Hymns in Washington

Last week, for the fourth year in succession, Franklin Roosevelt neglected to send the U. S. Chamber of Commerce a message of welcome. In fact, just as the 1,700 Big Businessmen who had swarmed to Washington for the 26th annual convention of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce settled down for their first assembly in the slick, neoclassic C. of C. building across Lafayette Square from the White House, Franklin Roosevelt went fishing (see p. 13). Obvious reason for the President's snub is that ever since 1933 C. of C. meetings have been hymns of hate against the New Deal.

Linking Depression and New Deal, the Chamber's dry, bespectacled president, 62-year-old George Harvey Davis of Kansas City, gave the pitch of this year's business hymn in his opening speech. Excerpt: "Back of all of the questions that will be brought before you for discussion during these three days lies a much larger question. It is whether business--the American system of business--is to endure or whether some other kind of system, is to take its place. . . ."

That night, at the first of three banquets, the theme was picked up by Chairman Winthrop Aldrich of the Chase National Bank, who last fortnight was one of 16 business leaders pledging co-operation with Mr. Roosevelt. Taking occasion to attribute the President's theory of economic crises to Karl Marx and asserting that pump-priming will prove futile, the crop-haired chairman of the biggest U. S. commercial bank proclaimed: "Reforms which, coming one by one. would be sound and helpful, can generate chaos if they come so quickly that men cannot adjust themselves to all of them simultaneously. I think that nothing is more needed at the present time than a prolonged period of quiet, not a three to six months' breathing spell, but a two or three years' breathing spell, during which both Government and business can consolidate, modify and assimilate what has already been done, and during which also it will be possible to study quietly the basis of further reform."

The applause which greeted these sentiments was equaled next day when General Motors' President William S. Knudsen rose at the general session to relate G. M.'s troubles with labor and its effect upon business. Excerpt: "The Industrial Union in its present form has to depend on force in defiance of law. There are not many places in the U. S. at the moment where laws can be enforced to control the movement. The technique of the sit-down strikers is identical with that of the syndicalists of Europe. France has finally had to take a stand against them because of the dangers as a political club rather than a social defensive weapon. I feel confident that the U. S. will eventually take the same stand. . . ." Then it was time for an Administration spokesman to present its side of the argument. The job fell to genial Jesse Jones, whose practical handling of RFC has made him more palatable to Big Business than are most of his Government compeers. Banker Jones rose at an afternoon session just after President Edward E. Brown of Chicago's First National Bank had remarked that Government regulations hamper the free flow of credit. Said Jesse Jones: "There is a widespread feeling that credit is not readily available at banks on the character of security that many businesses have to offer, security that, in the opinion of the borrower, would furnish full protection for the lending bank. . . . I am firmly of the opinion that banks generally have not been particularly wise or energetic in meeting the credit needs of the country. . . . Banking is a franchise that carries responsibility, not merely a privilege. ... If banking is to remain in private hands, it must meet the credit needs of the country. ..."

Mr. Jones's hearers took this lambasting in stony silence. The next night at the final convention dinner in the Hotel Willard, their reaction to 68 honor guests was equally frank. Cabinet members Frances Perkins and Henry Wallace got a cool reception; Lammot du Pont drew thunderous applause; ultra-conservative Justice James Clark McReynolds brought down the house.

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