The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 1934. THE PRESIDENT'S TASK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 4, 5 January 1934, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 1934. THE PRESIDENT'S TASK.

Por the cause that lacks assistance. For the wrong that needs resistance For the future in the distance, And the aood that tee can do

Since the beginning of the Roosevelt regime the people of the United States have tasted the sweets and bitters of national planning, and there is more in store for them. That is the one clear impression left by the President's address to Congress. He has declared that there will be no turning back from his charted course of planning a new social structure. This is an immense task, and it is not surprising that the President does not enter into details. Neither he nor his expert advisers, even with the experience of the past nine months behind them, can tell where the quest for recovery may lead them. They are on uncharted seas, directing tho destinies of a great nation. The welfare of 130,000,000 people is directly at stake, and the welfare of many times that number in the other countries of the world will be affected indirectly by tho American experiment. If President Roosevelt is able to lead the United States on towards a new prosperity, in which all the resources of the nation and all her man-power can be put to full use, trade and industry everywhere will feel the benefit. While uncertainty rules in the United States, while the value of the dollar fluctuates from day to day, trade, in tho ordinary sense is impossible. The conditions are too speculative, the risks too numerous, for the exchange of goods in a normal way. President Roosevelt knows this well. He is fully conscious of tho important bearing his actions have, and will continue to have, upon the world at large. His efforts at price-raising, his monetary programme, his attitude towards silver and gold, and his tariff policy, though shaped in the first instance to promote the interests of his own country, will have farreaching repercussion in Europe, Asia, and in tho British Dominions. Small though the foreign trade of the United States is in proportion to the domestic, it is indispensable; without it 50,000,000 acres of farmlands would cease to have any value, and millions of men still out of employment would be deprived permanently of the right to work. It is significant that no reference is made to currency inflation, and that on some of tho most important questions facing the nation the President has been brief and guarded. His attitude is one of caution, dictated partly, perhaps, by the signs of criticism already heard from some quarters of Congress, and partly by the difficulty of seeing far enough ahead to commit himself to a set line of policy. One aim, as he declares, is to strengthen the financial structure and to arrive eventually at a medium of exchange which will have, over the yeprs, "a less variable purchasing and debt-paying power." This plainly suggests a leaning towards a "commodity dollar," but just what measures the President intends to take to attain that object are not known. His buying of gold was only a first step, and as yet has not carried him very far; nor has it had much effect in raising the prices of primary products. It is one of the stubborn problems in the United States, as it has been in New Zealand and in other countries, to lift the prices of farm commodities to the same level as other goods. The restriction of production is aimed at the same end. Other phases of the Roosevelt plan are the revival of activity on public works, and probable reform of the banking system. The general effect of the measures taken is to throw a colossal burden on the finances of the Government, and tho cable news to-day gives some idea of the enormous expenditure involved.