The Waterbury Democrat., 1938-01-07
. BEHIND l THE SCENESI WASHINGTON M RopMEY puTcHER-A
 Democrat Washington
 Correspondent Behind FDR's Plan To Curb M nopolies Is A Secret
 6-Part Program

Washington, Jan. 7-The secret New Deal program for dealing witf the monopoly problem and curbine great concentrations of financial economic power calls for action along these lines:
 1. Rewriting the antitrust laws in the light of Supreme Court de- cisions which have made those laws unenforceable.
 2. Revision of the Federal Trade Commission statutes in such manner that the Supreme Court will be compelled by law to respect the FTC's finding of fact in monopoly cases.
 3. Disqualification of all identi- cal bids by companies seeking gov- ernment business.
 A tax program which will ease or remove the corporation surplus profits tax as it applies to small corporations, but keep it operative for big corporations.
 5. A general policy of heavy taxa tion of "over-siZed" corporations, possibly with the aim of making it impossible for holding companies to operate in interstate commerce.
 6. Requirements that individual corporations doing interstate busi- ness be required to have a certain number of competitors. A large in- dustrial corporation, for instance, might by prohibitive taxation or some other method, be prevented from doing more than 25 per cent, or some other arbitrary percentage, of the business in its industry. For All or Part
 So there it is. You will notice that the program gets more radical with each point.
 Roosevelt is in sympathy with and may fight for part or all of this formula. It is espOused by Assistant Attorney General Robert Fl. Jackson, Secretary of the Inter for Ickes, and other officials on the inside group-for which Jack son has been talking in his recent speeches.
 The administrations past sins of omission and commission as to monopoly suggest the possibility that the President may not go through with the program, although there is strong political incentive to do so, and the recent Jackson IckeS speeches were made in full aWRreneSs of their political value.
 Furthermore, Congress has lately shown a disposition to ditch any thing Roosevelt wants badly. And, finally. there's no assurance that the program, even if passed in full, would be any more effective than previous antitrust statutes.
 Three-Ply Motive
 Summing up motives behind the current official outcry against "big business" you have:
 TIRST-Obvious 1888 and 1940 political potentialities of trust busting crusade, coupled with efforts to show that business-not govern naent-caused the depression;
 SECOND-RooSeve belief that government must regulate business and not let business control govern mcnt. plus his belief that business cannot run itself - into anything except disaster:
 THIRD-Hope that public bally- leo against high prices will drive h,gh prices down. Inventories move faSter if prices go down. this theory holds. Lower prices for building materials are essential to any build inc boom. And a building boom. in turn, is considered by many as the only alternative to more federal spending.
 Repudiates Old Theory
 Although critics hark back to MIRA and its encouragement of mono reiistic practices, current adminis- t-:'-ction attitude completely repudi- stes the old, NRA theory that in Gustry could regulate itself from y,thin. NRA broke down. Anti t,ust laws broke down long before t,,e Supreme Court took to itself the tst-lCIAOll Ol OCClOlIlS III lllOANluudl csseS whether combinations in re- sraint Of trade were reasonable"
 The FTC's function was to find t,le facts on which the court must ase it's decisions, but the court
 cfused to respect it's findings.
 It now takes four or five years prosecute an antitrust case trough the Supreme Court, and
 government usually starts out without much hope of winning That's why it sometimes has been Hing to accept consent decrees, ; r1der which defendants agree to ';andon certain monopolistic prac-
 ,cs.
 Copyright, 1888, NEA Service, Inc )
 Steel grows tired when submit tad tO severe strain for a nun1he,.