Wall Street in Washington

After dark Wall Street tiptoed down Pennsylvania Avenue, turned softly in at the White House, stayed for dinner. Afterwards in the quiet security of an upstairs study President Hoover heard Richard Whitney, president of the New York Stock Exchange, and Allen Ledyard Lindley, its vice president, talk about the stockmarket, bear raids, short sales. President Hoover was vitally interested because the recent fall of stocks below the lows of last November's crash focused the business depression in all its gloom before a nationwide electorate on its way to the polls.

Not until 48 hours after Messrs Whitney and Lindley had bid the President goodnight were persistent newshawks able to worm an admission from the White House that they had been there at all. President Hoover was described as approving the New York Exchange's efforts to curb short selling but unwilling to take any hand in the matter. U. S. officials agreed that the Federal Government lacks authority to deal with short stocks sales on the New York Exchange as it tried to deal with short wheat sales on the Chicago Board of Trade (TIME, Sept 29 & Oct. 6).*The steady decline of the stockmarket during the past month deeply perplexed and dismayed Republican leaders, long accustomed to campaigning on the crest of a bull market. They had seen President Coolidge boom stock prices with White House statements. They had seen President Hoover's more subtle attempts to do the same thing fail. Nothing the Government did or said seemed able to brake the downward slide of values.

This state of affairs prompted G. 0. P.

Chairman Simeon Davison Fess last week to scent another dark plot. Said he: "Some leading Republicans are beginning to believe there is some concerted effort on foot to use the stockmarket as a method of discrediting the Administration. Every time an Administration official gives out an optimistic statement about business conditions, the market immediately drops.

Even when the slightest bit of improvement is proclaimed, the market always seems to respond with lower quotations." While Democratic Executive Chairman Jouett Shouse was loudly jeering Chairman Fess's latest "discovery," less partisan Wall Street traders explained that one good reason why the stockmarket did not respond to Republican statements of business improvements was because the Administration's predictions, from President Hoover's down to Secretary of Labor Davis', for a turn in the economic tide, had all failed to come true.

* Last week it was estimated that the Soviet Government had made close to $1,000,000 profit in a month by covering the short wheat sales which precipitated Secretary of Agriculture Hyde's violent but short-lived anti-Red campaign.

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