King Country Chronicle Thursday, October 19, 1933. AMERICAN RECOVERY PLAN.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVII, Issue 4459, 19 October 1933, Page 4

King Country Chronicle Thursday, October 19, 1933. AMERICAN RECOVERY PLAN.

When President Roosevelt brought down his gigantic scheme for National Recovery, he must be given credit for a genuine desire to improve the conditions of the people. The plan was a bold one, and embodied a threadbare theory held by many people that in providing greater spending power a stimulus will be given to business by which all sections of the community will benefit. In theory this appears to be quite a reasonable point of view, but in practice it does not work out to schedule. News that has come to hand from America goes to show that difficulties are increasing in carrying out the National Recovery programme. With the first enthusiasm for the plan there was a decided fillip to business and work was found for tens of thousands of men who were formerly workless. Business increased by leaps and bounds in May, June, and a part of July. After that the tide set the other way, and according to a message received some few weeks ago, “business is still tossing in the doldrums which it entered towards the end of July, with no clear indication as yet of the direction from which a breeze might be expected.” The Recovery plan is one that must prove a success with no set-backs. Any break will have a depressing influence from which it will be difficult to emerge, and provides the opponents of the plan with opportunities to decry it. It has been admitted that the plan had not absorbed as many unemployed as hoped for, and this was the crucial test of the. whole scheme. Commodity prices went up during the first few months, but they have since fallen. This applies more particularly to primary products, and the farming community has not had its purchasing power increased. The position between employers and employees has not improved by the scheme. On the contrary there have been several serious industrial clashes, and this has done much to check progress and impair confidence. There may yet be a more favourable turn for the scheme, but so far it cannot be seen. Other countries have been closely watching Mr. Roosevelt’s plan, hoping for success so that it could be more widely extended to other parts of the world. Mr. Roosevelt has attempted one of the biggest experiments of its kind in the world’s history, but his prospects of success are not at all hopeful. If he and his predecessor had taken a more active part in restoring world trade at the end of the war his country might have been in a much happier position to-day and there would have been no need for experiments of this kind, which embody many dangers.