National Affairs: What Next?

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September wheat last week was selling around 88¢ per bu. (last year's price : 54¢) after touching $1.17 in July. Farmers were receiving about a $100.000,000 A. A. A. bonus on their 1933 crop in return for a promise to reduce their 1934 crop by 15%. Last week A. A. A. planned to export to Japan and China 35,000,000 bu. of wheat from the Pacific Northwest, take a $7,000,000 loss by selling it below the domestic price.

Farmers were not wholly satisfied with the progress of Roosevelt relief to date. Their spokesmen said they had been led to expect much more from the Administration. Milo Reno was again threatening a farm strike. Even Secretary Wallace admitted that, with NRA raising farm costs faster than A. A. A. could raise farm income, they were "on the spot unless they got higher prices." Crop subsidies had not worked; currency inflation must therefore come next, and soon.

Mortgage Front. Another farm grievance against Washington was on mortgage relief. Since March i the Farm Credit Administration had advanced $342,000,000 to Federal land banks, regional credit corporations, farm cooperatives. Yet last week Speaker Rainey roundly flayed F. C. A. for its slow progress on refinancing farm mortgages, charged it with still following "Republican policies."

Home mortgage relief was no better off. The day after President Roosevelt signed the Home Owners' Loan Corp. Act last June, Louis McHenry Howe, his secretary, in a $900-for-15-minutes radio broadcast declared that the new agency would be in operation "in a week or ten days." Last week, three months later, the corporation issued its first circular on the $2,000,000,000 in bonds it will issue "shortly" to start refinancing mortgages on small homes.

Industrial Front. The ambitions of labor to organize all industry and the resistance of employers to such a program continued to produce clashes which overshadowed most other NRA doings. So sure did William Green, A. F. of L. president, feel of his grip on NRA that last week he boldly demanded that his organization be made an official co-administrator of all codes. NRA was almost as busy settling strikes and getting union men back to work as it was in creating new jobs for the unemployed. The coal strike hinged directly on the coal code which required the President's direct intervention (see p. 11). In the East 50,000 silk workers went on strike in protest against lumping their trade with cotton and rayon for code purposes.

General Johnson had waded into deeper & deeper water on the collective bargaining clause of the law. NRA committee efforts to get President Roosevelt to issue a public interpretation of famed Section 7 (a) failed when the President declared that the collective bargaining clause was written in plain English and required no interpretation.

General Johnson figured that the Blue Eagle blanketed 85% of the land. But temporary re-employment agreements which had hatched the Blue Eagle automatically lapse Dec. 31. After that the popular ballyhoo will die away and NRA emphasis will shift to administering permanent codes, limited to a few major industries.

NRA still lacked effective machinery to cope with the price rises it was stimulating. Retail prices went up 8% during August, 18% since May.