Midway Man

Midway Man "It is fully expected that the Congress will shortly pass a new act extending the life of NRA with certain modifications and additions."

So said Franklin Roosevelt last week. It was a simple declaration of well-known fact. Yet on the surface it had all the earmarks of a political fantasy.

Why should any such thing happen? Labor has called NRA a snare and delusion. General Johnson called it a dead dodo. As a Recovery measure New Dealers have privately admitted it is a flop. Untold manufacturers kick about its theory and its practice. The case of Fred Perkins was a shrill public indictment. The success of its enforcement is compared to that of Prohibition. Certain Senators seize every opportunity to denounce it as an oppressor of honest business. Its advocates are few and its critics many. How can its renewal be a certainty or even a possibility?

Roosevelt's Reasons. Obviously the biggest single factor in NRA's renewal is that Franklin Roosevelt wants it renewed. As a parent it would certainly pain him to see the favorite Recovery child of his Administration die a death of legal limitation --especially after he has so often praised it for abolishing child labor. But it is dear to him for other reasons as well. He promised the U. S. a new order, social and economic. Most of his Administration's acts have not, however, attempted to set up such an order but rather to repair the old order, to rebalance what was out of balance, to rescue isolated groups from distress. But NRA alone, conceived principally as a Recovery measure, was a man-sized attempt to produce a new social and economic order, affecting everyone's method of earning a living. Under AAA and FERA farmers and the unemployed discarded old cards and drew new ones from the same old political pack. Only under NRA was the old pack thrown away and a brand new one brought forth. From it alone was dealt a completely new set of rights, rules and institutions to all industry and labor.

Accomplished Fact. Conversely, a thing which made it hard for any New Dealer to consider scrapping NRA was that it was an accomplished fact, huge and substantial. In Herbert Hoover's Department of Commerce Building it rambles through a vast suite of offices. In the seat where Hugh Johnson once sat alone, now sits the National Industrial Recovery Board with S. Clay Williams as its chairman. Beside him sit his four horsemen: Leon C. Marshall, political economist; Arthur D. Whiteside, executive of Dun & Bradstreet; Sidney Hillman, labor executive; Walton H. Hamilton, lawyer and economist--a potent team whose days are given to wrestling with economic problems, with captains of industry and leaders of labor. Chairman Williams' administrative officer is William Averell Harriman, son of Capitalism, who has made more of a mark in NRA than he made in business. Four thousand underlings post over land and sea or sit at desks doing their bidding. Day by day NIRB turns out reams of decisions and orders which, for affected industries, have all the authority of substantive law. In every city, town and hamlet NRA's viceroys, the code authorities, govern as best they can. The 1,400 mills of the cotton textile industry, employing half a million workers, which for years had known no law but strife, now all obey one law in regard to hours, wages, production. To other industries, such as automobiles, the change may make less difference, but it is law of a kind and its potentialities are vast. In short NRA is an operating--if far from smoothly operating--social institution, nationwide, and no such institution can be easily dismantled.

Vested Interests. If criticism of NRA made it difficult for the President to ask its renewal, nonetheless the criticism following a decision to scrap NRA would have been more troublesome still. For NRA as a going institution already has its vested interests. Labor leaders may be bitterly disappointed by the results that followed NRA's promise of collective bargaining but many of them still hold to their belief that they can turn it to account. As long as NRA exists they sooner or later may win the right to write their own ticket for the complete unionization of industry. If NRA expires that source of hope expires with it. To them NRA may be no forward step but the liquidation of NRA would be a backward step which they could not forgive.

The others in the group of vested interests are for the most part those businessmen who are the most inveterate opponents of labor. They believe that if left to themselves they could turn the suspension of the anti-trust laws to profitable account. They also want to write their own ticket--fix prices, suppress competition, even deal as they like with labor. "Give us the privileges for which we bargained," they insist, "or we cannot be expected to give the U. S. the benefits of prosperity."

Balance. When Franklin Roosevelt cast up accounts and definitely decided upon NRA's renewal, he had no easy task to decide on the form renewal should take. To surrender to either group of vested interests would have made enemies of the other. In addition he had a third group to satisfy, businessmen who believe that if a business writes its own ticket it will soon bankrupt the economic railroad on which it is traveling. What good, they ask, does it do a business to fix prices or restrict production if high prices ruin its market?

Thus the President sat at his desk last week balancing the good against the bad, the hopeful against the hopeless. As he came to his conclusions and put the finishing touches to his message to Congress for NRA's renewal, he was painfully aware that he was about to set off a fresh batch of oratorical pinwheels and skyrockets at the Capitol. Congressmen had not had a good rousing debate on NRA for more than a year and practically every member was spoiling to take the floor and fulminate on some minor grievance of NRA Administration within his district. There would be much noise, the President knew, and some light--but NRA would undoubtedly be renewed just about as the President wanted it.

Camel Man. Biggest asset that Franklin Roosevelt had in planning his renewal of NRA was his possession of a good midway man, Samuel Clay Williams, midway man in NRA theory, midway man (presumably) in NRA history. The one-man rule of this New Deal experiment ended with the resignation of General Johnson. It may return again to replace the present board-rule whenever President Roosevelt can find his man.

In 1933 Clay Williams first went up from North Carolina to deal with the New Deal on behalf of the tobacco business. He was a powerfully-formed, slow-spoken man of Scotch-Irish ancestry, born in Iredell County, part of Representative Bob Doughton's Congressional district. As a young lawyer he was picked by the late Richard J. Reynolds and brought up in the tradition of the company that makes Camels: a company in which every director is a salaried officer and gets down to the plant in the morning at the same hour as the men. That tradition does not make spectacular executives. Mr. Williams in due time became president of Reynolds Tobacco, had a 1,800-acre farm with blooded cattle down on the Yadkin River and got to work at 7:30 in the morning. But neither did that life blight his ability. When he paid his first visits to Washington in 1933 he went as the representative of the hard-headed big four cigaret makers with the job of getting a "re-employment agreement" (i. e. preliminary code) that suited them. He got a code that specified not a minimum but an average wage, and he got it without fireworks and without making enemies except in the labor camp. In fact he made decided friends of Hugh Johnson, Donald Richberg and Daniel Roper. He also got along very well with Franklin Roosevelt--over the package of Camels on the President's desk (see p. 16).

When the New Deal wanted to invite the co-operation of hardboiled businessmen, its friendliest thoughts were of him. Secretary Roper made him head of his Business Advisory & Planning Council. And when the President wanted someone to step into General Johnson's shoes, Clay Williams was the answer. He came at 95-c- a year ($1 after April i) and began getting down to NRA headquarters at 7:30 in the morning. He still does. At breakfast, lunch and dinner, he goes out to eat with businessmen who have kicks against NRA--it is against his rules to be interrupted by callers or telephones during office hours. Otherwise he is not seen around Washington. So far as he is concerned he is simply there for a job, to clean up the administrative mess at NRA.

Thus S. Clay Williams is not a New Dealer but a businessman--a tobacco man --but he is a useful New Deal adjunct. His fellow board members know perfectly well that he is on the side of business-- which is part of his usefulness at a time when the Administration is trying to win the confidence of business. Because of his open taking of sides in the Recovery Board's debates, it was at one point suggested that he resign the gavel to the Board's Executive Secretary Leon Marshall--which he did. During the discussions of the recently adopted cigaret code he did not try to be impartial, simply withdrew from the meetings when the subject came up.

But to Franklin Roosevelt he is a valuable midway man: to bring order out of the NRA's adolescent chaos, to bring it peace instead of contention in the public prints. For Clay Williams has not the temperament to promote stormy scenes and he never has anything of importance to say to the Press. What he has to say he says at the White House himself or sends word by Donald Richberg. He is valued also as a midway man on NRA theory. The index of cigaret consumption fluctuates with every economic curve--and the industry meets fluctuations by flexing not by fixing prices. S. Clay Williams is accordingly no price- fixer. Recently NRA surveyed 23 industries and came to the conclusion that those which had maintained their prices had bad employment records compared to those which had flexed prices. As a price-flexer Mr. Williams favors uniform minimum wages as tending to stabilize costs, hence competition.

To the question: "Is it oriole, redbird or bluebird, or some strange, un-Auduboned new bird?" S. Clay Williams favors an NRA of neutral color with no spectacular plumage. That makes him a considerable asset to the New Deal. For when the shooting begins over the form of NRA's renewal, a neutral bird will be the poorest target.

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