The times-news., 1937-05-06
NEWSPAPERS OPINIONS
ANOTHER SCHEME cRUMBLEs

ANOTHER SCHEME CRUMBLES
The present condition of that pretentious and
amazing ship, planned economy" is such that it
is with great difficulty she can now be kept afoat.
Never at any time seaworthy craft, there are so
many leaks it is no exaggeration to say there exists
no real hope she can be plugged up or repaired.
Her captain may not know that yet, but nearly
all the mates and most of the do. And it is
getting harder all the time to keep the knowledge
from becoming general. To drop nautical meta
phors and get down to facts, the simple truth is
that all Semblance of an ordered scheme CO.
herent plan has disappeared from the Roosevelt
administration, and it is at it's most confused
and disordered worst.
The gay young planners who in the beginning
of the New Deal started out to make America over
on new lines have gone away or lost heart Through
their influence the president, an incredible num-
Der of gaudy and expensive experiments were un-
dertaken and at one time they did have well-de-
fined governmental theory concerning which they
were most enthusiastic. The central, though always
cloudy, idea was complete federal regulation and
control of industry agriculture, capital and COM
merce, all in the interests of genuinely Utopian
state in which wealth and work would be evenly
distributed and everybody be content,
1t was noble though not very new thought and
naturally of strong appeal to the masses of the
people. The trouble, of course is that it won't
work. And it is the clarity with which that has
been demonstrated which is at the bottom of the
situation in Washington today. That fact, clear to
good many who were swept along in the first
part of the Roosevelt regime by the emergency, Is
now being more generally grasped, the result be-
ing an underneath resentment among heretofore
supporting statesmen impossible not to notice.
Some of the most friendly Roosevelt commentators
have begun to write about it. Attributlng the re
VOLT to bad presidential judgment in three partcu-
lar things First, his effort to seize the court Sec
ond his grab for greater power in his reorganza-
ton plan and third, the long and painful silence in
the matter of the sit-down strike.
1t is undoubtedly true that these things have
greatly panied of the presidents best friends,
but they hardly would have caused the present feel
ing had success stamped his experiments as a
whole The real trouble is that success has not at
tended them, the real truth is that most of them
have not worked at all. Neither departmental pro-
paganda nor the "freside chats conceal from
those close enough to the facts that the whole
costly business has begged down.
The relief situation is in a conceded mess The
federal finances practically out of control The
gold policy has put the Treasury in hole where
whether the dollar is further devalued or let alone
involves equally delicate adjustments, the results
of which no one can foresee. The agricultural pro-
gram is shot to pieces. The housing program is up
in the air. The most recent experiment to crumble
is the so-called ReSettlement Administration, which,
it is now officially admitted is to be largely aban-
doned
1t is to discontinue altogether the idea of con-
structing government-owned towns where modern
houses could be furnished at low cost to small wage
earners That was fine idea, but after one town
been constructed at great expense,
it is discovered to be economically unsound. 1t is
now declared the RA henceforth will confne itself
to making rehabilitation loans to needy farmers,
but the whole vastly propagandzed town construc-
ton scheme has been scrapped Thus comes to an
end one of the most grandiose and absurd OF all
the New Deal planned economy experiments-upon
which has been wasted more than hundred NIL
lion dollars and two years of time. Among the IN
cidental consequences of the abandonment will be
the throwing out of work of several thousand men,
who now will go back on the relief rolls from
whence they came.-Frank Kent.