BUSINESS & CONGRESS

The Bark Was Worse Than the Bite UNDER the Administration of President Dwight Eisenhower, business has had a more favorable atmosphere in Washington than at any time in the past 20 years. But on Capitol Hill, particularly after the U.S. elected a Democratic-controlled Congress last fall, there has been a barrage of anti-business talk. Now that the House and Senate have finished their work for this year, how did business and the businessman actually fare in the first session of the 84th Congress? Within two days after the new Congress organized in January, Arkansas' Democratic Senator William Fulbright gave business its first big scare. Chatting with a newsman right after he became chairman of the Senate Banking and Currency Committee, Fulbright was asked if he would look into, among other things, the steep rise in the stock market. Why, yes, said Fulbright, "we ought to have a look." The headlines that followed his off-the-cuff answer caused Wall Streeters to brace themselves for something like the Pecora investigation of 1932-34.

Though Fulbright argued long and loud that his was to be "a friendly study," businessmen were not convinced. The stock market tumbled: in the first eight days of the Fulbright probe the Dow-Jones industrial average fell 28 points. Instead of easing up, Fulbright shifted his attack, e.g., he sharply questioned General Motors President Harlow Curtice about competition in the auto industry, suggested that G.M. could cut prices if it wanted to. His line of questioning soon drew a rebuke from Indiana's Republican Senator Homer Capehart, who flatly accused Fulbright of having no intention "to investigate the stock market, but to harass . . . business." When Fulbright's committee brought out its report two months later, he conceded that he had found no major abuses on the stock exchanges.

More anti-business talk came from Tennessee's Senator Estes Kefauver, who not only fought a desperate battle to keep private power from building in federal-power areas, but accused the Justice Department of writing a "gigantic brief for nonenforcement of the anti-trust laws." Kefauver repeatedly railed against "conflict of interest," thus helped the Democratic campaign to require businessmen serving without compensation in the Government to list in the Federal Register the names of all corporations or partnerships in which they own shares.

In the House, Brooklyn Democrat Emanuel Celler, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, took the role of anti-business gadfly. He attacked the Commerce Department's Business Advisory Council (a group of top industrialists and financiers), and tried to push through a bill to put bank mergers under the Antitrust Act. At hearings on his anti-bank merger bill, he charged that bank mergers threaten a "free and competitive economy," but his bill died in the Rules Committee.

But for all the anti-business talk, not much came of it. For the first time in years. Democrats made no attempt to grant gains to organized labor at the businessman's expense. Nor did Congress pass any law punitive to business. It roundly endorsed the Government's exit from the synthetic-rubber industry, but it dragged its feet on other Administration attempts to take the Government out of competition with private enterprise. To the dismay of many industrialists, e.g., Southern cotton manufacturers, it raised the minimum wage from 75-c- to $1 ; to the relief of most employers it postponed a boost in Social Security benefits. It extended the 52% corporate tax, but most businessmen were in sympathy with the purpose behind that extension: to cut federal deficit spending.

On a score of major issues, businessmen themselves differed. For example, chemical and textile manufacturers and other protectionists lobbied all-out to block renewal of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Committee for Economic Development and many individual businessmen (plus the A.F.L. and the C.I.O. as well) fought to get it passed, and won. Bankers and contractors wanted a highway bill, but the truckers wanted a pay-as-you-ride compromise plan killed because it would have raised their gas, diesel and tire taxes $1 billion yearly. The small businessmen did all right: the Small Business Administration was extended for two years, and the Justice Department's recommendation (backed by big-city department stores and discount houses) to repeal Fair Trade laws was blocked.

When the record is added up, businessmen fared well in the first session of the 84th Congress. In the investigations, they were lightly tarred by a small group of Fair Dealers. But in legislation--where reason and fairness took hold--they were not hurt. In a year of unprecedented prosperity, when business was hiring more workers, paying more wages and producing more goods than ever before, the U.S. was in no mood to harass its businessmen.

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