The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-08-01

EdsOn economy wh c h will provide ceremonial employ ment.
 Conservative businessmen are still pretty well unconvinced on the practicality of what they consider Murrays radical ideas. They look on booms and depressions as natur- al business cycles which nobody can do anything about. They don't think it possible to shape all related gov ernment policies on taxation, public works, wages, working conditions, foreign trade, agriculture, industry, development of natural resources and the control of investments, competition, monopolies and trade practices so that they will all make perity.
 The other side of the argument in these preliminary hearings is be- ing given by Murray's three CO., sponsors in the Senate and by lead- CTS from among the more than 100 co-sponSorS in the House.
 Senator Joseph c. O'Mahoney of Wyoming presents the need for such legislation. O'Mahoney was chairman of the pre-war Tempo rary National Economic Commit tee and his presentation is a sum- mary of the economic facts of American life as determined by TNEC.
 FULL EMPLOYMENT AND
 WORLD PEACE
 Senator Ebert D. Thomas, of Utah, chairman of the Senate Com mittee on Military Affairs, presents the need for full employment as a factor in maintaining world peace.
 Senator Robert F. Wagner, the fourth co-sponsor and chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, in whose hands the full employment bill will be studied, has still another approach to this question. It is a report on the En- ployment Stabilization Act of 1881. It tells how this act failed to do what it was supposed to do because of defects which are supposedly cor rected in Senator Murrays draft of the Full Employment Act of 1945, now before Congress.
 There is a common belief that this full employment bill presents a new idea in government. According to Senator Wagner, it is now new. In his report to ahis committee, Wagner states that Senator George Wharton Pepper of Pennsylvania in 1927 proposed study of stabilizing employment. A year later, Senator Wesley L. Jones of Washington sponsored a bill to create pros perity reserve and Senator Wagner himself first introduced bill for employment stabilization. But 1928 was an election year and nobody wanted to touch such politically dangerous idea then.
 By 1881, however, the unemployed were in everybody's hair and Con- gress was ready to do something. The result was passage of the En- ployment Stabilization Act of 1881, based on Wagner's original idea. FDR ABOLISHES
 STERILIZATION ACT
 Shortly after President Roosevelt JOOA O14ACC HI 4Occ, AAC pA dSI4SoAAy abolished the Wagner Employment Stabilization Act by executive order. Roosevelt then did not believe the act broad enough to deal with the crisis in which the country found itself.
 The 1881 act tried to stabilize employment only through federal spending on public works. There was no coordination with state and local governments on their public works programs. There was no con- certed effort to boost employment in private industry and agriculture. The act came too late - after the depression had set in - not before, when a little advance planning might have relieved the crash of the 1930's.
 Senator Wagner today believes that 1928 is comparable to 1945.
 The great difference is that today most people realize the danger of future unemployment and would like to see something done about it. A slight increase in unemployment by next fall, when the Senate Bank ing and Currency Committee comes back to begin real scrimmage and skull practice on Murray's full em- ployment football, will heighten the interest aroused by the kickoff at this weeks two-day tryout.