Imperial Valley press., 1937-06-11
News Behind the News
Scre,cier Phases of the NeW Deal
Too Numerous to be NeUS NOu
and Then One Stands Out :.

WASHINGTON = Attention would be called
oftener to the screwer phrases of New Deal
policy conflict If the accumulation OF them had
not long since tended to make the spectators
Injured.
A few eyebrows may lift a bit, however
when administration thoroughly committed
to further regulation of industry blithely junks
its only fact-finding staff of expert accountants
and economists available to analyze industries,
their problems and practices.
At the end of long period of seemingly
calculated attrition, the Economic Division OF
the Federal Trade Commission will be overooard
after July l unless Congress meanwhile assigns
to it special investigation.
This is the division which recommended legis-
lation which eliminated squeezes and corners
from the cotton market the packers and stock
yards act and the commodities exchange act.
In its recent milk investigation it exposed
combinations of producers and milk companies.
Once its work did much to break up the "tobac
trust" 1t made the official study of the steel
industrys baSing point system and few years
ago proved hat the bread industry wasn't max
ing unreasonable profits. 1t did all the cost
studies for the government during the war
High spot in the divisions big recent nvesti-
cation of middlemen and farm income is its re-
port the worlds largest grain market at
Chicago 1t found large grain operators were
able TO manipulate the market to their advan-
tage and the disadvantage of others, with
squeezes and even close approaches to corners.
1t showed that when wheat went up cents
ouSnel one minute and D cents down the next,
someone was being squeezed.
Years ago, however the late Federal Trade
Commissioner William E. Humphrey began to
plug for mo more Investigations" Proteges of
the e-powerful ex-senator Reed Smoot of
Utah. still entrenched at the Budget Bureau,
have helped weaken the division. And lately
Commissioner Ewin Davis from Tennessee, has
seemed TO favor abolishing the division.
Originally the unit was expected to make
Investigations the direction of either house
of Congress, of the President, or on its
initiative That was whitfield to the point where
before the division could act. Later the Budget.
Bureau ruled no investigation could be made
without specific congressional appropriation and
that rule has come to that the President
and the bureau must also approve.
The crushing blow came this year when Bud
get Director Dan Bell telephoned the FTC and
asked resubmssion of budget estimates along
certain lines.
But that eliminates the economic division"
he was informed
I'VE know it," the director replied.
The division has only ITO employees, who earn
an average of $4,000 year. The relatively small
expense Of its maintenance leads observers to
believe that there is more behind the elimination
of an appropriation for it than the purpose OF
economy gesture.
Apparently the only thing that might save the
economic division from extinction would be pass
age of the proposal to investigate public utility
propa ganda, which has been passed by the House,
or Joint passage of Congressman Withrow's re-
solution TO investigate unfair trade practices fl
nancing charges, and other phases OF the auto
mobile industry.