The Times News

NEWSPAPERS' OPINIONS
WILL SOUTH AWAKEN BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE?

It is their belief, in fact, that under these recent opinions there no longer remain any constitutional barriers to federal regulation of the most sweeping and comprehensive character. That this is the construction of the administration is attested by its avowed purpose to present immediately new national wage and hour regulatory bills drawn along old NRA lines. The purpose is to give these bills right of way, putting them ahead of the president's court packing and governmental reorganization plans. In addition to White House support they will be backed by the union labor leaders of both the Lewis and Green factions. Thus, a situation confronts administration supporters, such, for example, as Senator Robinson of Arkansas and Senator Harrison of Mississippi, which can hardly help but be painful. If they support the president and his labor-leader allies in their determination to regulate us by national act, they will commit themselves to a policy of national regulation from which, once established, it is almost impossible to retreat, and which easily can be expanded into other fields than those which concern wages and hours of labor.

For example, once congress, under sanction of the supreme court, has started down that road, it would seem a natural step to extend federal supervision over the states in the matter of elections and in the matter of public education, on the theory that in the South racial discriminations both exist and is, therefore, a matter of national concern. Those who think this idea far-fetched or improbable might reflect profitably upon a few of the things this administration has done in the last four years, which seemed most fantastic and improbable before they were proposed.

For one thing, they might reflect upon the president's court-packing plan and how far-fetched that would have seemed a few months ago if it had been suggested he would ask for six additional appointments to the supreme bench. They might reflect also upon the fact that in the last three years this administration, through Chairman Farley, the distribution of federal jobs and its relief expenditures, has made so great an appeal to the negro vote in the North that it is now one of the biggest of the administration's political assets and there is already pressure from negro leaders on administration politicians to end "suffrage abuses in the South."

And they might reflect further upon the recent speech of Senator Carter Glass in which he referred to one member of the Roosevelt cabinet (Mr. Ickes), who in addresses to negro audiences had favored mixed schools, urged the repeal of all segregation ordinances and, according to Senator Glass, "practically committed the administration to a new force bill for the South, declaring that not since Lincoln's day has it been better realized than now the necessity of laws to strictly enforce the three post-Civil War amendments which kept the South in agony for years and retarded its progress for half a century."

It would seem that these things might cause even such loyal men as Senators Robinson and Harrison to pause and think before blindly following the president down the national regulation road. They still have the choice.—Frank R. Kent.