The Daily Alaska empire., 1933-10-24

sounding generalizations to tht indisputable truths of honor, court esy, and ordinary morals. This step-by step empiricism is utterly incomprehensible to men of certain temperaments. They think a states man should have a complete theor, about the history of the humar race. comprehensive program about it's future, in brief, that he should forget he is mortal anc plant himself on the Judgmen
 Seat. The preference of the Eng speaking peoples for crossing bridges when you come to them and discovering the reason why you have come when you are hali way across, seems to them in vary ing degree confused, illogical, illit- crate, and even hypocritical. By its enemies it is described as muddling by it's practitioners as muddling through. But whatever it is, the record of history goes to show that it levies a lighter tax of blood and tears, of anguish and bitterness than the more perfected, the more theoretically consistent, and more exalted systems of governing men | It is not only among doctrinaires however, that MT. Roosevelt's eau tious avoidance of commitments has aroused objection. At home there is complaint that he has not announced monetary policy, that he does not define the position of labor under the codes, that he does not make it known whether the N R. A. is an emergency measure or a new industrial order, that he does not make it clear whether the capital market is to be run, as in the past by international bankers or, as it is at this moment by the Federal Government, that he does not indicate whether he looks for ward to a general policy of econ omic nationaliSm or backward to a revival of relatively free trade There are real issues at the heart of all these questions, and they will have to be decided. But as l see it, there is, in addition to his native caution, controlling reason why MT. Roosevelt has felt it nec- essary to let the, issues come to him rather than to reach out fo1 them and render his verdicts.
 He has come into power with a two-fold mandate from the people: to raise the country out of the de- pression and to inaugurate a New Deal. He is commanded to bring back better times, and he is also commanded to bring in a different order of things. So he must have Recovery and he must have Recon struction, and, unless he is to arouse disappointment and revolt, he must set them both going simul taneously. Now that complicates matters. For at innumerable vital points the pursuit of one of these objectives interferes with the achievment of the other If he could devote himself in singlemind ed fashion to Recovery, stimulating enterprise, profits and confidence according to the orthodox canons of capitalism, there is little doubt that employment would revive fast CT and business begin to hum soon- CT. But he cannot be single-mind- ed. While he is trying to stimulate recovery he must also respond to the conviction of the mass of the people that the old order of things up to 1929 needs drastic renoya- ton. He must give evidence that he is installing new controls and collective standards. This discour ages enterprise and so retardS Re- covery. Yet he cannot say to his constituency as revolutionary lead CTS in Russia, Italy or Germany say to their people: endure patient ly the sacrifices of the present for the sake of the glorious future. MT. Roosevelt is not a revolutionary leader. He must produce the pros perity of the old order while he builds a new one. Thus he must shape his course with one eye on the short objective of Recovery and the other on the long objective of Reconstruction.
 That this produces a kind of chronic dilemma has been amply illustrated since the adjournment of Congress. Thus, if the only thing the President needed to do was to encourage an old-fashioned busi- ness revival, it would have been sheer folly to raise the question of union recognition as acutely as the N. R. A. has raised it, or to depress an already frightened capi- tai market with the threats of the Securities Act, or to disrupt the paralyzed machinery of capital in- Ivestment by the Glass-Steagall Bill. | ho +1