SLOW PROGRESS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20000, 7 January 1935, Page 5

SLOW PROGRESS

AMERICAN NEW DEAL A Canadian member of a well-known New York financial house, writing to Sir Harold Beauchamp, December 10 last, remarks: “As you will have gathered from Press accounts, our progress in the United State under the New Deal programme of the President has been slow, but the public paid him the unusual compliment at the November elections of giving him a big majority in both houses. With this backing it is expected he will be able to push through any legislation he desires, and the question troubling most minds is whether he will go to the right or the left. His effort will be to stay in the middle of the road, but the inflationists will press him hard to pass a Bonus Bill for veterans and possibly redwce the dollar to 50 cents.

“Conservative opinion now states that he will oppose both plans and strive to foster industry and open up trade relations by reducing tariffs where possible. The N.R.A. is to be revamped, but Labour, the American Federation of Labour, will have something to say to that, and in my opinion Labour is making a fight to create a party which will figure in the next Presidential elections, thus splitting the old line Republican and Democratic parties. “Financially, money is very easy, deposits larger than in 1929, but the turnover is too low, in fact, almost at low ebb. This means business, except in retail lines, is slow and business on the Stock Exchange, due to restrictions and the trip wires of Government regulation, is very dull and unprofitable. However, it is a long road that has no turning and sanity may again rest on the shoulders of those in power, making them realise that freedom within a few well-considered and administered laws is better than checks and counterchecks.”

Incidentally, the writer refers to the newly-established Central Bank of Canada, and he points out that “many thoughtless but vociferous people consider a new era begins when a central bank is created and that credit will be easy to obtain. The new Governor of the Central Bank, Mr Graham Towers, is a Canadian and has, I understand, a very level head. He will need it to keep him safe from the importunities of impecunious provinces and municipalities. “It will be difficult, I fear, to keep the curse of politics out of the new creation, as the French-Canadians will demand their quota in appointments, and they usually get their pound of flesh.”