Evening star., 1936-07-05
TENDENCY OF ROOSEVELT
In CAMPAIGN LEFTWARD
Election Drive Is Expected to Grow in
Appeal to Radicals and Repulsion
to Conservatives.

candidates for reelection either this
year or soon-Democrats thus placed
may feel, as Mr. Garner does, that
they must follow where the COM
mander leads, even though the COM
mander's course should take him to a
political Hades. But throughout the
South are great number of Demo-
Gratis who share the sentiments Of
Senator Glass and others about the
New Deal-but do not share their po-
litical necessities. How far the anti
New Deal sentiment Of the South may
go no one can say. AS yet, there is no
sign of insurgency sufficiently vocal or
sufficiently organized to suggest that
any Southern State may cast its elec-
toral vote against the New Deal. But
the Democrats in the South, especially
the leaders. are essentially conServa-
tive. Whether they can remain DEM
ocratS while their conservative breth-
! ren in the North do not; whether habit
and tradition is strong enough to cause
the conservative Southern Democrats
to tolerate the appeals which Mr..
Roosevelt must make to the radicals
in this campaign, is thing that the
next few months will show.
For his campaign to hold the part
| Of the left that is still with him. and
/ get more of the radicals now disposed
/ to go toward the Lemke- -Coughlin third
| party, Mr.. Roosevelt has devised two
new slogans: Economic royalists." to
deride his opponents. economic free
dom," to describe the promise he holds
out.
Just what is economic freedom"7
The phrase recalls one that the late
President Wilson invented as he be-
gan to rise in public life, "the new
/ freedom Of which Grover Cleveland
said. Sounds f1ne-wonder what it
/ means" The Nation that was allured
by that slogan of some 25 years ago
found, after Wilson became President,
that the new freedom included q
course which for the first time in
American history imposed a compul-
sorry draft on the country. put the
whole Nation under compulsion to bear
arms and jailed those who refused. But
perhaps it is not fair to compare mill.
tary compulsion with economic COM
pulsion, to compare military compul.
sion by President Wilson with the
economic compulsion that America will
assuredly endure if the New Deal in
dureS.
Freedom Under Triple-A.
Economic freedom!" Let's look
at the record" Under Triple-A no
farmer was allowed to raise potatoes
unless he had previously been a raiser
OF potatoes. No farmer was permitted
to raise potatoes for sale without q
Government permit, and he could
raise only as many as the Govern
ment dictated. No farmer could sell
potatoes, and no consumer buy them,
unless they were packaged as the
Government dictated and bore a Gov
erment stamp. All this under penalty
OF the criminal courts. Under Triple
no farmer could raise cotton unless
he had previously been a raiser Of
cotton, and no farmer could raise
more than the Government at WASH
lngton dictated. And so on and so
on. Was that economic freedom?"
Similarly. under N R. A no person
| could set up little ice manufacturing
plant without first getting a permit
from the Government, from the code
authorlty-and since the code author
| ity was made up largely of persons
already in the business, naturally
few permits were issued to new COM
petltorS. This again was enforced
by threat of the criminal courts.
Similar limitations dictated by Gov
ernment, similar compulSionS enforced
by Government. ran through the whole
! fabric of N. r. A. Economic free
dom?" If one should set out to maks
a picture of society from which eco
nomic freedom is starkly absent, one
would simply describe the New Deal.
America imperatively needs to build
up, each individual within himself,
kind of sales resistance" against
slogans. Think of the ones We have
fallen for" during the past 20 years.
In 1916 Woodrow Wilson got himself
reelected to the presidency on
slogan of He kept us out of war"
with the implication, of course, that
if reelected he would continue to
slogan-and then, five months after
Wilson was reelected, we were at
war.
Similarly. if We now fall for" the
slogan economic freedom" We shall,
if the New Deal goes on and comes
to fruit, pass into an economic conf
pulSion as far removed from eco
nomic freedom as going to war was
removed from keeping out of war.
Once in the war, President Wilson
told us it was a war to end all
wars"-and we now know that all
wars are not ended. He told us it was
a war to make the world safe for
democracy'-and precisely since the
year we entered the war, 1917, de-
mocracy has been under a worldwide
attack, which at this moment focuses
upon America and menaces us with
the loss or extreme limitation of our
own democracy. Wilson believed his
own slogans; he himself fell for"
the slogans that his imagination in
vented. 1t may be that in the same
way Mr.. Roosevelt believes in his
slogan economic freedom"-he is even
more subject than Mr.. Wilson to the
magic of phrases, especially Of phrases
he himself invents.
Recall the other slogans we be-
lieved: President Harding's back to
normalcy," President Coolidge's "They
hired the money, didn't they?"-
meaning that our European debtors
must pay back the money they had
borrowed. The slogan Of the latter
part of the Coolidge administration,
"the new economic era" We accepted
that slogan. In bitter pain we saw
it fail us. we experienced the cold
grey dawn of the morning after
but still we believed in slogans. In
1881 many of US believed that pros
perity is just around the corner"
That failed. Yet still we believed the
slogans of the New Deal, of which the
emphasis is now on economic free
dom"