DEMS ASK $300 BILLION ECONOMY
STOUT, JONATHAN
Hiss Must Face New Ordeal, But Great Drama Is Over Now By Ralph de Toledano GRIM AND GREY-FACED ALGER HISS WATCHED the jury file in. His deep-set eyes glowered at the ten men and two women, the...
...to assist private investors expand thou* productive capacity...
...The Murray-Humphrey Bill — which will probably be called the Economic Expansion Act of 1949 — calls for expansion of the entire national economy until our total production output reaches 300 billion dollars worth of goods and services...
...THE MURRAY-HUMPHREY Bill, and its companion measure in the HouSe —which bears the name of Representative Andrew Biemiller of Wisconsin —is only the first of' several measures being prepared for Congress by Administration leaders...
...Morality is indivisible...
...Truman's eleven legislative recommendations to Congress was to urge repeal of the tax on the transportation of goods, and the liberalizing of provisions for the caryover of losses by corporations...
...But as out policy for peace tokos effect, it should be possible to.future years to reduce these expenditures which now make such heavy demands upon our Federal budget...
...POINT FIVE in the President's economic proposals called for increasing the minimum wage to at least 75 cents an hour and for broadening its coverage...
...The same testimony of espionage and subversion would be recited before a new judge and a new jury...
...We are fools or knaves if we do not realize that our whole political morality was on trial in Judge Kaufman's court...
...What tiresome itch drives a man to step into the limelight merely to besmirch a childhood friend...
...A fourth suggested adopetion of a program of farm income supports...
...Federal receipts would fall further, and the burden upon Federal expenditures would increase...
...In this nightmare time, we wait motionless, speechless, terror-stricken...
...People who couldn't get seats stared enviously as the reporters sauntered in, flashing their green working-press passes...
...His deep-set eyes glowered at the ten men and two women, the veneer of easy confidence finally stripped from his boyish face...
...And only the Furies scream as they swoop down on history...
...Which I sol as a practical objective In my Economic Report in January, would increase annual national output In real terms by 7.8 to 10 billion dollars...
...The Murray-Humphrey bill, paralleling the President's Economic Report to Congress, calls for steady expansion of the national economy (along with orderly reduction of the national debt), creation of 500 to 750 thousand jobs per year, and an annual increase of three to four percent in the total output of goods and services which will bring the grand total to around 300 billion dollars' worth...
...Even Cowley's notes did not fully bear out this charge, yet he made it eagerly...
...We cannot expect to achieve a budget surplus in a declining national economy...
...A third proposal asked for a broad study of investment and development needs and market opportunities...
...And it came to nothing, to a deadlock...
...The jury is dismissed," the judge declared...
...2. Increased private production and employment and regulated private investment...
...Van Doren had turned it over to A. J. Liebling, a merchant in ersatz press molality, who without a by-your-leave gave it to Hiss' lawyers...
...It's unethical," he admitted...
...The issues it raised of New Deal complicity in mass treason remain with us...
...A confiding letter written by young Whittaker as a Columbia student to Van Doren, his faculty adviser, found its way into the trial...
...And much could be said about th« impact of communism on the liberal mind during the Munich era...
...For this trial was, in many ways, a touchstone of the human soul, a shakenout tragedy in which even the less central characters stood out starkly and uncharitably...
...Tea — pass legislation to provide technical assistance to and encourage investment in underdeveloped areas abroad...
...FOR THE GREAT DRAMA was in „the, dress rehearsal on Fole,y Square...
...Yet Van Doren made no substantial move to disentangle himself from this breach of trust...
...Liberals Want Up to 750,000 New Jobs Yearly By Jonathan Stout Washington, D. C. , A BILL AIMED AT PROVIDING J\ 500,000 to 750,000 new jobs annually, through increasing: our national income by 50 billion dollars within the next three tofour years, will be introduced in Congress, hot on the heels of President Truman's Economic Report, by Democratic Senators James E. Murray and Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota...
...And to besmirch him by recalling childhood details — that Chambers was untidy of dress, that he walked through a brook with shoes on to cool his feet, that he played pranks on his teachers...
...And in a very real sense, the fate of the Republic was in the balance...
...Truman is "bullish" on America's future while Messrs...
...The President's message clearly stated: "In view of our domestic and international obligation!, an abundant economy is the only safe road to a Government surplus...
...It was a compendium of conflicting emotions and loyalties, a trial by ordeal, a medieval test of strength...
...We cannot arrive at a verdict, your Honor," he said...
...A three or four par cant annual growth of our economy...
...The President, on the other hand, envisages a nation steadily increasing its productivity, wealth and strength...
...This astronomical figures can best b<> appreciated by contrasting it with the 250-billion-dollar national income we attained in 1948, when the goal of 60 million jobs was reached and all employment records were shattered...
...Ralph da Toledano, former associate editor of The New Leader, is now an assistant editor of Newtweek...
...This legislation will thus translate into clear and specific terms the thesis nil the President's economic message to Congress last Monday, namely, that not cuts in necessary expenditures which might enable us to stay within our national means, but expansion of those means is the way to provide the' moneys required to sustain the great foreign and domestic burdens America has assumed...
...But I don't care...
...The first of Mr...
...Taft and Byrd are "bearish...
...As opportunity offers...
...I shall make every effort to achieve an excess of Federal income over outgo, consilient with our major objectives of peace and prosperity...
...To any bat the most antagonistic, his days on the stand as he withstood the cruel onslaught of defense counsel Lloyd Paul Paul Stryker was a token of man's God-given conscience...
...to encourage industry to create new Job opportunities in the nations underdeveloped areas...
...The gaudy corps of pundits and columnists would return to their job of spotting the social significance...
...There is much to be said about Alger Hiss, brilliant and composed as he watched the evidence pile up against him, a paragon of evasiveness on the stand...
...What made men betray their country for the Soviet will-o-the-wisp is a subject that could bear anatomizing...
...Present levels of expenditures are due hi large measure to the extraordinary costs of our national defense and international activities...
...The remaining points were: Six — strengthening unemployment compensation by increasing the amount and duration of benefits and extending coverage...
...In keeping eyes glued to the great, overall picture, the smaller but equally important nuances are lost...
...and to set up a flexible long-range public works program that can be reduced when employment is full and enlarged (to 30 billion dollars) in the time of serious unemployment...
...But if we tried to avoid a budget deficit by cutting essential expenditures, we would contribute to lower national output and lower employment...
...Either we are partners in a monstrous fiameup, or much that we held good was foul...
...It was a sensational trial down on Foley Square...
...Take Samuel Hamilton Kaufman...
...What tortuous path of self-deception did Malcolm Cowley travel to convince himself that he must air his faulty recollection by charging that in 1940 Chambers named Assistant Secretary of State Francis Say re "the head of a Soviet underground...
...In 194a tha yalua of our national output of goods and services was above 250 billion dollars...
...On the planning side the MurrayHumphrey bill provides for establishment of a national economic cooperation boar dcomposed of labor, industry and agriculture representatives...
...Are we or are we not courageous and farsighted enough to implement this bold new domestic program...
...Their dithyrambie utterances on the metaphysics of the New Deal would again fill up columns and columns of space...
...Seven^-extending to July 25, 1950, the availibility of readjustment allowances for veterans unprotected by state unemployment compensation laws...
...The Murray-Humphrey measure provides for: 1. Improved industry-labor-agrlculhire cooperation...
...Administration strategists, uncertain as to which tactic will secure their basic objective, are trying both...
...Stating that "no major increase in taxes should be undertaken at this time," the President reversed his previous request for four billion in new taxes, which had aroused considerable protest from friend and foe alike...
...Did his anger rankle for seven years, only to explode on Foley Square...
...But another possible explanation is that the Dixiecrat-Republican coalition is fundamentally devoid of ideas, pessimistic about the future, and lacking in vision needed to find solutions to the new problems which present themselves with every passing year...
...By the grace of God and Harry S. Truman, this small-time criminal lawyer became a Federal judge...
...These are large and gory words...
...These activities are of »uch paramount importance that it is out of the question to slash them a this time...
...After twenty-seven dramatic days, the first, inconclusive, trial of Alger Hiss for perjury was over...
...But it would not he the same...
...And Judge Kaufman understood them...
...Higher national output moans more Federal revenues at any given tax rate...
...Tho ordeal — for Hiss, for...
...Eleven—restore the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act...
...Strangely enough, the drama was riot in the principals of the play, though they loomed large in the running accounts of this trial of our times...
...Alger Hiss understands them...
...Kaufman, in Stryker's political debt, sat mean-faced over the trial...
...Eight — raise benefits and extend coverage under the old-age and survivors' insurance system and improve the public assistance program...
...The foreman spoke quietly to Judge Kaufman...
...And there were the minor witnesses who came forth for an hour, lay bare their vanities, and then stepped down...
...President Truman, in enunciating the above ideas, comes into head-on conflict with the Republican Congressional leadership as represented by Taft, and also with the reactionaries in his own party whose spokesman is Senator Byrd of Virginia...
...Mine —enact legislation to permit Federal agencies, and encourage states and localities to intensify their advance planning and to acquire sites for useful projects...
...Whittakor Chambers — would be .repeated...
...THE DIXIECRAT-REPUBLICAN position favors drastic economies to meet national expenditures, and cannot visualize an economic growth sufficient to provide jobs for the half million young people who each year graduate from school to swell the ranks of the nation's labor force...
...WHAT SURGE OF FEELING drove Mark Van Doren, a late believer In the higher morality of books, to his remote-control participation...
...Truman's Economic Report plus the" specific legislation already framed to execute it, constitute a formidable challenge to the Congress and the people of the United States...
...Or that shortly after the review appeared in Time' Cowley was dismissed from his OFF job...
...3. Long-range planning of useful national resources and public works projects in such a manner as would sustain expansion of the whole economy, f 4. Special "means for dealing with unemployment, including direct and immediate attention to localised areas of unemployment before they affect other perts of the national economy- and thus unsettle general economic stability...
...Second, the President urged extending the maximnm time limit now fixed by law on the maturity of business loans made by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation...
...5. A fund of 15 billion dollars as working capital to halt current unemployment...
...True, there ie much to be said about the great and good Whittaker Chambers, the man who tossed away a brilliant writing career in order to help scotch the snake of communism...
...It also seeks to help small businessmen and to study monopolistic trade practices...
...Perhaps, as the press reports, Mr...
...Scolding the prosecution, ruling out some of its key witnesses, and giving the defense unheardof latitude, he held justice and Hiss' fate in his little hands, There was the prosecutor, oversize Tom Murphy, fighting a riptide, yet clothed in a saving dignity by his earnestness of purpose and a cognizance of what this trial means to the American people in a time of dire struggle...
...Did he remember that in 1942 Chambers had written a scathing review of The Dry Season — Cowley's communist-wracked book of poems...
...The main difference between the Murray-Humphrey and Biemiller measures is that the former will attempt to grapple with increasing unemployment (now figured at 4,000000), whereas the House is entertaining separate legislation on unemployment...
...By contrast, the President seems optimistic, fertile in ideas, and courageous enough to meet new problems with new solutions...
...You and I were on trial there...
...But Whittaker Chambers understands them...
Vol. 32 • July 1949 • No. 29
