Milford chronicle., 1933-08-25
MURPHY HEADS
MILFORD NRA
ORGANIZATION
[COnfinued from Frn Pags]

! pdny. III pldCluS HIS udIue Ill HOIu
ination for the generalship, C. T
Varney, chairman of the nominatin
committee stated that the committe
had selected Mr.. Murphy because o
his ability to make friends, his un
firing efforts to make any projec
under his supervision a success ant
his ability to organize and manage
General Murphy announced thai
he would advise the National Re.
covery Administration Immediately
that the organization had been form
ed and as soon as information was
received from them he would call
a meeting of the group and work
would start at once thereafter.
Mr.. Gassaway, in his talk, which
prededed the forming of the cam
paign organization, explained the
history, purposes and organization
of the National Recovery Admins
tration.
His speech follows:
New ideas are revising our ma
tional life at breath-taking speed
and on an undreamed scale.
"The vistas of change opened by
the National Recovery Act alone al
most staged the imagination.
1.-THE elimination of child labor, of
the sweatshop and of unfair compe-
tition are with us in fact--ideas
which have been in the making for
years but have moved to swift and
unexpected fulfillment in few short
months"
In President Roosevelt's inaugu-
raj, he said:
"I have laid down the simple prop
osition that nobody is going to
starve in this country. 1t seems to
me to be equally plain that no busi-
ness which depends for existence on
paying less than living wages to its
workers has any right to continue
in this country. BY business" l
mean the whole of commerce as well
as the whole of industry; by work.
ers | mean all workers-the white
collar class as we'll as the men in
overalls; and by living wages l
mean more than a bare subsistence
level mean the wages of decent
living.
Throughout industry, the change
from starvation wages and starva-
tion employment to living wages
and sustained employment can, in
large part, be made by an industrial
covenant to which all employers
shall subscribe. 1t is greatly to
their interest to do this because de-
cent living, widely spread among
our 125,000,000 people eventually
means the opening up to industry
of the rihcest market which the
world has known. 1t is the only
way to utilize the so-called excess
capacity of our industrial plants.
This is the principle that makes this
one of the most important laws that
ever came from Congress because.
before the passage of this act, no
such industrial covenant was pos
sible.
Ion this idea. the first part of the |
act proposes to our industry a great |
spontaneous cooperation to put mil
lions of men back in their regular
jobs this summer. The idea is simp-
ly for employers to hire more men
to do the existing work by reducing
the work hours of each mans week
and at the same time paying a liv-
ing wage for the shorter week.
mo employer and no group of less
than all employers in single trade
could do this alone and continue to
live in business competition. But if
all employers in each trade now
band themselves faithfully in these
modern guilds-without exception
and agree to act together and at
)nce, none will be hurt and millions
)f workers, so long deprived of the
light to earn their bread in the
iweat of their labor. can raise their
leads again. The challenge of this
aw is whether we can sink selfish
interest and present a solid front
lgainst a common peril.
1T is a challenge to industry
which has long insisted that. given
he right to act in unison, it could
10 much for the general good which
as hitherto been unlawful. From
oday it has that right I
Some employers have said to me, /;
e we sign the code we might as I
'ell forget our stockholders"
"In his appeal the President said
MS country could not enter another :
inter as it entered the last. The l
azards of that would be a dozen
mes more serious than those now [
} be assumed by unqualified action |
l the spirit of recovery. The in d
ustrial administrator speaks of the t
ights of stockholders. which are not @
, be denied. Yet the stockholders /
ghts will mean nothing, there can y
3 no dividends, no return on invest /
ent, without recovery. "To put it
a nutshell" the industrial admin t,
traitor shows. men must earn be- h
re stocks can earn" a
"Now what is this code? What F
-ought 1t about? How is it that in d
lstry and commerce are now or h
,red to do what, under the Sher-
an Act and the Federal Trade Com A
ission, they have for years been
'ohibited from doing? s,
Let us review briefly: Il
LET us review briefly:
"In 1928, the national income was Il
timated at 81 billions of dollars; ol
1880 this had dropped to II bill to
ms of dollars; and in 1882 it had
opped to about 45 billions of dol 81
rs. M
"At the beginning of 1888, it was RI
timated that there were IL mill h,
N unemployed in the nation. st
Let us assume that each of these ia