Waldorf Conversion

In the grand ballroom of Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel last week took place the year's most spectacular conversion. Having assimilated last month's election returns, 1,800 high-powered U. S. citizens convened for the 41st annual meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers. Loudly they declared that henceforth their aims and those of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal were to be one & the same.

When U. S. bankers made their peace with the Administration in 1934, the manufacturers stepped into the breach, became the President's most violent non-political detractors. That the Nation's industrialists were now going to "cooperate" with the White House if it killed them was manifest from the quantity and quality of NAM members' pacific protestations.

"Industry must accept its responsibility for the national welfare as being an even higher duty than the successful operation of private business," keynoted Colby Mitchell Chester, chairman of General Foods and NAM's present president.

From President George Houk Mead of Mead Corp. (paper), who learned about politics as chairman of Secretary of Commerce Roper's Business Advisory Council came three "conclusions" which would have sounded like heresy or horseplay at NAM's meeting last year: "First--that politics is a highly-developed and honorable profession. . . . Second--that it is the obligation of industrial and business executives, as part of their daily work, to give time and consideration to the government of community, state and nation. . . . Third --that Government representatives . . . are giving untiring, conscientious effort to most difficult tasks. . . ."

Converted President Lewis H. Brown of Johns-Manville Corp. thumped for a "wider appreciation and understanding of the social responsibilities of business." It was up to industry, said Mr. Brown, to help supply what the U. S. wanted-- "work, more money, still more leisure, security against unemployment now and against poverty in old age, and more and better goods at lower prices."

Steelman Ernest Tener Weir, also throbbing with the spirit of reform, spoke warmly if tritely for redistribution of wealth: "Demand can be increased not only by increase in total national income, but also by distribution of the increase through the whole population. . . . Wage increases or investment returns that are paid solely through price increases are only apparent gains. ... It is probable that work on this problem will indicate that special attention should be given the low-income groups. This would have human value because these groups are most in need."

In a spirit of self-improvement the assembled manufacturers welcomed speeches telling them the need for selling themselves to the U. S. public. "In this task," advised Manhattan's cherubic Adman Arthur Kudner, "it will be well to remember that business is less in a battle than in a courtship. . . . You will do better as a lover if you exhibit charm, good humor, tolerance, gallantry, thoughtfulness, daring and romance than if you exhibit stubbornness, pomposity, fatuousness, bad temper and faultfinding. So let your personality ... be more in the guise of Clark Gable, say, than of Scrooge. In other words, 'say it with flowers' and not with spinach!"

Nearly every speaker said something about industry's immediate duty to make jobs for the unemployed. Social Security was accepted, child labor deplored. About the only part of the New Deal which NAM was unable to stomach officially was collective bargaining. Grumbled old James A. Emery, NAM's wing-collared counsel: "The Government and the individual is armed with every legal weapon essential to control any business combination and protect the public interest against any abuses of its power. . . . The labor combination ... is placed under no similar restraint. On the contrary, the labor combination seeks and has obtained a privileged position within the law."

To leave something on the record more lasting than speeches, NAM carpentered a massive platform entitled: "A Declaration of Principles for American Industry." It condemned war, monopoly, stockmarket manipulation and "undesirable practices and abuses in industry." It pledged co-operation with the Government in nearly every other paragraph, notably in perfecting the Social Security Act and an "equitable" tax system. Concluded this Declaration:

"Prosperity for a nation depends on productivity and peace. Productivity can be destroyed by internal dissensions, by labor conflicts and by wars. Industry seeks an era of good feeling."

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