The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1934-02-24
WHOSE OK is GORED?


North Carolina furniture manutactur-
ers, aided and abetted by Senator Bailey,
are protesting loudly against the proposal
to build a government furniture factory IN
West Virginia. This West Virginia scheme
is one of the pet Socialistic ideas OF Mrs.
President Roosevelt and it is said that 1t
is getting serious attention in Congress
from alleged Representative of the peo-
pie" who want to please the Presidents
wife. Only little more than half mil
lion dollars is wanted to build this factory.
It seems that we have arrived in this
country at the place where it is almost en-
tirely matter of whose OK is gored in this
business of putting the federal government
into competition with its citizens. When
the government proposes to go into COM
1etition with the furniture manufacturers
they sit up and take notice and begin to
''hoIler." The "hollering" is o. K. Let it
proceed. But the furniture makers should
have taken notice of what is going on IN
the country some time ago and ought to
have bestirred themselves to aid citizens
engaged in other lines of business in their
efforts to defeat the purposes of the So
cialists.
Government competition in the furniture
business is not a whit more dangerous to
fundamental American principles OF gov
eminent than government competition IN
the power business or any other business
The logical and inevitable end of govern
ment competition in any and every line OF
business is the destruction of private busi-
ness, the destruction of capital, the de-
struction of taxable values, the piling up
Of tax burdens on the people; the extrava-
gance and waste and inefficiency which al
ways accompanies government operation
of business; the multiplication of govern
nient bureaus and agencies and increase in
the swarms of bureaucrats that infest the
country. atN
There IS not, however, a logical argu-
ment that can be advanced by Senator
Bailey or any other citizen against gov
eminent in the furniture business that can
not be used as logically against govern
ment in any other line of business The
whole Socialistic scheme of government
ownership of business is economically rot
ten to the core and it is the most damnabe
perverSion of American principles of gov
eminent and the American economic and
social order that has ever been conceived.
1t is fine to see and hear the furniture
manufacturers of North Carolina as they
are aroused to the dangers CT Socialism,
bat it is pity they have been standing,
Idle and dumb, while the Socialists were
getting, actively into the business of throt-
Ting and destroying other great industries
of the country.
DIR. Julian S. Miller of The Charlotte
Observer, calling attention to the fact that
O1e-siXth of the total population of the
United States now have their feet in the
federal government feed trough, either as
direct benefciaries in one way or another,
or, as proteges of government relief, calls
it reinforced PROSTITUTION of the prin-
ciples of government" That is strong
language for DIR. Miller to use in the col
urhns Of a great newspaper that so far has
ventured only milk and water criticism of
the gigantic plan to Russianize the United
States, but it is language justified in the
application made by DR.. Miller and it is
justified if applied to the Socialist plan.
- :