"Remember November!"

On the anvil of public controversy President Hoover and Speaker Garner last week hammered out a red-hot campaign issue on Unemployment Relief. The issue: How far should the Federal Government go to take up the burden of private debt?

President Hoover would limit such relief to banks, railroads, states, public corporations. Speaker Garner would extend Federal credit down through industry and private corporations to Governor Roosevelt's famed "forgotten man." Both relief theories are based on the same assumption, namely, that debtors are to be tided over until prices rise to restore solvency. Without that price rise either theory would obviously fail, leaving in its wake a widespread form of government ownership.

The Hoover-Garner battle began when the House & Senate conferees compromised on a general relief bill. President Hoover objected to public works financed by a bond issue as "pork." The conferees agreed to an innocuous $322,000,000 construction program which the Treasury, if it chose, could undertake when it had enough cash. On direct relief to the needy the White House view also prevailed when the final bill provided the R. F. C. with $300,000,000 to be lent to states on the basis of need rather than population. The third provision--R. F. C. loans--was the anvil. The final bill provided that the R. F. C. should lend $1,500,000,000 (the Senate figure) not only to states, municipalities and public corporations but also to private companies, partnerships and individuals (the House clause).

When President Hoover learned of the compromise agreement, he summoned Speaker Garner and the conferees to the White House. At the eleventh hour he wanted the bill revised, private loans eliminated. Speaker Garner, whose own pet idea the loan provision was, told him that Congress had bowed to him on direct relief and public works, that it was up to him to bow to loans. The President refused to bow. After a two-hour wrangle, the meeting broke up inconclusively.

Early next morning there was another White House conference. Again the President and the Speaker clashed. Again each refused to budge. Finally Mr. Garner marched out and returned to the House. There amid Democratic applause he took the floor, for the second time this session, to excoriate President Hoover's ideas of relief. Excerpts:

"We went to the White House. . . . The President said he could not sign the bill. . . . The House has surrendered 75% of its position. . . .

"The issue is this: We're going to broaden the base of the R. F. C. We propose that from now on there shall be no class legislation and no class borrowers.

. . . How can you say it is more important that the New York Central Railroad should meet the interest on its bonds than it is to prevent the forced sale of 500,000 farms and homes?

"I said to the President: 'I'm through with class legislation. You want to lend to the railroads, the insurance companies, the mortgage companies.' His answer was: 'Why, all the people will get a benefit out of it.' My friends, it's too high. The drippings do not reach down to the earth. I want to start at the bottom.

"I believe we've got to have some reservoir of relief or we'll have riots. . . . I'm willing to go before the country for the whole people while President Hoover goes before them for his 'selected clientele.' "

Minority Leader Snell went into the well to make the Republican retort: "I've listened to the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee's speech of acceptance. ... He has made a more direct appeal for class distinction than has been made this session. If the Speaker ever made a demagogic appeal, he made that appeal here today--"

"Remember November!" shrilled a girl's voice in the gallery. She was Elizabeth Heiser, daughter of an Aberdeen, S. Dak. farmer whose home was about to be foreclosed on a $1,000 mortgage. Guards put Miss Heiser out of the gallery while Democrats cheered her challenge.

Stung by the Speaker's attack. President Hoover answered with a sizzling public statement explaining his objections to the relief bill. Excerpts:

"The fatal difficulty is the Speaker's insistence upon provision that loans should be made to individuals, private corporations, partnerships, states and municipalities on any conceivable security and for every purpose. Such an undertaking makes the Reconstruction Corp. the most gigantic banking and pawnbroking business in all history. ... It would compel the R. F. C. to deal with millions of people in terms of hundreds of thousands of small and large loans. It would require the extension of branch offices in every town and county and set up a huge bureaucracy able to dictate the welfare of millions of people. . . . The proposal is impossible of execution and huge losses and great scandals must inevitably result. . . . There will be inevitable discriminations ... the squandering of hundreds of millions of dollars. . . . The organization would be subject to predatory corporations and interests everywhere.

"To hold out hope that the Government is prepared to take care of [the country's] credit needs with the ridiculously small sum provided [$1,500,000,000] must be condemned as a deception. . . .

"The measure proposed and insisted upon, even to the extent of defeat of relief legislation, by the Speaker, threatens disaster to our people. ... I cannot accept the proposal for I do not propose to further increase unemployment by jeopardizing the whole credit of the Government and laying our people open to every kind of injustice and loss."

This White House broadside meant only one thing--a veto for the relief bill which represented three months hard work by Congress. Surprising to many was the President's opposition to loans to private industry because he had recommended that very thing last December when he outlined the R. F. C. Last May Secretary Mills, as the President's spokesman, appeared before a Senate committee to urge advances to private corporations for self-liquidating construction, only to have the Senate reject it. Last week the President retreated from his own proposal when he saw it extended to the smallest merchant, the one-plow farmer, the corner bootblack.

At the insistence of the Speaker who failed to answer the President's criticism or explain the machinery for private loans the House approved the relief bill 202-to-157. The Senate later passed it 43-to-31. President Hoover vetoed it ten minutes after it reached the White House. "Never before," said he, "has so dangerous a suggestion been seriously made to our country." As a substitute bill he suggested direct relief loans to states, a modest discretionary building program by the U. S. Government and R. F. C. advances to public agencies for self-liquidating construction.

Thus was a prime issue, not in either party's platform, forged for the campaign. Speaker Garner, stumping as the Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee, could set himself up as the friend of the Masses against the Classes. He could tell plain, unthinking, debt-ridden voters at the cross-roads that he had put through a bill for their relief only to have it killed by a coldhearted, opinionated Republican President. President Hoover, on the other hand, would go before the country as the implacable defender of the people against a disaster inherent in Democratic doctrine. Some citizens might comprehend the economic facts but in a rough & tumble campaign, facts usually carry less weight than impressions. As a matter of practical politics President Hoover had the facts, Speaker Garner the impressions.

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