FILENE SPEAKS

Boston, March 12--American business must rally immediately "for positive support of the President's Recovery Program," if Senator Long, Father Coughlin, Dr. Townsend and other "apostles of economic vagaries are to be squelched," Edward A. Filene, Boston merchant, warned tonight.

Asserting that he was "amazed and appalled" by the unrest noticed in his recent tour of the country, Filene charged that business was solely to blame for enrollment of a claimed 34,000,000 under the banners of Long, Coughlin, or Townsend. Instead of cooperating with the Administration, it had "stalled and balked and held back until the masses are now losing hope," he said.

Filene deplored the logic of those who thought that Long, Coughlin and Townsend would cut into the Roosevelt vote sufficiently to assure a Republican victory in 1936.

"The most that such a victory could achieve," he said, "would be to close the door to business recovery by rational action, and to open the door for Townsend, Coughlin, Long and chaos. The same radical mass vote, if it were successful in defeating Roosevelt, won of course elect enough of its own members to Congress to hold the balance of power."