The Charlotte News

Monday, December 19, 1938

FIVE EDITORIALS

To one aware of the difficulty Mayor Douglas faced in selecting five men for a housing authority, his appointments will seem astute indeed. You see, the Board had to be progressive in its combined view, so that something stood to be done about the city's blighted areas and indecent habitation, and yet the Board had to be practical, too, so as to assure that the city wouldn't come up with a low-cost housing project far beyond the means of the people it was meant to serve. And withal, since the housing authority may deal in millions and its decisions have a great effect on property values and the like, Mayor Douglas had to find men of considerable business experience.

In Messrs. Edwin L. Jones, W. Frank Dowd, Earle Gluck, L. R. McKlece and James A. Stokes--contractor, manufacturer, radio executive, labor representative and banker respectively--he found exactly the sort of authority he was looking for. The most encouraging aspect of it all is that he found five busy men willing to serve in what is likely to be a major municipal activity. Especially is the acceptance of Chairman Jones a piece of altruism which deserves to be recognized, since by taking a position on the authority eliminates his contracting firm as a bidder on any projects which may be let.

Almost two years it has been since The News came out with a series of articles, profusely illustrated, on slums in Charlotte. It was Feb. 7, 1937, after diligent preparation by Reporter Cameron Ship, that the first story and pictures appeared, and for days thereafter the city's slums, which it didn't know or was unwilling to admit it had, were upheld for public inspection in a manner that could not be ignored.

In itself, this presentation replaced not a single shotgun house, though it was followed, to be sure, by many needed repairs and improvements. And since that time the discussion of slums and what to do about them has been transferred from this newspaper to the Council chamber at City Hall. Not so long ago a committee appointed by the Mayor brought in a comprehensive report, and Saturday a housing authority--and its authority is great--finally was appointed.

That in itself clears no slums, but the prospect is hopeful. And it impels us to say--with due regard for the bounds of modesty, yet wishing to receive credit where credit is due--that the city's recognition of its slums and the series of events and changed attitudes leading up to the appointment of a housing authority trace directly, we believe, to that vivid series of articles in The News back there in Feb., 1937. We like to believe it, anyhow.

Dr. (Ph.D.) Benjamin M. Anderson is economist for the Chase National Bank of New York City and a Business spokesman whose opinions, being supported by facts, carry great weight. His occasional addresses are anything but speeches happily designed to pass the time between dinner and adjournment for some Rotary Club or Chamber of Commerce. They are studious reviews of the economic situation especially as it is affected by policies of the government.

In his latest contrast, Dr. Anderson starts out with the premise that it is profits or the hope of profits that make employment and better wages and not, as the Administration is still trying to [indiscernible word], the other way around. From this, which he considers axiomatic, he proceeds in due course to the conclusions (1) that Social Security taxes on payrolls (now 4% and headed for 6) are actually a considerable impediment to re-employment, and (2) that the Wage & Hour Law, far from being a recovery measure, is nicely calculated to nip in the budding any recovery movement that might have made headway. "When men are relatively scarce," he says, "and capital is relatively abundant, hours of work are reasonable and wages are high."

This hath a laissez faire sound to it and of course is a time-consuming procedure which will be not at all tempting to an Administration that is in a great hurry. But there is this to be said for Dr. Anderson's theories. They have not yet been proved, as have the Administration's, to work out mainly in getting us nowhere fast.

If only words were equivalent to deeds, Benito Mussolini would long ago have been as towering as Kit Marlowe's Tamberlaine the Great or Lucifer himself. Consider, for instance, the brave words of the Relazioni Internazionale, one of Benito's stooge magazines, in which it coolly announces that "Italy will enter immediately into action, and with her the Rome-Berlin Axis. All barriers will be demolished and all obstacles will be surmounted." And come next Oct. 28, the seventeenth anniversary of Fascism's rise to power, Italy will have won all her claims against France--including, presumably, the cession of Tunisia, Corsica, Nice, and Savoy, and the final yielding of Spain!

Well, no one can say positively that it won't be so. Considering what we have seen this year, it is not impossible that Mr. Bumble might try to give Musso half of France, and that M. Daladier might try to accept that deal. But still it is a large and somewhat staggering order to contemplate. The French people might decide to take things out of Bumble's and Daladier's hands, and if they did--well, the "barriers" that are going to be summarily demolished within ten months only include 5,000,000 French soldiers--admittedly the best trained and equipped army in the world, and certainly as good fighting men as exist on earth. Only that and the Maginot Line and a French Navy larger than the combined Italian and German Navies. Only that and, inevitably, the mighty navy of Britain and the immense resources of Britain, which in the long run would enable her to build ten bombing planes for every one the Axis could build.

Somehow, we suspect that Benito is ribbing us when he pretends to believe he is as irresistible as all that.

We haven't had time to digest all recommendations of the Social Security Advisory Council as yet, and so had perhaps better reserve our judgments until another time. But there is one thing that seems quite clear after a rapid reading of the report.

The Council seems to want to do a lot of things for a lot of people. For one thing it wants, we gather, to extend the old age pension benefits to professional men and self-employed business men. For another, it seems to want to give widows with children their late husbands' pensions until the children have grown up. For still another, it wants to give old age unemployment benefits to domestic servants. And for yet another, it apparently proposes to have the Federal Government pay one-third of the cost from its general revenue--a measure which seems to be conceived as doing something for the employer and the employee, who presently pay the whole bill.

But there is one creature for whom the Council doesn't propose to do anything. Says the AP account:

The one thing we are quite clear about after our cursory reading of the accounts is that the Council doesn't have much sympathy for bachelors.