Imperial Valley press., 1939-05-28
Congress Looks
Into Depressions
BY CHARLES p. STEWART

BY CHARLES p. STEWART
Senator Joseph C. OMahoney's
so-called monopoly committee"
an ordinary congressional commit
NAM is getting into some very in
teresting testimony relating to the
causes of economic booms and
slumps.
This committee, by the way. isn't
an ordinary congressional commit
tee. It's members include represen-
tatives from both the upper and
lower houses on Capitol Hill. They
also include representatives from
various cabinet departments and
independent governmental boards
and bureaus. The quiz isn't prop
erly monopoly investigation,
either. Senator OMahoney's origi-
nal proposition was that our own
national (and to a considerable
extent world conditions have so
greatly changed in the last two
or three generations that we no
longer understand the state of So
ciety that we're living in. Monopo-
lies may enter somewhat into the
problem, but the senator isn't so
sure that they're an important
factor in 1t. He's trying 10 arrive
at an all-around, intelligent con-
cluSion.
When Herbert Hoover was Sec
retary of commerce he conducted
a boom and slump investigation,
run principally by Edward Eyre
Hunt, one of his most trusted as
sistants. Secretary Hoover's and
Inquisitor Hunts assumption was
that booms and slumps automati-
cally are cyclical. They quizzed on
the theory that business gradually
overdoes itself more and more dur
ing a prosperous period until final
ly it blows up. They argued that,
If it could be warned in time, it
would apply the brakes-and then
there'd be no ensuing slump. They
didn't say that there wouldn't be
waves in the economic graph. They
did say that tremendous crests and
fearful troughs could be eliminat-
ed, If the commerce department
kept businessmen SO informed as
to take in sail at proper intervals
perhaps every 20 years, reckoned
as about the normal boom m-slump
cycle.
The O'Mahoney committee evolves
the notion that we've been on the
swell of boom since approximately
the era of Columbus. It's had its
little depressions. but of small con-
sequence until just now: now we're
coaSting down the real thing. 1t
may still be cyclical, but such cy-
cles-the astronomical kind. Mere
aeons involved!
An Experts Opinion
The committee had Political Eco
nomical Professor Alvin H. Hansen
OF Harvard on the witness stand
the other day.
With the discovery of America,
as DR.. Hansen points out, this
country started out from scratch.
1t couldn't do anything but de-
yelop. It's population grew. It's re-
qulrements grew Possibly it over
grew itself locally here and there.
but there always were others here
and there to absorb its local over
flows
IF, says DR.. Hansen, Optimism
had carried railroad building too
far at the moment, if a city had
been temporarily overbuilt, the
damage was short lived. Expansion
and growth soon made good the
error
"One can't repress the thought. +"
the doctor adds, that perhaps our
whole industrial revolution of the
last 200 years has been nothing
but a huge boom"
Then the Doc goes on. There
was, he remarks, "the tremendous
growth in the automobile and re-
lated industries-which have ceas-
ed to grow, as did the railroads of
the COS. It's the cessation of growth
which is disastrous.
We need something new. OBJ
serves the Harvard doctor. and we
need increasing population to abb
sorb it-and what we've got al
ready. And the populations ap-
preaching the static.
No Panacea?
The doctor doesn't think there's
panacea.
He just doesn't think there's n
mathematical test"
Nor does he think of ANYTHING
new to supplement the automobile
Hitting on something else, he sug-
gests, may take years.
It's scientific-like germs or as
tronomy.