Evening star., 1939-03-26
Conflicting Theories
Retord Recovery
BIZ OWen L. Scott.


President Roosevelt is finding the going
rough in his search for a way to resolve
the issues that are dividing the people
of this country in the midst Of a danger
Gus world.
Vice President Garner Is making as
much trouble for the President in Con-
gress as his ingenuity can contrive. Or
ganized business is giving Mr.. Roosevelt
a polite but obvious cold shoulder. John
L. Lewis and William Green are barely
able to keep their labor cohorts from q
new slugging match. The lines between
the employed and the unemployed are
hardening.
President Roosevelt finds that the
country is preoccupied at the moment
with an intense desire to be good to
businessmen, hoping that sudden show
of kindness will cure all of the troubles
that have afflicted the Nation since 1929.
In fact, the President has observed that
the Idea might be to offer the New Deal
as q sacrifice in the name of "appease-
ment," with this appeasing to call for
the New Deal to go the way Of Austria
and zecho-Slovakia-two extinct exam
pies of appeasement in action.
But apparently Mr.. Roosevelt is not
interested in appeasing business on that
basis. He is assured by the Govern
ment's economists that the whole New
Deal would disappear, the budget could
be balanced by cutting expenses. and
still the problems of business would re-
main-only in an accentuated form ow-
ing to the probability Of renewed acute
deflation.
The result is what looks to many side
line observers here as a highly unreal
istic situation.
Congress seems to be aching to return
to the good old days OF 1881 and 1882,
when Government was doing only those
things that business leaders advised it to
do. The leaders in Congress and in busi-
ness refuse to believe that world-shat-
tering events in Europe and the Far East
can have any Importance whatever in
the operation of the American economic
machine
men can defeat the forces that have Just
driven France to dictatorship; that drove
Germany to grab Czecho-Slovakia so
that she could steal $92, 500 900 in desper-
ately needed gold at time when the
United States is inundated with more
than 10000 900 in gold that has to
be buried in the ground; that threaten
fnrca tho pritiSh m ~ tho
same methods that Germany now Is
using.
So far as can be determined by careful
inquiry in Congress, almost no important
parsonage sees any relationship between
American economic problems and the
breakdown of world currencies, or the
arbitrary action of nation after nation in
barring its markets to foreign products,
or the strangulation of trade that Is
forcing the United States to dump its
wheat and to plan to dump its cotton and
lard in order to find buyers.
The prevalent idea inside and out
side Congress appears to be that the
United States lives in vacuum with
an economic machine that is in no way
geared to the world economic machine.
In that vacuum, congressional leaders
are convinced, kindness can serve as the
force that will make the wheels of Amer
lean industry turn fast enough to pro-
vide jobs for all of the unemployed and
to provide enough revenue to balance
the Governments income and outgo.
But a glance around the world sug-
tho cp1,1tiCy, nf fr1,'c
economic difficulties may not be so SIM
pie as all that. This glance shows that
the nation with the most busily oc-
cupied economic machines are those ma
tions that are ruling not only labor. but
business and finance as we'll, with an
iron hand. France just now is joining
the group of nations in this category.
England is giving serious thought to
joining, with national conscription re-
ported to be on the cards.
In this country President Roosevelt
operates on different theory.
His theory seems to be that the United
States can make up for the effects Of a
breakdown in the worlds once freely
operated economy by piling one subsidy
on top Of another subsidy.
People can't ind jobs that will enable
them to earn an income from which to
buy food and clothing, so the Govern
ment gives them jobs and then provides
them with supplemental food handout
Farmers can't sell their wheat, so the
Government pays the farmer high price
and then dumps the same wheat into
the hands of foreigners at knockdown
price. The South cannot dispose of its
cotton. To meet that situation, the Gov
ernment is getting set to guarantee the
Southern farmer an income and then to
dump cotton abroad for whatever it will
bring.
The result is that, in the midst of q
world crisis, the United States is caught
between two forces. One, in Congress, is
attempting to relieve the effect of the
world crisis by kindness to businessmen.
The other, in executive departments, is
attempting to reach the same goal with
constantly expanding handouts.
Disinterested observers doubt whether
either course is going to get the Nation
very far.
At least two members of the Presidents
cabinet, Cordell Hull, Secretary of State,
and Henry Wallace, Secretary of Agri-
culture, long have insisted that Just two
real courses lie orer tn tho Trpi+od ctotoc