PASSING THE BUCK

Foremost of recent criticism heaped upon the Administration is the charge of free and unlimited spending of billions of dollars disbursed to the states for relief purposes. Many impartial economic observers claim that the national credit is already stretched to the danger point and that any future huge appropriation--such as the $4,800,000,000 relief bill now before the Senate--will seriously threaten our financial stability and will impede rather than facilitate recovery.

No nation has yet been able to dissolve the difficulties of depression by a process of borrowing their way out. Our public debt of nearly 40 billion dollars--or one-fifth of the entire national wealth--should serve as a bracing tonic to even slow-witted treasury officials. Admittedly, the Administration is not entirely et blame as the recent survey report of the United States Conference of Mayors shows the distinct tendency of larging cities to pass their local relief burdens along to the federal government. Only five of the thirty-seven larger cities paid as much as one-third of their own relief bills for last year. That such conditions continue to exist, is abominable, and sooner or later the nation must awake to this panacea by public funds.

Individual states have a clear responsibility to shoulder the burden of welfare and administer local relief. Local units of public work programs should be set up, financed solely by state appropriations for this purpose. The federal government thus free from such extraordinary drain on the treasury, could confine their abundant energies to a more fruitful pursual of normal government functions--an excellent antidote for business and recovery.