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BRISBANE THIS WEEK A Baby Grows Up Senate's Good News Five Little Girls $4,880,000,000 Fifty-three years ago a good Amer ican mother, weak, but happy, received In her arms a small baby, with pink lace and little hair. That baby now lives In the White House, face bronzed by ocean air, hair thick at fifty-three years of age. The baby has grown to be Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States. One hundred and twenty-five million Americans are grateful to his mother, who, happily, has lived to see her son move up, from the cradle In which she first placed him, to earth's most im portant place among men. Congratulations and thanks, first of all, to President Roosevelt's mother; good wishes, congratulations and a long life to President Roosevelt. The people of the United States are to be congratulated that by the de cision of the senate they will not be pushed Into the back door of the League of Nations through the World court. Mr. Hull, secretary of state, wanted the United States to go into the World court and submit Important matters affecting this country to foreign Judges appointed by nations that have swin dled this country out of ten thousand million dollars. Why, in heaven's name? Those marvelous Canadian babies, the Dionne quintuplets, eight months old, are healthy, happy, each one a separate little lady of Intense Individ uality. All pretty, all Intelligent, with good foreheads, well-shaped heads. What a wonderful family! It seems almost a pity that they cannot remain babies, now, and above, through all eternity. The house of representatives, 329 to 78, gives the President four thousand eight hundred and eighty million dol lars, to be spent In accordance with his best Judgment to fight depression and unemployment. In early days the little, "small change" eighty million dollars, tacked on at the end of the large figure, would have astounded the country, for in those days millions were respectable units. Now our government unit Is the billion?one thousand millions. When will the trillion start its career? The printing press could bring It Not content with being reduced from a great empire to a small "backyard" by the last Hapsburg, Austria thinks it wants another emperor and Prince Starhemberg will say when little Prince Otto shall mount the throne. That will mean unhappiness, eventually for the young prince, and a good actor spoiled for Hollywood. , Gen. William Mitchell, commander of all our flying force in the big war, knows more about national defense than anybody In this country. He writes to a friend seventy years old, as follows: "During your lifetime have come the electric telegraph and telephone, the gasoline engine with Its accompani ment of automotive vehicles, the air plane and submarine. The world Is now only one-sixth as large as when you appeared. If this development goes on, it Is difficult to say what may take place in the next seventy years. Will the biological supremacy of the yellow races dominate, or will the mili tary supremacy, so far, of the white race be able to maintain our culture ; and standards? The world is growing bo small and so increasingly popu lated that one or the other will un doubtedly become master." Mr. J. Plerpont Morgan, whose fa ther collected pictures and other works of art, has decided to sell six pic tures. The price asked Is said to be $1,500,000. The older J. P. Morgan evidently bought good pictures. Two of the six pictures, already sold to the Metropolitan museum, are a portrait of "Anne of Austria," by Peter Paul Rubens, and an altar piece by Fillppo Llppl. Nobody knows how much was paid originally for either picture. A rare ten-dollar gold piece, that sold at auction for $fi.K>, might ofTer a suggestion for government profit. At that rate, our $8,000,000,000 worth of gold could he changed Into *400,000, 000,000 worth, nearly all profit Who could contradict the government If It mid that was the value? Industrialists that put 2T>.000,000 au tomobiles on the roads In this country helped their government last year. The federal tax on gasoline alone paid more than *170.000.000. Col. Roscoe Turner, who does all sorts of things with airplanes, plans a real flight around the earth. 2A000 miles, following the equator all the way, starting at Panama. This will be the first real "around the world" flight, the others having been flights around the northern end of the world, a flight that grows smaller as you go farther north. Equatorial heat will not bother Colonel I Turner. In a plane you can pick out | the altitude and the temperature that you want. ?. Kins F#*turw Syndicate, Inc. WW ?WYlee. | National Topics Interpreted by William Bruckart ffilifflpS? Katfonal Press Building Washington, D. C. e^T^||flffTT Washington-?At last after yean of talking, a social security program Is before congress. Social And now that It Is Security before congress there Is a brand new outburst of talk, because It seems the Msoclal securers" never can agree among themselves. The result Is that i leadership In the house and In the senate Is trying vainly to follow ad ministration Instructions, and has run afoul of all kinds of difficulties. The end Is not yet, but It is safe to say without fear of any necessity for re traction that the social security pro gram will not go back to President Roosevelt as a law In the form It was presented as an administration bill. I find everywhere among those not charged with responsibility for the so cial security legislation that there Is much confusion and lack of under standing as to what the President has proposed. It is easily understood. Any i time that It requires thirty thousand I words to explain a piece of legisla I tion obviously that legislation must be complex. To comprehend what the length of Mr. Roosevelt's social se curity message Is, It Is only neces sary, I think, to remind readers that the message with its explanation of the legislation would fill approximate ly thirty-five columns of an ordinary newspaper. Many persons naturally will fall asleep before they wade through that much material. But, let us attempt to summarize the social security bill. It provides, first, for a national system of com pulsory contributory old age Insur ance; second, It authorizes appropria tions to be used as federal subsidies (plain gifts) to the individual states to help them pension the aged who cannot be brought under an Insur ance system predicated upon their service In commerce and Industry and, third, a voluntary system of old age annuities Is set up. The system of compulsory contribu tory old age Insurance is designed to protect those who are no longer able to work but who have done their turn on the payrolls of industry. An old age fund Is set up In the Treasury of the United States. Initially, the money comes from the Treasury but thereafter there Is a tax operating on payrolls of all those who employ I workers In numbers exceeding four. This tax will start January 1, 1037, at a rate of 1 per cent. It Is Increased to 2 per cent as of January 1, 1492; 3 per cent as of January 1, 1947; 4 per cent as of January 1, 1952. and 5 per cent after January 1, 1957. The em ployer pays the tax but he collects half of it ty a deduction from the payroll of the individual worker. The age of sixty-five years is fixed as the time when a worker shall re tire and receive this pension. The pen sioner can receive as much as $30 a month. If the individual dies before retirement, his dependents receive back the amount paid In In his behalf. As a part of the old age pension system the legislation sets up an old age fund In which workers may pur chase an annuity but they never may acquire more than a total of $9,000 maturity value?the ultimate amount ?from which their Income may be in creased. Then there Is the much discussed unemployment Insurance. This also is predicated upon a tax on Industrial payrolls but it is a state proposition. That Is. the federal government is at tempting to encourage individual states to enact legislation which will protect the worker In periods such as that through which we have passed since 1929. In other words, tills phase of the legislation Is designed to cause workers and their employers to lay aside a certain percentage of their income while they are employed, to be used when times are hard. mere are countless suDdivisions m the bill, none of which are simple, that seek to protect the many who for one reason or another do not qualify under the general terms of the legisla tion. For Instance, aid to dependent children is provided. Federal health subsidies?a kind of health Insurance ?Is proposed. Maternal aid is ar ranged. and extraordinary cases are covered, such as aid to crippled chil dren. There are other subdivisions much too intricate to analyze here for the reason that their application is decidedly limited. The drafters of the legislation sought to cover all. Whether they have done so can be determined only after the legislation has been in operation some years. ? ? ? I have been unable to compute the cost of this legislation to the federal and state govern Counting ment and no one, of the Cott course, can approxi mate the expense it will be to Industry. It is one of those things so far reaching in its effect as to make utterly Impossible advance calculations of the cost in dollars and cents. Suffice it to say that all through the bill as it jiow wends Its way through legislative^phannels are fre quent paragraphs where money either is appropriated or authorized to be appropriated In the future. One wag covered the mon??y phases of the bill the other day with a remark that it was not unlike the conversations be I tween Amos and Andy, the radio come I dlans, for there Is five million, three million, twenty million, seventy-eight million and so on through the list. Yet it Is not the money phases that constitute the difficulties in the legis lation as the leaders in congress see them. The bill sets up an in tricate system of administration against which even the present far flung list of New Deal agencies pales Into insignificance. First, there la the ponderous organi zation for administration to be created here in Washington. Beneath that there are state organizations in every state, regional and county organiza tions and even city administrative bu reuus. I think it takes no stretch of the imagination to foresee how j many workers will be necessary to do just the plain chores of keeping a record of all the Individuals on the government payrolls, federal and state, for administration of thlfe legislation. Ilere In Washington, we will have a social Insurance board, a group of three members, receiving $10,000 a year each and serving for six years. The federal emergency relief adminis trator will have duties to perform in conjunction with the social insurance board as well as apart from It. The secretary of labor is given Jurisdiction over some phases of the administration and the public health service is. charged with conduct of the health Insurance phases. This is not all. The secretary of the treasury is charged with the manage ment and Investment of all of the monies under the various funds and It is he who must see that they are properly disbursed. In congress, considerable Jealousy has arisen among committee chairmen, party wheel-horses Jealousy an(j those who would Aroused enjoy being admin istration spokesmen. Some of them, it hardly need he said, believe their political salvation lies in following the administration blindly and in addition there is another seg ment of legislators who keep their eyes on the historical significance of passing events. This group wants to have a leading part in enactment of the social security legislation because. It must be said, this Is the greatest of j all experiments undertaken at any time ! by the American government. From ; lobby conversation it is perfectly evl- j dent that there are many men In the j house and senate who would be willing to retire to whatever rewards their po- I litical service has given them only to become known as the father of the social security legislation. This condition has precipitated sev- j eral humorous circumstances. Sena- | tor Wagner of New York sponsored the legislation in the senate and Rep resentative Lewis of Maryland pro posed it In the house. Senator Wag ner's committee arranged to start hear ings on u stated date in the senate and that date was announced rather sud denly. No sooner had the Wagner committee hearings been announced than Representative Doughton of North Carolina scheduled similar hearings before his ways and means committee In the house. He set the hearings one day ahead of the senate and the rivalry between the two for headline wit nesses has been, to say the least, a source of many Jokes. ? ? ? Some weeks ago I reported to you that there were rumblings of difficul ties ahead for the T rouble President's gigantic Ahead public works pro gram, as his new ex periment In recovery efforts Is de scribed. He asked congress for a lump sum of $4,800,000,000 with which to re vive the heavy industries and other lines of commercial endeavor that they may absorb some of those unemployed now on relief rolls. It will be remem bered that In his annual message to congress he said with emphasis that federal aid to the destitute must stop; that the giving of relief directly was a state responsibility. The first hitch encountered by the administration wheel-horses in guiding the public works bill through congress developed in the house when the lead ers, anxious to pass the legislation as the White House dictated, sought a special rule which limited debate to n couple of hours and made it almost Impossible for Individual members to amend the bill. Several scores of Democrats and all of the Republicans balked. For several days the house leaders fought gallantly to keep the stubborn opposition from running away with things, but the defections from the Democratic ranks became so large that a compromise had to be offered. It was accepted and the Republican critics and Democratic opponents were successfully squelched. One result of the near revolt against the house Democratic leadership was the exposition of feeling against Sec retary Ickes of the Department of the Interior who also carries the titles of public works administrator and oil ad ministrator. A lot of Democrats dis like Mr. Ickes for what they call his political aloofness. Apparently he has not yielded to their demands for patronage appointments and naturally men seeking elective offices hold out that plum as bait to voters. C, Wtfttn Nevspajpr Union. ^SxLU6\ MILL! ROGERS BEVERLY HILLS.?Well all 1 know Is just what I read in the papers, or what I see from here to hither. About ten days ago, Mrs. Rogers and I were going into New York. (By train as the weather had me riding the rods about that time for several days). It was late Sunday after noon. We was com ing from Washing ton, D. C. I was go ing In to broadcast from there that Sun day evening. You see you got to kinder let em know a I little in advance where you will be on these broadcasting Sundays so they can sorter make arrangements. We hadent been in N. Y. in a good while. We had nothing to do but broad cast at seven thirty, and that gave us the evening to ourselvs. We got into our hotel about six thirty. Dident in tend to go and eat tijl after the wind Jamming. Got to the studio, which was a real theatre, with an audience of three floors of people, and a big or chestra sitting on the stage. Well I hadent any more than walked in the place till I was booked for a bene fit performance, there was some kind of a combined charity broadcast by j both companies, Columbia and Na | tional, for the musicians. It was to be | around eleven, so 1 told em 1 would be glad to be there. Well then I come from my broadcasting and 1 hear of another show. Its a big benefit for the Actors Fund, a fine charity ably spon sored for all these years by the be loved Daniel Frohman. Well I was tickled to death to go there. Here I havent been in town over 30 minutes and book myself two shows. You never get so old that somebody dont want you at a benefit, and they have always got audiences too. 1 do know that N. Y. people are the most liberal and they always fill a house for a good cause. You see, Sunday nights are the bene fit nights on account of the actors be ing idle, and they can get the theatres for the show. First actor I met was Charles Winninger, who has become immortal as Captain Henry of Zeigfelds "Show Boat" on stage and air. I was with Blanche Ring in a musical show called "The Wall Street Girl" twenty years ago when he and Blanche got married. Well then out of the theatre and met an old cowpuncher friend, Charley Aldrich, who used to ride bucking horses in the stage show "The Round up" with Macklyn Arbuckle starring. Who should we run onto but Lillian Shaw, the stages best character singer. Played in vaudeville with her for years, and she was a star in my first musical show, one called "The Girl Rangers" at the Auditorium in Chicago. That was in 1907. Wow, 28 years ago! Lillian looked great. John Bunny the first movie comedian, was in that show. The chorus girls were all mounted on horses. (That is 12 of them were). Reine Davis was the star. It was a beautiful show, but too expensive. Then who comes over to tb^ table but Roscoe Turner, and we had to cross and recross India, Persia, Messopotamia, as I had flown that route too. The grand dramatic actress, Char lotte Walker. All these people I am mentioning we have no one like them. There is no training ground. Where in America is there even a tenth grade Elsie Janis, a Blanche Ring, a Charley j Winninger who could do anything ever done on a stage, every musical instru ment, a dandy acrobat. And who do I hear is there of us old timers but Miss Geraldine Farrar. We worked for a year on the same movie lot for Sam Goldwyn In 1919. Sbe was al ways a remarkable woman, the most pleasant, the most considerate, and the hardest working 1 ever saw in pictures. Now who can sing like her today? Then we went up to see our dear friends the Fred Stone family. Betty says, "They will be In bed." I says, "The Stones are show people, they couldent sleep before mid night" Fred has gone to Hollywood on a fine movie contract, and he will make a hit for he can do anything. Where on the American stage, radio or screen Is there someone we compare with what he meant to the theatre? They dont develop people like that anymore. They have no place to de velop em. Well as we were driving home mighty late for the Rogerses, Betty said, as we talked of each we had met that night, "Isnt It a shame that not on our whole amusement fields have any of these a successor." Everyone of them today can walk on a stage and show that when they learned their trade It was a profession and not an accident. People who have spent a lifetime per fecting the art of entertaining people, then to have the whole stage profession snatched from under them, and ship your entertainment to you in can. Brave hearted people are theatrical people. C tWi. McS?gkt iymdumts. Im. Government Pay Roll Lists 6,500,000 ' ' 1. Chester C. Davis. 2. Harry L. Hopkins. 3. Donald Richberg. 4. Harold Ickes. 5. Jesse H. Jones. By WILLIAM C. UTLEY MEND FOR TODAY Little Pig Sausage AAA Sunshine Salad NRA Plum Pudding PWA NRA tions like that may or may not look like un attractive menu to you and me, but 25, 500,000 of our inspired citi zens are eating it or something like it i every day, and all of us are paying $100,000,000 a month just for the sal aries of the chefs. We may not be paying cash, but we're at least signing the checks and sooner or later we'll have to make them good. Bureaucracies of the New Deal have added more than 116,000 employees to the executive department alone, that is the amount of increase since Feb ruary 28, 1033, Just before the New Deal administration came into power. It is estimated that approximately 6,500,000 persons are on the lists who receive salaries and other payments from the government, from President Franklin D. Roosevelt down the line through the long rolls of executives and workers to the least of the mil lions who are dependent upon the Fed eral Emergency Relief administration. This body says that the average family of four persons has but one wage earner in iL This would seem to indi cate that 25,500,000 persons are either wholly or partly depending upon the national government for support. That is one out of every five in the nation. The Public Works administration under Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes employs 400,000 directly, itself, and indirectly gives employment to another 2,000.000 on its various proj ects. Regular routine employees of the government, which Include the White House, congress, the depart ments and miscellaneous commissions, and some of the Independent agencies created by the New Deal, account for 680,000. Many Are Employed. * j Congress Itself, which votes all the money for the administration's spend ing, employs less than 2,<)00 persons^ ] 1,905 for the house of representatives and 805 for the senate. Employees of , the national labor relations board, list ed as a "regular" branch of the gov ernment, total 622,771. Military em ployees are more than 210,000. Federal relief rolls account for 19, 000,000, of whom there are 750,000 sin gle persons and 4,500,000 families. The Civilian Conservation corps?or as It Is officially named, the Emergency Con servation Work organization?which Is one of the early comers of the new bureaus, created under the direction of Robert Fechner on April 5. 1933, employed at the last reckoning 383, 708. The executive department, with its alphabetical bureaus, i.ow boasts i more employees than at any other time in the country's history, save the | World war years. tast October the payroll passed the mark of $100,000, 000 monthly, the official figure re- | leased by the civil service commission being $101,888,573. AtVnore than $1.? 200,000^)00 a year, the salaries in the executive department civil branch now surpass one-third of the total annual revenues of the United States. It la In the executive branch of the government, of course, where virtual ly all of the "bureaus" and "adminis trations" and j "commissions" lie. Else they could ndt have so efficiently ac complished their pose of centralizing the authority and responsibility as they have done. What all of these bureaus are and what they are intended to do are shown by charts and outlines in the United States government manual re cently released with a cover message from the President himself which reads: "Only through a clear under standing by every citizen of the ob jectives, organization and availability of the government agencies can they render truly effective service and as sure progress toward economic se curity." Rather Mystifying. The average citizen who learned the structure of his government in the schoolroom of the days before NRA is apt to become a bit befuddled, if not altogether punch-drunk, after fin gering the pages of this manual, how ever. The manual, provided in loose leaf form, so that more pages can be added as more bureaus are created, indicates that no less than 51 such ad ditions have been made by the present administration?as nearly as I could count them; there are so many "wheels within wheels." I am inclined to think the average citizen might close the book, gaze thoughtfully over its green cover into space and murmur, "My, my, how smart must be the folks at the helm to keep track of all these things." The AAA, or Agricultural Adjust ment administration, under the direc tion of Chester C. Davis, which wa9 approved by the President, May 12, 1933, "to promote national economic recovery by restoring the purchasing power of American farmers to the level it occupied In the five years pre ceding the World war (1909-1914)," has 6,683 employees on its payroll. The Farm Credit administration (not a New Deal product, since it was created In 1923, but an outlet of plenty of the New Deal's easy money) employs 6,683 persons. Of the $8,000,000,000 easy money let loose by government bureaus during 1934, it dispersed $1, 827,000,000. Employed In the actual agencies of the PWA are 4,999 persons, all striving for "the reduction of unemployment and the restoration of purchasing pow er through the construction of useful public works and the encouragement of long range planning In the field of public works." HOLC, the Home Owners' Loan cor poration, supervised by the FHLBB (Federal Home Loan Bank board) and organized June 13, 1933. with an ulti mate view of loaning 33,000,000,000 to assist In the emergency financing of 1,000.000 homes, spent $2,059,000,000 In 1934, and bas stopped loaning money. It still employs 20.538 persons In Its agencies. Another billion may be granted HOLC by congress. Codes and Codes. The NBA Itself employs 3,993 In Its agencies, not among them, however, one Gen. Hugh S. Johnson, who has called the Bine' Eagle "dead as t?e dodo, which Is extinct," and wno has written a book' and several magazine articles about what is wrong with NRA. Administering NRA codes for business might well keep many more persons than that busy, a perusal of the government manual suggests. List ed there are more codes than you can shake a stick at, even If It happens to be a very big stick. They're Donald R. Richberg's worry now, not the fiery general's. Some of them are interest ing to contemplate. Of course there are the codes that have been approved for the most important industries; those are to be expected. But the careful reader of the manual discov ers that there is even a Wrapped Toothpick and Wrapped Manicure Stick code. Listed immediately un derneath is the Burlesque Theatrical code. Then there are the Covered But ton, Compressed Air, Fresh Oyster, Nottingham Lace Curtain. Corn Cob Pipe, Pecan Shelling, and Pretzel codes. All in all, there are 751 codes listed as approved. How many were examined and not approved is not told. Another large payroll Is that of the Tennessee Valley authority, which is spending a billion dollars in irrigation, flood prevention, soil erosion and pow er development projects on the Tennes see river. Thp PER A fPprlornl lief commission), administered by Harry L. Hopkins, spent $2,000,000,000 last year, some of It in payment of the bills of the CWA; Jesse H. Jones, and the RFC disbursed a total- of $632,000,000; the FAA, $573,000,000, and the CCC. $372,000,000. Many of the bureaus have been add ed only during the past year. Among these are the FCU (Federal Credit Union system); FCC (Federal Communi cations commission); NPPC (National Power Policy commission); NMB (Na tional Mediation board); RUB (Rail road Retirement board); NAB (Na tional Archives establishment) and its subsidiary NAC (National Archives council); TV AC Tennessee Valley As sociated Co-operatives. Inc.); FAC (Federal Aviation commission); SAB (Science Advisory board, which was created "with authority ... to ap point committees to deal with special problems in various departments," a function which ought to be the very acme of the Alphabet Soup industry); FCA (Farm Credit administration); FFMC (Federal Farm Mortgage cor poration) ; FHA (Federal Housing ad ministration) ; NRB (National Re sources board); CGS (Committee on 'Economic Security); NLRB (National Labor Relations board); TWAB (Tex tile Work Assignment boards),i and NSLRB (National Steel Labor Rela tions board). What 1935 will bring In the way of augmentation of the bureaucracy will begin to reveal Itself In a few weeks. The President has announced that be himself will administer the $4,800,000. 000 which be recently demanded from congress to be used for work relief purposes. Although he has said that he will name an advisory board to assist him, New Dealers were emphatic In the declaration That it Is the President who will hare the last word about ex penditures of the fund. Continuation of the rich New Deal menu will no doubt create new rugged Individual gas pains for the die-hards, especially as the food gets more ex pensive. C, Welters Newspaper Union.
The Alamance Gleaner (Graham, N.C.)
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