Evening star., 1934-04-01
CHARGE OF COMMUNISM
IS DECLARED RIDICULOUS
Wallace Believes in Free Speech and
Religion-and Republicans Have
''Regulated," Too.
BY WILLIAM HARD.


n about all this communism
~ in this administration and
what the opposition party
should do about it.
To begin personally, there's Mr.
Wallace. the Secretary of Agriculture.
He's thought to be one of the farthest
gone of the Roosevelt revolutionaries.
A special passion of his, however, is
for free discussion, free debate, free
speech Starting from Moscow, as a
Communist, this ought to take him
just about as far as Siberia.
He also believes fervently in re-
ligion. That should get him fired
pronto from any Communist party
in the world.
Poor Communist.
Personally. as Communist. Mr..
Wallace is one of the poorest l ever
have seen. And then look at his
principal agricultural policy! 1t is a
policy of acreage restriction, of output
restriction. From what Communist
did he learn that?
The only Communist government
in the world-the government of Rus
crease agricultural production. but
trying to expand it. More food" says
Stain Less food" says Wallace.
What's the resemblance?
Oh. says somebody. both of them
Use government to forward their pur-
poses. Yes. But has capitalism never
used government to forward its pur-
poses? And in particular. has capi-
talism never used government to for
ward agricultural production reStric-
ton?
An Old Device.
Why it's one of the oldest devices
Of capitalist governments in distress.
The Colonial Legislatures of the Com
monwealth of Virginia back in the
seventeenth century repeatedly re-
strcted the growing of tobacco They
repeatedly declared that each ter
ritorial unit in Virginia should grow
only so much tobacco. They also re-
peatedly fixed the prices to be re-
ceived by tobacco growers for their
product All of Mr. Wallace's A. A. A.
stuff has an ample precedent in Vir-
ginian behavior right here on our soil
800 years ago. And what had Stain
to do with it? 1t all turned out in
the end perhaps to be nonsense. But
1t certainly wasn't communism.
Let us look at a plain fact. The
purpose of agricultural production re-
striction is to raise prices and profits
for farmers. This is because farmers
are private individual property own
ers. But Communists don't believe
in private individual property owners.
So communism has no motive to raise
prices and profits. Communism seeks,
Of course, in fact. to abolish profits.
It seeks to pay the farmer mere
vage-and a quite low one at that
and then to get his products to the
cities cheap.
Wallace Wants "Kulaks."
II Stain sees a farmer getting rich
he calls him a ''kulak" and herds
him toward timber camp in the
Arctic or assimilates him into col
lective farm or in some other way
promotes his evaporation and disap-
pearance. Mr.. Wallace, on the con-
trary on all our countrysides
trying to give us nothing but "kLlaks.'
Some difference. l should say.
And then look at our whole general
administration policy regarding prices.
agricultural and industrial. all put
together Mr.. Roosevelt wants to
raise the price level to the level of
1928. It is true, admit, that along
about half of his administration
doesn't go along with him on this.
Prof. Warren and Secretary Nor
eenthau are supposed to put prices
up. Mr.. Morgan and Mr.. Llienthal
and the other members of the Ten
nessee Valley Authority and of the
Electric Home and Farm Authority
in their dealings with electric power
and light rates are supposed to put
prices down. And Mr.. Choate and
the other members of the Federal
Alcohol Control Administration in
their dealings with intoxicating bev-
erages are likewise supposed to put
prices down. AS for Gen. johnson
of the N. R. A.. he puts prices up
by permitting price-lifting clauses in
N. r. A. codes and then he puts
them down by exhortations to N. r. A.
code authorities. 1t is easy to ask,
then. in what direction we are going.
One carpins critic has answered: In
what direction is circle?
Price Lifters Dominate.
But, on the whole, the price lifters
have it. The general basic price
notion of the administration is that
prices should 60 up And that is the
precise contrary of Communist ideals.
I feel really quite sorry sometimes for
both the government at Moscow and
the Government at Washington. The
government at Moscow fails to get
prices down to where it wants them,
and the Government at Washington
fails to get prices up to where it
wants them. The Communists strug-
gle unavailingly against the high cost
of living, and the Rooseveltians strug-
gle unavailingly against the low cost
of it. Every government in the world
seems always to be failing at its own
specially. That's what gives writer's
chance to write articles showing
how much abler they are than states
men.
But Mr. Rand of the Committee for
the Nation, though he loves all of the
administrations price-raising en-
deavors-as he should, being manu-
facturer-is strongly opposed to the
pending Stock Exchange control bill
and calls it communistic vociferously
should only like to remind him of
all the communism in Washington
which for more than 40 years has
preceded this bill. 1 should also like
to remind the opposition party of its
responsibility for at least half of that
communism.
The Sherman Law.
Who passed the Sherman antitrust
law. that law which broke the great
Standard Oil Co. into fragments and
which, as the big business men of
that day continuously said, destroyed
the effective cooperative intergra-
ton" of American industry? Who
passed that vicious anti-business
law? The Republican party under
President Harrison.
Who, then, began our present long
series of detailed regulatory" laws