Evening star., 1933-05-07
BY WILLIAM HARD.

The President Is determined now to
get rid Of Congress early in June; but
there are many excellent Observers
political and economic-who are firmly
convinced that Congress will be back
again in Washington in another extra
session early in the Fall. They base
this calculation on the laws which the
present extra session will have enacted
by June l and on the laws which it
will not have enacted
The laws enacted will give a large
momentum to imitation. They will be
OF instant advantage to those who have
commodities or securities to sell. Such
sellers will presumably find themselves
in rising market and will presumably
succeed in making sales at advanced
prices. This Is the total essential aim
from the business point Of view-of the
farm bill and of the imitation rider
which it carries.
On the other hand, Congress will be
unable by June to enact any compre-
hensive legislation for the adequate
protection of those to whom imitation is
injurious. 1t is injurious, naturally and
obviously and admittedly, to those who
sell not commodities or securities but
only the labor of their hands or brains.
Such people-and there are many
millions of them-are restive already
under the prospect that the prices Of
all those things which they purchase
will increase, while there is no assur-
ance whatsoever that their wages and
salaries will correspondingly increase.
They constitute a potentially discon-
tented element Of the highest economic
and political Importance.
| X
1t has been partly in consideration
~f I,-,t .Sr%r-n
tons advisers-both regular and VOL
unteer-have busted themselves with
such suggested measures as the pro-
posed national industrial recovery
act" Under that act there would be
a deliberate governmental recognition
and encouragement of organizations OF
wage earners and of salary earners
throughout all American industry for
the safeguarding Of their interests.
Under that act there would also be
strong governmental direct influence
upon the general level Of wages and
salaries.
Under the farm bill, with its agri-
cultural price-raising devices and with
its device for the expansion of cur
rency and of credit, 1t is owners
owners Of commodities and Of Securi-
ties-that will be presumably cheered
and ostensibly benefited. Under the
national industrial recovery act" with
its stimulation of collective bargain
ing" and its concern for wages and
salaries as we'll as for profits, it would
be the employees who would also be-ln
principle-cheered and benefited.
In other words. the two laws put to-
gether would be an attempt to put
everybody-owners and employees both
on governmental economic escalator
upward
If, however. Congress adjourns by
early June the likelihood is that the
owners will be on the escalator and
the employees will not.
In somewhat similar circumstances
right after the Great War there were
vast strikes. Prices seemed to employees
to have risen out of harmony with
them to be expanding out of propor-
ton to pay rolls. They thereupon
called strikes, which in turn produced
governmental repressive intervention
on large scale.
Parallel developments are expected
now by many observers of great wealth
of experience and of great sobriety OF
temperament. They believe that the
imitation now started cannot possibly be
checked before it begins to react in
juriously upon people with fixed In
comes, whether those incomes are de-
rived from pay rolls or from invest
, mentS.
J They admit that the administration
will do everything aatlosa within its power so 70
point out, however, that in every In
flation there are two influences at work.
The first Is the Government; but the
second. very early in the imitation, Is
the business community itself. The Gov
ernment may strive to curb the tnf1a-
ton at a certain stage in its progress
but the business community. having
become excited and exhilarated, may go
straight ahead bidding the prices OF
commodities and Of securities 1artner
and farther up without the Govern
ment being able to do anything to stop
that movement.
This is the fundamental reason why
a "controlled imitation" has been at
tempted often in principle but has sell
dom been accomplished in practice. The
Government starts the imitation and
then tries to throttle it down, but by
that time the business community has
put its foot on the accelerator and the
car leaps forward progressively faster,
not under governmental urging. but
under the urging Of the private markets.
X
This condition has begun to exist al
ready in the United States in the pri-
vate markets and it conceivably may
have come to q high degree Of accumu-
lated volume and velocity by Midsum..
mer. The International Monetary and
. Economic Conference will then be In
session in London. For the delegates
both of the United States and Of Great
Britain the prime purpose Of the con-
ference is further heightening OF
prices. Our decisive domestic legisla-
ton so farm the emergency banking
bill, as well as in the farm bill and its
currency and credit appended clauses
> is inflationary The International None
tary and Economic Conference Is also in
its central design inflationary. 1t will
endeavor, II the Americans and the
British have their way, to unite the