Evening Star Newspaper, April 27, 1937, Page 11

Fascist Note Detected in Coal Bill Domain of Monopoly Under U. S. Control Feared. BY DAVID LAWRENCE. " HE first step toward a legalized fascism in America now has been taken. President Roose- velt has just signed a law which permits a monopoly of soft- eoal producers to be organized under | Government control. Theoretically, the Government is to fix the price of bituminous coal, but actually, em- ployers’ and em- ployes’ organiza- tions in 23 dif- ferent coal pro- ducing areas throughout the country are to . establish the minimum and the maximum prices, subject to § the approval o s Government commission. Thus does an important section of the coal indus- try pass from the field of free com- petition to the domain of monopoly under Government control. The suecess of the scheme embodied David Lawrence. THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., TUESDAY, APRIL 27. 1937. News Behind the News Wallace Move to Junk Farm Program Is Called Only a Gesture. BY PAUL MALLON. HE heir apparent, Mr. Wallace, furnished the only official cabinet Teaction to President Roosevelt’s hold-down budget warning. He said dolefully the Government might have to scrap its whole farm- legislation program—farm ‘enancy, crop insurance and ever-normal granary. Mr. Wallace should have put the accent on the “might.” It is an old political custom for officials in doubt to advertise their troubles and then sit down and wait for the echo. Usually, when it is officially hinted that any such large organized group as the farmers are going to lose anything, the echo comes rolling back like political thundera- tion. * K ok ok This time the nymph of the fields seems to have & cold or some- thing. It may be thet the West- ern farmers do not care much about farm tenancy, that the crop insurance and granary proposals are largely Wallace ideas which the farm Congressmen and farm or- ganizations consider to be good but not urgent, or & dozen other things. At any rate the program has not been ditched. The best guess is that the $50,000,000 farm tenant bill will be cut drastically and passed. (A lot of Democratic Congressmen pledged themselves to it in the last campaign and are up foryre-election mext year.) The insurance and granary plan will rest indefinitely in the House Agri= ture Committee unless the echo gets much louder than it has been. (Conservative administration forces are trying to kill it, and House Chairman Jones does not care much for it.) * ox ok % Much of the legislative program is in the same fix—particularly taxes. Ordinarily the President’s public edict against tax revision until next session would be conclusive evidence that there will not be any this session. That is by no means certain now. ' A minor bill will be passed continuing excise taxes which are expiring. This bill is open to any and all amendments. If the Treasury happens to change its mind around June 15, it could shoot up some tex-revision pro- visions it has already prepared. It might even add some new taxes if Con- gress passes any extra-budgetary appropriations in the meantime. Wi G F ATING OB GUESS L CHO. in what is now known as the Guffey- Vinson law depends on whether the public—the consumer—will accept the | higher prices or else turn to substi- | tutes. If on turning to other forms | of fuel, the latter become competitors | ©f coal, will John L. Lewis, on behalf | of the coal miners and the big coal | companies, be able to swing the Gov- | ernment into a contrel of other basic | industries? And if the Government starts fixing the prices of oil and gas, will it not be compelled to fix the prices of steel and copper and metals and all other ingredients entering into the productive processes of the Nation? The bituminous coal industry is | divided as to the advantages of the Jaw, but most of the producers have resigned themselves to submission They hardly can do otherwise, for any coal producer who doesn’t join the proposed code subjects himself to a | heavy Federal tax, which is sufficient penalty to put him out of business. | Question of Legality. Is this constitutional? The so-called | Guffey case which was decided last | year by the Supreme Court merely | held the labor provisions of the exist- | ing act to be unconstitutional. There | s no way from & reading of the | opinion to know whether the price- fixing provisions would or would not be upheld in another and separate | lawsuit. | What has happened is power of John Lewis over Congress has been demonstrated to such an extent that the second measure, a substitute for the one declared in- valid, went through Congress with only a few hours' debate in both houses. The new law differs some- what from the old one in important details, but the principle 1s about the same Union labor, having vi ghop in the coal industry, now compels | the employers to deduct from the | miners’ pay envelope a certain amount | for dues. The collection problem gf the union is facilitated and Mr. Lewis now has the biggest dues-paying or-t ganization he has ever had. This has been achieved with the assistance of the Federal Government. Effect of Consumer Counsels. The producer companies used to complain that they could not pay the wage increases demanded by Mr. Lewis unless they passed them on to the consumer. Now the passing-on proc- ess has been made legal by Govern- ment approval. It is true that the | matter cannot be carried to extremes | and provisions have been made for a consumers’ counsel which is supposed to have the right of protest But consumers’ counsels have never been effective around here, as the experi- ence with N. R. A. codes amply dem- | onstrated | So the coal operators ought to be | happy—at least some of them who | produce at low cost. For the Gov- | ernment will not prosecute any of them for fixing prices, but will actual- 1v help them pass on their higher labor costs to the consuming public. What will the public say about | this? Public utilities are large users of coal. So are railroads and manu- facturing enterprises. They, too, will | attempt to pass on the costs. | Will the coel operators make more | or less money? It depends on their | capital structures and operating plants | and methods. The price is to be an average for a coal-producing area. The law specifies how the costs shall be figured. The price is to be fixed %0 as “to yield a return per net ton equal as nearly as may be to the weighted average of the total costs net per ton of the tonnage of the minimum price area.” There are to be 23 minimum price areas described geographically in the law itself. Here is how the law reads on costs “The computation of the total costs &hall include the cost of labor, sup- plies, power, taxes, insurance, work- men’s compensation, royalties, depre- ciation and depletion (as determined | by the Bureau of Internal Revenue) and all other direct expenses of pro- duction, coal operators’ association | dues, district board assessments for board operating expenses only levied under the code and reasonable costs of selling and the cost of administra- tion.” | What are “reasonable selling costs and the cost of administration”? A group of competitors is to determine | this and a Government commission | is expected to have the wisdom to | question their conclusions when they | are not in the public interest. In an- other place the law says the com- | mission may fix a maximum price “in order to protect the consumer of coal against unreasonably high prices,” but “no maximum price shall be estab- lished for any mine which shall not yield a fair return on the fair valtie of the property.” What's a “fair return”? One com- | pany recently organized buys at a receiver’s sale some mines. Its interest charges are low. Another company | which has weathered the depression | and owes money on its bonds and | notes must earn these fixed charges | and get them out of its gross income. | To protect the high-cost company a maximum price is then established, which gives the low-cost producer a handsome and unreasonable profit. ‘The public, as usual, bears the burden. And when the public outcry is loud the way will be opened for Government control of profit in coal and competing industries and the cycle of fascism be- comes complete. the rtually a closed | * K ok % A neat job of hiding the flood-control button is being played on Congress by downtown autnorities. The flood States Congressmen do not like it, but they may have to. The report of the Army Engineers took weeks. Then it went to the White House, then to the National Resources Board. Latest dope is that it has recently been on its leisurely way back to the White House. The idea, they say, was to hold it away from Congress until the current econ- omy move could be started. There will be a fight about it, but probably not a bill. Note—Suimilarly sensational timing is noticeable on the national defense bills, particularly the Navy bill. The President’s Budget Bu- Teaw’s warning arrived after the big Navy bill had passed both houses and the Army bill was ready to go through., . * ok ok K A tremendous personal scrap between Chairmen Pittman and Mc- Reynolds is supposed to be holding up the neutrality compromise, but it 14 may be more tremendous than ‘ir‘x':f”\’»’? scrappy. When a Senate conferee & like Mr. Pittman abandons a Sen- ate bill in favor of a House bill, he generally finds it necessary to have a big fight with some one about something in order to prove that he died for dear old Senate. The fighting this time will be loud, but not necessarily fatal. The bill will be passed in just about its present form, which is what the President wanted in the first place The railroad retirement bill will go through easily . . . The anti- lynching bill is being laid aside in the Senate for trading purposes, (Lead- ers may buy a few Supreme Court packing votes by agreeing to drop it.) For this and other reasons its passage is more doubtful . . . A new price plan, N. R. A, minimum wages and hours, is supposed to be nearly ripe, but the President has been very secretive about it and Congress knows nothing. Messrs. Corcoran and Cohen are supposed to have devoted much of their personal time to this subject lately . . . The $100.000.000 Harrison education bill is definitely among the unburied dead. It will not pass, and, if passed. will be vetoed . Senator Wagner is phenagling around to preserve the principle of his billion-dollar housing bill, but, if he saves anything. it will be only the principle . . . The congressional leaders are going at their purpose of holding to the budget with great earnestness An inside working arrangement has been made among House leaders to Bang up against any and all amendments offered from the floor. The House also is being pledged to hold to any economies effected in appro- priation bills by the Senate. However, the budget is all in the laps of the gods, and political gods at that (Copyright, 1937.) CAROLINA COUNTY BEATS NORRIS, MODERN T. V. A. LIQUOR STORE BILL| TOWN, TO VOTE ON BEER Prohibitionists Win by 11 Votes, Sale Has Been Banned in Dam Dare Election Official Announces. | Commonwealth Since It Was Laid Out in 1933. By the Associated Press. NORRIS, Tenn., April 27.—Folks in | the ultra-modern town of Norris, built | by the Tennessee Valley Authority, will vote today on whether they want | beer sold and, if so, how | Although legal in Tennessee, sale of | beer has been banned in Norris since | the town was laid out near Norris dam in 1933 The pre-referendum campaign has | been much like the old-fashioned tem- perance rows that have split less mod- | ern American villages for the last hun- | | dred years. B) the Associateq Press MANTEO, N. C, April 27.—E. S. Wise, chairman of the Dare County Board of Elections, said last night a proposal to establish alcoholic bever- age control stores in Dare County had been defeated by 11 votes. Wise said the official tabulations had been locked up and that he did not remember the exact number of votes cast for and against liquor stores An unofficial check of complete re- turns, however, showed 671 dry votes and 652 wet ballots, with the prohi- bitionists leading by 19. | he wishes. Dare was the first county to vote on the repeal of prohibition under Mrs. A. E. Morgan, gray-haired wife of the T. V. A. chairman, is the leader | of the opposition. She has the support the new county option liquor law, | of most of the women. passed by the 1937 General Assembly. There are about 800 qualified voters. “Sacred name of a pig!! I hope nothing happens 10 that Wilkins Coffec” trHE opinions of the writers Zm this page are their own, not necessarily The Star’s. Such opinions are presented in The Star’s effort to give all sides of questions of interest to its readers, although such opinions may be contradictory among themselves and directly opposed to The Star’s. Dynamite in Court Bill Charge of Bar Association Discussed as Measure Enters Second Phase. BY MARK SULLIVAN. HE President’s bill to change the courts passes on Tuesday into its second phase. The Senate Judiciary Committee, having completed seven weeks of hear- ing witnesses, will now consider send- ing the bill to the Senate as a whole. In this week's consideration by the committee, Senator Van Nuys of In- diana will move to divide the bill into two. The bill now stands in the exact | form in Which it was written by the President and his advisers, as one bill dealing with both the Supreme Court and the lower Federal courts. Senator Van Nuys' proposal is to have two bills, one dealing with the Supreme Court, the other with the lower courts (the district and circuit Federal § courts). ¥ Division of the President’s bill into two will call attention to the part of it that deals with the lower courts, con= cerning which, far, there has been little discus- sion and almost no public under- ° standing. Appar- | ently public * understanding is needed. For about the President’s plan with respect to the lower courts a dis- turbing charge is made in a report of the Bar Association of New York City, supported by other authorities. Mark Sullivan. Bar Association Charge. The bar association’s charge is that | Mr. Roosevelt, by his bill, would be empowered to appoint a large number of new judges to the lower courts; that these new judges would have a status | differing from the status of existing judges, and that. as a result, the new judges appointed by Mr. Roosevelt would constitu 1 quote the bar association repor “A mobile force of itinerant judges nominated by the Chief Executive ®** who are to be assigned to particular cases * * *. These judges may be as- signed to any case on any of the dis- trict court calendars.” ‘Whether this charge is well based, laymen cannot tell. It depends on close reading of the President’s bill, and also close reading of the existing law about assignment of judges, which the Presi- dent’s bill would change. Most per- sons will be influenced by the fact that the charge is made by a responsible bar association The charge arises mainly from one paragraph in the President's bill. The bill gives the President power to ap- point additional judges on the lower courts, just as it gives him power to appoint new justices on the Supreme Court. Important Phrase. Then the President’s bill provides that the new judges, appointed by him, can be moved from one part of the country to another. The sus- picion expressed by the bar associa- tion report arises partly from two words in the Presideng’s bill,” which I here italicize “hereafter appointed!™ “Any district judge hereafter ap- pointed may be designated and as- signed from time to time by the Chief Justice of the United States for service in any district court * * = (And the same as to any circuit Jjudge.) If the charge of the bar association is well grounded it must contemplate that the following things would happen: 1. The President would appoint 2§ to 50 judges. This will happen. 2. The President would appoint only judges whom he expects to decide cases the way he wants them decided. This is an assumption, but the as- sumption is believed by practically all who oppose the President’s bill. 3. The President would appoint a Chief Justice and the Chief Justice whom he appoints would do whatever This is perhaps the least probable of the assumptions, though it | is believed by many who oppose the President’s measure. | To imagine a concrete case, such as the bar association report must have in mind, we should foresee something like this: The President (the present Presi- dent or a future one) addresses the Chief Justice thus: “There is a case in the New York district which I want decided in favor of the Government. So won't you please take one of these new judges I appointed in Chicago | and send him to New York? Tell him | to take the case away from the regu- lar New York judges and try it him- self and get a verdict in favor of the Government.” | Can we really imagine that hap- | pening? Apparently the New York | Bar Association is able to imagine it. I don't know whether to think it is | credible, or just fantastic nonsense. | And if it is credible, if this pos- sibility really exists in the President's bill, did it just happen? Or did the writer of the bill, presumably one of the President’s intimate advisers, real- ly envisage and intend this result, and cunningly write a bill designed to bring it about? The most disturbing question is why the new judges, “here- after appointed,” should be given a different status from existing judges, with a changed method of assignment. Says Worse Could Happen. If the suppositious case I have cited | could happen, then worse could hap- pen. A President (the present one jor a future one) could direct that | one of his judges be assigned to try | & particular case and to find a de- | fendant guilty on the ground that the defendant is politically or personally disliked by the President. “He's an anti-New Dealer; find him guilty and | give him the works.” Or, in the case | of a future President: “Find him innocent; he's a good guy and he gave $10,000 to the Republican cam- paign fund” I ask again: Is this credible? Or is the bar association's charge, with its implications, mere fantastic non- sense? Unfortunately for Mr. Roosevelt, those who wish to believe the sus- picion will be moved by some of the circumstances with which he has sur- rounded his whole attempt to change the courts. In his launching of the at- tempt there was an apparently studied effort not to reveal its portentousness. It caused Mr. Walter Lippmann to | say “misleading.” “coup d’etat”; and the Baltimore Sun to say “deceptive,” “an intent to deceive”; and the Scripps- Howard newspapers to say “too ciever, too damned clever”; and Mr. William Allen White to speak of the Presi- dent’s “instinctive indirection.” and Miss Dorothy Thompson indignantl | to ask “must we examine every mq sage from the President to see wheth- er there is a trick in it somewhere?” Also, many of the President’s words | and actions over a period of years suggest that he really does nct con- ceive of courts as independent insti- | tutions: he seems actually to think | the courts ought to do what the Presi- | dent wants. And, finally, it is a fact that many bills written by New Deal- ers contained purposes or effects not revealed until after Congress had un- | | knowingly passed them. We, the People A South Carolinian Who Is Attempting to Make the South See Its Place in Present World. BY JAY FRANKLIN, HARLESTON.—In the first rapturous dawn of the New Deal, Mr. Jerome Frank, who was then the general counsel of the A. A. A, was traveling through the Carolinas to examine the damages to the agricultural South wrought by the profit system as understood in ‘Wall Street. At Charleston he ran across a man who seemed to understand the whole problem—racial, economic, social, in the mountains and low country alike—a gentleman who had been the editor of a big New York magazine and who had retired to a career of long-distance free-lancing and to “the good life” on the South Carolina soil. Frank introduced this gentleman, Mr. James C. Derieux, to Dr. Rexford Guy Tugwell about the time the latter was organizing the Reset- tlement Administration. He seemed—and was—the ideal man to handle the public information work in the resettlement region consisting of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Alabama. For, in addition to his ‘wide journalistic experience, Derieux had served as secretary to the Governor of South Carolina and knew the 4 current politics of the region as thoroughly as a Wall Streeter knows his ticker tape. * ok ok ok ‘There was a little initial diffi- culty as the regional director, Dr. Philip Weltner of Georgia, at first did not see the point of telling the public how and why its money was being spent in the South and felt that he should have the selection of the man charged with this duty. But after a tense conference, the two men became firm friends and close allies in the struggle to make the happy thoughts of Northern idealists make sense in terms of Southern ways of living and habits of thought. It was a long and, on the whole, on unsuccessful battle. Dr Tugwell believed in decentralization, but the instinct of a bureaucracy is always in favor of uniformity, and uniformity can be achicved only through red tape, and red tape is a parasitical creeper which can choke the stoutest tree. The reason for the mess in the Southeastern resettlement region is still shrouded in mystery. There was & community of poor Negroes on the sea islands off the Georgia coast in which one of the great Northern philanthropic institutions was interested. Derieux and Weltner refused to certify that these particular Negroes were in greater need of Federal relief than thosé on the mainland, when the sea-island people were, if anything, happier and better off than the latter. This was not well received in Washington. Then Weltner requested and received authority to reduce the heavy office staff Washington had wished on him, and dismissed some of the red tape artists at regional headquarters. His authority over his own personnel was promptly revoked by telegraph from Washington and, being a man of pride, he promptly resigned Jim Derieux offered to resign ai the same time. He was then part of my organization and I refused to accept his resignation, but he insisted on abandoning a craft subject to such eccentric and whimsical naviga- tion and returned to his free-lancing. As much as any one man, Derjeux is responsible for the “discovery” of Charleston by the writers and artists who are beginning to make it famous as one of the lasi refuges of gracious living in the United States * k% ox Year after year, Dericux has plugeed for South Carolina and for an understanding of the South in terms of itself. Like all sensible men, he believes the strength of a na- tion lies in diversity rather than uniformity, and senses that the evolution of this country must fol- low individual lines of regional de- velopment rather than revolve in the closed circle of States rights vs Pederal authority. He believes that the old Southeast has much to con- tribute to the Nation on this basis and that the money-civilization of the North is inapplicable to a re- gion where a successful farmer can raise and educate his children. live well improve his property, and prosper, never handling more than $1,000 a year, drawing his living directly fyom the land. This was, in fact, the old plantation idea for which the South fought so valiantly 75 years ago. It was not so much slavary as an institution as it was the dignity and security of a well-ordered agrarianism which prompted the South to secede. In this process, Jim Derieux is playing a quietly important part in his native State. Some of the money squeezed from the South by three genera- tions of high-tariff Northern indusirialism is being poured back into Charleston. And the wealthy duck hunters find themselves being softened and civilized in the process. At the same time he is fostering the germ of a new Southern culture and literature which can give direction and self- consciousness to the revival of Southern prosperity. When they start pass- ing around statues in years to come, South Carolina could do far worse than erect one to Mr. James C. Derieux of Summerville. (Copyrisht, 1937.) An American You Should Know Budding Lawyer Turned Into Mine Expert by Wanderlust. BY DELIA PYNCHON, OHN W. FINCH has led an ade venturous life. He started ous to be a lawyer. He ended up one of America’s foremost con= sulting engineers and geologists. The wanderlust led him far afield. Nos- bout “remote and primitive ' brought him back to become . a professor and ultimately direc~ tor of the Bureau of Mines, in 1933, by appointment of Secretary of Interior Ickes. Born in Lebe anon, N. Y, in 1873. Finch has & pocketful of dee grees, which ine clude an A. B, A M, Sc. D. from Colgate, and one each from Chi= cago and Ala- John W. Finch. haths. He tanglit | mining at Colgate University, was professor of mining geology, Colorado School of Mines, and dean of the School of Mines University of Idaho. | Mining examinations, in connection with metals, petroleum, coal, have taken him to Canada, Mexico, South Africa, China, Siberia, Siam, Burma, |and other Asiatic countries. Quiet, | purposeful, with a disinclination for | conversational bombast, Finch has & ready smile and an appreciative gleam in his eyes as he recalls a saga of | vast work and travel. | In his travel-stride he visited the ‘Ymmn Province, Southwest China, | where the Ming Emperors made their money. “The Chinese miners, and have | Pinch says. | In South Africa he rested on a gravel bed one day and in 15 minutes picked up diamonds worth $600. In Turkey he drank thick Turkish coffee with the 27 children (seven widows not present!) of “terrible Turk.” | old Sultan Abdul Hamid. The com- pany he represented had an oil cone tract with the s 1's heirs. Reors ganization of the voung Turks voided oil contracts and rendered the heirs have not been good left much,” the r of a Nation-wide set up, PFinch direc superintends and | administers a network of technologic economic, administrative and health the technologic branch out processes to better utilife 1l the minerals and find new prod= ucts that have remained idle. The economic branch supplies ine formation on coal. metals and petrolee um that forecasts probable demands. The administrative branch di tributed 476000 free copies of the Bureau of Mines publicetions last year. The health and trains the men in More than 200 lives | been saved. safety branch safe practices. annually have A RACING STORY THAT WILL MAKE YOUR HEART POUND | DRUMFIRE by Almet Jenks HUNDERING HOOFS on the turf, skim- ming fences with no inch to spare. Lives held carelessly in a desperate timber-topping steeplechase, with fame waiting for the win- ner. Yet one man, who gained most, had nei- ther horse nor money in the race. You don’t have to know horses and racing to get excited over this story. AT YOUR NEWSSTAND TODAY IN THE SATURDAY EVENING POST FicTio Drumfire Sy " Fites Tonite Miss Skanasunk Page 8 12 16 18 D 27 * + ALMET Jpnks ** . DON TRACY + « LUCIA ALZAMORA 3-3.8 (Fourtb.par/YA'LTER o EDMONDS B 0f six) J.P. MARQL 0ad to Reno Sixth pays of seven) I A R, WYLIE 33 i F| EATURES 4zelnuts for Gyps - JOHN GUNTHER I Graduateq Last june , ANONYMOL JS Move Over, Please J. P. M Tom Jeff and the el 5 10 10 Coart 14 5 15 Cutting the Capjes DICK BARRy 20 SENATOR HENR Father Meeys Son Editorials Post Scripu % Y CABOT LODGE,_]R_ 23 oo Jiop McEvoy 36 L .- . LI LI 22 24