POLICY TESTED.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20509, 10 January 1935, Page 1

POLICY TESTED.

Mr Roosevelt’s New Deal to Be Tried in Court. f WASHINGTON, January 8. Following the adverse decision by the Supreme Court yesterday against the National Recovery Administration’s petroleum control programme, a tribunal started consideration to-day of perhaps the most vital phase of the New Deal, namely, Congressional action voiding the so-called gold clause covering public and private securities. The test suit involves the holder of a single bond of Baltimore-Ohio railroad stock, who contends that a 22 dollar interest payment should have been equivalent to the old gold value, or about 40 per cent more, and that, in effect, complainant has been deprived of property without the due process of law. It is estimated that about 100 billion dollars in securities is involved in the issue as well as the entire basis of President Roosevelt’s monetary policy. For that reason, the AttorneyGeneral, Mr IT. S. Cummings, took the almost unprecedented action of personally defending the suit against the Government before the Supreme Court to-day. lie argued that the crisis of 1933 was so serious that summary action was necessary “to keep the people from slipping to a lower level ol civilisation.”