| Show M 1 9 av A NED 9 1 rl 5 fw 0 FA I 1 R S ck TP AT h C 3 1 tta f T AT A I 1 W WA SHIN TON r national topics interpreted by A WILLIAM BRUCKART washington A good many per sons ons in washington still are arguing the point whether that president roose conference ve velt and d secretary roper of the department part ment of commerce made a mistake in arranging for the so called conference of nearly a thousand small business men the conference that turned into a near riot provided plenty of publicity if that was what was planned but it was publicity of a distinctly bad sort from a political standpoint on the other hand some way some how there came out of that conference a score or more of recommendations ions and some of them were the very recommendations which mr roosevelt wanted from business interests it is a new vehicle on which bureaucrats and advisers can ride but before I 1 attempt an analysis of the results that may flow from the conference a review of the meeting itself should be recorded the business men widely publicized as being small and independent fellows were convened in the commerce department auditorium it had all of the earmarks of a session lor for which a program had been drawn up here in washington it appeared to be cut and dri dried ed no sooner had the session convened however than things began to happen since there were nearly a thousand individuals there were nearly one thousand different views and the individuals sought in various ways to express themselves the result of the first days IT meetings iee tings can be described therefore as nil unless you want to conqer consider the riot the necessity for physically ejecting some of the members who became violent in their objections as a result it was a session in which shouts were heard about handpicked hand picked chairman and log rolling and you cant dictate to me with the first days session a flop machinery somehow was set in motion for the second day so that a recurrence of the riot would be avoided the conference was broken up into group or sectional meetings it was hinted that big things could be expected from these in the shape of concrete recommendations well we observers found instead that the big conference riot of the little business men had been broken up into some ten or twelve smaller conference riots just as an example one session was so uproar cus that it was found necessary to call in the building police and forcibly throw out one little business man who measured over six feet and weighed plenty those were the physical phases ol of the two day conference yet believe it or not there were recommendations ions made by those nearly one thousand business men representing small businesses of the country they were duly presented to president rosevelt who sent out word to the newspaper correspondents spon dents afterward that some of those recommendations were indeed quite constructive I 1 shall not attempt to set them down here they would take more more space than is available I 1 noted among them however one item that urged the government to establish a procedure to encourage and facilitate loans to small business it recalled to me that there has been much talk among advanced thinkers in the administration that the government should have an agency to make loans to small businesses it was discussed in these columns recently undoubtedly it was just a coincidence that this th s recommendation should come from the small business men while the advisers to the president were considering it included in the recommendations however were proposals tor for the administration to do Sor some are several things that pleased thus tar far have not had administration backing one of these was a recommendation that wage and hour regulatory legislation should be abandoned no one seems to know from whence that item came and it was variously reported as not having had the full support ol of the conference it may have been that even the 12 chairmen who carried the recommendations to the white house meeting with the president performed a miracle but there is no denying that the item was included and quite a few members ot of the democratic party in congress were glad to see it so the conference has been held and its work and efforts to solve the depression problems are spread on the first pages of newspapers the results in this direction would seem to justify mr Roosevel ts recent intimations that the business men do not know what they want such a view would be correct if the conference itself had been representative true the delegates came from all sections of the country true all excepting a very few were of the type known as small business men but it must not be overlooked that the conference was planned invitations extended and program written from washington I 1 think it is quite unlikely that men would be invited without somebody in the administration mini having knowledge of their general attitude toward the new deal there actually may be something to the charge that was variously hurled in the sessions that chairmen were hand picked and that there was a bit of log rolling done just a teeny bit of it concerning the aftereffects after effects one can hear many observations some say that the bulk of the small business men went away from washington nursing a grudge others add that many of the delegates went back home with a sour idea of government conferences and therefore with a willingness to ridicule the administration and still others hold the conviction that the very confusion that came from the meeting provided mr roosevelt Hoo sevelt with the horrible example that he wants want in his criticism of business leadership it seems to me there is ground for each of these three conclusions time alone will disclose the ultimate effects mr roosevelt may utilize the recommendations in a fireside chat or a message to congress some of his advisers may blar bear dawn un on we me lack ut a ds reumen and understanding among business men or the whole thing may be treated very seriously and an at tempt made to convince the coun country Y that the administration is being s guided by what it believes the business interests want as shown in the recommendations of the conference 4 the treasury treasur laid some stress on announcement the other da day that hat it will begin a series treasury of borrowings late to borrow this month that likely will be the last borrowings by the federal government in this generation it was stated that between and millions will be borrowed during the next several months but that june tax payments and subsequent collections will provide money for current needs that is to say there will be no need for new money which is money borrowed out of the money market or banks it has riot not been made clear how the treasury will accomplish the objective of cessation of borrowing at this time president roosevelt has predicted that there will be a deficit of about one billion dollars in the next fiscal year A treasury deficit can mean only one thing namely that the amount of income income is less than the amount of the expenditures tures something appears to de be screwy in a circumstance where there is a deficit of a billion and only a few hundred millions have to be borrowed however it may be accomplished it is hopeful to think that borrowings are going to be terminated the treasury has been doing it for a long long time the tr Treas easu rys announcement explained that the treasury would receive more than one billion dollars tor for the account of its trust funds during this year trust funds are segregated moneys such as the fund for payment of social security benefits well it strikes me as a bit unfair to say the treasury will not borrow any new money this year when it actually is borrowing from the so social cial security fund there is no violation of law in that course because the law says the social security funds must be invested in government bonds 0 0 the borrowing from social security funds calls attention to another phase of gov another eminent finance phase those funds come from payroll taxes they are taxes paid by the workers as well as by the employer it has occurred to me therefore that unless the governments revenue can be made to balance its expenditures tures sometime in the future workers will want to obtain payment under the provisions and there will be nothing but government bonds in the fund further there is every possibility indeed I 1 believe it is a probability that these payroll taxes are going to bear more heavily on the workers of the future than they do today C western newspaper union |
