Six and Six

President Roosevelt, after taking counsel with his Cabinet, last week picked the six members from his executive branches who will sit with six from Congress on the potent temporary National Economic Committee, better known as the Monopoly Investigation (TIME, June 20). Because the President originally asked for an all-executive committee, because Congress kept control of only one-fifth of the $500,000 expense money it voted, and because of the six Congress members at least one, Representative Eicher of Iowa, is an Administration wheelhorse, the six executives will doubtless dominate the committee's policy. Significantly, not the President but his trust-busting Solicitor General Robert Houghwout Jackson announced the names:

Treasury Department--Chief General Counsel Herman Oliphant. (Alternate: Rear Admiral Christian Joy Peoples, Director of the Procurement Division.)

Department of Justice--Assistant Attorney-General Thurman Arnold.

Department of Labor--Commissioner of Statistics Isador Lubin.

Department of Commerce--Assistant Secretary Richard C. Patterson Jr.

Federal Trade Commission--Garland Ferguson Jr. (Alternate: Ewin L. Davis.)

Securities & Exchange Commission-- Jerome Frank. (Alternate: William O. Douglas.)

Titular chairman of the Committee is Wyoming's hardworking Senator Joseph C. O'Mahoney, whose efforts to modernize the anti-trust laws endeared him to Franklin Roosevelt (and earned him sufferance for fighting the President's Supreme Court plan). Beside Chairman O'Mahoney will sit his antimonopolist colleague, Senator Borah of Idaho, and Utah's colorless, querulous old Senator King. The House members, besides Mr. Eicher, are fiery Hatton Sumners of Texas, sophisticated Brazilla Carroll Reece of Tennessee (Republican).

While businessmen waited for the Committee's first move, probably into U. S. Steel in September, Chairman O'Mahoney tried to reassure them that, so far as he was concerned, the inquiry would be no witch hunt, no kangaroo court. Said he: "I think most people, regardless of their economic views, realize that we have gone into a new era and that we have to find some new rules. But I think they want to go about the job without resorting to punitive tactics. . . . It is a question whether the educated opinion of the American people can preserve democracy in Government and business."

On Chairman O'Mahoney's mind are such questions as:

P: Why should Delaware charter corporations who do their business thousands of miles from Delaware?

P: In some corporations there are more stockholders than there are inhabitants of Wyoming. Are these stockholders' interests protected, their officers under sufficient legal control?

P: If States can charter and regulate corporations why, in view of the giant size of some, should the U. S. Government not charter and regulate them in interstate commerce?

A bill to do precisely that is the joint pet project of Senators O'Mahoney and Borah. Regardless of what else may result from the inquiry, their bill's eventual passage by Congress seems sure. But, as astute Columnist Raymond Clapper last week observed: "His struggle will not be to get the measure through, but to prevent some of the extreme New Dealers from loading it with more executive discretionary power than he wishes to allow."

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