Code for Four

At NRA headquarters codification troubles do not vary in direct proportion with the number of units to be codified. Aluminum, which consists of Aluminum Co. of America, still has no code. Neither has the telephone industry. The communications industry--Western Union, Postal Telegraph and other International Telephone & Telegraph units, American Telephone's telegraph business and Radio Corp.--had no code until last fortnight when, after months of wrangling, General Johnson threw the foursome a ready-made one which needed only the President's signature. Last week the telegraph and radio companies and their big customers had a last opportunity to protest against what may soon be the first code imposed by Executive order.

Hotfoot to Washington went fruit growers and commission merchants, fearing higher rates on the mass of facts & figures which they flash by wire daily. Brokers feared for their leased wire systems; railroads, for their ancient and exclusive contracts with Western Union; newspapers and news services, for their favorable press rates. A delegation of Manhattan messenger boys, afraid that code wages would be too low and code hours too long, went to Washington and were forced to pass the hat for train fare home. But the Telegraph & Cable Code hearings quickly reverted to the old family feud between Postal, which does one-fifth of the U. S. telegraph business, and Western Union, which does practically all of the rest.

Western Union's President Roy Barton White, an oldtime railroad telegrapher who rose to run Central R.R. of New Jersey, had hung out the first bit of dirty linen by sending telegrams to his big customers, inviting them to protest and declaring that for all intents & purposes the President's Code was Postal's code. Bitterly he lashed the proposed fair practice clauses which minutely regulate leased wires, exclusive contracts and special services. At last week's hearings he thundered: "We strenuously object to injecting in the long-established rate arrangement . . . provisions which we know will add unnecessary and increased burdens to telegraph users, will bring no increase in revenue and will seriously injure the telegraph system by driving a large number of users from it entirely." What he dreaded most was a code which would merely redistribute the available business--at Western Union's expense.

Postal was backing the code, said President White, ''in the hope that they will produce a situation which will either force a consolidation of the telegraph companies, now prohibited by Federal law, or force the Government to take over the properties.''

Neither Postal's President Major General George Sabin Gibbs nor I. T. & T.'s Sosthenes Behn was on hand to defend Postal's stand. But Vice President Howard L. Kern, taking a tip from the Senate Banking & Currency Committee, hoisted the red flag of "unfair propaganda." Anyone with half an eye, said he, could see that "the code proposed by NRA was designed to meet the abuses pointed out by Western Union representatives themselves." Though the code would cost Postal $2,767,000 per year in increased wages, the company was willing to subscribe to it in the hope of "eventual benefits."

A Western Union vice president dismissed as gross exaggerations reports that his company had sent out 10,000 telegrams, suggesting protest. But Deputy NRAdministrator Peebles said, he has seen copies of messages sent to customers whose telegraph bills did not exceed $2 per month. The vice president replied: "I cannot account for the indiscretions of subordinates."

A. T. & T., whose 4,400 teletypes compete with both telegraph companies, sided with Western Union against the imposition of a code. Radio Corp., whose stake in the domestic communications business is relatively small, was willing to sign anything that its competitors did. But President White made it clear that Western Union would accept what he thought was a Postal code only by court order. His counsel, maintaining that Congress had no intention of codifying an industry already regulated by the Interstate Commerce Commission, swore that Western Union was ready to wage "a legal contest along all fronts."

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