Harvard Teachers Differ on One Most Needed Law, Call for Balanced Budget, Aid for Indigent Profs

If Congress were limited to passing one law during this season, what do you think that law should be?

Harvard professors were not uncommonly divided in their responses to this question. Two were in general agreement that a balanced federal budget would be of primary importance in such an unlikely event.

Others, presuming that normal appropriation bills and war expenses would be cared for somehow, suggested laws to abolish racial segregation in the District of Columbia, a permanently-financed Point Four program, approval of the St. Lawrence Seaway project, and creation of a new Cabinet post of Peace and Human Welfare.

Suggestion Vary

One Harvard professor suggested a law requiring all verbal statements of Washington bigwigs to be first submitted in writing. Another, realizing the question to be an unrealistic one, suggested an "Aid to Indigent Professors Act."

Prof. A. N. Holcombe (government) ranked as most important "a tax law which would enable us to meet our current commitments at home and abroad and pay for them as we go--a balanced budget."

Prof. A. M. Schlesinger, Sr. (history) also embraced the pay-as-you-go idea. He pointed out that the last Congress voted economic mobilization, price and wage controls, billions for rearmament, industrial preparedness and foreign aid, "but left pretty much unsettled how the gigantic bill should be paid."

"Quite apart from the fact that we have a huge national debt left over from World War II, a pay-as-you-go policy is vital in order to give every citizen a sense of real participation in the defense effort and at the same time to absorb some of the excess purchasing power which stimulates inflation," he added.

Other "Musts"

Other respondents, assuming that a satisfactory federal budget would be worked out, advanced these "musts" for Congress if it should be limited to a single enactment this session:

Prof. Zechariah Chafee, Jr. would have Congress abolish all racial segregation in the District of Columbia. He submits that discrimination between all sorts of citizens is hurting the United States in the U.N.

"To try to end discrimination inside Southern states raises strong local opposition and it will require a considerable conversion of community opinion to make the reform work. Until it will work, perhaps it should not go into law. At least that can be postponed during this session.

"But under the shadow of the Capitol all Americans should share the same privileges. There Congress would not be treading on the toes of any particular state."

McGeorge Bundy (government) would like to see Congress "pass a bill providing for an extended and permanent Point Four program. Such a bill should provide, say, $5,000,000,000 a year for the Economic Cooperation Administration to use abroad in economic, political, and social expenditures."

Dean Livingston Hall (law) would like to see final enactment of a bill which has been before Congress for the past 50 years and whose passage "is so long over due that if it were the only legislation of the current session, the session would still rate as an outstanding success.

"This is the bill for the St. Lawrence Seaway Project. It literally has everything--power for defense which could mean as much to us as Muscle Shoals and the later T.V.A. did in World War II; an interior and defensible route for iron ore from Labrador in war or peace; opening to deep water transportation the entire heart of the Mississippi Valley; and all this for an investment of less than $1,000,000,000, split between Canada and the United States in such a way as to create an additional tie between the two countries. It would develop one of the last of our great natural resources."

Prof. Harlow Shapley (astronomy) calls for creation of a Department of Peace and Human Welfare, headed by a Secretary of Cabinet rank. "Congress should back this department with a budget approaching 10 per cent of what we are currently spending on the various machineries of war. The department would of course include a number of bureaus that already exist, but its large new adventure might be in the field of the international development of the world's human and material resources to the end of decreasing the miseries and irritations that lead to the wars that threaten our civilization."

Some Gagged It

A facetious view of the question produced the following replies:

Prof. J. K. Fairbank (history)--"Instead of the old one 'that all automotive vehicles should be preceded by a man carrying a red flag' (to solve unemployment), I suppose now we need a law 'that all verbal statements by members of the executive or legislative branches must first be written out in longhand' (to lower the national blood pressure)."

Prof. Donald C. McKay (government)--"If we can have only one law the country will obviously be prey to inflation and paralysis, the Soviets will feel free to carry out the Hoover Plan, and we might as well look sharply each one to his own special interests.

"Under these conditions I favor passage of an "Aid to Indigent Professors Act" which would envisage that rapidly-growing class which has always occupied a position on the subsistence frontier and which has recently (if I may vary the metaphor) been caught squarely in the inflation scissors."

Professor McKay said the Sunday travel supplements of newspapers remind him "of the one-sided nature of a society which sends its business leaders--not to speak of university administrators, reluctantly heeding the winter call of Florida alumni--to mend their nerves on Florida beaches while we professors inhale each other's germs in the fetid air of Widener Library."

"Let the government come to the rescue of this neglected group (it's almost the only one not to have had government aid to date) so that it may have a regular mid-winter restorative; for the wives, too, of course (we don't want this to be misunderstood or slipped into the Raised Eyebrows Department)," McKay added.