In Congress Assembled

If the U. S. public wants to see Society, it can go to the opening of the opera. If it wants to see movie stars, it can hang on the ropes at any Hollywood opening. But if it wants to see tycoons, the place to look is at the annual convention of the National Association of Manufacturers. Last week the heavy cream of tycoonery floating on a Grade A selection of 2,500 substantial U. S. businessmen poured through the lobbies of Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria between sessions of N. A. M.'s 44th three-day Congress of American Industry.

If the Wall Street Journal had a society editor, she would appreciate that company. There were tough, jut-jawed Steelmaster Ernest Tener Weir, chairman of National Steel, smartest little steelman in the U. S.; sleek, youngish Edgar Monsanto Queeny of Monsanto Chemical, whose dignified diversion is Republican politics (finance committee) in Democratic Missouri; scholarly Henning Webb Prentis Jr., president of Armstrong Cork, No. 1 U. S. linoleum producer; rock-ribbed John Howard Pew, president of Sun Oil Co., financial angel of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania; long-nosed Lammot du Pont, beardless patriarch of the U. S.'s most famed family industry; Du Pont-in-law Donaldson Brown, vice chairman, financial and labor policy man of General Motors; the retiring president of N. A. M., courtly Howard Coonley of Walworth Co., whose valve business has not been doing so well in spite of recovery; barrel-chested Utilitarian Wendell Lewis Willkie, foe of TVA; President Clarence Francis, able little-publicized business pundit, and Chairman Colby Mitchell Chester, of General Foods; heavy-jowled Samuel Clay Williams, chairman of Reynolds Tobacco; Wisconsin's politics-minded Walter Jodok Kohler, of Kohler.

Just as at opening of opera or cinema, news photographers whanged away to the giddy glare of flash bulbs. They caught tycoonery (see cuts), failed only to re-record the serious things which the tycoons had come for. During their sessions they:

> Heard Democratic Senator Wheeler attack the Wagner Labor Relations Act and come out for a balanced budget.

> Wrote a plan for restoring U. S. prosperity. Its prime points: reduction of Government regulation of industry to a reasonable basis; an end of Government pump-priming because it is a failure; recognition of the profit motive as an incentive to produce; a return to economy in Government expenditures; amendment of the National Labor Relations Act "to guarantee to employes real freedom in the selection of their representatives"; modification of the Securities Acts to encourage new capital investment.

> Chose for their 1940 president Phi Beta Kappa Prentis of Armstrong Cork. Said he: Businessmen "must recognize their historical mission as preservers of human liberty . . . eliminate unethical practices in their own enterprises ... be keenly conscious of the social significance of their day-by-day decisions ... be industrial statesmen rather than mere businessmen."

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