The Waterbury Democrat., 1931-03-02
NEA Service Writer

Washington-No game has ever fascinated community to the ex- tent that the pastime of doing tricks with figures has beguiled this. the seat of government.
 The game is often played with millions of dollars and sometimes with hundreds of millions. Every body goes in for 1.-the White House, the treasury, the Depart Cross and others.
 The adro tness which the peoples .ervants in' Washington have acquired has been demonstrated in the handing of estimates as to the cost of bonus bills, estimating the number of employed, explaining how much the Red Cross had for relief and how much 1t ', would need, guessing at the size of treasury def icits, estimating the number of American Communists and what not
 Of course. there is a variation ot exactly the right answers and de- liberately twist figures when an ac- curate result has already been ob- tained. But the real zest Is found in reaching results which cannot positively be proved wrong despite the absence of any good base of computation and which will be a big aid tu somebody's propagranda.
 Mellon Is Expert Estimator. Secretary of the Treasury Mellon has been such an accomplished player, through 10 years of prac- tice, that every time he estimates anything these days he finds even the republicans laughing at him. But Mellon is only one among many who have been doing tricks with figu es on the possible cost of ex- tending loans on soldier bonus cer- tificates.
 MT Mellon, however, said that | the bill to lend veterans money up to 50 per cent of the face value of their certificates would establish a potential liability" of about $1,-
 FOG. 100000. It sounded like lot of money,
 The chance was there to make
 the cast appear perhaps more than twice what it was likely to be and opponents of the measure made the most of that. Of. course, the faces are that the only logical way to es. innate the probable extent of ne"
 veteran loans is to study what the veterans Fave done with their loan privilege in the past and that there
 is no possibility of accurate esti-
 mate.
 Only 800 Million Now Out. Up to now. their certificates have had a loan value of about $765, ,000.-
 900 and li..t!e more than $300,00G.09(
 of that has actually been borrowed
 If veterans borrow up to 50 pei
 cent in .het same proportion tha,
 they have borrowed up to 22 l-2 per cent they would use somewhert
 around $75O,000,000 of the new
 loan value, of which about $30O,000,. 900 is already outstanding in loans.
 Thus, unless Q considerable mum.
 ber of veterans begin to borrow oy
 their vertificates for the first time
 after previously ignoring the loar privilege, the amount of new money
 needed Is unlikely to, run over hall
 a billion dollars. Estimates of tiis
 new money needed, of course. have
 run from $500. .000. .000 to billion.
 Congress also has shown its adept.
 ness in making figures do tricks. l
 provided for a uniform rate of l.. Iper cent interest on the bonus certi
 cate loans. In almost everything
 that has been said about that rate
 the veter,ins were assured that they would be getting the loans on es
 pecially liberal terms and that ths prevailing interest rate was pel
 cent.