Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, MAY 2, 1938. AN EMBARRASSING ADDITION.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 May 1938, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, MAY 2, 1938. AN EMBARRASSING ADDITION.

'J'TIOUGH its sponsors, the La Follette brothers, are men of radical inclination, who sympathise strongly with President Roosevelt’s efforts to promote social betterment under the New Deal, the Third Party which-dias just been launched hi the United States possibly may become the final factor needed to cut down the President’s authority, or even reduce him to helplessness during his remaining period in office. With nearly three years’ oc'enpaney of White House still before him, Mr Roosevelt already is faced by great difficulties. Much as he has been hampered and hindered by divisions within the Democratic Party, the greatest factor threatening his authority and influence is that the United States is once again in the grip of economic depression. The reality of the falling-off that has occurred in production and employment is beyond question. It is emphasised sharply in the,announcement made at the end of last week of an impending cut of 15 per cent in the wages of railwaymen. Time and events possibly may show that the depression is, as some authorities contend, only a fluctuation. At best, however, it represents a deplorable setback in what it -was hoped would be a great continuing movement of recovery and it has done a great deal to undermine Mr Roosevelt’s prestige and to shake popular faith in the New Deal. A decisive reversal of the present economic trend in the United States may be the only thing that will re-establish the authority and influence of the President, but at an immediate view the intervention of a Third Party must make more complex the problems by which he is faced. It modifies the President’s difficulties that his principal political opponents, the Republicans, have shown themselves capable of little in the way of constructive opposition. It has been said that the Republican Party at present lacks not only a programme, but leaders of national stature. Mr Roosevelt is an able and astute political tactician, who knows well how to turn the weaknesses of his opponents profitably 7 to account. It is even possible that he may be able to find in the appearance of the Third Party (whose aims, incidentally, as they have thus far been outlined, are not dissimilar from his own) a means of quelling revolt and tightening up discipline in the ranks of his own party. A great deal is bound to depend, however, on the course of economic events. Congressional elections, affecting the whole of the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate, are to take place in November next. If depression ■continues until that, date, President Roosevelt will find himself engaged in an uphill battle. In existing conditions, his authority and his prospects of further developing his New Deal programme alike are critically menaced.