Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-01-26
FARRELL STIRS BUSINESS MEN
WITH PROSPERITY HOME RUN"

The opening game in the world series
between what might be called the Bust
ness Builders team and the BeartSh
Bankers team Is on, says an editorial
in the current issue of the Business
Week. The first inning has kept the
granciStand jumping. Last week we saw
Wiggin, up for the biggest bank in the
world, Chase National take f5rst base on
an obvious Orom our point of View foul
for more deflation, and we sat down
and groaned. This week we saw Farrell,
at the bat for the biggest industrial con-
Germ in the world, U. 5. Steel, drive q
clean home run for higher standards Of
living, and we stood up and cheered.
A neat but somewhat staggering con-
traSt, down to the smallest detail, that
successive appearance at the plate of
the Babe Ruths of big banking and big
business in this decisive play-off for
prosperity. Every American, worker or
employer, may well go home and medi-
tate upon its meaning afterward, no
matter how the game goes; but mean
while, with the bleacherS full OF idle
labor, idle machinery and idle money,
we say, Hats in the air for fearless
Farrell and more power to his arm"
No anxious economist stood at his ell
bow when he wrote the words he spoke
in Chicago this week. He was talking
as a man who made and sold things to
men who wanted to do likewise; he was
thinking as a creator, not as a cred
itor; as a leader, not as a lender: No
nostalgia for the past distorted his
vision-it was turned forward to the
possibilities of a future.
No cramped calculations Of the cost
of living limited his estimate Of what
labor could earn and should spend. He
saw clearly and said Straightforwardly
that the crux Of the problem of pros
perity is the increase of consumption,
not the liquidation of loans nor the cur
tailment of production; that the prime
requisite for recovery is the expansion
of purchasing power, not the payment
of debt.
Without benefit of the economic
clergy, he was unafraid to father the
thought that even though prices are
lower, wages might well remain rela-
lively higher if business concentrates
its energies upon reducing other costs
and stimulating demand. For, refusing
to view the modern world as through a
caster-oil bottle, darby, he could see
that the expansion of the market Is
still the main factor Of business prog
resS, as it has been in the past. With
q degree Of insight far higher than
that of any of the other doctors OF de-
versity of Experience, he saw that the
more and the longer the purchasing
power of other countries or of some
groups OF our own people Is crippled
by depressed prices or unemployment,
obviously the greater need to maintain
and increase the buying power of the rest.
And he realized, with the sound in
stincts of an unspoiled salesman, that
If this country cannot expand its con-
Stunning power and steadily raise its
standard of living we needn't expect
any other country to do so. The money,
the materials, the machinery, men
management and minds are here to do
the job.
These simple, sturdy ideas will, no
doubt, seem deplorably nlegitimate to
the Puritan fathers Of finance when
they ponder the paternity thereof
They have come with a rousing yell
into this weary world from one of the
Oldest, most basic industries. They have
been rocked in that ancient cradle OF