Congressman Gardner Robert Withrow of Wisconsin is a fourth cousin of Abraham Lincoln. Son of a Mississippi steamboat captain, he was born in La Crosse, Wis., 45 years ago, went to work after high school as a fireman for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R.R. Nineteen years later he had risen to be a conductor, got into the Wisconsin Legislature with the support of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen. Next he acted as the Brotherhood's lobbyist in Madison, Wis. Then in 1930 he went to Congress as a Republican.
Now officially listed a Progressive, member of the House Committee on Interstate & Foreign Commerce, he is the father of a resolution to investigate the automotive industry. This was inspired in March 1937 by the predominantly Progressive Wisconsin Legislature, as a result of a State licensing law for automobile dealers which brought out the fact that certain features of the dealer business were interstate in character and therefore outside State regulation. Gardner Withrow's proposal was that the Federal Trade Commission investigate monopolistic features of the relations between automobile manufacturers and dealers. Congress passed the resolution last month and Franklin Roosevelt, always glad to investigate monopoly, quickly signed it.
Others besides Gardner Withrow had suggested prying into the dealer business. Year ago the National Automobile Dealers Association, to which belong 10,000 of the 45,000 U. S. dealers, petitioned FTC for a fair trade practice code. About six months before the American Finance Conference, a trade association of independent automobile finance companies, instigated a Department of Justice investigation of the trade practices of the four factory-affiliated finance companies which do 75% of the new car business. Charges of dealer coercion were presently brought against the "big four" in Milwaukee, but the case fizzled when the judge discovered the Department of Justice trying to arrange a consent decree on the side (TIME, Nov. 22, et seq.). Since then this particular phase of the tripartite dealer investigation has lain dormant. Last week, however, the other two simultaneously came to a climax in Detroit at the annual convention of the N. A. D. A.
This convention, attended by 850 dealers, was for the primary purpose of drawing up a fair trade practice code for submission to the FTC for approval and promulgation. FTCommissioner Charles H. March was on hand to help. But his place in the sun was definitely overshadowed by Gardner Withrow. With the FTC scheduled to begin its investigation of automobile monopoly five days after the N. A. D. A. convention ended, stocky, heavy-jawed Sponsor Withrow appeared in Detroit to explain it. What he had to say was the most vigorous tongue-lashing the automotive industry has had from a Congressman in many a day. Excerpts: