The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1935-03-05

THE permanence Of NRA rests In the last
analysis upon its necessity.
It's vitality is as persistent as the problem Of
government. relationship to industry. which it
was destined to meet.
While that problem lives. the NRA idea can
not die Until We have solved it. we must look
forward TO working, in one application or an
other with the ideas behind NRA.
What the President has said in his message
| 70 Congress asking for the extension Of NRA's
powers Is, in substance, this: The problem Of
government relationship to industry is too big,
too detailed and too Immediately concrete to be
left 10 the slowly divulged chances Of series
Of court decisions. The interests involved in our
economic life are too great to be abandoned to
the unpredictable outcome Of unregulated COM
petition. The NRA is here-an organized
| functioning reality.
There seems TO be no way for an advanced
industrialism in todays world to escape govern
ment intervention unless industry itself inter-
venes in and takes control Of government. Even
/ then, We should have something which could be
| described by three letters.
If this particular NRA were given up, some
other formula of letters or words would be used
| to describe its successor.
| If government should not intervene somehow
and somewhere to further the great social values
| that have always marked governments justif1ca-
ton and purpose, modern competition would re-
vert to a dog-eat-dog process. NIonopOlieS would
| grow until the only competition We should have
would be between monopolieS themselves. This
war Of numbering giants would end with fearful
! losses. Such writers as John Strachey and Lewis
Corey. in fact, predict that capitalism viii de-
strOy tself in this way. But we do not have to
believe that social democratic governments will
! fail tC keep this from happening, unless We lose
faith in cur own sense Of direction and our own
ability Of self-government
COMMUNISTS offer something they say is
~ better than the struggle of eternal Wig
lance needed to maintain the economic balance
in a truly democratic economy But on the basis
of their evidence, only tiny minority of the
American people has given the Communist argu-
ment credence. FasciSrn offers nothing more than
a fleeing and ultimately destructive solution
Fascism would merely mean the concealment
from the newspapers Of an irrepressible con-
flict.
NRA is the actually existing machinery by
which we are trying to work out a method OF
averting the self-destructive tendencies of an
unrestrained capitalism If we believe. as I do
that some kind of machinery like this must
exist, unless We can find some substitute that is
afhrmatlvely better, there is no alternative but
TO keep our present machinery in existence.
NRA was not created as permanent solution
OF governmental problem. 1t was set up merely
as one OF many emergency devices created to
stop the onrush Of defation and to give meas
VI tCAIIpOAdAy SldDillJy 10 the
tem While, at the same time, it would afford a
laboratory for experimentation with more fun
damental remedies. NRA is a conduit of ap-
proach to the problem of the relationship of
government to industry.
What OF the incOntrovertibe benefits that
have come from NRA? These are the abolition
of child labor, the abolition of uneconomic and
unsocial competition in the reduction of wages
IN the lower brackets the beginnings of a sys-
TEN OF collective bargaining based upon some
sort of a semi judicial process, and the begin
nngS OF system of industrial law designed to
reduce commercial corruption and anti-sociaI
competition within industry
on the other hand, there can be little argu-
ment as to the things NRA has failed to do. 1t
has failed in one of its chief emergency tasks
raising the income of the individual worker
largely because of rise in the cost of living and
the spread Of actual available work to more peo-
pie.
MIRA has taught us that, in some fields at
L least, there are definite limitations upon
what the federal government can do. One of
such limitations arises in connection with the
regulation of service trades. The complexities
involved in the practices of the sO-called service
industries are so great as to make it impossible
to attain for these industries the helpful re-
suits contemplated by the Recovery Act.
The many conflicts and overlappings in the
codes are shortcomings so generally recognized
do " lltcN lAJtle 1neSe, together With
the sheer number of regulations embodied in
the codes, have definitely slowed up business
The uncertainty and caution which they have
instilled in business men have been a def1ation-
airy influence.
These. it seems to me, are the aspects of
NRA where failure, in some degree at least, has
been demonstrated and where the lessons we
have learned have been largely negative.
One Of the greatest services of NRA has
been to afford a tribunal for the airing of those
great controversial issues which have been
smouldering beneath the surface of our indus
trial life for many years.
NRA simply provided forum where differ
enceS could be localized and brought to issue
under rules and regula lions for the orderly con-
duct Of dispute 1t did not prohibit the throw
ing of dead cats; it furnished ring where dead
cats might be thrown. subject to something like
orderly rules.
In the field of conflict between workers and
| employers NRA has offered, and is still offer
ings. a forum for the presentation of two great
controversies.
The first is whether high hourly wage or
some device to insure higher yearly wage best
serves the ultimate interest of employees, en-
ployers and the public; the second is the feast
votes of each state among the persons voted