Evening star., 1945-10-01
Full Employment Bill
Declared Innocuous
Yet Measure Is Welcomed BY
Both Sides, Says Observer
By David Laurence

By Uapfd Laurence
The most significant debate in Con-
gress in recent years turns out piece
of legislation which all sides profess to
be innocuous.
The measure to provide means OF
bringing about full employment" comes
out of the Senate minus the so-called
guarantees of jobs, minus the pledge of
huge expenditures and of public works
programs and yet 1t is welcomed by its
proponents as better than no measure
at all.
The paradox is readily explained. The
conservatives" who have been condi-
toned by years of New Dealism's trick
phrases In statutes that were claimed
to be harmless at first only to be made
the basis of everything from an admin
istrative order to Supreme Court
decision, thought they saw hidden de-
vices to sabotage the free-enterprise
system.
The liberals" on the other hand,
started with the premise that Govern
ment no longer will stand by and see
widespread unemployment when a de-
preston comes and that some sort Of
economic budget for the Nation could
be issued each year to which all seq
ments of the free-enterprise system plus
the Government would subscribe.
Lesson of the War.
Whatever the motives or suspicious
or ambitions Of either side with respect
to the other, the fact is that World
War II, like World War I, taught the
American people certain basic things
about full production for war and it
Is the mobilization of this knowledge
continuously in sort of economic in
trospection which the liberals" think
and with some justification-will aid
our economic system to mitigate the
painful swings in the business cycle
from abnormal booms to abnormal de-
pressions.
The mere command by the national
Government to the Budget Bureau or
any other of the statistical agencies
to bring to light certain essential
facts about the interdependence of
agriculture, manufacturing, distribution.
finance, and the service industries is
bound to be constructive. Where the
full employment" bill got of to bad
start was in the use of the slogan to
give the impression that by. some
miracle the Federal Government was
about to provide jobs for all, including
compensation for those who didn't care
to work at any job.
The use of vague phrases pledging the
Federal Government to provide jobs II
private industry cannot or does not do
so was also a mistake made by the pro-
ponents Of the measure. If the bill had
been set forth as an act to make the
private-enterprise system function to
provide incentive taxation and to elm
mate unnecessary barriers by Govern
ment to the working Of the free-enter-
prise system, it would have been hailed
by the conservatives as a fine piece of
legislation. And yet, in order to accom-
plish those very objectlves, there must
be in Government some kind of over
all view of what the economic machine
can or may do each year to provide the
maximum number of jobs
Ship Without Rudder.
Clearly an economic system without
some guiding influence is like ship
without rudder. If the labor group
insists on steering the boat to higher
and higher wages without corresponding
increases in output or efficiency. If the
sellers insist on as high price as they
wish, if each group wants a free hand
with no restraint upon 1t in the public
interest, economic anarchy-otherwise
known as depression-is inevitable.
The cure does not lie in a planned
economy wherein the Government tries
to run the machine. But it does lie In
self-balanced economy when all the
facts and all the danger signals have
been given the widest publicity.
The so-cslied "full employment" bill
is in reality measure to promote the
fullest publicity about our self operating
economic system. 1t could lead to great
er controls by the Government If the
facts prove that the citizens can't run
the economic machine without COLI
sions and it could lead to longer periods
of prosperity if the various groups
learned to heed unbiased facts collected
and proclaimed by Government
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