Barrage Over Butler

All the heavy siege guns of the Administration last week joined in annihilating drumfire on a lone freshman Republican Senator. The Senator: Nebraska's hum drum Hugh Butler, who huffed back from a South American journey with wild tales and wilder figures to show that Good Neighborliness was a $6-billion boondoggle (TIME, Dec. 6).

Arrayed against him were the Vice President of the U.S., no less than four Cabinet members, two Senators, and the bosses of four top New Deal agencies. All visibly enjoyed the novelty of a free shot at a vulnerable, small-fry Republican. They ripped holes in his statistics, his suspicions, and even plastered his style.

Butler's figures, said Tennessee's testy Kenneth McKellar, were 95% wrong. In the past three years, the U.S. has spent--aside from purchases of strategic materials --only $324 million. Cut out military and naval appropriations, and Lend-Lease paid back, and the Good Neighbor bill would come to only $178 million, McKellar said --not $6 billion.

After this overall blast, the New Deal, supported by pounds of midnight-oil-smelling research, laid down a barrage on each square inch of Senator Butler's 176-page report. Samples:

> Butler said the U.S. has spent $100 million on Mexican rail rehabilitation. Actual cost to date: $771,000.

> Butler said the U.S. has lent Argentina $50 million for oil development. Replied Cordell Hull: no such loan was ever made.

> Butler included $57 million spent in Puerto Rico as part of his $6 billion Latin American outlay. Reply: Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, not a foreign country.

> Butler said Brazilian rubber was costing the U.S. "$500 a pound." Reply: he mistook 30,000 tons for 30,000 "pounds"; actual cost is 82-c- per lb.

On the lowest artillery level, the New Deal's Senatorial smear specialist, Pennsylvania's Joe Guffey, leveled a bazooka at the literary naivete of Freshman Butler. Delightedly Joe Guffey read to the Senate from Butler's report: "Mexico is a land of beautiful mountains.. ."; of El Salvador, "this little country is picturesque"; of Colombia, "it is full of mountains"; of Chile, it is "long and narrow."Said Senator Guffey drily: "[These observations] show him to be a man of singular powers of observation."

But there was more than such rare sport to the fuss over Hugh Butler's astronomically wrong facts. His accusations enjoyed wide circulation through the Reader's Digest, which sent three writers about South America with him. Some Latin Americans already fear that the end of the New Deal may mean the end of Good Neighborliness. Hugh Butler's partisan rancor would probably travel faster in South America than the news that all major Republican Presidential possibilities unanimously endorsed Good Neighborliness.

But the question was not a matter of dollars & cents. Many a returning traveler echoed Hugh Butler's contention that the U.S. was regarded as a sucker, south of the border. What the U.S. was still waiting to see was an able documenting of the ineptitude with which the U.S. spent its Latin American dollars, if only to serve as a guide to an intelligent and effective future policy.

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