Two years ago a picture of the United States of
America as it is to-day could have been placed only in the category of the imaginary and utterly incredible. The national treasury is faced with a deficit of £500,000,000, and the. richest country in the world will be driven to defy all . the . recognized canons of sound public finance by borrowing to balance its budget. Great cities like New York, Chicago and Philadelphia cannot meet their immediate liabilities, far less find funds for the relief of. the unemployment mounting. steadily week by week. And the experienced correspondent of The Times at Washington sounds a warning of reminder of the existence underneath the surface crust of American conservatism of a volcanic mass of potential revolution. Having regard to the -vast and still unassimilated foreign popu- lation that warning is not to be disregarded. Mote disturbing than anything is the unbelievable levity with which Congress approaches the situation. The economy bill introduced to save the situation has been torn to rags and on top of that it is proposed, as a trans- parent election bribe, to vote a further 30 million dollars a year for the benefit of so-called war-veterans—any man who served 00 days in a training camp being entitled to that proud appellation. President Hoover's sun is setting in a stormier dusk than his worst enemies could have predicted.
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