New Deal Weighed

Thousands of college graduates listened during the past fortnight to scores of commencement day speeches in which the predominant text was the New Deal. Rarely before had campus bigwigs found so handy a theme for their intellectual springboard. Most of them pointed with pride to President Roosevelt's program, lauded his use of college professors, wound up on a lofty note about public service.

But to appraise the New Deal fairly & squarely was no easy matter. Members of the Administration, in great demand as graduation speakers, were biased. Most tycoons were almost as puzzled about its meaning as their young audience. The group best qualified to speak with some authority was composed of oldtime Democratic liberals detached from the Washington scene. Outstanding among those with a worthwhile opinion last week was Owen D. Young.

Franklin Roosevelt had used Mr. Young during the campaign but had passed him by as an adviser since March 4. Slightly defeatist, Mr. Young has experienced politics, international economics, big business. Last week at Cambridge's Radcliffe he weighed the New Deal, concluded that it would be neither a complete success nor an utter failure. A thoughtful critic. he predicted that "the immobility of men's minds, the persistent force of habit, the resistance to new rules" would thwart quick fundamental changes in U. S. life.

Slyly recalling the high hopes of the Coolidge-Hoover New Era, Democrat Young declared:

"Our language does not provide a vocabulary of condemnation adequate to express now our feelings toward the Nineteen Twenties. At the same time, we are seeking new phrases in which to tell the world of our oncoming glory in the Nineteen Thirties. I hope you will not be misled by these enthusiasms and extravagances. . . .

"There has been a great cry for economic planning. I often wonder whether the people who call for it really mean what they say. Are they willing to sur render their individual freedom to the extent necessary to cooperate in a plan. . . . Rugged individualism is not so bad, however much we jeer the phrase today.

"Some years ago, I referred to politics as the lovely lady in the parlor, and economics as the kitchen maid who did the work: I had hoped that the kitchen would be able to discipline itself. Indeed we were making progress in that direction, but there was always a small minority who refused co-operation and were unwilling to accept selfdiscipline. They represented rugged individualism at its worst. . . . So business having failed to discipline itself, I see no escape from some direction and control by the lady in the parlor, but I am not willing to turn the kitchen over to the lovely lady who talks so easily and so gracefully until I know she is competent to bake the bread. . .

"It is not the large powers granted to a President which are permanently dangerous. It is the small ones with which we invest our petty tyrants that eat away our liberty."

One strong professorial voice raised last week against the New Deal and its professorial sponsors was that of Robert Andrews Millikan, head of California Institute of Technology. At Oberlin's centennial commencement this Nobel prize winner extolled the Machine as the producer of wealth and leisure, flayed government paternalism for "weakening American self-reliance, discouraging private initiative, diminishing opportunity, stimulating bonus marchers and veterans' rackets." Warning against dictatorship Dr. Millikan cried:

"We should leave to private initiative everything it can do as well as or better than the government. . . . The duties of the government are the coinage of money, defense of the nation, suppression of crime, regulation of monopolies, maintenance of public health and care of the indigent and helpless. But in America the State is now performing these normal functions so very badly that even if it were right in principle to extend its functions, a totally blind man could see that the time is not yet ripe for such extension. . . . The government should content itself in the field of industry with acting as a check to private industry's exploitation and greed."

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