Exeunt Omnes

Without bothering to take a record vote, the Senate last week passed a resolution to extend NRA, not for two years but only to next April 1, to outlaw code price-fixing in all but mineral natural-resource industries, to exempt from code control "any person whose business is wholly intrastate."

If the House approved the Senate's resolution, it was conceded that it would become a sentence of slow death. For industry would not want to be bothered attending for nine months at the deathbed of an emasculated Eagle.

But if the House did as the President wished--insisted on a two-year extension without emasculation--it appeared that NRA's death might be swifter. For the Senate had passed the nine-months resolution only because Senator Borah and other NRA enemies had agreed to it as a price for not fighting any form of NRA renewal. Said Senator Pat Harrison, Administration whip:

"We have Senators in this body who would filibuster for weeks against a two-year extension. They want to kill the NRA and would jump at the opportunity to delay action until after the date* on which the act automatically comes to an end."

Even better evidence that NRA lay dying came from NRA itself. Donald Richberg gave 1,500 NRA men a pep talk to put down their growing feeling that they had better forget NRA and look for jobs elsewhere. But when Senators called him to account for calling them muddle-heads, he excused himself, saying he felt free to speak, since he himself was planning to quit NRA soon, about July 1. Nor was he alone in that. W. Averell Harriman, NRA Administrative officer, and Sol Rosenblatt, Director of Compliance & Enforcement, were both reported ready to leave on June 16. NRA had apparently come to the Chapter of Exodus.

*June 16.

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