Evening star., 1935-08-25
President Is Now
Changing Jobs
BY OWEN L. SCOTT.


experiments, forcing reforms, corralling
new powers for the Executive, planning,
acting and driving ahead.
That job Is about ended with the
adjournment of Congress. The emer-
gency no longer impresses people. They
have turned their attention from the
excitement of one dazzling Washington
performance after another to the more
personal problem of trying to make a
living in spite of, or with the help of,
the Government.
So President Roosevelt, provided by
Congress with nearly all the powers and
plans for which he has asked, is faced
with the problem of turning from as
saults on the old order of things to the
now completed new set-up function
effectively.
His first Job involved constant, rapid
fire action to keep the people aroused
to the need for change or to take ad-
vantage Of their desire for change. The
President proved a master of that type
of performance. In spite of tales about
presidential defeats on one legislative
plan after another, the fact Is that the
White House has had from Congress
Just about what it wanted on every vital
point The national planning machine
Is built in the way that Mr.. Roosevelt
desired it.
The second job, just ahead, calls for
new technique and other abilities than
the first. Painstaking details of admin
istration will carry more importance
than planning for new ventures. Fewer
chances will occur for grand gestures;
more for carefully arrived at admins
trative decisions that will spell success
or failure Of the ambitious plans ap-
proved by Congress. Those plans sooner
or later will affect the lives Of nearly all
citizens. The interest Of these citizens
and others will be in the functioning
Of the various programs; not in alluring
descriptions of the future hope that
they hold out.
Mr.. Roosevelt's new problem is to put
his promises to work, now that Congress
has given its o. K. to 60 ahead
The size of that job is staggering to
the administrators They can be ex-
guidance, and Mr. Roosevelt increasingly
NdAA 1C OhRCNIC0 w bCOOIlC oCQ Al
problems Of administration.
Seven months have passed since the
President asked Congress to give him
four billion dollars to be used in shifting
the Nation from dole to a work-relief
basis. Nearly five months have elapsed
since Congress gave him the money.
Yet today that most ambitious of New
Deal plans presents more problems than
accomplishments.
Promises made at moment when four
billion dollars seemed like a lot Of
money cannot be fulfilled. Those billions
would feed great numbers of people,
but, as it has turned out, they will not
cover wage and material costs in the
type Of program that Mr.. Roosevelt vi
stoned to give jobs to those people.
So the President finds States and cities
not satisfied, organized labor. not salts
fed, voters, at least in Rhode Island,
not satisfied. and many Of the relief
workers themselves not satisfied. He is
unable to provide the volume of useful
work or the type of useful work that
he described to the country in January.
If jobs are created on the scale he
proposes, the money Will be used up
and more billions then would be needed
/ next year
Plenty Of administrative problems to
keep any President busy are wrapped
up in that single New Deal project. 1t
Is but one Of many. If they are solved
there will then be the problems raised
by the country's new program of old
age insurance and its budding venture
into unemployment insurance on a
State-Federal basis.
The country appears not yet to appre-
ciate the scope of the venture into ma
tional insurance approved by Congress.
Nothing that eventually will directly
affect SO many people has been enacted
in the recent legislative history of the
Nation.
Next January will give the country its
first pay roll tax. This tax, like the
processing tax, is New Deal creation
and one that provides the heart of the
social security plan, just as the process
ing tax is the heart of the farm program.
At first the tax will apply only to
employers of four or more persons and
will be payable January /, 1897, on the
pay rolls of the previous year. But
ployers and all workers in industry will
feel the tax. In the end it will amount
to per cent of the countrys pay roll,
with employees paying 3 per cent and
employers s per cent.
OF most direct effect on the bulk of
the country's population is the old
age insurance system. This is sys-
tenn of forced saving. through the pay
roll tax medium, which is designed to
assure all workers in industry a pen
sion ranging from $17.50 to $81.5 per
month, after they reach the age of IS.
Unemployment insurance starts on a
narrower basis, with plans dependent
upon State laws. But the whole ven-
ture Is the beginning of a system vast
in scope, creating problems Of admins
tration that will need to be solved by
Mr.. Roosevelt.
At the Presidents request, Congress
has voted to reshift the controls in the
Federal Reserve banking system. The
country has been told that Senator
Glass Of Virginia won sweeping VIC
tory for orthodoxy in the new bank law.
Actually, astute New Deal analysts say,
he came out decidedly second best, with
victory really going to Mariner S. Eccles,
governor of the Federal Reserve Board.
AS result of that victory, Mr.. RooSe-
welt now is given an opportunity to take
control of the machinery that provides
the country with its bank money or
credit.
Credit control, formerly in the hands
of bankers, is wreSted from them and
FRO in, hot