Evening star., 1938-01-17
WASHINGTON OBSERVATIONS
BY FREDERIC VILLIAM VILE.

When Joe Kennedy quits the palpitat-
ing Potomac for the foggy banks of
the Thames, the New Deal will lose, at
critical hour, the principal business
mind that has the ear of the White
House That is circumstance of tragic
Importance from the standpoint of the
financial and industrial world. affrighted
afresh by President Roosevelt's sentence
of capital punishment-no pun in
tended-for holding companies of any
and every hue With the exceptions of
r. F. c. President Jesse H. JONES' Fed
eral Reserve Chairman Mariner 8.
Eccles and Assistant Secretary of Com
tration contains hardly anybody, includ-
ing Mr.. Roosevelt himself, who can be
classed as business man. The reeds on
which the President mainly leans for
counsel on recurring occasions, barring
his platonic parleys with economic
royalists. are professional economists, So
cial workers, statisticians, research ex-
perts. verdant lawyers and starry
'reformers" with fifty-seven varieties of
panaceas for making democracy work"
All of them are richly endowed in mex
perience in meeting pay roll.
X
Donald Richberg, Harry Hopkins. Tom
Corcoran. Ben Cohen, Herman Oliphant,
Roswell Magill, Leon Henderson, Isador
Lubin and Mordecai Ezekiel-to name
only the outstanding luminaries in the
Roosevelt advisory firmament-are all
brilliant specialists in their respective
fields. But from the standpoint of prac-
t1cal acquaintance with the essentials OF
commerce and finance. their best friends
would hardly call them qualified to
grapple with the vital issues affecting
modern business. They would be about
as fit to run United States Steel, General
Motors, General Electric. the B. e. O..
Commonwealth e. Southern or j. p.
Morgan & Company, as Myron Taylor,
Albert p. Sloan, Owen D. Young, Dan
Willard, Wendell p. Willkie or Tom
Lamont would be to teach medicine.
theology or astronomy at Harvard. Was
Mr.. Roosevelt possibly referring to his
brain trust, when he said on Jackson
Day: In our Nation today we have
still the continuing menace of a COM
paratively small number Of people who
honestly believe in their superior right
to influence and direct Government, and
who are unable to see or unwilling tn
admit that the practices by which they
maintain their privileges are harmful
to the body politic"?
&*
When the President on January Il
was at pains to assure his press confer
ence that his vendetta against holding
companies emphatically includes banking
enterprises many of his inquisitors won
dered whether Mr.. Roosevelt remembers
that Mariner E. Eccles, chairman of
the Federal Reserve Board, publicly de-
scr1bes himself as organizer and presi-
dent Of the Eccles Investment COMPANY.
"a holding company for interests in
family estate" and also as president of
the First Security Corporation, owning
and controlling many banks in Idaho,
Utah and wyoming" The White House
scribes were curious. too, as to whether
the master Of the New Deal knows that
one Of his chief hackers on the Pacific
Coast, Amadeo P. Giannini, multi i-mil-
lionaire San Francisco financier, is
founder and chairman of the board of
the Bank OF Italy (now Bank of Amer
lea National Trust d Savings Associa-
tom, and chairman Of the board Of the
Transamerica Corporation. All these
powerful Giannini set-ups have the ~.
pect. II not the actual form, Of holding
companies.
What seems like the launching of
another imitation campaign Is the recent
dinner Siven by the Committee for the
Nation In honor Of the members Ct