The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1933-07-17
MONDAY. JULY II. 1888.
THE RECOVERY TEST
THE Presidents recovery program faces its
Il hardest test this week and next.

THE Presidents recovery program faces its
hardest test this week and next.
hi threat Of a thirty-hve hour week for
all employees has worked as intended and ma
ior industrial codes are pouring into Wash
ington. This does not mean, however, that the
race between prices and purchasing power is
over.
Code after code is coming in with provision
for a work week Of forty hours or more. The
lumber men suggest a forty-eight-hour-week
The steel agreement offers a forty-hour-week,
averaged over a siX-month period, which
means that in busy weeks men would work
fifty or ffty-fve hours and then would be
laid of or put on part time. Most of the big
codes now waiting hearings fail to reflect the
spirit or purpose of the recovery act.
The administration is trying to take these
faulty tools and, somehow, fashion with them
the sort Of balanced economy that can bring
prosperity back to America.
1t is not surprising that codes of this sort
have been submitted. The cotton textile in
dustry's forty-hour week fixed that figure in
peoples minds as a precedent, despite the
warnings by the President and Administrator
Johnson to the contrary.
1t inspired a general hope in some employ
ers that somehow or other they could get
around the first principles laid down in Wash
ington and get a long start in the price and
purchasing power race.
If they are successful, the recovery program
will fail. Prices will rise for a while in an
ticipation of better times and will fall with a
thud because reinforcements of purchasing
power have not been brought up to support
them.
American business leaders have admitted
again and again that our economic structure
can survive only if a way is found to keep the
whole population at work and earning enough
to buy enough to make the wheels go around.
Before these major codes receive the ap-
proval of the administration, most of them
should be and will be revised.
Working hours will be shortened to the
point where the recovery administration is
certain that more men and women will have
to be hired to do the work which a few are
y doing now. Minimum wages will be raised.
This is the only way to get the purchasing
power we are after.
Child labor should be ruled out, as it has
been in every code so far. Unemployment in
surance should be provided for each industry,
as it has been for garment workers. This sort
of insurance protects the business man against
collapse of the present order as surely as it
protects the worker from starvation and want.
Business is making f~altering progress to-
ward saving itself from destruction. Only con-
tinued firm guidance from the administration
can pull it through.
Meanwhile, the President properly is con-
sidering the recommendation of the recovery
administration for temporary codes for groups
of industries, pending formulation and accept
ance Of the individual codes.
Several weeks or months must elapse be-
fore most Of the individual codes can become
effective. During that time purchasing power
will be losing in the race with rising prices.
To get the unemployed back to work quick
ly and to create mass buying power at once,
the President might we'll appeal to all indus
try to accept voluntary blanket codes for
shorter hours and higher wages Immediately.