Heckling from the Hill

Heckling from the Hill When Congress is not in session its voice cannot be heard. When its voice cannot be heard it might as well not exist. Hence General Johnson, whose NRA did not begin teething until after Congress adjourned last June, was troubled for months by the complaints of old guard businessmen, but not by the caterwauling of Congressmen. To be sure. Senators Borah and Nye wrote him protesting that NRA was driving small businesses to the wall and turning trusts loose on a career of price fixing. To be sure, they appealed to the President and were given to understand that the Federal Trade Commission might be given power to protect small businessmen, to restore some of the teeth in the anti-trust laws. To be sure, the Trade Commission at General Johnson's invitation sent a man to watch the code making. But nothing happened. So last week, with Congress solidly in session again, Messrs. Borah and Nye went forth to battle on the Senate floor.

Senator Borah offered an amendment to the Recovery Act ending the suspension of the anti-trust laws. Said he: "I do not think there can be any compensation for unjust prices charged to the public. I do not think there can be any compensation for the destruction of small business. ... I do not believe it is possible to protect [the small businessman] so long as we permit these combinations in restraint of trade, so long as we permit the great combines to fix prices. . . ."

Senator Nye used warmer language: "If what seems to have been the policy of NRA is continued the plunderers may well adopt 'The Last Round-Up' as their theme song and trample under heel whatever remains of independent business and make the consumer a mere slave. . . ."

Not a Senator spoke up to defend NRA, but conservative Democrat Glass and radical Democrat Costigan both chimed in on the critical chorus.

That same afternoon General Johnson flew up to Manhattan, dined with National Retail Dry Goods Association, and gave them a Johnsonian earful by way of reply: "Generally speaking the dead cats are fewer in number and have lost some of their ripeness and velocity. . . . But a storm is brewing. . . . There will be a distinct movement to repeal this act under this slogan of 'oppression of small enterprise.' It won't be a forthright open movement for repeal. These gentlemen do not dare do that. Some of this will be done by a Senator whom I love for his intestinal fortitude perhaps more than any Senator other than Carter Glass. . . . It will be an attempt to put in the act about three lines forbidding action by any industry in unison and in effect substituting the Federal Trade Commission for the NRA.

"There was--and there is--about as much cooperation between the Federal Trade Commission and industry as there is between a lion-tamer with a blacksnake whip, a revolver and a strong-backed chair standing in a cage with six jungle cats snapping and snarling on six star-spangled hassocks--that is their version of economic planning. . . . Yet that is the condition these economic genii want to restore. . . . These men have really nothing to support them but the width of their mouths and the volumetric capacity of their lung power. . . . The fact is that they do not know what they want and men in that condition ought not to speak at all. . . .

''If I had only nine words with which to address you, I would rise here and say: 'Keep prices down--for God's sake, keep prices down. . . .'

"As the Angel of Death, at the Passover, omitted those houses that showed no crimson palm-marks on the lintel, so do you pass by any shop window or advertisement that does not display the Blue Eagle.

"And that recalls another story about people who ease their indignation by writing letters: Casper Milquetoast, in a fit of public spirit, wrote to the Pullman company about insects in his berth and promptly received a complimentary and apologetic letter two pages long. He proudly displayed this to his friends as proof that corporations do have souls, until some cynic discovered and pointed out to him a faint penciled note on the back: 'Send this s.o.b. the bug letter.' "

General Johnson's hot answer loosed hotter Senatorial wrath. Reiterating his charges of monopoly and ruin for small businesses, Senator Borah boomed. "When those things are remedied I will cease my efforts and not till then." And Mr. Nye cried eloquently: "Nero may rant and roar, but all the browbeating he may resort to will not destroy, though it may delay, knowledge of what NRA policy is doing ... to the end that the plunderbund may enjoy larger monopoly. . . ."

With things thus getting hot for the Administration. the President again stepped in, as he did on veterans' pension to make mollifying concessions to Congress. By executive order he directed the Federal Trade Commission to look out for the interests of any small business which appealed to it for help against code-born monopolies, directed that, if the Trade Commission could not help, the case should be passed along to the Department of Justice. In short the Federal Trade Commission was to check and balance NRA.

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