N.R.A. SIDELIGHTS

Hokitika Guardian, 20 November 1933, Page 3

N.R.A. SIDELIGHTS

DIFFICULTIES OF THE CODES

THE ATTITUDE OF 'THE PUBLIC

WASHINGTON, November 2. The “Times’” Washington correspondent says: In actual practice the National Recovery Act is creating some serious difficulties as well as bringing some of the good results hoped for. For example, .it. is working grave injustice through its grants of the. Blue Eagle insignia of official approval only to those industrialists and ; merchants who are able to, and do, subscribe to its codes. To conform to the codes, which increase the wages of labour, and decrease, the hours of work, has proved impossible for hundreds of thousands of . small merchants, who - are without capital enough to stand the increase in their overhead expenses which will run on for many months before increased profits —which-incidentally, may never be realised—will make it possible to meet increased expenses out of current revenues.

It would not be so hard for these people—although hard enough—if the N.R.A. had not set up a boycott of them; or if' not an actual boycott, at least indirectly a boycott. As it is, the public has been encouraged by the N.R.A. ■to deal only with those merchants who. can show the Blue Eagle as a proof that they have subscribed to its cedes. Necessarily this puts other merchants who might have .been willing to subscribe to the codes if they had been able to do so in an invidious position. Now, as one commentator put it, the threat of discrimination “means to quite a big army of.'small business men who have come through the depression in tatters, staggering under a load of debt, the choice between two modes of extinction. They can conform and perish at once, under the weight of the increased overhead that the N.R.A. would impose. Or they can hold aloof and let discrimination in favour of their more fortunate or less honest rivals wipe them out.” ; ' " Whether the public, with insufficient I purchasing power as it- is to follow up | fully the rise in retail prices of goods that has already occurred, will 'feel disposed to sacrifice economy to “patriotism” and to buy only in shops and stores displaying the N.R.A. Blue Eagle, or whether they will continue to buy where they think they can get most for their money and so deprive the Blue Eagle of much of its advertisement value, remains to be seen. A few -incidents have- already occurred in places widely separated which seem to suggest that 1 there, is. not the popular enthusiasm for patriotic boycotts direct or indirect, that appears to Have been expected. 4 ’ General Johnson if it is plain enough, is Jnuehr concerned K 'at ’the ‘ pb'ss‘ibilit.f ‘ that merchants' unfortunate enough to be unable to conform to'the N.R.A. codes may suffer unfairly from the advice given to the public to discriminate in favour of''thfc conformists ;.tnit there are other 'supporters of the N.RJL—some of those who'look upon it lioncflllly as the beginning of a permanent control of business through planned production—who have no tenderness for the small merchant. To these people the small merchant and the small employer generally arc uneconomic survivals of' a less efficient age. They have no plaice in the modern ’scheme of things, and the sooner they disappear (it is said) the better it will be for all business..