Everybody's Code

Steel men, macaroni men, oil men, broom handle makers, automobile men, string men, copper men, lead pencil men last week waited eagerly to see how the first industrial trade code (of the cotton spinners) was received by General Johnson (see p. 14). Meanwhile they laboriously whipped their own codes into shape. Many a code was thus drafted last week, but held back from the public till the industry had completed its own powwow over the provisions. An exception was the code of the National Retail Dry Goods Association.

Lew Hahn, chairman of Hahn Department Stores, Inc. (with a chain of 27 stores from Tampa to Seattle) sent a lengthy document to department store heads throughout the land. It had been concocted by some of the biggest store-men in the U. S.: Percy Straus of Manhattan's R. H. Macy, Tom May of Los Angeles' May Department Stores, William T. Grant of W. T. Grant Co., Samuel H. Halle of Cleveland's Halle Bros., Dennis F. Kelly of Chicago's The Fair, Earl C. Sams of J. C. Penney, Oscar Webber of Detroit's J. L. Hudson Co., Philip Leboutillier of Best & Co., Herbert J. Tily of Philadelphia's Strawbridge & Clothier, Reagan P. Connally of San Francisco's The Emporium, William L. Walker of Salt Lake City's Zion Co-operative Mercantile Institution.

These gentlemen proposed to their confreres a multilateral agreement:

1) Their employes should have perfect freedom to organize and bargain collectively.

2) Except for two weeks before Christmas and two days a year for taking inventory, their employes (exclusive of executives) should not work more than a maximum of 48 hours a week.

3) The minimum weekly wage for employes should be:

In Cities Over 1,000,000 In Cities of 250,000 to 1,000,000 In Cities Under 250,000 Male $18 $15 $12 Female 12 11 10 Apprentices 11 10 9

4) No store should sell or advertise goods for less than 10% above net invoice cost (to insure a minimum margin for labor costs) except for seasonal clearance sales, or for damaged or perishable goods.

5) No advertising should make reference to the goods, service or prices of competitors or lay claim to a general policy of underselling competitors.

6) No store should sell any prison-made goods. Such was the document which Lew Hahn dispatched with a long letter of explanation, apologizing not once but several times because under the law "certain things are mandatory. . . . We can do nothing but fall in line. . . . We are required to establish a minimum wage. . . ."--The last underlined.

All told, no less than 18,000 trade associations have existed in the U. S. In other days they arranged group advertising, sometimes arbitrated disputes between producers and distributors, some-times arranged exchanges of information or undertook research. Not one association in a thousand handled labor disputes, none dared touch questions of competition (for fear of the anti-trust laws) except by promulgating vague codes of ethics enforcible by talk. As a class: thoroughly impotent.

Last week the members of such associations were staying up nights trying to figure out industrial codes, sitting in hotel rooms in their shirt sleeves, sweating and listening to endless argument. Often before they had subscribed to moral codes of Mosaic simplicity for their own guidance ("Thou shall not steal thy neighbor's trademark . . . honor thy promises to pay" etc.) but never before had they been ordered to write detailed laws for the complex machinery of modern business laws to be enforced. Moses himself, with all his legislative experience, would have had to make a second ascent of Mt. Sinai before attempting such a task.

Last week with the trade code of the National Lumber Manufacturers Association nearing completion, the Department of Agriculture was listening to the forestry proposals of Ward Shepard, expert of the Carl Schurz Foundation. Forestry is an integral part of the New Deal, as dear to the heart of Franklin as it was to Theodore Roosevelt. Already the Government has taken steps to hire 300,000 forest workers. The idea under discussion last week was to get lumbermen to take better care of private forests, not to denude forested lands but cut only the biggest trees, keep others growing constantly. Object: to give permanent employment to 2,000,000 men. What would be the effect on lumber and paper prices of adding 2,000,000 men to the industry's payroll was not disclosed but talk was of a Federal Forest Loan Bank, of Forest Marketing Cooperatives.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.