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(See front cover) Like a great drowsy giant, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, oldest and costliest of U. S. recovery agencies, last week stalked forth to stretch its huge bulk to the public gaze for the first time. Not until this startling exhibition did the country fully realize to what an extent its Government, through RFC, had committed it to State capitalism. In two short years the RFC had outstripped private capital, was well on its way to become not only the largest single investor in U. S. finance and industry but also the Biggest Business organization in the land. RFC announced that from Feb. 2, 1932 to Dec. 31, 1933 it had disbursed, or authorized disbursements, to 8,541 institutions of $6,000,000,000. Some $1,500,000,000 had been distributed in 1932— 55% to banks, 20% to railways, the rest to insurance companies, building & loan associations, mortgage loan companies, farm credit organizations, relief agencies. Again in 1933 there was a $1,500,000,000 outlay. This time banks got 40% while another 15% was invested in bank stocks and notes. Railways received 9%, the remaining 36% being split up among miscellaneous borrowers from sovereign states to indigent farmers. To date, more than. $1,000,000,000 of RFC loans had been repaid. But RFC was pledged to $3,000,000,000 in future commitments to finance which it had a cash balance of only $9,674,518. Not only did the giant need more money in a hurry but it also needed more life. By law it must die Jan. 22 unless the Congress granted it a reprieve. To get that reprieve and additional cash to make it worthwhile, Chairman Jesse Jones last week marched out of his dilapidated office in the old Commerce Building, descended nine perilous floors in an ancient and asthmatic elevator, rode up Pennsylvania Avenue to Capitol Hill and the rooms of the Senate Banking & Currency Committee. There he was closeted in executive session until 5 p. m. Next day he took the same trip, talked with the House Banking & Currency Committee. He called most of the members by their first names, told a joke on an associate who had inadvertently related a dirty story in front of his stenographer, left at 4 p. m. His legislative gardening bore handsome and unprecedented fruit in the form of identical House and Senate bills extending RFC's activities until Feb. 1, 1935, permitting it to sell another $850,000,000 worth of debentures to the Treasury. This sum, plus expected repayments on out standing loans, would get the RFC well forward into its third year. The bill speedily slid through House and Senate. As is the case of all governmental authority under the New Deal, RFC's new potency naturally fell into President Roosevelt's strong grip. But everyone be lieved that the President would continue to delegate RFC's power of life & death over U. S. finance and industry to one man and one man alone. RFC's board is no collection of straw men. An ex-officio director is Henry Morgenthau Jr., who takes time out from, his job at the Treasury to serve. Onetime Republican Senator John James Elaine of Boscobel, Wis., an old La Follette warhorse, represents on the board the Left-wing politics of the New Deal. But—as if to suggest that capitalistic enterprise can be carried on more honestly on the outskirts of civilization—the board takes its coloring mainly from the plains and mountains of the wide open spaces. The three