Evening star., 1934-08-26
GEN. JOHNSON'S ROMANTIC
SIDE APPEARS In N. r. A.
Most Rugged Individualist in U. S.
Denies He Is Taking America
Toward Fascism.

johnson has been curious. The gen.
eral did not invent it, really. True,
preceding Mr. Roosevelt's administra-
ton, during the presidential campaign
of 1882, the general sold" Mr.. Roose-
welt an idea which was not N. r. A,
but parallel to some aspects of it.
N. r. A. was really brought about
by big business. In April of 1888, when
things we're at their worst, big business
came down to Washington to plead
that the new administration save them
from themselves. They feared a Pc
riod of reduced consumption and they
feared cut-throat competition with
each other. They asked for N. r. A.;
they cried for it, they sobbed for it.
What big business wanted was i'm
munity from the antitrust laws. the
privilege of making agreements among
themselves about prices and competi-
tive practices, for which, under the
antitrust laws, they would be sub
ject to jail.
Once the N. r. A. statute got into
Congress things happened to 1t that
big business had not expected. Among
others 1t was argued, reasonably, that
If business should be allowed to COM
bine, so also should labor. Thus arose
the famous section la, giving labor
the right to collective bargaining. BY
this time or little later, big busi-
ness, now little recovered from their
panic, began to say they had been
led into a trap, that immunity from
the antitrust laws had been merely
the bait which lured them into in
creased rights for organized labor ac-
companied by drastic Government
supervision. But they were not lured
and there was no trap-except what
their own panicky self-interest had
laid for them.
Loses Much of Immunity.
After year and a quarter, what
has taken place? Gradually big busi-
ness has lost much of the promised
immunity from the antitrust laws
and is likely to lose more yet. Whole
areas of N r. A. which permitted or
required fixing of prices and other
monopolistic practices, or agreements
to restrain competition, have been
Topped off.
Meanwhile what has happened to
the labor part of N. r. A? It has
grown and is today growing. Most of
the recent strikes have arisen out of
the labor section of N. r. A. New in
stitutions set up in connection with
N. r. A. tend to make it easier to
win strikes.
Labor is getting more and more
out of N. r. A; big business getting
less and less. The first industry to
adopt a code was cotton textiles and
cotton textiles was at first quite
happy. 1t had been an overexpanded
industry, subject to extreme internal
competition. And the code enabled
them to save themselves from each
other. In the cotton code no one
can set up new loom without first
getting consent from his competitors
All this has been pleasing to cotton
textiles-but now the textile industry
is faced with a strike.
Big Business Keeps N. r. A. Alive.
Although big business is somewhat
diSillusioned, it still remains true that
the element that helps most toward
keeping N. r. A. alive is big business.
If big business would reject it, reject
all of it and reject it whole-heartedly,
N. r. A. would probably cease to exist.
Little business, almost universally,
does not want it. Farmers do not
like N. r. A. because they think, cor
rectly. that it raises the prices of what
they must buy. Labor, in spite of its
benefiting from NJ r. A., does not
really like it. The old-time labor
leaders are suspicious of N. r. A. be-
cause they shrewdly see it tends
toward an organization of society in
which the leadership of labor will be
provided, not by the union leaders,
but by Government, by politicians.
Labor will look for help to, and pay
its loyalty to, not the unions nor
the union leaders. but the Govern
ment. And the younger and more
radical leaders of labor don't like
N. r. A. because they think that, as
now set up, N. r. A. stands in the
way of the workers world" which
the radicals aspire to.
~ R. A. would go over the dam If
big business did not hold on to it.
I am not sure but it may be going
"out" anyhow. 1t comes to the end
of its statutory life June 16 next;
the Congress that will be elected in
November must either renew N. r. A.
or let it die.
Copyright 1934)