Back to Work

As 3,000 members of the National Association of Manufacturers gathered for their annual meeting in Manhattan's Hotel Waldorf-Astoria last week, most of them were sure of the No. 1 bellyache of U.S. industry. It was inflation, complicated by a new round of union wage demands, and most of the NAMsters agreed on the cure put forth by General Motors' C. E. Wilson. Said he: the 40-hour week must go, at least temporarily.

The nation's problem, said Wilson, was fundamentally "to produce more"--but not at all costs. "Any attempt to raise wage rates faster than the actual increase in hourly productivity," he said, "will only add to further inflation." Rationing and price controls would not increase the supply of goods. They "tend to reduce production" in some lines. The only answer, Wilson declared, was to abolish the 40-hour week, "a heritage of the days of planned scarcity. All of us," said he, "must work longer and harder if we are to achieve the postwar standard of living that we dreamed of during the war."

Some of the blame for inflation, said retiring N.A.M. President Earl Bunting, must be borne by industry. There had been unjustified price rises by some businessmen. "I don't think our hands are too clean," he added.

The N.A.M. put forth its own anti-inflation program with a plea to management to redouble its "efforts to increase production, lower unit costs, and pass on the benefits of such increased productivity to the public." It asked union labor to show restraint.

The association endorsed aid to Europe, but with the prohibitive condition that the U.S. insist that foreign nations, in effect, adopt an uncontrolled, free-enterprise system before they get any aid.

The N.A.M. also called on the Government to:

P: Cut its spending to the bone. (The bone, as the N.A.M. figures it, would be a budget of $31 billion for 1948-49--some $6.5 billion below the current budget.)

P: Provide funds for further capital investment by "an immediate and substantial reduction" of taxes. (Under the N.A.M.'s detailed plan for such cuts, they would range from a minimum of 40% across the board to a maximum 60% on the lowest incomes.)

P: End U.S. Treasury pressure on corporations to distribute 70% of their profits as dividends, thus encouraging management "to plow back earnings and increase output."

P: Tighten up on inflationary bank credit by dropping the Administration's cheap money policy and letting interest rates rise.

To promote this program, N.A.M. chose as its 1948 president Morris Sayre, 62, the tall, mild-looking president of giant Corn Products Refining Co. Like many another top NAMster, Sayre started his career at the bottom. After graduating from the University of Richmond and Lehigh University, Sayre went to work for Corn Products in 1908 as a $75-a-month boiler washer. He climbed the ladder rung by rung and never lost his modesty on the way. He likes to keep his door open to any one of his 5,000 employees who has a complaint or an idea.

At his first press conference, Sayre gave a little homily drawn from his own career. Recalling that he was of New England Puritan stock, he said: "We could use a lot of the Puritan precepts right now, particularly that of work." More productivity--as distinguished from more production--was a big part of the answer to inflation. Said he: "I don't believe any of us are working as hard as we can or ought to under the circumstances."

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