A NOTABLE EXPERIMENT

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 585, 17 July 1933, Page 4

A NOTABLE EXPERIMENT

American papers just to hand show that Roosevelt Administfation won its hardest fight in Congress when it forced the acceptance of the industrial coiitrol measures in tH'e National Recovery Act. To-day's cables announce the approval of the first of a series of "codes" for which the Recovery Act provides with their complicated machinery for regulating hours and conditions of labour in the chief manufacturing trades of America. This new move would appear on the face of it to be almost as revolutionary as the Roosevelt inflation policy, arid the expefiment is fraught with great possibilities for good if it succeeds in getting the nation's unemployed back to work. Although very strong opposition came from various interested actions, the measure had the blessing of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, presumed to be the most widely | representative body of industry 'in the nation ,and 130 trade as- ! sociations already were prepared with tentative agreements under which it is said 3,000,000 workers will be re-employed by October 1. It has been seen at long last (says one commentator) that the business firms composing a staple industry need a more effective organisation among them selves than the anti-trust laws hitherto have permitted. Super!vision over price policies by the President and the Federal Trade jCommission in the interest of |the consuming public has been | provided for. If the management j of industry is permitted to or- ! ganise more tightly for its barJgaining with the public on one jhand and with labour on the jother, it seems only reasonable jthat the rights of labour to or- ! ganise for collective bargaining jshall be increasingly recognised. This is one of the provisions of the new legislation which is not mentioned in to-day's cable.