(2 of 4)
Accomplished Fact. Conversely, a thing which made it hard for any New Dealer to consider scrapping NRA was that it was an accomplished fact, huge and substantial. In Herbert Hoover's Department of Commerce Building it rambles through a vast suite of offices. In the seat where Hugh Johnson once sat alone, now sits the National Industrial Recovery Board with S. Clay Williams as its chairman. Beside him sit his four horsemen: Leon C. Marshall, political economist; Arthur D. Whiteside, executive of Dun & Bradstreet; Sidney Hillman, labor executive; Walton H. Hamilton, lawyer and economist—a potent team whose days are given to wrestling with economic problems, with captains of industry and leaders of labor. Chairman Williams' administrative officer is William Averell Harriman, son of Capitalism, who has made more of a mark in NRA than he made in business. Four thousand underlings post over land and sea or sit at desks doing their bidding. Day by day NIRB turns out reams of decisions and orders which, for affected industries, have all the authority of substantive law. In every city, town and hamlet NRA's viceroys, the code authorities, govern as best they can. The 1,400 mills of the cotton textile industry, employing half a million workers, which for years had known no law but strife, now all obey one law in regard to hours, wages, production. To other industries, such as automobiles, the change may make less difference, but it is law of a kind and its potentialities are vast. In short NRA is an operating—if far from smoothly operating—social institution, nationwide, and no such institution can be easily dismantled.
Vested Interests. If criticism of NRA made it difficult for the President to ask its renewal, nonetheless the criticism following a decision to scrap NRA would have been more troublesome still. For NRA as a going institution already has its vested interests. Labor leaders may be bitterly disappointed by the results that followed NRA's promise of collective bargaining but many of them still hold to their belief that they can turn it to account. As long as NRA exists they sooner or later may win the right to write their own ticket for the complete unionization of industry. If NRA expires that source of hope expires with it. To them NRA may be no forward step but the liquidation of NRA would be a backward step which they could not forgive.
The others in the group of vested interests are for the most part those businessmen who are the most inveterate opponents of labor. They believe that if left to themselves they could turn the suspension of the anti-trust laws to profitable account. They also want to write their own ticket—fix prices, suppress competition, even deal as they like with labor. "Give us the privileges for which we bargained," they insist, "or we cannot be expected to give the U. S. the benefits of prosperity."