the government has only to the economy of the country by the process of pump priming this process to be sure has enormously increased tile the volume of deposits in the nations banks for whenever the government borrows it creates a deposit which is subsequently transferred to private individuals as checks are drawn against it to fo cover the governments expenditures but the process has not achieved the success which its authors expected it to achieve for the reason that as the volume of deposits has increased the velocity of their turnover has gone down it is now down to a very low point what has happened is that the government has in fact succeeded in creating a large supply of deposit money at the eventual expense of the taxpayer but that it has failed thereby to stimulate an important increase in business activity because the new deposits it has created are not being used the administration at first called this situation a strike of capital and said capital was deliberately being withheld from expenditure and investment in an effort to force political concessions from the government in recent days there have been some reassuring signs that the administration is reconsidering in secretary Morg mor gan anthaus thaus recent talk he did not mention capital on strike but invited congress to take a careful look at the tax laws to see if there are any det deterrents holding the business man back from making future commitments when secretary hopkins delivered his much commented on address in iowa he did not speak of breaking br eakin a strike of capital he spoke instead of breaking a log jam of private investment in the field of utilities utilizes util iJes railroads and housing these recent events lead us to believe that the administration is willing to accept a more realistic point of view and recognizes that there need be no real conflict between the aims of reform and recovery there is no reason why the government cannot pursue a sound utilities program a sound monopoly program a sound social security program and a sound tax program and at the same time encourage the long term investment of private capital in the business of this country it is not necessary to abandon or to compromise the broad social purpose of the roosevelt administration or to surrender the controls many of which are valuable which it has established over private enterprise what is needed is simply a reexamination examination re of legislation which was enacted in great haste and under great pressure for the purpose of correcting such parts of it as are unreasonable restrictive strict ive and adverse to the recovery of industry and employment if government and business will work together this country can be made to move simultaneously toward both an expansion of business activity and a reform program which has as its objective a larger measure of social justice |