The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1938-01-17
REASONS FOR A LITTLE BIT OF LACK
OF CONFIDENCE

Christian Science Monitor:
"The proof is in the present recession. Never
have hourly wages for labor been higher. or hours
shorter Hardly ever has farm purchasing power
been better Total income, nevertheless, is dechn-
ing and no commentator says, he would say II
the President were right, 1T is simply impossible
to have a recession because of the situation IN IN
dustrial labor and agriculture
"This brings US to a conclusion opposite to the
Presidents If there had been reform-the re-
forms involved in braking the flow Of capital into
private work opportunities have no doubt that
the country would be further advanced toward Nh
Roosevelt's income goal of more abundance than 1t
is today.
Redistribution is clearly necessary for our social
health; it is the object of reform, however not the
agent of recovery. And these excellent aims are
not served by the confusion which arises from
blurring the distinction between them. Indeed the
confusion may explain why the national income
still lags so far behind the 1929 level"
With the highest hourly wages and the
employed working the shortest number of
hours per day and week in the history OF
this country, we are informed by friends
and supporters of present policies that
there may be as many as fourteen to fif-
teen million persons unemployed in the
United States today.
After five years Of valiant effort to make
this plan work; after the administration
has borrowed and spent more than twenty
billion dollars, not to mention more than
that number of billions collected in taxes
and also expended, the country is in the
midst of a dangerous recession" and, GER
tainly, regardless of the exact number,
there are some millions of unemployed in
the nation.
Under the circumstances, may some tens
of millions of the country's citizens be par
doned for failure to accept the theory that
the way to national recovery and prosper
ity-in fact, the open door to Utopia-is
according to the policy of fewer and fewer
hours Of labor at higher and higher hourly
figures.
Also, it seems to this newspaper that
these millions are fully. justified in doubt
ing the wisdom of borrowing and chucking
the borrowings into rat holes.
With public debt that is, undoubtedly,
by the reckoning of any reliable and hon
est system of bookkeeping and auditing,
now above forty billion dollars (see the
statement by Senator Byrd of Virginia, re-
Gently made public there would seem to
be not only reasonable but highly convinc-
ing grounds for doubling the wisdom of
the plans and policies of the present ma
tional administration.
Just as NRA and AAA and other alpha
betieal bureaus have frozen and stopped
the flow of business and the recovery of
industry in the past five years, so do all
political attempts to revise the national
and economic laws of the universe by
edicts issuing out of Washington, fail Yet
the authors and promoters of these schemes
persist in their absurd and foolish efforts
and persist in their determination to forge
ahead on these roads which have, so far,
led only to confusion, disappointment and
multiplying difficulties and failures.
NRA proved to be the most gigantic and
costly failure of that character in the his
tory of this or any other country, yet Pres-
dent Roosevelt and many of his supporters
are today striving to have the essential er-
rors, weaknesses and uneeonomic policies
OF NRA fastened on the country by subter-
fuge. Thus it goes all along the line and
with dozens of laws, proposed laws and
schemes, all of which are fashioned and
used with the direct and central purpose
of riveting on the country his plans for
transforming the Republic into some sort
M radical government with. dietatorial
power vested in=his control.
- il aats the experimenting that has been