Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 1934. N.R.A. UNDER REVIEW

Evening Post, Issue 56, 7 March 1934, Page 8

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 1934. N.R.A. UNDER REVIEW

Not jubilation but stock-taking was the note sounded by President Roosevelt on the conclusion of his first year of office. . A conference of several thousand members of the staff engaged in the administration".of'theNational Recovery Act codes had been called for a three-day reyiew of their activities, and it was to that department of his ever-changing and ever-expanding programme that he confined himself in the address with which he opened the proceedings. Before such an audience at any rate he was safe in proclaiming "the necessity of the National Recovery Act for economic rehabilitation," and in "flouting the fears that it was the forerunner of Fascism or Communism." The second of these points would probably, not, have been worth more: than a passing gibe before any audience. The. question for the American people a year ago was whether or not they were to drown in the; bpgyin .which they were rapidly sinKngfyyWHe'Aerhhe' means that w?*e:-employed;for their rescue might be tiltirtrsitely wrested to the purposes of; Fascism.or Communism or anyother "ism? was of no more interest to,them th_n the binomial theorem or the doctrine of relativity. By means of a new.hope and a New Deal their ne^ President kept their hearts up anclA their heads up, with the result thatthey are still' alive today, hut he knows and they know, that their feet are not yet planted; on "terra fir™?'" If he tells them that in oider^to effect that purpose the New Deal itself must be in parts renewed, they will surely accept his* advice With as little regard for the prophets of a remote and problematical disaster as they showed a year ago. -The charge of inconsistency carries no more weight than the academic labels and'; the Ar contradictory prophecies of future trouble. President Rposeyelt has never claimed to her^infallible. AHe was dogmatic in his insistence, on the need for courage and ; hope, and by following his advice and'his example his countrymen gave his practical measures a chance. But in a field where there were no precedents to point the way and the conditions were constantly changing those measures were necessarily and avowedly, to a .very,'large extent a hand-to-mouth business. , ATwo of these, great- experiments have definitely A failed, All the millions paradoxically spent on the destruction^ of crops and stock under the Agricultural Adjustment Act have left the unfortunate farmers in a worse plight than before, the National Recovery Act'itself having contributed to the aggravation, and the President is now looking to his "majestic gamble" with the currency for better results. Another disastrous failure is that of the Civil Works Administration, and the sting is sharpened by the corruption which has been stealing at the expense of the unemployed. But, as we were told on Friday, Mr. Roosevelt has his substitute ready in a reorganisation of his national relief programme,' for which he thinks that the 950,000,000----dollar appropriation already granted will suflice till the spring of 1935. A3 the provision made for the President's needs during the seven months is estimated by Mr. George Glasgow in the February "Contemporary Review" at nearly £8,000,000 , a day— £1,000,000 more than Mr. Lloyd George's war expenditure—he should at any rate have enough to go on with! It is fortunate that the N.R.A. has not shared the fate of the A.A.A. and the. C.W.A., but after a highly prosperous start it.suffered checks which all the energy and ingenuity of the President and General Johnson, his very able chief of staff, have failed to remove. Some of these difficulties had been foreseen and denounced by critics of. the scheme before it came into operation. Others were due to factors which . were beyond calculation or control, and have baffled the hopes of the Administration. The President refers to both kinds of difficulty in the speech reported today. He has arrived, he says, at the inescapable conclusion that we must now consider an immediate co-operation to secure an increase in wages and a shortening of hours. AYe must set up every safeguard against erasing small operators from the economic scene. Tho first task of industry today is to create consuming power. It is the immediate task of industry to. re-employ more people at purchasing wages and to do it now. When Mr. Roosevelt declares for the setting-up of "every safeguard against erasing small operators from the economic scene," he is virtually pleading guilty to one of the charges most loudly proclaimed against his recovery scheme before it reached the Statute Book. It was a relatively easy matter for a big business with an abundance of capital behind it to face the strain of shorter hours and standard ivages, but the representatives of small businesses working on , a narrow margin were up in arms 1 agaihst a proposal which might well prove fatal. But Mr. Roosevelt, whose sympathy with, the under-dog and "the forgotten man" played a 1 conspicuous part in his election propaganda, somehow or other forgot J the small man on this occasion. His memory has now been jogged, but in I what direction he is looking for a remedy is not disclosed. I The other point emphasised by lhe

President is one on which General Johnson has long been harping—the urgent need for increasing consuming power by the re-employment of more people "at purchasing wages."- The reduction of working hours in all codes by 10 per cent, and the increase of wages by 10 per cent, were the proposals tentatively submitted by General.Johnson. It may be hoped that an exhaustive and authoritative review iof the actual'position will be submitted to the Conference and published. In November tlie estimate of the American Federation of Labour wasthat 10,720,000 workers still had no industrial employment. This, said tho New York "Nation" of February 7, represents a fifth of the country's.normal wage-earning population, and it is evident that . nothing satisfactory has been done yet' in lessening unemployment, although much has been accomplished towards better relief of tho unemployed. • The N.R.A. Conference will, we trust, produce a more hopeful estimate, and at the same, time point the way to still better results.. '• ~