Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JULY 6, 1938. GOVERNMENT FOR THE PEOPLE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 July 1938, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JULY 6, 1938. GOVERNMENT FOR THE PEOPLE.

QNLY a few sentences have been cabled of a speech, delivered by President Roosevelt a day or two ago on the famous battlefield of Gettysburg, in which he declared that the United States was again engaged in an effort to preserve, under changing conditions, government for the people’s good, and that the New Deal’s fight against its opponents was a conflict as fundamental as Lincoln’s. Without questioning Mr Roosevelt’s sincerity, it may be doubted whether the struggle that is in progress in the United States can become in the full sense of the words a fundamental conflict, until it is better understood than it seems to be today even by the vast majority of those who are involved in it. The President’s position as leader of his nation is in some respects altogether extraordinary. While he himself accepts the character of an author of bold and sweeping reforms, which put broad community interests above those of any section, many radical thinkers in his own country and others class him as primarily one who is intent on propping up the existing system of private enterprise and capitalism. On the other hand, he is accused by many representatives of business and industry in the United States of having undermined confidence and made it impossible for normal economic development to proceed unhampered. On the whole there is probably a good deal to be said for the view that Mr Roosevelt has done nothing/ in giving effect to his New Deal programme, that need prevent private enterprise and capitalism in the United States from making full use of adequate opportunities. New deal legislation, notably that concerning labour relations, which has been assailed in the United States as revolutionary and as blocking or impeding the normal conduct and operation of industry, is by no means revolutionary if measured by British standards. Moreover, there is the impressive fact that, with the more drastic features,, such as they are, of the New Deal already in general industrial and economic recovery made good headway in the United States from early 1935 until the third quarter of 1937. It does not seem unjust to ascribe to an effort of imagination the blame imputed to the President for the disastrous recession that has since occurred. The reality of this recession, or slump, is, however, not to be' questioned. Summing up the position a month ago in an article in the “Christian. Science Monitor,” Mr Erwin D. Canham wrote in part: — First, the nation is again in a severe economic slump. The general business indexes are where they were five years ago, when President Roosevelt took office. There is no sign of an immediate return, but only hope that in the autumn low inventories and renewing demands may produce a modest degree of re-employment. Second, some. 12,000,000 people are again totally unemployed—probably more than that—and a great many more have only part-time work. • Over 14 per cent of the population, of the United States, the Senate Unemployment Committee estimates, are beneficiaries of one kind of public aid or another. Indirect beneficiaries would run the number up, perhaps twice that high and more. There is not today in the United States the overwhelming mass of unsecured debt that led to widespread ruin and disorganisation in 1929 and afterwards. Much has beendone to give stability to the banking system. Today, again, a widely extended system of relief remains in full force. On relief and public works combined, the sum of close on 20,000 milion dollars was spent in the Uniled States from 1933 to 1937 inclusive. As has just been mentioned, over 14 per cent of the population of the United States are beneficiaries of one kind of public aid or another. Charges are being made in some quarters that relief expenditure is being employed as a political lever, and is being misused in other ways. It is maintained, also, that a proportion of the recipients are being corrupted or demoralised. Plainly, however, relief on a huge scale must continue, as the only alternative to incalculable disorders born of privation and despair, until the United States has solved the problem of making the wheels of industry turn freely again. If he had in mind a defined clash of opposed interests, the fundamental conflict of which President Roosevelt spoke at Gettysburg is not apparent. It would seem rather that all concerned have an obvious and common interest in reversing the process of recession. In allowing unemployment to extend, the United States is progressively destroying its principal market. In the country that is more highly organised industrially than any other in the world, however, the application of the self-evident remedy is found to be impeded by extraordinary difficulties.