THE NEW DEAL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 307, 28 December 1935, Page 8

THE NEW DEAL.

With perhaps only one exception, America is at all times a land' of super-free, open and frank discussion. In this one exception to the rule the discusser himself/ tle : United States Press, if you please, is seldom if ever discussed, whence the stack of unwashed Press linen in what might otherwise be at least a reasonably clean household. Up to the time of President Roosevelt's attack on our modern money-changers' strongholds and threatened attack on the yellow section of America's Press, all was going along quite hopefully and merrily. But, alas, the corrupt politicians and financial racketeers were'awakened, like the sleeping dogs of the old proverb. As a matter of cold fact, they were not sleeping but playing 'possum while good and true men' worked in frantic effort to save a sinking ship. From that time forward these public enemies number one of the nation have challenged, attacked and re-attacked President Roosevelt and all the liberal' laws and the principles of the good neighbour which he is striving so hard to set up and establish amidst an international world of turmoil and uncer J tainties, and a national world of perplexities, unrest and inhumanities to man. History is again repeating itself and choosing, as usual, America as a field for its operations. As it was nineteen hundred and thirty-five years ago, as it was in honest Abraham Lincoln's time, in grand old man Gladstone's time, in good Theodore Roosevelt's time, in good Richard Seddon's time, in good Woodrow Wilson's time, so it is in equally good Franklin D. Roosevelt's time. All'these attacks on a' good man with a good principle, including, of course, the world's tragedy of nineteen hundred and thirty-five years ago, are easily traceable to the jealousies, the yellow streaks, the kinks and the loose screws of human nature. In the front ranks of the present army of attackers on President Roosevelt and virtually the whole of the New Deal's set-up and principles is William Randolph Hearst, the publisher —with an empire which includes, it is said, 341,000 acres of ranch land in the State of California, 900,000 acres of ranch land in Mexico, 41,000,000 dollars' worth of real estate in New York, a castle in Wales and a chain newspaper and magazine corporation whose assets were in 1934 valued at some 189,000,000 dollars, which, despite the ' payment of 1,600,000 dollars in Federal income-tax, brought in,the handsome figure of 8,396,000 dollars in net profits.| The vast Hearst chain of newspapers and magazines is one of the greatest powers, for good or ill, in the United States, and much and many have either sunk or swum according to the way that power was applied. During the past eighteen months or two years the bulk, if not alii of Hearst's power of concentrated wealth and paid-for intelligence has been directed „at and against Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, as it has been, strange to say, directed at and against many other Federal Administrations, whether good or bad. Settling an old score with those "Forty Thieves" of the Press, of finance, of politics, of the law and of industry has now reached.a point nearer to realisation and established fact than ever before in the United States. As never before the honest and truly American newspapers, of , which the "New York Times" and. Scripps-Howard publications are outstanding examples (those of a type and character like your own "Auckland Star ) are now being much rep.d, believed, remembered and respected. GEORGE A. KLOWER. San Francisco.