Thrice has U. S. Business assembled in Congress to deliberate upon the New Deal. Two years ago the delegates to the annual convention of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce converged on Washington with quaking hearts and fearful step, plumped for President Roosevelt's proposed partnership of Government & Business and departed with only the vaguest notion of the New Deal's implications. Last year, somewhat wiser and more cheerful, the convening Chambermen undertook to criticize the New Deal—only to have the President tell them sharply to stop crying ''Wolf!" By last week business profits had recovered enough to send the Chambermen to Washington with eyes ablaze. For three days they proceeded to blast the New Deal and all its works.
High Chambermen, who had maintained a semblance of co-operation with the White House, pattered up & down the Chamber's corridors trying to still the storm of abuse. Henry Ingraham Harriman, outgoing president, keynoted moderately: "The chief objection is not to the basic principles underlying many of these measures but to the extremes to which they are carried." Secretary of Commerce Roper rode a herd on the impatient Chambermen, trying to prevent a stampede.
But the rank & filers were in open revolt. "We have floundered along for two years without knowing whether we were going to be locked up or not," trumpeted Chicago's Silas Hardy Strawn, the Chamber's head under Herbert Hoover. "I think we have the right to know where we are going. Businessmen are tired of hearing promises to do constructive things, which turn out to be only attempts to Sovietize America. We are tired of dawdling and boondoggling."
Chairman Charles Bismark Ames of Texas Corp. grumbled about the "bungling efforts of Washington bureaucracy to regiment American industry."
Most acid Chamberman was Forney Johnston, slender, sharp-nosed Birmingham lawyer who has led the power fight against Tennessee Valley Authority. Calling the New Deal "a witch's dance of uncoordinated legislation" and referring to "the house-top Allah shoutings of Mr. Ickes and other impeccables," he snapped: "If business is vicious, it has required a century and a half to discover it. . . ."
Snub. Last year President Roosevelt sent greetings to the Chamber. Year before he addressed it in person. This year he cut it dead. Chamber officials and White House secretaries denied an intentional snub, explaining that the President was too busy to speak and had not been asked for a message. Nevertheless, the Chamber rebels trembled in defiant delight, convinced that they had thoroughly riled the President.