Batteryman

Not since he bucked the lines of Penn as fullback on Cornell's football team of 1900 had Fred Perkins known the heady excitement of the past six months. Gallingly hard and obscure to a onetime football hero had been the years between. Most of his college mates including Standard Oil's Walter C. Teagle and Publisher Frank Gannett lately heard of him for the first time in more than 30 years as Fred Perkins prepared to buck the mighty line of the New Deal.

Around York, Pa. big, ruddy, hairy-fisted Fred Perkins has a first-rate reputation for honesty and industry.

He divorced his first wife in 1918, gave her all his property. Ten years ago, aged 46, he had only a knowledge of storage batteries and $10 in cash to show for the 24 years since he left Cornell. Somehow he managed to get hold of a second-hand Ford sedan, started repairing the lighting batteries of "Pennsylvania Dutch" farmers around York. Nights he slept in his Ford. In time he saved enough money to put up a frame shed behind his brick house in York, began manufacturing a battery with some features of his own invention. As neighboring farmers got to using his batteries, he built a few more sheds. At the peak of his manufacturing career he had about 20 men working for him. But he was not getting rich. This year he reported for income tax a 1933 net profit of $2,531. Even though supporting a second wife and three adopted children, he put some of that profit back into his battery business.

A jolt to Fred Perkins was the coming of the Blue Eagle. The code for his industry set minimum wages of 40-c- per hour. He was down to ten employes, paying them 20-c- per hour. He upped that to 25-c-, opened his books to show he could not pay more and stay in business. Refusing to sign the code, he applied to NRA for exemption, was turned down. But Fred Perkins did not feel like shutting up shop. His men were willing to go along with him until he could afford to pay them more.

Though he sells only between 300 and 600 batteries per year, Fred Perkins blames what happened last June on the desire of big competitors to squeeze him out. On their complaint the U. S. clapped him into jail on charges of code violation. Unable to post a $5,000 bond, he stayed there for 18 days until a sympathetic townsman bailed him out. But already Fred Perkins had started a campaign to make himself the Dred Scott of the New Deal. From his cell he broadcast appeals to famed foes of NRA. He had himself photographed behind the bars, sent a copy to his college fraternity (Phi Gamma Delta) brother, Donald Randall Richberg. Newspapers took up his cause. Pundits Frank Kent and Mark Sullivan did indignant pieces about it. Clarence Darrow, ex-Senator James A. Reed and Senator David A. Reed expressed sympathy. Gradually Fred Perkins began to loom up as a symbol of all little businessmen in all the little towns of the country who found life under the Blue Eagle insufferable.

Last week in U. S. District Court at Harrisburg, Pa. the trial of Fred Perkins as a code violator began. The Government had had it postponed--because, Defendant Perkins loudly charged, it was afraid to have the case come up before the November elections. On eleven counts Fred Perkins was charged with violating the wage provisions of his industry's code. If convicted he was liable to a fine of $500 on each count for every business day since the code's enactment on Oct. 16, 1933. Clarence Darrow begged off representing Fred Perkins, but Harold B. Beitler, one-time president of the Pennsylvania Bar Association, volunteered his services free of charge. From Washington, NRA sent a staff headed by its Assistant Counsel Meyer Turin to back up the U. S. Attorney.

The Government was interested only in proving that Fred Perkins had engaged in interstate commerce since the battery code took effect. Fred Perkins was content to deny such activity. Quickly found for the jury were seven men, five women who had no fixed opinion about NRA or the Code of Fair Competition for the Electric Storage and Wet Primary Battery Industry. The Government proceeded to put before them a flood of bills of lading, shippers' receipts, waybills, arrival slips supported by the testimony of station agents, truck drivers, freight clerks to show that Fred Perkins had bought materials, sold his batteries outside Pennsylvania. Farmers in New York, Virginia and North Carolina told of buying batteries from Perkins' agents. Fred Perkins privately assured his friends that he had sold those batteries in York to independent distributors. But a onetime Perkins salesman testified that he had sold batteries "on time" to Southern farmers directly for Fred Perkins.

After experts had testified to the need for a battery code and Perkins employes to their low wages, the Government rested its case. Then & there, to his great surprise and dismay, Fred Perkins discovered that he was not a star fullback but only the football in his attorney's game against NRA. Lawyer Beitler announced that the defense would present no testimony whatever. The Government had not proved its case, he declared, so no rebuttal was necessary. But most observers agreed that Lawyer Beitler simply wanted to hurry the case up to a higher court before opening constitutional fire on NRA. The jury obliged him with a prompt verdict of guilty.

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