Untitled

Hokitika Guardian, 3 August 1935, Page 4

One of the most significant, things in American history is that in times of crisis the American people have always looked to the President, and not to Congress, for leadership, writes Sir Frederick Whyte, in the Listener. Thus each of the great moments in American history lias seen the Presidency raised to a higher power than was originally given to it hv the Constitution. It was so in the times of the first President, George Washington; it was markedly so when Abraham Lincoln guided America through the Civil War; the Great War repeated the same story in Woodrow Wilson’s time; and for the past two years and three months the unprecedented crisis of the economic depression has given President Roosevelt almost unexampled power. When Congress, two years ago, passed the National Industrial Recovery Act which gave the President, almost a free hand to reform the whole economic structure of American life, it did not imagine that it was violating; the Constitution. On the contrary, it must have believed that, in providing the necessary legislative auth-ritv for the President to make Codes for American industry,' it wa s acting within the four corners of the Constitution, and that.

without this authority the President could not act at all in such a matter. Bv declaring the Act unconstitutional, the big question which the Supreme Court ha s put to the American public is this: Do you or do you not want a national standard of social conditions? And if you do, do you realise that you can’t have a national standard unless you give the. Federal Government the actual legislative power to deal with many vital things-' which have hitherto- been solely, or mainly,

within the jurisdiction of the individual Slate. Thus is raised one of the oldest controversies in America; States rights versus the Federal power. And it seems likely that this issue, brought to *a head by the urgent need for a national programme of social reform, will henceforth dominate American politics and decide Air Roosevelt’s fate.