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Labor's Toes. Labor, its toes trodden on heavily by omission from Mr. Swope's controlling hierarchy, was hopping mad. Its spokesmen instantly chorused: "Benevolent feudalism!" "Business Fascism!" Chairman Leo Wolman of the Labor Advisory Board snorted that "there is little or no chance of the Swope Plan ever being adopted." "The Swope Plan," firmly declared A. F. of L.'s William Green, "is unacceptable to Labor. . . . The people of the U. S. cannot delegate such broad powers to the same management which failed under the Old Deal to relieve unemployment and restore purchasing power." Consumers' Toes, Mrs. Mary Harriman Rumsey's NRA Consumers' Advisory Board also hopped. "There must be recognition," it declared, "that there are three parties in industry—the consumer, Labor and the management-ownership group. . . . No one of these parties should be placed in a position to dominate another." Pigeonhole. "The Swope proposal," the Chicago Tribune crowed, "may be regarded as an open door through which the Government can make its retreat from Moscow!" Sharp and swift were other observers to forecast NRA's rapid disintegration once the strong voice and arm of Federal authority were made remote.
President Roosevelt decided to mend that sort of talk and pigeonhole the Swope Plan without delay. On his desk he assembled departmental reports to show that: 2,000,000 people had been re-employed since the NRA went into operation; that although industry overproduced in anticipation of the costly Codes, real outlets for the same industrial products are actually greater now than in the summer boom; that hourly wages have increased 20% while the average hours of work per week decreased from 42.3 to 38.1. From the White House came word that "the present was not thought a propitious time for a change in program. . . . The next few months were expected to bring forth hundreds of other plans."
"I Can Take It" As reports that he was about to resign continued to pile up, General Johnson wryly remarked : "Somebody ought to get a copyright on that. 1 came here to help President Roosevelt, and I'll stay just as long as he wants me. I am conscious of the dead cats. I expect them. I can take it. I have no political ambitions and so I don't care what they say."
After a flying visit to Manhattan to spend the night with his close but now critical friend Bernard Baruch, General Johnson hopped off from Washington for the Midwest to begin a speaking tour, to apply the arnica of eloquence to his Blue Eagle's black-&-blue spots.
In Chicago, he retorted to Stanley Baldwin and the U. S. Press:
"Another great hobgoblin is the alleged unconstitutionality of the NRA. All that it has done is put no less than 4,000,000 hopeless, destitute people back to work and raise the wages of millions more to something more than a subsistence level. It has wiped out the sweatshop and child labor and has done so without impairing constitutional limitations that have prevented these results for a generation. Does anybody suppose that a revolting ancestry ever expected that, in writing the Constitution, they intended to perpetuate these abominations? It is ridiculous to suppose such a thing. . . .