Dozens of Governors

It was the open season for Governors in the South last week. Twenty of them gathered at New Orleans to confer. The most eminent Governor of all, New York's Smith, was not far from New Orleans, golfing and fishing at Biloxi, Miss. But he did not "take in" the conference. Maryland's Ritchie was over in Florida, but he, too, kept his vacation inviolate. Other notable absentees from the New Orleans meeting were Mississippi's Bilbo, who telegraphed that he was too busy even to fly down from Jackson for a day; and Massachusetts' Fuller, who, in the course of winding up his administration, punctuated the week by saying: "The greatest danger that confronts us . . . is the result of avarice on the part of our 'best people'."

"Hoover Plan." Happiest and most eager of the Governors was Maine's Brewster. He carried and soon delivered an authorized message from the President-Elect himself, a message outlining a plan (see col. 3) to help carry out the Hoover dream of "abolishing poverty." It being impossible for the Governors' conference to enforce resolutions or fix programs, the Hoover plan was received with applause only, not acted upon.

Speculation in securities and agricultural products was causing several Governors deep concern. Alabama's Graves observed that speculative loans "right now" exceeded what had been loaned to planters to produce the next cotton crop. He viewed with alarm the Federal Reserve effort to discourage market gambling by jacking up interest Crates because the effect of this policy is to make borrowing injuriously expensive for "legitimate business." "There is nothing wrong with America except the evils of mad gambling in stocks and cotton," announced Governor Graves. Iowa's Hamill and Nebraska's McMullen (chairman of the conference) agreed.

Taxation. The Governors compared their states' pocketbooks and methods of filling them. Louisiana's Long instructed his guests as to the virtues and efficacy of the severance tax--a sort of subterranean tax imposed to compensate for the removal of a state's irreplaceable natural resources (oil, illuminating gas, etc. etc.).

Minnesota's Christianson arose to complain about the U. S. Supreme Court's ruling that national banks are federal agencies and therefore exempt from cer tain state taxes. His point was that na tional banks are operated for the benefit of stockholders and should therefore be taxed the same as state banks.