ON THE WRONG ROAD

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 19 July 1932, Page 5

ON THE WRONG ROAD

AMERICAN CONFESSION DEBTS FOR POSTERITY VERY CANDID COMMENT A remarkable confession, that the United States, during the whole period of its recent development, has followed the wrong road, is made in a leading article in the “Saturday Evening Post. The admission, coming from the most widely-read of all American publications, stamps it as one of the most moving ) documents of our times. “As a nation, we have, always been in a terrific hurry to get somevvhere, without knowing what we were going to do when we got there,” says the “Post. “We want the biggest of everything, without much thought as to whether it is the best—the biggest population, the biggest cities, the biggest factories, the biggest buildings, tho biggest banks, the biggest, fortunes, and, finally, President Roosevelt wanted the big stick. “To attain our ambition, we exploited and wasted our national resources prodigally, and we are still wasting them. In order to pile up population and, incidentally, to got cheap labour with which to build up big business and big fortunes, wo threw our gates wide open to low-grade and too often potentially criminal immigration. “BIG IN EVERYTHING” i “We expanded our factories far bcyong the power of our population to consume their goods. We built splendid hotels, for which there were no guests, and towering office buildings for which there were no tenants, and many cement highways, for Which there was no real need, and no real money in sight-*—only promises that the next generation would pay for them.” Another writer says: “The harvest of the whirlwind now faces Americans: the biggest criminals, the biggest boom and burst, the biggest tax bill, with the threat of the biggest- volume of debased currency since those days when it took a truckload of marks to buy a square meal in Germany, and the biggest economic fools in Congress. “The pity of it is that, in the approaching hour of trial, no country has much sympathy with Uio United States. Canada, her nearest neighbour, has least of all. Why? Because, whereas Britain has set her house in order and borne her share in aiding world recovery, the United States has done neither if we exclude a grudgingly-acceded year’s moratorium on war debts. NEW TARIFF AFFRONTS “The worst of American blunders in half a century are being committed just now ; new tariff affronts to the nations, trading of votes to pass measures, against the best economic advice, ‘pork-barrel’ legislation, and raids on tho Treasury. “President Hoover has lost his influence. There is no leader in Congress, or in the country. Sound citi/cns are at a discount. Sound measures are rare and the worst is to come. Tho ini crest of the people is being side-tracked from tho nation’s real needs to the sordid deals now under way in the national conventions, and the ‘primaries’ and Presidential elections ahead.”