Evening star., 1934-04-15
BY WILLIAM HARD.

~ feel the new deal pausing, can
~ feel it circling, can feel 1t be-
\ having like a retriever that
fears it has lost the scent and
Is gaHantly striving to recover it. Never
was the indubitable genius CT Frank
lin Delano Roosevelt as a political
hunter more needed. Welcome back!
The central trouble is the still
enormous mass of the unemployed. 1t
Is idle to talk of the accomplishment
OF recovery when eight or ten million
workers are still not working.
1t is true that Industrial corpora
tions are again beginning to make
money. But If the N. R. A. codes are
90 constructed that capital can reap
profits out of restricted production
and restricted consumption with mil
lions and millions of citizens left un-
employed outside the industrial organ
ism, then the N. R. A. has helped
actually to accentuate a social prob
lem which still requires the applica-
ton to it of Rooseveltian social Justice.
No one can doubt that the ideal of Mr..
Roosevelt-and the ideal of common
sense-is that profitable life for
capital in this country shall develop
only in accompaniment with profita-
BILE life for the American people in
total
From the beginning it has been the
aspiration of the new deal to arrive
at that end. 1t has followed at least
four different sorts of devices Com
mentators customarily have divided
new-deal policies into those designed
for recovery" and those designed for
reconstruction" The line thus drawn
is dubious. Recovery and recon
struction" merge. 1t is more con-
venient-and even more logical-to
divide the new-deal policies into
categories not of purpose, but of
method.
Momentum Slackens.
It will be found. upon examination.
that each of the methods so far pur-
sued has come now to a slackening
of momentum, or even sometimes
almost to a stoppage.
The first method was the monetary
methCd. BY manipulation of the gold
value of money the price level was
to be restored to the heights of 1926
and kept there,
This objective, every friend and
every foe must admit, is far indeed
from having been reached. Prices
have not gone more than approx
mately half way back to the desired
altitude. That altitude was declared
to be necessary to economic regen-
Grafton. We today are not at that
altitude, nor are We at that regen-
Grafton. Strict logic would thereupon
suggest that further monetary manip-
ulation was necessary.
But right there the administration
recoils from its own road. For months
it has taken no additional step in the
monetary method Of producing price
relation. Now, therefore, come the
silver people in the Congress and
declare that what has not been sue
cessfully concluded by the manipula-
ton of one of the monetary metals
should be valiantly attempted by the
manipulation of the other.
Experiments Resisted.
How can monetary eXperimenterS
and price rehationists meet that ar
gument2 In basic theory they cannot
meet it at all. The monetary con-
servatives, who resisted the expert
mentations with gold, are on strong
ground in resisting the experimental
tions with silver. The administration,
however, which has committed itself
over and over again to the pre-de-
preston price level, is obviously en-
barrassed and perplexed. Itself re-
flationist, it has difficulty in answer
ing and countering the congressional
continued re1ationists.
It's situation is thereupon-for the
first time in this matter-negative
1t has ceased to assault the citadel
of 1926 by new rushes along the path
of gold, and it declines to begin to
assault it by new rusheS along the
path of silver. 1t has lost the ref1a-
zionist flag to Senator Wheeler. Mr..
Wheeler now summons the Congress
to a fresh effort to arrive at the ad-
ministration's own stated price ter
minal, and the administration is
forced into saying:
Rather than go there by silver we
will not go there at ALL
This may be perfectly sound, but
1t transfers the initiative in the price
problem from the White House to
Capitol Hill. 1t demonstrates that
the monetary method of the new deal
is thought by the new dealers in the
executive branch of the Government
to have come-for the moment at
any rate-to its limit.
Public Expenditures.
The same observation must be
made regarding its second method
its public "a. mixtures method. A
strong streak of the philosophy of
% ho off
a sufficient quantity of public expen-
ditures-through for instance. the
P. w. A-would prime the pump"
of private industry and restore 1t to
a full normal flow This idea is in
operation now only hesitantly and
falteringly.
If the P. w. A. and other similar
Constitutional governmental agencies
spend one and a half billion dollars
during 1884, they will be fulfilling all
present realistic expectations. The
normal national income of the people
of the United States is some $50, ,00O,-
100000 annually. Our national con-
structional opportunities in the i'm
mediate future-in the determination
of our railroads, in the replacement
of obsolescent machinery in our fac
tories, in the reconstruction and i'm
provement of our residential housing
in town and on countryside, in the
relocation of industries, in the de-
velopment of subsistence homesteads
plus adjacent industrial employment,
and in numerous other directions
come to $5O000,000,0O0 or $60,000,-
100000 at a most moderate estimate.
The instant future of this country,
irrespective of what defeatists may
say. is colossal.
But what contribution to the
"priming" of it is a billion dollars Or
a billion and half or two billion? It
is like trying to prime" the Missis-
sippi with freshet from a creek
The administration thereupon loses
its public expenditures verve. 1t de-
clines to support the bill Of Represent
ative Kelly of PENNSYLVANIA for mov-