LET THEM BE NUMBERED

When the President returns from placid southern waters, he may be surprised to find that the men on the Hill can be even harder to keep on the hook than the fighting tarpon. For as revenues fail and the President demands killing sums for relief, the prospects of new taxation are heightened--and at this suggestion the Congressional barometer falls. "Dependable Jimmy Byrnes" and long suffering Joe Robinson are both demanding cuts in appropriations and when these two stalwarts kick against the pricks we may expect wholesale defection in the Cherokee strip.

But with obliging helpfulness Senator Vandenberg has proposed a plan which can dispel the heavy fog engulfing government finances and the growing hostility of Capitol Hill. If Congress accept the Michigan Senator's plan for an unemployment census, the President would have a sound basis upon which to formulate his demands and a reliable indication of the true success of his program, Mr. Roosevelt would no longer be torn between two factions demanding from one to three billions for relief, and Presidential estimates would cease to be an economically unscientific but politically prudent mean between the two.

Such an enumeration, though considerably larger than the one ordered by the Lord for the Hebrew tribes, would not necessitate a huge expenditure. For the census, if undertaken by the constituted relief authorities, would not cost much more than the extra expense for stationery and cigars for the field force and light wines and beer for the secretariat.