Garner Unmuzzled

It is an open secret that Speaker Garner has been kept muzzled by his Democratic managers for discretion's sake. Told off to chaperon him was able, tactful Charles Hand, longtime secretary to indiscreet James John ("Jimmy") Walker. Unlike Vice President Curtis, the Democratic Nominee has not been allowed to stump the small time political circuits. While the Speaker was silent his rule of the House was built up by G. O. Partisans into a major campaign issue. Again & again President Hoover pointed to it with shuddering alarm as the kind of thing of which the country could expect a lot more if he were defeated.

Speaker Garner last week was un-muzzled long enough to speak in his own defense. His first campaign speech was delivered over a nationwide radio hook-up from Manhattan. Informal, aggressive, he demonstrated what his 30 years in the House had taught him about political debate.

"I have been represented as a dangerous radical," Speaker Garner began, "with a Satanic desire to turn thing's topsy turvy. Actually I am a plain business man, the representative of a conservative community."

With a liberal sprinkling of President Hoover's rosiest 1928 quotations. Speaker Garner's argument took this tack: The 1929 crash and subsequent Depression hit the U. S. first, did not. as Republicans claim, come from abroad. The economic collapse developed from domestic folly and the notion that prosperity was about to "abolish poverty." For two years President Hoover minimized Federal deficits, missed his guess as to their total size by about four billion dollars. Public distrust of Treasury policy was at the root of last winter's panic. The President was two years late getting around to budget balancing. Declared Democrat Garner:

"The Administration was either hopelessly at sea as to the actual Treasury situation or else deliberately concealed the true state of affairs, deceiving the country until concealment was no longer possible."

According to Speaker Garner the President "did not raise a finger" to help in the House tax fight and. when the sales tax was torn to shreds, he "chuckled and jeered." His treasury chiefs supplied such bad estimates of revenues that the House's budget-balancing efforts were largely "frustrated" and today's collections are running 45% behind expectations. "The budget is not balanced." declared Speaker Garner. "The whole job must be done over."

The President's right to claim credit for all House legislation as part of his recovery program while damning defeated measures as the Democratic program, was vigorously challenged by Stumpster Garner who concluded:

"The important thing is not whether Herbert Hoover or John Garner is the greater authority on finance and legislation but whether directness and frankness is more likely to put us on the road to economic recovery than their Pollyanna statements and hiding the truth. . . . There's nothing the matter with the finances and credit of the U. S. except gross mismanagement."

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