INFLATIONARY LEGISLATION

Reports from Washington indicate that the President's veto of the Patman Bill will probably be upheld by the Senate. But the bonus champions indicate they have just begun to fight. If the Patman measure does fail, other bonus bills will be waiting to be rushed through--this time as a "rider" attached to one of the administration's pet appropriation measures. These new bills, it is rumored, would give the Precident greater freedom in choosing means of raising the two billion dollars. He would be allowed to draw from the four billion relief fund, or borrow the necessary cash from the banks--thus, in one sense avoiding ugly immediate inflationary dangers.

Whatever means are devised for paying off the soldier's certificates, the bonus bill will still remain a purely selfish bit of class legislation. As such it is as great a vice as the inflation it eventually would cause. Today the majority of the country look to the President in his speech to the Senate not only to expose the evils of the bonus measure, but once and for all vigorously to denounce those sectionists who have been intimidated into yielding to the unjustified demands of a single group. Mr. Roosevelt will need all his powers and public support if, in his talk this afternoon, he is to convince the bonus interests of the danger which their demands entail.