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Washington News
Decentralization Is Key To Exit From Depression Senator Shipstead Avers
By CHARLES P. STEWART
W ASHINGTON, D. The country is likelier to find a way out of its economic maze through decentralization than by any exit. Senator Ship stend believes. The Minnesota Farmer Laborite favors decengovernment also but refers espe. gency to indus. zation He that shall rive at gradually and naturally not by Senator m pulationHenrik Shipstead though "The technocrats' ma. political machines are the only offes central factories and redistributed the form of manufactures.
HOWEVER as to decentralization "W th the growth of means for transmission of ver to great distances the need is passing." points out the senator. "for the concentration of manufacturing "This foreshadow an era of widely scattered small plants in small towns, close to sources of raw ma "While power remained unavoidably localized the mos economical method of industri tion was in enormous plants whither their raw materials were brought. perhaps from hundreds of miles away, transformed into finished goods and then shipped back again. "Today power can be transmitted to the areas where raw material is available less expensively than the new materials can be transported to
"THE HUGE PLANTS of the dy. ing era. continued the Minnesotan, "created by their presence, big cities at their gates. and in these cities the labor. which they relied on to oper. ate them has been congested. subject to the absolute dictation of the factory managements: since employment. for hire. was this labor's sole source of subsistence. Indeed, what other opportunity for production open except to very few, in crowded city "Life in and around a town of a few thousand inhabitants is wholly different from life in a roaring "In every such country town, where small plant is running, turn. ing its nearby territory's natural products into consumable merchandise there necessarily will be a little community of workers. more or less dependent on its payroll, but by no means completely dependent on it. It will not be densely-packed community: there will be ample room
'Updoubtedly each family will own or at least rent its individual plot of ground-perhaps one to four or five acres. worth about $50 an acre-and produce practically all the food it requires."
We judge from his past utter. ances that Governor Futrell will ask the legislature to enact certain important measures and to repeal or amend certain others He will naturally expect support from both houses, and if that support is withheld, the people themselves will be asked to get behind the Governor and help him put his program of reorganization and retrenchment into effect On the whole we look for a busy session of the 1933 general assembly. and for much beneficial legisla. tion. There is pleaty of room for
TO BE SURE the technocrats contend that the day of mass agriculture has arrived-for example, that 4,000 men can supply the entire nation with wheat. "This may be true of a staple like wheat." agrees Senator Shipstead, "but it is not 80 true of vegetables, pigs. COW and some chickens And anyway what of it? These factory hands will not be competing with mass agriculture, and neither can mass agriculture compete with them -working their little patches on their own time and consuming their own "Though erhaps." added the trifling concession, "they will depend on mass cultivation for their flour: their farmlets will serve as grain fields. the other hand. have generally been conducted with the utmost circumspection, the evident inten: being to recover and réturn as much as possible to depositors. A case in point is that of the closed National Bank of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, now in process of liquidation under direction of Mr. Jay M. Riley. According to the percent of the deposits at the time of closing has been paid to depositors in dividends. and the cost 0. administration up to December 31, 1932, two and a half years from the date of closing, was only 4.7 percent of all amounts collected The receivership is still in effect. "Cash collected from interest rents, etc., by Mr. Riley," says the Commercial. "has practically paid all of the receivership expense, including costs, attorney's fees, etc. for a large number of suits." These interesting facts were revealed in a statement made by the receiver to the comptroller of the currency at Washington. Among other things, they show conclusively that it is possible to manage the affairs of a closed bank SO that depositors will be protected to the full extent of the law: and further.