Ithaca Sweatshop

Among the enumerated powers of the Federal Government is control of the nation's currency. This power was lodged by the Constitution in the hands of Congress. In late years it has tended to gravitate toward the Senate and its potent Banking & Currency Committee. Thus theoretically Chairman Duncan Upshaw Fletcher of the Senate Banking & Currency Committee has more power over the country's monetary policies than any other man in the U. S. Actually the aging gentleman from Florida has very little to say about it. He makes a conscientious effort to follow the devious convolutions of the monetary squabble but final word now rests with the White House.

For a brief and brilliant period of the New Deal U. S. monetary policy slipped out of the hands of the President, Congress and Senator Fletcher into the hands of economists. With bankers in disrepute as wise and beneficent directors of U. S. destiny, economists were trotted out to replace them. In regular if rapid rotation economists rode high in the New Deal. What they have accomplished no one will know for years but today one thing is certain: Economists as a class are almost as discredited as bankers in the popular mind.

Last week, exhibiting that peculiar U. S. urge to sweat in convention assembled, most of the New Deal's onetime economists and a number of other experts gathered in Ithaca. N. Y. for a Cornell Monetary Conference. Much in evidence on his home ground was Professor George F. ("Rubber Dollar") Warren, the only moneyman who sold a major theory to President Roosevelt but who is no longer a frequent White House caller.* Also on hand was Professor Oliver Mitchell Wentworth Sprague, the Treasury's hard money adviser, who quit his post in 1933 as a protest against the prevailing Warren theories. Another was Professor James Harvey Rogers, who lost caste in Washington for criticizing the Administration's silver policies. There was even a self-appointed New Deal economist, Britain's Major Lawrence Lee Bazley Angas, prophet of coming U. S. booms.

For two sweltering days they wrestled with such subjects as how and when to stabilize world currencies; how to establish a "Supreme Court" for banking & currency; "trial marriage" of the dollar and pound sterling; when to return to the gold standard; how to avoid returning to the gold standard. James David Mooney, General Motors' famed vice president in charge of exports, gave a few quick and cogent suggestions for reviving world trade, without attracting serious attention. After presiding at one session of the conference President Harper Sibley of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce politely surmised: "If all economists were laid end to end, they would reach no conclusion."

*Most definite prediction of the conference was made by Dr. Warren's colleague and collaborator, Frank Ashmore Pearson: "It is probable that the volume of building construction will rise from about 1936 to 1942 and that the value of gold will fall. If these two events should occur, business will be very active and real estate will be a prize possession--not a drug on the market."

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