New Deal Chorus

Having hit upon the 1829-37 Adminis-tration of hard-shelled, practical old Andrew Jackson as its prototype in U. S. history, the New Deal has made the seventh President's birthday a national political fiesta. Last week, at 36 Jackson Day dinners all over the U. S., $400,000 was raised (wiping out the deficit of the Democratic Party) and New Deal spokesmen let out a chorus of oratory matchless in volume. Unfortunately the Jackson Day chorus--instead of proving an overwhelming performance for which the antimonopoly speeches of Secretary of the Interior Ickes and Assistant Attorney General Robert Houghwout Jackson last fortnight were a curtain raiser--turned out mainly as a majestic anticlimax.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt has a temperament so beautifully suited for political leadership that there is only one thing he enjoys more than projecting himself into a large audience of respectful men and listening to his own assuring counsel. This is projecting himself far into the future and viewing himself retrospectively in the grandeur he will have assumed 100 years hence. In Washington last week the President made good use of his opportunity. From a beginning devoted to a historical picture of the New Deal as the logical modern flowering of a tradition in government set by Andrew Jackson, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Cleveland and Roosevelt I, the President adroitly proceeded to echo the remarks of his underlings on the subject of monopoly. Excerpts

"It has been estimated that there are outstanding some $13,000,000,000 of electric utility securities and that the substantial control of this total is vested in the hands of the owners of less than $600,000.000 of the total. That means that the ownership of about 4% of the securities controls the other 96%.

"Here is a 96-inch dog being wagged by a four-inch tail.

"I have recently described many other activities that should not be tolerated in our democracy--price rigging, unfair competition directed against the little man, and monopolistic practices of many kinds. . . . Give to me and give to your Govern-ment the credit for a definite intention to eradicate them. Give to me and give to your Government the credit for believing that in so doing we are helping and not hurting the overwhelming majority of businessmen and industrialists in the United States."

Herbert Lehman. A principal speaker at New York City's Jackson Day dinner --from which, to increase the scope of the fiesta, Postmaster General James A. Farley introduced the President to his radio audience--was New York's Governor Herbert Lehman. Considerably farther removed from the New Deal than he was before he objected to the President's plan to enlarge the Supreme Court last summer, Governor Lehman delivered a speech which, in the oratorical chorus, represented counterpoint rather than close harmony. Its strongest note: "A political party, like government itself, must be the servant of the people, not their master. It must be ... open-minded but not visionary, courageous but not impulsive, progressive but not impractical. . . ."

Cabinet Members, when they speak solo, usually make headlines. Last week, in concert, they did nothing of the sort. At Nashville, Secretary Ickes drew a parallel between Andrew Jackson's struggle with the Bank of the United States and Franklin Roosevelt's struggle with "the hydra-headed economic monster of 1938," by which he meant monopoly. In Chicago, Attorney General Cummings said the same thing less picturesquely, found fault with existing anti-trust laws. Secretaries Wallace at Des Moines, Woodring at Denver and Roper at Columbus defended respectively farm control, domestic peace in view of foreign threats of war, and economic reform.

Robert Houghwout Jackson, who helped denounce "America's Sixty Families "* in the prelude to his namesake's birthday, last week took part in another preliminary in the form of a debate with Commonwealth & Southern's Wendell Willkie on the subject ''How Can Govern-ment and Business Work Together?" (see p. 32). On Jackson Day itself, Robert Houghwout Jackson modestly played second fiddle to Governor Lehman at the New York dinner, but before the dinner he made the one remark of the fiesta which may have tangible consequences. Asked whether he would run for Governor of New York next autumn, Mr. Jackson beamed: "If the Democratic Party wants me to be its candidate. I will be."

-Ferdinand Lundberg, belligerent young author of America's 60 Families, and Vanguard Press, his publisher, were sued last week for $150,000 libel by E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. Reason for the suit was not that Author Lundberg placed the Du Ponts ninth among his 60 families, but that he gave the Du Pont Company as the correct answer to the question which appeared in the book's advertisements: "What industrial corporation engaged in war work was charged by the U. S. Government with billing it $75 for the burial of each of its employes who died during an influenza epidemic--and then sold the bodies for $11 each?"

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