RECOVERY: 30-Day Windup

One year ago Hugh S. Johnson went to Washington to spend a few weeks putting U. S. Industries under NRA codes. Weeks dragged into months, months into a year. Last week when it came time for the general to take a vacation his score stood: 476 codes made, 262 to go. But the hard-talking NRAdministrator would not go vacationing with his job left in that unsettled state. He delivered an edict: All code-making must be wound up before he gets back to his desk. Then, his conscience content, he hopped an Army airplane with Secretary Frances ("Robbie") Robinson and flew west.

To demand that his underlings should complete in 30 days half as many codes as he had pushed through in a year was not wholly unreasonable. Of the codes yet to be made only one or two (e. g. ship-building and anthracite) were important. The rest were small and miscellaneous: gold fish, atomizers, window cleaning, suspender trimming, artificial limbs, cemeteries, drive-it-yourself, button holes, traveling salesmen, ironing board pads.

These industries were hardly caviar to the general. He ordered them to : 1) complete their proposed codes in 15 days; or 2) join up with allied industries already under codes; or 3 ) accept a new basic code containing general labor and hour provisions to which they might later add trade-practice requirements.

Having made this edict to end all code-making in 30 days, he announced that he had written the President that as soon as code making was done NRA would cease to be a one-man job and should be administered by a non-partisan commission. Then, lest the public entertain any premature hopes of his early retirement, he added:

"Please do not get the idea that I am getting out. That is not true. I will be back. . . ."

Thus he set out on his vacation. It was marred by airplane trouble. His plane came down once at Rantoul, Ill., another landed him at Waterloo, Iowa. There, in the hippodrome of the Waterloo Dairy Cattle Congress, 4,500 farmers and farm women gave him a hand as his white shoes waded through the inch-thick dust on the dirt floor to put him before the microphone. Save for paying his compliments to Germany (see p. 9), he delivered a mild defense of NRA: "When anybody tells you that NRA and the Blue Eagle have not done for the farmer all that he hoped, you can confidently tell them to go jump in the lake. . . ."

Hot weather again got into the motor of his Army airplane. Against his will he spent two sweltering nights in Omaha, at last chartered a special plane to take him to Portland, Ore. to make a similar speech. Two more speeches were in his brief case, one for Los Angeles, Calif., the other for Chicago. Between them lay an unwritten and far more precious plan—two weeks of rest somewhere in the mountains.