Blue Eagles & Dead Cats

Late one night last week National Recovery Administrator Hugh Samuel Johnson marched proudly out of the White House with President Roosevelt's signature to a program which they both hoped would put 6,000,000 persons to work by Labor Day. Nothing like it had ever before been seen in the U. S. in peacetime. It was a "war" measure designed to mobilize the entire nation and march it patriotically forward into the biggest and perhaps the final battle with its old enemy, the Depression.

Signed by the President were orders for setting up a man-to-man partnership between himself and each of the country's 5,000,000 employers "to raise wages, create employment and thus increase purchasing power and restore business." Behind the orders loomed the threat of a new and near economic crisis. For weeks the Government had been ding-donging warnings about the unnatural increase in industrial production which had left the nation's buying power, as represented by low wages, far behind. The rise in wholesale prices General Johnson called "appalling." Putting trade codes through the Washington mill had proved a slow, cumbersome process. Only one had been completed in six weeks. Something quicker, more drastic, more realistic was necessary to shore up the sagging foundation of national economy. Last week's proposal for a blanket work & wage agreement was the Administration's answer.

The "partnership" between the President and every employer from the corner grocer to the biggest tycoon was to be voluntary (no law existed to force it upon all industry & business) and run until Jan. 1. Approval of regular trade codes before that date would release all "partners" in the subscribing industry. Excepting household servants and farm hands, all employes were divided into two groups: 1) those who worked with their hands in factories and shops; 2) those who worked with their heads in offices and stores. Employers of Group 1 were asked not to work their help more than eight hours a day or 35 hours a week, not to pay them less than 40-c- per hour.* Employers of Group 2 were asked not to work their help more than 40 hours a week or pay them less than $15-to-$12 per week depending upon the size of the community. These latter employers were also asked to run their offices and stores on a 52-hour week basis, thus forcing themselves to hire additional workers to maintain the schedule. Other features of the "partnership" called for: 1) no child labor; 2) no wage cuts to the proposed minimum; 3) no profiteering; 4) no more price-upping than was actually necessary. Fixed-price contracts for future deliveries were to be revised to meet higher costs. Exempt from the plan were doctors, lawyers, preachers, architects, pharmacists and "executive" employes getting more than $35 per week. General Johnson called the whole program "a truce on selfishness, a test of patriotism."

The President had scarcely approved this titanic economic experiment before the Washington machinery to organize and execute it was given a full head of steam. Out from the Government Printing Office poured millions and millions of copies of the "partnership agreement." They were loaded into freight cars and shipped to distributing points throughout the U. S. Beginning July 27 postmen were to deliver a copy to every employer of three or more persons along his route. The employer was to sign on the dotted line and mail it back to the Government. In return he would be given a bundle of signs and placards with which to advertise his compliance with the President's program. Insigne: a blue eagle over the inscription: "Member N. R. A./- We Do Our Part." The blue eagle (General Johnson called it a hawk) could be painted on factory chimneys, printed on letter heads.

To get 5,000,000 employers to sign up and regiment public opinion behind them, General Johnson organized the biggest and loudest propaganda campaign out of Washington since War days. The agreements were "voluntary" but the Government was ready to put the screws on balky employers. Consumers, particularly housewives, were to be asked to sign this pledge: "I will cooperate in re-employment by supporting and patronizing employers and workers who are members of N. R. A." Thus the way was open for a boycott of firms that refused to fall into line. If patriotism did not work, a sharp pinch in the pocketbook might.

Recalled to Government service to captain this publicity drive was Charles Francis Horner of Kansas City, a veteran propagandist who as chief of its Speakers' Bureau helped the Treasury sell $21,000,000,000 worth of Liberty bonds. A one-time cowpuncher, Mr. Horner long owned and managed a string of Chautauquas, had Bryan, Taft and Harding on his payroll. In Kansas City he started a music conservatory of which he is still president. A tall, quiet man with grey hair and a soft voice, he has none of the outward characteristics of the supersalesman of an Idea. To his side at N. R. A. headquarters he summoned his old Liberty Loan associates to round up speakers, prepare newspaper blurbs, make the country ring with the Government's appeal. Wartime methods were revived--Four-Minute Men orating in theatres, full-page advertising spreads in newspapers and magazines, exhortations from the pulpit, messages from signboards, a steady geyser of radio talk, special pleading on cinema screens.

To inaugurate the campaign President Roosevelt took to air Monday night in a nation-wide broadcast. Said he:

"It is obvious that without united action a few selfish men in each competitive group will pay starvation wages and insist on long hours of work. . . . We have seen the result of action of that kind in the continuing descent into the economic hell of the past four years. . . . Already the great basic industries have come forward with proposed codes. . . . Here is an example. In the cotton textile code and in other agreements already signed, child labor has been abolished. That makes me personally happier than any other one thing with which I have been connected since I came to Washington. . . . As a British editorial put it. we did more under a code in one day than they in England have been able to do under the common law in 85 years of effort.

"I ask that even before the dates set in the agreements which we have sent out, the employers of the country who have not done so--the big fellows and the little fellows--shall at once write or telegraph me at the White House, expressing their intention of going through with the plan. And it is my purpose to keep posted in the postoffice of every town a roll of honor of all those who join with me. I cannot guarantee the success of this nation-wide plan, but the people of this country can guarantee its success."

Even before the partnership blanks were distributed many a potent company had wired the President support of his program. Among the first were American Tobacco, Sears. Roebuck, Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea, Florsheim Shoe. But it was the small independent employer not in the habit of telegraphing the White House who would make or break the campaign. Some doubtless would sign agreements and then secretly violate them. For such cheating some N. R. A. advisers thought they could be penalized under the National Recovery Act. Declared General Johnson: "We'll administer this thing through the squawks. When I hear a squawk I'll decide then what action to take. We haven't had one protest so far."

But General Johnson had no illusions about the trouble into which he was heading. Said he: "The time will come when there won't be so much applause. Then the air will be filled with dead cats."

* Though this wage scale figured out at $14 per week, no employe was guaranteed a full week's work.

/-National Recovery Administration.

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