The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

ON THE WORLD TODAY

THE great attack on the Office of Price Administration filled the Capital to overflowing with lobbyists. The natural result is a renewed hue and cry against the practice of lobbying. The practice, however, is inseparable from our system of representative government. It is an essential adjunct of the lawmaking process. Only through spokesmen for organized groups can Congress be apprised of abuses and be educated in the way of ending them.

Lobbying, however, is not to blame for the ills that Congress perpetrates. Congress alone is responsible for the legislation it enacts. It cannot put the blame — as sixty-three irate Congressmen, in a manifesto on the initial House massacre of the OPA by amendment, have done—on “an unholy alliance of paid lobbyists operating from their expensive hotel suites behind the skirts of reputable but deluded business leaders.”

The business of lobbying, however, needs legislative regulation. Its activity has grown until it seems to rival even the business of government itself. As the La Follette-Monroney Committee report on the reorganization of Congress says, the multiplication of organized pressure groups may distort and confuse public opinion. Certainly the lobbyists have confused public opinion about the OPA, and in general their activities help to explain why Congressmen vote as they do.

One remedial step suggested by the La FolletteMonroney Committee is publicity. Individuals would remain free to apply all the persuasive powers at their command in dealing with their Congressmen. But organized groups “seeking to influence legislative action ” and individuals employed by such groups would be compelled to register and report on their activities. Lobbyists hired to bring pressure on Congress would thus be brought out into the open. Any discussion of lobbies is incomplete without some mention of money. From time to time one hears of huge amounts to be devoted to the influencing of legislation or some other process of government. Where does this money go?

For example, one big national lobby advertised in the newspapers a few months ago for contributions to a million-dollar fund for a drive against the OPA. This was only a single group. There are others, as big or bigger.

How much money can an organization spend on cocktails, hotel suites, high jinks, cigars, and the other odds and ends of frivolity that the public commonly considers the tools of the lobbyist? A million dollars will buy a surprising quantity of mimeograph paper. Even if one hopefully admits large expenditures for advertising, travel, and “educational work,” a million dollars is still a lot of money. If we are going to identify and register the activities of the lobbyist, must we not also audit his cash performance?

OPA on the defensive

Sober analysts, such as the Committee for Economic Development, admit that any sudden ending of controls would be most unwise. In some cases the OPA, to be sure, has hampered output. But, as Price Administrator Paul Porter told Congress, it is the scarcities of manpower, materials, and equipment that are the immediate obstacles to enlarged output. Much of the criticism of the OPA is due to inefficient administration: decisions were not handed down with enough speed in cases where decontrol or price increases were required by economic conditions.

During his brief tenure of office, Paul Porter has moved fast in response to legitimate criticism of the OPA. He has raised ceiling prices when adjustments were required to increase production. He has inaugurated a program assuring that controls will not be retained any longer than is necessary to protect the people against inflation.

This is the test: when an item has come into ample supply, no excuse exists any longer to retain control. And this is the policy Porter has been following. He also has weeded out of the staff the men who are ideologically statists or profit controllers. The OPA has had more than its share of these gentry.

We watch the world starve

There will be plenty of worry about our foreign policy if the present world famine gets worse. President Truman correctly called it the “worst mass starvation in history.” We cannot negotiate with chaos and social and political convulsion. The State Department is well aware of this grave situation.

There was no need to let such a serious situation develop. In at least two respects we have been remiss. First, early in the war a proposal for stockpiling food against the day of liberation was shelved. One of the reasons, it is said, is that the War Production Board frowned on the building of warehouses.

Another example of our remissness was the hasty removal of controls after V-J Day. If we had kept up rationing, there would have been more to spare for the starving. As it was, the entire government was misled by the calamity-howlers who forecast deflation last winter.

It has been difficult for the Administration to overcome its earlier failure to act, which has already made this country lag throughout the year far behind its pledges of aid for the world’s hungry. Now a program is in effect. The key items are those aimed at moving wheat carry-overs off the Northwestern farms and at preventing farmers from feeding wheat and corn to overweight hogs and cattle. In an effort to force corn on the market, the government called, for repayment on May 1, the Federal loans on the 1945 crop which were due originally September 1.

The carry-over is not excessive. Nor is it due to hoarding in the hope of getting better prices. The years of the locust are still fresh in the minds of the plowmen west of the Missouri River. Not so long ago, the dwellers in the Dust Bowl had not even enough carry-over for feed and seed.

Their present carry-over is a prudent reserve for the lean years which may succeed the five-year run of bumper crops. The government’s job is to pry loose enough of the carry-over to help this country fulfill its obligations abroad. Without government prodding there is no possibility of meeting the arrears in our pledged quotas. Summer wheat does not look too hopeful for current requirements.

No less than 35 per cent of the nation’s carry-over is held in North Dakota. This amounts to enough wheat to provide every person in the world with two loaves of bread. The appeal to North Dakotans is now taking the form of pastoral letters by the Catholic and Lutheran hierarchies. Cash and bonus offers have up to now left the farmers unresponsive. It is felt that the message of the Bible will be more effective.

Petrillo and Lewis

The pusillanimity of Congress on labor legislation is in danger of bringing our representative system into disrepute. When the mountain moved at last, all that was forthcoming was a mouse in the shape of an anti-Petrillo bill. This bill prohibits the use of force to make broadcasters hire stand-by bands or pay royalties to the union for playing recorded music. It also bans use of force to prevent broadcasters from carrying noncommercial, educational, and foreign programs.

Measures directed at specific persons notoriously make bad law. The badness of this law was demonstrated even before its enactment. Petrillo simply launched out in another direction. Aiming at the lush coffers of Hollywood, he asked for a threefold increase in the number of musicians hired by the eight principal motion picture studios, along with a 100 per cent pay rise for the ten playing hours a week permitted by the union. The coolness of Petrillo’s demand is matched only by his nose-thumbing at Congress.

John L. Lewis, who has copied some of Petrillo’s tactics and added them to his own armory, is, however, far more formidable than Petrillo. Lewis has been on his usual spring rampage. Bargaining, in his language, is a euphemism for bludgeoning.

To be sure, his demand for a “royalty” on coal has as its object a laudable reform. It would be used to create a health and welfare fund for the miners, and it is not in dispute by the operators. But when they offered a rational basis for discussion — namely, an independent administration for the fund — Lewis imperiously brushed aside the counter-proposal of the operators.

The miners’ “rest” has held back production, of course. And, in addition, it has held up recuperation abroad. The effect on relief is even worse. Coalstarved France is dependent on coal supplies from America while the Ruhr is being restored. Without this coal the transport of food supplies in Europe is retarded. Lewis’s ability to impose his will on his following, to wrest concessions from the employers, to hold up the processes of government, to cripple our foreign program — this sequence approaches the intolerable.

WASHINGTON(continued)

Labor leadership is now exerting its influence in the matter of appointments to strategic posts in the government service. The latest example is the case of the Commissioner of Labor Statistics. For nearly six years the acting Commissioner has been Dr. A. Ford Hinrichs. He is the logical successor to Isador Lubin, who has now resigned.

But Dr. Hinrichs fell afoul of the labor unions several years ago. They had challenged the reliability of the Bureau of Labor Statistics cost-of-living index. That index had acted as a barrier to wartime wage increases based on extravagant claims about the extent of the rise in living costs. In spite of expert testimony to the general reliability of the index, the union leaders never forgave Dr. Hinrichs.

Congress marks time

Secretary Byrnes is constantly pleading with Congress to give him the tools with which to operate the nation’s foreign policy. But Congress has never been so laggard. The late Lord Keynes told the House of Lords that in his three months in Washington not a single bill was passed. Extension of the draft, the Army and Navy merger, the loan to Britain, military training — action on all these measures is essential to Byrnes in an affirmative prosecution of foreign policy.

Byrnes’s new activity has been widely applauded, but he gets little help. Before he left for the Paris Conference of Foreign Ministers, he was told by a Southern editor that in the South the best horsetrading was done when you didn’t seem anxious to trade. “Yes,” the Secretary of State flashed back, “but you had a horse.”

Even a minor thing like the Fulbright bill on surplus property abroad meanders through the Congressional machinery. Surplus property is rusting away to zero value. It requires guards to look after it who are yearning to be home. All that Fulbright suggests is that we sell it to foreign governments in their currencies, and spend this money abroad in scholarships for Americans. Yet weeks and weeks are consumed in talking about it.

THE MOOD OF THE CAPITAL

The mood of the Capital is one of frustration. One reason for it is the approaching Congressional elections. These always put a damper on action. .But the general inaction is harmful to the country. Most of Mr. Truman’s domestic legislative program is still hanging fire: full employment; extension of social security; health and medical care; labor legislation; river valley development.

One of these days, the legislators will wake up. But it may be too late. The more one looks at the Capital scene, the more one is convinced that radical innovation may be the sole safeguard against stagnation, dry rot, and termites.