The N.I.R.A. and stabilization

Among other objectives, the National Industrial Recovery act purported to provide measures for greater stability in business. The law itself gives hardly any indication of how stabilization is to be promoted. The Act, as a means toward stabilization, can serve only as one link in a whole chain of varied economic measures. Entire sta bilization of our economic system is impossible to achieve; however, economic policy should attempt to attenuate and smooth cyclical fluctuations. The National Industrial Re covery act may provide machinery to assist in such a policy. Such measures, chiefly for regulating new investments during a boom and influencing the process of readjustment during a depression, seem possible under the Act only if its present provisions are inter preted in such a way as to permit regulation of production and productive capacity as well as fixing of prices. The results to be hoped for will, at best, be very moderate in the near future. Constructive economic policy will not be possible without a board continuously studying and analyzing economic developments and advising the government.