"Good Old Word"

Another Big Business errand last week took President Hoover to the great brown-panelled hall of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce across Lafayette Park from the White House. There under the bright flags of Columbus, DeSoto, Cortez and Cabot waited the 400 of U. S. industry--men like James Augustine Farrell (steel), Charles E. Bockus (coal), Matthew Scott Sloan (power), John G. Lonsdale (banking). Frank A. Seiberling (rubber), Roy Wilson Howard (newspapers), Frederick H. Ecker (insurance), Homer Lenoir Ferguson (shipbuilding). To a man they rose and cheered the President as he began to read them his speech:

"You have been invited to create a temporary organization . . . to counter act the effect of the recent panic in the stockmarket. . . . The cure for such storms is action. . . . No movement to reduce wages. . . . The greatest tool of stability is construction and maintenance work. The improvements and betterments and general cleanup of plants. . . . All of these efforts have one end--to assure employment. . . . A great responsibility rests upon the whole people. I have no desire to preach. I may, however, mention one good old word--work."

Again his auditors rose and cheered as the President, smiling broadly, marched out of the hall. The meeting and his speech rounded out his immediate efforts to put momentum into industry, to mold the mass-mind of business.

Julius Klein, Hoover-trained Assistant Secretary of Commerce, stirred the meeting to loud applause with the next speech:

"The only sound that really counts is the clang of shovels and cash register bells. . . "

The nation is now looking to you business men to get out of the huddle of 'conferences' and play ball. . . . A goodly number of citizens are inclined to be almost disrespectfully skeptical as to the value of committees and resolutions. . . . They are looking for action. . . . Our Christmas trees will have about the usual share of tinsel and electric lights and little crepe. . . ."

The 400 of Big Business reported hopefully the outlook in their own industrial spheres. A committee of 72 was formed under Julius Barnes, board chairman, of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, to survey U. S. business, to develop solutions, to make business line-bucks, the economic end-runs, industrial off-tackle plays, suggested by his fellow Julius. Sample problem: Automobile dealers pressed by manufacturers from above with new cars, overstocked from below with used cars.

Another problem (recited by Dr. Klein): "The small retailer. . . . Most of them may be careless, shortsighted and therefore shortlived (commercially speaking). . . . Admittedly many of them ought not to be in business. . . . In Louisville the costly perils of careless retailing were shown in the fact that 30 grocery stores failed in that city each month and 32 new ones opened up. . . . A recent analysis of the restaurant business in Kansas City showed that of some 1,080 such establishments in 1928, 551 went out of business and almost exactly, the same number of new ones opened up. . . . If the present average turnover period in charge accounts of some 70 days could be shortened to, say, 40 days, the resultant values in saving in interest charges and by general acceleration of business would run into hundreds of millions of dollars."

Out of the mass of generalities at the Washington meeting four specific objectives were set up for all U. S. business:

1) More new-plant construction, public and private; 2) No layoffs; 3) Continued buying of materials; 4) More exports, without dumping.

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