The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1934-09-21
NEWSPAPERS OPINION
MIRA REORGANIZATION

| As contemplated in the presidential announce
nent. the reorganization of the MIRA is merely a
concentration of its administration. The great
object was to unhorse Brig. Gen. Hugh S. Johnson
from his tsardom This has been accomplished i'll
several ways Formulation of policy will be vested
lin a legislative department outside the influence
of the administrator The executive department.
over which the administrator will preside, will
carry out the mandates laid down by this policy
making board. Code disputes and enforcement
will be turned over to the Judiciary, while labor
problems will become wholly the business OF the
National Labor Relations board
This is good so far as it goes. But the reorgan-
ization that the country requires is reorganlza-
ton of the codes themselves. Johnsonan econom-
les. as we'll as General Johnson's role must be re-
viewed. The codes as they have been written do
not conform with the preamble of the National
Industrial Recovery Act which inter ALA in
tended ito promote the fullest possible utilization
of the present productive capacity of industries"
Has that been accomplished? The latest bulletin of
the Federal Reserve board supplies negative
answer.
The act was signed on June 16 last year. Pro
duction in that month amounted to 81 per cent of
the 192S-25 average, but a year later, the index
had fallen to "a per cent, and must be about 10
per cent lower today. One of the reasons for this
slowing down is the artificial restrictions inserted
in the codes--price-fx overt and covert, and
limitation of production or productive capacity
which has as it's aim the maintenance of artificial
prices.
How such impediments curb the filling out of
purchasing power will be apparent after little
thought on how purchasing power is created. Logl-
cally it must come out of production. If you do
not create you do not have the means to spend.
General industrial restrictonism has lowered the
national income, or for one example, the buying
power of potential cotton textile purchasers. If
the textile industry INDUCES in periodical shut
downs, even the operatives, matter how high
their hourly wages on paper, receive nothing,
end cannot buy their products.
This is one side of the wedge in which the in
dustry has been caught. Agricultural restriction
ism supplies the other side of it. Nd other indus
try has to pay out such large ratio of its costs
for raw materials. AS result in part of cotton
restrietionism, the fiber has gone up from four
cents to twelve cents, and, in order to pay the
cotton planter to restrict an added burden in the
form of processing tax has been put upon the
cotton fertile industry Cotton textiles, conse-
.quently, have had to be marked up out of reach
of even the depleted consumer market Purchasers
still in position to buy textile have turned to
other fbers.
On more than occasion the President has
expressed his antipathy to industrial restrctonism.
Before he went to Hawaii he ordered cuts in code
prices government purchases. At the time his
order was interpreted the beginning of the as
sault on the price rigdites which have been intro
Fduced by the NRA. Possibly the establishment of
"a policy-making board will hasten code reorganza-
ton. Until this is accomplished, the industrial sys
tenn will always be periodically out of touch with
consumers purses, situation which will make for
reeurrent depressions such that in which the
cotton textile industry is now plunged-Christian
Science Monitor.