SUDDEN JUMP IN PRICES

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 226, 22 April 1933, Page 5

SUDDEN JUMP IN PRICES

SUGGESTION THAT STAGE WAS SET Developments Obscure Bui Vigorous Washinflton, April 20.—Internally the various developments in the last two days are obscure for the purposes of interpretation as to the long-time effect, yet are obviously intensely vigorous. A |-*VriPn Wall Street has changed niahtly in*o a rorketinn e^ l ' market with certain important issues such as United States Steel gaining 50 per cent, in price, while bonds, even United States Government bonds, are depressed. Commodities have made exceptional gains. S The parallel is drawn that going off the gold standard did not seriously ' raise the cost of living in Britain and that similarly the American "man in the street will not be affected in any ; way," but it seems impossible that the 'basic staffs df life and living can continue to have any more such hectic markets as in the past few days without the cost of living rising quickly and perceptibly. That this if not accompanied by an automatic adjust ment upward of the present deflated wages might seriously discommode a great element of the population, the labouring class, seems inescapable, and the labouring class can at the present time ill afford to adjust itself to any further dislocation. To revert to the question of stagesetting, it seems to indicate that if j any such intention existed it was lodg- j ed chiefly in the breast of Congress, j Mr. Rainey's statement to-day and the specific provision in the Bill that the president whenever he finds upon investigation that the commerce of the United States is being adversely affected by the depreciated currencies of other countries, or wishes to secure international agreements for the stabilisation of currencies, can take appropriate steps, socm to indicate this. It is indicated, too, that Mr. Roosevelt personally is not averse «o utilis- | ing the situation for the purposes of "bargaining" at the impending Washington conference, but the circumstances and not the intent seem to have been the principal impetus of the various steps and measures of the past few days and the clays to come, both as concerns Congress and the President, embarrassing though the situation may prove to the visiting statesmen. "Lifting Herself by Boot Straps" It is no secret that despite the general good nature and willingness to follow the leader with which the American people accepted Mr. Roosevelt's programme in the past six weeks, all that vast tier on tier of legislation resolved into America trying to lift itself by its boot. Hiaps. It has all been largely schematic and not without grandeur, but exasperatingly slow as concerns the end. The yesults are that the people's impat-

ience, sharpened by years of culminating suffering, has begun to voice itself in Congress by its well known and welt calculated demands tor the radical inflation of currency and a radical change in the monetary system. Should Congress have been allowed to have its own way there was no saying what unorthodoxics as concerns money it would not have forced through during the next few weeks, aside from other disrupting the President's legislative programme.

The best opinion is that Mr. Roosevelt by putting himself at the head of the movement has cleverly stopped it. There is no gainsaying the fact that the Black Bill which to-morrow will probably b 8 passed gives the President power to do many extraordinary things, but does not make it mandatory. From Washington comes the word to-night that "it is 90 per cent, psychology and only 10 per cent, dynamite."