Fellow Partners

Last week 1,200 U. S. businessmen assembled in Washington and spent four strenuous clays at the U. S. Chamber of Commerce listening to 49 speeches by their fellow Chambermen. Of the 49 speakers nine were die-hard laissez-faire men, who wanted the Government to get out and stay out of their businesses. Thirteen were confused about the question or did not directly refer to it, and 27 clearly favored a larger measure of Government control of industry.

That was a new record for John Businessman. Goodyear Tire & Rubber's Paul Weeks Litchlield declared he had "regretfully arrived at the conclusion that a measure of Government control must be introduced. . . . We have failed to take the necessary steps voluntarily so the element of force. Government compulsion, becomes necessary. . . . Our continued decline in employment and purchasing power is leading us into state socialism or complete anarchy." General Electric's Gerard Swope (who. over a year ago. urged industry to do what it may now be forced to do) said: "I repeat that if industry does not sec its opportunity [to regulate itself] ... it will be done from without. The alternative, therefore, is not shall it be done, but by whom shall it be done."

And when President Roosevelt addressed U. S. Business in Congress assembled, he asked that wages be upped to keep in step with expected rises in the cost of living, he promised a Government club to drive recalcitrant minorities into trade associations where they would be taught to behave. Before (he meeting closed the Chamber as a whole plumped for production, planned and regulated by trade associations under Government supervision.

Harried by three years of bad business. worried by falling profits and mounting deficits, little wonder that the 1,200 businessmen conventioning in Washington were eager for anything that promised better conditions. Certainly many a man had in mind a better set-up for his industry, this or that needed thing which the industry had not done for itself, which might be done by the Government. For that hope, the Chambermen voted. But did they understandingly vote for Revolution? (Only the big word, "revolution." adequately expresses the opinion of many an observer both native and foreign, concerning the present trend of U. S. Government into U. S. Business.)

If they did not know what they asked for, they soon learned. Home went the 1,200, and on the Sabbath evening they heard the radio-borne voice of Franklin Roosevelt tell them that the Government was going to be a partner in their business. What form that partnership may take, no man. probably not even Franklin Roosevelt, could say. but every partnership has two sides: a side which offers help, a side which makes demands.

The two-sidedness of a partnership with Government was last week amply forecast. In adjoining columns of many a morning newssheet appeared parallel accounts 1) reporting the Administration's plans for raising prices and relaxing the anti-trust laws to prevent useless competition; 2) reporting that Secretary of the Interior Ickes, having opened ten sealed bids for 400,000 barrels of cement for Boulder Dam. found them all uniformly $1.29 a barrel, up 20-c- since two month? ago. Angered, Mr. Ickes demanded that the Federal Trade Commission investigate whether the companies had entered into illegal price-fixing agreements. Not inconsistent were the two Government actions, but evidence of the Government's dual interest in industry.

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