Vagabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

"It is a miracle,'r said General Hugh Johnson the other day, "how we keep this depression going."

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A rniracle, did you say, General? Well, at least it requires strenuous and continuous efforts. Reminds me of the dialogue between the two colored brothers. One said"Ho\il come you is allus lookin' fo' a job an' nevah findin' one?" "Dass skill, boy, das skill." "An' how come you nevah wuks but allus gits erlong?" "Dass management, boy, dass management." ttAn' how come you allus keeps you neckties tied so good?" "Dass genius, niggah, dass genius." {.{<*

And it requires nothing short of genius to keep this depression going. Even the hardest of the old-timey hardshell Democratic newspapers in the South are editorially questioning every day now when these "emergency" measures that were supposed to be instituted temporarily to assist recovery, are going to be dropped, and the new crop headed off?

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Others are asking when "recovery" efforts terminated and the present wave of "reform" measures got started. The Supreme Court kitted NRA, the daddy of so-called "recovery" laws. So we have been laboring ever since with recovery-reform laws with which to bludgeon business, frighten employers, and postpone as long as possible such extension and expansion of the private business of the nation as must take up the slack of unemployment before we can get much better.

No wonder General ,";"; ,lr" .n.. it requires a miracle to keep this depression alive. The truth is being declared from one end of the country to the other today, and without regard to political party lines, that the recoveryreform efforts are the last hurdles that we must jump in ' order to get economically, industrially, and financially well. ft seems to be a known and accepted fact everywhere outside of washington f am reminded every day of the remark of a former President Roosevelt concerning the marvelous capacity of some people for resisting information. If we could get the light that is shining elsewhere to shine in offEcial Washington for a little while, we would be rid of this doubled-damned depression, and start going somewhere.

And we are seeing a splendid illustration of how almost impossible it is to get the claws of politics off of business, once they get a grip. A little further into the throes of bureaucracy and it would have required a major operation to get that grip loose. *:1.*

One little bit of information, however, seems to have thoroughly permeated official Washington, and that is what the American people think about changing the constitution to fit the New Deal. My rnemory does not go back as far as many, but surely never since,I have learned to read has any utterance of any public official in this country been received with so withering a blast of condemnation as that suggestion. From rich and poor, from old and young, from great and small, from North, East, South, and West, without regard to politics of party lines, came an avalanche of indignant protest' ,& ,. *

And, since that blare broke forth, it has indeed been-to quote the old Civil War poem-"All Quiet Along the Potomac.t'

Dropping NRA was n"rnrt ,rl-.n, ways, not the least of which, so far as the average small business is concerned, is termination of code dues. The cost of the code, now kept in the cash drawer, looks like a very decent profit to a world of small business men.

There isn't much to discuss about the new NRA. It was merely passed as a face-saving proposition, and I seriously doubt if it is supposed to be anything but a name. I have read only one announcement concerning its policies, namely that the effort to boost prices will be dropped for the present. The college-professor theory that it is better to get ten dollars a day and pay nine to live, than to get three dollars a day and pay two to live, becomes for the time inactive. Someone suddenly discovered that the dollar the three-two man has left over will buy several times as much as the one the ten-nine man has left, and they've taken time out while they check the figures.

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