Evening star., 1935-04-18

has brought some harm and some Of
the harm is avoidable. The little
fellow has suffered from having to
pay higher wages, but he has bene-
flied by being preserved. To the ex-
tent that he has been hurt by bad
administration we must cure that
Would Aid Labor Further.
Labor has been immensely helped.
1t has been hurt by not getting the
benefit intended by section Z (A). We
should cure that.
"The consumer has been helped by
being given the power to consume at
all. He was on the verge of losing 1t.
"On the whole my conclusion is
clean up N. r. A.-don't destroy it.
Let us scrub our infant offspring
vigorously, but let us not throw the
baby down the drain pipe with the
dirty water"
Defending the fair practice pro-
visions of the codes against charges
that they created monopoly, johnson
said something of this nature was
necessary to make 1t possible for in
dustry to accept minimum standards
on wages and maximum hours.
He contended fair trade practice
control could not be restricted to the
natural resource industries.
THE extent to which you need fair
trade practices to protect wage sched-
uleS is not q question Of natural re-
source or processing or even selling"
he said 1T is a question OF the cir
cumstance of each particular case in
every field Of commerce and industry.
I'VE can not consider destroying N.
R. A., promulgating naked hours
and wages law, and setting the anti
trust acts to work on the chaos thus
created, unless you are willing to
countenance repetition Of the deadly
lethargy toward effective control Of
our economic system of the past quar-
Ter century, with its ensuing deStruc-
tion of employment and small enter
prise, and of every safeguard that JUS
titles the existence and expense of
national Government"
Sees Theories Outmoded.
Discussing whether N. R. A. should
attempt regulation within a State,
johnson said I'VE are faced by a new
condition that transcends any legal
theory" N. r. A., he added, taught
beyond question that John Marshall
was right when he said In commerce
we are one people -.
The former administrator said he
had no doubt the courts would uphold
the Government in regulating COM
merce within a State, and that "the
only question Is a practical one; how
far it should 60 in doing So"
He conceded there would be great
difficulty in carrying regulation into
the small service industries. He said
it was one of the greatest mistakes"
of N, r. A. to have attempted to do
SO.
1T has been demonstrated that
these trades are not practically ad-
ministrable by national code" john
son said. But the wages and hours
provision might be enforced therein
by a revivified Blue Eagle. Trade
practice agreements can be approved
and administered on a local basis only
and should have the full support Of
State legislation and State agencies.
MY answer to my own question is
that N. R. A. should attempt intra-
state regulation through codes wher-
ever it is clearly necessary to protect
interstate commerce and not other
wise, and that 1t Is not so necessary
in service industries"
Price-Fixing "Bugaboo."
johnson said price fixing under N.
r. A. is just big bugaboo." He as
serted only nine codes contained any
provisions for price fixing or rate con-
troll.
AS for the basing point price sys-
tenn in the steel industry, which N. r.
A. critics have attacked as one of the
most vicious kinds of price fixing,
johnson said it was practised in the
industry long before N. r. A.
II have always condemned it," he
testified. "The first thing did when
I took over big industrial COM
pany was to abolish it. But you can't
do that in Government-by flat
after you have sat twhdling your
thumbs for 81 years, as the Federal
Trade Commission has, and allowed
titanic industrial clusters to be built
up on that basis"
johnson contended the antitrust
laws must be made to accommodate"
regulation of industry for the proteC
ton of labor and the outlawry of
unfair competition.
This, he said, could not be done by
"any fiat statutory provision" In
stead, johnson contended some ad-
ministrative agency must be set up
to "see that in their relaxation the