The border vidette., 1933-12-09
ECONOMIC HIGALtGHTS
y 4 33

! al anu MCKINNEY IOuRnt 1t out
along the line Of 16-to-1 has the
money question so swept the
country. And it's q good deal
more important now than it was
then Bryan. who wanted to try
a new monetary experiment was
on y q candidate Franklin
Roosevelt is q President, with
unprecedented powers.
Recently, infation aud def,
tion,. gold buying, dollar depre
citation, and all the other phases
of the problem, have dwarfed
everything else. They have ell
most taken the NRA out of the
headlines. They have snbmerg
ed the farm problem and the
foreign problem. Definite battle
lines have formed. Each side is
plentifully supplied With experts.
Each side has its corps of big
business men and little business
men. And the public, which
reads the dispatches, is in q state
of be wilderment.
The way the wind blows was
first shown with the resign alton
of Undersecretary OF the Trea
sury Acheson, q conservative
and an unrelenting hard-money
man. he was immediately fol.
lowed into retirement by Dr..
Oliver Sprague, once q financial
advisor to the Bank of England,
to whom soft" money is even
more distasteful. Secretary
Woodin, who has been torn of
late between bis great devotion
to bis chief, and his instructive
belief 10 conservative financial
policies. went away on on indie
finite leave Of absence. Into his
place stepped Henry Morgen
than. Jr., scion of a famous fir
ancial family, who sees eye to
eye with the President on prac
tically everything.
Behind all this is a. quiet,
scholarly figure, and name
which rarely comes before the
public. 1t is that of Georg e
Frederick Warren, au agricul
tural economist Of Cornell. Last
year he wrote a boob, called
Prices, which becomes the bible
Of the Committee of the Nation,
an organization of business men
seeking way to recovery. Il
is Mr.. Warren's thesis, as Time
puts it, that supply and demand
are not twins, but quadruplets.
He holds that the price of q con
modify is determined not only
by supply aud demand for it..
but that the supply and demand
! for gold is of equal Importance
in establishing the commodity's
cost. To raise prices means to
lower the value of the dollar, and
long ago DE-. Warren scoffed at
the idea of trying to reduce the
dollars value and still maintain
it's gold contends unimpaired.
He prophesied many years more
Of depression unless the gold
standard was thrown overheard,
the dollar revalued It's. no
secret that Mr.. Roosevelt has
been disappointed by the slow
ness with which his legislative
acts have stim ulated business
Improvement, and be leant a
ready ear to Dr.. Warren and to
Professor Rogers of Yale. whose
ideas are similar. A little latter
commodity prices begau to sag,
precisely as Dr.. Warren said
they would. Upshot WAS the
Presidential order that sent the
United States into the world
market for gold. lowered dollar
value IN foreign exchange, aud
began the long process of re
valuing it.
Then t b e criticism began
gathering. The Chamber Of
Commerce OF the State of New
York passed resolution calling
for sound money. It was at once
rebuked by an economist for the
Committee Of the Nation, who
defended the President, saying
the Chamber lis not even repre-
sentative Of tt Q commercial
point OF view Of tho city of New
York" ." Then. Alfred r. Smith
took crack st what he termed
the baloney" dollar, in a New
Outlook editorial, and intimated
that the country needs another
Cleveland. To the Presidents
defense came Republican Borah,
as brilliant and erratic Senator
a. the country ever saw. who
said thst the question was not
I