Evening star., 1937-06-23
Shadow Boxing.

The Senate. having wiped the sweat
OF economy out of its eye, has passed
the 81 ,500,000000 relief appropriation bill
as desired by President Roosevelt. With
q great deal of noise and publicity, an
attack on the bill to reduce the total
sum to billion dollars was heralded
several weeks ago. When Senator
Bridges of New Hampshire, just before
the measure was passed, moved to cut
the appropriation by s500,O0Oo 900, it was
voted down without even the dignity of
a roll call.
The Senate by very considerable
vote stripped the bill of the Byrnes
amendment, which would have made it
necessary for States and municipalities
to put up 40 per cent of w. P. A. prof.
ect-unless they could show that they
were unable to do so. This was the one
rather feeble gesture toward economy
which the Senate Appropriations Com
mittee had INDUCED in before report
Ing the bill to the Senate.
Almost as much is said these days
about economy as used to be said about
balancing the Federal budget-and just
about as much is being done about it.
With the public debt now above $685.
O00000,000, the administration goes right
ahead planning to spend money blindly.
Wllfully blindly. too, for it, the ad-
ministration, has turned its back on
census of unemployment and prefers to
guess at the number of employed. The
only reason that suggests itself for this
antagonism to an accurate census of
the unemployed is that the administra-
ton wants as much money to spend for
'relief' as it can get from Congress,
without regard to the amount of relief
money actually needed. There is an
election coming on.
When Senator Lodge of Massachu-
sets submitted an amendment to the
relief bill, proposing a very sensible
census-which would take the popula-
ton, the number of persons employed
and the number of persons unemployed
he was able to muster only thirty votes
in the Senate for his proposal. Surely
the arm of the President is long-When
by a mere statement that he does not
believe a census of unemployment is
necessary he can control the Senate of
the United States in this fashion. 1t is
true that the Senate has adopted a reso-
luton calling for a study of the unem-
ployment situation in this country, but
it does not make provision for census
OF the unemployed. To bring up the
Senate resolution is merely Qulbble.
The fact appears to be that the ad-
ministration does not wish to be inter-
fered with by cold, hard figures on unem-
ployment when it comes to Congress to
ask for relief funds.
AS Senator Lodge pointed out when
he spoke for his amendment: "It is
little short of astounding that in the
United States of America we still do
not know the facts on our most i'm
portant single national problenl-the
problem of the man and woman who are
willing and able to work but cannot find
q job. We do not know how many of
them there are, where they are, or what
the nature of their unemployment is"
The Government has expended many
billions Of dollars for relief in the past
four years. 1t is planning to continue
spending billions, until there are no
more billions to spend. When the bot
tom of the barrel has been reached,
national credit-and the American peo->
ple-Will be in a sad way.