Evening star., 1937-11-21

to a present Of II per cent; and which
brought about decline Of 1875 per
cent IN the issue Of permits for new
construction in the building industry.
This recession had been in the max.
Ing for several months: 1t was only,
however, during late October that it
/ became openly apparent to the pub
Tic. The recession was accompanied
by and made conspicuous by drastic
drops in the prices Of securities on the
exchanges and In the prices Of many
commodities.
Interruption Of Prosperity.
Mr.. Roosevelt and the country were
now faced by what at best must be q
disturbing interruption of the pros
perity for which the New Deal was
claiming credit, and might conoeiv.
ably be something even worse than
an interruption.
In this changed atmosphere Mr..
Roosevelt's mood seemed to change.
He was spending much Of the time at
Hyde Park, and the callers upon him
there began to include many persons
OF a conservative bent of mind. Those
members of his administration who
are prevailingly conservative came to
be more conspicuous among his call
ers; the radicals among his advisers
| less so.
There arose an atmosphere in which
1t was said that Mr.. Roosevelt would,
Tor a time at least, turn toward the
right This expectation and this at
mosphere continued up to the time
Congress met.
There have been occasions before
when Mr.. Roosevelt seemed to be veer-
ing toward the right. when conserva-
tives were more conspicuous among
his callers than radicals. None of the
past occasions have lasted long. There
was a period of several weeks follow
Ing Mr. Roosevelt's reelection, in No
vember, 1896, when it was commonly
said that he was going to make his
second administration an ERA Of good
feeling" This expectation lasted for
a period long enough to cause wide
spread acceptance Of it. But on Feb
ruary 5 last, almost exactly three
months after election, Mr.. Roosevelt
sent to Congress the most radical
measure he had yet prepared, the one
| whlcn would have given him oppor-
tunity to add six new justices to the
Supreme Court.
Congress q Factor.
Besides Mr.. Roosevelt. there is
another factor. There is Congress
itself. At no time during Mr.. Roose-
velt's administration has Congress
been really radical. When, in the
early days of his administration,
Congress was passing the New Deal
measures with overwhelming major
tiles it was doing so in the spirit
OF emergency, in the expectation
that these measures were emergency
statutes which would be repealed so
soon as the emergency was over.
| This assertion, that the measures
were passed because of emergency,
was embodied in many of the stat
| utes themselves. Many of them be-
gin with phrases saying. in effect:
Whereas there is an emergency"
| So unquestioned was the feeling that
| these were emergency measures only
that some of the most important
New Deal statutes set a limit of
time. The original NRA measure,
for example, was enacted to be In
effect only two years. Other New
Deal measures provided that they
should end whenever the President
should dclare the emergency to be
at an end
Mr.. Roosevelt's Congresses passed
his New Deal measures only on the
assumption that they were emer-
gency statutes. His Congresses were
never radical. They were never, as
a whole, even New Deal-except in
the sense that they were willing to
pass New Deal laws solely for the
sake of taking care of emergency.
In all Congress. in both branches
Of it, there is hardly handful Of men
who believe in any material departure
from the American form of govern
ment or from the traditional Amer
ican conception of society.
The willingness of Congress to en-
| 0St 1NC" ACdl IlCdSul CS upOIl lCQucSU
of the President was sharply inter-
rupted after he had made his re-
quest for his court measure Con-
gress, as it was last July and August.
was ready to act generally in the
same spirit in which the Senate de-
clined to enact the court measure.
The House would have declined as
thoroughly as the Senate did. had
the court measure come before the
House for action.
Congress. feeling this way about
Mr.. Roosevelt and his measures, even
at the time the regular session ended
last August. was strengthened in its
fundamental conservatism by the busi-
ness recession that became apparent
few weeks ago. In short, Congress,
as it met last Monday, was less dis
posed to enact new New Deal meas
ures than to repeal or greatly mod
tfy old ones.