"We"

Not until shortly after noon on March 4, will the country see directly and officially into the Presidential mind of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. At that hour he will plant himself on a flag-draped platform on the East steps of the Capitol and deliver his inaugural address to his countrymen, forgotten and otherwise.

Last week readers of the enterprising New York World Telegram were given an advance glimpse of the Roosevelt program in the making through an interview with one of its collaborators. A liberal professor of economics at Columbia University, 41-year-old Dr. Rexford Guy Tugwell is a member of the "Brain Trust" which helped to steer Mr. Roosevelt through the campaign to the election. Since then Dr. Tugwell has been in constant, confidential communion with the President-elect. Though he spoke only for himself, Dr. Tugwell was presumably giving an authoritative reflection of the Roosevelt mind when he set forth and commented on a seven-point program for recovery after March 4:

1) A sharp increase in income taxes especially in the higher brackets. No sales tax. "To attempt to support prosperity values for property among an idle and impoverished people is a futile gesture. It's like trying to revive a dying tree by applying fertilizer to its branches instead of to its roots. . . . There is just one thing to do--take incomes from where they are and place them where we need them. Practically this means extreme income taxation. . . ."

2) A public works program, costing up to $5,000,000,000, with direct Federal relief to the jobless needy. "I have no doubt the Government could borrow $5,000,000,000 at 2%."

3) A reduction in retail prices, utility rates, interest on mortgages (see Item 6).

4) A Federal budget balanced with the aid of Prohibition repeal. "But I doubt if repeal would produce more than one-quarter of the stimulus to business which its advocates have asserted it would."

5) A sound currency, with no inflation. "General inflation will not procure the results we want. . . . It would be favorable to those groups which never adjusted themselves to the new price level; it would injure those who had done so. . . .

6) A new balance between wholesale and retail prices. ". . . Some prices ought to go down; some ought to go up. Most obviously all retail prices have resisted decline in comparison with wholesale prices. But certain groups are worse offenders--for instance, public utility rates. . . . A little statesmanlike denunciation of retailers and public utility concerns might do something. Devices like the Domestic Allotment plan for agriculture ought to be really effective on the other side."

7) Rationalization of foreign trade and War Debts, with a possible remission of all interest charges in return for commercial advantages.

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