Evening star., 1938-12-05

really happening in the business
mechanism of the country that has
been attempted since the days of
the war when America had her first
introspective appraisal, industry by
ganization known as the War In
dustries Board, presided over by Ber-
nard M. Baruch.
How do certain industries relate
to each other, what happens in one
that affects the other, what pushes
employment up and what keeps it
down, what is the impact of inten-
sive competition and what is the re-
tarding process that monopoly
breeds? Questions of this sort are so
basic that one wonders how the eco
nomic system as whole could ever
without penetrating study have been
subjected to the severely regulatory
legislation which has been piled up
in the last few years.
There can be no doubt that abuses
have occurred such as in the sale
of securities or in the exploitation of
child labor or in the neglect of en-
ployerS to pay subsistence wages,
but even conceding all these defects
the reason why the New Deal has
come a cropper is that it never
tackled by scientific means the basic
issues that make all the difference
In the world between employment
and unemployment, production and
economic stagnation.
It is not necessary to consider the
testimony of the first three days of
the Temporary National Economic
Committee as conclusive. The "eco-
nomic prologue'-the material pre-
sented by Commissioner Lubin of
the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Will
lard Thorp of the Department of
Commerce and Leon Henderson. ace
economist of the administration
was intended to lay a foundation
a broad base on which legislative
discussion might be erected Sig
nificantly Senator O'Mahoney, the
committee chairman, said the other
night on the radio that the word
monopoly" had hardly been men,
toned in the first three days of the
hearings and he was emphasizing
this as proof that the purpose of
the inquiry is to get the facts about
business rather than to conduct a
smearing inquisition.
In many respects the committee
Is different from anything that has
been seen here in recent years. It's
. combination of the executive and
legislative branches of the Govern
ment as we'll as a combination of
Senate and House representatives.
Certainly if the whole field of eco
nomic legislation is to be analyzed,
It is great step forward to find all
the agencies of Government which
are primarily affected taking part
IN the study.
Thus we have the representatives
Of the Securities and Exchange Com
mission who look at business through
the eyes of the financial process
the sale of securities to get working
capital. Then there are the repre-
sentatives of the Federal Trade Com
mission, which for 1ears has been
handling cases of Unfair competi-
ton and trade practices generall7.
AS for the antitrust laws, the De-
partment of Justice, which has the
problem of enforcement, has its
representatives on the committee,
too.
Over in the Department of Com
merce business has thousand and
one contacts, so Richard C. Patter-
son, the energetic Assistant Secre-
tary of Commerce, sits on the T. N.
Z. C.-the name by which the COM
mlttee is going to be known. The
Treasury Department., dealing with
taxation, sends Herman .Oliphant,
general counsel, and finally the De-
partment of Labor, with its val
liable statistical data on retail and
wholesale prices, costs of living and
employment and unemployment
figures, has place at the committee
table.
So with representatives of the i'm
portant executive agencies sitting
alongside three Senators and three
Representatives from Congress. it
cannot be said that every essential
interest is not represented some
where in the Investigation.
The representative character of