NRActive

In Coolidge times the businessmen who went to the Chamber of Commerce Building in Washington were bigger. The 150 businessmen who visited it in a body last week were piddling small. They did not come of their, own volition. They came on peremptory summons from the NRA for violating in their many little dry-cleaning shops throughout the land their miniscule but racket-infested industry's minimum price agreement (65-c- to 95-c- for cleaning a suit or dress).

Compliance Director William H Davis presided at the hearing. The dry-cleaners were read a decision just handed down in a New Jersey State court, permitting the NRA to enjoin a cleaner from cutting prices, on the grounds that "no citizen has any right in this emergency" to defy his industrial code. Chief plaint heard by the Compliance Director was that cash-&-carry cleaners were required to charge their customers the same rates as call-&-deliver cleaners. In chorus the cash-&-carriers squealed that they were being ruined.

NRA was prepared to review the code's price schedule, but, meantime, violators would be turned over to the Federal Trade Commission unless they promised to go and sin no more against Recovery. On the strength of this combined promise and threat, 50 of the littlest cleaners knuckled under, among them the St. Petersburg, Fla. "pressing-club" proprietor whom Federal Judge Akerman, on a technicality, had exculpated from the charge of "chiseling" the NRA fortnight before (TIME, Dec. 11). Those big enough to have lawyers for the most part did not knuckle under. Hysterically cried one Irving Brukstone, representing Chicago's Sterling Cleaners: "I won't advise my clients to stand by these prices! Bring on your Federal officers! Bring on your trade commissioners! We don't care!''

These protests were still ringing in the air when once again the Blue Eagle loosed a claw full of lightning bolts. They singed a Passaic, N. J. beautician; scorched the owner of the New Deal Cafe in Cincinnati; crackled around five other restaurateurs from Evanston, 111. to Austin, Tex. All were ordered to surrender their NRA insignia. But NRA announced that of 3.000.000 Blue Eagles issued, only 48 had so far been recalled.

Still very much in the saddle in spite of reports that he would soon retire from NRA, ham-handed General Johnson with oldtime cavalry gusto dismissed Pittsburgh's NRAdministrator, John S. Fisher. Mr. Fisher was no mere local booster who had climbed on the Recovery bandwagon, but once (1927-30) Pennsylvania's Republican Governor. He had made a speech in which he criticized NRA for making "no provisions for financing the load of rising costs which it necessarily placed on producer and consumer." When General Johnson heard this he dispatched a curt six-line letter demanding Mr. Fisher's resignation. To reporters, the General snapped: "Sabotage!"'

With the same bold stroke, General Johnson regimented 90 more industries into the march toward Recovery by appointing, on one day, administrators for 90 more codes. Now in effect are 150 codes. Three hundred and seventy-seven more are yet to come. General Johnson makes all his industrial colonels do duty for many codes. The majority of new colonels came from the ranks of the four brigades into which NRA was originated (TIME, Nov. 6). Typical was Ralph Justin Fogg, Manhattan consulting engineer, longtime Lehigh engineering professor who built cantonments and shipyards during the War. Administrator Fogg got automatic sprinklers, concrete masonry, vitrified clay sewer pipes, four other authorities. Another colonel was wiry little Colonel George S. Brady, engineer and Wilsonian trade commissioner.

Far from feeling grouchy toward NRA last week, many a U. S. business found new happiness in code life. Thus, the silk hosierymen notified Washington that their enforced 40-hr. week was piling up an unsold surplus. Right back came an order which, recognizing the industry's seasonal slump, stipulated that silk stockings were to be made throughout the nation only on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. The automotive industry, whose code expires Dec. 31, requested that it be extended to Sept. 1, 1934. Well pleased with NRA was the Synagogue Council of America, which voted the Administration thanks for the five-day week and "the rehabilitation of the Jewish Sabbath."

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