Hearings on the bill began immediately but many do not consider that there is any chance of whipping it into shape and passing it this session. Later it will be supplemented by a bill dealing with fair trade practices. Under URA labour standards and questions of business ethics were covered by the same act.
Within a few days after the Labor Standards BU had- been sent to Congress the President launched an k on wealthy tax evaders. In a vigorous fee-fi-fo-fum style the President Held up to public scorn those who had taken advantage of the various loopholes in existing tax legislation and had not paid as much money into the Treasury as Treasury officials felt that they should. The American practice is for the individual to make out his own tax return and reckon: how much he owes the government. He naturally gives himself the benefit of any exemptions or deductions "he possibly can.
Even with the best will in the world it is easy to make an error and given a natural bias in his own favour to claim exemptions about which there is a possible doubt. The percentage of returns which the Treasury could challenge if it wished is very high. The small fry are not usually troubled unless they run foul of the political machine. When Senator Huey Long of Louisiana was?live income tax prosecutions were launched against several of his henchmen. When he was assassinate ed and the prosecutions would serve ne useful purpose they were quietly cropped.
To Plug up Loopholes The general attitude of citizens claiming exemptions is "if 1 don't make the claim no one is going to make it for me." To this of recent years was added another reason. The Government appeared to be unnecessarily extravagant and to be wasting its funds. At the same time it was carrying out policies of which the wealthier citizens (denounced as money bags, -Tories and economic royalists) heartily disapproved. The; therefore. urged the attorneys who helped them with their tax returns te make more vigorous -efforts to reduce the amounts. Various loopholes were discovered such as the Gevice of turning country estates into corporations, splitting up income and into interstate commerce. Nor will goods manufactured by children under the age of sixteen nor those made by firms which in the eyes of the Labour Standards Board have been unfair to organized labour and attempted to intimidate workers by the use of labour spies or strikebreakers.
The new bill is precise codification of national labour standards. It gives far reaching powers to these five men, who are asked to decide matters which. the President and his advisers found too difficult or too dangerous politically to decide for themselves. Economi and' geographical conditions var enormously throughout the country.
There are depression trades which struggle along just making both ends meet, and which would be sufied by any addition to costs, their workers being flung onto relief. There are areas in which the cost of living is so low that 40 cents an hour would be a good wage and others in which it would mean penury. These are the circumstances which have in the Dorothy Thompson wrote. "Once upon a time we had Parliamentary government, the essence of which is reflection, consultation, deliberation.
Now we have bills which are in effect decrees, issued from the White House, and addressed not to the elected legislators but to the population at large, which is then whipped up into action through the organizations of Mr. Farley, Mr. John Lewis government propaganda ani the personal influence of the President.
"This is democratic government Mr. Hitler's is. He also issues decrees formulated by some of his anonymous advisors and then submits them to actual or inferential plebiscite for their endorsement."
To parody Hobbes, the new Labour Standards proposal is "tke ghost of the old N.R.A. sitting crowned upon the grave thereof," and as is often the case the ghost arouses more terror than the original ever did. The President has, however, learned one thing from the overthrow of the URA act by a unanimous Supreme Court. His new Labour Standards Be wise, take care of your eyes. have them examined regularly {or greater comfort and health.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.