Evening Star Newspaper, July 5, 1936, Page 25

‘Editorial Page Special Articles EDITORTAL SECTION he Sunday Star WASHINGTON, D. C, U. S. Shipping Gets New Life New Chapter in Maritime History Written by Law—Advantages to Nation Cited. l | Part Two ( ‘ SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 5, 1936. BY MARK SULLIVAN. | T WAS inevitable that President TENDENCY OF ROOSEVELT IN CAMPAIGN LEFTWARD Election Drive Is Expected to Grow in Appeal to Radicals and Repulsion to Conservatives. Party leaders situated as Vice Presi- dent Garner is, and the orthodox Dem- The social laws which were passed by the French Parliament at M. Blum’s urgent request have brought about an increase of 35 per cent in the production costs of French in- dustry—an increase which is bound to cripple French foreign trade and increase substantially the cost of liv- | ing. The industrialists who were ‘\A Sy -~ /W - /4 il ' BY JOHN L. COONTZ. NEW chapter in the history of the American merchant ocratic Senators—holding office and Roosevelt, in his ncceptnnce} candidates for re-election either this I speech, should attack conserva- tives, should move farther toward | year or soon—Democrats thus placed the left. It was inevitable because | | may feel, as Mr. Garner does, that only from the left can Mr. Roosevelt | they must follow where the com- recapture any part of the two groups mander leads, even though the come of voters who once were for him but | mander's course should take him to a have now left him. The conserva- |political Hades. But throughout the (I South are a great number of Demo- | crats who share the sentiments of Senator Glass and others abcut the tives are gone and gone for good. speak, of course, mainly of the Demo- cratic conservatives in the North) [ X! 4 The most elementary sense of political strategy knows that nothing Mr. Roosevelt could now do would bring the conservatives back to him. Them he must abandon. His campaign must be devoted to holding as many as he can of the radicals. We can picture Mr. Roosevelt's situation: His right wing, the con- servative Democrats, symbolized by ex- Gov. Smith, Col. Henry Breckinridge, 4 Lewis Douglas, ex-Gov. Ely of Mas- )‘ sachusetts—Democrats of this type. leaders and voters, have gone from him. On the left, there is likewise a de- fection, but one from which Mr. Roosevelt can salvage something. The | extreme left-wingers are forming a new party, with Congressman Lemke of North Dakota as its presidential | candidate and Father Coughlin its best known leader. That this party will take much from Mr. Roosevelt goes out saying. But Mr. Roose- velt, by his conduct of the campaign, can determine, to some extent, just how much of his radical following he must lose. The radicals as an entire | group range from mild to extreme. | The mild ones Mr. Roosevelt can hold | —he eould hold many of them by | conducting just an ordinary middle- | of-the-road campaign. The extreme A ) i | radicals he cannot bring back by any asking marine legislation of Congress, | device. But between the mild radicals said: | and the extreme ones is a large body “In many instances in our history | of, so to speak, medium radicals. This | | New Deal—but do not share their po- litical necessities. How far the antie New Deal sentiment of the South may 20 no one can say. As yet, there is no sign of insurgency sufficiently vocal or sufficiently organized to suggest that any Southern State may cast its elec- toral vote against the New Deal. But the Democrats in the South, especially the leaders, are essentially conserva- tive. Whether they can remain Dem- ocrats while their conservative breth- ren in the North do not; whether habit and tradition is strong enough to cause the conservative Southern Democrats to tolerate the appeals which Mr, Roosevelt must make to the radicals in this campaign, is a thing that the next few months will show For his campaign to hold the part of the left that is still with him, and get more of the radicals now disposed to go toward the Lemke-Coughlin third party, Mr. Roosevelt has devised two new slogans: “Economic royalists,” to deride his opponents, “economic free- dem,” to describe the promise he holds out. Just what is “economic freedom"? The phrase recalls one that the late President Wilson invented as he be gan to rise in public life, “the new freedom.” of which Grover Cleveland sald, “Sounds fine—wonder what it means.” The Nation that was allured by that slogan of some 25 years ago found, after Wilson became President, that the “new freedom” included & Part 2—8 Pages . . Days of Blum and Parliamentarism Held J/ . Numbered as Premier Is Led BY CONSTANTINE BROWN. can command the respect of his fol- l )REMIER LEON BLUM resents | lowers. sky because the description comes too close to being ac- fonary, he has one thing in common with the former Russian leader. Like And Blum is being led not by his own followers or by the parliamentary ship, but by that amorphous thing say they cannot adjust themselves to called the popular masses, the prole- |them. The workers have announced Blum's days are numbered—his ten- | considered only as a temporary meas- ure of office cannot be long. He will {ure and will have to be increased tive groups—the Croix de Feu, the goes up again. It is a viclous circle Front Patriotique and other so-called | for which there seems to be no solu- present allies, the Communists. |about an increase in the cost of liv- France is struggling for her exist- | ing, which again causes an increase of erisis Italy and Germany have experi- There was nothing revolutionary in enced: the fight between revolutionary | the original demands of the laboring between the Tricolor and the hammer | shortening of hours. It is the mode and sickle. The decision as to which |in which these measures have been tional emblem of the country lies not | of the workers, which have introduced with the government nor with the par- | the revolutionary element in these which of the popular factions will win | Communist party — obeying orders the battles on the streets of Paris, | from Moscow, the French nationalists cities | idea. One of the pamphlets which is M. Blum inherited a difficult situa- | being distributed throughout .the | treasury was empty. During the last | copies, reads: “Workers, employes and | 14 months France has lost no less | peasants. You will be the master of serves. Taking advantage of the fact | we have been able to obtain in eight that no embargo on the export of that | days (the eight days which followed | ecitizens of France have transferred |firing a shot. . Our revolution need their capitals and savings to the not be a bloody one. Just assert your- gerland. | ments of the capitalists and you will Make Permanent Investments. | 0Diain with the heip of the govern- many of those who possessed a certain amount of wealth were not satisfied their gold to a “safe” country, nor with the purchase of foreign securities again when the situation became clearer. This time they placed a good BY RULE FROM STREETS by Popular Masses. being called the French Keren- curate. While more able and less vis- Kerensky, he is being led, not leading. groups which gave him the premier- | browbeaten into accepting these terms tariat. that the increase of wages must be be overthrown either by the conserva- | further as soon as the cost of living reactionary organizations—or by his | tion; the increase of wages brings | ence. She is going through the same | Wages and so on. socialism and dictatorship. The fight | class for an increase of wages and a of the two flags will become the na- ‘adopt!d, the yielding to mild violence liamentary institutions. It rests on | demands. And the agents of the | Marseilles, Lyons and other important | say—are spreading the revolutionary tion when he assumed office. The |country in hundreds of thousands of than $2.285.000,000 of her gold re-|France if you follow us. Look what | precious metal could be inforced, the | Blum's coming into office) without | United States, Great Britain and Swit- | selves by occupying the establish- But, unlike their actions in 1925, | Ment everything you have not had | with a mere temporary transfer of which could be transferred into francs deal of their wealth in permanent in- ? heretofore.” A marine is in the making. For 20 years Congress has been Financial Plight Increases. And, while the gold flees France, | while the workers play with their | employers like a cat with a mouse, | and the government looks impotently |at these developments, the financial | | plight of France is increasing every (day. In order to placate those on | struggling with the question of an adequate and effective merchant ma- rine for the United States, and for 20 years its efforts have produced only failure. Now it is forgetting | the past and striking out again. ‘The new maritime law of 1936 gives vestments such as real estate. In the | the government's pay roll, M. Vincent | to American shipping a new lease on United States alone substantial | Auriol, the minister of finance, has life. It gives to ship companies new amounts have been invested in farms, | Suppressed the law which cut the |sinews for war to survive in a world eountry estates, houses and lots in towns. The same applies to Great Britain— on .a larger scale. estate market is undergoing an unex- pected boom and many of the white elephants which the British nobility 1o longer could afford to maintain are | being purchased like hot pancakes in | Winter months. The French people fear that for the next few years nothing good can be expected to happen in France— whatever group will succeed finally in obtaining the upper hand. They are afraid of confiscatory taxes either in the name of the proletariat or in the name of “La Patrie.” | Monsieur Blum has inauguarated | his administration by a series of strikes | such as France never before has seen. He rushed through an obedient Parlia- ment a number of social bills which have nothing radically socialistic in their nature. The 40-hour bill, the increase of wages, the holiday with pay and other such laws have been applied for years in many other | countries in Europe. Italy has had | them for the last 18 months. But there is a fundamental difference between the methods by which these bills were rammed through. Italy’s Reforms First Studied. In Italy Mussolini has had the whole situation investigated by ex- perts representing industrialists, labor, bankers and government economists. Adoption of the 40-hour week and the increase in pay was analyzed from every possible angle with special regard to the effect on Italian exports and the cost of living. When the experts | reported that an improvement in the lot of the workers could be achieved without harm to Italy’s economic life, Mussolini ordered the "reforms put into force. Capital and labor were instructed to accept them and any sign of obstruction was punishable | with a large dose of castor oil. | The French government gave the | impression of accepting under duress the terms of the workers which were in no way different from those intro- duced into nationalistic Italy. Blum and his followers in the Chamber and the Senate appeared to yield to the pressure of the masses which had declared strikes and occupied the factories to press their demands. ‘Within 24 hours after the new cabinet took office, strikes were declared in every branch of France’s economic life. Workers in mines, in restau- rants, cafes, in the metallurgical in- dustry, in department stores, in navy yards, in funeral parlors, in the build- ing industry, in the dressmaking business, in the chemical industry, in the transport business, the “sandwich” men and the janitors all went on strike and occupied the premises in which they were employed. In some in- stances the strikes were legitimate, but in many cases it was just the fun of striking and kicking the boss about that caused these movements. * Like the “flu” epidemic after the war, one group caught this disease from the other. The waiters in Paris are the tyrants of their patrons. They make & better living than many an army officer or a government offi- cial. Yet they joined the strikes just because it was a lot of fun. In some instances, like the Lido Cafe in the Champs Elysee, the owner wanted to turn over the whole business to his employes; he was not making ends meet in any case. He informed them that since he could not see his way clear to giving them more than he is paying now, they might just as well yun the business for their own benefit. But they turned him down; they knew better than to do that. They in- sisted on his running the show for them. Followers Lose Confidence. Only four weeks of Blum's admin- istration discredited the so-called leader of the French Leftists. His own followers have no confidence in | the French national loan of 1925 | salaries of the government officials | and resulted in a saving of $20,000,000 | |8 year to the treasury. In order to | | ment and provide the working masses | {with more comforts—new houses, swimming pools, playgrounds, etc.— the Blum government has obtained " from the Chamber a $200,000,000 ap- | propriation. Where is the money coming from? | For a while the Banque de France { will be compelled to “advance the needed sums to the treasury,” but | this game cannot go on for long. New taxes on the “sock the rich” tune are being prepared, but it is doubtful | that they will give a satisfactory yield. A loan abroad, especially in the United States, appears now out of the question, even to M. Blum and | his financial advisers. A loan in | England, while possible, seems im- | probable. The city is not sentimental about loans to foreign countries and | knows France's predicament better than M. Blum himself. Of course, the administration is talking about | restoring confidence by its decision to maintain the gold standard. It hopes to float an internal loan to cover increasing government expendi- tures, Joseph Caillaux tried this in 1925, when he was Herriot’s minister of finance. Although the situation then was better than it is at present, proved a complete flop. . France's tragedy is not her own; it is the tragedy of Europe and indi- rectly affects this country, too, be- cause the weakening of a European power has an immediate repercussion on the Far Eastern situation. Every time another stone is taken out of the foundation of post-war Europe the structure of the peace edifice be- comes weaker. Despite the previous unyielding attitude toward a po- litical compromise with her defeated neighbors and despite her being, in the past, the leader in the armament race, France has been a highly re- spected and feared nation in Europe. As such she has been able to main- tain for the last 15 years a status quo which, bad as it was, has pre- vented the outbreak of a war on the continent. Allies Ready to Bolt. Now France’s allies, especially the Little Entente, realizing the hope- lessness of -the situation, are ready to abandon her and are seeking help elsewhere. Some of these nations are looking toward Mussolini, others toward Hitler. At the last meeting of the rulers of the Little Entente in Bucharest, a month ago, neither King Carol nor Prince Paul of Yugbslavia nor Benes, the President of Czechoslovakia, men- tioned the name of France once in their official communiques or in their public speeches. In the past they spoke about their solemn engagements and the preservation of peace with the help of “our great ally, France.” At the Bucharest meeting the alliance with the great republic was overlooked. Not that these pillars of the French Euro- pean peace system want to abandon the French, But they are waiting for developments. They are waiting to see what will come out of the present chaotic situation. And there seem to be only two pos- sibilities—either the nationalist groups will succeed in overthrowing the pres- ent regimes and set themselves up as some kind of government, which will rule without the help of parliamen- tarians, or else the Blum administra- tion will be pushed out of office by the extreme radicals and the Communists, who will give their country some sort of a neobolshevism form of govern- ment. In either case, the days of M. Leon Blum and of French parliamentarian- ism are numbered. The next govern- ment will be sent to the Palais Bour- bon from the streets and will be hoist- ed into power from the barricades. his ability to steer the ship of state. The Lavals, the Herriots, the Tardieus o leader who is led imstead of leading dpnd the Doumergues are through. | law is subsidies, of cutthroat marine competition. It gives to the Nation a fleet of merchant ships to carry our trade overseas when There, the real | fulfill its pledge to relieve unemploy- | Other vessels fail, through war or other cause It gives us an auxiliary naval fleet when war itself comes to our shore. In short, it gives us American- owned ships. American-manned ships and ships for fighting purposes in event of war against us. The basic foundation of the new These we have had before, but not as now authorized Under the old—1928—law shipping companies were intrigued Wwith the proposition of building an adequate national merchant marine through liberal ocean mail contracts by the Federal Government. Under the au- thorization of that law shipping com- | panies were granted somewhat arbi- trary sums for each mile of the out- ward voyage of their vessels carrying United States mail. There was scarcely any relationship between the amount | of such subsidy involved in the pay and the higher cost of ship con- struction and operating cost, as com- pared with similar costs to foreign competitors. Corrects Poor Relationship. | The new law corrects this poor re- | lationship. Under it there is a direct | relationship between ship cost and| operating cost as represented by American built and operated vessels | and foreign built and operated | vessels. The application of this correction is found in the manner in which the sub- sidy is granted to the shipping com- pany or companies. Under the old law money paid out on ocean mail con- tracts was supposed to—and did— supply sufficient funds for the com- panies to expand. And many of them did, building more ships and carrying more trade. But the tendency was for abuses to creep into relationship be- tween the Government and the com- panies. The public felt this. Dividends, high expense accounts, salaries—all tended to fix the belief in the public mind that ship operators were making great profits out of their Federal re- lationship rather than expanding their shipping business. And the period of prosperity which prevailed at the time of the creation of the mail subsidies undoubtedly did result in some bad business judgments by some of the beneficiaries of the act, as reflected large salaries, large expense accounts and failure to provide reserves. The new law attacks the problem from a different angle. The subsidy is there, just as under the old law, but it is & direct subsidy with Uncle Sam holding to one end of it. Instead 6f mail contracts over and above the cost of transporting the mails, out of which great prosperity might come if judi- ciously handled, the new law calls for the building of vessels for the inter- ested companies by the Government and the sale of them to the companies on the installment plan. It acts for American shipping in the following manner: Way Plan Operates. An operating company wants to build a ship for foreign trade. It can be built abroad much more cheaply than at home. So, as the Government wants the ship built here and operated under the American flag with an American crew, the following proposi- tion is made to the operating company. It is told to draft plans of a modern vessel to serve its purposes, if they be Justified, and to ascertain the foreign cost of this vessel. Then to submit the plans to the Navy and comply with its requirements to make the vessel & b seles ey e S KO | There no longer can be a makeshift government of national concentration as we have seen during these last 10 years. It will be & Gallic form of dic- tatorship. Whether it will have as its banner the tricolor or the hammer and sickle, nobody can say, because it is not possible to gauge the tendencies of (Copyright, 1080.) & WHEN AMERICAN SHIPS ARE | naval auxiliary craft in time of need.| This done, everything else is smooth | sailing. The Government will build the vessel and it will tost the shipping firm just what it would built overseas. The company has to put up one- quarter of this cost. The balance the Government finances for a period of 20 years at 3'; per cent interest, pay- | ments on contract to be made yearly. The program works out as follows: A vessel desired and approved costs, let us say, $1,000.000 to build in Amer- ica. Foreign bullt it cost $600,000— both costs exclusive of the defense fea- tures required by the Navy. Six hun- dred thousand dollars, therefore, is the price of the ship to the operating com- pany. One-quarter of this amount is $150,000. This is all the actual cash the company has to put up. As for the $400,000 differential—that is the sub- sidy. That is the price the Government pays to have the ship built in this country and ready for its service tn time of war. Also Operating Subsidles. The subsidy, however, does not end here. There are other subsidies— operating subsidies. Uncle Sam wants this ship manned by American seamen | All officers and all crews of these ves- sels must be American citizens, save only a small percentage of stewards on passenger vessels. And he wants them to have American wages. Now Amer- ican wages are higher than foreign wages, 50 Uncle Sam has to pay the differential. This he agrees to do, re- quiring all companies buying vessels under his subsidy plan to keep a con- tinuous discharge book or service record of seamen employed upon the vessels. The shipowner does not receive the construction differential subsidy. This is paid to the American shipbuilder a; a part of the privilege of having the ship built in America. This is essential because of the difference in the stand- ard of wages paid here and abroad, and the cost of materials, American labor is the chief benefi- ciary of this differential cost. Virtu= ally 85 per ccnt of the cost of con- structing a ship is labor. And the profits of the shipbuilder in the trans- actions are adequately restricted by recapture, The operating differential goes to the shipowner. It covers the excess cost of materials and labor over the foreigh cost of the same items, an amount he would be exempt from paying were he operating a foreign- flag ship. It covers repayment of sums of money already disbursed in payment for American labor employed upon his American ship and for ma- terials required in its maintenance and operation. In strict language this payment of operating differential is not & subsidy. It merely represents an equalization of American costs as against costs of foreign operation. No profits accrue to the shipowner as a result of this payment. He is out of pocket so much and he is reimbursed 80 much. . In return for moneys put out by the Government over and above those that would be put out by the ship- owners were they to build their ships abroad the Government receive “l. Naval and military & ABLE TO FIGHT FOR TRADE. “2. Protection and extension of American foreign commerce and as- surance of available transportation for it. “3. Employment for American la- bor and consequent reduction of re- lief expenditures. “4, The right of requisition at low cost to the Government. “5. The right to specify and confine | the operation of the vessels to a def- inite trade route. “6. Registry of vessels under Ameri- can flag for at least 20 years. “7. The use of materials and sup- plies. | “8. Right of readjustment of con- | tracts. “9. Right to control the sale, trans- fer and management of vessels. *10. The right to impose upon the shipowner, in the conduct of his busi- ness, a multitude of. restrictions not borne by shipping or any other busi- ness. “11. Right to specify that national defense features of no value for com- | mercial purposes be incorporated in the ship. “12. Possibility of reducing even the limited ‘parity’ attained by recapture of profits.” Subsidies Not New. Subsidies are not new to the Ameri- can Government. They have been granted shipping in one form or an- other ever since the early days of the Republic. The first act helping Ameri- can shipping was passed in 1789. It had for its purpose nothing more than was practiced by the rest of the mari- time nations of the world. ‘These early subsidies took the form of discriminating duties and lower tonnage taxes for American bottoms. American ship tariffs were 10 per cent less than those charged other countries on coming into American ports. The lower tonnage taxes consisted of lower charges to American ships at the port, of lighthouse fees and other incidentals. These indirect subsidies or favors to American bottoms continued on up through our history from the foundng days until about 1830. Then treaties were substituted for them. This country and other maritime na- tions agreed to dispense with them and signed pacts to that effect. Many of these treaties are still in effect and stand, therefore, as a bar to favors shown domestic shipping in- terests by the Government, after the old manner. Sidestepping, therefore, 1is the order of the day, and this has re- sulted in the subsidy idea. These subsidies are, therefore, world-wide. Every nation that goes to sea, that maintains a carrying trade across the water helps its nationals with a subsidy. Great Britain, France and Germany are notable examples. In this country we have always sidestepped the word “subsidy” when talking of help to our merchant marine. But, bluntly, American ships cannot stay on the high seas as carriers of foreign commerce with- out financial assistance from the Government. And those who have opposed the use of the word get no- ‘where with their opposition. Because of this understanding of the situstion President Rgosevelt, in the Congress has provided for vari- can shipping. of interest to American shipping companies for the purpose of build-! ing new ships for the foreign trade. | It has, in addition, appropriated large sums under the guise of payments { for ocean mail contracts. * * * Given | under this disguised form it is an | unsatisfactory and not an honest | way of providing the aid that Govern- ment ought to give to shipping. “I propose that we end this subter- |fuge. If the Congress decides that |1t will maintain a reasonable, ade- | quate merchant marine, I believe that it can well afford honestly to call a | subsidy by its right name.” | For those who like figures and facts | to bolster arguments, as fine an ar- | gument as ever could be devised bol- !slers up this latest subsidy step by the Government. Present U. S. Status. | Today our foreign-borne commerce | is second only to that of Great Brit- |ain. Over two-thirds of it is carried |in foreign bottoms. | For more than three years not a | single merchant ship for our foreign commerce has been started in Amer- ica. | At the beginning of the World War over $1,000,000,000 was lost by rot- ting on American shores of American goods for want of bottoms to carry it overseas. During the World War over $3,000,- 000.000 excess in tariffs were paid | by American businesses to get goods | overseas. | And over $100,000.000 were paid to foreign governments for transport service to get American troops to the | battlefields of France. These losses would have subsidized an American merchant marine for three centuries. Why, even back in the Boer war we paid out enough in in- creased freight rates to cover its cost. From these facts and figures it may |lier for us not to have a merchant | marine than to have one. 1908 Naval Splurge. As for the Navy. Back in 1908 we made a great splurge in the naval | waters of the world. Teddy Roosevelt was then President and he thought | it a wonderful thing to show the globe ghow wonderfully powerful and mighty | we were on the seas. The Great White | Fleet steamed out of American har- | bors to impress all mankind dutifully. | And it did. But every time the fleet left a foreign harbor for another “kill- ing” destination the high government of the departed country got behind doors and had a good laugh. For all the way round we were coaled and fed by fleet auxiliaries of the nations vis- ited. We had a wonderful naval ar- mada, but we had no supporting ships. Today, with the world jittery, we need a vast array of merchant ships to support our Navy as auxiliaries. With 500 to 600 million dollars pledged for a larger Navy, we need, in the opinion of naval experts, not less than 400 merchant men auxiliaries. Where are they coming from? Out of the ribs f the merchant marine act of 1936—if the new plans of Congress do not mis- carry. For immediate modernization of our commercial shipping we need not less than 200 vessels. Swedish Heirs Willed Money of Immigrants STOCKHOLM (#).—Legacies left by Swedish immigrants, in the United States and Canada, ranging from & few pennies to several hundred thou- sand dollars, are being handled here by a special “inheritance bureau” in the foreign office. Within four years 8,000 heirs in | Sweden have received $4,250,000 from the estates of Swedes who left their home country, many penniless at the time, for America. Since the inheritance bureau has been in existence approximately 40, 000 heirs have been located and paid. About 90 per cent of the funds han- dled by the bureau come from the United States and Canada. One will Provided for payment for 66 persons. ‘The smallest bequest, according to records of the bureqg was 7 cents. | | | easily be seen that it is distinctly cost- | ous kinds of disguised aid to Ameri- | Roosevelt group will bg fair game for both Mr, and Mr. Lemke. Mr. In recent years the | Roosevelt, by being himself more and Congress has provided this aid in the | more radical, can salvage most of form of lending money at low rates | them. Campaign to Grow More Radical. This constitutes the ordained pat- tern of the President’s campaign. It | will begin fairly radical—it has already begun so in Mr. Roosevelt's acceptance speech. As it goes on it will be more and more radical, because more and more Mr. Roosevelt will be obliged to reach farther and farther for the radicals. In proportion as Mr. Roosevelt reaches out farther and farther for the “lefts.” so will he more and more alienate the “rights.” If temptation, indeed necessity, leads him to carry his leftward appeal far enough he will lose even those moderate conserva- tives who are still with him. He may even lose many of the Democrats in the South, where the great body of | voters is conservative, but up to the present have remained with Mr. Roosevelt through tradition and habit-blinking their eyes so far to the New Deal, simply because Mr. Roosevelt, formally and officially, runs as the nominee of the Demo- cratic party. Up to the Democratic convention there was no reason to suppose any Southern State would cast its elec- toral vote against Mr. Roosevelt in November. May be this condition will remain until the election. But by the platform the Democrats adopted at Philadelphia and by other events that emerged a large -part of the course which for the first time in American history imposed a compule sory draft on the country, put the whole Nation under compulsion to bear | arms and jailed those who refused. But | perhaps it is not fair to compare milie | tary compulsion with economic com- pulsion, to compare military compule {sion by President Wilson with the economic compulsion that America will assuredly endure if the New Deal in- dures. 3 | Freedom Under Triple-A. “Economic freedom!” Let's “look at the record.” Under Triple-A no farmer was allowed to raise potatoes unless he had previously been a raiser of potatoes. No farmer was permitted to raise potatoes for sale without & Governynent permit, and he could raise only as many as the Govern- ment dictated. No farmer could sell potatoes, and no consumer buy them, unless they were packaged as the Government dictated and bore a Gov- erment stamp. All this under penalty of the criminal courts. Under Triple~ A no farmer could raise cotton unless he had previously been a raiser of cotton, and no farmer could raise more than the Government at Wash- ington dictated. And so on and so on. Was that “economic freedom?" | Similarly. under N. R. A. no person could set up a little ice manufacturing plant without first getting a permit from the Government, from the code authority—and since the code author- ity was made up largely of persons already in the business, naturally few permits were issued to new com- petitors. This again was enforced by threat of the criminal courts. | Southern electorate, including much | gimilar limitations dictated by Gov- of its best leadership, has become aware that the New Deal is not the Democratic party. Indeed, they know that the New Deal is in most respects the antithesis of Democratic tradi- tions and principles, especially of pre- cisely those principles and traditions that have most endeared the Demo- cratic party to the South. For several months perturbance about the New Deal has simmered in the editorial offices of the South and in other quarters that provide the South's leadership. Southern Demo- crats in the Senate and House have been loyal to the New Deal. even | though they were appalled by it. But they are aware of an increasing ques- tioning from their Southern friends and constituents. Among others, Vice President Garner has been made aware of it—and this is the reason for the extraordinary sentence with which Mr. Garner began his accept- ance of renomination: “I am a sol- dier and my duty is to follow where the commander leads.” Would Follow Chief to Hades. That has been Mr. Garner’s answer to friends who had questioned him; the phrase has been on his lips for months. A variation of it that he uttered publicly a few weeks ago is “If the President’s course should take him to a political Hades, I will be at his elbow, inhaling the sulphurous fumes with him.” To a Texas friend who wrote him a letter of reproach, he replied: “You can’t do everything you want to do and I can't do half. what I would like to do; you don’t control everybody you would like to. and I am in a similar fix.” The reproaches to Mr. Garner have been increasingly forceful. A few weeks ago he received a letter from a Democratic friend saying: “You are the one man in this country who can save it today. * * * This crisis is far beyond success or fortune of any party. * * * Our form of government is at stake. If you will come out and say that you do not believe in the New Deal and not run on a New Deal platform or lie to the American peo- ple, you will go down in history as one of the greatest men this country ever produced.” In the same “fix” that Mr. Garner says he is in, are Democratic Senators like Messrs. Glass and Byrd of Vir- ginia, and Mr. Bailey of North Caro- lina; These three Southern Senators have in the past given public utterance to their dissent from the New Deal. Other Southern Senators, wheelhorses of the Democratic party, are believed to feel privately the same seniiments that Messrs. Glass, Byrd and Bailey have spoken openly. Even some of the highest party leaders, Southern Sen- ators of the greatest prominence in the public eye, are believed to be, in their private hearts, appalled by the New Deal. ernment, similar compulsions enforced by Government, ran through the whole fabric of N. R. A. “Economic free- dom?” If one should set out to make a picture of society from which eco- | nomic freedom is starkly absent, one | would simplf describe the New Deal. | America imperatively needs to build | up, each individual within himself, |8 kind of “sales resistance” against slogans. Think of the ones we have “fallen for” during the past 20 years. In 1916 Woodrow Wilson got himself re-elected to the presidency on a slogan of “He kept us out of war,” with the implication, of course, that if re-elected he would continue to | keep us out of war. We believed that - slogan—and then, five months after Wilson was re-elected, we were at war. Similarly, if we now “fall for” the | slogan “‘economic freedom,” we shall, |if the New Deal goes on and comes | to fruit, pass into an economic conie pulsion as far removed from eco- nomic freedom as going to war was | removed from keeping out of war. | Once in the war, President Wilson |told us it was & “war to end all | wars”—and we now know that all wars are not ended. He told us it was a “war to make the world safe for democracy”—and precisely since the year we entered the war, 1917, de- | mocracy has been under a world-wide | attack, which at this moment focuses jupon America and menaces us with | the loss or extreme limitation of our |own democracy. Wilson believed his own slogans; he himself “fell for* | the slogans that his imagination ine | vented. It may be that in the same | way Mr. Roosevelt believes in his | slogan “economic freedom”—he is even more subject than Mr. Wilson to the magic of phrases, especially of phrases | he himself invents. Recall the ofher slogans we be- lleved: President Harding’s “back to normalcy,” President Coolidge’s “They hired the money, didn't they?"— meaning that our European debtors must pay back the money they had borrowed. The slogan of the latter part of the Coolidge administration, “the new economic era.” We accepted that slogan. In bitter pain we saw it fail us, we experienced the “cold grey dawn of the morning after”— but still we believed in slogans. In 1931 many of us believed that “pros- | perity is just around the corner.” That failed. Yet still we believed the | slogans of the New Deal, of which the | emphasis is now on “economic free- | dom.” | Let us have an enlightening cam- paign. Let us listen to arguments and compare them. But let us equip ourselves with a wholesome skepti- cism about slogans, a clear-minded- ness which can save us from another disillusionment. (Copryent, 1036 )