GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22306, 21 January 1938, Page 11

GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS

♦ REPRESENTATIONS MADE TO MR ROOSEVELT CO-OPERATION IN COMBATING TRADE RECESSION (united mess association—copyright.) (Received January 20, 11.30 p.m.) WASHINGTON, January 19. Fifty of the nation's business leaders presented Mr Roosevelt with a statement promising their co-oper-ation in combating business recession, but demanding a radical revision of the President's Wages and Hours Bill, and a truce with the public utility companies. Mr Roosevelt was cautioned against a general purge of holding companies and against any further tinkering with the currency. The statement concluded with an expression of faith in the efficacy of the principles of democracy. Mr Roosevelt said the Government was seeking a simple machinery by which its policies could be formulated. He insisted that Congress must pass the Wages and Hours Bill. The quarrel with public utility companies, he said, was only with the recalcitrant 15 per cent. Labour unions should voluntarily make public their receipts and expenditures in the same way as under the British system! It is authoritatively stated that the immediate objective of Mr Roosevelt's business conferences is the creation of a national planning council to overcome business recession. The council will comprise elements not only from the geographical standpoint but from "big" and "little" business, labour, finance, distribution, agriculture, transportation, credit, investors, and consumers. It will thus be representative of the active productive life of the nation. The council, it is understood, will be informal and will not need to be sanctioned by Congress.