Black & Blue Eagle

In the smoky blacksmith shop of Hugh McMahan at Newport, Tenn. last week, a young New Yorker named Don Cahill was discussing the NRA. Blacksmith McMahan was an NRA man. Cahill was not. Resenting the city man's talk, the patriotic blacksmith let his temper get the better of him. He picked up one of his tools and flung it at Cahill. Cahill flung back. The blacksmith flung another, Cahill returned it, and Blacksmith McMahan drew his gun shot Cahill dead.

Had patriotic blacksmiths slain every outspoken critic of NRA throughout the land last week, the slaughter would have been terrific. A definite, increasingly voluble reaction had set in against the Blue Eagle. The "dead cats" which Administrator Johnson had predicted would "fill the air" when NRA hit its stride, were flying thick & fast, and some of them were very dead cats indeed.

Referring to the offices of NRA as "the bedlam that they have over there," President Henry Ingraham Harriman of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce observed in Washington: "About six months ago, [businessmen] were 100% for [the NRA] ;' about three months ago there was much less unanimity; and I know of no representative group of businessmen today in which some do not question the whole program."

The Chicago Tribune and Hearstpapers warmed to their new policies of attacking NRA editorially. Tribune excerpt: "The Government, undertaking to control American industry and business by codes enforced in minute detail by Federal authority over all phases of American production, has failed to meet the expectations of the administrators, failed to satisfy the economic requirements of the country, to fit in congenially with the American temperament, and to remedy the ills for which it was used as a cure."

Hearst excerpt: "The blighting effect of the NRA policy has been so complete that a justifiable interpretation of the letters NRA would make them read, 'No Recovery Allowed.' "

Mark Sullivan, touring the Midwest, observed for the New York Herald Tribune and its syndicate: "[The people] are willing to accept NRA as the fire department, but have no idea of letting it become the permanent police department."

Even so constructive a critic of the Administration as Walter Lippmann decided, after re-reading the Recovery Act: "Congress meant to allow industries to combine for two years, to enjoy the benefit of exemption from the anti-trust laws provided they lived up to certain conditions. The initiative was to come from industry. Certain privileges were to be granted to industries if they made certain concessions. It seems to me clear that for most industries Congress meant that codes should, under certain conditions, be permitted and not that codes should universally be imposed. . . " The excessive centralization and the dictatorial spirit [of NRA] are producing a revulsion of feeling against bureaucratic control of American economic life. The trouble, as I see it, is not in the act but in a midsummer misconception of what could and ought to be attempted under the act."

From the editorial chair of his New Outlook, Democrat Alfred Emanuel Smith rumbled: "Today a good many patriotic people, scanning the horizon for the first light of returning prosperity, are trying to figure out whether the flag of the Constitution still waves." Even in England, bumbling Stanley Baldwin made a speech comparing President Roosevelt to Hitler as a dictator: "The ordinary Constitution has certainly broken down in the United States and they are practically under a dictatorship. ... It will be interesting to see what the backwash in America or Germany will be twelve or 18 months hence." Outside official Washington defenders of NRA were few. But in the nation's Republican-bossed, third-largest city, the stout-hearted Philadelphia Record chuckled : "If conservative sources are to be believed, the NRA is so radical that Soviet Russia is taking a chance by extending recognition to the U. S."

Swope Plan. Polite friction had developed between NRA and the Department of Commerce, which felt it had not been allowed to go to bat as resolutely for Business as the Labor Department has for Labor in the New Deal. From the Department of Commerce's Business Advisory & Planning Council--60 public-spirited tycoons--was drawn the 13-man NRA Industrial Recovery Board on which sat General Electric's Gerard Swope, Standard Oil's Walter C. Teagle, General Motors' Alfred P. Sloan. These gentlemen, too, had become impatient with NRA's labor policies. Six weeks ago they were about to resign. Last week an awkward situation was gracefully avoided when Secretary of Commerce Roper announced that in accordance with a rotation system, a new board, on which Pierre Samuel du Pont, U. S. Steel's Myron C. Taylor, Reynolds Tobacco's Clay Williams and Sears, Roebuck's Robert E. Wood were the big names, would replace the Swope board. The old board prepared to retire, but not without making news. Desirous that "much of the great adventure of the NRA be made permanent," General Electric's Swope laid before the Advisory & Planning Council a plan to take the NRA out of Government hands and make it self-governing. The Swope Plan for NRA was tantamount to the national cartel system which Mr. Swope proposed two years ago (TIME, Sept. 28, 1931). Points: 1) Each trade association under a code would elect executives to supervise its affairs. With these executives would sit a minority of one or more NRA agents, or agents of the Government department taking over this work permanently. 2) "If the governing board of the codified trade association is unable to exact compliance with the code by any recalcitrant member," the board would lay its complaint before the Federal Trade Commission or Department of Justice. 3) Supervising all trade associations would be "a national chamber of commerce and industry located in Washington, which may well be an enlargement and development of the present Chamber of Commerce of the U. S." The national chamber would be composed of delegates from trade associations, from which would be chosen a board of governors. These would elect an executive committee, on which the Secretary and Assistant Secretary of Commerce would also serve. Tip-top of the whole pyramid would be a board of appeals, including representatives of the President sitting in with industrialists serving four-month shifts in Washington. Secretary of Commerce Roper did not demur when 37 members of the council resolved: "Business should remain free of Governmental interference and control. . . ."

Labor's Toes. Labor, its toes trodden on heavily by omission from Mr. Swope's controlling hierarchy, was hopping mad. Its spokesmen instantly chorused: "Benevolent feudalism!" "Business Fascism!" Chairman Leo Wolman of the Labor Advisory Board snorted that "there is little or no chance of the Swope Plan ever being adopted." "The Swope Plan," firmly declared A. F. of L.'s William Green, "is unacceptable to Labor. . . . The people of the U. S. cannot delegate such broad powers to the same management which failed under the Old Deal to relieve unemployment and restore purchasing power." Consumers' Toes, Mrs. Mary Harriman Rumsey's NRA Consumers' Advisory Board also hopped. "There must be recognition," it declared, "that there are three parties in industry--the consumer, Labor and the management-ownership group. . . . No one of these parties should be placed in a position to dominate another." Pigeonhole. "The Swope proposal," the Chicago Tribune crowed, "may be regarded as an open door through which the Government can make its retreat from Moscow!" Sharp and swift were other observers to forecast NRA's rapid disintegration once the strong voice and arm of Federal authority were made remote.

President Roosevelt decided to mend that sort of talk and pigeonhole the Swope Plan without delay. On his desk he assembled departmental reports to show that: 2,000,000 people had been re-employed since the NRA went into operation; that although industry overproduced in anticipation of the costly Codes, real outlets for the same industrial products are actually greater now than in the summer boom; that hourly wages have increased 20% while the average hours of work per week decreased from 42.3 to 38.1. From the White House came word that "the present was not thought a propitious time for a change in program. . . . The next few months were expected to bring forth hundreds of other plans."

"I Can Take It" As reports that he was about to resign continued to pile up, General Johnson wryly remarked : "Somebody ought to get a copyright on that. 1 came here to help President Roosevelt, and I'll stay just as long as he wants me. I am conscious of the dead cats. I expect them. I can take it. I have no political ambitions and so I don't care what they say."

After a flying visit to Manhattan to spend the night with his close but now critical friend Bernard Baruch, General Johnson hopped off from Washington for the Midwest to begin a speaking tour, to apply the arnica of eloquence to his Blue Eagle's black-&-blue spots.

In Chicago, he retorted to Stanley Baldwin and the U. S. Press:

"Another great hobgoblin is the alleged unconstitutionality of the NRA. All that it has done is put no less than 4,000,000 hopeless, destitute people back to work and raise the wages of millions more to something more than a subsistence level. It has wiped out the sweatshop and child labor and has done so without impairing constitutional limitations that have prevented these results for a generation. Does anybody suppose that a revolting ancestry ever expected that, in writing the Constitution, they intended to perpetuate these abominations? It is ridiculous to suppose such a thing. . . .

"The talk of dictatorship is just another bugaboo set up by witch-doctors for screaming purposes.

"My only request is that the gentlemen of the fourth estate give us a chance and not lend themselves to this primitive witch-doctor dancing. We have no protest against criticism. A free and unrestricted Press is an absolute necessity. With such power as resides in the Press there also resides responsibility, owed not to govern-ment but to the people who rely on government at a desperate time like this for salvation. . . ."

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