The Daily Alaska empire., 1933-10-26

obvious choice is to postpone, pre-
 terably to scrap, the ideal of Re- construction, adopt the orthodox measures for restoring confidence
 -mong business men and investors, and let enterprise have it's head. My own conviction is that those who take this view misjudge the temper of the people. It is true that the confidence of business men needs to be restored. But it $ also true that another kind of confidence needs to be restored the confidence of the mass of peo- pie in the justice, the efficiency, and the social responsibility of democratic institutions. MT. Roose-
 1elt cannot betray the hopes sym bolized by the New Deal. To do that would be to SOW dragons teeth of disillusionment and cynicism for the future, once the business cycle had turned down again after a period of revival. For the New Deal is a supreme test of the pow CT of men to control competitive acquisitiveness under system Of ordered liberty Whatever the mo- mentary temptation to abandon it, we must not
 Yet the opposite course, which is to install the New Deal and let Recovery wait, is equally to be re- jected. Those who in the back of their heads would like to do this also nisjudge the temper of the people. They fail to see that in- ability to produce substantial evil dences of Recovery will produce a reaction, not in favor of, but against the principles of the New Deal. Only the very naive pro gressive can imagine that this re- action would promote the ideas that the most advanced progress sives desire.
 Where, then, are we to find the way to reconcile the short-term objective of Recovery and the long, term objective of Reconstruction? We can find it only in the prin- ciple which has been, I believe, the essential reason for MT. Roose- velt's immense success. From the day he took office he began to govern In a series of sharp and decisive acts he convinced the whole people that the Government was master in it's own house as against all Hobbies minorities, fac tions and vested interests. The astounding change of public senti- ment was not brought about by any one measure, but by the evidence that the Government was both well intentioned and strong. Men trusted MT. Roosevelt to experiment because they saw that he had the situation in hand.
 By keeping continually vivid the conviction that he has the situation in hand, he can work his way through the dilemmas and con- tradictions of his dual task. What, for example, is the origin of the fear that is paralyzing enterprise when business men and investors contemplate the implications of the N. R. A., the penalties of the Se- curities Act, or the possibilities of inflation? It is the fear that the President will lose control of the situation and be carried no one knows where. That is the fear. Enlightened men must know that the basic conceptions of the N. R. A. represent a necessary evolution of modern industrialism. But they know also that the working out of that evolution calls for long ad- justment and contrivance and com promise, which can be carried out successfully only if all the interests concerned are steadied and calmed by a firm assertion of the national power. So also they know that