The Waterbury Democrat., 1938-04-20

the scenes and take a look which influenced the meSsa It is supposed to be White House secret, but the President used two different sets of col laborators in the preparation of his program.
 On the message to Congress he followed the advice of his soft-peddlers, Cordell Hull, Henry Wallace, RFChairman Jesse Jones, and Jim Farley. These are the boys who have urged that Roose- welt lean over backward rot to offend the rebellious sensibilities of Congress. As result, the mes- sage was largely factual ex- planation of the measures with which he proposes to combat the recession. It contained only a fifteen-Word reference to wage hour legislation.
 Contrasted to this, Roosevelt's speech to the nation echoed the views of his militant lieutenants. But much more important, it echoed his own personal views. Wage-HOurs Issue
 Running all through the fire side chat, it will be remembered, were references to the failure of consumer demand,' to the neces- sity of creating buying power" and finally to the need of pass ing a wage-hour bill to ensure better distribution of pros perity."
 Behind this, in turn, was the private conviction of the President that his first spending program from 1883 to 1886 had failed large ly because the big fellows at the top had taken out most of the profits.
 Naturally, Roosevelt is not go- ing to come cut publicly and say this, though he came close to it in his fireside chat. But some of his close advisers are saying it for him-in fact, even go so far as to say that the old "trickle down" system of Her. bert Hoover was largely dupli- cated by Franklin Roosevelt.
 The "tricklc down" system was the idea of the late Andrew w. Mellon, who believed that if you fed business to the big firms at the top, without taxing them too f,,o 11,, trickled down to the worker at the bottom.
 Only difficulty was that the system was too well named. The "trickIe" which emerged at the bCttcm was, in fact, only trickle. Ard it is now pretty well recognized by economists of political parties that the big profits which stuck to the top and the meager wages which came out at the bottom, dur ing the Coolidge Hoover days, were an important cause of the depression.
 Quite recently the President has had some figures placed before him which indicate that the "trickle down" system continues during his administration and has been an important cause of re- cession.
 "Trickle Down" Figures
 These figures show that the automobile industry made 25.3 per cent profit in 1886 and 20 per cent in 1887; that confectionery and beverage manufactures made 21 per cent and g per cent profit respectively during the same years; that drug manufactures made 26.6 per cent and 19.9 per cent; that the liquor industry made Is per cent and 15.5 per cent; that tobacco manufacturers made 12.9 per cent and 12.8 per cent; that farm implement manu- lecturers made 119 per cent and 13 per cent in 1886 and 1887, and so on. (These are the conserVa- tive figures of the National City Bank; some government econo- mists figure them even higher) Tn other words, Roosevelt had before him figures showing that big business had waxed fat from his recovery program, while the buying power of the average wage-earner did not increase
 materially.
 Also he had Department of Commerce figures showing that from March, 1887, to March, 1888, there had been a 25 per cent drop in farm prices, while the price drop on $40 various manufactured items was less than 3h per cent.
 Thus parity between farm
 prices and industrial prices was
 not being kept. Small groups of
 manufacturers could pool to fix
 prices while 30,OOO,0O0 farmers
 could not. Thus also labor had
 to pay just as much for manu- OFF TIFF RECORD