BUYING POWER

Taranaki Daily News, 2 September 1933, Page 7

BUYING POWER

UNITED STATES’ CHIEF AIM SELLING OF RECOVERY PLAN ABSORPTION OF WORKLESS INCREASE IN THE PAY ROLL VIGOROUS CAMPAIGNING By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. Vancouver, Aug. 31. “Our recovery plan is designed on the simple principle that 100 men earning 10 dollars each will spend more than a man earning 1000 dollars and 99 earning nothing. That’s all it is. .We have no intention of making business walk the goose-step in a strait-jacket.” In these picturesque words General Hugh S. Johnson, chief administrator of the national recovery scheme, finished a stirring address at Boston, where he went from Chicago on his first big speaking tour, and “to sell recovery to my fellow citizens.” “There’s no more sense in starving m the midst of plenty now than in 1776,” he continued. “Our agriculture is flat on its back and our industry paralysed, all because we have been lending ‘busted countries money to buy our goods. This has laid the basis for the four-year headache from which we are to-day emerging.” General Johnson claimed that 2,000,000 people were re-employed, increasing the country’s pay-roll by 30,000,000 dollars a week. - A demand by organised labour for even a shorter working week than that embraced in the national recovery codes was added to-day to the stupendous task of the administrator. Mr. William Gre<m, president of the American Federation of Labour, asked that the nation’s recovery codes’ working weeks, which are generally set at 40 hours, be reduced to 35, and even to 30. Mr. Green said that 2,000,000 workers had been absorbed back into industry since the drive was begun, but, there were still 11,000,000 idle. , Recapitulating the August activities in President Roosevelt’s drive to stimulate employment and purchasing power before the. winter, leaders of the national recovery administration to-day stated that 18 permanent codes and 240 temporary trade pacts had been approved, bringing upwards of 10,000.000 workers under shorter hours and higher minimum wages. - , ■ CANADA CANNOT IMITATE DEPENDENCE UPON EXPORTS MUST MEET COMPETITION. Rec. 10 p.m. Montreal, Aug. 31. Canada cannot afford to imitate the United States in all phases of the national recovery programme, the Prime Minister, Mr. R. B. Bennett, told members of the Board of Trade on Thursday night. As the fifth exporting nation of the world Canada’s very life depended on its export trade, he said. In .this she encountered the competition or highly specialised, industrialised and efficient nations. If the country was to continue to compete it could not afford to experiment with shorter hours of work and higher rates of pay.