Knoble Experiment

Cliff Knoble was doing all right until January of 1937. A serious young man, he had worked his way up from male stenography via International Correspondence Schools to head a firm of his own. His Business Promotion Corp. had 14 employes, some fairly profitable accounts with Chrysler and other automobile dealers who bought his sales ideas. But when Michigan auto workers went on strike dealers no longer felt like spending money. Soon business for Cliff Knoble dried up. Last week the consequences of Cliff Knoble's personal depression blossomed in a full-page advertisement in the Detroit Free Press:

"I am the Middle Class Citizen.

"... I am the man in the middle."

The pronoun did not refer solely to smart Cliff Knoble. Signer and buyer of the advertisement was The Middle' Class Alliance Inc., composed of small merchants, professional men and upper-salaried white-collar workers who thought they, too, had been caught in the middle. Promoter Knoble placed another full-page advertisement to appear in the Free Press this week, and he hoped to place more if $3 annual dues and contributions flow in properly.

As defined by Promoter Knoble's smoothly professional copy, function of the Alliance is first to collect information about the problems of the middle class and then to DO SOMETHING. What Cliff Knoble proposed to do, first for Detroit and then for other localities, he did not make clear. But the things about which he proposed to do something were made plain: 1) taxes, State and Federal; 2) labor disputes. Major emphasis was on taxation (in an M. C. A. pamphlet, eight of 15 listed objectives deal with reducing Michigan and Federal taxes and expenditures). Excerpts:

". . . Isn't it your tax money that is going to pay these WPA workers? And if it is, what are you getting for your money? ... A square deal for both Capital and Labor--the equalization of responsibility --compulsory arbitration--and the outlawing of 'wildcat' and 'sitdown' strikes. In other words, industrial peace through cooperation."

Last week Promoter Knoble appeared to be doing all right again. Alliance sales headquarters were housed in the same impressive office suite where Business Promotion Corp. still holds forth. Cliff Knoble counts on onlisting 50,000 followers in Detroit. Then, he figures, he will be ready to devise and broadcast his "Messages" for middle-classers everywhere.

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