"BOON-DOGGLING" THE AMERICAN COURSE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 132, 30 November 1935, Page 6

"BOON-DOGGLING"

THE AMERICAN COURSE

SEARCH FOR PROSPERITY

MONEY AND WORK

I was with Mr. Roosevelt at White House the morning before he went for a holiday. He was in big-boyish mood, laughing and joking, and he told me he "felt fine," writes Sir John FosterFraser in the "Sunday Graphic and Sunday News." He had just allocated the last remaining chunk of the near £1,000,000,000—t0 say, nothing of another £250,000,000 available for emergencies—which Congress not very willingly, but under the "you must" command of the American dictator, placed at his disposal to combat unemployment in the United States. There has been improvement in trade but not corresponding improvement in unemployment. It is reckoned there are 20,000,000 folk on relief, eight million of them agriculturists and four million negroes. Already £2,000,000,000 has been expended in direct relief to the destitute.

The United States Budget deficit has run into astronomical, meaningless figures; but while part of the accumulating liability will join the national debt, there were threats to "soak the rich" in further taxation, together with regulation of industry, wages, and hours—which partly explains why the President is denounced by Republican foes as a tyrannical Socialist hastening America to ruin.

Also—as there is little oratorical beating about the bush over here—he is accused of allocating the colossal sums in order to benefit the dungaree crowd j and the white-collared brigade so they will vote for him next year, when he will want to be elected President for a second term of four years. Also any local beneficent and kindly purpose. i This is described by a new American

word, Boon-doggling—and I'm told this will gradually evolve into Hornswoggling. THE MAYORS ARRIVE. As soon as the thousand million pounds were in the Presidential fist, to be distributed in the pressing on with public works—to get started this November and calculated to have 3,500.000 fellows back to work by next spring, moving forward to ten million jobs this time next year, the average pay to work out about £3 5s per week per man—the Mayors of a hundred cities buzzed to Washington to point out the necessities of their regions, roads, bridges over railroad tracks, boulevards; indeed, it is a joke the number of cities which have suddenly discovered improvements that are essentially, imperatively necessary. Mr. Roosevelt sent nobody empty away. Every million dollars was accompanied by a smile. It was hailed as a grand idea nobody should draw a dole, but every person unemployed should register for work or money help he or she was drawing would cease with a snap. There was some trouble with organised labour— which suspected displacement—but one of the plans—there are dozens of plans in operation and thousands of people engaged in trying to operate them and frequently getting in each other's way—is a sort of friendly sharing under which skilled men will work only sixty hours a month, instead of 120 hours hitherto required, for a maximum of £18 a month—l4s less than most of them have been getting, but providing an hourly rate of 6s; while unorganised and unskilled labour, more necessary in America than the other, shall work 120 hours for £12 a month. Getting people back to work was to be "snappy." General Hugh Johnson, the Works Progress Administrator, who is stepping out because the hustle is too strenuous, planned in New York to have 220,000 unemployed on the pay roll by October 15. He has been mad because, although he had a ballyhoo advertising of jobs to be filled, tie cannot get the fillers— short by 8650, including 290 dock builders, 424 gardeners., 292 ornamental iron workers, 669 timbtrmen, 694 stonemasons, and one instrument man among the unskilled, while among the white collars he is short of 51 dentists, 150 general foremen, 125 draftsmen, 122 librarians, 239 nurses, 1158 recreation workers. 1805 teachers, 103 art teachers, and one bacteriologist. NO CURE. General Johnson, stentoriously frank, doesn't think the ladling out of money by the President will cure unemployment. He was telling a bunch of business men that "one of these days somebody is going to kill Santa Claus or put such a crimp in him he won't be able to keep problems asleep by waving a wand over them." One-firth of the people of New York arc dependent on relief. He declared that if relict' is shut oft" there will be "riot, rebellion, or revolution in two weeks' time." He was snappy himself, saying the Government could not go on pouring out £1.000.000,000 a year in soothing syrup to keep the unemployment imp

from raising bedlam all over the nation. He laughed hoarsely at those who said, "Oh, ride along another yearreturning prosperity is going to fix all this mess." Nothing of the kind. Better business will not do the trick. There was a spurt in August which hired 130,000. Ten more spurts would put back business to what it was in 1927. "But," he shouted, "at that rate it would only create 1,500,000 jobs, and we need 10,000,000 jobs. Don't let's kid ourselves."

That is the talk of the man who, since Mr. Roosevelt set out to make Uncle Sam smile, as he can smile himself, has been Works Progress Administrator in New York. When I was with the President he was enthusiastic over ,the camps for young men established in various parts—and everybody agrees it is a grand piece of work salvaging jobless lads and putting them to the healthy and helpful task of saving the country in a very literal sense— erosion prevention, afforestation, and such work; the same sort of thing as Herr Hitler was enthusiastic about when I talked with him in Berlin a couple of years ago. HALF A MILLION. There are half a million of these fellows, between 17 and 28, in the camps—far better than tramping the countryside, and sleeping on city park benches—with wholesome food, and gradually reduced in numbers as they are found jobs. Money well spent. Many of the allocations have been small, even to helping tiny communities to have an extra clerk in the Mayor's office.

What Mr. Roosevelt has done to help farmers and others dependent on produce from the earth has given general approval to ruralists—but there is the twist of the mouth among the urbanists, although they, too, are getting a share of the largesse under distribution.

Human nature is much the same in "God's own country" as in "effete England." Instead of Mr. Roosevelt being an all-the-year-round Santa Claus there are 100-per-cent. Americans who believe he is the darndest, cutest, lowdown, four-flushing politician in the land, nicely watering the parched regions with national money so that on

Presidential election day there will be a bumper crop of Kooseveltian voters. Most of the money was to have gone to national and State "major improvements"—housing, rural electrification, grade crossing eliminations—but apparently it has been realised, even in pushful America, you cannot overnight get your men and start building bridges, grid rural parts with electricity, or rush up necessary houses: a certain amount of preliminary arrangement has to be made before huge projects start moving. CANNOT HE IDLE. Those five thousand million dollars cannot lie idle; the money must be sprayed round. So Roosevelt's critics suspect that for the present big projects are ruled out and "made work such as park puttering, futile research by inexperienced white-collar workers and trifling repair jobs will absorb most of the work." So when I told Mr.. Roosevelt of some recent journeys of mine in Europe and assured hjm he was not the only chief of a nation subjected to guerrilla attack, he puffed at his cigarette threw back his head, and laughingly exclaimed, "Well, I guess not!" "When Mr. Roosevelt ousted Mr. Herbert Hoover, and took control of a despondent America with a joyous, fraternal programme, he was hailed as a Moses. Even in England there was wish we could plan a New Deal on Rooseveltian lines. Well, nothing is over except the, national enthusiasm. Mr. Roosevelt, a man of vast vision didn't tinker. He got authority to go ahead, and he went ahead with his buoyant democratic programme which gave the Conservatives—believe me, there are more conservative-minded people in the United States than in the whole of the United Kingdom—a terrible pain in the tummy and got the most important part of his New Deal declared illegal by the Supreme Court because it did not line up with the cast-iron rules of the Constitution drawn up when the United States was bovn a hundred and fifty years ago. Roosevelt drives right on, even though colleagues have descried him. Mr. Lewis W. Douglas, former director of the Budget in the Roosevelt Administration, has been booming at Chicago that America is faced with a dictatorship and a Socialistic regime unless the orgy of spending is stopped. He charged the Government with spending the people into enormous debt, spending by those who have no knowledge of how wealth is produced and who care less. For five years the deficit has equalled the Federal income. For 1936 it will be 125 per "cent, of the income. LIKENED TO KERENSKY. Hear Mr. Roosevelt's ex-direclor of the Budget: "The Administration's acts parallel what Russia did after Kerensky. Ancient Rome, the French Revolution, our own Revolutionary and Civil Wars, post-war Germany all testify to the vicious effects of deflated currencies, when Governments spent more than they took hi." The prevalent belief in Europe is that Americans are always talking about dollars. They arc Inl'king about dollars now. In the terrific clatter o[ tongues the I

talk is of dollars—with special attacks on those accused of battening on American confusion. The Republicans —who in their time did not so badly when they had control of the national dollars and had the management of what we would call "patronage"—are indignant, although the Supreme Court slew the National Recovery Act because it was illegal: 2760 members of the bureaucracy—"political henchmen" they call them here—are drawing pay at the rate of near* £1,500,000 a year for just "sitting round the corpse."

The President, however, sits back beaming like a happy Buddha. He has a big heart and can outdo Lloyd George in his old encouraging days when he was constantly hailing the light on the distant hills. He glows.

He surrounded' himself with a "brain trust" which worked out the schemes of universal happiness— schemes which make ordinary business men grind their teeth.

I should say that at present the bountiful heart of American democracy beats with that of Mr. Roosevelt, who threatens to amend the Constitution so the wishes of the American people shall not be checked by the legal strictures of the Supreme Court interpreting the written decree.of the fathers of the United States five generations ago. "SACRILEGE." In the eyes of the Republicans to amend the Constitution is sacrilege: it means the abolition of liberty, the setting up of dictatorial dignity, a stride towards abominable European Communism! I, as an alien, don't know* But I believe that so far there have been eighteen amendments of the Constitution, twelve of them made by the Republican Party.

The Republicans are much worried finding a champion who will be their candidate next year. America seems curiously deficient in statesmanlike men to lead the country; maybe this is because the best men will have nothing to do with politics, which are generally regarded as unclean business.

Mr. Hoover is showing signs he would like to come back; but Hoover, a high-principled Quaker, is an uninspiring figure, and was in charge when the depression struck the United States like a Miami tornado and got a ""tremendous licking by Roosevelt at the last Presidential election. Besides. Americans don't back losers.

A furious drive is being made against the alleged Socialistic-minded Roosevelt. But my impression is, whatever unknown man the Republicans bring forward to challenge him, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is pretty certain of another term as President. His smile is worth millions of votes.