Economy's End

Old Chairman Carter Glass* of the Senate Appropriations Committee, who remembers when the whole U. S. Govern-ment ran itself on a billion dollars a year, last week rose to his feet in horror. Before the Senate was a bill appropriating $1,218,000,000 to run the Department of Agriculture in fiscal 1940. He earnestly asked unanimous consent to reconsider the $383,000,000 which the Senate had added to the House version of the bill. Would not his colleagues give second thought before approving the biggest Farm Bill in U. S. history?

"I object," shouted Wisconsin's young Bob La Follette.

Defeated, Carter Glass sat down. Another who had already sat down defeated was Utah's King, who had embodied his hope of economy in a proposal for an automatic cut of 10% in all appropriations made by this session of Congress. The rest of the Senate's economy bloc had either yielded too or, succumbing to political schizophrenia, recast themselves as members of the Senate's farm bloc. When the bill came to a vote, only 14 Senators mustered courage to vote No. Even such Democratic economizers as Adams, Byrd, Byrnes, such Republican economizers as Taft and McNary, had not the political heart to say Nay. Even Carter Glass joined the chorus.

Thus did the Senate up the House's appropriation of $835,000,000. On top of $500.000,000 which Secretary Wallace had asked for benefit payments and crop loans to farmers who restrict their acreage, the Senate gave him: i) $225,000,000 for parity payments (to recompense farmers for the difference between present prices and the higher prices of "normal" years), and 2) $203,000,000 (instead of $90,000,000 asked) to subsidize the export of crop surpluses.

To the House which two months ago resisted the temptation to make such additions to the Farm Bill, the Senate's action seemed a poor reward for virtue. When the bill goes to conference the House is now hardly likely to insist on cutting it down to its original dimensions.

Meanwhile came the House's next chance to spend--on the non-military section of the War Department supply bill. For generations, Rivers & Harbors appropriations have been prize political pork. Last week the House added $50,000,000 for flood control and navigation improvements to a $225,000,000 measure reported by the Appropriations Committee, excusing itself on the ground that this money would be deducted from the next Relief Bill.

So came to an end four months of "economy," in which Congress had pared a total of about $70,000,000 from various bills. In one week House and Senate undid this parsimony three or four times over. Economy looked deader than most mackerel.

> The Senate was decorated with charts and maps as friends of the abandoned $200,000,000 Florida Ship Canal prepared to revive it this week, at Franklin Roosevelt's request ("national defense").

> Democrat Pius Schwert of Buffalo introduced in the House a bill echoing one introduced in February by his fellow townsman, New Dealing Senator Mead: to give RFC's Jesse Jones authority to insure bank loans to small business.

> The House Ways & Means Committee recommended speeding up Social Security payments out of the old age reserve account, beginning next year instead of 1942. In the account is $994,000,000; so far only $14,000.000 has been paid out. Last week, inspired by Chairman Marriner Eccles of the Federal Reserve Board and new Commissioner Leon Henderson of SEC, Florida's Senator Pepper went to work planning a Senate measure to start putting that money into circulation even sooner, this summer if possible.

> Pink, parbald James Michael Slattery, the new Senator from Illinois (vice the late J. Ham Lewis) made his first speech, in self-defense. Newspapers had printed a story that, while he was chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission, he gave his daughter $25,000 with which she bought stock in Commonwealth Edison Co. The innuendo was that Mr. Slattery, in charge of utility rates, judged for his family. Cried Senator Slattery: "I welcome a complete and thorough examination. . . . My conscience is clear!"

* Last week appeared Carter Glass (Longmans, Green & Co., $3), a biography by Rixey Smith, his devoted secretary of 18 years, touched up by Writer Norman Beasley. Glowing with tribute to the courage and integrity of the 81-year-old Virginian, who as an urchin of seven would not step out of the road for Yankee cavalry, the book traces the evolution of the Federal Reserve Act, which Glass sired for Woodrow Wilson, and the origin of Glass's split with Franklin Roosevelt on fiscal policy. Net effect of this recital: to portray Mr. Roosevelt as a pretty tricky operator.

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