News of the Week
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S message to Congress on Wednesday was notable both for what it contained and what it did not. Nothing was said about stabilization of the currency—apart from a suggestion, a little curious in view of the President's attitude during the World Economic Conference that international agreement was impeded by other countries' difficulties—and prices on Wall Street promptly fell two or three points as mark of disappointment. The President is apparently content to let the dollar take its own course for Some time yet; though he may have more to say on this point in his impending Budget message. The -most significant passage in the address was that in which Mr. Roosevelt spoke of the National Industrial Recovery Act machinery as "a permanent feature of our modernized industrial structure." - That declaration, which no one in America seems to question, means in fact something gigantic—economic planning, much of it in the first instance empiric, on such a scale that it must ultimately have international as well as national reactions, and the exercise over the lives of 120,000,000 people of a central control so extensive as to put the Federal Government in a totally new relationship to the States. Far more decisive for the immediate future than anything the President said on Wednesday was the demonstration of his sustained authority Over Congress. His position as the country's approved Dictator remains unshaken.
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