Man of the Year
(See front cover)
The year 1933 was the fourth in the greatest industrial crisis in history. Standing between an old world that was forever dead and a new world that was not fully born, whom would the discerning and alert U. S. citizen pick as Man of the Year? Notably barren of candidates was the British Commonwealth. Pious Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald's London Economic Conference was a notorious fiasco. In rapid succession, France dealt and discarded three Cabinets in twelve months, produced no leader sufficiently bold or capable to rescue her from the climbing quicksands of insolvency. In Russia Maxim Maximovich Litvinoff was a hero for his success in bringing about . S. recognition of the U. S. S. R., but that country's perennial Man of the Year remained Josef Stalin, whose dictatorship was marked by no major innovation.
After three years of political ups-&-downs, Adolf Hitler at last sat atop the German Totalitarian State, but Hitler lost Man of the Year stature as the result of the wave of international resentment and boycott he fomented by his hysterical anti-Semitic campaign. And Hitlerism had yet to lift Germany from its economic trough. Possibly Italy's Benito Mussolini will be 1934 Man of the Year when his new Corporative State begins to show results.
Another candidate for Man of Next Year is bellicose General Sadao Araki of Japan. But War Minister Araki is not yet Japan's dictator and last week his Emperor became the father of his first son (see p. 15).
Air-minded individuals might pick Italo Balbo, leader of Italy's mass flight to the World's Fair, as the year's outstanding airman. But the Federation Aeronautique Internationale hinted that it would make no award this year, having honored Flyer Balbo once before.
In the field of medicine no young Banting skyrocketed from obscurity with a cancer cure. Geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan of Caltech received a Nobel ' Prize for his studies in the heredity of fruit flies, but Dr. Morgan's reward was the result of research carried on over a period of many years.
Dropping his search in the world field and turning his eyes toward home, the Man-of-the-Year-hunter would discover no likely candidates in the realm of sport. No golfer won more than one big match, and Robert Tyre Jones's record of 1930 (British & U. S. open, British & U. S. amateur) had not been remotely approached. Frank Shields, who was left off the Davis Cup team for his erratic playing, was named No. 1 U. S. tennist, after Ellsworth Vines turned professional. As picked by the Pulitzer Prize judges, Maxwell Anderson's Both Your Houses might be called Play of the Year. However, it developed early trouble at the boxoffice. George M. Cohan's performances in Pigeons & People and Ah Wilderness ranked high at both ends of the season, but represented no zenith to that talented actor's career.
With Little Women, Cinemactress Katharine Hepburn made a place for herself in the film firmament. But Greta Garbo is still America's Swedish Sweetheart.
Among books, best seller was Hervey Allen's 2f-lb. Anthony Adverse, yet this super-romance was a retrogression in literary technique.
As to the nation's financial community, skewered by investigations and hogtied by the Securities Act, Virginia's sardonic Senator Glass articulated a widely-held public estimate when he remarked: "Down in my town not long ago they hanged a banker for marrying a white woman."
As the selection narrowed down, it became plain to the alert U. S. observer that he must choose his Man of the Year from within his Government. Who? No member of the Cabinet, with the debatable ex- ception of busy Secretary of the Interior Ickes, had stood out head and shoulders above his fellows. No Senator, no Representative had glittered individually at the Capitol. In the White House sat Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was Man of the Year in 1932, when the New Deal was new. More popular than the day he won the Presidency, he had lived up to the brightest expectations of the electorate. But he needed no fresh laurels, could well afford to pass them along to an associate. The secret of the New Deal's success lies in the well-known fact that the time to make sociological hay is when, the economic sun is not shining. But four years of hard times did not soften the U. S. industrial order, which had gone its untrammeled way for generations. Given a program, given the political power to legalize it, it nevertheless took a dynamic personality to hammer the mold of "in- dustrial democracy" on to the nation's adamantine industrial life. Such a man had to possess an enormous amount of physical energy. He had to have gusto. He had to be a phrasemaker. He had to be handy with the tools of propaganda. He had to have the ruthless drive of a Cromwell and the tact of a Disraeli In 2,000 A D. there will still be alive hundreds & hundreds of octogenarians to whom the words "chiselers," "codes " crackdown" and "Blue Eagle" will have an historic association. And to them the Man of the Year of 1933 will be National Recovery Administrator Hugh Samuel Johnson. The year was more than one third gone before Man of the Year Johnson burst like a flaming meteorite on the country On May 19 the New York Times first reported that he, "soldier, lawyer and manufacturer," had been offered "almost unlimited powers" under "the pending Industrial Regulation Bill." As administrator of the Wartime Draft General Johnson had enjoyed publicity aplenty, but since then he had been out of sight in the news. After June 16, when the Recovery Act was signed, Man of the Year Johnson's scowl his broad mouth and furrowed brow his pithy epithets, the daily state of his health and temper, made acres of newspictures, miles of news copy every 24 hours. He was not the Administrator of NRA He was NRA. In plotting their common course through the last six months of 1933, future historians will mark well these dates: July 9--The cotton textile code is signed, providing a 40-hr. week, $12 minimum weekly wages, abolishing child labor --the first and still the most satisfactory trade agreement. It was arrived at, said General Johnson, "in a goldfish bowl." July 27--With heavy industry lagging behind in the codification march, the President sends 5,000.000 "re-employment agreements" to 5,000,000 employers of whom 3,000,000 sign. The Blue Eagle is born. "A truce on selfishness, a test of patriotism," cried General Johnson. Aug.5--National Labor Board is created to settle the wave of strikes created by the resurgence of organized Labor. Aug. 19--"The most memorable date in NRA history." It is sweltering in Washington. Since early morning, Administrator Johnson has been toiling with three groups of stubborn industrialists. Just before midnight, when the President is leaving for Hyde Park, General Johnson dashes for the White House. "Three major codes signed!" he cries. "That's a day's work!' Estimated jobs created: lumber, 115,000; steel, 50,000; oil, 240,800. Aug. 27--The automobile business becomes the fifth major industry to be codified. "My one regret," says General Johnson, "is that Henry Ford did not sign." Aug. 31--Dudley Gates of Chicago, Johnson's right hand man for industry, resigns. Mr. Gates believed in vertical unions, rather than the oldstyle horizontal unions of the A. F. of L. Sept. 26--General Johnson retires to a hospital for four days with a boil, rises to fly 17 more codes to Manhattan for the President to sign. Oct. Q--Summer boomlet ends. "Buy Now" campaign is rushed into the breach. Oct. 10--With strikes still pocking the nation from coast to coast, General Johnson warns the A. F. of L. convention: "The plain, stark truth is that you cannot tolerate the strike. . . . Public confidence will turn against you!" First crackdown, on a Gary, Ind. roadhouse proprietor, whose Blue Eagle is recalled. Oct. 12--Weirton Steel strike starts. Oct. 25--Administrator Johnson announces NRA's reorganization into four industrial divisions. A fifth division, compliance, he personally takes in charge. Nov. 17--Steel, pointing to a 32.1% increase in wages, a 28.3% increase in payroll, announces it is "satisfied" with its tentative code, renews it for six months. Dec. 11--Some 150 dry cleaners are haled to Washington for price agreement violations. To the Federal Trade Commission were handed 100 of their cases, NRA's greatest "crackdown." Dec. 13 -- Ninety code administrators appointed in one day. Net Reviewing NRA's first six months, during which General Johnson mustered 1,500,000 volunteer workers and speakers, issued 100,000,000 "pieces of literature," plastered millions of Blue Eagle posters throughout the land, the historian will look to net results as well as dates. When the NRAdministration first settled down in the Department of Commerce Building, it had 87 employes, with a half-month payroll of $6,619,41. NRA now employs 1,555 people, uses 105,000 sq. ft. of office space, meets a $166,608,000 bi-monthly payroll. General Johnson gets $6,000 a year. His secretary, nurse, guardian and constant companion at Washington, in air planes, on trains, at banquets, Frances ("Robbie") Robinson, gets $5,780. When that news got out last month, Man of the Year Johnson hotly announced: "I think that was one below the belt. She knows more about this organization than anyone else. I am sure that nobody here ever thought she was a mere stenographer or secretary. She has been my personal assistant straight through." Not on the payroll is Mrs. Hugh Johnson of the Consumers Board. Son Kilbourne, 26, on leave from the Army, who spells his name with a "t" as his father used to, draws only his 2nd lieutenant's pay ($143 per mo.) as a member of NRA's compliance Board.
Of the 3,000,000 Blue Eagles NRA has issued, only 48 have been revoked. It has fought eight code violators in the courts, has won seven cases. Pending are twelve more. To date 168 codes have been approved. Seventy-five more will be approved by New Year. Man of the Year Johnson believes that he has put 4,000,000 people to work, has upped the national payroll $2,500,000,000 in the past half-year. Last week the President extended his blanket re-employment agreements to May i, but these have lost their importance since 70% of the nation's workers will be covered by regular codes by Jan. 1.
Reception, Whatever the phrase "industrial democracy" may mean, it is the heart of the President's recovery program. As embodied in the NRA, "industrial democracy" no longer terrifies U. S. businessmen. General Johnson's bark has been found to be worse than his bite. Last week William S. Knudsen, executive vice president of General Motors, was happy to say: "General Motors Corp., with the rest of the industry , supports our President's recovery program to the fullest extent. . . . This is final, official and without reservations."
The shift of sentiment toward NRA was brought about in part by Industry's realization that the days of cut-throat competition and laissez faire are over. Few industrialists want them back Many of them would agree with NRA' s Divisional Administrator Arthur Dare White- side, Dun & Bradstreet executive, one of the most experienced practical businessmen in the Administration, who said last week: "It is obvious in retrospect that four years ago this month the old industrial order which existed for generations broke down forever. Today we have set up a new order which has been built on a foundation which I firmly believe will prove indestructible, although I am definitely convinced that it will be necessary to make alterations."
Phrasemaker into Orator. Few Men
of the Year actually achieve intrinsic personal development within the period they dominate. But General Johnson developed from a picturesque phrasemaker. who could throw a highly printable aphorism to the Press while climbing up a Pullman step, into an embroidered and inspiring orator.
"Chiselers," "Old Guard lookout men," and "Rugged Individualists," were his principal targets of attack on his barnstorming trips out of Washington to sell NRA to the country. He can whip almost any audience into a fine frenzy of exaltation for the President's recovery program and, adopting a familiar Wartime trick, can make it appear downright unpatriotic to block NRA's advance. Yet for a man who lives by invective and abuse of his foes, General Johnson is surprisingly thin- skinned to criticism of himself and his cause.
To the National Association of Manufacturers in Manhattan three weeks ago, Man of the Year Johnson, wearing a hard-boiled shirt and expression, even quoted from Tennyson's "Maud" a bit of heroic verse to achieve the desired effect upon his audience:
We have proved we have hearts in a cause,
we are noble still, And myself have awaked, as it seems, to
the better mind: It is better to fight for the good, than to
rail at the ill; I have felt with my native land, I am one
with my kind. . . .
But it was left to the citizens of Atlanta, whither Man of the Year Johnson went on his Southern speaking tour, to hear him in tip-top forensic form:
"The experiment is scarcely begun and yet in the few months of its execution it has produced 25% of the results expected of it. ...
"Away, slight men! You may have been leaders once. You are corporals of disaster now and a safe place for you may be yapping at the flanks but it is not safe to stand obstructing the front of this great army. You might be trampled underfoot -- not knowingly but inadvertently -- be cause of your small stature and of the up lifted glance of a people whose 'eyes have seen the glory' and whose purpose is in tent on the inspired leadership of your neighbor and my friend Franklin Roose velt!"
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