RECOVERING RECOVERY

With the United States faced with the prospect of having more people out of work this winter than at any period since the beginning of the Depression, it becomes increasingly evident that the Roosevelt Administration must consider with greater care the problem of putting the country back to work in an effort to secure recovery.

For the basic problem today is unemployment. Roosevelt, in office for more than a year and a half, has failed as yet to bring substantial relief to those out of work. Disregarding Utopian ideas of perpetual government support of the unemployed, it is safe to say that private corporations must take up the large number of men now idle. The government can't do it all forever. Under the capitalistic system companies refuse to hire men unless they see the possibility of making a profit. Yet to date, the administration has deprecated the profit motive as a guide to business activity. It has attempted to limit profits, to set up competing industries, and to foster projects entailing the limitation of production. Even more important than its actual limitations have been its Tugwellian threats of price fixing and of more stringent control of all of the activities of private business.

The fundamental philosophy to end the depression seems comparatively clear. The government must cease its threats to private initiative. It must use every force at its command American business to make money. Having made a fondle attempt to solve the problem of unemployment by radical programs and federal priming of the industrial pump, the administration must now encourage the normal course of business enterprise. Only by thus inducing business to stand on its own feet can the Roosevelt regime hope to achieve a permanent and satisfactory solution to the problem which every day thrusts itself more sharply into the life of the American public.