''Listen & Learn"

Many a citizen who voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt had no idea what the New Deal was which the Democratic nominee promised. Many doubted if even Mr. Roosevelt knew the details of that New Deal. Perhaps his most "satisfactory" and revealing speech was on railroads at Salt Lake City where the candidate indicated a firm intention of solving that major public problem (see p. 41). But even in that address he promised all things to all men--lower rates for shippers, good wages for employes, safe returns for investors (including the Mormon Church, a heavy holder of railroad bonds).

Last week the Senate, to help the next President flesh out his New Deal, began supplying him with the most nourishing ideas yet grown in the thorny garden of national economic thought.

On the theory that solving the Depression is not a one-man job, even for a Democratic President, Senator Pat Harrison. Mississippi Democrat, was inspired to bring every possible plan, program, proposal or panacea into sharp focus at the Capitol where Mr. Roosevelt could pick and choose the ones he liked best. To that end, Senator Harrison last month had the Senate pass his resolution authorizing the Finance Committee, of which he becomes chairman after March 4, "to make an investigation and study of the present economic problems of the U. S. with the particular object of obtaining the views of such economists, financiers and other persons as may be able to offer constructive suggestions with respect to the solution of such problems."

Out went 250 invitations to 250 Great Names throughout the land to journey to Washington and tell the Senate Finance Committee what was wrong with the U. S. First Great Name to open last week's hearing was Bernard Mannes Baruch. His advice: "Balance the Budget. Tax everybody for everything. Take hungry men off the world's pavements." He proposed the following farm relief plan: Let the Government allot production quotas on corn, cotton, wheat and tobacco and then lease the farm land thus left idle at an average of $3 per acre per year, thereby compensating the producer for accepting his quota; let the Government collect a processing tax not upon individual products but upon all agricultural commodities to raise the $200,000,000 necessary to rent fallow fields.

Others who had promised to appear during the first fortnight of the investigation included: Publisher Paul Block, International Harvester's Alexander Legge, John Francis Hylan, onetime Mayor of New York, Packard's Alvan Macauley, United Mine Workers' John Llewellyn Lewis, Morgan Partner Thomas William Lament, Prudential's Edward Dickinson Duffield, Delaware & Hudson's Leonor Fresnel Loree, Statistician Leonard Porter Ayres, Pundit Walter Lippmann, Chase Bank's Winthrop Williams Aldrich, National Farmers' Union's John Andrew Simpson, Anaconda's Cornelius Francis Kelley, Alfred Emanuel Smith, Pennsylvania R. R.'s William Wallace Atterbury.

"Listen & Learn" is a favorite motto of President-elect Roosevelt who was expected to do just that with the testimony Senator Harrison had adroitly arranged to have adduced before the Senate Finance Committee. Another "Listen & Learn" session for the new President also came to light last week with the announcement that he had invited all State Governors in Washington for the inaugural to meet him at the White House March 6. At that conference President Roosevelt will get the benefit of their collective ideas on the following topics: 1) Federal and State tax conflicts; 2) Federal aid for the jobless; 3) mortgage foreclosures: 4) better land use; 5) reorganization of local governments to cut taxes.

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