Evening star., 1937-04-12

while to get into motion. 1t is some
times year or two before its full
effects are felt. Legislative power to
| FIX prices is already available to our
one-man government in the name
of coal, but an indirect power to fix
all prices has developed out of the
way the Government handles its own
purchases, namely, through the
Walsh-Healey law
just as one man used to corner a
commodity market by having a sub
Stantial amount of stock or grain in
his hands, so the Government, with
its vast purchasing power, is gradually
putting into effect a rice-fixing
scheme which will tend slowly to
elevate all prices Efforts to keep
! prices down will be made by official
oratory and by some rejection of public
bids and by a general outcry about
| ''proflteerS," but speeches against high
| prices do not as a rule affect those
who put higher tags on their articles
of merchandise. In the eighteenth
century France found it necessary to
shoot Storekeepers SO as to control
prices, and even that didn't work, be-
cause bootleg prices soon took the
place Of official prices.
Some day when the working man
finds that all the talk about increased
wages is just talk, that his money
wages may be going up, but his real
wages are being cut every week as his
dollar buys less and less at the store,
maybe there will be a revision of
thinking about one-man government.
Today, the business outlook is the
outlook that one-man government
happens to have. 1t is not the one
vote on the Supreme Court, but the
one vote in the White House. a vote
that is mightier than virtually two
thirds of both Houses of Congress.
For if the people should suddenly de-
sire to repeal any of the powers al
ready granted to Mr.. Roosevelt, they
might readily have two-thirds of the
House of Representatives, but might
muster in the Senate only 63 votes
instead of 64-one less than two
thirds. They could not then recover
the dictatorial powers they had pre-
viously given to the Chief Executive
One-man rule through the veto power
would remain Notwithstanding a nor
NAL majority atthe polls in 1885
congressional elections.
Fateful Decisions.
So the threadbare argument that
President can be removed at the
end of four years, but a Supreme
Court justice holds office for life does
not have any practical application
today. Four years of mistaken policy
can do enough damage to the eco
nomic cycles of a country as to be
lrreparable for lifetime.
That's the crux of today's business
situation as the United States drifts
passively into period of rigid govern
mental control which, for better or
for worse, will be changed only in the
long run when the economic damage
has been done. This began to happen
seven years ago in another cycle
when men chose to ignore the laws of
thrift and supply and demand. The
5Se-1ASA'- dNiSh PAAhOoOPlly VI 1879 now
has been translated in 1887 into
get-something-for nothing doctrine
which, with borrowed billions, is used
as means of mobilizing the public
sentiment of the voters. To them is
held out the bait of more wages for
less work and greater abundance by
less production-another new eco
nomic era" erected on as false a
bottom as that of 1929, but not as
clearly demonstrated yet because the
politicians of Pennsylvania avenue
are much more skillful with their
smokescreens and propaganda ma
chimes than all the tycoons of Wall
Street ever were in the heyday of
their vicious ingenuity
(Copyright. 1879