The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1936-01-20

The New York Daily News
"STARRY-EYED IDEALISTS"
In his recent down-with Roosevelt speech at ST.
Louis ex-President Hoover tcc occasion to snar at
'the starry-eyed dea;sts who periodically discover
that relief is needed and that everything up to date is
wrong" This was an echo of the old familiar COM
plant Of many business people against the New
Deal-thst it is managed, not by hard-headed and
practical business but by starryeyed idealists
and aspiring college professors who don't know red
ink from black
We think this complaint be turned inside
out and shown to be insincere and phony
What is the idea behind the fact that President
Roosevelt has filled his government with economic
professors, political reformers and mugwumps cx-
perts housing and social service and hundred
other things Tugwes anxious to rebuild the country
Hopknses anxious to spend the taxpayers money to
make work for those whom the industries can not
employ?
The idea is this That before Roosevelt big bust
not only ran the government but was the gov
eminent. The Treasury was subject to orders from
Wall Street; the State Department was dedicated to
dollar diplomacy; the Supreme Court was the Ark of
the Covenant of property rights human rights
the President himself by big business and
glad and proud of it.
This system was supposed to be the best. guaran-
ty of prosperity that there was. If the people at
the top taken by every possible means
available to the COVE. nent, the belief was that
prosperity would seep down from them to the
below. AS much prosperity, that u.s. as the masses
we're rightly entitled to-
That philosophy of government hit terrible rut
in the road in 1929 so terrible that the machine was
wrecked think beyond repair. Prosperity
stopped seeping down from the top; misery and fear
began seeping up from the bottom.
When Mr. Roosevelt came in he decided that a
new philosophy of government new for this coun-
try that isl must be tried out since the old one had
failed so wretchedly. Accordingly, he surrounded
himself with the aforesaid experts and idealsts and
put the professional politicians and practical bust
ness men in the shade.
THESE experts and idealists hateful to big
business for this reason: They are disnterest-
ed, they have no personal axes to grind and they
not be controlled or reached by big business.
That is what hurts. The power to govern has
slipped from the hands OF business, operating
through the professional politicians. It has slipped
into the hands of who have spent their lives
studying for the very jobs Mr. Roosevelt has given
them.
Hence the hatred for Mr.. Roosevelt entertained
by many big and little business men-the personal,
blind fury that swels their necks when they think
about him. 1t is their desire for power which he
has thwarted
Everybody wants power. Along with the self
preservation and instincts the lust for power is
one of the strongest human instincts. Sons have
killed their fathers for power and vice versa; fami-
lies have been rent into fighting factions over pow
err; old friends have jumped for anothers
Threats when power was at stake To see the pow
to run the government slipping from their hands
naturally hurts business people When man is
making plenty of money over and above his living
eating and family expenses, his most usual desire
is to use the surplus to influence other people-to
uplft them with libraries force his ideas of right
living them by substituting Anti-Saloon Leagues,
or monkey with the peoples government in the vari-
Gus ways open to man who has money.
Roosevelt has stopped that stuff at least in part
He is as tough minded and courageous the big
business men whose power he has Gndeed, as yet,
in slight degree) shorn away, and he is a better
practical politician than anybody now working to
unseat him. No wonder many business man hates
Roosevelt. And business men being human
the rest of u.s. it is no wonder that they figure out
high-sounding excuses for what is only very hui
man hatred, after all.