The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-11-12

presidents by - r,..p..-,.,, the threat that s' " F1'1slicA if it did not do so 1t would starve to death. It is an encouraging sign of our enlarged mental de- velopment that the threat no longer registers. Whatever the issues of the 1886 campaign may be it is a copper-rivetted certain ty that the ''Go Republican or Go Hungry" one will not be dug out of the moth balls.
 Hope Eternal
 The judge of a Federal District Court sitting in Baltimore last week decided that the holding company act passed by the last congress and which called for 8 thorough house cleaning in the public utilities business is invalid ''in it's entirety" Whereupon the financial highbinders have whetted up the edge of the good old hatchet in preparation for another open season on investors. Especially on the Pacific slope where hope bounces eternal like a rubber ball in the hearts of the boys who hang around the stock market. Enthusiasm in the effete East is a trifle more restrained. It is remembered here that a single swallow does not make a Spring. More than one finding of & federal district judge has been booted into the waste paper basket by the august toes of the United States Supreme Court. Just when the Big Nine will pass finally upon the validity of the holding company bill no one knows. There is wilderness of legal technicalities to be over- come but ultimately the court of last resort will make its decision. In the meantime the pathfnders of the law will be cashing in on the delay. Also in the meantime Judge Coleman's decision will serve to strengthen President Roosevelt's hand.
 More Ammunition
 During the Black committees investigation of the utilities lobby in the closing days of the con- greSSional session a Stinking mess of corruption was exposed. The public has short memory and under ordinary conditions it is quite possible that the utilities expose would be no more than 8 nine days wonder. But the inves- tigation has not finished its dirt digging and there is authority for the statement that what has been developed is nothing compared to what remains uncovered. The surface has just been scratched and the amount of political pay dirt to be mined is inestimable.
 There is no question of Presi-
 dent Roosevelt's determination
 to end, once and for all, the
 abuses of the holding company
 system. His indomitable insist
 ence last Spring that the
 Wheeler Rayburn measure be
 passed with all it's teeth intact
 is still fresh in the minds of the
 people. Despite the widespread
 propaganda that he was robbing
 the widow and the orphan of
 their last farthing which had
 been invested in utilities securi-
 ties the man on the street knows
 that he was acting not as 3
 destroyer but as a preserver of
 the fortunes of the innocent
 investor.
 Every measure, passed in the interest of the plain people as a result of White House inspiration and pressure, which is thrown into the scrap heap by the courts furnishes more ammunition to the President for the fight which IS coming a year hence. Nothing that MT. Roosevelt has done or said has served to shake the belief of the common man that at last he has a bona fide friend in the presidential chair. If then the work of the president is to be un- done by judicial action on points of law about which the people know nothing and care less the reaction is going to be directed not against MT. Roosevelt but against the legal system which sabotages his efforts.
 Looking Back
 Without doubt the Republican attack in 1886 will develop the