Kicking Party (Cont'd)

Kicking Party ( Cont'd )

"This is an open round-up for criticism." General Hugh S. Johnson was addressing hundreds and hundreds of plain citizens gathered by special invitation in the big auditorium of the Department of Commerce Building in Washington to find fault with NRA. But before any critic could open his mouth the belligerent NRAdministrator delivered a 90-minute harangue in which he flayed faultfinders in general, admitted the most glaring shortcomings of the recovery program and proposed a whole series of improvements. Said he:

"I think it necessary to draw a sharp line between the kind of criticism that is helpful and should be encouraged, welcomed and acted upon, and the kind that is wholly unwarranted, highly obstructive and against which I have contested with all the strength I have."

The General promised better rules for fixing prices and determining costs; more uniform rules for working hours and wages; more adequate code representation for labor and consumers; stricter enforce ment of code provisions. Did anyone dare to suggest that NRA had not employed as many people as promised? He had promised, roared the General, that the program would make 3,000,000 new jobs and it had. Had NRA failed to increase consumer purchasing power? He had upped annual payrolls by three billion dollars while the cost of living had remained almost stationary. Had NRA been put across by "ballyhoo and propaganda?" These, explained General Johnson, were empty words hurled by NRA's detractors to mislead the public. The field of criticism was further narrowed by the redoubtable General as he concluded :

"Therefore we welcome you. We will try to give you every opportunity to pre sent your case. We will record that presentation and give it earnest consideration in connection with the code conference. You will understand that there are rules necessary to orderly procedure that we must ask you to observe. You will also understand from what I have said why we will not receive personal aspersions. Neither will we receive attacks on the law itself because that is not a matter within our control. It should be taken up with Congress. Nor will we entertain at tacks on other departments of Govern ment or the statement of general policy laid down by the President in setting up this organization. These, too, are matters not within our control. We are here to hear of our own policies, methods, acts, errors, mistakes and blunders, and not those of anybody else over whose acts we have no control and for whose results we are not responsible."

Thus the field day began. It continued for four days in the form of a five-ring circus, one in the Department of Commerce Building and others in various hotels around Washington. Inasmuch as the General's dozen points for bettering the codes promised to make "fair rules" on almost every conceivable type of error, the complainers were hardly able to take him off his guard. Some typical complaints:

Mrs. Ruth Scott of Washington, D. C.:

[My brother] used to be paid $24 a week before NRA. Now his hours have been cut and he is making only $12 and can't make ends meet. ... It is impossible for the boy to go on like he is. ... It is true he works less hours, but what can he do with his spare time? All he can do is sit around and brood about not being able to make a living for his wife and baby.

Mary E. O'Connor, New York's State Director of Purchase: We have 1.700 bidders on our mailing lists, and under the State finance law, must purchase from the lowest responsible bidder. Today, in many groups, there is no lowest responsible bidder. ... All purchase terms are identical. . . . [NRA] has been used to promote the interests of the Captains of Industry and has substituted the slogan "Do as I say and charge what I tell you" for the intended slogan "Goods shall not be sold below cost."

John P. Davis, Negro: I speak my bitterness today without malice. . . . The threat of displacement against Negroes is most damnable and unAmerican. ... If NRA really wants to crack down they should put an anti-displacement clause in the NIRA.

Gerald Smith, Louisiana Federation of Labor: The violations of the 18th Amendment are a Sunday School picnic compared with the violations of NRA. Louisiana is a feudal state.

Mrs. Gifford Pinchot: General Johnson*. . . I wonder if you ever stay awake at night seeing the faces of the thousands of men and women who are pacing the streets of Pennsylvania towns, jobless and desperate, without resources and with despair in their hearts, because they had faith in your promises and went ahead and organized a union and for so doing lost their jobs, and never a finger in Washington lifted to help them.

Dr. Paul Nystrom, president of the Limited Price Variety Stores Association: Let us not mince matters. Let us call things by their right names. This is monopoly. ... In view of the rapid price increases that have already occurred and still others certain to come, it is now almost certain that we shall have a period of severe consumer resistance this coming spring.

Q. Forrest Walker, of R. H. Macy & Co.: If the trend toward too rapidly advancing prices continues, aided and abetted by collusion and price-fixing under open price associations, the inevitable result must be decreased production and decreased employment or greatly retarded re-employment.

Matthew Smith, Mechanics Educational Society of Detroit (automobile labor): The NRA is definitely scared of Ford and General Motors. Labor has been fairly patient but now if the NRA does not function old-fashioned strikes will. . . . We have tried the law but we are disillusioned and have no faith in it any more.

When it was all over General Johnson summed up the results: "We have the support of Industry, of Labor and of the People of the U. S. ... Of course, there has been some diatribe and exaggeration. I am sorry I could not be in five places at once and especially that I could not have welcomed Mrs. Pinchot. . . .

"Apparently Mrs. Pinchot does not know that these are not in the jurisdiction or control of NRA at all. These are the province of the National Labor Board, which is wholly independent of NRA. When she held us responsible for Pennsylvania towns where labor meetings could not be held, I should have liked to ask her who was Governor of that State.

"Much was said in the hearings about the so-called failure of NRA to cure un employment and produce recovery. That charge also flows from an omission to recognize that NRA is only one piece in the whole mosaic of the President's recovery program. . . .

"We are immensely pleased with what has happened here. ..."

*Rhetorical, the General not being present.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.