In the smoky blacksmith shop of Hugh McMahan at Newport, Tenn. last week, a young New Yorker named Don Cahill was discussing the NRA. Blacksmith McMahan was an NRA man. Cahill was not. Resenting the city man's talk, the patriotic blacksmith let his temper get the better of him. He picked up one of his tools and flung it at Cahill. Cahill flung back. The blacksmith flung another, Cahill returned it, and Blacksmith McMahan drew his gun shot Cahill dead.
Had patriotic blacksmiths slain every outspoken critic of NRA throughout the land last week, the slaughter would have been terrific. A definite, increasingly voluble reaction had set in against the Blue Eagle. The "dead cats" which Administrator Johnson had predicted would "fill the air" when NRA hit its stride, were flying thick & fast, and some of them were very dead cats indeed.
Referring to the offices of NRA as "the bedlam that they have over there," President Henry Ingraham Harriman of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce observed in Washington: "About six months ago, [businessmen] were 100% for [the NRA] ;' about three months ago there was much less unanimity; and I know of no representative group of businessmen today in which some do not question the whole program."
The Chicago Tribune and Hearstpapers warmed to their new policies of attacking NRA editorially. Tribune excerpt: "The Government, undertaking to control American industry and business by codes enforced in minute detail by Federal authority over all phases of American production, has failed to meet the expectations of the administrators, failed to satisfy the economic requirements of the country, to fit in congenially with the American temperament, and to remedy the ills for which it was used as a cure."
Hearst excerpt: "The blighting effect of the NRA policy has been so complete that a justifiable interpretation of the letters NRA would make them read, 'No Recovery Allowed.' "
Mark Sullivan, touring the Midwest, observed for the New York Herald Tribune and its syndicate: "[The people] are willing to accept NRA as the fire department, but have no idea of letting it become the permanent police department."
Even so constructive a critic of the Administration as Walter Lippmann decided, after re-reading the Recovery Act: "Congress meant to allow industries to combine for two years, to enjoy the benefit of exemption from the anti-trust laws provided they lived up to certain conditions. The initiative was to come from industry. Certain privileges were to be granted to industries if they made certain concessions. It seems to me clear that for most industries Congress meant that codes should, under certain conditions, be permitted and not that codes should universally be imposed. . . " The excessive centralization and the dictatorial spirit [of NRA] are producing a revulsion of feeling against bureaucratic control of American economic life. The trouble, as I see it, is not in the act but in a midsummer misconception of what could and ought to be attempted under the act."