Evening star., 1938-01-01
What Next?

The violence OF the administration
drive against big business-as the insti-
gator of the business recession-has left
the country rather breathless, wondering
what next. Its spokesmen have told
business it must come to heel or else!
The ultimate step, as in other nations
where a government has taken over the
affairs of its citizens, would be to call out
the Army and the Navy.
The attacks of Assistant Attorney Cen
eral Robert H. Jackson and Secretary
Harold L. Ickes upon big business will be
interpreted as attacks upon business in
general. There has been no attempt by
Mr.. Jackson, who is supposed to be the
trust buster in the Department of Justice,
to name specifically the evil doers in
business, but he engages merely in gen.
erallzations that might include many
business men. MIR. Ickes, it is true, re-
ferred to book dedicated to the thought
that sixty families rule America today.
President Roosevelt, speaking more
Ickes, suggested at his press conference
yesterday that some distinction should
be made between the malefactors of
great wealth and those of wealth who
are not malefactors. Apparently it is
to be his effort to convince the people
that his administration is seeking to i'm
prove the behavior of only a small
minority of American business men and
that the great majority are not bad at
all. That, however, is likely to be diff
f1cult to carry home either to the ordi-
nary man in the street or to the men of
business, big or little.
Capital has been driven to cover by
fear-fear Of the New Deal policy which
attacks monopoly in one breath and
fosters it in another, which seeks to raise
the costs of production and thereby
prices by legislation and inveighs against
high prices through its spokesmen. The
N. r. A., now defulnct not through action
Of the Roosevelt administration but by
reason of a decision of the Supreme
Court, encouraged monopoly and was a
peril to the smaller business man, with
its codes and agreements. Twice the
administration placed upon the statute
books laws permitting the fixing of prices
for bituminous coal, and the last one
has stuck. One of the wisest and most
far-seeing men on Capitol Hill four years
ago declared that it was the evident
purpose Of the New Dealers to foster
monopolies and then to have the Gov
ernment take them over, on the theory
that private monopolies were enemies of
the consuming public. Does any one
believe that a government monopoly,
politically controlled, would be any better
for the people than private monopoly?
At the very time that the administra-
ton is proclaiming the outrage of high
prices for many commodities, it is seek
Ing to have Congress enact two major
pieces of legislation which will increase
prices still further the wages and hours
bill and the crop control bill. They will
increase the costs of production of all
manufactured products and will increase
the prices to the consumer of all agricul-
tural products. That is the kind of
thing that does not make economic sense.
The administration having put its
hand to the pillow, will continue it's drive
against big business-or business, to put
1t more plainly-unless there is a revul-
sion of feeling in the country. Congress,
which has been inclined to be more
must be encouraged rather than lashed,
II the recession is to halt, is returning
to Washington. 1t may be that the
elected representatives of the people will
take hand In this situation.