Tsar Out

"I have assumed that your purpose in . . . broadening the scope of the work of the Iron & Steel Institute is primarily the practical one of getting and keeping the industry on a sound and profitable basis in so far as this can be brought about by co-operation between the various units--within the law.

"I assume also that . . . the reasons for making these changes are related . . . to more fundamental difficulties affecting all industries which, if not worked out within or by industry itself, will in the end bring about changes in existing laws and a greater measure of Government control than most of us would like to see."--Robert Patterson Lamont to the American Iron & Steel Institute's executive committee after assuming the presidency August 1932.

"On August 29 the board of directors held its first meeting in its capacity as administrator of the code. Three representatives of the National Recovery Administration attended the meeting, marked the beginning of Government regulation of business. No one knows how far it may go.

"From now on ... the principle activities of the . . . Institute will be in seeing that the obligations of the industry under the code are properly carried out and reported to the Government. The opportunity for constructive, forward looking . . . plans for the industry as a whole . . . must give way to the . . . immediate need, which can best be met by men familiar with the vast details of ... the industry."--President Lamont's resignation written Sept. 1, but not released until the day of Manhattan's monster NRA parade last week (see p. 12).

Thus was the past year defined by President Hoover's onetime Secretary of Commerce. But behind Mr. Lament's frank dislike of Government-in-Business, Wall Street saw other reasons for his resignation. Mr. Lamont was reported to be weary of trying to maintain discipline among his pack of individualistic ironmasters at the same time that he was forced to go among them begging for funds to keep the Institute going. His $100,000 salary was understood to have been halved. He had been offered several big industrial jobs. Furthermore, Mr. Lamont had been picked for one kind of job and the NRA had suddenly handed him another. In Steel's long fight for an open-shop clause in its code, not Mr. Lament but Bethlehem's gusty Charles Michael Schwab and U. S. Steel's indomitable Myron Charles Taylor had taken command. And although NRA's labor clause was rammed into the code, no good steelman would dream of conceding the end of the open shop. What steelmen want for a tsar is either: 1) a man who will fight all attempts to unionize the industry or 2) an efficient non-entity who will leave steelmen to handle Labor themselves.

No two steelmen agreed last week on Mr. Lament's probable successor, but at his summer home in Loretto, Pa. Charles Michael Schwab, now the Institute's chairman and its former active head, admitted that he was "likely" to resume the presidency.

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