Evening star., 1934-04-08

conform to N. R. A. must have re-
fected. on his part, greater wish
that the cost of running the Govern
ment should be kept down.
Mr.. RooSevelt'S actions within this
one field, keeping down the annual
recurring expenses of government,
have been consistent. Excepting the
classes directly affected. veterans and
Government employees, Mr.. Roosevelt's
policy was universally applauded. His
actions within this field have been
persistent. They are easily under
stood. and they make a pattern. They
reflect a fundamental purpose Of get
ting the country back on the track |
through the simple virtue of requiring
the Government to practice economy. |
Had all Mr.. Roosevelt'S policies been |
as clear as this, and consistent with |
this, it is possible he might have re-
tanned sufficient support from the
country to enable him to continue to
overawe Congress and to avert the |
overthrow Of his veto.
Mr.. Roosevelt's policy of keeping
down the regular. annual cost of gov
eminent has been clear and simple. |
Some of his other policies, however,
have been not only inconsistent with |
his policy of keeping expenses down !
they have been inconsistent with |
each other. His policies as whole do
not make an ineligible pattern. He !
has seemed to take one idea from one !
school of thought and another idea |
from an opposing school of thought. |
The paSII1t iS that hic
whole do not, in the current phrase, |
make sense"
When Chaos Threatened.
For this, as respects the past, there |
Is some explanation, even justification. |
At the beginning of his administra-
ton, when chaos threatened, it is |
little wonder if he grabbed each and |
every tool that was at hand. It is |
little wonder if some of his efforts |
were in head-on collision with other |
efforts. At the end Of year, how |
ever. the most clear-eyed observers of |
Washington think that Mr.. Roose- |
velt's most imperative need, for the |
country's good and lis own, is to take |
a calm and leisurely survey of the
policies he has initiated and the in !
stitutions he has set up. To survey /
them calmly and to bring them into |
some kind of consistency, an or
derly whole.
AS things stand, Mr.. Roosevelt's
policies as whole, some aiming in !
one direction and some the other, !,
make a picture which Mr. Walter |
Lippmann has called the Economics
of Bedlam" -Shakespearean English |
for crazy economics.
Among many contradictions within |
Mr.. Roosevelt's policies as a group, |
the spirit of recovery and the spirit |
of N. R. A. together with some other
policies of the administrator fight |
against each other.
The spirit of recovery is one of en-
couraging everybody to do as much |
business and as much work as he can. |
The spirit of N. R. A. on the other
hand is restraint. The spirit of re- |
covery is initiative, energy; it is a
spirit of ''take-the- -brakes-off" of |
"open-the-throttle" The spirit of N. |
r. A., on the other hand, is to clamp |
down" and tighten up" The spirit |
of recovery is to hold out the ex-
pectation of profit-profit is what |
most persons work for. The spirit |
of N. R. A, on the other hand. is to
limit profit. The spirit of recovery
would say to business, Go ahead and
make some profit and then out of
your profit employ more men and pay
them higher wages" But the spirit
of N. R. A. says employ more men
first, whether you need them or not;
and pay higher wages first-let the
profit wait" And when the business
man hears President Roosevelt tell
him to let the matter of profits wait,
the business man wonders uneasily.
He does not doubt MIR. Roosevelt-but
he knows that some important per-
sons in Mr.. RooSevelt's administration
do not look kindly on profits.
Penalties Under N. r. A.
That the spirit of N. R. A. runs
counter to the spirit of recovery, of
expansion, is proved by many of
N. R. AS rules and principles.
N. r. A. in many of its codes
actually forbids men to be enter
prising, threatens them with the
criminal courts if they are enter
prlsing. Under some N R. A. codes
it is a misdemeanor punishable by
fine for textile manufacturer to
set up an additional loom, or for
new man to start in the manu-
facture of cotton, without the con-
sent of those already in the business.
There are similar penalties or re-
stralnts for enterprise in the glass
manufacturing code, and the carbon
black code, and several others-I
have not gone through the codes
in detail.
That N. r. A. has the effect of
retardlng recovery is well understood
by many economists who look on at
Mr.. Roosevelt's experiments wholly
without prejudice, or even sympa-
thetically. AS it is put by Walter
Lippmann Gin an article entitled The
Economics of Bedlam"):
The rice-flxing policies of N. r.
A. raise costs ahead of
profits. thus discouraging enterprise.
They raise prices without increasing
production, in fact by decreasing it,
so that the real net income of the
community tends to fall 1t becomes
more difficult to sell and therefore
more difficult to produce and there
fore more difficult to revive business
and employment"
Copyright, 1894. New York Tribune, Inc
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