The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-02-14
Liberal Viewpoint
By DR. HARRY ELMER BARNE.

A NOINAIDC0ON1E1IN OAIlGAO v In hAS 49,
~ p~ressible Philadelphia p%ublicist, is tearing
up and down the country at his old job of saw
ing the Constitution. Speaking at a meeting
of the New York State Bar Association, he de-
nounced the doctrine recently set forth by Chief
Justice Charles E. Hughes in the Minnesota
mortgage case, to the effect that a national
emergency can constitute the basis for a mod1-
fcation of conventional judicial rulings. He
assailed as a comparable menace Dean Clark's
doctrine of a paramount social need"
Paramount social need is but a euphemistic
phrasing of the word emergency. The doctrine
Of emergency as a justification for federal
usurpation was once characterized by the SUI
preme court as the most pernicious Of c%onstitu-
tional heresies. There is no suggestion in the
Constitution Of any right to declare q mora
forum on constitutional provisions simply be-
cause of an emergency"
A S evidence of the fact hat we are a country
IA characterized by wide differences of opinion,
I have Just received a communication from the
| Constitutional Convention Club of New York
City demanding not merely the stretching OF
the Constitution to meet an emergency, but the
framing of a new Constitution to create a new
social order. The club defends its position on
the following grounds:
Americas economic system agriculture, in
dustry, banking) which has grown up under the
present Constitution is dislocated and insecurity
of livelihood has become a national nightmare.
"a great and ever-growing army Of workers,
now approximately 5,OOO,0 900, is unemployed and
hundreds of thousands are destitute in the midst
Of plenty.
Factories are idle while men and women
willing to work are forced to seek charity from
agencies unable to meet even their most print
tive requirements.
"Granaries are filed to overlooking, but
farmers suffer bankruptcy and worse while great
numbers of industrial workers are hungry.
Tens of thousands of children are under
nourished and the future health and stamina
of the nation are being irreparably damaged.
Hundreds of Thousands of our young men
are eXiles from homes where unemployment
made them a burden, cumming the country,
exposed to disease, criminality and irretrievable
generalization.
Armies of young people are graduating from
our schools and colleges with no prospect of
being absorbed into the economic system
pariahs in their own land and among their own
people.
w can produce goods of all kinds in great
abundance, but under the present lack of sys-
tenn we can not distribute the goods among the
people, due to private ownership and control,
competition and production for profit instead
OF for use. ProdteerS are in the saddle; the
people are forgotten.
UNEMPLOYMENT of labor-saving machinery
~ Tor the purpose OF prOnt-maklng makes
certain a permanent army of unemployed so
large that no form Of dole or insurance will be
able to take care of it.
1T is now obvious that no solution can be
found short of social control of economic factors
and this can not be accomplished without a
basic change in the Constitution. The nation
needs recognizing in the light of the twentieth
century.
g constitutional structure adequate to the
America of the last decade of the eighteenth
century is not adequate to the America of the
fourth decade of the twentieth century. The
tremendous social, industrial and scientific de-
velopments of the past $50 years put this fact
above dispute. The conditions Of the two eras
are so different that only a psychological con-
nection remains and even this is fast disappear
ing under the stress of economic depression.
The convention Of 1887 was called to over
come chaotic conditions in government, trade
and finance that threatened the new nations
life, and it worked out a new coordination of
powers and functions. Conditions today demand
the same kind OF action"
Those who, like Congressman Black are so
much alarmed lest the Constitution be tempo
rarily stretched or suspended will do we'll to
realize that the alternative is not saving the
Constitution intact, but losing it altogether. And
there are some who even think it more impor-
ant to save the country than to save the Con-
stitution.