RECOVERY - Rivets for Coal

Rivets for Coal

Henry Ford continued to stay in the nation's headlines by doing nothing at all last week. As a "rugged individualist" he persisted in holding out against "robust collectivism" in the form of the NRA automobile code. He puttered around his northern Michigan camp, gave no inkling of his intentions, sneaked back to Detroit in the rear of a canvas-sided auto trailer. His friends said he was more concerned with his health than with the Blue Eagle. His critics called him a stubborn old codger who had never learned to cooperate with anyone.

Wages of about 25% of the 40,000 Ford factory employes were last week scaled up from a $4 per day minimum to $4.80. Outsiders thought the increase was Mr. Ford's first move to go his industry's code one better. Insiders declared it was all part of an old wage-upping program.

To bargain collectively with a boss who has always fought unionism, 538 employes at the Ford assembly plant at Edgewater,

N. J. got an American Federation of Labor charter for Local No. 18,613 of United Automobile Workers Association. Samuel Untermyer, famed Jewish lawyer, charged Mr. Ford, onetime Jew-baiter, with being a covert contributor to Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic campaign. This charge Mr. Ford denied many weeks ago. Mr. Untermyer's excuse for reviving it was the recent return of the ex-Kaiser's grandson, Prince Louis Ferdinand von Hohenzollern, to his job as a Ford salesman in Detroit. Detroit's Father Charles Edward Coughlin, Roman Catholic radiorator, defended his fellow townsman as "as good an American as anyone." More important were the views of Recovery Administrator Johnson: "It's Ford's move. Probably he won't violate the auto code. If he does. I'll have to do something . . . but I haven't seen enough indication of violation to start an inquisitorial process. In one sense Mr. Ford has put himself athwart this whole movement. I couldn't allow a man as big as that to stand out and defy the Government. I'd have to make a showdown." But General Johnson was too busy trying to club the soft coal industry under a code to press for a showdown with Mr. Ford. Coal was the last major industry to balk at NRA control. Non-union operators were profanely intransigent. United Mine Workers were doggedly persistent. Their conferences, their fights, their deadlocks ceased long ago to be news. Calling both sides to the White House, President Roosevelt had told them that their industry was causing the Government more trouble than the Cuban crisis. By last week General Johnson's patience was at an end. He suddenly flipped out a bituminous code of his own making, slapped it down before the operators. Said he: "You've got to take it or I'll give it to you." Operators might file objections, make one last public protest this week. After that NRA would steamroller them into compliance. The Johnson coal code provided for: 1) an average 36-hr. week; 2) an 8-hr. day; 3) a basic wage for 15 mining areas ranging from $3 per day in Alabama through $4.60 in Pennsylvania to $5.63 in Montana; 4) collective bargaining without qualifications as to merit or efficiency;* 5) compulsory NRA arbitration to outlaw strikes for six months; 6) a price-fixing agency which might raise coal to $2 per ton; 7) no child labor; 8) no payment of wages in company scrip, no forced dealings with company stores, no forced living in company houses. United Mine Workers were ready to accept the Johnson code, despite its provision that non-members could still he employed. U. M. W. contended that its complete unionization of the industry made this provision an empty legal formality. Violent objections to the NRA code immediately arose from the operators, particularly those of the Appalachian and Alabama regions. General Johnson was lunching one day at the Occidental Restaurant when he was handed a letter from the operators' camp. He glanced through it, crumpled it up, hurled it to the floor, went into a "Blue Eagle rage." Amid a barrage of public profanity, he exclaimed: "That letter is an insult to the President of the United States! I'll be damned if I'll receive it!" Later when he cooled off somewhat he called the operators to his office, gave them a severe tongue-lashing.

Next day Cleveland's Frank Taplin, famed union mine operator who wants a U. M. W. code, called on Administrator Johnson, declared: "General, you're letting that gang of non-union Appalachian operators make a sucker out of you." Rapped back General Johnson: "You wouldn't think so if you knew what I told them yesterday."

Protests flowed in to General Johnson's desk, which he keeps bare as a ballroom floor at all times. The Alabama crowd wailed that NRA's illegal socialization of the industry would ruin them. The Appalachian operators stormed violently against unionization, restrictions on company stores and houses, prohibition of child labor. Others criticized the pay differentials between various districts. They pointed out, for example, that nothing but the Ohio River separated Western Kentucky's $3.84 per day scale and Illinois' $5. Having listened to such talk for six weeks, General Johnson was unmoved. With the law and the President behind him, he was supremely confident of riveting a coal code on the industry this week.

*Last week General Johnson admitted that he had let the "merit" provision on labor go into the automobile code "in an unguarded moment," declared he would bar it from all others.

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