Evening Star Newspaper, December 9, 1934, Page 43

ROOSEVELT SYMPATHY BELIEVED LEANING LEFT President’s Natural Urge Is Declared Toward New and Untried Social Experiments. BY MARK SULLIVAN. HE past week and the week be- fore have been consumed largely, so far as politics and business go, with discussion of whether President Roosevelt 15 going to the left or the right. The answer is vastly important. For good or ill, Congress has turned over to Mr. Roosevelt much of its powers; consequently much of government consists of whatever happens to be at the moment the judgment of the President, as modified by his tem- peramental bent and as modified by the influence of whatever group of advisers is closest to him. This delegation by Congress of much of its power to the President was undoubtedly useful when it was made, in the midst of the almost im- minent chaos at the time of the uni- versal bank closing and soon after. ‘Whether it is wise to continue this delegation of powers, whether the in- dividual who happened to be Presi- dent at the time that the delegation was made, happens also to have the best possible personality for the ex- ercise of wide powers, whether a country at any time is happier under a regime of government by men rather than government by laws—all these questions are no matter; the condition exists. Ickes May Have Made Slip. The recent wave of speculation about whether the President is going to the left or to the right arose in connection with a difference of opin- ion between two heads of Government branches about building construc- tion. Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes made remarks which implied that he believed the Government ought not to wait on private capital, but should itself go phead with a large program of residence building. It will be clarifying to point out that Mr. Ickes' remarks were made in answer to questions at a confer- ence with newspaper men. His dic- tum was not a well considered ex- pression of policy, long reflected upon. Mr. Ickes, like some other members of the administration, has fallen into a way of feeling called upon to make striking answers to questions asked by newspaper men. When any public official falls into this way of thought he is subject to being asked questions at times when he is tired; and on some such occa- sions he may say what he would not have said in a thoughtfully worked out statement of policy. Mr. Ickes is not really one of the radicals of the administration. On a forthright question whether America ought to keep its present system of private ownership of industry or go to universal public ownership—on such & question Mr. Jckes would answer wholeheartedly and conservatively in favor of the traditional American system. His radicalism—radicalism is much too strong a word for it—ex- presses itself merely in a wish for greater regulation of business in the interest of the public. His is a per- fectly honest mind, but it is not the quickest mind in the world. The rather lumbering quality of some of his actions, and the meticulous safe- guards he has taken to insure that there shall be no graft in the ex- penditure of money in his charge, have led to a slowness of action which already has given rise to some im- patience with him in the White House. Socialism Not in Mind. ‘The sum of all this is that almost certainly Mr. Ickes did not make the declaration about the Government going to the vonstruction industry with any intent of bringing about State Socialism in America. At the same time he is quite capable of tak- ing an action which, without his in- tending the ultimate outcome, would lead toward State Socialism. This ap- pears to have been the case in the present instance. Immediately after Secretary Ickes made his declaration about Govern- ment building the head of another branch of the administration, Mr. James A. Moffett of Federal housing, declared that entry of the Govern- ment into building on a large scale would have the effect of keeping pri- vate capital out of this field. Mr. Moffett did not say anything about the fundamental theory involved, but he could have added that paralysis of private capital in the construction industry, if prolonged for a sufficient period, would go far toward carrying America to State Socialism. All that needs to be done by those | who hope to bring about fundamental | change in the American system is merely to keep the old system un- workable for a sufficiently long time. Let the depression be kept in existence long enough, let industrial recovery be postponed for a sufficient period, and the result will be that radical move- ments will grow. If, nearly two years from now, in August, 1936—if at that time we are still as deep in depression as we now are, then the Socialist Mr. Sinclair’s E. P. 1. C. in California, for example, would have more votes in 1936 than when it won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in California in August, 1934, and cast nearly a million votes in the gubernatorial election in November. President Leans to Left. The controversy between Mr. Ickes and Mr. MofTett focused public atten- tion upon the problem whether the bent of the administration as a whole is toward the left or the right. The answer to that is partly within the President’s own mind. partly it is a matter of the preponderant weight of groups who advise him. By and large, the President will, in the net, go toward the left. He gets stimulation out of new ideas and tends instinctively to act upon them. As between a new way and the drab path that follows precedent and takes careful account of principles, the President gets more interest out of the former. This is now so well known as to be commonplace. The President himself has said it, in vary- ing forms, often. The result is that the element of personality in deter- mining the country’s course will tend to carry us toward the left. Until, perhaps, the time comes when, so to speak, the new becomes old, and to turn to the old may be more appeal- ing than to go on with the new. Yet this picture would not be curate without adding that funda: mentally Mr. Roosevelt has no con- scious purpose of leading America to a form of society and government so basically changed as accurately to be called socialism. Far from that. We may be carried that way as the unin- tended consequence of policies adopt- ed and actions taken. That is a law of social change, whether it be called evolution or revolution. One step the next step. Yet Roose- velt's basic conservatism would be likely to emerge at any moment of realization that the country is on & sreslly radical path. As between the radical and con- a servative advisers of the President and the respective groups within the ad- menistration, the radicals have by far the best of it. They are more aggressive, they know where they want to go, and some of them know just how to get there. What the lingo of this field calls the “technique of revolution” is fully understood by some in the administration. I have spoken of a change in the country’s social structure and form of government as one possible out- come, intended or unintended, of the administration’s course, if accompa- nied by prolongation of the depression. A related but different possible con- sequence of a prolonged unorthodox course would be inflation. That the President does not desire inflation is an indisputable fact. Indeed, one of the clear facts about his administration, one of the points about which he is consistent—con- sistent in intention if not in action— is the President’s wish to avoid in- flation (I use the word here as mean- ing violent inflation). Yet everybody knows that infla- tion may come as the result of a pro- longed course in unorthodox manage- ment of the country’s fiscal affairs. Indeed, if the unorthodoz course is sufficiently prolonged, inflation must come. And when we look backward to survey the President’s relations with his advisers in fiscal affairs, what we see is disturbing. During the only 20 months of his administration Mr. Roosevelt has chosen for advisers in fiscal affairs four important men who turned out to be conservative, and who after urging the conservative course, pretty promptly disappeared from the scene. Warburg Ouster Recalled. At the beginning of the adminis- tration the President chose James P. Warburg to be an adviser in fiscal matters related to the London Eco- nomic Conference. Mr. Warburg's ad- vice was orthodox, and in about six months he was out. At the beginning of the administra- tion the President chose as Under- secretary of the Treasury the second highest office in the Treasury hier- archy, Dean Acheson. Mr. Acheson was and is no mossback conservative— he first came to Washington as pri- vate secretary to Justice Brandeis, for which reason and others he can fairly be regarded as reasonably lib- eral. But Mr. Acheson’s advice about fiscal matters was orthodox, and with- in less than a year he, too, was out— out rather violently and on the Presi- dent’s initiative—at least so it seemed to those of us who observed. The President chose, as his expert adviser about international exchange and other Treasury matters, Dr. 0. M. W. Sprague, formerly adviser to the Bank of England in similar matters, and before that a professor at Harvard University. Dr. Sprague lasted about six months, and was then out—out with explanations which showed that he believed the administration was embarked on a fiscal course that was radical and dangerous. The President chose as director of the budget, Mr. Lewis W. Douglas. Mr. Douglas was & strong believer in and energetic urger of an orthodox monetary course. Particularly did he believe in following policies which would result in the earliest practi- cable balancing of the budget and therefore in the avoidance of infla- tion. After some 18 months Mr. Douglas resigned. Roper and Hull Conservative. Observers in Washington felt that Mr. Douglas did not get out, and would not have got out, until such time as he was convinced that un- orthodox fiscal measures had been carried to a point at which they made inflation a serious possibility. These four incidents show that in fiscal matters it is not—decidedly it is not—the conservative advisers who have most weight with the President. It is the same in the broader field. Without undertaking to classify all the members of the cabinet, we can say quite certainly that Secretary of Commerce Roper and Secretary of State Hull are conservatives in the sense that they would deplore, would be somberly shocked by any departure of America from its traditional forms of social organization and Government. They are strong believers in certain reforms, manly reforms set forth in the Democratic platform of 1932; but that sort of cure of abuses in the old system is as far as they go. Several of the other members of the cabinet, perhaps a majority of the cabinet as a whole, are conservatives in the same sense. Certalnly Secretary of the Navy Swanson is one. Outside the cabinet, Vice President Garner is a conserva- tive in the same sense. So is Senate | Leader Robinson of Arkansas. On the other side, the group that calls itself liberal—which is called liberal if you like it but radical if you do not—includes such men as the Undersecretary of Agriculture, Prof. Tugwell, and Mr. Harry Hopkins, the administrator of emergency relief. ‘Without attempting here to charac- terize the social and economic beliefs of these men accurately, it is quite safe to say they are—let us put it this way—the opposite of conservative. There are others, but these are suffi- ciently typical, Numerous in Ranks. Down the line a little ways, in the secondary and lower ranks of the ad- ministration, the young men who be- lieve in a pretty complete departure from the old American system, who have distaste for what they call the “profit system” or “capitalist system” are numerous. As between the two groups, con- servative and the opposite of con- servative, the latter have much the greater access to the President, much the greater influence with him. Most of the conservatives are older men, and the President likes to have youth around him. Also the conservatives are handicapped, I think, by con- sciousness that, as respects access to the President’s mind, as respects the President's sympathies, they are on the weaker side. I should imagine that Secretary of State Hull or Secre- tary of Commerce Roper do not feel that the President is on as intimate terms with them, gets as much in- formal pleasure out of seeing them, as he does out of seeing Prof. Tugwell, for example. So the sum of all is that within the circle where much power is now lodged, within the executive branch of the Government, the tendency to- ward the left is greater than that to- ward the right. To say how it stands in the two other branches of Govern- ment, Congress and the courts, would consume much space. Relief. From the Columbus (8. C.) Record. What is needed, obviously, is some kind of self-liquidating relief plan— ani’?.h»wmremeuumnwd relief, THE SUNDAY STAR,‘WVASHINGTON, D. C, DECEMBER 9, 1934—PART TWO, Will India Get Self Rule? Britain Soon Must Decide What to Do—Scope of Independence Also One of Big Issues. BY HAROLD E. SCARBOROUGH, Author of ‘fThe Immortals.” etc URING the coming Winter India is going to be in the news again. It is quite pos- sible that the reading public may not find that news so amusing as it was when Gandhi and i his goat figured in it; or so exciting as when, a few years ago, unarmed Hindus were lying down across the Bombay tram lines or getting beaten up in police charges. But it is going to be a good deal more important, fundamentally, than these things were. For, after nearly 20 years’ considera- tion of the problem, the British gov- ernment is going to have to decide whether it is going to give self- j government to India; and, if so, how much. Since the latter stages of the World War, when the question of Indian self-government first became a live one, half the world has overhauled its governmental machinery. In many nations the process has been carried out more than once. When it started, in 1918 and 1919, the whole apparent trend was toward a broadening of political liberties. Kings were being succeeded by Presidents, hereditary nobles by elected parliamentarians. The announcement of Britain's in- tention eventually to confer home rule upon its Indian subjects seemed completely in keeping with the spirit of the times. ‘Throughout the 1920's reaction staged a comeback, until today's dic- tatorships, or at the very least “au- thoritarian” governments such as our own are the rule rather than the exception. Have the British managed to stand out against this tendency? And are they now going to give a practical demonstration of their per- sistent faith in democracy? Some Concession Due. The answer is, yes and no. By next Spring India in all probability will have been legally endowed with a considerable measure of self-govern- ment, but rather less than she would have got had the final decision been taken 10 years ago. The machinery of Western parliamentary democracy is going to be set up; but it will be fitted out with quite a lot of brakes and safety devices. For a good many years to come the Indian politician will be rather in the position of a pupil in a dual-control airplane; he will be manipulating the rudder, the throttle and the other controls, but in the other cockpit there will be an instructor ready to “take over” when- ever he deems it necessary. Whether the Indians will like it or not is of course another matter. The Indian National Congress, which speaks so far as any one agency can for that complex of races, religions and languages, which really consti- tutes a ‘continent, rather than a nation, declares that the British pro- gram “in no way expresses the will of the Indian people and has been more or less condemned by all Indian polit- ical parties.” On the other hand, Gandhi early this year agreed that the congress should abandon its then policy of civil disobedience (non-co-operation, refusal to pay taxes, etc.) and that his followers should seek representa- tion in sucn Indian legislative as- semblies as already exist. No secret is made of the strategy of this move, which arises less from e desire to be helpful to the British Raj than from a determination to use the British- established machinery to work for greater independence. Scheme Has Often Worked. But the British, wise in govern- mental technique, are _definitely pleased by this decision. They have seen “wild men” descend upon their own Parliament with intentions very similar to those of the Indian politi- cians; and have noticed how the in- surgents generally become so tamed by the parliamentary routine, so se- duced by the honors it dangles before them that before long they are roar- ing as gently as any suckling dove. They are willing to take the chance that the Indians will follow suit. That is, some of them are. The fly in the ointment is that even in Eng- land, the citadel of democracy, L?; strong-arm methods now popular other countries have had a certain appeal. Ten years ago the average Englishman would have given it as his casual opinion about India that “if the blighters want to leave the Empire, let ’em go, and the sooner the better.” Today, having had a skillful propaganda directed upon him for some years, he is a little dubious and rather more inclined to revive the “white man’s burden” talk. Observing this, and observing also that the various Indian factions are again as incapable of agreemept as ever they were, the die-hard colonels —the old boys who sit in the best armchairs in the club and splutter that “Damme, sir, it's preposterous!” —have been vastly encouraged. So much have they been encouraged that politely telling Stanley Baldwin, the IN THE leader of the party, that he was all wet on the Indian question. Thus, almost at the very end of the road leading to the first stage of Indian self-government, the British government finds it a touch-and-go affair as to whether it will be able | to carry out its promises. The situation is the more extraor- | dinary when one considers how | strongly—to the average man in the | BAZAAR. | street—British interests in India seem | | to be safeguarded by the present pro- gram. If one were to read only the | ’newspapers which oppose the cabinet | on this issue—for instance, the Morn- | ing Post or the Rothermere Press—he would certainly gain the impression that the British government proposes | ;xo get out of India, bag and baggage, abandoning to the native politicians | ! the vast British investments there, the BY GASTON NERVAL. HE success of the recently in- augurated administration in Mexico will be largely deter- mined by the extent to which the government of Gen. Car- denas carries out the agrarian program of “la Revolucion.” Of course, there are other major problems confronting the new admin- istration, such as the educational ques- tion, the church issue, the fulfillment of the six-year plan, etc., but, in the end, it is the land problem which will decide the place the Cardenas regime is to occupy in history. And the reason for this is simple enough. The revolu- tion itself—and by the revolution is meant the social and political move- ment which began in 1910 with the overthrow of the Diaz dictatorship, and has continued to this day through civil war and peace—wili be finally measured by the change it forces in the land system of the country, where the roots of most of the other problems seem to converge. The other consequences of the revolu- tion are, really, incidental. As Frank Tannenbaum, who has written the most comprehensive and intelligent in- terpretation of it, declares, the destruc- tion of the old ruling class, the weakening of the church, the awaken- ing of nationalism, the emergence of racial consciousness, the rising power of labor, the abolition of peonage, the widening base of the government, with the peasant and the city laborer added as supports for social and political power, all of these are by-products whose meaning will, in the long run, be determined by the altered social structure that a change in the land system involves. Peon Kept in Debt. After all, it was the demand for this change that started the revolution. The Diaz dictatorship had increased tremendously the injustices of the plantation system, under which two- thirds of the Mexican population lived virtually & life of slavery. Although the peon received wages and was, therefore, theoretically free to take himself and his services wherever he wished, the wages were very nominal, and paid in kind and credits from the plantation store, with the result that the peon was invariably and carefully kept in permapent debt to the land- owner or “hacendado,” and practically enchained to the plantation for the rest of his days. Moreover, the plantation was not an economic institution or business enterprise built up by purchase and capital saving. It was a political in- stitution, the fruit of the Spanish Conquest, “the result of theft, robbery and murder, of age-long conflict with the neighboring villages.” It was a family heritage, unprogressive, sta- tionary, which permitted a small group of privileged individuals to live luxuriously in European capitals at the expense of millions of ex- ploited and downtrodden people. Un- der Diaz this state of affairs reached its height. The destruction of the remaining “free villages” and their absorption by the privately owned plantations was frankly and openly encouraged under the influence of a philosophy of capitalism, individual- ism and material progress which sought to supplant the traditional pat- tern of life and culture of the Indian with a more modern and apparently more desirable system of “large-scale private ownership, with large credits, efficient production, competent util- ization.” By 1910 only a fraction of the rural population of Mexico had any land at all. The plantations held more than 80 per cent of the inhab- ited communities. There were nearly 57,000 plantation communities as against some 13,000 free villages. But this policy of the Diaz dictator- ship, of rapid capitalistic develop- put it, dians, To use his own v.ords. 'CARDENAS GOVERNMENT FACES LAND PROBLEY |Success of Administration Will Be De- termined by Extent Agrarian Pro- gram Is Carried Out. the time came, the remaining villages destroyed the program of the Diaz government and repudiated the theory | of radical and social inferiority upon which it rested. They rose in rebel- |lion and saved themselves from the fate of becoming peons upon the | large plantations—peons witQout a voice, without land, without a com- | munity, without hope—with nothing but a burden of debt from the cradle | o the grave. Rather than accept | | that fate the villages, each one for | | itself, without mueh concert or broad | | general phtlosophy, tock their stand |and fought their battle, and in the | process shifted the structure of the | Mexican nation from its original base.” That was the beginning of the rev- | olution. Before any definite political plans had been made, before any social program had been outlined, even before a revolutionary regime | had been set up, as soon as the news |of Diaz' resignation became known, armed groups of Indjans and peons took over by force the properties of large plantations and began to use them to satisfy their needs. The rev- olution started as a movement to re- cover land. After the idealist Madero, after the autocratic Huerta, but particularly after the several years of continuous and successful campaigns of Zapita, “the father of the agrarian revolu- tion,” who seized most of the large estates in Morelos, Guerrero and Hi- dalgo and turned them over to his followers, the Carranza government was finally forced, in January, 1915, to provide a legal basis for the dis- tribution of land. The Carranza de- cree provided that all the communal lands which had been alienated by the “hacendados” from the villages through force or guile should be res- tituted. It further stipulated that the villages which could prove no title to lands but could establish they needed them should also be given some. Little Progress Made. These provisions were made part of the organic law of the nation by the constitution of 1917, which confirmed both the restitution of lands tradi- tionally belonging to the free villages and the right of expropriation of pri- vate lands for the benefit of commu- nities in need of them. Unfortunately, the agrarian laws so far passed, apart from having re- mained largely on paper—the land re- form made very little progress under Carranza and Obregon, moved for- ward under Calles and Portes Gil, lan- guished under Ortiz Rubio and picked up mildly under Rodriquez—have only partially solved the problem. The new administration not only will have the task of carrying out the laws already written into the constitution and so slowly being fulfilled—at the present rate of distribution it will take another 10 years before even one-fourth of the communities entitled to it have been provided with land—but it, also, will fall to its lot to correct the short- comings and limitations of the present laws, which have merely scratched the surface of the Mexican agrarian problem. Some of these shortcomings (half the rural population is beyond the reach of the agrarian laws because these have not yet struck at the large plantation communities; restitution is, still, to a large extent, the basis for land distribution, instead of a right to land; the minimum of 20 families re- quired to qualify a village to ask for land leaves more than 35,000 villages outside the laws; the legal machinery involved could stand simplification, etc.) have delayed the consummation of the agrarian aspect of the revolu- tion. Recent utterances by Gen. Plutarco Elias Calles, the dominant figure in the Mexican political scene, and by ~—From an etching by W. 8. Bagdatopoulos. hundreds of thousands of English- men in the civil or military services of the Indian government and he future prospects of a lucrative trade. As a matter of fact, the present scheme for the new Indian govern- ment simply bristles with safeguards. The recommendations of the Simon commission and of the various round table conferences as to the basic con- stitutional structure have in the main been followed out. India, that is, is to become a federal state, comprising both that territory now known as British India and as many of the native states as desire to adhere to the federation. These subdivisions are to enjoy a considerable measure of lecal autonomy. Two Chambers in Legislature. ‘The ultimate governing body is to be an all-India legislature, with two chambers. The Lower Chamber, or House of Assembly, is to contain 375 members, of whom 125 will be ap- peinted by the native princes and the remainder directly elected. The Upper Chamber, or Council of State, will have 260 members; some appointed by the princes, some by the viceroy and some elected from the provincial legislatures. It is estimated that be- tween 2 and 3 per cent (between seven and eight million people) of the population of India will be given the franchise. But—there 1s a joker. Certain functions of government—specifically, the conduct of foreign affairs, of na- tional defense and ecclesiastical ad- ministration—will be directly con- trolled by the viceroy, answerable only to the British Parliament. And then there are a few other matters in which the Indian legislators may dab- ble so long as they behave themselves —but no longer. Thus the topics in respect to which the governor general may overrule his legislators and his cabinet, if he sees fit, include: 1. The maintenance of internal order. 2. The safeguarding of the financial | stability and credit of the federation. 3. The safeguarding of minorities. 4. The maintenance of the rights of | state employes, British or Indian. 5. The protection of the rights of any native state. 6. The prevention of commercial discrimination. 7. Any matter which affects the ad- ministration of the “reserved depart- ments” (defense, foreign affairs, etc.). Most people would agree that this is a pretty comprehensive list of safe- guards —a particularly comprehen- sive one, if one studies the seventh clause, which seems to account for | anything that might have been over- looked. And, if that were not suffi- cient, it is also proposed that should he think it necessary the governor general (who will ipso facto be the viceroy) may personally assume any powers vested by law in any existing Indian federal authority. Viceroy’s Power Delegated. No dictator in the world has more potential power than it is proposed to confer upon the viceroy of India. But—it is a delegated power. The governor generai of the new federa- tion may be more than a king in theory; in practice he must justify his every act to the British Parliament. British officials say—and there is no reason whatever to doubt their good faith—that all these safeguards are a good deal like the small type, which nobody ever reads, on the back of a steamship ticket. That is, they hope that the Indians will work their parliamentary machinery to such good ! effect that intervention will never be called for, and that gradually the D—3 PLANNING THE INAUGURAL FOR GROVER CLEVELAND Carpenter Writes of Elaborate Prepara- tions for the Great Banquet and Ball at the Pension Building. This s the thirty-second of a series of weekly articles on inter- esting persons and events in the National Capital during the '80s by Frank G. Carpenter, world- Jamous author and traveler. The next chapter in the series will be published next Sunday in The Star. CHAPTER XXXIIL BY FRANK G. CARPENTER. hood was spent in the eco- nomical quarters of a poor man’s cottage. His early falo, where he lived part of the time in the jail, as its keeper, and the re- maining in bachelor quarters back of the Buffalo hotels. For the past year or so he has inhabited the big guber- natorial mansion at Albany, and for White House. He has had a life of changes, and it is a question whether his last state is better than those The White House with all its beau- ties is by no means a desirable resi- dence for a quiet man. Its occupant he has are always spent with guards at his doors amid an unavailing clamor of those who want admittance, President’s every action is watched. Crowds come to his back doors and peep into his kitchen; they inter- has the right at any time to walk through his great palace and make their remarks about his furniture and ‘The full half of his big house is given up to offices and he has his work always with him. He can't get away He has also to entertain, and at his entertainments, which he pays for out of his own pockets, he has to invite straw, people who will eat his terrapin and drink his champagne tonight, then go off and plot to break down dent of the United States has not an enviable position, and his head as it sleeps on the soft couches in the sec- must rest as uneasily as that of any monarch in Europe. White House Upkeep. Most people believe that $50,000 a year which the President gets as his salary is the sum total. This is a and shaving rooms off the ball cor- ridors, and the new Pension Building with its acres of dancing floor, its hundreds of columns of various sizes, and its three wide promenade gal- leries, will give an opportunity for splendor and variety of decoration never before known in our history. All around the ball room run wide cor- ridors, giving ample room for the moving about of the thousands who will not want to dance. ‘The supper rooms probably will be situated just off the cbrridors, and the supper will be furnished by the notorious Ed Stokes, the man who shot Jim Fisk, and who is now the proprietor of the Hoffman House in New York City. The ball room will be lighted by electricity and by gas. Fifteen hundred large flags will aid in its decoration, and the Botanical Gardens will furnish flowers and plants. In addition to these, which will be free, there will be other decorations variously estimated as costing from $5,000 to $10,000. The music is ex- pected to cost about $4,000, and the cost of the supper would make a very deep hole in Mr. Cleveland's salary if he had to pay the bills. The $60,000 which the ball managers expect to re- ceive from the tickets will be almost if not quite consumed in the expenses of the ball. Grant’s second inauguration ball cost $60,000, but the ball room was not so large as this, nor the oppor- tunity for decorations so extensive and varied. New Pension Building. The outside walls of the new Pen= sion Building are already completed. ‘They run up 75 feet and with a single range of office rooms)form a rectangu- lar square about the great central | court wherein the ball is to be held. Canvas will be stretched over these walls, making a temporary roof over the whole ball room, and a waxed floor will teke the place of what is now mud, covered with piles of brick, little mountains of sand and little lakes of steaming mortar. When I visited the Pension Office Building today carts were driving in and out of it, a steam engine was puffing away doing the work of hun- dreds of men in pushing the struc- ture toward completion, and a small army of swarthy laborers were carry- ing and wheeling this and that amid the din of the machinery. The four boilers which are to heat the build- ing are already in place, and it is thought these will heat the ball room and the apartments adjoining it. It is a big job to put on a roof of an acre of canvas, but the two GR.OV!ZR CLEVELAND'S boy- manhood was passed at Buf- his office, taking his meals at one of the coming four years he will fill the which preceded it. has no privacy, and such moments as but must necessarily be refused. The view his servants; and the good public the way he keeps it. from it, it haunts him day and night. people for whom he doesn't care a his reputation tomorrow. The Presi- ond story of that great white palace, What does the White House cost? mistake. The estimate of the amount relating to the.President. I see that $36.064 is asked for him in addition to the salary of $50.000, to pay the His private secretary is paid $3,250, his stenographer $1.800, five messengers cach $1200, a steward $12800, two doorkeepers each at $1,200, there are four other clerks at good salaries, one telegraph operatos, two ushers getting $1,200, a watchman who gets $900 and a man to take care of the fires, who receives $864 a year. In addition to this there is set down $8,000 for incidental expenses, such as stationery, carpets and the care of presidential stables. And further on under another head there is a demand for nearly $40,000 more. Of this, $12,500 is for repairs and refurnishing the White House, $2,500 is for fuel, $4,000 for the greenhouse and $15,000 is for gas, matches and the stables. The White House all told costs the country in connection with the Presi- dent considerably over $125.000 a year. But this is a mere bagatelle in com- parison with the cost of the residences of the heads of the other governments of the world. Inauguration Plans. ‘The preparations for the inaugura- tion of Grover Cleveland go bravely on. The outlook is that more than one hundred thousand strangers will be in the city, and where they are all to be accommodated is one of the vexing questions of the present. Cots are being put up in all the boarding houses, and various residences in all parts of town will be thrown open to the crowd. At Buchanan's inaugura- tion, thousands walked the streets all night after vain attempts to get lodg- ing; it will be strange if the same does not happen on the of March 3. costly inauguration in our history. ‘There will be no Democratic simplic- ity about it. The ball in the central court of the new Pension Building will tions will be made to accommodate over thirty thousand people. There will be 12,000 tickets, each ticket, I suppose, admitting two ladies and one gentleman. There will be about one hundred ball officers and floor managers, and 50 mail carriers in uni- forms will have charge of the cloak rooms. There will be bootblack stands start already has been made on the bill to provide for the future govern- ment; and ‘ts details will pe filled in when the report of the Jyint Com- mittee of both Houses of the British Parliament (which has just concluded an 18 months’ review of the whole position) has been digested. This committee nas had as its agenda the famous “whi‘e paper” of March, 1933, in which the main cutlines of the formidable powers reserved to the rep- resentative of the British King-Em- peror will fall into desuetude. And here is the rub. The conserva- tive opnonents of the cabinet’s policy don't think that the Indians will be- have themselves. They say in effect: “It 15 a lot easier to talk about reassuming the functions of govern- ment than it is to do it. Suppose, for instance, you put Indians, on suf- ferance, in control of the police and the judiciary. All may go well for a time; but when you finally decide it is necessary to take back power ir your own hands, how wili you do it?” Positive Policy Advocated. Although they talk much about “the policy of scuttle,” and ‘“being forced to clear out of India,” such leaders of revolt as Wirston Churchill, Lord Lloyd and Sir Henry Page Croft realize that a purely negative policy Is not enough. Their present posi- tion is well *lmmed up in Sir Hen:y's own words: “We are prepared broadly to accept the principles of the Simon Commis- sion with one reservation: That the judiciary and the police shall remain in British hands. That means that democratic government will be granted to vast provinces, with territory and population in some cases as great as the principal powers of Western Eu- rope. But in these territories 92 per cent of the people cannot read or write. 1Is that not a gamble great enough to satisfy the craving of the wildest reformer?” cabinet’s Indian policy were made public. Congress Cold to Gandhi. How Indian opinion will react to the !imited freedom which will be of- fered cannot, of course, be predicted. It remains broadly true that the opinions of Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress will be de- cisive. But Gandhi and the Con- gress nave not been hitting it off too well 1ately. The Mahatma has begun to suspect that the hearts of his fel- low Congressmen are not completely ensnared by his policy of non-violence and hand-spinning. The Congress- men nave’begun to wonder whether Gandhi #n't an even more imprac- ticable dreamer than they thought. This Spring he tried to have a “con- stituent assembly” called for the whole of India; a body which with no uncertain voice would echo the na- tion's demand for independence. His Hindu backers got cold feet; they knew well enough that such a gather- ing would degenerate into a free fight among themselves and the Moslems. The result may be summed up in the words of a correspondent of the Manchester Guardian: “It looks very much as if India would have to accept the white paper —if she can get it—with or without amendments. If and when India can face the prospect of a constituent as- sembly such as Gandhi desires, then she will deserve and get the self- government she desires. So long as she dare not and cannot agree upon ‘The battle on the Indian question ' neither probably will be fought out in this Winter's session of Parliament. A The coming inauguration will be, | if not the grandest, at least the most | be a gllt-edged affair, and prepara- | rows of immense pillars running which Congress is to appropriate this | through the court and dividing it year lies before me, open at the page | into three halls make this a com- paratively easy matter. In the days | of the great Roman emperors. it was salaries of his subordinates and clerks. | assistant private secretary, $2,250, his | customary at times to cover the Coli- seum with canvas, but in that case there were no pillars to help, and the area to be covered was at least five times as great. The city will be extravagantly dec- orated. The electric light display will be a new feature in inaugurations, and there will be also a great number of calcium lights burning at different points. It is now intended to have 92 of these at a cost of $1,500, and it is said they will be such that they will burrf for five or six hours. They will be placed all about the Capitol, along F street between the Treasury and the inauguration ball room, down Pennsylvania avenue, and in short, in all parts of the city where the crowd is likely to be the greatest. The fireworks display will also be fine. There will be the Japanese fire- works producing entirely novel effects, consisting of large bombshells thrown from mortars, which explode high in the air. Some throw out colored il- luminated lanterns each two feet in diameter. While others produce hang- ing chains and blue dew, thunder storms and moon dragons in combat, clusters of grapes, dragons dropping out of clouds. white stars and small chrysanthemums, shooting stars, large weeping willow trees and other designs. Other kinds of these fire- works produce animals from six to eight feet in height. There are fishes, dragons, birds, elephants, deer, oxen, men of various sizes, umbrellas and an endless variety of curious things in fires of different colors. |Swedish Expert Sees night | Production Control Vain STOCKHOLM (#).—In a strong defense of capitalistic production, especially as regards America, Prof. Gustav Cassel, Swedish economist, is convinced that restricted and con- trolled production will never serve the well-being of the world. No justification can be offered, de- clares Prof. Cassel, writing editorially in the Svenska Dagbladet, for wide- spread claims that the world economic crisis is evidence of the incompetence of capitalistic production methods. “It is also a mistake,” he insists, “to interpret the crisis as proof that production as a whole has earlier been driven up too fast. “The only possible solution to the large soqjal problems is that produc- tion be permitted to develop to the same tempo that it did before the world economic crisis.” Statistics now available, Prof. Cassel says, put aside completely the “continually repeated dogma that the tremendous crisis in the United States has been caused by an un- natural expansion of industry and in that connection an enormous piling up of profits on such enterprise.” Fiber Substitute Blow To U. S. Cotton in Italy MILAN (#).—An effort on the part of Milan manufacturers to substitute wood and cellulose fiber for cotton fabrics is causing some apprehension among American cotton agents in Italy. After a year's experimentation with the new fabrics, the manufacturers have begun to flood the market with smart shirtings, flannels and other materials for garments for both men and women. g American producers supply a large part of the raw cotton imported by Italy. The Milan manufacturers boast that their product will cut cotton im- portations by 80 per cent. The manufacturers for many years engaged in producing artificial silk before inventing the new process. It turns out the fibre in rolls, much like those of raw cotton, but with the re- ported advantage of being free from foreign substances such as dirt and leaves. The staple length is mathe- matically even and can be produced in any measurement desired by the spin- ner. Efforts to classify the product as synthetic cotton have brought forth strong protests from the manufactur- m;hnflucflbeltunnm&!lym "