Evening star., 1934-03-25
INDUSTRIAL SELF-RULE
DEMANDS INTERVENTION
Presidents Position Like Performer
With Snake on One Shoulder and Mon.
goose ON Other-Must Be Friends.
BY WILLIAM HARD.

IeINcIc HlOIS dIU UlOIC III OuT |
i current strikes - and threats of
strikes-and that his interven-
tions will seem substantially on the |
side of so-called organized labor"
He is obliged to do this. The bar
gain on which the N R. A. was based |
is slipping; and, If it slips all the way
down hill, the whole N. R. A. will go |
with it into the abyss.
1t cannot be too often emphasized |
that this basic bargain which Consti- |
tutes the original foundation of the
N. R. A. was between the interests or
supposed interests of labor and the |
interests or supposed interests of capi- !
tai. 1t cannot be too often remem- |
bered that this bargain was brought |
to Washington a good many years ago |
in the course of the development of |
proposed legislation regarding the re-
vval of prosperity in the bituminous |
coal industry. In that proposed legis- |
lation the employees were to be given |
collective bargaining" and the en-
ployers were to be given rice-fXing."
more elegantly described as price sta
bilization'
This was the idea which was taken
by Representative Clyde Kelly of /
NAAAAcy dAiAd W lO1. Iva ylIlOiu INOlCy
IN the State Department in the Spring
of last year and which was trans |
mitted to Senator Wagner of New
York en- Capitol Hill and which there |
was perfected into the national in |
dustrial recovery act under which we |
are now living or striving to live.
Essence of Contract.
No two men in the country should |
know the actual meaning of the ma
tional industrial recovery act better |
than Mr.. Kelly and Mr. Wagner; and |
they completely agree in recollecting |
and maintaining that collective bar
gaining" was of the essence Of the |
contract.
All of which. from the legislative
point of view, may have been a pro-
found error of policy. Perhaps We
never ought to have countenanced
price stabilization.'' Perhaps we
never ought to have guaranteed col
lective bargaining" That point do
not here discuss The point here
made is simply and solely that the N.
r. A. had its birth and draws its
breath of life from an exchange OF
favors-a trade-between labor and
capital
Whereupon, in the Summer and
Fall of last year, We had a sort of
religious revival taking us down
or up-the sawdust trail to industrial
self government" Labor leaders were
converted to the beauties of the notion
of IAN adequate return for capital"
and said so with fervoF. Leaders of
capital knelt in the front row and
repented aloud of their sins of "indi-
vidualiSm," and rose and promised
the congregation that hereafter they
would live life of strict collective
cooperation" BY means of Co
operation" and as band Of brothers,
we would go forward to eternal busi-
ness stability and prosperity"
So We got the codes and among
them, for instance. the codes of the
automobile manufacturing industry
and of the motor vehicle retailing
trade. For these codes, as for all
codes there were and are code au-
thorities."
Violation Of Principle.
Now observe These code authori-
ties" exactly like the American Fed
Grafton Of Labor, are outrageous viola
tions, if you like to put it that way.
of the good old-fashioned American
'individualist' principle of the COM
plete local autonomy of each and
every "iadividual'' business. The
code authority" of the automobile
manufacturing industry is the Ma
tional Automobile Chamber of Com
merce. which is not even situated in
Detroit. where automobiles love to be
made. but resides aloof and aloft at
366 Madison avenue, New York.
Similarly the code authority" of
the motor vehicle retailing trade is
utterly Nation wide in its jurisdiction
and is called the National Automobile
Dealers Association, with headquar-
ters at 1910 Pine street. St. Louis.
To this association-think of It'll
every free-born retail motor car
dealer in the United States must open
his books, his accounts. his own per-
sonal private business records. And
why?
Why, in order, as the code says that
all the dealers in the United States
may firmly cooperate toward the
maintenance of established prices"
especially in the matter of the al
lowances made to customers for used
cars" it being understood that ex-
cessive allowances for used cars"
are in the nature of anti-Social and
criminal acts.
1t has followed that quite a few
dealers in various parts of the country
are now presumably on their way to
Jail for giving a customer a break
on his used car" in connection with
thriving sale to him of new car.
In New York, I believe, there Is a
peculiarly vicious dealer who divvied
with his customer thus to the extent
of S130 of benefit for the customer.
1t is precisely the sort Of crime that
a trade union brick layer commits
when he lays brick for customer at
$40 a day instead of S13 or whatever
else his trade union rule may be.
ExperimentaIist Philosophy.
do not much complain. If motor
car manufacturers and motor car
dealers are going to have national
trade unions and maintained prices"
on their sales of their cars to me.
If buy any, who am I that should
object to being the subject of a vast
and noble social experiment? The
dominant scholastic philosophy Of the
times in America has been the lex
perimentalist" philosophy of Prof
John Dewey, whereby We do things in
order to find out whether they are
moral or not, and the natural in
evitable sequence is that we have the
Rooseveltian 'experimentalist" politics
and economics, whereby we do things
in order to find out in business
whether they make sense or not. 1t
is the spirit of the age, and Mr.. i
Roosevelt is in harmony with it, and
am too old reporter not to know