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In the marbled halls of Herbert Hoover's monument, the new Department of Commerce Building, both phases of the Recovery Act are being administered. Last week movers were cluttering up its halls with furniture from the offices of the moribund R. F. C. Pert young clerks by the score were inking up rubber stamps and, like hungry buzzards, Congressmen had already scented out the headquarters of the government's newest and grandest handout.
His pockets bulging with papers like those of a country lawyer, General Johnson left the White House as soon as the President had issued his statement. Unofficially he had been talking to industrialists for weeks about the Recovery Act. That evening he was scheduled to speak to harassed soft-coal men in Chicago. When his airplane was grounded by fog at Pittsburgh. General Johnson addressed his audience by radio. He strongly urged his distant hosts to "put into effect provisions which you find necessary to protect the willing and the forward-looking among your members from the racketeers and price-cutters and those who are willing to take advantage of the unselfishness and public spirit of other men."
At Bryn Mawr, Secretary of Labor Perkins predicted the Recovery Act would "outlaw the sweatshop."
Racketeering in labor was simultaneously attacked when New York's Doctor-Senator Copeland left Washington with a committee to investigate hoodlumism in New York, Detroit, Chicago. The Recovery Act may also be used as a weapon against labor racketeering since an industry's labor will, like its management, be obliged to make a clean breast before the Industrial Recovery Administration.
Into Line. First to submit a model code was the cotton textile industry, through a committee said to represent two-thirds of the textile millers. Pending approval in public hearing June 27, the code provides a minimum wage of $10 a week in southern mills. $11 in the north, a 44-hr, week, and acknowledgement of employes' right to collective bargaining. The coal men in Chicago were preparing a code. The American Petroleum Institute was also doing spadework in Chicago, while to Washington the independents sent their own recommendations. At Bloomfield, Ind., 30 Indiana limestone producers agreed on a code.
Wage increases were taking place all over the country. In Akron, where Newton Diehl Baker was trying to bring harmony to the embattled rubber industry, Goodyear, Firestone. General. Mohawk all announced 10% raises. Seiberling upped pay 5%. The Pittsburgh Coal Co. was paying 10% more to 8,000 workers. Amoskeag Manufacturing Co., largest cotton textile manufacturer, announced a 15% raise at Manchester, N. H. Other textile mills at Dallas, Gadsden, Ala., Lawrence, Mass., Rockville, Conn, swung into line. Canning factories in Florida, a Philadelphia handbag maker, a Suffolk, Va., candy company, upped pay. Sears, Roebuck rescinded a 10% salary cut order.
Problems, Well did General Johnson know that such pay raises as occurred in the past fortnight were influenced by a slight business upturn, were not primarily due to President Roosevelt's Recovery Act. Before the Recovery Act could be given its head, to show whether any democracy can plan its economic future, many a snarly special problem had yet to be thrashed out. Samples: