Junkmen

No ordinary Ned-raising business convention was the 22nd annual meeting of the National Association of Waste Material Dealers in Chicago last week. "Our industry today is a profitless business," warned Chairman Louis Lippa gravely. "We've got to do something about it or else close up shop." More than 1,000 waste paper dealers, brokers in rags, old rails, cracked stoves, rusty boilers and smashed automobiles, listened soberly to his plan and found it good: let junkmen junk their NRA code. "We are making the first move to withdraw from the code authority," said Chairman Lippa. "The code has not served any useful purpose."

Up rose one delegate to deplore the rapidly growing automobile graveyards in vacant lots and prairies. "There's no profit nowadays in buying this junk," said he. "The cost of labor in removing the stuff would be greater than any profit you could get out of it. ... And besides there's not enough demand for this kind of material." Another delegate admitted, however, that Japan, biggest buyer of U. S. scrap (TIME, March 11), was now buying 400 tons of scrap aluminum a month. "They can use this material for making fuse caps," said he.

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