Regulation X Ended September 15

As had been predicted recently, Regulation X. u'hich was the credit control law covering residential and commercial construction, ended September 15th, at midnight.

Home buyers got their bargaining liberty back u.hen the Federal Reserve Board suspended its Regulation X.

Since October, 1950, this defense emergency regulation has prescribed the size of the do'ivn payment in new honse or commercial purchases.

llouses selling for $7000 or less recluired at least a 5 per cent down payment. On houses selling for $25,000 or more it ran up to 40 per cent.

Regulation X required a 50 per cent down phyment in all commercial building purchases. Further, Regulation X forbade second mortgages.

The Housing and Home Finance Agency (HHFA)which supervises Government housing programs-followed the Federal Reserve announcement by relaxing dorvn payment requirements where the Government makes the loan or backs it.

This applies to housing under the Federal Housing Administration, the Veterans Administration and the Department of Agriculture.

Housing Administrator Raymond M. Foley indicated he was not too happy about loosening the curbs on housing credit. HHFA rvas keeping all the controls it could, Foley said.

The Federal Reserve and the Housing agency acted under the terms of amendments made by Congress last Spring in the defense Dro-duction act.

Contractors neport on Building Bccklog

Backlog of needed residential, conrmercial, industrial, institutional, public works and defense construction continues to be tremendous despite the fact that 1952 building is at unprecedented levels and well ahead of the record year 1951. This was the report by H. E. Foreman, managing director of Associated General Contractors, at the midyear meeting of tl.re association's gorrerning and advisory board, rvhich 'n'as in session at White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., during the rveek of Sept. 8-12.

The amendments required that Regulation X should be lifted when the number of new houses started in any three consecutive months fell belorv 1,200,000 a year on a seasonally adjusted basis.

The law authorized the Federal Reserve to continue requiring dou'n payments of at least 5 per cent. The board ignored this provision in suspending Regulation X.

Suspension of Regulation X does not mean down payments are no longer required in house or commercial property purchases. It means that, outside the field of Government-backed housing, the purchaser and seller are free to make their own deal, without Government supervision. All the ordinary restraints still apply.

Chief among these is the fact that few private lenders are rvilling to advance more than two-thirds of the value of a house, requiring the buyers to put up or find the other one-third.

Standing Federal regulations forbid national banks to lend more than 60 per cent of the appraised value of a house.

However suspension of Regulation X gives the purchaser an opportunity to arrange a second, and even a third mortgage if his credit is good enough. Thus the purchaser can narrorv his down payment.

FIIA said terms of housing purchases under its rving u'ould revert to limits set in the national housing act. This requires a minimum dolr'n payment of 5 per cent on houses costing $7000 or less, and runs up to 20 per cent.

Named Assistant Scrles Mcrncrger

Announcement is made by E. C. Crampton, sales manager of the Western Division of Marsh Wall Products Inc., Alhambra, Calif., of the appointment of Glen F. Polen as assistant sales manager, Wester:n Division, and acting manager of the Los Angeles office. Mr. Polen was formerly located in St. Louis, Mo., and has been rvith the company for a number of vears. During the rvar he served in the South Pacific n'ith the Army. IIe has made his home in San Marino.

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Voltaire said: "War is the greatest of all crimes; yet there is no aggressor who does not color his crime with the pretext of justice." ***-

The great French thinker hated war above all things, and many were the sharp and clever remarks against war that are credited to him by *historians.

Voltaire would have agreed heartily with a speech-a very eloquent speech-on the subject of war, that was made in the U. S. Senate in the*year 1847.

The speaker was Senator Thomas Corwin, of the State of Ohio, one of the most eloguent men of his day and generation. IIe was speaking in criticism of aggressive war, and he argued in most eloquent fashion that the entire history of the world proves that wars of aggression and conquest-like crime-do not pay, and that in the final count they invariably end in disaster. Such opinion should be more prevalent in the*present day and age.

So eloquent was his argument and so splendid his array of facts that when William Jennings Bryan selected for publication in book form his choice of the world's most famous orations, he gave Corwin's speech high position among history's greatest raa.r"r"it. * * fnnumerable writers in history have sought to prove the same thing, namely, that aggression and wars of conquest never pay, but seldom, if ever, has it been done so powerfully as by the long-ago Senator from Ohio. Which is why a review of that speech X".Tr pertinent today.

Corwin is not well known to fame in the present generation, but it is an acknowledged fact that we of today learn much by turning to the words and thoughts of the strong men of the past. Corwin served his state both as Governor and U. S. Senator and/ the Encyclopedia Britannica tells us that he was fame{ for his oratory. - -\l

In a comparatively short addrdls covering much of the world's history, he arraigned his facts to show that from the dawn of time, wars of conquest and aggression finally terminated in failure. He told in flaming words what finally happened to the great aggressors of the past, and how all their conquests finally **.U****reckage.

Of Alexander the Great he said: "Ammon's son (so was Alexander named), after all his victories died drunk in Babylon. The vast empire he had conquered became the prey of the generals he had trained; it was disparted, torn to pieces, and so ended. Sir, there is a very significant appendix; it is this; the descendants of the Greeks of Alexander are now governed by the descendants of Attila (one of the great kings he conguered).

He spoke of the rise and fall of Rome, and her mighty efforts to conquer the world, and concluded: "And where is she now, the mistress of the world? The spider"weaves his web in her palaces; the owl sings his watch song in her towers; foreign po\rrrers now lord it over the servile remnant, the miserable memento of old and once omnipotent Rome. Sad, very sad, are the lessons which time has written for us." (Remember, this *was in f847.)

These, of course, are but samples, of the aggression-doesnot-pay speech of Senator Corwin. The others are as colorful and dramatic. But his concluding clincher was the strongest and most eloquent of all. He told of the despoilation and dismemberment of Poland by an alliance of three great despotic nations, and how retribution came to all of them, and to a fourth as well, and he tells it like this:

"fn the later half of the eighteenth century three powerful nations, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, united in the dismemberment of Poland. Doub,tless each of these thought, with his share of Poland, his powei was too strong ever to fear invasion, or even insult. Did they remain untouched and incapable of harm? Alas, no. Far, very far from it. Retributive justice may fulfill its destiny, also.

"A very few years pass over and we hear of a new man, a Corsican lieutenant, the self-named 'armed soldier of democracy,' Napol'eon. He ravages Austria, covers her land with blood, ilrives the northern Caesar from his capital, and sleeps in his palace. Austria may now remember how her power trampled upon*Poland.

"But has Prussia no atonement to make? You see this same .Napoleon, the blind instrument of providence, at work there. The thunders of his cannon at Jena proclaim the world of retribution for Poland's wrongs; and the soldiers of the great Frederick the drill-sergeant of Europe, are seen flying across the sandy plain that surrounds their capital, right glad if they **? .i""n. captivity or death.

"And how fares it with the autocrat of Russia? Is he sgcure in his share of the spoils of Poland? No, suddenly we see six hundred thousand armed men marching on Moscow. Blood, slaughter, despoilation spread abroad over