Evening star., 1934-08-12


the two Morrises. What we're the re-
suits? He established a bimetallic
system that was failure from the
start. He created a domestic coinage
that was to drive out foreign coins in
three years-and drove them out in
IS. He set up central bank that
expired amid national disaster. He
set up a traffic system that caused
endless bitterness and was major
cause of the Civil War.
Can't Foresee Needs.
This is no disparagement of Ham
ilton- He is the one great economic
planner of our history. The lesson to
be drawn from the experience of Ham,
ilton and Lycurgus ard all those be-
tween is that no man in history has
'been able to foresee economic needs
far enough in advanc. to plan for
them on the grand scale. No man
has been able to analyze existing eco
nomic institutions with certainty
sufficient to justify his tearing them
to pieces and setting up in their place
some pet individual system of his
theoretical devising. Ruthless eco
nomic planning with pad and pencil
in q Government Office is an inter-
esting indoor sport. In practice it
is a form of megalomania.
Fortunately this country has never
had any experience with the tyran-
nical type of economic planning. Late
ly we have had series of desperate
experiments which superficially bear
some resemblance to dictatorial eco
nomic planning.
All this is easily explained. In
March, 1888, the country, in the
throes of a grievous depression, was
in hysterical and incendiary mood.
A bewildered Congress was glad to
turn responsibility over to the Execu-
tive. The administration had been
elected to Office on its claims to a
superior genius that by political leger-
demain could end depression, and to
a warmer sympathy for the masses
that by social legislation would cure
economic injustice. 1t had to move,
and move quickly.
That is the whole story. Radical
experiments have been tried, one after
another, in an effort to live up to
campaign promises. They have been
possible because the country in gen.
eral and Congress in particular
thought a desperate emergency ex-
isted. In 1917 a war emergency led
to a similar suspension of ordinary
legislative control. In all that has
happened in the last year and a half
there is no indication of radical eco
nomic planning. Unhappily enough,
there is no indication Of any kind of
planning whatever.
Consider the monetary program.
The suspension of the gold standard
was dictated by panic. 1t certainly
was not planned.
The imitation act was no part of an
executive plan; it was Senate omni-
bus carrying all the monetary heresies
of the last century hitched to the tail
of an agricultural act. The gold-pur-
chase scheme was an experiment sud-
denly devised to meet an outburst of
nationalistic resentment of currency
devaluation in other countries. espe-
cially Japan. Devaluation was a be-
of the recovery program and the
threats of an infiationist Senate group.
The silver subsidy was an abject sur
render to political bloc.
This is not planning; it is just one
experiment after another in response
to external pressure. When a dictator
plans to initiate, he initiates. Lycurgus
"quenched the iron money with vine
gar" so that 1t was too brittle to ex-
port.
No One Knows N. r. A.
Consider the N. R. A. The Senate
had passed a suicidal 30-hour bill, and
the House was dallying with it. Some
thing had to be done. A bill was
drawn up, a vague and indefinite
measure compounded of mixture of
the Swope plan, the ideas of the
United States Chamber OF Commerce,
various amateur plans, sundry schemes
to get rid of the antitrust laws and
q lot of ill-digeSted theories of over
production, consumer power and tech
biological unemployment. This pot
pourri was passed as the N l. r. A
Nobody knew what the law meant
when it was paSsed-and who does
now?
Any sort of real economic planning
presupposes very SPECIFIC economic
theory and an inhexible determination
to put it through. The N. r. A. in
some obscure fashion was to reduce
the evils of competition. 1t was to
increase employment by forcing
shorter hours and to increase general
purchasing power by forced increase
of wages. None of this was in the
law. of course, but was read into it
after its passage.
1t is a question how far this sort
of interference could 60 without in
tensifying the depression even when
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