Dead Cats

President Roosevelt's New Deal is not radical enough to suit U. S. radicals. To Communists the NRA appears as just one more capitalist plot to grind down the proletariat. To Socialists it seems like a bungling, inadequate attempt to apply government supervision to capitalism. But it does, they believe, offer workers "an exceptional opportunity to organize as a fighting force, not merely to wrest concessions from their 'partners,' the Government and the bosses, but to capture the former and to destroy the latter as a class." In New York City last week the Socialist Party was asked to cooperate in the NRA consumer campaign, to canvass housewives to sign pledge cards. Party spokesmen replied that they were too busy "organizing the working masses under the act'' to divert any of their energies to other purposes. The No. 1 Socialist, Norman Mattoon Thomas, publicly warned that NRA is packed with all manner of new dangers. He fears that the minimum wages in the codes will become maximum wages, that Labor will find itself organized into unions under a Fascist state. Said he: "It may turn out to be just a case of getting milk from contented cows, with a few getting the cream off the top." The Communist attitude was exemplified last week when burly, bald, scowling Robert Minor, the party's current nominee for Mayor of New York, attempted to picket a Brooklyn furniture factory in defiance of an injunction. Super-solemn Communist Minor, 49, thrice married, is the son of a Texas judge. For years he edited the Daily Worker, drew savage cartoons for the old Masses. On a soap box before the NRA factory, he yelled at its workers: "Comrades! Most of you are non-union members. You must earn a living. But don't scab on your fellow workers. Your factory carries a picture of the Blue Eagle, of course. They all do. But the Blue Eagle is a blue buzzard for the workers. So come on out and strike!"

Happy as any martyr was Communist Minor when a policeman arrested him.

At the other extreme of political thought the chief critic of NRA happens to be blind Republican Senator Thomas David Schall of Minnesota. A mass of political contradictions, Mr. Schall once voted for Democrat Champ Clark for Speaker in the House, yet he almost wept on Pennsylvania's William Scott Vare when the Senate booted out that squat Republican, Now hardly a day passes without a barrage of dead cats for General Johnson from the Schall office on Capitol Hill. The Senator's outpourings have annoyed and embarrassed his Republican colleagues whose silent strategy is to give NRA all the rope it needs to hang itself. They explain Mr. Schall's blatant behavior on the ground that he fears that Minnesota's Farmer-Labor Governor Olson, identified with the whole Roosevelt program, will oppose him on his next senatorial campaign. Schallisms: "NRA no longer stands for National Recovery Act. It stands for National Ruin Association . . . [variant : National Racket Administration]. "Premier General Johnson -- Wall Street partner of Barney Baruch, the broker-- has declared a five-week campaign to put across the five-year plan of Premier Stalin of Russia. . . . "The Blue Eagle is a Russian fish hawk. "Why keep Capone in Atlanta? . . . Why not call him out to lead the retail branch of racketeering. "In some countries the orgies of an NRA put through PDQ might end in TNT. "President Roosevelt better call a special session to repeal this act. . . ."

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