Hugh Johnson Terms Frankfurter Most Influential Person in U. S. A., Censures Him for Sidetracking of New Deal

Felix Frankfurter's belief that the government is "the nucleus of a vast collectivism in which business or any private enterprise are just elements to be absorbed" is responsible for the diversion of the new deal from its original paths, General Hugh S. Johnson maintains in the current issue of the Saturday Evening Post.

Torming him "the most single influential person in the country." General Johnson lays the huge spending program, the decline in farm product exporte, and the failure of the unemployment program to tile philosophy of the Byrne Professor of Administrative Law and his "hot dogs," whom he has placed in almost every section of the government.

Guide Legislation

"They have had a guiding hand in the drafting of nearly all legialation expert the NRA, he days. To them the constitution is just a foil for clever fencing- an antediluvian joke to be respected in public like a Sacred Cow and regarded in private somewhat as Gertrude Stein probably regards the poet Tennyson, or any other Victorian.

"Their guidance largely prevailed in the strategy of defensive litigation by the Department of Justice, and it was this philosophy, almost singlehanded, which was successfully urged and developed in the famous press conference on the Constitution which dealt the new deal and returning confidence the heaviest, single blow they have yet suffered.

Supreme Court Scapegoat

"Their thought here was that the Supreme Court and the Constitution could be put on the spot as a scapegoat in the public eye, and Government could thus move by a short cut to collectivism. They recognize this as a blunder now but they were positive then.

"the presence and the obvious influence of such a group is an intimidation to administrators and legislators alike. The knowledge of their power colors all legislation and action."

general Johnson points out that the original new deal program was designed to meet the banking organization and collapse, the burden of debt, the depression of agriculture, and unemployment.

Tinker With Currency

The banking situation was met according to the original plan, he says, but the belief that you can tinker with the currency "just a-lee-tle" and control monetary inflation soon wrecked the sound financial program to solve the burden of debt.

The failure to ensure export trade by keeping farm prices in competition with foreign countries leaves the agricultural problems worse for 1936. Mr. Johnson maintains. He also points out that the failure to promote increased business activity has been aided by the PWA-WPA projects and the destruction of business confidence.

It is the Frankfurter philosophy which is at the basis of these failures and which has turned business against the Administration, he concludes. "Business as such--big and little. North, East, South, and West-is Anti-Administration because the hot dog strategy has made it believe that the Administration is anti-business."