Coulee City dispatch. [volume] (Coulee City, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1939-06-22
NATIONAL DEBT WEEK
ATTRACTS NO ATTENTION

"National Debt Week., launched
by the Republican National Committee
came and went without attracting !
anything like the attention the idea
seemed to deserve. Indeed, the idea
President Roosevelt mentioned it In
his address to the national convention
of retailers, radio listeners might have
been deprived Of the best comedy re-
lief of the current season. That seems
pity, for the most VI what there is
to be said, as the President accurately
surmised, the Republicans omitted
saying.
For instance, they pointed proudly
to an exhibit which taught the les-
son that quite lot Of Empire State
buildings could have been built with
the amount represented by the six
year increase in the public debt. As
Raymond Clapper pointed out in his
syndicate column, this was a remark
ably apt illustration. For the Empire
State building is by long odds the
most notorious white elephant among
all structures on earth. Acres of its
sky-piercing floor space have never
been occupied or finished. 1t is a mon
iment to the speculative follies, the
6mazingswaste, resulting from the al
| titudinous financing of the Coolidge
n Hoover era. 1t is a shuddering remind
er of banks that crashed, of savings
that were swept away, Of stalwart
businesses that were needlessly ruined
A reminder, too, Of the mountain of
crushing private debt-that American
corporations borrowed, $128.00O,000,-
900 between 1923 and 1893 load
that was depressing American home
owners and farmers and business men
when the Roosevelt Administration
stepped in to relieve them.
1t is good to have these things
brought to our attention, even in the
form Of labored attempt to pic
ture the most solvent government on
earth in 1899 as tottering on the
brink Of bankruptcy.
Doubtless any American communi-
ties were pleased to learn from the
spokesman sponsored so Justify by the
Republican National Committee that
they could have had Empire State
buildings in place of the new schools,
courthouses, auditoriums, hospitals.
roads and bridges and public parks
and other useful improvements that
the increase in the public debt has
! brought them.
OF course the aim of the Old Guard
; epublicans was to make "debt' an
obscene word, which is economic non
sense. It is an attitude which dis
putes the fact that sound debt puts
. idle money to work, for the highly
essential purpose of purtlng idle men
4 and women to work.
The U. s. gress public debt has
grown 10 billions in six years. Allow
ing for assets held by the Government
the net debt has grown 10 billion and
the whole debt, public and private
including State and national, has
shrunk because the national income
has increased. As for the "menace'
to national credit as portrayed by the
reactionary medicine show, the de-
mand for U. 8. bonds is so keen thit
year that they are selling at the high
est rate and the lowest yields in tn,
entire history Of tine country. They
have to be parcelled out in small frac
lions Of the amounts asked by invest
ors-who include many Republicans
They do actually prefer public i'm
i provements and even the total sum o.
nine billions spent for relief to EN-
pire State buildings.