"ROT"

When Governor Earle on Monday night advocated a resumption of government spending to check the depression, he showed a sense of reality that deserted him a few moments later when he condemned as "rot" Robert Jackson's charge that business had gone on a sit down strike against the government. Such a charge is rot only if we take Jackson to mean that a handful of magnates have formed a revengeful cabal to sabotage the New Deal. The National Association of Manufacturers is really an elegant institution. But Jackson was not ridiculous when he claimed that the policies of large corporations drive away the customers that government spending tries to provide.

Priming the pump is, as Governor Earle admitted, only a temporary expedient even though our per capita debt is less than that of France and England. Purchasing power can be permanently maintained in the absence of government spending only when prices are within the people's ability to buy. When the United States Steel Corporation gave its workers a pay rise and then raised the price of steel by more than enough to cover the rising wage bill, Ben Fairless's giant paved the way for an ultimate reduction in the number of customers for steel products.

How can a roof be placed over prices? The government can, of course, use its power as a purchaser to bring prices down. But it would have to face the same sort of reaction that greeted the Walsh-Healey act. The refusal of big steel to bid on navy contracts came pretty near to being a sit down strike. And the government can try to instill new vigor in America's puny consumers cooperatives movement.

But the permanent solution lies in the extention of the regulatory principle of the I.C.C. to industry. The $200,000,000 corporation that is the dominant unit in American industry is as much a public institution as a common carrier and requires as much regulation. In the fifty years since the bitter struggle over its parturition the I.C.C. has won universal respect for its useful service. Perhaps after the early troubles that beset every new organization--even business organizations, a new government regulatory commission for big industry will prove just as useful and win as much respect.