Session's End

Last week the 72nd Congress waded out of a dark and troubled jungle of legislation and went home to rest until after the elections. For 224 days--the longest stretch since 1922--a Republican Senate and a Democratic House had been groping and stumbling, hacking and thrashing through the thickest set of national problems that ever sprang up in the U. S. in peacetime. Midnight adjournment found the Senate mouthing over Prohibition, the House swapping political wisecracks and President Hoover absent from the Capitol.

Home Loans. What held the Congress in late session was a deadlock on the Home Loan Bank bill, last item on President Hoover's general relief program. Both houses were agreed upon a system of eight to twelve regional banks, backed by $125,000,000 from the Treasury, at which savings banks, building & loan associations and the like could discount their first mortgages up to $10,000 on home property valued at $20,000 or more. But the Senate had amended this bill with a currency expansion scheme of Virginia's Glass, to let national banks issue their own paper money on any Federal bonds bearing interest of 3 3/8% or less--a privilege now limited to 2% gold bonds. Senator Glass estimated his amendment, offered as a substitute for the House's Goldsborough Bill to inflate commodity prices by deflating the dollar, would bring out $995,000,000 in new currency. Twice the House refused to accept this rider to the Home Loan bill. Thrice the Senate refused to accept the bill without the rider. After hours of night haggling, the House finally, with only four votes to spare, gave in to the Senate and both bill and rider went to the White House.

Record. The first session of the 72nd Congress had been full of political bluster and bustle but behind the noise was plenty of substantial accomplishment. President Hoover got all he could reasonably expect from a divided Congress on the brink of a national election. His program for bolstering the sagging body economic of the nation was enacted. A variety of measures obnoxious to him were left to die. Between them, the President and the Congress made the following record:

1) Ratification of the one-year-War-Debts Moratorium. Congress declared against cancellation, refused to revive the World War Foreign Debt Commission to consider Revision. The Moratorium increased last year's deficit by some 250 million dollars.

2) A $125,000,000 increase in the capital of the Federal Land Bank system. This was the session's biggest sop to farmers.

3) Creation of Reconstruction Finance Corp. to lend $2,000,000.000 to banks, railways, trust & insurance companies. R. F. C. checked the onrush of bank failures and rail receiverships. Up to last week it had lent $1,054,000,000 to 4,106 institutions.

4) Enactment of the Glass-Steagall bill. By substituting U. S. bonds for commercial paper as Federal Reserve currency coverage, this measure freed excess gold behind paper money, helped the Reserve to resist foreign raids on the dollar. It also opened the way for the Reserve to buy U. S. bonds wholesale, pump credit back to member banks.

5) Enactment of a $1,118,000,000 revenue measure to balance (approximately) the 1933 Budget.

6) Economies of $150,000,000 as a supplement to Budget-balancing. The President had asked for $230,000,000 in cuts. He got his furlough plan instead of straight pay reductions for all Government workers.

7) A $2,122.000.000 general relief bill, without "pork" or bond issues.

8) A $125,000.000 Home Loan Bank bill.

9) Appropriations $184,000,000 less than Budget estimates.

During the session President Hoover vetoed seven measures, including the first relief bill, a Democratic tariff bill, an omnibus pension bill, a bill for a pre-arranged wage scale on public works.

Congress failed to act fully on his proposals to consolidate and eliminate Government bureaus and to revise the bankruptcy laws.

On its own initiative Congress passed two prime measures: 1) a Constitutional amendment doing away with the "lame duck" session of Congress, already ratified by twelve States; 2) a bill severely limiting the use of injunctions in labor disputes.

The Senate killed immediate cashing of the Soldier Bonus.

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