THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JUNE 7, 1935. GOVERNMENT IN HOBBLES.

Wairarapa Age, 7 June 1935, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JUNE 7, 1935. GOVERNMENT IN HOBBLES.

According to the latest message on the subject received from Washington, President-Roosevelt and his advisers have decided to ask Congress to continue for nine and a half months a skeletonised form of the National Recovery Act, conforming to the constitutional requirements defined by the United States Supreme Court. The immediate purposes, it is added, are to group and classify the vast amount of business information gathered by the N.R.A. organisation and to enforce the measure requiring all contractors supplying the Government with materials to conform to the N.R.A. labour provisions. The period of nine and a half months mentioned is the remaining length of the present Congressional term and als* of the term of four years for Which President Roosevelt was elected in 1932. In March next there will be a Presidential election and elections also of the House of Representatives and of one-third of the Senate. The supreme issue to be submitted to the people in March no doubt will be a reform of the Constitution designed to transfer authority from the Supreme Court to the Federal Executive and Legislature.

Under the constitutional forms to which the United States is committed, change on the lines now indicated is a slow ‘and cumbrous process—the President is reported to have said that he is prepared for a five or even a tc.nyear fight to bring about the changes that are desired. It is just possibA, however, that if he is able to revive the popular enthusiasm that attended his inauguration and the launching of the New Deal, Mr. Roosevelt may bo able to rush constitutional changes that will in part undo the effect of the torpedoing by the Supreme Court of the National Recovery Act and other New Deal legislation. At this stage nothing can be taken for granted. The present-day temper of the American electorate is an uncertain quantity and it has yet to appear that Mr. Roosevelt is still master of the vim and enthusiasm which enabled him to win overwhelming public support in his early days in office. Like all who attemp4 big national tasks, he has met with heavy setbacks and disappointments. Too many of his selected assistants have been more active in

quarelling with one another than in forwarding the common task. Before the present crisis arose, the President was being attacked and criticised both by conservatives and by people of radical bent prepared to go much further than he wishes to go in subordinating private enterprise to national authority and control. Only an actual test can show whether Mr. Roosevelt is capable of giving an effective and commanding lead in such a battle as is now in prospect, with the amendment of the Constitution and limitation of the powers of the Supreme Court as its central issue.

Amongst all the complexities of the existing position it is fairly clear that the effect of the invalidation by the Supreme Court of the New Deal measures has been wholly bad. In great part the effect plainly is to substitute anarchy for order. Where industrial conditions are concerned, the alternative to far-reaching adjustments under the National Recovery Act presumably is widespread conflict between the more powerful labour organisations and employers. Waste and disorder on a huge scale and extreme injustice to sections of workers less favourably placed than others are thus brought into prospect. Other aspects of the situation are hardly less alarming. It is possible that the extraordinary difficulties of the situation may contribute to a solution by consolidating public op- ' inion in the United States in favour of drastic and decisive constitutional reforms.